Sigsbee held out a cigar. Nash accepted it, and thanked him. He enjoyed a good cigar. Once down on the busy street, he lighted the weed, and walked slowly down to Fifth, and along this thoroughfare to the station. He was so busy with his own thoughts that he paid scant attention to what went on around him. So much had happened within the past twenty-four hours that it was small wonder he appeared preoccupied.

A hundred unanswered questions pounded at his brain; no sooner did he try to reason out one than a dozen rushed in. So, with a shrug of his shoulders, he resolved to give it all up and allow the problems to wag for a while.

“I’ve enough to do in minding my own affairs,” he told himself. “The other things will solve themselves.”

He reached the station just in time to catch a train back to San Fernando. He swung up on the last car, and made his way into the smoker. With a sigh of relief, he sank into the nearest seat.

“Well, there’s one thing certain,” he said, addressing the endless orange groves that stretched on either side of the track. “And that is, Camp Forty-seven is going to be heard from, and in the right way, for work accomplished and the cost of it.”

CHAPTER XIII.
ON THE HIGH TRAIL.

The installation of the new foreman at Camp Forty-seven provoked no little discussion, not alone in the camp concerned, but all along the busy line of aqueduct construction. It was the abruptness of the affair which probably affected the majority of the workers, and a dozen different stories were in circulation as to the real cause of the change.

Doubtlessly the men arrived at as satisfactory a conclusion as did Nash himself. While he had no great respect for the Los Angeles politician—Sigsbee—still Nash admired him for the apparent determination he had expressed in their interview that day—a determination to rid Camp Forty-seven of graft.

Whether this was Sigsbee’s object or not, or his main reason, for changing foremen, Nash speedily took matters into his own hands and put his ideas into execution. He studied out a system, held weekly consultations with his subforemen, and saw to it that they followed the lines he had drawn. There was considerable grumbling at first, principally because each man had been in the habit of doing what he pleased.

“That’s why you don’t accomplish more,” Nash told them. “You don’t pull together. Teamwork is the thing that counts.”