“That’s bad; neither Mr. Ford nor Mr. Maxwell will stand for anything like that. Just between us two, Vallory, Lushing has always spent a lot of time in Powder Can—did it while he was with your people.”
“I know. But now that he’s out of it, temporarily, at least, why can’t we get together and straighten up some of the kinks? You know how exasperating it is for these fellows of mine to have somebody standing over them with a club all the time. Come on up to camp with me and we’ll hammer it out.”
Crawford had stopped his concrete mixer because he had to; no more concrete could be poured until the steel bars were placed. The crisis had come, and while Strayer hesitated, David Vallory, the new David, took the deep-water plunge into the stagnant pool of open trickery. Crawford’s men were bringing the scanted supply of steel bars, getting in each other’s way to kill time. David stepped over to the steel pile and counted the pieces.
“Say, Crawford!” he called out; “you haven’t got enough steel here! Heavens and earth, man! don’t you know any better than to run right up against a shortage like this?”
Crawford gasped twice, and then he understood. “Ding bust it, Mr. Vallory, I ought to be fired! Mr. Strayer, here, has been keeping me so busy that I haven’t looked at that steel pile. What are we going to do?”
“Do? You’ll just have to place what you’ve got, and hold your mixer until we can get some more down to you. I’ll go back to the yard and see that it’s hustled out. Come on, Strayer; let’s take a ride.”
The crisis was past and the big inspector climbed on the engine with the Grillage chief.
“I’ll take an hour off with you, Vallory, after I’ve seen that steel put on the car,” he laughed; and at a sign from David, the throttle was opened and the locomotive clattered away up the grade.
XXII
At Bridge Three
AFTER the dash in the card-room at Black Jack Dargin’s place, and its immediate and transforming consequences, Silas Plegg, shrewd observer and most efficient of assistants, looked confidently for trouble, and went about prepared to stand by his chief when the trouble should materialize. It was during Lushing’s administration as the Grillage chief of construction that the Powder Can kennels had begun to flourish, and it had been broadly hinted that he had been a sharer in the profits. Rumor had it that he was still hand-in-glove with the kennel-keepers; and with such a lawless contingent at his command, the ex-chief became—at least in Plegg’s estimation—a man whose enmity was to be feared.