Again Connolly explained, and he did not try to make it easy for the offending crew of Number Seventeen. “Jasper didn’t ask for orders at Nophi. He simply took snap judgment and went along, leaving the Nophi man to tell me after the thing was done.”
“Jasper and his engineer will get thirty days on this, no matter how it turns out!” snapped the boss. “There is a good deal too much of this rule-breaking lately, and it’s got to stop short. I won’t have it.... Suffering cats! I wish those sprinters would hurry up and get word to us! My God, Dan, if that fast train gets into the tunnel before they catch it——”
A thunderous clangor in the station yard below the office windows cut into the sentence, and again the superintendent looked up at the clock.
“That’s the ‘Quick-step,’ isn’t it?” he said. “She’s bringing an old friend of ours from the East, Dan—Mr. Sprague.”
For a moment Connolly was able to take his mind off of the tragedy or near-tragedy which was working itself out to some kind of a climax in the far-away Hophra Mountains to the westward.
“You asked him to come and tell us why we’re having this fit of extra cussedness all over the line?” he asked.
“Oh, no; the Department of Agriculture is sending him to make some soil tests in the Timanyoni. He writes that he is likely to be with us for a month or two.”
“I’m glad,” said Connolly simply. “Somehow, you feel as if you’d got a good solid mountain at your back when Mr. Sprague’s around. I wonder if he’ll come up here before he goes over to the hotel?”
Even as he spoke the door opened, and the man who looked like the elder brother of all the foot-ball “backs” in the intercollegiate try-out came in.
“Hello, hello, hello,” he said jovially; “same old shop—same old worries, eh? How are you, Maxwell? And you, Mr. Connolly? Glad to see you both. What’s the trouble this time? Anything a journeyman chemist can help you out on?”