Jim, with his arm across Iron Skull's shoulder, turned to watch the river. The moving brown wall had filled the excavation. It rushed like a Niagara over the flume edge. In half an hour it ran from bank to bank, with a roar of satisfaction at having once more regained its bed.
Jim sighed and said to Iron Skull: "She's taken a hundred thousand dollars at a mouthful. I'll put that in my expense account for my trip to Washington."
Iron Skull grunted: "We'll be lucky if we get off that cheap. This will make talk for every farmer on the Project. They'll all be up to tell you how you should have done it."
Jim shrugged his shoulders. "This isn't the first flood we've weathered, Iron Skull. Come up to the house while I change my clothes."
The two started along the road that wound up to the low mountain top where the group of adobe cottages known as "officers' quarters" was located. The cottages were occupied by Jim's associate engineers and their families.
"I suppose you learned that your friends came," said Iron Skull. "They wanted a tent for his health, so I put them in the tent house back on the level behind the quarters.
"I didn't know of their coming until I was leaving Washington," said Jim. "How are they?"
"She stood the trip fine. He was pretty well used up, poor cus! She is awful patient with him. She's all you've said about her and then some. The ladies have all called on her but he don't encourage them. I stood a good deal from him, then I just told him to go to hell. Not when she was round, of course."
Jim listened intently. He knew the whole camp must be alive with gossip and curiosity over his two guests. An event of this order was a godsend in news value to the desert camp.
"Much obliged to you," was Jim's comment.