The stranger has one, an' fills a glass an' shoves
it under Bat's nose. An' if any longshoreman I ever seen had saw the
way ol' Bat put that red-eye under his vest he'd 'a' died with
jealousy. I knowed as how there wouldn't be nothin' in it for me, so I
went an' got another drink of water an' hit the rag-pile. That what
you wanted to know, 'bo?"
"Who was the man?" Conniston insisted. "What did he look like?"
"That's dead easy. I'm sure the gumshoe when it comes to pipin' a man
off so's I got his photograph in my eye. He was a little cuss an'
dressed to kill, with gloves on, an' all that. He was skinny an' pale
an' weak-eyed-lookin'."
"That will do!" cut in Conniston, brusquely. "And now get your men
going. We've got a day's work ahead of us."
A little more than fifteen minutes later Conniston himself pounded one
of the cook's pans as a summons to breakfast. The cook, surly,
glowering as he moved, set forth the big pots of coffee.
Less than half an hour after he had ridden into the idle camp
Conniston saw the two hundred men resume their work of yesterday as
though nothing unusual had happened, saw the teams string out in the
four sections of the ditch where Truxton had left off, watched the
long lines of scrapers and plows cutting into the soft soil, scooping
it out and piling it upon the banks of the canal.
He climbed to a little knoll from which he could glance over them
before and behind the ditch-cutters.
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