“These are not the same cars,” said David, and he produced the yard boss’s memorandum to prove it.
The half-truth, which was wholly an untruth so far as the inner fact was concerned, succeeded. The cars were billed, and in due course they reached Coulee du Sac as a new shipment. Just what was to be gained by the juggling, when the railroad inspectors would be certain to sample the cement and test it, with probably the same results as those they had reached before, was not very clear to David Vallory. But one night, a little farther along, he was given a shock of enlightenment.
The shock was administered by his bunk-shack mate, the engineer in charge of the under-water work in the caissons; Shubrick by name, and by training a man who had grown accustomed to many shifts and tricks in that branch of engineering which is fullest of fatalities. To Shubrick David Vallory was freeing his mind on the general subject of over-critical inspection.
“These railroad watchers are getting on my nerves more and more, all the time!” he complained. “They act as if they think we are a bunch of crooks, needing only half a chance to scamp this job so that it will fall into the river with the first train that passes over it. Do they worry you on the under-water work as much as they do us on the concreting?”
Shubrick grinned ferociously.
“I’d shut off the air and drown a few of them if they did. Just the same, David, they’re onto their job all right. You needn’t make any mistake about that.”
“You say that as if you thought we needed watching. Do you think so?”
This time Shubrick’s grin took a sardonic twist.
“When you are a few years older, you’ll know a heap more, David. Why, good Lord, man! are you nourishing the idea that this contracting company is doing business on a philanthropic basis?”
David Vallory shook his head. “You’ll have to diagram it for me, I guess. We may not be any too honest; I’ve seen some things done that I’ve wished we didn’t have to do. But that isn’t an admission that we’re a gang of thieves, to be watched and harried from one day’s end to another.”