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The stage pulled up and Henderson dismounted and bowed. "I come out to meet you gents," he said, in his tender voice, "representing the Charles Tuck Club of Makon, to tell you we hope you'd not try to go down the Canyon this afternoon, as us citizens of Makon had got up a few speeches and such for you."
"Bet your life!" replied Henderson, whose enthusiasm for social affairs had never flagged since the day of the reception to the Director, up on the Makon. Jim spent a heavy morning on the dam, climbing about, testing and calculating. Already the forms were back in place ready to restore the concrete swept away by the flood. Excavation for the next section of the foundation was proceeding rapidly.
Henderson cleared his throat and looked down into the awful depths of the Makon Canyon. "I heard about that trip," he said. "If if you feel that way about it, Mr. Manning, I guess us boys'll stand by you. And much obliged to you." "I'm grateful to you," exclaimed Jim. "Tell the boys the stuff will be here in less than a month."
As near as I can make out this was his first experience at three meals a day and he never saw a bathtub before. There isn't a rough-neck in the camp that isn't convinced he could build that dam better than I. Eh, Jack?" "Sure, all except the old Makon bunch." "Well, we're up against the same old problem here, Henderson.
"He didn't answer me for a long time, then he begun to tell me a story about how he and another fellow went through the Makon canyon and how that other fellow felt about it and how he was drowned and how he had some verses that that fellow taught him printed on his gravestone. Thought I'd remember those lines. They made me feel more religious than anything I've heard at church.
And if bitterness toward the Service betokened free speaking, the complainants held back nothing. A heavy set man, tanned and cheaply dressed, said: "Mr. Secretary, I was born in Hungary. I am a tinner by trade. I lived in Sioux City. I have a wife and six children. I got consumption and a real estate man fixed it up with a friend of his on the Makon Project that I go out there, see?
"Of what specific things do you accuse Mr. Manning?" asked the Secretary, with a glance at Jim's impassive face. "His Project is full of mistakes, some of them small, that, nevertheless, aggregate big and show the trend of the Service. Up on the Makon he made a road at a cost of a hundred thousand dollars that only the Service used.
They started up the road in silence, Jim leading his horse. Suddenly Jack pulled off his hat and ran his fingers through his bush of hair. "Boss," he said, "I chin a lot to keep me cheered up while I finish Iron Skull's job. I wish he could have stayed to finish it. Of course he helped on the Makon but he never had as good a job as he's got here.
"Don't let on to anyone but Williams and us fellows is mum." And so the Director made his trip down and up the Makon Road and praised much the forethought and care that Jim had expended on it. And Jim, because the secret meant so much to his men, did not tell of their devotion until the Director had gone and Arthur Freet was established on the job.
There is a big valley that has been partially farmed for years. It is enormously fertile, but there is only enough water in it to irrigate a limited number of farms. "Now, ten miles to the north, is the Makon river that never fails of water. But as near as anyone can find out the only feasible place for damming it is somewhere in a beastly canyon that no man has ever gone through alive.
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