McCarty and Walter came to their assistance, and in a short time the two tents were pitched in the thicket of glossy green and the dirt floors carpeted thickly with fragrant pine needles. This done, Charley brought over from Murphy's tent the box with its collection of papers. The payroll was already made out, so all the lad had to do was to make out the checks and, as soon as it was done, the negroes filed in, one by one, signed their names to the pay sheet, and received their checks. Some of them would have liked to have stayed and worked on, but the lad was sick of their dirtiness and laziness, and wanted no more of them.
Dinner followed close upon the completion of this task, and all gathered around the long tables upon which Chris had already impressed somewhat of cleanliness, and had cleaned up some of the rubbish which had littered the floor. The grinning negroes sat down to a dinner such as they hadn't eaten in many a day--plain and simple, but wholesome and well flavored and well cooked.
They had hardly begun to eat when the engineers entered, bearing a big bag of quail and followed by a panting pointer dog. They sat down quietly at the boys' table, and sullenly began to eat. Charley noted their faces with dissatisfaction. He knew, from what he had seen of the class, that dredge men are a hard, cruel, overbearing class, but these two shocked him in their sheer coarseness and brutality of expression, and from each emanated the strong odor of cheap whiskey. If not drunk, they were apparently on the verge of drunkenness.
Charley waited until the last negro had filed out of the tent, then he turned to McCarty. "You might introduce me to your mates," he said, with mild sarcasm. "They are so highly trained, socially, that it seems that they will not speak without an introduction."
McCarty grinned with delight at his new boss.
"This," he said lightly, "is Bully Rooney; the one on the left is One-eyed McGill. Mr. Rooney, Mr. McGill, meet your new boss, Mr. West."
"If he's the new boss, he can just understand one thing," growled Rooney, "I'm not going to have any greenhorn fooling around the machine when I am working on it."
"Nor me, neither," growled his companion.
"You will not be troubled at all in that way," Charley assured them smilingly. "I'm going into town in the truck between two and three o'clock, and, if you can get your things packed up, I'll take you in. Your checks are ready, and I'll give them to you as soon as you sign the payroll. I do not want a man in our gang whom I cannot trust absolutely. And I will not have one that drinks. Drink leads to carelessness, and carelessness leads to accidents. I imagine that's why the machine has been broken down so much."
