“Well, if you put it that way, I’m not. Crawford’s a good boy, and he means well. See here, Vallory, if you’ll give me your word that you’ll make the boy live up to the specifications on these bridges, I’ll do what I can to keep Lushing off of you. Is it a go?” David was thoughtful for a moment, and then he said: “I’ll do better than that, Strayer. I’m needing another engineer to handle the tunnel approach work on the other side of the mountain. I know what the railroad company is paying you, and I’ll better the salary. This is straight goods. What do you say?” The big man shook his head slowly. “You oughtn’t to make a break like that at me, Vallory, and you know it. It’s too bald, and--well, dog-gone it all, I thought better of you!” The inspector turned and walked away with his head down and his hands in his pockets. David Vallory waited until he had passed the corner of the cement house, and then, at a signal from Crawford, he sprang upon the bridge stagings. “We’re up against it,” said the bridge builder hastily; “that’s why I went after Plegg. We’ve reached the point where we’ve got to place the top span reinforcement, _and I haven’t got the steel_!” “How is that?” “It’s this way,” Crawford explained, still more hurriedly. “When we begun on this job, Plegg and I figured the plans over and he--that is, we concluded that it was simply wasting steel to put it in as thickly as the plans called for--why, the factor of safety was the whole cheese! So we agreed to cut the steel down. If you can’t get Strayer away from here for an hour or so, I’ll have to stop the run and take the risk of the concrete’s setting in the forms while we’re getting some more steel down here.” A month earlier David Vallory would have known what to say, and would have said it, without garnishings. But now he merely nodded and walked down the runway and across to the cement house where Strayer was still pacing back and forth. “This situation needs threshing out from the bottom up, Strayer,” he began crisply. “Suppose you get on the engine and go up to headquarters with me where we can fight it out to some sort of a conclusion. I’m tired of this business of scrapping with you fellows all the time.” “I’m sorry, Vallory, but Lushing is the man you’ll have to talk to.” “You’re his second, aren’t you?” “Yes, but you know the rules; I don’t have anything to say when he is on the job.” “Well, he isn’t on the job. He had a racket with a man over in Powder Can a couple of hours ago, and they tell me he’s knocked out for the present. That puts it up to you, again, doesn’t it?” “Why, yes; I guess so--if he’s--how badly is he hurt?” “I don’t know; pulled a gun on a man, and the man jumped him.” Strayer shook his head. “That’s bad; neither Mr. Ford nor Mr. Maxwell will stand for anything like that. Just between us two, Vallory, Lushing has always spent a lot of time in Powder Can--did it while he was with your people.”