Blake burst into a hearty laugh. “That’s a fine metaphor, Mr. Gowan. But it does not happen to fit the case. It would not matter if the spike-hole had been pulled out and the post along with it, so far as concerns this line of levels.”
“It wouldn’t?” muttered Gowan, his lean jaw 184 dropping slack. He glowered as if chagrined at the engineer’s laughter at his mistake.
Without heeding the puncher’s look, Blake began to tell Knowles the result of his day’s work. While he was speaking, they went into the house after his wife and the girl, leaving Gowan and Ashton alone. Equally sullen and resentful, the rivals exchanged stares of open hostility. Ashton pointed a derisive finger at the spike-hole in the post.
“‘Hole ... and the post along with it!’” he repeated Blake’s words. “On bridge work it might have caused some trouble. But a preliminary line of levels––Mon Dieu! A Jap should have known better––or even a yap!” With a supercilious shrug, he swung back into the buckboard and drove up to the corral.
Gowan’s right hand had dropped to his hip. Slowly it came up and joined the other hand in rolling a thick Mexican cigarette. But the puncher did not light his “smoke.” He looked at the spike-hole in the post, scowled, and went back around the house.
CHAPTER XVI
METAL AND METTLE
At dawn Blake and Ashton drove up to the waterhole on Dry Fork with their camp equipment. There they left the outfit in the buckboard and proceeded with the line of levels on up the creek bed into the gorge from which it issued.