“I had all that figured out as soon as I opened my mouth,” Tom said sullenly. “Let’s go.”
They climbed on the tractor and took off, stopping for a moment at the beach outcropping to pick up a cable and some tools.
Daisy Etta sat at the edge of the mesa, glowering out of her stilted headlights at the soft sward which still bore the impression of a young body and the tramplings of the stretcher-bearers. Her general aspect was woebegone — there were scratches on her olive-drab paint and the bright metal of the scratches was already dulled red by the earliest powder-rust. And though the ground was level, she was not, for her right track was off its lower rollers, and she stood slightly canted, like a man who has had a broken hip. And whatever passed for consciousness within her mulled over that paradox of the bulldozer that every operator must go through while he is learning his own machine.
It is the most difficult thing of all for the beginner to understand, that paradox. A bulldozer is a crawling power-house, a behemoth of noise and toughness, the nearest thing to the famous irresistible force. The beginner, awed and with the pictures of unconquerable Army tanks printed on his mind from the news-reels, takes all in his stride and with a sense of limitless power treats all obstacles alike, not knowing the fragility of a cast-iron radiator core, the mortality of tempered manganese, the friability of over-heated babbitt, and most of all the ease with which a tractor can bury itself in mud. Climbing off to stare at a machine which he has reduced in twenty seconds to a useless hulk, or which was running a half-minute before on ground where it now has its tracks out of sight, he has that sense of guilty disappointment which overcomes any man on having made an error in judgment.
So, as she stood, Daisy Etta was broken and useless. These soft persistent bipeds had built her, and if they were like any other race that built machines, they could care for them. The ability to reverse the tension of a spring, or twist a control rod, or reduce to zero the friction in a nut and lock-washer, was not enough to repair the crack in a cylinder head nor bearings welded to a crankshaft in an overheated starting motor. There had been a lesson to learn. It had been learned. Daisy Etta would be repaired, and the next time — well, at least she would know her own weaknesses.
Tom swung the two-cycle machine and edged in next to the Seven, with the edge of his blade all but touching Daisy Etta’s push-beam. They got off and Peebles bent over the drum-tight right track.
“Watch yourself,” said Tom.
“Watch what?”
“Oh — nothin’, I guess.” He circled the machine, trained eyes probing over frame and fittings. He stepped forward suddenly and grasped the fuel-tank drain cock. It was closed. He opened it; golden oil gushed out. He shut it off, climbed up on the machine and opened the fuel cap on top of the tank. He pulled out the bayonet gauge, wiped it in the crook of his knee, dipped and withdrew it.
The tank was more than three-quarters full.
“What’s the matter?” asked Peebles, staring curiously at Tom’s drawn face.
“Peeby, I opened the cock to drain this tank. I left it with oil runnin’ out on the ground. She shut herself off.”
“Now, Tom, you’re lettin’ this thing get you down. You just thought you did. I’ve seen a main-line valve shut itself off when it’s worn bad, but only ’cause the pump pulls it shut when the motor’s runnin’. But not a gravity drain.”
“Main-live valve?” Tom pulled the seat up and looked. One glance was enough to show him that this one was open.
“She opened this one, too.”
“O.K. — O.K. Don’t look at me like that!” Peebles was as near to exasperation as he could possible get. “What difference does it make?”
Tom did not answer. He was not the type of man who, when faced with something beyond his understanding, would begin to doubt his own sanity. His was a dogged insistence that what he saw and sensed was what had actually happened. In him was none of the fainting fear of madness that another, more sensitive, man might feel. He doubted neither himself nor his evidence, and so could free his mind for searching out the consuming “why” of a problem. He knew instinctively that to share “unbelievable” happenings with anyone else, even if they had really occurred, was to put even further obstacles in his way. So he kept his clamlike silence and stubbornly, watchfully, investigated.
The slipped track was so tightly drawn up on the roller flanges that there could be no question of pulling the master pin and opening the track up. It would have to be worked back in place — a very delicate operation, for a little force applied in the wrong direction would be enough to run the track off altogether. To complicate things, the blade of the Seven was down on the ground and would have to be lifted before the machine could be manoeuvred, and its hydraulic hoist was useless without the motor.
Peebles unhooked twenty feet of half-inch cable from the rear of the smaller dozer, scratched a hole in the ground under the Seven’s blade, and pushed the eye of the cable through. Climbing over the mouldboard, he slipped the eye on to the big towing hook bolted to the underside of the bellyguard. The other end of the cable he threw out on the ground in front of the machine. Tom mounted the other dozer and swung into place, ready to tow. Peebles hooked the cable on to Tom’s drawbar, hopped up on the Seven. He put her in neutral, disengaged the master clutch and put the blade control over into “float” position, then raised an arm.
Tom perched upon the arm rest of his machine, looking backwards, moved slowly, taking up the slack in the cable. It straightened and grew taut, and as it did it forced the Seven’s blade upwards. Peebles waved for slack and put the blade control into “hold.” The cable bellied downwards away from the blade.
“Hydraulic system’s O.K., anyhow,” called Peebles, as Tom throttled down. “More over and take a strain to the right, sharp as you can without fouling the cable on the track. We’ll see if we can walk this track on.”
Tom backed up, cut sharply to the right, and drew the cable out almost at right angles to the other machine. Peebles held the right track of the Seven with the brake and released both steering cluches. The left track now could turn free, the right not at all. Tom was running at a quarter throttle in his lowest gear, so that his machine barely crept along, taking the strain. The Seven shook gently and began to pivot on the taut right track, unbelievable foot-pounds of energy coming to bear on the front of the track where it rode high up on the idler wheel. Peebles released the right brake with his foot and applied it again in a series of skilled, deft jerks. The track would move a few inches and stop again, force being applied forwards and sidewards alternately, urging the track persuasively back in place. Then, a little jolt and she was in, riding true on the five truck rollers, the two track carrier rollers, the driving sprocket and the idler.
Peebles got off and stuck his head in between the sprocket and the rear carrier, squinting down and sideways to see if there were any broken flanges or roller bushes. Tom came over and pulled him out by the seat of his trousers. “Time enough for that when you get her in the shop,” he said, masking his nervousness. “Reckon she’ll roll?”
“She’ll roll. I never saw a track in that condition come back that easy. By gosh, it’s as if she was tryin’ to help!”
“They’ll do it sometimes,” said Tom stiffly. “You better take the tow-tractor, Peeby. I’ll stay with this’n.”
“Anything you say.”
And cautiously they took the steep slope down, Tom barely holding the brakes, giving the other machine a straight pull all the way. And so they brought Daisy Etta down to Peebles’ out-door shop, where they pulled her cylinder head off, took off her starting motor, pulled out a burned clutch facing, had her quite helpless—