“Difficult? How?”
“Why—er—there can’t very well be two bosses on a job, and when I give an order and Strayer countermands it——”
“Do you mean to say that Strayer is trying to boss your job?”
“It amounts to that.”
David turned to the engine-driver.
“Run us down to bridge Number Two, Pete,” he ordered, and the heavy construction locomotive lumbered down through the yard and out over the switches.
The run was a short one, and at the bridge approach David and his assistant got off to walk over to the new structure. The bridge plant was well lighted by carbide gas flares, and prominent on the form stagings was the big figure of Strayer, the railroad inspector. David Vallory called up to him.
“Come down here a minute, Strayer; I want to talk to you,” he said.
When the railroad engineer joined him he led the way to the cement platform, where the noise of the mixer was less insistent.
“What’s the idea, Strayer?” he demanded.