“Is it at Yuma?”
Hardin admitted that it was not yet at Yuma; it would be there soon; he had written; oh, it was all right.
“When did you write?”
Hardin reddened under the catechism of questions. He resented being held up before his men. The others felt the electricity in the air. Hardin and his successor were glaring at each other like belligerents.
“I asked when did you write?”
“Yesterday.”
“Yesterday!” Rickard ripped out an oath. “Yesterday. Why at all, I’d like to know? Did you understand that you were ordered to get that here? Now, it’s gone.”
“Gone?” The others crowded up.
“San Francisco’s burning.” He walked into his inner office, mad clear through. The group around Hardin were tearing his wisp of news. San Francisco on fire. The city of their fun gone.
He was not thinking of the ruin of the gay young city; not a thought yet did he have of the human tragedies enacting there; of homes, lives, fortunes swept into that huge bonfire. As it affected the work at the river, the first block to his campaign, the catastrophe came home to him. He had a picture of tortured, twisted iron, of ruined machinery, the machinery for his dredge. He saw it lying like a spent Laocoön, writhing in its last struggle. He blamed himself for leaving even such a small detail as the hastening of the parts to Hardin’s care, for Hardin wasn’t fit to be trusted for anything. No one could tell him now the man was unlucky; he was a fool. A month wasted, and days were precious. A month? Months. Hardin’s luck. Oh, hell!