In the midst of his labours he looked up as the door of his log shanty was unceremoniously thrust open.
The table before which he was seated was a rough enough piece of furniture, as were most of the fitments of this shelter he had set up on the wind-swept cliffs. It was littered with the mechanical drawings, and charts, and maps he was at work upon. There was a queer assemblage, too, of the instruments of his profession lying scattered over the completely untidy apartment.
Peter Loby stood regarding him with a smiling look of relief.
“I’m glad I took the chance, boss,” he said, with a laugh of content. “Guess I was two minds about it. You see, I came down the river because I wanted to save you the trip up—an’ to gain time.”
“Why? What’s doing, Peter?”
McLagan spoke quietly, but his eyes were sharply questioning.
Peter was a tall, lean creature whose whole horizon was bounded by oil and the business of extracting it from the bosom of mother earth. He was a practical expert to his finger tips. But he possessed no knowledge beyond its sheerly technical side. He was glad enough to serve under McLagan. He knew his chief’s worth as a dogged, fighting, companionable creature who held his place as the principal representative of the world’s greatest oil concern by sheer ability. And he knew his own expertness would have full play under McLagan’s control, and such reward on results would come his way as rarely enough fall to the man in his position. Furthermore, he liked the man, and desired nothing better than to serve as his foreman of works.
“Why, I spent three weeks on that coal belt you located last fall. An’ I’ve made a further rough map of the thing you guessed about it but didn’t figger to chase up at the time. Here’s the map. Maybe you best read it. I’ll talk after.”
He passed a large linen tracing across to the man behind the table, and drew out a plug of chewing tobacco from the hip pocket of his moleskin trousers. Then he propped himself against the doorcasing and gazed out seaward, while his lean jaws masticated the chew he had bitten off.
After awhile McLagan looked up from the carefully drawn chart.