“I think,” interjected Rickard, “that we all agree with Mr. Marshall, Mr. Hardin, that a wooden head-gate on silt foundation could never be more than a makeshift. I understood that the first day he visited the river with you he had the idea to put the ultimate gate, the gate which would control the water supply of the valley, up at the Crossing on rock foundation. Mr. Marshall does not expect to finish that in time to be of first use. He hopes the wooden gate will solve the immediate problem. It was a case of any port in a storm. He has asked me to report my opinion.”
“Why doesn’t he give me a chance to go ahead then?” growled the deposed manager. “Instead of letting the intake widen until it will be an impossibility to confine the river there at all?”
“So you do think that it will be an impossibility to complete the gate as planned?”
Hardin had run too fast. “I didn’t mean that,” he stammered. “I mean it will be difficult if we are delayed much longer.”
“You are in charge of the construction of that gate?”
Hardin said he was. If it had not been for the floods—
“Have you the force to re-begin work at once?” demanded Rickard.
“I had it,” evaded Hardin. “I had everything ready to go on—men, material—when we stopped the last time.”
“And you haven’t it now?”
Hardin hated to the soul of him to have to acknowledge that he had not; he shrank from uncovering a single obstacle that stood between his gate and completion. He tried to hedge. MacLean, a big man whose iron wheels moved slowly, was weighing the caliber of the two opposing men. Babcock, wiry, alert, embarrassed Hardin with his challenging stare.