She smiled as she thought of the reason of his presence, and blew a kiss over the edge to his unsuspecting head. This, the great task of her father's career, would mark the end of Conrad's apprenticeship. These days of a mass attack on the bottomless pit might be the beginning of the end. When the mass of logs and trees and rocks was dumped in, surely she could lay her plans for a new life! Conrad would return to the city, to the partnership he had dropped only temporarily to be near her; and her father would have enough for the rest of his days.
A week or two to test the success of their latest effort, another to build the permanent foundations and strengthen the trestle in its final shape, and then a few weeks at most for the fill-in. Already the wave in the trestle beneath the supply trains was scarcely noticeable. The end was in sight.
Her father she could pick out easily enough—that still, large figure standing by itself, or joined now and then by Adrian. Once it jerked forward, and half a dozen men catapulted themselves at some part of the work that did not please him.
Presently Adrian and two others gathered before the contractor, where they seemed to confer a long time. One, Tressa knew, would be Koppowski; the other must be one of his friends, Werner probably, or Morani, or Heppel. They alone of the five hundred possessed intelligence enough to justify consultation. The rest merely obeyed orders, like the horses, and crammed their stomachs till the dishes were empty. Yes, and made strange music of evenings. She never understood that.
Then Adrian and her father were alone.
The men swarming through the lower lacework of the trestle were keying up with sledge and rope and wrench, adding a pole here and there. These they lifted by means of rope and pulley attached to convenient parts of the existing structure. Her father was pointing upward. A bohunk climbed clumsily to the point indicated and tied a pulley there. Passing a rope through the pulley, he tossed the end down. Several men seized it. To the other end a log was attached.
Down below, Torrance watched the carrying out of his orders with keenest interest. He had been at this for months, and his trained eye could pick out the weak spots with unerring instinct. To his eye he was forced to trust for the support of those twin bands of steel high above his head, since the uncertain and uneven sinking of the trestle, green timber, and ignorant and careless workmen, with the incidence of accident far above the average, made construction at the best patchy and haphazard.
He was surprised and a little chagrinned by the weakness he had discovered; he could not understand how it had escaped him before. The pull, the brace of the trestle poles just there did not seem unsound, yet instinct warned him that something was amiss in the sag of adjacent supports. His orders to Conrad, accordingly, were hurried and abrupt.
The men in the trestle went about the work in their usual clumsy way, but at last a score of men had hold of the rope and the fresh log rose on its end in slow jerks. Then it was clear of the ground, rolling in a leisurely way against the lower supports of the trestle in response to the uncurling of the rope. Up above, men were holding it away from the trestle; a dozen more waiting to fasten it in place.
It had risen twenty feet when a cry of warning burst from Torrance's lips. He scarcely knew why. His wandering eyes had fancied a sag in the support that held the pulley; his quick ear had caught a new note in the creaking timbers.