"Not with such unfailing unanimity if there were several hundred of me. Mirapolis isn't such an infernally good place to go away from—not yet."
Brouillard's smile matched the easy-going laugh which had been its forerunner.
"You are a most persistent gadfly, Harlan. If I tell you one small, trifling, and safely uninflammable fact, can I trust you not to turn it into a house afire in the columns of the Spot-Light?"
"You know well enough you can!" was the eager protest. "When have I ever bleated when I should have kept still?"
"Well, then, the fact is this: the men leaving the Niquoia are not discharged from the service. They are merely transferred to the Escalante project, which the department is trying to push through to completion before the northern winter sets in and freezes the concrete in the mixers."
"Ah!" said Harlan with a quick indrawing of his breath. "That brings on more talk—about a thousand miles of it, doesn't it?"
"For example?" suggested the engineer.
"To put it baldly, is the government really quitting on the Niquoia project, or is it merely transferring its force from a job that can wait to one that can't wait?"
Brouillard smiled again. "You see," he said; "it is second nature for you pencil-pushers to try to make two facts grow where only one grew before. Honestly, now, Harlan, what do you think about it yourself? You don't need any kindergartner of a construction man to help you solve a little problem like that, do you?"
"I'm doing a little sum in simple equations," was the thoughtful answer—"putting this bit of information which you have just given me against what I have been believing to be a pretty straight tip from Washington."