"I couldn't think of that. It's too far away. I must stay right here and keep my eye on the work, every minute. You have no idea what a dangerously narrow margin of time we have left; 'specially for those north laterals, you know, Sis." His voice grew sharp and anxious.

Marian looked at him keenly. For the first time she saw the dull circles under his eyes, the drawn, tired lines around his steady mouth.

Then she glanced up the ditch. High on its green stilts, Sally Lou's perky little martin-box caught her eye.

"I have it, Rod! Tell some of your laborers to build a cabin for you, like the Burfords'! Then I'll come down and keep house for you."

Roderick shrugged his shoulders.

"I can't spare a solitary laborer from the contract, Marian; not for a day. We're short-handed as it is. No, I'll stay where I am. I'm doing well enough. Steam up, Mulcahy? Good-by, Sis. Back to-morrow!"

Marian watched the launch till it disappeared in the green mist of the willows. Then she sat down to her brother's desk and began to sort the clutter of papers. But sorting them was not an easy matter. To her eyes they were only a bewildering tangle. Marian knew that she possessed an inborn knack at figures, and it piqued her to find that she could not master Roderick's accounts at the first glance. She worked on and on doggedly. The little state-room grew hot and close; the dull throb of the dredge machinery and the noisy voices from without disturbed her more and more.

At last she sprang up and swept the whole ma.s.s into her hand-bag. Then she ran up the hill to the martin-box.

Sally Lou, very fresh and cool in pink dimity, sat in her screened nest, with the babies playing on the scrubbed floor. She nodded in amused sympathy at Marian's portentous armful.

"Aren't those records a dismal task! Yes, I've found a way to sift them, though it took me a long time to learn. Start by adding up the time-book accounts; verify each laborer's hours, and see whether his pay checks correspond to his actual working time. Roderick has fifty men on his shift, so that is no small task. Then add up his memoranda of time made by the big dredge; and also the daily record of the two little dredges up at the laterals. Then run over the steward's accounts and see whether they check with his bills----"

Marian stared at Sally Lou, astonished.

"Well, but Sally Lou! Think how much time that will mean! Why, I would have to spend all afternoon on the time-books alone."

Sally Lou raised her yellow head and looked at Marian very steadily.

A tiny spark glinted in her brown eyes.

"Well, what if it does take all afternoon? Have you anything better to do?"

There was a minute of silence. Then Marian's cheeks turned rather pink.

"I suppose not. But it is horridly tedious work, Sally Lou. On such a warm day, too."

"It certainly is." Sally Lou's voice was quite dry. She caught up Thomas Tucker, who was trying laboriously to feed Mr. Finnegan with a large ball of darning cotton. "You'd find it even more tedious if you were obliged to work at it evenings, as your brother does. Can't you stay to lunch, Marian? We'll love to have you; won't we, babies?"

"Thank you, no. Mrs. Gates will expect me at home."

Marian walked back through the woods, her head held high. The glint in Sally Lou's eyes had been a bit of a challenge. Again she felt her cheeks flush hot, with a queer puzzled vexation.

"I'll show her that I can straighten Rod's papers, no matter how muddled they are!" she said to herself, tartly. And all that warm spring afternoon she toiled with might and main.

Roderick, meanwhile, was spending a hard, discouraging day. Arriving at Saint Louis, he found the secretary of the coal-mining company at his office. Eager and insistent, he poured out his urgent need of the promised barge-load of coal. The consignment was now a week overdue.

The dredges had only a few hundred bushels at hand; in less than forty-eight hours the engines must shut down, unless he could get the fuel to camp.

"You can't be any more disturbed by this crisis than I am, Mr.

Hallowell," the secretary a.s.sured him. "Owing to a strike at the mines we have been forced to cancel all deliveries. I can't let you have a single ton."

Roderick gasped.

"But our dredges! We don't dare shut down. Our contract has a chilled-steel time-lock, sir, with a heavy forfeit. We must not run over our date limits. We've got to have that coal!"

"You may be able to pick up a few tons from small dealers," said the secretary, turning back to his desk. "You'll be buying black diamonds in good earnest, for the retail price has gone up thirty per cent since the news came of the mines strike. Wish you good luck, Mr.

Hallowell. Sorry that is all that I can do for you."

Roderick lost no time. He bought a business directory and hailed a taxicab. For six hours he drove from one coal-dealer's office to another. At eight o'clock that night he reached his hotel, tired in every bone, but in royal high spirits. Driblet by driblet, and paying a price that fairly staggered him, he had managed to buy over four hundred tons.

"That will keep us going till the strike is settled," he told Burford over the long-distance.

"Bully for you!" returned Burford, jubilant. "But how will you bring it up to camp?"

"Oh, the railroad people have promised empties on to-morrow morning's early freight to Grafton. Then we can carry it to camp on our own barges. I shall come up on that freight myself. I shall not risk losing sight of that coal. Mind that."

At five the next morning Roderick went down to the freight yards. His coal wagons were already arriving. But not one of the promised "empties" could he find.

"There is a mistake somewhere," said the yard-master. "Can't promise you a solitary car for three days, anyway. Traffic is all behindhand.

You'd better make a try at head-quarters."

"I have no time to waste at head-quarters," retorted Rod. He was white with anger and chagrin. This ill luck was a bolt from a clear sky.

"I'll go down to the river front and hire a barge and a tow-boat. I'll get that coal up to camp to-morrow if I have to carry it in my suit-case."

His hunt for a barge proved a stern chase, but finally he secured a large flat-boat at a reasonable rental. But after searching the river front for miles, he found only one tow-boat that could be chartered.

The tow's captain, noting Roderick's anxiety, and learning that he represented the great Breckenridge Company, promptly declared that he would not think of doing the two-days' towing for less than five hundred dollars.

"Five hundred dollars for two days' towing! And I have already paid three times the mine price for my coal!" Roderick groaned inwardly.

Suddenly his eye caught two trim red stacks and a broad familiar bow not fifty yards away. It was the little packet, the _Lucy Lee_. She was just lowering her gang-plank, making ready to take on freight for her trip up-stream.

"I'll hail the _Lucy_. Maybe the captain can tell me where to find another tow-boat. Ahoy, the _Lucy_! Is your captain aboard? Ask him to come on deck and talk to Hallowell, of the Breckenridge Company, will you?"

"The captain has not come down yet, sir. But our pilot, Commodore McCloskey, is here. Will you talk with him?"

"Will I talk to the commodore? I should hope so!" Rod's strained face broke into a joyful grin. He could have shouted with satisfaction when Commodore McCloskey, trim as a gimlet in starchy white duck, strolled down the gang-plank and gave him a friendly hand.

"Sure, I don't wonder ye're red-hot mad," he said, with twinkling sympathy. "Five hundred dollars for two days' tow! 'Tis no better than a pirate that tow-boat captain is, sure. But come with me. I have a friend at court that can give ye a hand, maybe. Hi, boy! Is Captain Lathrop, of the _Queen_, round about?"

"The _Queen_? Why, her captain is the very man who demanded the five hundred dollars!" blurted Rod.

At that moment the captain's head popped from the cabin door. He stared at Roderick. He stared at Commodore McCloskey. Then he had the grace to duck wildly back, with a face sheepish beyond words to describe.

"Well, Captain Lathrop!" Commodore McCloskey's voice rang merciless and clear. "Tell me the truth. Is it yourself that's turned highway robber? Five hundred dollars for twenty hours' tow! Sure, ye must be one of thim high fin-an-ciers we read about in the papers. Why not make it five hundred dollars per ton? Then ye could sell the _Queen_ and buy yourself a Cunarder for a tow-boat instead."

Captain Lathrop squirmed.

"How should I know he was a friend of yours, commodore? I'll take his coal all the way to camp, and gladly, for three hundred, seein' as it's a favor to you."

"For three hundred, is it?" The commodore began a further flow of eloquence. But Rod caught his arm.

"Three hundred will be all right. And I'm more obliged to you, commodore, than I can say. Now I'm off. If ever I can do you a good turn, mind you give me the chance!"