human
No; you don't know him, he said, turning back to the worker at the mapping table.
gpt
It was his motor party that was camping at the Buckskin ford the night we broke in here--the night when we saw the search-light.
human
And you met him? I thought you told me you merely went down and took a look--didn't butt in?
gpt
I didn't--that night. But the next morning----
human
I recollect now; you said that one of the motorists was a young woman.
gpt
Don't be an ass, Murray, he snapped; and then he went on, with the frown of impatience still wrinkling between his eyes.
human
The young woman was the daughter. There was a cub of a son, and he fired a stick of dynamite in the river to kill a mess of trout. I heard the explosion and thought it might be the gasolene tank of the car.
gpt
Naturally, said Grislow guilelessly.
human
And, quite as naturally, you went down to see. I'm not sure that I shouldn't have done it myself.
gpt
Of course you would, was the touchy retort.
human
When I got there and found out what had happened, I meant to make a second drop-out; but Cortwright and his daughter were coming up the trail, and he hailed me. After that I couldn't do less than the decent thing. They wanted to see the valley, and I showed them the way in. Cortwright is the multimillionaire pork packer of Chicago, and he went up into the air like a lunatic over the money-making chances there were going to be in this job. I didn't pay much attention to his chortlings at the time. It didn't seem remotely credible that anybody with real money to invest would plant it in the bottom of the Niquoia reservoir.
gpt
But now you think he is going to make his bluff good?
human
That looks very much like it, said Brouillard sourly, pointing to the letter from Washington.
gpt
That scheme is going to change the whole face of Nature for us up here, Grislow. It will spell trouble right from the jump.
human
Oh, I don't know, was the deprecatory rejoinder.
gpt
It will relieve us of a lot of side-issue industries--cut 'em out and bury 'em, so far as we are concerned.
human
That part of it is all right, of course; but it won't end there; not by a hundred miles. We've started in here to be a law to ourselves--as we've got to be to handle this mixed multitude of brigands and ditch diggers. But when this new company gets on the ground it will be different. There will be pull-hauling and scrapping and liquor selling, and we can't go in and straighten things out with a club as we do now. Jobson says in that letter that the relations have got to be friendly! I'll bet anything you like that I'll have to go and read the riot act to those people before they've been twenty-four hours on their job!
gpt
Curious that this particular fly should drop into your pot of ointment on your birthday, wasn't it?
human
O suffering Jehu! gritted Brouillard ragefully.
gpt
Are you never going to forget that senseless bit of twaddle?
human
You're not giving me a chance to forget it, said the map-maker soberly.
gpt
You told me that night that the seven-year characteristic was change; and you're a changed man, Victor, if ever there was one. Moreover, it began that very night--or the next morning.
human
Oh, damn!
gpt
Certainly, if you wish it. But that is only another proof of what I am saying. It's getting on your nerves now. Do you know what the men have named you? They call you 'Hell's-Fire.' That has come to be your word when you light into them for something they've done or haven't done. No longer ago than this morning you were swearing at Griffith, as if you'd forgotten that the boy is only a year out of college and can't be supposed to know as much as Leshington or Anson. Where is your sense of humor?
human
They are a fearful lot of dubs, Grizzy, he said, meaning the laborers;
gpt
Niqoyastcàdje--'Place-where-they-came-up.' It will be 'Place-where-they-go-down' if the tin-horns and boot-leggers get an inning.
human
We'll all go to the devil on a toboggan-slide and there is the order for it, declared the chief morosely, again indicating the letter from Washington.
gpt
That means more human scum--a new town--an element that we can neither chase out nor control. Cortwright and his associates, whoever they are, won't care a rotten hang. They'll be here to sweat money out of the job; to sweat it in any and every way that offers, and to do it quick. All of which is bad enough, you'd say, Murray; but it isn't the worst of it. I've just run up against another thing that is threatening to raise merry hell in this valley.
human
I know, said the hydrographer slowly.
gpt
You've been having a _séance_ with Steve Massingale. Leshington told me about it.
human
What did he tell you?
gpt
Oh, nothing much; nothing to make you hot at him. He happened to be in the other room when Massingale was here, and the door was open. He said he gathered the notion that the young sorehead was trying to bully you.
human
He was, was the brittle admission.
gpt
See here, Grizzy.