Chapter XIX: The New Rodman

Up the valley of the Picket Wire one morning in early fall came a young man roughly dressed like the average cow-puncher from the ranches further north. He rode well, not with the carelessness and security and mastery of the cowboy, yet with a certain attention to detail and a niceness that betrayed him to the real rough-rider of the range. Just as the clothes he wore, although they had been bought at the same general store where the ordinary cattleman's outfit was purchased, were worn in a little different way that again betrayed him. One look into the face of the man, albeit his mustache and beard hid the revealing outlines of mouth and chin, sufficed to show that here was no ordinary cow-puncher.

He rode boldly enough among the rocks of the trail and along the rough road, which had been made by the wheels of the wagons and hoofs of the horses. Yet a close observer would have seen a certain hesitancy in his approach. He checked his horse from time to time and looked back. A bold man determined on a course does not check his horse and look back, yet no one who knew him could accuse this horseman of timidity. There was about him some of the quiet confidence begot of achievement, some of the power which knowledge brings and which success emphasizes, yet there were uncertainty and hesitation, too, as if all had not been plain sailing on his course.

To be the resident engineer charged with the construction of a great earth dam like that across the Picket Wire, requires knowledge of a great many things beside the technicalities of the profession, chief among them being a knowledge of men. As the newcomer threw his leg over the saddle-horn, stepped lightly to the ground, dropping the reins of his pony to the soil at the same time, Vandeventer, the engineer in question, looked at him with approval. Some subtle recognition of the man's quality came into his mind. Here was one who seemed distinctly worth while, one who stood out above the ordinary applicant for jobs who came in contact with Vandeventer, as the big mesa rose above the foothill. However, the chief kept these things to himself as he stood looking and waiting for the other man to begin:

"Are you the resident engineer?" asked the newcomer quietly, yet there was a certain nervous note in his voice, which the alert and observant engineer found himself wondering at, such a strain as might come when a man is about to enter upon a course of action, to take a strange or perilous step, such a little shiver in his speech as a naked man might feel in his body before he plunged into the icy waters of the wintry sea.

"I am."

"I'd like a job."

"We have no use for cow-punchers on this dam."

"I'm not exactly a cow-puncher, sir."

"What are you?"

"Look here," said the man, smiling a little, "I've been out in this country long enough to learn that all that it is necessary to know about a man is 'Will he make good?' Let us say that I am nothing and let it go at that."

"Out of nothing, nothing comes," laughed the engineer, genuinely amused.

Some men would have been angry, but Vandeventer rather enjoyed this.

"I didn't say I was good for nothing," answered the other man, smiling in turn, though he was evidently serious enough in his application.

"Well, what can you do? Are you an engineer?"

"We'll pass over the last question, too, if you please. I think I could carry a rod if I had a chance and there was a vacancy."

"Umph," said Vandeventer, "you think you could?"

"Yes, sir. Give me a trial."

"All right, take that rod over there and go out on the edge of the dam where that stake shows, and I'll take a sight on it."

Now there are two ways--a hundred perhaps--of holding a rod; one right way and all the others wrong. A newcomer invariably grasps it tightly in his fist and jams it down, conceiving that the only way to get it plumb and hold it steady. The experienced man strives to balance it erect on its own base and holds it with the tips of his fingers on either side in an upright position, swaying it very slightly backward and forward. He does it unconsciously, too.

Vandeventer had been standing by a level already set up when the newcomer arrived and the rod was lying on the ground beside it. The latter picked it up without a word, walked rapidly to the stake, loosened the target, and balanced the rod upon the stake. As soon as Vandeventer observed that his new seeker after work held the rod in the right way, he did not trouble to take the sight. He threw his head backward and raised his hand, beckoningly.

"It so happens," he began, "that I can give you a job. The rodman next in the line of promotion has been given the level. One of the men went East last night. You can have the job, which is----"

"I don't care anything about the details," said the man quickly and gladly. "It's the work I want."

"Well, you'll get what the rest do," said Vandeventer. "Now, as you justly remarked, I have found that it is not considered polite out here to inquire too closely into a man's antecedents and I have learned to respect local customs, but we must have some name by which to identify you, make out your pay check, and----"

"Do you pay in checks?"

"No, but you have to sign a check."

"Well, call me Smith."

Vandeventer threw back his head and laughed. The other man turned a little red. The chief engineer observed the glint in his new friend's eye.

"I'm not exactly laughing at you," he explained, "but at the singular lack of inventiveness of the American. We have at least thirty Smiths out of two hundred men on our pay-roll, and it is a bit confusing. Would you mind selecting some other name?"

"If it's all the same to you," announced the newcomer amusedly--the chief's laughter was infectious--"I'm agreeable to Jones, or Brown, or----"

"We have numbers of all of those, too."

"Really," said the man hesitatingly, "I haven't given the subject any thought."

"What about some of your family names?"

"That gives me an idea," said the newcomer, who decided to use his mother's name, "you can call me Roberts."

"And I suppose John for the prefix?"

"John will do as well as any, I am sure."

"We have about fifty Johns. Every Smith appears to have been born John."

"How did you arrange it?" asked the other with daring freedom, for a rodman does not enter conversation on terms of equality with the chief engineer.

"I got a little pocket dictionary down at the town with a list of names and I went through that list with the Smiths, dealing them out in order. Well, that will do for your name," he said, making a memorandum in the little book he pulled out of his flannel shirt pocket. He turned to a man who had come up to the level. "Smith," he said--"by the way this is Mr. Claude Smith, Mr. Roberts--here's your new rodman. You know your job, Roberts. Get to work."

And that is how Bertram Meade, a few months after the failure of the great bridge, once again entered the ranks of engineers, beginning, as was necessary and inevitable, very low down in the scale.