"Oh, he is a free lance; comes and goes as he pleases. No, he's not quarreling with Dick"—answering her look of anxiety.
"How do you know he isn't?"
Ford laughed. "Because Dick wouldn't let him get that near. He knows—Hello; I wonder what your good uncle wants of us."
Mr. Colbrith was standing up in his place in the leading buckboard and making signals to the rear guard of two. Ford shook the reins over his broncos and drove around.
The president was fingering his thin beard and waving an arm toward the track-layers.
"Mr.—ah—Ford," he began critically, "is it necessary to have such a vast army of men as that to lay the track?"
"I don't think we are over-manned," said Ford good-naturedly. It was comparatively easy to be patient with Alicia looking on and listening.
But it was against Mr. Colbrith's principles to let a man off with a single rebuttal.
"I am not at all convinced of the worth of these new-fangled ideas, Mr. Ford; not at all. We built the Pacific Southwestern main line in the old, approved way—a rail at a time—with less than one-quarter of the men you have over there."
"I don't question it: and you were three years building some six hundred miles in a prairie country. We are to-day just six weeks out of Saint's Rest with the track gang, and in six more, if the weather holds, we shall be laying the switches in the Green Butte yards. That is the difference between the old way and the new."