Part 22 (2/2)
”Bring him in!” replied a voice, and Prescott entered the building.
It contained a pump and two large steel tanks. Near one of them a man was doing something with a drill, but he took out his pipe and pointed to a piece of sacking laid on a beam.
”Sit down and have a smoke,” he said. ”You have plenty of time. Was Kermode a friend of yours?”
Prescott looked about the place. He saw that it was a filtering station for the treatment of water unfit for locomotive use.
”Thanks,” he responded. ”I knew Kermode pretty well; but I needn't stop you.”
”Oh, don't mind that!” grinned the other. ”We're not paid by the piece on this job. Besides, they've some chisels for us on your train and we haven't got them yet.”
”You're English, aren't you?” Prescott asked. ”Are you stopping out here?”
”Not much!” exclaimed the other with scorn. ”What d'you take me for?
There's more in life than whacking rivets and holding the caulker. When a man has finished his work in this wilderness, what has he to do? There's no music halls, no nothing; only the dismal prairie that makes your eyes sore to look at.”
Prescott had heard other Englishmen express themselves in a similar fas.h.i.+on, and he laughed.
”If that's what you think of the country, why did you come here?”
”Big wages,” replied the first man, entering the building. ”Funny, isn't it, that when you want good work done you have to send for us? Every machine-shop in your country's full of labor-saving and ingenious tools, but when you build bridges with them they fall down, and I've seen tanks that wouldn't hold water.”
”Oh, well,” said Prescott, divided between amus.e.m.e.nt and impatience, ”this isn't to the point. I understand Kermode was here with you?”
”He was. Came in on a construction train, looking for a job, and when we saw he was from the old country we put him on.”
”You put him on? Don't these things rest with the division boss?”
The man grinned.
”You don't understand. We're specialists and get what we ask for. Sent the boss word we wanted an a.s.sistant, and, as we'd picked one up, all he had to do was to put him on the pay-roll.”
”And did Kermode get through his work satisfactorily?”
”For a while. He was a handy man; might have made a boiler-maker if he'd took to it young. When we had nothing else to keep him busy, he'd cut tobacco for us and set us laughing with his funny talk.”
This was much in keeping with Jernyngham's character. But the man went on:
”When we'd made him a pretty good hand with the file and drill, he got Bill to teach him how to caulk. He shaped first-rate, so one day we thought we'd leave him to it while we went off for a jaunt. Bill had bought an old shot-gun from a farmer, and we'd seen a lot of wild hens about.”
”It would be close time--you can only shoot them in October; but I suppose that wouldn't count.”
”Not a bit,” said the boiler-maker. ”All we were afraid of was that a train might come in with the boss on board; but we chanced it. We told Kermode he might go round the tank-plate landings--the laps, you know--with the caulker, and give them a rough tuck in, ready for us to finish; and then we went off. Well, we didn't shoot any wild hens, though Bill got some pellets in his leg, and when we came back we both felt pretty bad when we saw what Kermode had done. Bill couldn't think of names enough to call him, and he's good at it.”
”What had he done?”
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