“Quicksand! It was a dry, solid stream-bed when I ran the line through here and drew the plans for Number Ten,” declared Neale.
Coffee and Blake stared blandly at him. So did the lineman Somers.
“You? Did YOU draw the plans we—we’ve been working on?” asked Coffee.
“Yes, I did,” answered Neale, slowly. It struck him that Blake had paled slightly. Neale sustained a slight shock of surprise and antagonism. He bent over his note-book, opening it to a clean page. Fighting his first impressions, he decided they had arisen from the manifest dismay of the engineers and their consciousness of a blunder.
“Let’s get down to notes,” Neale went on, taking up his pencil. “You’ve been here three months?”
“Yes.”
“With what force?”
“Two hundred men on and off.”
“Who’s the gang boss?”
“Colohan. He’s had some of the biggest contracts along the line.”