The United States Reclamation Service is in the Department of the Interior. Jim had been at Cabillo two years when the new Secretary of the Interior summoned him to Washington.
The new Secretary had found his office flooded with complaints about the Reclamation Service. He had found, too, a report from the Congressional Committee which had the year before investigated several of the Projects. Being of a patient and inquiring turn of mind, the Secretary had decided to go to the heart of the matter. Therefore he invited the complainants to come to Washington to see him. He summoned the Director and Jim with several other of the Project engineers, Arthur Freet among them, to appear before him, with the complainants.
May in Washington is apt to be very warm, although very lovely to look upon. Jim, so long accustomed to the naked height and sweep of the desert country, felt half suffocated by the low hot streets of the capitol. He went directly from the train to the Hearing, which was held in one of the Secretary's offices. The room was large and square, with a desk at one end, where the Secretary was sitting. When Jim entered, the place already was filled to overflowing with irrigation farmers or their lawyers, with land speculators, with Congressmen and reporters.
The Secretary was a large man with a smooth shaven, inscrutable face and blue eyes that were set far apart under overhanging brows. He looked at Jim keenly as the young engineer made his way to his seat in the front of the room. He saw the same Jim that had said good-bye to the little group in the station eight years before; the same Jim, with some important modifications.
He was tanned to bronze, of course. He had sun wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. His mouth was thinner and the corners not so deep. The old scowl between his eyes had traced two permanent lines there. The mass of brown hair still swept his dreamer's forehead. His jaws had become the jaws of a man of action.
Jim sat down, folded his arms and crossed his knees, fixing his gaze on the patch of blue sky above the building opposite the open window. For five days he sat so, without answering a charge that was brought against him.
For five days the Secretary sat with entire patience urging every man to speak his mind fully and freely. And if bitterness toward the Service betokened free speaking, the complainants held back nothing.