“It’s this way,” Crawford explained, still more hurriedly. “When we begun on this job, Plegg and I figured the plans over and he—that is, we concluded that it was simply wasting steel to put it in as thickly as the plans called for—why, the factor of safety was the whole cheese! So we agreed to cut the steel down. If you can’t get Strayer away from here for an hour or so, I’ll have to stop the run and take the risk of the concrete’s setting in the forms while we’re getting some more steel down here.”
A month earlier David Vallory would have known what to say, and would have said it, without garnishings. But now he merely nodded and walked down the runway and across to the cement house where Strayer was still pacing back and forth.
“This situation needs threshing out from the bottom up, Strayer,” he began crisply. “Suppose you get on the engine and go up to headquarters with me where we can fight it out to some sort of a conclusion. I’m tired of this business of scrapping with you fellows all the time.”
“I’m sorry, Vallory, but Lushing is the man you’ll have to talk to.”
“You’re his second, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but you know the rules; I don’t have anything to say when he is on the job.”
“Well, he isn’t on the job. He had a racket with a man over in Powder Can a couple of hours ago, and they tell me he’s knocked out for the present. That puts it up to you, again, doesn’t it?”
“Why, yes; I guess so—if he’s—how badly is he hurt?”
“I don’t know; pulled a gun on a man, and the man jumped him.”
Strayer shook his head.