The new superintendent of bridges took hold promptly; we knew he had been wired for long before his appointment was announced. He was a good enough fellow, I guess, but we all hated him. Bucks did the civil, though, and took Agnew down to the Spider in a special to inspect the new work and introduce him to the man whose bread and opportunity he was taking. "I've been wanting to meet you, Mr. Hailey," said Agnew pleasantly after they had shaken hands. Hailey looked at Agnew silently as he spoke; Bucks looked steadfastly at the grasshopper derrick. "I've been expecting you'd be along pretty soon," replied Hailey presently. "There's considerable to look over here. After that we'll go back to Peace River cañon. We're just getting things started there: then we'll run up to the Bend and I'll turn the office over." "No hurry about that. You've got a good deal of a bridge here, Mr. Hailey?" "You'll need a good deal of a bridge here." "I didn't expect to find you so far along out here in the mountains. Where did you get that pneumatic process?" It touched Hailey, the pleasant, easy way Agnew took him. The courtesy of the east against the blunt of the west. There wasn't a mean drop anywhere in Hailey's blood, and he made no trouble whatever for his successor. After he let go on the West End Hailey talked as if he would look up something further east. He spoke about it to Bucks, but Bucks told him frankly he would find difficulty without a regular degree in getting a satisfactory connection. Hailey himself realized that; moreover, he seemed reluctant to quit the mountains. He acted around the cottage and the Wickiup like a man who has lost something and who looks for it abstractedly--as one might feel in his pockets for a fishpole or a burglar. But there were lusty little Haileys over at the cottage to be looked after, and Bucks, losing a roadmaster about that time, asked Hailey (after chewing it a long time with Callahan) to take the place himself and stay on the staff. He even went home with Hailey and argued it. "I know it doesn't seem just right," Bucks put it, "but, Hailey, you must remember this thing at Omaha isn't going to last. They can't run a road like this with Harvard graduates and Boston typewriters. There'll be an entire new deal down there some fine day. Stay here with me, and I'll say this, Hailey, if I go, ever, you go with me." And Hailey, sitting with his head between his hands, listening to his wife and to Bucks, said, one day, "Enough," and the first of the month reported for duty as roadmaster.