"He's strong, yes. But even strong folks can tire out. Flesh and blood aren't steel and wire. You'd better watch him pretty sharp, now that hot weather is coming. He needs it."
Marian pushed back her plate with a frown. Her dainty breakfast had suddenly lost its savor.
"Watch over Rod! I should think it was Rod's place to watch over me, instead. And when I have been so ill, too!" she said to herself.
Yet a queer little thorn of anxiety pricked her. She called Mr. Finnegan and raced with him down through the wet green woods to the canal. Roderick stood on the dredge platform, talking to the head dredge-runner. He hailed Marian with a shout.
"You're just in time to see me off, Sis. I'm going to Saint Louis to hurry up our coal shipment."
"The coal shipment? I thought a barge-load of coal was due here yesterday."
"Due, yes. But it hasn't turned up, and we're on our last car-load this minute. That's serious. We'll have to shut down if I can't hurry a supply to camp within thirty-six hours."
Marian followed him aboard the engineers' house-boat and watched him pack his suit-case.
"Why are you taking all those time-books, Rod? Surely you will not have time to make up your week's reports during that three-hour trip on the train?"
"These aren't my weekly reports. These are tabulated operating expenses. President Sturdevant, the head of our company, has just announced that he wants us to furnish data for every working day. He's a bit of a martinet, you know. He wants everything figured up into shape for immediate reference. He says he proposes to follow the cost of this job, excavation, fill, everything, within thirty-six hours of the time when the actual work is done. He doesn't realize that that means hours of expert book-keeping, and that we haven't a book-keeper in the camp. So Burford and I have had to tackle it, in addition to our regular work. And it's no trifle." Roderick rolled up a formidable mass of notes. There was a worried tone in his steady voice.
"Why doesn't the company send you a book-keeper?"
"Burford and I are planning to ask for one when the president and Breckenridge come to camp on their tour of inspection."
"Could I do some of the work for you, Rod?"
"Thank you, Sis, but I'm afraid you'd find it a Chinese puzzle. I get tangled up in it myself half the time. We must set down every solitary item of cost, no matter how trifling; not only wages and supplies, but breakdowns, time losses, even those of a few minutes; then calculate our average, day by day; then plot a curve for each week's work, showing the cost of the contract for that week, and set it against our yardage record for that week. Then verify it, item by item, and send it in."