“Shucks!” tossed Maria Busby.
CHAPTER XI
THE RIVALS
FROM the window of the adobe office building of the company, Hardin saw Rickard jump from the rear platform of the train as it slowed into the station. He noticed that the new manager carried no bag.
“Wonder what he’s decided to do about the head-gate. He didn’t waste much time out there.” Hardin was fidgeting in his seat, his eyes on the approaching figure. His desk was cluttered with untouched papers; there was a report to be made; Hardin had several times made a great show of getting out his books, sharpening his pencils, but he was as restless as a girl when a lover’s declaration lingers. Marshall had held up the gate—what did Marshall know about it, he’d like to know, sitting at his office desk in Tucson? They were losing valuable time. He wondered what Rickard would report to his chief; he vowed to himself that he would not show his eagerness by inquiring. “Ask him, please him by truckling? I’d see the gate rot first.”
Rickard passed through the room, nodding to his office force. The door of the inner office shut behind him. Hardin stared at the blank surface. He moved restlessly in his swivel chair. Did the fellow think a big thing like that could hang on while he unpacked his trunks and settled his bureau drawers? He picked up a pencil, jabbing at the paper of his report. He covered the sheet with figures—three hundred—six hundred. Six hundred feet. Whose fault that the intake had widened, doubling its width, trebling its problem? Whose but Marshall’s, who had sent down one of his office clerks to see what Hardin was doing? Wouldn’t any man in his senses know that the way Maitland would distinguish himself would be by discrediting Hardin, by throwing bouquets to Marshall; praising his plan? They all go at it the same sickening way! Office clerks, bah! Sure, Maitland had advised against the completion of the gate. Said it would cost more in time and money than Hardin’s estimates. “Thanks to Maitland it did,” growled Hardin, scrawling figures over the page. “By the time Maitland finished monkeying with that toy dam of his the river had widened the break from three hundred to six hundred feet. For that, they throw mud at me. Oh, it makes me sick.” Hardin flung his broken pencil out of the window.
Rickard reentered the room. The question leaped from Hardin.
“The head-gate—are you going on with it?”
Rickard looked curiously at the flushed antagonistic face of the man he had supplanted. The thought crossed his mind that perhaps Hardin had taken to drinking. It made his answer curt.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know!”