Part 6 (2/2)
VII
THE POLO PLAYERS
Ballard gave the Sat.u.r.day, his first day in the new field, to Bromley and the work on the dam, inspecting, criticising, suggesting changes, and otherwise adjusting the wheels of the complicated constructing mechanism at the Elbow Canyon nerve centre to run efficiently and smoothly, and at accelerated speed.
”That's about all there is to say,” he summed up to his admiring a.s.sistant, at the close of his first administrative day. ”You're keyed up to concert pitch all right, here, and the _tempo_ is not so bad. But 'drive' is the word, Loudon. Wherever you see a chance to cut a corner, cut it. The Fitzpatricks are a little inclined to be slow and sure: crowd the idea into old Brian's head that bonuses are earned by being swift and sure.”
”Which means that you're not going to stay here and drive the stone and concrete gangs yourself?” queried Bromley.
”That is what it means, for the present,” replied the new chief; and at daybreak Monday morning he was off, bronco-back, to put in a busy fortnight quartering the field in all directions and getting in touch with the various subcontractors at the many subsidiary camps of ditch diggers and railroad builders scattered over the length and breadth of the Kingdom of Arcadia.
On one of the few nights when he was able to return to the headquarters camp for supper and lodging, Bromley proposed a visit to Castle 'Cadia.
Ballard's refusal was prompt and decided.
”No, Loudon; not for me, yet a while. I'm too tired to be anybody's good company,” was the form the refusal took. ”Go gossiping, if you feel like it, but leave me out of the social game until I get a little better grip on the working details. Later on, perhaps, I'll go with you and pay my respects to Colonel Craigmiles--but not to-night.”
Bromley went alone and found that Ballard's guess based upon his glimpse of the loaded buckboards _en route_ was borne out by the facts. Castle 'Cadia was comfortably filled with a summer house-party; and Miss Craigmiles had given up her European yachting voyage to come home and play the hostess to her father's guests.
Also, Bromley discovered that the colonel's daughter drew her own conclusions from Ballard's refusal to present himself, the discovery developing upon Miss Elsa's frank statement of her convictions.
”I know your new tyrant,” she laughed; ”I have known him for ages. He won't come to Castle 'Cadia; he is afraid we might make him disloyal to his Arcadia Irrigation salt. You may tell him I said so, if you happen to remember it.”
Bromley did remember it, but it was late when he returned to the camp at the canyon, and Ballard was asleep. And the next morning the diligent new chief was mounted and gone as usual long before the ”turn-out”
whistle blew; for which cause Miss Elsa's challenge remained undelivered; was allowed to lie until the dust of intervening busy days had quite obscured it.
It was on these scouting gallops to the outlying camps that Ballard defined the limits of the ”hoodoo.” Its influence, he found, diminished proportionately as the square of the distance from the headquarters camp at Elbow Canyon. But in the wider field there were hindrances of another and more tangible sort.
Bourke Fitzpatrick, the younger of the brothers in the contracting firm, was in charge of the ditch digging; and he had irritating tales to tell of the lawless doings of Colonel Craigmiles's herdsmen.
”I'm telling you, Mr. Ballard, there isn't anything them devils won't be up to,” he complained, not without bitterness. ”One night they'll uncouple every wagon on the job and throw the coupling-pins away; and the next, maybe, they'll be stampeding the mules. Two weeks ago, on Dan Moriarty's section, they came with men and horses in the dead of night, hitched up the sc.r.a.pers, and put a thousand yards of earth back into the ditch.”
”Wear it out good-naturedly, if you can, Bourke; it is only horse-play,”
was Ballard's advice. That grown men should seriously hope to defeat the designs of a great corporation by any such puerile means was inconceivable.
”Horse-play, is it?” snapped Fitzpatrick. ”Don't you believe it, Mr.
Ballard. I can take a joke with any man living; but this is no joke. It comes mighty near being war--with the sc.r.a.pping all on one side.”
”A night guard?” suggested Ballard.
Fitzpatrick shook his head.
”We've tried that; and you'll not get a man to patrol the work since Denny Flaherty took his medicine. The cow-punchers roped him and skidded him 'round over the prairie till it took one of the men a whole blessed day to dig the cactus thorns out of him. And me paying both of them overtime. Would you call that a joke?”
Ballard's reply revealed some latent doubt as to the justification for Bromley's defense of Colonel Craigmiles's fighting methods.
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