Steve turned toward the door.

"So I heard," he replied, without facing around. "I'll try to be on hand."

He stood for another instant on the threshold.

"I'm going to ask you to see that my horse is fed and watered," he requested evenly. "And I reckon you'd better eat your own lunch, yourself."

But the man behind him had already antic.i.p.ated that suggestion.

Through a generous bite of sandwich he made answer.

"I'll see that he is taken care of," he called cheerfully. "See you later, Mr. O'Mara---- Pshaw, the coffee's cold!"

CHAPTER XII

THAT WOODS-RAT

Between Dexter Allison's monopoly of his time and the persistence with which Miriam Burrell clung to Stephen O'Mara, Barbara Allison had opportunity for little more than a perfunctory word or two of greeting that afternoon, during the first hour or two that followed a jolting ride on the flat car which trundled them to the head of operations.

Almost as soon as her feet touched the ground Miriam's eager survey singled out a tall figure at the edge of the farthest embankment; and in spite of the fact that he was at the moment in sober conversation with white-haired, white-bearded McLean, she crossed instantly to take possession of both Steve's arms and his undivided attention. Barbara, at Wickersham's side, glancing now and then in their direction, knew well what subject was engrossing them to the exclusion of all else.

But Allison's acceptance of that arrangement as time pa.s.sed grew less patient.

For a time he was content to stroll along with the rest--content with his facetious comments on Elliott's explanation of this matter or that.

Yet whenever his eyes strayed toward Miriam and that other figure whom a week or two before he had designated as "my man, O'Mara," his jovialty faltered a little, his manner grew restive. After a time he, too, detached himself and sauntered in the direction of that wholly preoccupied pair.

"See here, my lady," he accosted the girl, who turned extremely bright eyes upon his approach. "This won't do at all. How do you suppose I am going to get a minute with Mr. O'Mara, here, if you persist in clinging to his elbow? You'll have to run along--you run over and listen, with the rest, to Elliott's heroic tale of this scarring of the face of nature. I've waited a good many days to talk business with Mr.

O'Mara; I'm not going to lose him, now I've got him cornered."

Had Dexter Allison been less occupied with other thoughts, the face which Miriam Burrell turned toward him would have surprised him, if only because of the unusual color burning in her cheeks. At that he was vaguely aware that he had never before seen that quiet, self-contained girl so pulsingly happy. She stood and gazed at him a moment, then made him a low and mocking obeisance.

"Don't flatter yourself that I haven't noted your covetous glances,"

she flashed. "I've been talking very fast, because I knew this interruption was coming. But we've finished, thank you, so I'll leave you to--to bore him now!"

She turned back toward O'Mara. "And thank you," she murmured not very audibly. "Thank you, more than I ever thanked anybody before in my life. You've made me very, very happy."

No one could have missed the depth of real thankfulness in those last words. Even Allison stood astonished at it, mouth open, following her rapid withdrawal toward the group fifty yards away.

"Huh-h-h," he snorted. "Huh-h-h. A mighty strange girl!" And then, as abruptly as he had interrupted their low conversation, "Well, how does it go, Chief? How does it look to you, as far as you've gone?"

No man's good humor could be more infectious than was that of this big, noisily garbed man. Steve smiled and met his cordiality more than half way.

"Not too bad," he answered. "Not too bad." He swept the ground before them with a short gesture. "You aren't beginning to worry, too, are you?"

"Worry?" Allison's frown was barely perceptible. "Why should I? I never let anything worry me. Who is beginning to fret? You aren't, are you? You don't look--much disturbed."

"Not a particle!" Steve still smiled. "I never do either, unless that there is something worth while to make me. I just thought perhaps you might have contracted it from Mr. Elliott. He's been bothered, you see, by the way some of the men are acting. We're short a lot of labor this week."

The big man wheeled and squinted at the droves of men sweating under the unseasonably hot sun; he peered keenly at each clump of laborers, some of them scarcely distinguishable knots of humanity in the distance.

"Not very short," he stated comfortably. "I don't claim to be a wholly competent judge, but it looks to me as though they would be in one another's way if there were any more of them. What's wrong?"

The chief engineer's answer was drawling in its deliberation.

"I wish I knew," he replied. "I wish I could be positive. And there aren't too many of them; they are altogether too few. We're going to need them, and more, too, before we finish, Mr. Allison. Perhaps I'd better figure on--perhaps if they continue to quit on us, by twos and threes, as they have in the last week--I'll have to----"

His pause seemed almost an invitation that the other suggest a remedy; and whether it was or not Dexter Allison was quick to seize the opening. His suggested solution was heartily bluff.

"Import some more," he said. "When you've employed these men as long as I have--the type of man who has worked all his life on the river--you'll know as well as I do just how uncertain and unreliable they are. What you need is a gang that doesn't want to think for itself. This crowd has too much imagination for a grind like this."

Steve nodded very thoughtfully.

"If it is all imagination," he wondered. "But they're not merely discontented, you see, Mr. Allison. They--they are misleading themselves. They seem to think, from what I've gathered from McLean and a few with whom I have talked, that they are working themselves out of a job for good, when they help to build this strip of railroad.

They think so--they have been convinced that such is the truth.

Personally, however, I feel sure that between us, we can correct that impression."

Even though he was looking in the direction of a heavy smoke-cloud that had followed a sharp blast to the north of them, Steve felt the weight of Allison's questioning glance.

"We," he echoed. "Where do I figure in it?"

The younger man's upward glance was seemingly surprised.

"You? Why, you're a stockholder. It means as much to you as it does to Mr. Ainnesley and Mr. Elliott."

Allison interrupted him.

"Of course," he exclaimed. "Surely! I see! What I mean was how in the world can I make them understand that such a fool idea is all wrong? So far as this constructive work is concerned, I'm not an active member. I--I had that understood with Elliott when I went into this thing!"

"Of course," Steve in turn broke in. "I understand that. But they know you; they know that Morrison would be nothing more than a street of well-kept lawns and cow-pastures, if you hadn't seen its possibilities. And so I've already told some of them, Mr. Allison; I've gone even further, and given a lot of them my word that you'll guarantee, yourself, that this is the biggest thing for the good of this section that has yet happened."

The speaker smiled frankly into the bigger man's eyes.

"And that was all they needed, was it?" Allison queried, at length.

"That fixed it, did it?"

"Absolutely!" Steve's cheeriness should have been infectious.

"Absolutely, Mr. Allison. A lot of people have come to look on your word as law in this country, you know--a lot of them!"

"Hum-m-m," replied Allison. "Hum-m-m."

Both of them were quiet for a time. Steve's next remark brought Allison's head up sharply.

"I meant to bring some of my estimates and plans down with me, when I came," he told him. "You spoke of wanting to run over the whole proposition with me, you'll remember, the first day you arrived."

Allison nodded shortly.

"I remember."

"I'll bring them, next trip," Steve finished. "I came so near to losing them last night that I'm taking no chances until they're in duplicate. We can run over them later?"