The Iron Furrow
by George C. Shedd · English · Gutenberg #17088 · 421,758 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Iron Furrow
Author: George C. Shedd
Illustrator: Henry Albert Botkin
Release date: November 18, 2005 [eBook #17088]
Most recently updated: December 12, 2020
Language: English
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[Illustration: "UNDER THE HAT BRIM DRAWN FORWARD TO HIS LINE OF
VISION HIS EYES ... GAZED FORTH KEEN AND OBSERVANT"]
THE IRON
FURROW
BY GEORGE C. SHEDD
FRONTISPIECE BY
HENRY A. BOTKIN
A.L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with Doubleday, Page & Company
COPYRIGHT, 1919, 1920, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.
THE IRON FURROW
THE IRON FURROW
CHAPTER I
The Ventisquero Range stretches across the circumference of one's
vision in a procession of mountains that come tall and blue out of the
distant north and seemingly march past to vanish in the remote south
like azure phantoms. The mountains wall the horizon and dominate the
mesa, their black forest-clad flanks crumpled and broken and gashed by
cañons, lifting above timber-line peaks of bare brown rock that pierce
the clouds floating along the range. At sunrise they cast immense
shadows upon the mesa spreading westward from their base; and at
sunset they reflect golden and purple glows upon the plain until the
earth appears swimming in some iridescent sea of ether; while over
them from dawn till dusk, traversed by a few fleecy clouds, lies the
turquoise sky of New Mexico.
At a certain point in the range a small cañon opens upon the mesa with
a gush of gravel and sand that flows a short way into the sagebrush
and forms a creek bed. Tucked back in the little cañon there is a
considerable growth of bushes and trees, cool and fresh-looking in the
shadow of the gorge during the summer season, a splash of vivid green
there at the bottom of the dusty gray mountain, but at the cañon's
mouth this verdure ceases.
Only an insignificant stream of water ran, one day, in the stony creek
bed that meandered out upon the mesa, and it appeared under the hot
July sun and among the hot stones for all the world like a rivulet of
liquid glass. That was all the mesa had to show, only its endless gray
sagebrush and the creek bed almost dry--unless one should reckon the
three parched cottonwood trees beside the stream, a little way down
from the cañon, and the flat-roofed adobe house near by, and the empty
corral behind built of aspen poles. In that immensity of mountain and
mesa the house looked like a brick of sun-baked mud, the corral like a
child's device of straws, the three cottonwoods like three twigs stuck
in the earth. Or, at any rate, that is how they appeared to a horseman
regarding them from the main mesa trail a mile away.
The rider, a slender tanned young fellow of about twenty-eight, sat in
the saddle with the relaxed ease of habit which allowed his body to
accommodate itself to the steady jogging trot of his horse. A roll
comprising clothes wrapped in a black rubber coat was tied behind the
cantle. His Stetson hat was tilted up at the rear and down in front
almost on his nose--a thin, bony nose, slightly curved and with the
suggestion of a hook in the tip, just the sort of nose to accord with
his lean, sunburnt cheeks and clean-cut chin and straight-lipped
mouth. Under the hat brim drawn forward to his line of vision his
eyes, notwithstanding his air of lounging indolence, gazed forth keen
and observant. He had the appearance of a man who might be seeking a
few stray cattle, or riding to town for mail, and in no particular
hurry about it, either, this hot afternoon; but, for all that, Lee
Bryant was proceeding on important business--important for him,
anyhow. When everything one possesses is about to be risked on a
venture, the matter is naturally vital; and at this moment he was
moving straight to the initiative of his enterprise.
Where the road crossed the creek bed to continue northward, a trail
branched off and followed up the stream to the little ranch house by
the three cottonwood trees. Here the creek had not yet begun to cut an
arroyo and had washed merely a course five or six feet deep and some
fifty feet wide through the mesa, so that from a distance the shallow
gash was invisible and the ground appeared unbroken. It was because of
the flat character of the mesa, too, that Bryant on reaching the bank
of the stream was able to see on the opposite side two persons a
quarter of a mile off riding toward him; women, he perceived. Far
north of them on the road, a black spot in a haze of dust, seemingly
motionless but as one could guess advancing rapidly, was an
automobile.
Bryant rode his horse down into the creek bed and turned him aside to
a small pool on the upper side of the crossing, under the cut-bank,
where the horse thrust his muzzle into the water and drank greedily.
The rider swung himself out of the saddle, knelt a pace beyond, where
the rivulet trickled into the pool, and also drank.
"Wet anyway, even if warm, eh, Dick?" he remarked, when done. "Don't
drink it all, old scout; leave a swallow for the ladies." Still on his
knees he looked appraisingly down the creek and then up it, and added
derisively, "Some stream, this Perro, some stream!"
After rolling and lighting a cigarette, he meditated for a time in
the same kneeling position. His horse finished drinking and moved a
step nearer his master, where he stood with head lowered, water
dripping from his lip, body inert. But presently he pricked his ears
and turning his head toward the other bank gave a low whinny. Bryant
got to his feet.
The two women he had beheld at a distance had now reached the ford.
Their ponies snuffing water immediately dipped into the creek bed and
crossed its sandy bottom with quickened steps. Young women the riders
were, scarcely more than girls, it seemed to Bryant; wearing divided
khaki skirts and white shirt waists and wide-brimmed straw hats tied
with thongs under their chins. In this region where white men were
none too numerous, and women of their own kind scarcer yet, and girls
scarcest of all, the presence here of the pair aroused in the young
fellow a lively interest.
He led Dick aside that their ponies might approach the pool.
"Thank you; they are very thirsty," said the nearer girl, with a nod.
The ponies plunged forefeet into the water and stood thus with noses
buried, drinking with eager gulps. "The afternoon is so hot and the
road so dusty," the speaker continued, "that the poor things were
almost choked."
She was the smaller of the pair, of medium height and having a
graceful, well-molded figure, with frank gray eyes, a nose showing a
few freckles, smooth soft cheeks slightly reddened by sun, and an
expressive mouth. Bryant judged that she had small, firm hands, but
could not see them as she wore gauntlets. He further decided that she
was neither plain nor pretty: just average good-looking, one might
say. An air of friendliness was in her favour, though what might or
might not be a prepossessing trait, depending on circumstances, was
the suggested obstinacy in her round chin.
"Don't you yourselves wish a drink? You must be thirsty, too," Bryant
addressed the young ladies. "If your ponies won't stand, I'll look
after them."
"Oh, they'll not run off, unless we forget to let the reins hang, as
has happened once or twice," said the girl who previously had spoken.
"For they're regular cow-ponies. At first we had a hard time
remembering just to drop the lines when we dismounted instead of tying
them to a post somewhere; and for a while we had a feeling that they
certainly would gallop off if we did let the reins hang, as we'd been
instructed. But they never did." She turned to her companion. "Imo,
aren't you thirsty? I'm going to get down and have a drink." With
which she swung herself down from her saddle upon the sand.
The second girl was tall and thin, lacking both the spirits and
stamina of the other; a crown of fluffy golden hair was hinted by the
little of it the young fellow could see under the brim of her big hat;
her eyes were of a soft blue colour, probably weak; while her face,
the skin of which was exceedingly white with but a tinge of the sun's
fiery burn, was regular of feature and delicately formed.
She walked to the rill languidly, where stooping she drank from her
palm. Most of the water that she dipped escaped before reaching her
lips; and Bryant doubted if she were really successful in quenching
her thirst. The heat, the dust, and the ride appeared to have been
almost too much for her strength, exhausting her slender store of
vitality. The other girl, who had coiled herself down by the
trickling stream and bent forward resting her hands in the water,
drank directly from the rivulet.
"There, that's the way to do it, Imo," she declared, when she had
straightened up, hat-brim, nose, chin, all dripping. "Like the ponies!
I hope I haven't lost my handkerchief." And she began to search about
her waist.
"I'd fall flat in the water if I tried it, as sure as the world," the
taller girl responded.
They rose to their feet and joined Bryant.
"You're the young ladies who are homesteading just south of here,
aren't you?" he inquired, politely.
"Yes, two miles south on Sarita Creek," the smaller answered. Then
after an appraising regard of him she continued, "We took our claims
only last April. And they're not very good claims, either, we're
beginning to fear; the creek goes dry about this time. That's why no
one had filed on the locations before. Have you a ranch somewhere
near?"
"No. That is, not yet. I'm a civil engineer, but I'm thinking strongly
of settling down here. If I do, we shall be neighbours. My name is Lee
Bryant; this is my horse Dick; and I've a dog called Mike, which
stopped aways back on the road to investigate a prairie dog hole. Now
you know who we are," he concluded, with a smile.
The girl thereupon told him her name was Ruth Gardner and that of her
companion Imogene Martin.
"We'll be very glad to have you call at our little ranch when you're
riding by," Ruth Gardner said, graciously. "Aside from Imogene's uncle
and aunt, who live in Kennard and who've come to see us several
times, we've not had a single visitor in the three months and a half
we've been there, except once an old Mexican who was herding sheep
near by and came to ask for matches. Of course, not many people know
we're there, I imagine. From the road one can't see our cabins--we had
to have two, you know, one for each claim, and they sit side by
side--because they're in the mouth of the cañon among the trees. It's
really cool and pleasant there during the heat of the day. Any time
you come, you'll be welcome."
"Yes, Mr. Bryant," Imogene Martin affirmed. "A man now and then in the
scenery will help out wonderfully."
"I'll stop the first time I'm passing," he stated.
Lee Bryant understood the significance of the invitation: they were
starved for company and would be grateful for the society of a person
they believed respectable. He had seen a good deal of homesteading
conditions in the West; he knew the hardships involved in "holding
down" claims, of which the dreary monotony and loneliness of the life
were not the least. One earned ten times over every bit one got of a
free government homestead. For men it was bad enough; but for woman,
for girls like these, who had probably come from the East in trustful
ignorance and with rosy visions, the homestead venture impressed him
not only as pitiful but as tragic.
"I'll certainly ride down to see you," he assured them again.
"And perhaps, being an engineer, you'll show us why the water doesn't
run downhill in our bean patch, as it ought to do," Imogene Martin
remarked.
Bryant laughed and nodded agreement.
"You'll find that it's your eyes, and not the water, that have been
playing tricks," he said. "Ground levels and ditch grades are
deceiving things close to the mountains, because the latter tilt one's
natural line of vision. That's why water seems to run uphill when you
look toward the range. I'll soon fix your ditch line when I set an
instrument in your bean patch and sight through it once or twice. The
water will behave after that, I promise you."
They continued to chat of this and of the failing of Sarita Creek,
until the automobile that Bryant had earlier sighted shot into view on
the northern bank of the creek, whence at decreased speed it descended
into the bottom and ground its way across through sand and gravel.
Driving the hooded car was a man of about thirty years, of slim figure
and with a pale olive skin that betrayed an admixture of American and
Mexican blood. Beside him in the front seat sat a girl whose clear
pink complexion made plain that in her was no mingling of races; her
hat held by a streaming blue veil and her form incased in a silk dust
coat. The tonneau was occupied by two men: one an American with a van
dyke beard sprinkled with gray, the other a short, stout, swarthy
Mexican, whose sweeping white moustache was in marked contrast to his
coffee-coloured face.
The car, with radiator steaming and hissing, was stopped at a spot
close to where Lee Bryant and his companions stood. The young man at
the wheel, unlatching the door, stepped out.
"I'll bet the stop-cock of the radiator is open," he addressed the
girl with the blue veil, "or the engine wouldn't be so hot." After
making an examination of the faucet, he returned to the door and
procured a folding canvas bucket, saying, "That's the trouble, and the
radiator is empty."
But the young lady scarcely heeded him. She had loosened the blue veil
knotted at her throat and pushed it back from her cheeks to free them
to the air; she sat regarding with interested eyes the group of three
standing a few paces off by the horses. In her gaze, too, there was a
faint curiosity, as if she wondered who the persons might be, and what
they were doing here, and of what they had been conversing when
interrupted. An exceedingly lovely girl she was, as the engineer had
instantly perceived; her features molded in soft lines and curves that
enchanted, a tint like that of peach petals in her cheeks, with warm,
sensitive lips and brown, shining eyes--a radiant, intelligent face.
Against the background of the place, the creek bed of sand and stones
and the banks fringed with dusty sagebrush, she glowed with the
freshness of a desert rose.
The driver of the car took a step toward Bryant, extending the bucket.
"Dip me some water out of that hole while I look at my tires, will
you?" he said.
At the words, which were rather more of a command than a request, the
engineer regarded him fixedly while the blood stirred beneath his tan,
but finally took the bucket. The other turned back to the car, where
he made a pretense of inspecting a front wheel and then, with a foot
on the running-board and elbow resting on knee, twisting indolently a
point of his small moustache, he began to converse with his companion
of the blue veil.
Bryant filled the radiator. Two trips to the pool were necessary to
obtain enough water for that purpose, but he finished the job with the
same thoroughness that he went through with any business once
undertaken, whether pleasant or otherwise. As he poured the contents
of the bucket into the radiator's spout, he took stock of the
automobile party. His face hardened with a slight contempt when he
considered the effeminate-appearing young Mexican who had bade him
bring water and the girl talking with him; which she must have noticed
and taken to herself, for when their eyes met he saw that a flush dyed
her cheeks and that she bit her lip nervously.
He snapped the radiator cap shut. At the click the man stopped
fingering his moustache, ended his talk, mounted to his seat, and
started the engine. Bryant handed him the bucket, folded flat again,
which the recipient tossed down by his feet.
"Here, my man," said the olive-skinned young fellow at the wheel, with
a forefinger and thumb searching a waistcoat pocket as the car began
slowly to move forward.
He tossed a quarter to the engineer. Bryant instinctively caught it,
as one catches any suddenly thrown object. For an instant he remained
transfixed, incredulous, astounded, then the blood flamed in his face
and he cast the coin back at its donor.
"No Mexican can throw money to me!" he exclaimed.
For answer he received an angry look and snarled word from the driver.
Beyond the man Bryant beheld the startled, embarrassed, and yet
interested face of the girl with the veil, her lips a little parted,
her eyes intent on him. Then the car lurched out of the sand, splashed
through the rivulet, ascended the inclined roadway of the creek bank,
and sped from view.
The sudden spark of antagonism flashing between the engineer and the
young Mexican made the two girls by the ponies acutely aware that the
horseman after all was a stranger, a man of whom they knew nothing, an
unknown quantity. And so the two exchanged a glance and drew on their
gauntlets and said they must be riding home. Thereupon Bryant assisted
them to mount.
As he separated from them to follow the trail up the creek to the
ranch house by the three cottonwoods, Ruth Gardner called to him not
to forget his promised visit to their cabins. He assured them he
should remember. When the girls were some distance off, they waved
across the sagebrush at him and he swung his hat in reply. Off then
the pair went at a gallop, with the automobile on the road far south
of them leaving a hazy streamer of dust above the earth; the riders
going farther and farther away, becoming smaller and smaller on the
mesa, until at last they were but bobbing specks in the golden
sunshine.
CHAPTER II
As Lee Bryant reined his horse to a stop before the small ranch house,
a man seated on a stool just within the open doorway rose and came out
to join him. He was a man of thin, stooped body; his sandy hair
streaked with gray formed a fringe about his bald crown; and on his
lined, sunburnt face there rested a shadow of worry that appeared to
be habitual. Bryant dismounted and shook hands with the ranchman.
"Well, how are you making it, Mr. Stevenson?" he greeted. "As I
promised if I should be riding by this way again, I've stopped to say
'howdy.' Doesn't seem a month has passed since I stayed over night
with you? How's Mrs. Stevenson? Hope you're both well."
"Just feeling fair, just fair. Glad you stopped, Bryant," was the
answer. "My wife was wondering only the other day what had become of
you. Bring your horse around to the corral."
They went behind the house, where the young man removed saddle and
bridle from Dick and turned him into the enclosure. Stevenson gathered
an armful of hay from a small heap near by and tossed it over the
fence to the horse, which began to eat eagerly. Lee glanced about,
gave a sharp whistle; from the trail by the creek a bark answered him.
Then an Airedale came racing through the sagebrush, now and again
leaping high to gain a view of his master and finally breaking out
upon the clear ground about the ranch house.
"Mike, you're too inquisitive about other animals' dwellings," Lee
addressed him as he arrived, wet from an immersion in the creek and
panting from his run. "Some day a rattler in a hole you're digging
into will nip you on the nose and you'll wish you'd been more polite.
Come along now and be good."
He walked with Stevenson back to the house, where leaving the dog to
drop in the shade outside they entered. The interior was cool and dim
after the hot, glaring sunshine; and Bryant, having greeted Mrs.
Stevenson, sat down gratefully in a rocking-chair, glad to avail
himself of the room's comfort. Crude as an adobe house is both in
appearance and in construction, it is admirably adapted to the climate
of the arid Southwest; its flat dirt roof and thick walls built of
sun-baked mud bricks, plastered within and smoothly surfaced without,
defying alike the heat of midsummer and the icy blasts of winter and
lasting in that dry clime half a century. This ranch house of the
Stevensons', originally built by some Mexican, as Bryant judged, had
been standing twenty-five or thirty years and was still tight and
staunch.
"Your creek's pretty dry, I see," the young fellow remarked
afteratime, when they had exchanged news.
"By August there won't be any water in it at all," Stevenson said,
"except a little that always runs in the cañon. I'll have to haul it
from there then. You see now why I can't keep stock here."
His wife stopped the needle with which she mended an apron while they
talked, and looked out of a window. On her face was the same tired,
anxious expression that marked her husband's countenance.
"I've barely kept our garden alive," she said, "but it won't be for
much longer."
"That's too bad, Mrs. Stevenson," Lee Bryant replied. "However, one
can't do anything without water. Still, your sheep are doing well, I
suppose; the grass is good on the mountains this summer."
An answer was not immediately forthcoming from the rancher; he sat
staring absently at the backs of his roughened hands, now and again
rubbing one or the other, and enveloped in a gloom that Bryant could
both see and feel. Then all at once Stevenson began to talk, in a
voice querulous and morose.
"We're going to quit here, sell the sheep, and go back East. I was
swindled when I bought this ranch, and I want to get away before I
lose my last cent. Came out to this country five years ago from
Illinois with forty thousand dollars, and now we're going back with
what I can sell my sheep for, maybe twenty-five hundred cash. Menocal
robbed me right at the start, selling me this place for twenty-five
thousand--twenty thousand down and a mortgage for the remaining five
thousand--when the place was just five thousand acres of sagebrush,
with no more water than runs in this creek. I was a tenderfoot all
right! The land agent at Kennard showed it to me in June when the
Perro was booming, and I believed him when he said it ran that way all
the year around. Look at it now! I didn't have sense enough to inquire
and learn about it, being in a hurry to get into the sheep business
and thinking I should be rich in no time. That agent sold it to me for
irrigated land, and a bargain at five dollars an acre. Menocal, who
owned it and deeded it to me, pretends he isn't responsible for what
the man said. Five dollars an acre! It's worth about fifty cents for
winter range, and no more."
"If it could be irrigated, it would be a bargain sure enough at five
dollars," Lee stated. "And there's another water right for the place
you said when I was here before."
"Yes, there is--on paper. Water was appropriated out of the Pinas
River, but that's eight miles north of here, and it would cost a
hundred thousand dollars, if not more, to build a dam and a canal
along the mountain side. No, sir; that appropriation was just some
more of Menocal's tricky work! He jammed it through the land office
thirty years ago and, they say, never did any more to comply with the
law requiring delivery of the water on this ground than to have a man
drive around pouring a bucketful out of a barrel upon each quarter
section."
"Some pretty shady transactions were put across in those early days,"
Bryant commented.
"Well, ain't matters just as bad now?" Stevenson asked, quickly. "He
still has the appropriation, or rather I'm supposed to have it with
this ranch. Because Menocal controls the Mexican vote hereabouts,
which is about all the vote there is, why, nobody has ever disturbed
him about that water right. And he's using that water, belonging to
me, to irrigate a lot of bottom farms along the river, for which no
water can be appropriated, the Pinas not carrying enough. I rode over
one day and looked at those farms--all grain and alfalfa. Well, he'll
get this ranch back, anyway. The mortgage he holds on it is due next
week and I can't pay it. Wouldn't even if I had the money. We're going
to pull up stakes and leave."
Bryant silently regarded the other's haggard face and stooped figure,
whose expression and resigned attitude revealed clearly Stevenson's
surrender. He was a man discouraged, disheartened, whipped.
"What's wrong with the sheep?" he questioned, at length.
"Not much that isn't wrong. When I started five years ago, I invested
in three thousand head. One time I had them increased to fifty-five
hundred--three bands. Thought I was doing first rate; and I was then.
But everything began to go against me. It seemed as if I always got
the worst herders; and not having any water to raise alfalfa I had to
buy winter feed, which was expensive; and a lot of them got the scab
and died; and last year I lost nearly all my lambs at lambing time,
the band being caught out in a storm and being in the wrong place.
Just one thing after another, to break my back. Had trouble about the
range, too. When I started them off this spring, they were down to
seven hundred; and I've been losing some right along from one cause or
another. No lambs, either, this spring, except dead ones. I thought I
could hang on till my luck changed, but losing a hundred head two
weeks ago was the last straw. I'm done now."
"What happened, Stevenson?"
"One of Menocal's herders mixed his flock with my six hundred, did it
deliberately, I'm convinced; there were three thousand head of his.
Billy was tending ours--and Billy is only fourteen, you know. I had
come down here for some supplies and when I returned, I found him
crying. The Mexican had separated the sheep and we were a hundred
short, gone with his, and he would pay no attention to Billy, swearing
he had only his own band. And he drove them away. I went to Menocal,
who was very polite, but he said I must be mistaken as his herders
were all honest men; and I've not got my sheep back, and I'm not
likely to. For that band is now thirty miles away somewhere. No use to
go to court--Menocal owns everything and everybody around here. So I'm
quitting."
"The sheep business isn't all roses, that's certain," Lee Bryant
remarked. "It's hard luck that your band ran down just when the price
of mutton and wool is going up. So you're letting the ranch slide?"
"Yes, I can't pay the mortgage; Menocal would foreclose at once if I
tried to stay. Last time I was in town he asked me about paying it off
and when I told him I shouldn't be able to do that, he said he'd have
me deed it back to him to save foreclosure proceedings. And he was
smiling, too. He knew all the time that he'd get the ranch back; and
when he does, he'll sell it to some other sucker."
"Both of us have wished a hundred times that we'd never sold our
Illinois farm to come here," Mrs. Stevenson said, plaintively. "I
don't know what we'll do when we go back, for that matter. Just rent a
place, I guess. Land is so high-priced there that we'll never be able
to buy a farm again."
"Renting there is better than starving here," her husband declared.
"We'll have a better home, too. When we first came to this place, we
planned on building a fine house, but I never had the money loose, and
we've just kept on from year to year living in this 'dobe hole. Good
thing I didn't have the money, however, for we'd lose the house along
with the ranch if we had built. Well, we're going back East, anyhow,
as soon as I sell the sheep. Graham, who has the big ranch on Diamond
Creek, south of where those girls are homesteading, is coming up in a
day or two to look at them, maybe buy them. You can see Graham's big
white house from the Kennard trail."
Bryant nodded. "I know the place, saw it when passing," said he. Then
he went on, "When I was at the ford watering my horse before coming
here, an auto crossed the creek. In the rear seat were a fat Mexican,
whom I took to be Menocal, and a white man with a pointed beard. The
latter perhaps was Graham?"
"Yes, that must have been him. Which way were they driving?"
"South."
"Going to the Graham ranch, I s'pose."
"There was a slim young fellow driving the car--some Mexican blood in
him," Lee stated.
"Menocal's son, Charlie, a half-breed snippet who puts on airs because
his father's rich," Stevenson said, in a disgusted tone. "A white
woman married Menocal, you know."
"In the front seat with the young fellow was a girl, rather pretty,"
Bryant appended.
"That's Louise, I imagine," Mrs. Stevenson said, reflectively. "Yes,
it must have been her. She's Mr. Graham's daughter. A nice girl, too.
That Menocal boy is crazy to marry her, the talk is."
"And is she crazy to marry him?" Lee inquired, amused by this gossip.
"Well, not exactly crazy, I'd say; I don't see how she could be. But
he'll be worth a lot of money some day, and she may overlook
considerable on that account. Menocal's boy has been to college;
besides, the family goes everywhere with white folks. I guess a
Mexican is supposed to be really white, isn't he?"
"Those having pure Spanish blood," the engineer explained. "Nearly all
the ones around here that I've seen have more Indian in them than
anything else, however, with a dash of other races perhaps. From the
glimpse I had of Menocal, I'll venture to say he has Red men among his
ancestors."
"Mexican or Indian or whatever he is, he can squeeze money out of
nothing, like a Jew," Stevenson complained. "Look how much he has made
out of this ranch; look at what he has made out of me! And it's just
that way with everything he holds. The Mexicans all around this
section sell him their stuff cheap and take what he pays, because they
don't know any better and because he's their leader. He has the big
store at Bartolo, which you've seen, and owns the bank there, and has
any number of farms up and down the Pinas River, and runs I don't know
how many bands of sheep; and besides, he elects the county officers,
and fixes the taxes to suit himself, and recommends the water
inspector for this district, and--and--well, what chance has an
ordinary man to get ahead here?"
Lee Bryant let a pause ensue. He rolled a cigarette and struck a light
and carefully got the tobacco to burning.
"You say you're going to let the ranch go back to Menocal," he stated,
abruptly. "You've made up your mind that you won't keep it, anyway.
All right. Now I've a proposition to make you."
Stevenson looked at him with curiosity.
"A proposition? What is it?" he asked.
"It's this: I've a farm of eighty acres in Nebraska that I'll trade
you for it. I could offer you less, but I won't; you have an equity
here of value, and I'm not the kind of man to beat you down to
nothing. If we deal, you shall have something in return for your
interest. This eighty of mine is worth a hundred dollars an
acre--eight thousand; it's mortgaged for five thousand, which leaves
an equity of three thousand; on it are good buildings and it's rented
until next March. You could then take possession. It's a good farm,
and with the money you'll have from the sale of your sheep you can
make a good start on the place, which is in the corn and wheat
section. My equity of three thousand isn't worth, to be sure, anything
like what you paid Menocal for this ranch, but it's something--and all
that I can afford to give."
The rancher stared at Lee as if he could not credit his ears.
"Are you in earnest?" he demanded, at last. "Why I've just told you
there's no water here. A man can't make a living on the place, and the
mortgage is due next week."
"I'll pay off the mortgage; I've enough money saved up to do that."
"But, man, without water----"
"Listen, Stevenson, I know exactly what I'm about," the engineer
interrupted. "This thing's a gamble with me, I admit, but you needn't
do any worrying on that score. I'm going in with my eyes open; I know
the risks and am willing to take them. What about my offer?"
Stevenson, still gazing at his visitor in wonderment, was at a loss;
he rubbed his knuckles doubtfully, hitched about on his chair and knit
his brows, perplexed, hesitating, as was his manner when presented
with any new affair, even with one palpably to his advantage. It was
clear that in this lack of quick decision lay much of the reason for
his failure.
His wife exclaimed in appeal, "Oh, John, if Mr. Bryant really means
it, why don't you say yes? I can't understand why he makes us such a
fine offer, but he is making it. We can start again; we'll be back in
a farming country like what we're used to, even if it isn't in
Illinois; we'll have a farm of our own, a home of our own, and will
not have to rent. Oh, why don't you say yes?"
The rancher looked from his wife to Bryant and back again, pursing his
lips.
"But I don't understand this," he said.
"You heard what he explained," she replied, anxiously. "He expects to
pay off the mortgage and be rid of Mr. Menocal. Perhaps he knows the
sheep business better than you do; you never did learn it well, John,
and you ought never to have stopped farming. You were a good farmer;
you will be again. We can go on this place in Nebraska and raise corn
and wheat and hogs, and I'll have chickens to help clear the debt.
Why, it's a chance for us to be independent again, and have a home,
and neighbours, and attend church, and--and be happy, John!"
"That's so," her husband agreed.
"We are going to leave here anyway," she continued to urge. "We
wouldn't have had anything but the money from the sheep, but now
you'll be getting a farm, too. I'd think you'd jump at Mr. Bryant's
offer."
"But maybe, after all, the ranch is worth more than I thought,"
Stevenson speculated.
His wife sank back in her seat, picked up her sewing, and tried to
resume her task, but her fingers trembled and her lashes were winking
fast. Lee gazed at her sympathetically. Then he lifted his hat from
the floor and stood up.
"Well, there are other places I can trade for," he remarked. "I
thought I was doing you a good turn in proposing the exchange,
especially as you're about to lose your place. I wouldn't be beating
you out of anything, certainly, and as your wife says, you'd really be
getting something for nothing. The mortgage is due next week, you must
remember."
Stevenson's mind, however, was running in another channel.
"I'll tell you how we can deal," he said, with an assumption of
shrewdness. "You pay me the five thousand you plan to pay off the
mortgage with, and get Menocal to renew the loan. Five thousand--why,
my equity is worth more than that! Besides, you've some scheme for
making money out of this ranch."
"What if I have?"
"That makes a difference when it comes to a deal."
"Not with me," the engineer stated, curtly. "If that's your attitude,
we'll drop the matter. Probably you yourself can arrange an extension
of the mortgage or a renewal, if you're minded to remain."
"You know, John, that you can't; Mr. Menocal has already refused,"
Mrs. Stevenson said, in a low voice.
"I ought to have cash in addition to your farm," her husband insisted.
"You get none," Lee replied. "Well, this trade is what I came to see
you about. From the way you talked when I was here last I supposed you
might consider my offer favourably, but I guess we can't do business.
I'll ride on to Bartolo."
At this statement Mrs. Stevenson wiped her eyes, rose and went into
the inner room, closing the door after her. The engineer moved as if
to depart.
"Now, wait a minute," Stevenson exclaimed.
"Well?"
"I'll take--let me figure a minute."
Bryant tossed his hat on the table in disgust and relighted his
cigarette.
"Stevenson, listen," he began. "You're an older man than I am, but
just the same I'm going to say a few things that you need to hear. I
couldn't say them and wouldn't say them before your wife, but now I'm
going to turn loose. You can do as you damn please about trading, take
my offer or leave it; if you refuse, though, you'll lose both ranch
and farm. The trouble with you is that you can't see the difference
between a good proposition and a bad one. That's why you bought this
ranch on say-so. That's why now you're turning down my offer. You
either jump without first looking, or you wait until it's too late.
You don't pay attention strictly to what's immediately under your
hand, but waste your energy wondering if you can't get rich from
something out of your reach. That's what has been the trouble with you
in the sheep business, I imagine. Here when I offer you a farm for a
ranch that's slipping through your fingers, you at once get greedy.
Most of the time you don't know your own mind; you hesitate and
speculate and vacillate and worry. Why, you deserve to lose your ranch
and your sheep and everything else. And your wife suffers for your
faults! You're a failure, and you've dragged her down with you. If
you're not a failure, and a fool, too, go bring her back into this
room and tell her you're going to make this trade, so you two will
have a farm and the home she wants and so her mind will be easy once
more. You've been thinking of only yourself long enough; now begin to
think of her comfort and happiness."
Stevenson came angrily to his feet.
"No man ever talked to me like that before, I'll have you know!" he
cried.
The engineer kept his place, with no change of countenance.
"Well, one has talked to you like that now and I'm the man," he said.
"And I don't retract a word. It's the truth straight from the
shoulder. What are you going to do about it? Why, nothing, just
nothing. Because I've talked cold, hard facts, and you know it."
The momentary fire died from Stevenson's eyes. He shuffled his feet
for a little, looked about the room with the worried aspect he
usually showed, brushed his lips with the back of his hand.
"You're pretty rough----" he began.
"Don't stand there talking; go get your wife," Bryant said, sharply.
Stevenson turned and walked slowly to the closed door. He cleared his
throat, stared at the panels for a moment, and at last pushed it open.
"Come out, Sarah, we're going to trade," he announced.
The woman came forth. About her eyes was a slight redness, but on her
lips there was a tremulous smile.
"I'm glad," she said, "I'm glad, John."
"Yes, I decided it was a good trade to make," her husband assured her.
"No need to think it over longer."
They came to where Bryant stood, unconcealed pleasure showing on Mrs.
Stevenson's face.
"You may like to see these kodak pictures of the farm and its house,"
the young man said, producing an envelope from a pocket. "Take a chair
here by the window, Mrs. Stevenson, where you'll have the light. See,
this one shows the house, with the trees and lilac bushes in front,
and gives you a glimpse of the flower garden. Pretty, don't you
think?"
She readjusted her spectacles. After a time she gazed from the
pictures through the window at the stretch of sagebrush.
"And I'll have neighbours, too," she said, in an unsteady voice. "The
loneliness here was killing me."
Stevenson considered the backs of his hands in awkward silence.
"Neighbours, lots of them," Bryant affirmed.
"I kind of pity you having to stay," she said, looking up at him with
a smile.
The engineer laughed.
"Why, this country suits me right down to the ground," he replied.
"I've been in the West ten years, wouldn't live anywhere else. And I
don't expect to be lonely; Menocal will probably attend to that.
Besides, there are two good-looking young ladies just south of here,
on Sarita Creek."
"That's so," she said, laughing also.
"First thing we hear, you'll be married," Stevenson remarked, with a
quick grin.
"Oh, I'm safe--there are two of them," Bryant returned, clapping the
rancher on the shoulder.
CHAPTER III
The town of Bartolo slumbered in the July sunshine. Nothing stirred on
its one long street, lined with scarcely a break on either side by
mud-plastered houses that made a continuous brown wall, marked at
intervals by a door or pierced by a window; nothing stirred, neither
in front of Menocal's large frame store at the upper end of it, with
the little bank adjoining, nor before the small courthouse grounds
across the way, where the huge old cottonwoods spread their shade, nor
along the entire length of the beaten street down to Gomez's
blacksmith shop and Martinez's saloon across from each other at the
lower end; nothing, not even the pair of burros drowsing in the shade
of the wall, or the dogs lying before doors, or the goats a-kneel by
the saloon, or the fowls nested down in the dust. Only the Pinas
River, issuing from the black cañon a mile or so above, was in motion;
and, indeed, it appeared to partake of the general somnolence, barely
rippling along its gravelly bed, shallow and shrunken, and giving
forth but an indolent glitter as it flowed past the town. The day was
hot and it was the hour of the siesta, therefore everything
slept--everything, man, beast and fowl, from Menocal, who was snoring
in his hammock on the vine-clad veranda of his big stuccoed house just
beyond the store at the head of the street, to the goats at the foot
of it by the silent saloon.
Bryant, descending from the mesa into the river bottom and riding into
the street, had he not known otherwise, might have supposed the
population vanished in a body. But he was aware that it only slept;
and he had no consideration for a siesta that retarded his affairs. He
dismounted before the courthouse and entered the building, whose
corridor and chambers appeared as silent, as lifeless, as forsaken as
the street itself. Coming into the Recorder's office, he halted for a
look about, then pushed through the wicket of the counter and stepped
into an inner room, where he stirred by a thumb in the ribs a thin,
dusky-skinned youth reclining in a swivel chair with feet in repose on
a window-sill, who slept with head fallen back, arms hanging, and
mouth open.
"Come, _amigo_, your dinner's settled by this time," the engineer
stated. "Grab a pen and record this deed."
The clerk sleepily shifted his feet into a more comfortable position.
"We're behind in our work," said he. "Just leave your deed, and the
fee, and we'll get around to it in a few days."
"So you're too busy now, eh?"
"Yes. We've had a good many papers to record this month."
"Where's the Recorder?"
"Not back from dinner yet," was the answer.
The speaker once again prepared to rest. From the outer office the
slow ticking of a clock sounded with lulling effect, while the grassy
yard beyond the window, shaded by the boughs of the cottonwoods,
diffused peace and drowsiness. The clerk closed his eyes.
"Just leave the deed and fee on the desk here," he murmured.
"And tip-toe out, too, I suppose."
"If you feel like it," the young Mexican remarked, with a faint
insolence in his voice, the insolence of a subordinate who believes
himself protected by his place.
Bryant's hand shot swiftly out to the speaker's shoulder. With a snap
that brought him up standing the clerk was jerked from his seat, and
before his startled wits gathered what was happening he was propelled
into the outer office.
"Record this deed, you forty-dollar-a-month penpusher, before I grow
peevish and rearrange your face," Bryant ordered, with his fingers
tightening their grasp on the youth's collar. "You're receiving your
pay from the county, and are presumed to give value received. Anyway,
value received is what I'm going to have now."
"Let go my neck!"
"Let go nothing. When I see you settle down to this big book, then I
let go. No '_mañana_' with me, boy; right here and now you're going to
give me an exhibition of rapid penmanship. Savey? Take up your pen;
that's the stuff. Now dip deep in the ink and draw a full breath and
go to it."
Bryant released his hold on the cowed clerk, but remained by his side,
where his presence exerted an amazingly energizing effect upon the
scribe. The pen scratched industriously to and fro across the page,
over which the youth humped himself as if enamoured of the tome, only
at intervals risking a glance at the lean-faced, vigilant American.
When he had finished the transcription, stamped the deed and closed
the book, Bryant handed him the amount of the fee.
"Thank you," the clerk said, with an excess of politeness.
He was still nervous. He furtively observed his visitor stowing the
deed in a pocket, as if expecting Bryant to initiate some new
violence, and resolved on flight if he should.
"There, my friend, that's all you can do for me just now," the
engineer remarked. "But I shall return soon, so keep awake and ready.
When you see me entering, advance _pronto_. If anything annoys me,
it's being kept waiting by a Mexican boy-clerk. Do you get that
clearly?"
"_Si, señor_," the other replied, unconsciously lapsing into his
native tongue.
"_Muy bueno_--and bear it in mind. Now I advise you to get to work on
the documents you've allowed to accumulate; it's half-past two and
you've had enough of a siesta for one noon." With which Bryant took
his departure.
Outside he led his horse across the street to the frame store. Beside
the latter stood Menocal's house, with its smooth green lawn and its
beds of poppies, its trees, its fence massed with sweet peas, and its
vine-covered veranda, where the engineer had a glimpse of a corpulent
figure in a hammock. The only sound from the place was the musical
gurgle of water in a little irrigation ditch bordering the lawn.
Inside the long store Bryant aroused the only man in sight, a Mexican
who slept on the counter with his head pillowed on a pile of overalls.
"Go tell Menocal there's a man here to see him on business," Lee
said.
The awakened sleeper slid off his perch, rubbed his eyes, yawned,
stretched himself, and then shook his head with great gravity.
"Mr. Menocal takes his siesta till three o'clock; you can see him at
that time," he said, in English.
"I'll see him now."
"Impossible! He is very angry when awakened for a small matter."
Bryant went a step nearer to the speaker.
"Where do you get the authority to decide that my business is a small
matter?" he demanded, with a menace of manner that caused the other to
retreat in haste. "Go bring him and make me no more trouble."
The man went. Bryant lighted a cigarette and fell to surveying the
store's merchandise. Several minutes passed before a murmur of voices
apprised him of the coming of the men. Menocal entered the side door
first, approaching heavily and sleepily the spot where the engineer
waited. He had not put on coat or collar; his short figure appeared
more than ever obese; his sweeping white moustache divided his plump,
shiny brown face; and his air was that of one who must put up with
vexatious interruptions because of the important position he filled.
"You wish to speak with me?" he asked, shortly.
"That's why I'm here," Bryant returned.
Menocal gazed at him owlishly for a time.
"You're the man who threw my son's money back at the ford day before
yesterday, aren't you?" he questioned.
"The same."
"Why did you throw it back?"
"Why did he throw it at me in the first place? You should train him to
use better judgment. You yourself wouldn't have done it."
"No," Menocal said. Then, as if the subject were dismissed, he asked,
"What do you wish to see me about?"
"About the mortgage on the Stevenson place: I've bought the ranch.
Stevenson moves off in a few days."
Menocal's brows lifted and remained so, as if fixed in their new
elevation. He slowly rubbed the end of his nose with his forefinger.
The sleepiness had wholly vanished from his countenance.
"Come into the bank," he said, finally; and moved toward the front
door.
The engineer accompanied him. In a space railed off from the cashier's
grille in the little building next door they sat down. The teller was
visible in the cage, where now he appeared very busy though he had
undoubtedly been drowsing when they entered.
"So you've bought the Stevenson ranch," Menocal said.
"Yes. I've just had the deed recorded."
"The mortgage is due in a few days; I told him it wouldn't be renewed
by me."
"Perhaps now that I have the place----"
"No; I've carried that loan long enough. If it isn't paid when due,
I'll start foreclosure proceedings immediately."
Bryant nodded.
"Well, I merely asked out of curiosity," said he. "It's your right to
demand payment--and I'm on hand with the money. Make out a release so
that I can clear the record. Here's a Denver draft for six thousand
dollars--I figure principal and interest at five thousand four hundred
and you can have the balance placed to my credit in the bank. I
shouldn't continue the loan at its present rate of interest in any
case; eight per cent. is too much for money. Besides, I want the ranch
clear of incumbrance."
With an expressionless face Menocal gazed at the draft, turned it
over, examined the back, then at last laid it down on his desk.
"Isidro," he called to the teller, "make out a mortgage release for
the Stevenson place. Copy the description from the mortgage in my file
in the vault. Afterward credit six hundred dollars to--What is your
name?"
"Lee Bryant."
"Six hundred dollars to Lee Bryant, Isidro. Mr. Bryant will give you
his signature." Again facing his visitor, he said, "Do you know that
that ranch has no water to speak of? I'm afraid you may not find the
property what you expect."
"It has a good appropriation from the Pinas River here."
"Ah, but it can't be used," Menocal exclaimed, with a bland smile.
"I propose to use it."
"What!"
Bryant kept his eyes fixed on the amazed banker's orbs.
"Didn't I speak clearly?" he inquired. "I own one hundred and
twenty-five second feet of water in this river and it's my intention
to apply it. I'm going to make a real ranch down there."
A shadow seemed to settle on Menocal's face, leaving it altered, less
placid, more purposeful.
"Considerable capital will be required to build a canal there," he
remarked. "You're certainly not going into this thing on your own
account, are you? Who is putting up the money? Eastern people?"
Bryant smiled, but made no answer. His smile and his silence provoked
an angry gleam from the banker's eyes.
"Well, it doesn't matter," Menocal continued. "But you're going to
discover that you haven't this water right, after all."
"What makes you think so?"
"Because it was never used, because no real canal was ever built, only
a little ditch that doesn't exist now. The right will be cancelled,
and the water will be reappropriated for lands along the river."
"For farms on which you're now using it, you mean?"
"I'm not saying where."
Bryant leaned forward and tapped the banker's desk with a finger-tip.
"Mr. Menocal, don't try to start any trouble with me," he said, with
jaw a little outthrust.
"_Dios!_ You dare talk that way to me?"
"I repeat it, don't attempt to keep something that doesn't belong to
you. You may want to--but don't try it. I know all about the water
appropriation for the ranch I've bought; all about your sworn
affidavit filed thirty years ago, with an accompanying map, certifying
that a canal was built and water delivered to the land. It's a matter
of record. Now you seek to reappropriate this water, or to have the
right cancelled, and see where you wind up. Thirty years ago men
winked at false affidavits, but it's different to-day."
The Mexican's white moustache drew up tight under his thick nose,
disclosing his teeth in a snarl.
"You threaten me--me!"
"I'm not threatening, only warning you. Or if you wish a still milder
word, let me say advising," Bryant rejoined.
The banker's eyes, however, continued to flash at the engineer, as if
alive in their sockets and hunting a mark to strike.
"You accuse me of dishonour!" he exclaimed. "I don't know why I should
pay attention to your charge, which is false. A ditch was built to the
ranch--"
"Mighty small one, then. No trace of it remains."
"One was built, one was built!"
"Very well, Mr. Menocal, grant that it was. It but strengthens my
position. But let us pass to recent times; five years ago you passed
title to Stevenson with the water right as a reality when you sold him
the ranch; your son is water inspector for this district, or was until
a year ago, anyway, making reports to the state. Did he say anything
in them about this canal or water right having ceased to exist? No."
"His reports were largely routine," the other stated, regaining his
composure.
"Still they were official. I'm simply pointing out to you, Mr.
Menocal, why it will be unwise for you to endeavour to have this water
appropriation cancelled. You sold it to Stevenson as a live right--the
deed proves that; and now that I have the property I shall make it
such in fact. You've been using the water for other land, which
possibly will suffer afterward, but that doesn't affect the case in
the least. That water is a valuable property; when it's delivered on
my ranch, the land will be worth fifty dollars an acre. You may have
calculated that no one who got hold of the Perro Creek ranch ever
would or could use the water, but in that you were in error: I can and
will use it, and you must understand that fact."
Menocal fell into consideration. He folded his hands across his
stomach and remained thus, pondering, occasionally lifting his lids
for a scrutiny of Bryant's face.
"I'll give you ten thousand cash for the place as it stands and hand
you my check now," he said, at length.
"Not to-day, thank you," the engineer replied.
"What is your price?"
"The ranch isn't for sale. It'll be worth a quarter of a million when
it's watered. No, it's not on the market at present."
A deep sigh issued from the banker's lips; he blinked slowly several
times before speaking, with a resigned countenance.
"I see you've some capitalists behind you," said he, "for it will take
money to build a dam and a canal. If they saw a reasonable profit
without the trouble of construction, no doubt they would be willing to
sell."
"Put your mind at rest, Mr. Menocal; you have only me to deal with;
there are no capitalists running this show yet. But the water system
will be built, never fear."
Menocal's eyebrows went up. "Ah, so?" he asked, softly.
Then his face smoothed itself out; and Bryant realized that he had
been led into a betrayal of importance.
"You would do well to name a price, Mr. Bryant."
"No; I propose to develop the ranch," the engineer answered, curtly.
"Is the release made out? If it is, I'll be on my way."
"It's too bad you refuse, too bad," Menocal said, with a lugubrious
shake of his head.
He called Isidro. The clerk placed a card before Bryant for his
signature and gave him a check book. Then he laid the mortgage release
in front of Menocal, who signed and passed it to the engineer.
"You'll find it correct," the Mexican stated. "Isidro is a notary and
has filled out the acknowledgment."
Nevertheless, the visitor took care to read the paper and compare it
with his deed before he rose.
"Well, that ends my business for the afternoon," said he, "and I'll
take no more of your time. You understand where I stand, Mr. Menocal."
The latter gave a number of slow nods saying, "I understand, I
understand. Good day, Mr. Bryant. And remember that you have an
account with us and that the bank will be pleased to render you any
service possible."
Sleepily the banker, watching through the bank window, saw the young
man lead his horse across the street and once more disappear within
the courthouse. Then for some minutes he continued in somnolent
contemplation of the courthouse front. At last he called:
"Isidro, Isidro! Go find Joe García and tell him I wish to speak with
him in half an hour in my garden. Look for him at home and in the
saloon, but find him wherever he is. That man who just went out now,
Isidro,----"
"Yes," answered Isidro.
"He's one of those hard, obstinate Americans, Isidro--and his eyes,
they are bad eyes, I don't like them."
"Yes," Isidro concurred, who had not noticed the eyes at all.
CHAPTER IV
Charlie Menocal, who after his sleep had read a few chapters in a
novel, went out of the shaded room where he had reposed and into the
garden. There he discovered his father in talk with Joe García.
"What's going on?" he exclaimed. "Lost a horse, or a wife or
something, Joe?"
"No, Charlie; this is business," García said, with a grin.
Menocal continued to give his instructions to the latter. They had to
do with bringing a few hundred sheep from one of the bands feeding in
the hills. They were to be driven down on the mesa to graze, and kept
moving about near the Stevenson ranch house; García was to observe
what the young man there did, all he did, whom he saw, and as far as
possible where he went. Particularly was he to note if surveyors came
and set to work anywhere. If the young man appeared to be engaged at
any task on the mountain side, Joe was to approach with his sheep. And
he was to report everything he learned.
Charlie's attention became more lively as he listened to his father's
directions to the man, and when García had departed he asked, "Who are
you after? Who's this young fellow you speak of as being at the Perro
Creek ranch? Didn't Stevenson deed the place back?"
Menocal senior twisted an end of his flaring moustache.
"May a thousand damnations fall on him! No, he didn't," he responded,
wrathfully.
"But that only means you'll have to foreclose the mortgage. It will
take longer, that's all."
Charlie was vice-president of his father's bank--his name was so
printed on the stationery, at least--and was familiar with his
parent's affairs, though he was averse to anything like industry. He
much preferred the pursuit of pleasure to work, and his automobile to
the grille of the bank. He was accurately aware, too, of his father's
weakness for him, an only child, and of his father's inclination to
indulge his desires; and shrewdly played upon the fact. Nevertheless,
in matters of business he possessed a certain sharpness.
"Stevenson sold the ranch to this young man Bryant, who just now paid
off the mortgage," Menocal explained.
"Then he was stung," Charlie averred.
"Wait, you don't know all, my son. He plans to build a dam and a canal
and use that old water right out of the Pinas, taking the water with
which we irrigate the farms down at Rosita. It will leave them dry;
the alfalfa will die; no more grain or peas or beans will be raised on
them; they won't have even good pasturage; they will go back to
sagebrush and cactus--all those farms, all those beautiful ranches!
Altogether four or five thousand acres! They are worth two hundred
thousand dollars now--to-morrow worth nothing! Half my winter hay
comes from them; half my peas for fattening lambs. I shall have to
sell part of my sheep. I'm a millionaire now, but I'll be reduced,
I'll be less than a millionaire, and so almost poor again. It's very
bad; it mustn't be; I must stop him using the water."
Even Charlie became solemn at the prospect of losing two hundred
thousand dollars and being less than a millionaire.
"The right hasn't been used; we'll have it cancelled," he said, with
sudden confidence.
"He refused to sell the place to me for ten thousand dollars cash,"
the father stated. "He's no fool--and he's a bad customer, Charlie; he
said he would send me to prison for perjury if I tried to cancel the
right."
"Perjury, pouf!" Charlie sneered.
"He couldn't send me to prison, of course, for I have too much money,
but he might make it unpleasant for me, very unpleasant. Politics are
to be considered; I mustn't get a bad name in the party and in the
state. I must be careful. The records show that the ranch has had the
water, and while in my possession. As he says, that would be difficult
for me to explain if I entered court against him. The matter mustn't
get into court or into the land office. Later we can have the water
right cancelled and reappropriated--later, when he has gone away, when
no dust can be raised about it."
"Is he going away?"
"Don't be stupid, Charlie. He must go away; that is necessary: I'm
considering plans. He must be pursuaded--or----"
"Or forced," said his son, with reckless bright eyes.
"Men generally depart from a locality when public opinion is brought
to bear on them," the elder remarked. "He can be made unpopular until
he desires to leave."
"We'll run him out, just leave that part to me."
"Charlie, nothing rash must be done, remember that, and nothing
illegal. I shall think of some plan soon."
"Nothing rash, but nothing uncertain, father. Two hundred thousand is
a lot of money. I, too, shall plan."
The prospect of ousting an intruder who had challenged his family's
right to control what it wished here, who indeed had the audacity to
attempt to robe the effort under a claim of legality, appealed to
young Menocal as an undertaking most attractive. The fact that all the
advantage was on his side, of influence, of wealth, of race, of power
that might be exerted through ignorant Mexicans in a hundred subtle
and vindictive ways, made the enterprise all the more alluring. The
Indian strain in his blood--a strain which accounts for much that sets
American and Mexican apart, unconsciously in his case gave a tinge of
cruelty to his anticipation. Aspiring himself to pass as an American,
it never failed to please him when he could slight or humiliate an
American; and he lacked his father's restraint of impulses, as he came
short of his sagacity and perseverance. Indeed, secretly the son
believed his father too conservative, too cautious, too old-fashioned
and slow; and at times was exceedingly impatient with methods that he
was confident he could immensely improve.
His father considered him for a time.
"Charlie, you leave this matter alone," he said. "You keep out of it.
Whatever's to be done, I'll do. You would go too far. You can give
your attention to seeing that the crops are watered and the hay cut on
time; you should be down at Rosita now looking after things."
"I'll run down in the car this evening," was the answer. "To-morrow
I'm going to Kennard, where I haven't been for two weeks. The wool in
the warehouse there should be sold, and a buyer from Boston wrote, you
know, that he would be there this week. And I think we can get our
price."
Kennard was the nearest railroad point and forty miles south. It was a
pleasant little city, with some of the attractions of larger places.
Of these Charlie was thinking rather than of the wool. He would attend
to the wool business, of course, but it was an excuse instead of a
reason for the projected visit on the morrow.
"Very well, it's time the wool is sold; the price is good at present,"
his father agreed.
Charlie recurred to the matter of the Stevenson ranch.
"What's this fellow's name who bought out Stevenson?"
"Lee Bryant. A young man. And I don't like him; I'm afraid he's a
trouble-maker. You should remember him, Charlie, for he's the fellow
who filled the radiator of the car at the ford on Perro Creek and who
threw your money back in your face."
Young Menocal's thin figure stiffened, while his small black moustache
rose in two points of ire.
"Him! That scoundrel who insulted me before Louise! That
lamb-stealer!" he shrilled.
"That is the man," his father affirmed.
Charlie spat forth a string of Spanish curses. When he had recovered
from his outburst of passion, he said:
"Well, I'm glad he's the man. He'll pay for that. Louise said nothing,
but she heard him. And now he's trying to steal our water, too! I'd
like to tie him down on a cactus-bed and run a band of sheep over
him."
"Charlie, Charlie, control yourself. Don't exhaust your strength by
being angry; it's bad for you in this heat; sunstrokes are sometimes
brought on that way. Besides, such talk as you uttered is foolish and
dangerous."
"Bah, I'm not afraid of a sunstroke."
"Anyway, it's unwise to be angry," his father warned. "When you're in
a temper, you talk loud; and people may hear it and repeat it, making
trouble. Now I must return to the bank. But remember what I say:
you're not to meddle in this Perro Creek matter. Do you hear?"
"Oh, yes, I hear," said Charlie.
His face as his father walked away did not, however, indicate
acquiescence in this tame course. His heart was full of rancour for
the insulting stranger of the ford; and where the fires of his hatred
blew, his feet would follow.
CHAPTER V
Though Lee Bryant, during his colloquy with Menocal, had spoken
confidently of his ability to obtain money wherewith to construct a
canal system linking the Pinas River and the Perro Creek ranch, he had
no definite promise of funds from any source. Nor would the project be
ripe for financing before he had completed his surveys and made his
cost estimates.
He had become interested in the undertaking in this way. Staying over
night with the Stevensons by chance a month previous, a stranger, his
speculation was aroused when through questions about the ranch he
learned of the unused Pinas River water right, a right valid but
apparently impracticable. Was it indeed impracticable? Would the cost
of bringing water to the land be, after all, prohibitive? In fact, had
a competent engineer ever gone into the matter? He doubted it. The
history of the property, so far as he could glean from Stevenson,
disclosed on the part of no one any serious effort ever to develop the
ranch. In the beginning Menocal had probably had some faint notion of
carrying out the scheme, but if so, had afterward abandoned the
enterprise. The tract of five thousand acres of land had originally
been a small Mexican grant; it lay in the midst of government land;
and when Menocal came into possession of the ranch, some conception of
utilizing water from the Pinas must have inspired him to acquire the
appropriation of one hundred and twenty-five second feet. Well, the
land, theoretically at any rate, had water; and if water actually
could be delivered, an extraordinary value would accrue to the now
nearly worthless tract. It was a problem for engineers; it was one of
the possibilities that if seized might be converted into a fact.
Bryant was an engineer, and he was just then foot-loose.
From the worried ranchman, Stevenson, who appeared glad to talk of his
affairs to someone, he learned that the man was both dissatisfied with
the country and straitened in circumstances. Bryant judged that his
host would consider any offer which would enable him to realize
something on the ranch and to depart; so that particular aspect of the
matter if undertaken, namely, securing title to the land and water
right, seemed favourable. If no insurmountable obstacle stood in the
way of building a dam and a canal, arising from construction elements,
it assuredly looked as if money was to be made out of the project.
With his mind kindling to the idea Bryant rode northward next morning
along the base of the mountains, studying the hillsides where a canal
naturally should run, all the way up to the Pinas River. Afterward he
reconnoitered the mesa, hitting at last on a slight elevation, hardly
to be called a ridge, that projected from a hillside a mile below
Bartolo and curved in a gentle crescent for about three miles from the
range of mountains down the mesa, again bending in toward the hills
close to the north line of the Perro Creek ranch.
Next, he absented himself for a week at the state capital, where he
industriously studied the water and land records pertaining to the
district. When he returned, he brought with him a surveying instrument
and a boy for helper. He pitched a tent out of sight in a hollow at
the foot of a hill, worked early and late running his lines,
establishing a dam site, and surveying the river bottom near the mouth
of Pinas Cañon, and remained practically unseen except by a few
incurious Mexicans. His instrument proved the correctness of his
conclusion regarding the crescent-shaped elevation as a practical
grade for a canal, which though necessitating a longer course would
nevertheless immensely lessen the time, expense, and difficulties of
digging when compared with a line along the mountains' flanks with its
danger of washouts and earth slides. Nor did he stop there. He made
rapid but reliable topographical measurements, on a general scale, of
the mesa for five miles out from the mountains, between Bartolo and
Perro Creek, locating among other things a large depression in the
plain, three miles southwest of the town, which might by diking be
converted into a flood water reservoir. Then he folded his tent and
again disappeared for a week. When, finally, he rode to Stevenson's
ranch house that hot July afternoon and made a trade for the five
thousand acres of land, he was the possessor of considerably more
knowledge of the locality and its possibilities than any one would
have guessed.
And now he was owner of the ranch and committed to the enterprise.
A few days after Bryant's visit to Bartolo Stevenson disposed of his
sheep to Graham, the owner of the large ranch on Diamond Creek, loaded
his household goods, except the stove and some of the furniture which
the engineer bought, and with his wife and boy drove away in his sheep
wagon for Kennard and for the new farm in Nebraska. Bryant's own
effects--trunk, bedding, provisions, surveying instruments,
draughting-board, and the like, came up from the railroad town by
wagon, and with them the fourteen-year-old lad, Dave Morris, a
gangling, long-legged boy extremely dependable and extraordinarily
serious, who had carried rod for the engineer during the week of
preliminary surveying.
The man and boy now attacked the canal line in earnest, with Bryant
intent on establishing its course, location, and displacement exactly,
so that he could make necessary blueprints and compile construction
estimates. It was while they were working along the first mile of the
line, where it ran from the Pinas River along the base of a hill to
the low ridge that bore out upon the mesa, that they received their
first interruption. The worst and most expensive part of the canal to
build would be this section, and the engineer was therefore taking
especial care in its surveying; near the river the line traversed
several fenced tracts of ground extending part way up the hillside,
fields owned by natives; and it was one of these Mexicans who slouched
forward to the spot where Bryant and Dave worked and ordered them to
get out of his field.
Bryant straightened up from sighting through his transit, and asked,
"What's on your mind? What's disturbing your brain, _hombre_?"
"You get off," was the unkempt fellow's answer.
"Why?"
"You can't come on my ranch; get off."
The engineer pulled a map from his hip pocket--a copy made from one
filed in the land commissioner's office thirty years previous. He
spread it open before the Mexican.
"See this? Here is Bartolo, here is the river, here is your field," he
said, pointing with a finger. "Now look at that line; it runs across
this field right where we stand. That's the Perro Creek Canal,
extending down to Perro Creek."
The man stared at the earth under his feet.
"No, I see no canal," he stated, now looking right and left as if to
make sure. "There is no canal."
"Yes, there is. But it needs cleaning badly. I'm surveying its banks
again and then I shall clean out the dirt. You can see that it needs
cleaning, because you can scarcely see it at all. Menocal, the banker,
didn't take very good care of the canal after he built it; that's the
trouble. Hello, does that surprise you? Yes, Mr. Menocal got the water
right and dug the ditch in the first place; and he also secured a
right of way across these fields, sixty feet wide, by buying it from
whoever owned the ground at that time, and the right of way is
certified to the state. Now, I own Perro Creek ranch and the Perro
Creek canal and likewise the right of way. So you see, José, or
whatever your name is, we're standing on my ground and not yours; I
could even make you take down your fence where it crosses my right of
way."
The Mexican blinked stupidly.
"I was born here; my father was born here; my grandfather lived here,"
he said. "There have been little ditches, many of them, but never a
big canal in this field. You must get off."
"No; you're mistaken. Go see Mr. Menocal and he will set you right."
"I saw Charlie Menocal, who said to drive strangers off."
"Well, Charlie had best keep his fingers out of this dish, or he may
find it full of pepper, and you tell him so next time you talk with
him."
Bryant folded his map and restored it to his pocket, while the Mexican
went away to his house.
That day the engineer worked until darkness shut down. At three
o'clock next morning he routed his young assistant out of bed and by
dawn they were in the fields again. Knowing that the Menocals had set
about impeding and if possible altogether obstructing him, he proposed
to be done, as quickly as careful surveying allowed, with the fenced
part of the hillside where plausible controversies could be invented.
Toward the end of the second day he had progressed into the last tract
of owned ground. He breathed more freely. In his statement to the
Mexican concerning the right of way he had been exactly right; and he
was following to a dot the original course taken by the early ditch.
He could have improved upon this section of the canal by another
survey, but that would have involved him in a host of troubles, very
likely unsolvable ones, in securing title to another strip of ground
across the fields. Without question Menocal's influence would prevent
the owners from selling, even if Bryant had the money with which to
buy a second right of way, which he had not. Dollar for dollar it
would be cheaper in the long run to use the old line. Well, Dave was
already across the last fence with his rod; they would soon be
working entirely on government land; and with that, it did not matter
for the present what the Mexican landowners thought or did.
Bryant had walked fifty yards or so away from his transit to call
something to Dave, when the crack of a rifle sounded from the hillside
and a bullet whined near by. The engineer pivoted about. Another shot
followed, and he beheld a spurt of dust close by his instrument. The
hidden rifleman was not seeking to murder him, but to destroy his
tools.
There were no more shots and he resumed work. Later on, as he neared
the fence and was establishing his last points within the field, a
horseman with a gray moustache came galloping up along the stretch of
barb wire. He nodded, inquired if the engineer was named Bryant, and
announced that he had half a dozen injunctions to serve.
"I expected something like this; glad you didn't arrive any sooner,"
Lee remarked.
"Well, I was away from town, or I'd have been here by noon," the
horseman, an American, stated. "The injunctions cover all these places
between here and the river. You and any one you hire must keep off the
tracts specified until the cases come up before the judge."
"All right, sheriff. Wait till I take a last squint or two and I'll
vacate."
The horseman idly watched the engineer make his final measurements,
then when Bryant had lifted his tripod over the wire and told his
assistant Dave they would call it a day and stop, he dismounted and
sat down for a smoke with the man on whom he had served his papers.
"Looks as if you've stirred up some interest in your doings," he
remarked, expelling a thread of smoke. "All the Mexicans from here
down to Rosita are gabbling about your canal. Don't seem pleased with
you."
"There's one who doesn't, in any case," was the response. "He took a
couple of shots at my instrument a while ago from up yonder in the
sagebrush when I had stepped aside for a moment."
The sheriff gazed at the hillside.
"A few _hombres_ around here will bear watching," said he. For a
little he meditated, then went on, "You're a white man and so am I;
they don't like our colour any too well, at bottom. I s'pose you know
that."
"Yes. But they needn't express their feelings with rifles. As far as
these injunctions are concerned, they'll be dismissed eventually, for
there's no question about my right of way through here. Menocal
secured it himself and it's all a matter of record--the deeds, the
certificate to the state, and the rest."
"Menocal got it, you say?"
"Nobody else. Some time or other he must have expected to water Perro
Creek ranch, which he owned until he sold it to Stevenson."
"I knew he had that place," said the visitor, "but I didn't know it
carried a water right from the Pinas. Where does this move of yours
hit Menocal?"
"In his ranches down the river; he's been using this water for them,"
Bryant explained. "I suppose it's been taken for granted by nearly
everyone that the water belonged to those farms down there, but it
doesn't."
"How much water in this right?"
"Hundred and twenty-five second feet."
"Whew! That takes a chunk out of the Pinas. And I presume that by this
time Menocal knows what you're doing?"
"Oh, yes; I told him. He doesn't like it, of course."
The sheriff turned for a full view of Bryant's face. In respect to
features the two men were not unlike: both had the same thin curving
nose and level eyes and cut of jaw.
"Well, let me say as between man and man," the elder spoke, "that
Menocal won't let you take away that much water from him if he can
help it. And I'll drop you some more news, in addition: several
Mexicans are going to file on homesteads or desert claims along the
base of the hills south of here, scattered along like and running part
way up the mountain sides. I don't know where your canal to Perro
Creek will go, but if its line follows the foot of the range, as may
be likely, it might happen to find those claims in the way."
"Any idea in your mind where those fellows may locate their filings?"
"No; I can't say definitely. Shouldn't be surprised if they began
stringing them along a couple of miles south of here till they reached
Perro Creek."
Bryant gazed at the flank of the mountain. The gentle ridge where his
ditch line left the hillside was but half a mile away. Beyond that the
Mexicans could file to their hearts' content, for they would be left
on one side by the canal. But in all this he perceived Menocal's
cunning hand.
"Much obliged to you, sheriff," said he. "I'll see if I can't find
some way to satisfy those chaps when the time comes."
His visitor rose and put foot in stirrup.
"If any of these Mexicans grow ugly, let me know," he remarked. "I'll
tell them where to head in. Drop in at my office at the courthouse
when you're in town; Winship's my name. I brought these notices over
myself in order to look at you, for they were saying you are a
trouble-maker, but that's what these natives frequently state when
they want to fix an alibi for themselves before they start something.
I'll see if I can learn anything of the fellow who was up yonder
shooting. These _hombres_ are altogether too free with firearms,
anyway. Better feed that lad there with you a few more meals a day;
looks as if he could use them."
Bryant laughed.
"Dave's a little lean, but he's all there. Looks don't count, do they,
partner?"
"I do the best I can," Dave responded, solemnly.
"Not at meal-time, I reckon," the sheriff said. "Feed up and get fat.
A kid like you has no business having so many joints and bones
sticking out."
"I been through a hard winter last winter, and this spring, too, till
Mr. Bryant picked me up."
"How's that?" the horseman inquired.
"My mother died at Kennard. I didn't get on very well after that; not
much there for a boy to work at. And I hadn't any folks."
"Hump. What's your last name?"
"Morris."
"Any relation to Jack Morris?"
"He was my father."
The sheriff nodded. "Knew him well; he died four years ago. And your
mother died last winter? Little woman, I recall."
"Little, but a lot better than plenty of bigger ones I know of," Dave
asserted, stoutly. "She died of pneumonia."
"Boy, I've held you on my knee when you were about as high as my hand.
But I guess you don't remember that, and I'm mighty sorry to learn
your mother's gone. Dave--is that your name? Well, now, Dave, fight
your grub harder from now on."
The speaker gathered his reins, nodded, and rode away along the barb
wire fence.
CHAPTER VI
"When gentlemen of a dark and sinister cast of mind deliberately set
out to frustrate one's legitimate efforts under a misapprehension as
to the course to be pursued, the proper diplomacy in such a case is to
foster the delusion circulating in their craniums as long as possible
and thus divert their attention from the real purpose. Don't you agree
with me, David?" Lee Bryant gravely inquired of his young companion,
as they were about to set forth next morning.
"Yes, sir," Dave affirmed, to whom the statement was so much Greek.
"Then since the vote is unanimous, we'll proceed to run a line along
the mountain side where it will collide with these new homesteads."
The engineer shouldered tripod and rod, whistled Mike to heel, and
with Dave started forward. Half way to Bartolo they perceived three
men busy on the hillside, so Bryant swung up to a point a quarter of a
mile off and began surveying. When he approached the workmen, Mexicans
naturally, he saw that they were engaged in setting fence posts, of
which a row was already in line part way up the hill.
The men dropped their tools and confronted him as he drew near.
"This is my land; you keep away," one exclaimed, with waving arms,
while the other backed him up in a show of force.
"How can I build a canal here if you won't let me go through?" Bryant
demanded.
"No go through, no canal on my claim!"
"Well, just let me run a line, anyhow."
"No. Keep off, keep off," was the obstinate answer.
The engineer continued to argue, now as if in anger and now with a
conciliatory mien, all the while protesting that the homesteader must
not prevent the construction of the canal. But he received only shakes
of the head, short replies, and malicious looks. So at length, with
every pretense of disappointment and dejection, he went down the
hillside.
A mile farther along, where he found two more men occupied at similar
labour, he likewise dissembled his purpose, with the same opposition,
controversy, and retreat. He thereupon led Dave back to the ranch
house, where he prepared and ate dinner with satisfaction. Very likely
Menocal would receive reports that evening faithfully depicting his
chagrin and despair, or whatever were the Mexican equivalents.
Yet while he deluded the banker, he must secretly carry on his actual
surveying on the mesa. Since the men setting fence posts had a fairly
wide view of the plain, he determined to work in the open only for two
or three hours at daybreak before the Mexicans were about. For
Menocal, or any one else, must have no suspicion of his real ditch
line until an application for construction of the project had been
filed in the state engineer's office.
Signs that the banker had taken measures to keep him under
surveillance were not wanting.
"Dave," he said, "have you noticed a sheepherder with a bunch of sheep
hanging around here, when he should be up in the mountains where the
range is good?"
"Yes, I've seen him. And he hasn't a full band, either."
"Looks as if he's grazing down here on the mesa so as to watch us,"
Bryant mused. "When we went north, he and his sheep drifted in that
direction; when we were over on the mountain side, they followed
there. What shall we do about it?"
"I don't see that we can do anything except to watch him, too, and
fool him." The lad took thought for a moment, and then proceeded,
"Somebody was around here yesterday while we were away, for I saw a
brown paper cigarette stub on the ground in front of the door this
morning. You use white papers; it's mostly Mexicans who have those
straw papers."
"Then we had better put an extra nail or two in the windows as a
precaution," Lee stated, "before we go down to Sarita Creek. And I'll
leave Mike here also. If anybody comes fooling around, he'll take a
piece out of the fellow's leg."
In addition to nailing the windows and leaving Mike at the door, much
to his dissatisfaction, Bryant secreted his papers, note-books, and
maps, the theft of which would be an extremely serious loss. Menocal
probably would not instigate open lawlessness, but his hirelings might
break into the house on their own initiative. And this was not
unlikely since a bitter feeling was systematically being aroused
against Bryant and his project among the preponderate Mexican
inhabitants.
But for the time being he dismissed this matter from his thoughts,
when with tripod and rod and a bundle of stakes on Dick's saddle he
and Dave set out for Sarita Creek, leading the horse. Bryant had
postponed, under pressure of work, the business of fixing the feminine
homesteaders' garden ditch, until his conscience began to prick him on
the subject. He had neither seen nor had news of them since the chance
meeting at the ford; but now, as he could survey his canal line on the
mesa only during the early hours, he planned to make frequent visits
to the girls.
That they already had a caller this afternoon he discovered on
arriving at the two little cabins built of boards, peeping forth from
among the trees in the mouth of the cañon. The place was indeed
charming, with its grass and shade, with its brook flowing close by
the dwellings, with walls of rock rising behind. Just now an
automobile rested before the trees; and the engineer saw a man sitting
on the grass with Ruth Gardner and Imogene Martin, the three chatting
and laughing gaily. When Bryant got a good look at the other visitor
he gave vent to an ejaculation in which was blended surprise and
contempt. "That magpie! Of all damn impudence!" For the cavalier so
debonairly entertaining the young ladies was none other than the
olive-skinned Charlie Menocal.
A sense of pique was Bryant's succeeding feeling. He would have
disdainfully denied that he was moved by a pang of jealousy. But he
had anticipated finding the girls alone and having a pleasant chat
with them, enjoying their companionship, relaxing from the strain of
arduous work, harkening to their badinage. Indeed, if the interloper
had been someone else, some other man, at least, he would have
experienced a turn of disappointment--but that the individual should
be this tricky, coddled, egotistical Charlie Menocal! Well, he should
align the girls' irrigating ditch and then go about his business.
"I've been delayed in coming to correct your water flow," he remarked,
when the fair homesteaders had given him greeting, "but I'm on hand at
last."
Ruth Gardner, looking prettier and fuller of spirits than ever,
assured him the ditch was behaving no better than before. Her next
words, however, left him with an impression that he and not Charlie
Menocal was the intruder, which hardened his annoyance into a desire
to have done with the matter.
"I wish you had come some other day, for we're just about to depart,"
she exclaimed. "Mr. Menocal is very kindly taking Imo and me in his
car to see the old ruins of a pueblo somewhere over west. We'll be
gone probably all the rest of the afternoon, and there'll be no one to
show you the ditch and what's wrong with it."
"Oh, I'll find out what's wrong and straighten out the trouble," the
engineer replied. "You've a spade or shovel, I suppose? Go right ahead
with your exploring expedition and don't worry about me; the ditch
will be working properly when you return."
"Well, if you don't really need us----"
"Not in the least," was his assurance.
She still hesitated, while her look travelled from Bryant to Menocal
and back again. To the engineer that inclusive regard indicated that
her mind was less concerned with the garden ditch than with a
comparison of her two visitors; and with a sudden feeling of warmth
about his neck Bryant admitted to himself that he presented no
attractions. He wore laced boots, soiled khaki trousers and flannel
shirt, with his hat pulled over one eye against the sun; Menocal was
dressed in light gray clothes, thin and cool, low white shoes, a pale
pink silk shirt (trust a Mexican for colour somewhere!) a vivid
rose-hued scarf, and a white cap. To further emphasize the contrast,
Bryant led a loaded horse and a gangling boy, while Charlie Menocal
leaned at ease against his twin-six. Quite a difference, for a fact.
And it was plain that Ruth Gardner noted it with discrimination.
Imogene Martin now spoke.
"I don't think I'll go, Ruth. I've not been feeling well the last day
or two, as you know, and I'm afraid to risk the sun."
"Oh, come on, Imo. The ride will do you good," her friend replied,
with a trace of impatience.
"No, I told Mr. Menocal when he proposed the expedition that I doubted
if I should go."
"Too bad not to come, Miss Martin," that worthy remarked, without
enthusiasm. Clearly his interest in what company he should have did
not point toward her.
"I'm going, at any rate," Ruth Gardner said. And then, "Oh, dear! I
overlooked altogether introducing you you two gentlemen."
Bryant was human; the opportunity was one he could not let pass. So
smiling broadly he said:
"We've met before, haven't we, Menocal? At Perro Creek ford." And
receiving no response but a scowl, he spoke at large, "Well, I must
get busy if I'm to save those beans."
He led Dick, with Dave at his side, toward the garden on open ground
below the trees, where the bean vines were already turning yellow for
lack of water. He chuckled as he went, for the disappearance of
Charlie Menocal's patronizing air and the sudden thundercloud hanging
on his visage attested that the charge had gone home.
Ten minutes later the automobile passed the garden, but Bryant, who
had set up his tripod and stationed Dave with his rod some distance
off, did not see the hand Ruth Gardner waved. His eye was where an
engineer's eye should be, at his transit.
"She waved at you," Dave called.
"Who?"
"That girl with the Mexican."
"Well, what of it?"
When Bryant used that tone, Dave recognized the wisdom of silence. He
pretended that he had not heard. Even his employer, whom he
worshipped, had strange, mysterious moods.
CHAPTER VII
The defect in the ditch proved to be one of minor character, which
Bryant corrected after a few observations and half an hour's work with
a shovel. While he was thus engaged, Imogene Martin, wearing a
wide-brimmed straw hat, strolled out to watch his operations. She was
in a friendly and talkative mood, and asked questions concerning
ditches and irrigation and surveying, and about Dave, and speculated
on the ruins of the pueblo whither Ruth and Charlie Menocal had gone,
and said she was glad Bryant had bought the ranch just north of their
claims and would be their neighbour. Only, she added, she was sorry to
learn that he was having trouble with the people about; Mr. Menocal
had stated such to be a fact, though what he had further hinted of
Bryant's endeavour to gain property to which he had no title and of
the engineer's being a trouble-maker, she did not for one instant
believe.
"I'll be a trouble-maker for Charlie and his dad if they continue
their present policy," Lee vouchsafed, tossing aside a shovelful of
earth.
Imogene Martin carefully flattened a hill of bean plants for a seat,
sat down, and locked her hands over her knees.
"I think you're to be trusted, so I'll tell you a secret," she
remarked, smiling. "Charlie Menocal doesn't make a 'hit' with me,
either. When you referred to the ford, I could scarcely keep my face
straight; and my feeling ill this afternoon, though partly true, was
also partly manufactured, because I didn't want to go to those old
ruins with him. I don't care for men like him especially. I share the
feeling of my uncle in Kennard--"
"You have an uncle there? I thought you were from the East."
"I am; from Ohio. But I've an uncle and aunt living in Kennard, which
is the reason Ruth and I came to this section for homesteads. Ruth was
crazy to take up a claim, having read how easily one is acquired,
while my health was not very good and the doctor at home thought it
would be improved by being in the open in a high altitude. Uncle said
I'd better stay with him and aunt, but I knew how terribly
disappointed Ruth would be if I did, because she couldn't homestead
alone. So uncle declared that if homesteaders we had to be, then we
must locate near him where he could have me under his eye, so to
speak. I myself am not taking this claim business very seriously. And
now uncle, who once had some controversy with the elder Menocal,
wouldn't be very well pleased if he knew the son was making calls on
us."
"So others besides myself have trouble with the Menocals," Bryant
stated.
"Apparently. I don't know what this particular difficulty was about,
but uncle is president of a bank in Kennard and so it may have been
some financial matter. Or it may have been over politics; both of them
mix in that. Anyway, he doesn't think highly of the elder Menocal,
and has no use at all for the younger; so I know he would be vexed at
Ruth and me for receiving this Charlie."
"You didn't know him that day he and I clashed at the ford," Lee
suggested.
"Oh, no. Our meeting came about one afternoon about a week afterward.
He overtook us on the road a mile or so away from here and politely
offered to bring us home in his car; we were walking and couldn't very
well refuse his courtesy, and then he asked to call and Ruth at once
gave him permission, and that's the way it came about. But I thought
it wise to draw the line at going off miles and miles with him to see
ruins. Of course, Ruth hasn't any uncle to consider, but uncle or no
uncle I should have drawn the line just the same."
"A colour line, eh?" Lee asked, with a lift of his brows.
"Yes, that's it, though I hesitated to put it in just those words,"
she agreed, with a nod, while both her lips and her blue eyes smiled
at him in amusement. "Really, Mexicans are of different blood and
race, you know, and I feel the--gulf. That probably sounds foolish and
ridiculous, still I can't help the feeling. When I look at a man like
Charlie Menocal, I see the Mexican strain uppermost even if his mother
was white; and I think what strange, savage, unguessed traits may lurk
in his blood from a long time back; and I shiver. One dare not say
they have ceased. There may be forces at work in his soul that are
inherited from the very tribesmen who dwelt in that pueblo ages ago,
whose ruins he and Ruth have gone to see. Who knows? And I'm never
able to rid myself of the feeling that such forces exist in him and
his kind."
The engineer thrust his shovel into the earth and seated himself
beside the girl.
"Nor I," said he. "And I suppose that feeling will remain between
persons of different races as long as the races themselves last. Those
who ignore or deny it are simply blind. Why, look, there's antipathy
between even white men of different nationalities! So what else is to
be expected when the question is one of race and colour? Nor will one
or two generations change what is infused in blood and sinew."
"Now, that's what uncle says," Imogene Martin declared, "and asserts
that's the reason why Mexicans born and raised here are in sympathy
with those across the border in any trouble Mexico has with our
country." Her face all at once became amused. "He says craniums were
shaped long before governments."
Bryant laughed on hearing that concise summing up of the case. And
then they continued to talk of this and other subjects, while Dave
Morris drew near and silently drank in the conversation, most of which
passed above his head. As for the engineer, he found in his companion
a peculiar charm that he never would have suspected from their first
meeting at the ford; a pleasure begotten of a quick intelligence and a
keen, trained mind.
"I've delayed you in your work," she exclaimed, at length.
"Except to throw out a few shovelfuls of dirt, and that will take but
a moment. I was done. I didn't sit down until it was practically put
in shape. I hope we shall have another talk soon; this one has been a
great treat for me. Let me help you up."
When he had cleaned the last clods from the ditch, he set off with
tripod and shovel on shoulder to walk with her to the cabins, while
Dave followed with Dick. At the houses Bryant cast an appraising look
at the scanty heap of chopped wood and wound up his visit by seizing
the axe and attacking the store of dry poles hauled from the cañon by
the man who had built the cabins.
"There, that will keep you going for awhile," he stated, when he had
produced a large pile of sticks. "I don't believe you're strong enough
to handle an axe, Miss Martin; and it would grieve me deeply to learn
you had removed a toe in the attempt. Really, this homesteading game
isn't for women and girls."
"Oh, we've made out fairly well."
"Your spirit is admirable, but I can't say as much for your judgment
in the matter," he returned, good-naturedly. "Still, we all go hunting
trouble in our own individual fashion; if not in one way, why, then in
another."
It was after five o'clock when Lee Bryant and Dave, once more leading
the loaded horse, took their departure and followed Sarita Creek down
to the mesa trail. When they had struck into the latter and travelled
it for half a mile, they saw a long distance ahead someone walking
toward them, also leading a horse. In a land where men saddle a mount
to ride a few hundred yards, the singular coincidence excited their
curiosity. They wondered why the fellow walked, as doubtless he was
wondering the same thing of them. But as they drew nearer they
perceived the pedestrian to be not a man but a woman; and when they
met Bryant recognized in her the girl who had sat by Charlie Menocal
in his automobile at the ford. Her gray corded riding habit was
dusty; she appeared both hot and tired; and her countenance showed a
deep dejection. The horse she led was limping.
Bryant raised his hat and addressed her.
"Your horse has gone lame, I see. Can I be of any service to you?"
"I'm afraid not; he acts as if he had strained a tendon," she replied.
"So I'm leading him home. Our ranch is on Diamond Creek."
"But you had a fall! There's blood on your glove."
"No, it's not from that," she said, with a shake of her head.
Bryant again remarked the exquisite molding of her face as he had
noted it at their first meeting, and her wide brow and clear brown
eyes and the fineness of her skin, and her warm, sensitive lips, at
this instant moving in the barest tremble imaginable. She was gazing
at him with a curious, troubled look.
"Bring Dick here," Lee bade Dave.
He swiftly untied the ropes and removed tripod, rod, and saddle. Then
he unfastened the hitch of the saddle of the horse the girl led.
"Why, what are you doing?" she exclaimed.
"Giving you a fresh horse. You can ride mine home and send him back to
me to-morrow; I live just ahead on Perro Creek at the Stevenson
place."
"I wondered if you weren't the new owner, for I had learned that the
ranch had been sold by Mr. Stevenson. Father bought his sheep. You are
Mr. Bryant, aren't you? This is most kind to lend me your horse."
"You'll find Dick gentle; and you can lead your own mount. Walking
appears to have exhausted you."
Again she shook her head, with an odd expression growing upon her
face--anxiety, distress, just what Lee could not exactly decide. But
as she made no explanation, he gave her a hand and swung her upon
Dick, after which he handed her the reins and advanced the hope that
she should arrive home without further misadventure.
She made no move to depart, however, but sat regarding the engineer.
"I was at your house," she stated, finally.
"To see me?"
"To find you, or someone, who could help me. When my horse went lame
near the ford, I found that he had picked up a stone which I couldn't
remove. So I led him to your house, seeking assistance. When I reached
there----"
She stopped in her recital, compressing her lips and gazing off across
the sagebrush.
"Well?" the engineer encouraged.
"When I reached there, I heard a dog whining."
Bryant stiffened.
"I left my dog Mike behind," said he.
"The sound was really more like a moaning," she went on. "At first I
could see nothing, but when I looked everywhere I found that it came
from one of the three cottonwood trees. Somebody had hurt him, and the
poor creature was suffering terribly. I--I can hardly tell what had
been done to him!" And she shuddered.
"Mike! They've killed my dog Mike!"
"They nailed him to a cottonwood tree. A nail through each leg. A
nail through his throat. Nails through his body. They had crucified
him. And, oh, his pitiful eyes!"
Lee Bryant stood perfectly still and quiet. Dave was frozen and
horrified. Both gazed fixedly across the mesa to where the cottonwoods
could be seen.
"Is Mike alive yet?" Bryant asked presently, in an unsteady voice.
"No; not now. I found a piece of iron and hammered the nails free.
Then I lifted him down and carried him to the creek and washed his
wounds. But he died. I see his eyes yet, looking up at me." For a
little she was overcome. Then she resumed, "When he was dead, I
carried him up to your door, for I knew you must have loved him."
Bryant glanced up at her.
"Mike would know you were a friend," he said.
She nodded and reined Dick about. Leading the other horse, she rode
away through the sunshine that burnished the mesa.
CHAPTER VIII
July passed. Followed August, with days likewise hot and unvarying
except for a scarcely appreciable retardation of dawn. Perro Creek now
showed no water at all in its shallow bed; the garden planted by the
Stevensons was long dried up; the sagebrush was dustier than ever; and
Bryant and Dave were hauling in a barrel on a sledge water for their
use from a pool in the cañon.
From daybreak until about eight o'clock in the morning the engineer
and his assistant worked on the canal line. Bryant had run a
fictitious survey along the mountain side, staking it out
conspicuously for any one to see, to the first of the fenced claims of
the Mexican homesteaders, where it ended as if blocked; but his real
line on the mesa remained unstaked.
To the low ridge, or spur of ground, projecting from the mountain's
base at a point half a mile south of his right of way through the
fields, where the canal began its sweep out upon the plain, he gave
considerable time. The fall of this at first was sharp, and concrete
drops would have to be constructed at intervals for a distance of a
mile or so in order to lower the water. When this section was left
behind, he advanced rapidly along the line, for the surface of the
gentle crescent swell was smooth, its grade fairly regular, and its
contour fixed by nature. Essential points he marked by stones, with
merely their surfaces exposed, so that if noticed they would be
considered scattered pieces of rock from the hills. At the proper time
they would constitute guides for later staking.
Evenings Bryant spent in developing his notes and in making tracings
of the canal sections covered. During the day hours, when he knew
watchful eyes were on him, he made a topographical survey of his
ranch; work that he could carry on openly. The five thousand acres
comprising the tract had a general direction of east and west, being
about four miles long and two miles wide, which for the most part lay
equally on each side of Perro Creek. By using the water of this stream
during the flood season, a period of some weeks in spring and early
summer, Bryant would be able very considerably to augment the supply
from the Pinas. It was necessary to join the two sources in a unified
system of laterals that would efficiently serve the tract; and
therefore the whole enterprise required study, innumerable
measurements, calculations of dirt moving, of water distribution, of
dam, weir, and gate construction, of soil analysis--a coördination of
the thousand and one matters concerned in an irrigation project that
are preliminary to breaking ground. So early and late he toiled, and
with him Dave Morris.
The boy indeed did enough for a man. And Bryant would sometimes arise
from his drawing board where he worked after supper until midnight, to
go and affectionately gaze at Dave sleeping the sleep of exhaustion.
One afternoon, when the pair were at work near the southern boundary
of the ranch, Ruth Gardner came through the sagebrush to the spot, a
mile from Sarita Creek.
"I could see you, just black specks, from our cabins; and since you
don't visit us, I made up my mind to visit you," she announced. "I've
noticed you down here for two days past. Days and days have gone by
without you coming to pay another call."
"Well, we've been sticking pretty steadily at our job," Bryant
replied. "Won't you use this bag of stakes for a seat? It will keep
you off the ground."
Ruth accepted the proffered resting place and loosened the thongs of
her hat, inspected her face in a tiny mirror produced from somewhere,
rubbed her nose with a handkerchief, and then gave her attention to
her companions.
"Our garden has grown splendidly since you fixed the ditch," she said.
"Thanks to you. How is yours?"
"It has expired."
"Then you shall have things out of ours--if you'll come get them. See,
I'm using that to decoy you. There are beans, peas, lettuce, radishes,
and new potatoes, not very large yet, of course. I know just what
you're doing: working hard, eating only canned stuff, skimping your
food, and ruining your digestion."
Bryant laughed. Her tone had expressed indignation, while her face was
directly accusatory.
"We seem to have fair health, don't we, Dave?" he remarked.
"You look positively thin," said she. "And as for this poor starved
shadow that you call Dave! Well, I won't say my thoughts. For a penny
I'd invite myself to dinner at your house just to see what you do
have."
At this possibility both the engineer and his young assistant
displayed signs of consternation. Under pressure of work housekeeping
had been an unimportant trifle frequently postponed; last meal's
dishes were washed while the next meal was preparing; clothes were
left where they were carelessly flung; and surveying tools, maps, and
papers littered the rooms. No, it was not a dwelling in which to
entertain a feminine guest.
"Maybe I had better go there and clear up things some," Dave stated,
uneasily. And without awaiting a reply from Bryant, he set off through
the sagebrush for the house.
Ruth began to laugh, resting her cheeks in her hands.
"That poor solemn boy, he took me seriously!" she exclaimed. "I
shouldn't come alone, of course; it wouldn't be proper--and Imo would
be horrified. Well, you may as well sit down and talk to me, Mr.
Bryant, for you can't work alone, and I've come to stay awhile.
Imogene told me what a nice talk she had with you the afternoon I went
to the ruins, and I hoped you'd come soon again, but you never did."
"Perhaps I haven't been exactly neighbourly."
He lowered himself to the ground and sat cross-legged, considering
her.
"I thought that possibly I had offended you in going off so abruptly
with Charlie Menocal," she said, with eyes fastened on his. "You and
he aren't very good friends. I know----"
"We're not friends at all; we're enemies."
"That need not keep you away from us. He has been very civil and kind,
but neither Imogene nor I have any particular fancy for the man.
Besides, I think his chief interest in life centres around a girl
living on Diamond Creek, named Louise Graham; he hinted that they were
as good as engaged. Very likely we shall see little more of him. So if
your dislike at meeting him is the reason for your staying away, you
haven't a good reason at all. Don't you think Imo and I ever tire of
listening to each other? Any two girls would, living alone by
themselves. After your promise at the ford we were delighted--and how
many calls have we had from you? Just one. With me away, too!"
"To-morrow will be Sunday; I'll stop work at noon and come," he
declared.
She pointed a forefinger at him and wiggled her thumb, in imitation of
a pistol.
"Hold up your right hand and swear it," she commanded, "or I'll
shoot." She continued to menace Bryant while he obeyed. "There, now
you're safe. And bring that hungry boy and we'll feed you both; this
is a dinner invitation, understand. Now, tell me about everything."
"Everything?"
"All you're doing with that three-legged telescope and these stakes."
She smoothed her dress and manifested an expectant interest. The
impression Bryant had gained at the first accidental meeting at Perro
Creek, of her good looks, of her vitality and irrepressible spirits,
was heightened. As he recollected his feeling of pique at her visit
with Charlie Menocal to the ruined pueblo, he realized that he had
indulged in a bit of senseless, unwarranted umbrage; and now had, in
consequence, a quick desire to make amends. It was as if he must
reëstablish himself in her good opinion and his own.
Their talk ran on from topic to topic. The gaiety of her comments
pleased him; the youthfulness of her was irresistible; and he found
himself observing the changing curves of her throat and cheek as she
turned her head a little aside or raised her chin; found himself
watching for certain unconscious attitudes; awaiting the lift of her
eyes to his, harkening for particular tones of her voice. And Bryant,
who, though he knew it not, was also athirst for companionship, more
and more yielded to her subtle feminine attraction. "She's even
prettier than I supposed," he thought. Her lips, her nose, her eyes of
deep gray with their wonderfully long lashes--each had a particular
charm of its own. He admired the grace of her figure. He felt an odd
surprise at her apparent soft and pliant strength, as at a discovery.
His mind thrilled with delight at her laughter.
"Look where the sun is!" she exclaimed, all at once. "Straight over
our heads--noon. Your David will be wondering where you are, while
Imogene will imagine I'm lost. Let me pick a flower to stick in the
ribbon of your hat and then I'll go."
"Your fingers will suffer; I'll get some," Lee said, quickly. From a
spreading bed of prickly-pear he plucked a dozen of the cactus
blossoms, ranging in colour from a delicate lemon to a deep orange. He
turned to her.
"First I'll decorate you," he said. "Please assume an angelic
expression and gaze straight at the camera."
She tilted her chin upward and thrust her arms downward with all five
fingers of each hand stretched apart. But immediately she began to
laugh. Lee gave her a reproving tap on the uplifted chin and then
fastened the flowers in her hat-band. A thrill like fire ran through
his body at the proximity of that soft, round chin, those red lips,
her eyes gleaming with merriment.
"Now, beauty!" he said, stepping back.
The yellow blossoms made a garland about her hat.
"Do you like them thus?" she asked, delighted.
"Immensely."
"Then they shall stay there. And Imo will die of envy when I tell her
they're yours."
"Nobody ever died of that."
"Perhaps not. But she will suffer extremely. You didn't even put bean
plants in her hat."
Lee was highly amused at this raillery. He began to walk forward by
her side as she moved away from the spot, now addressing her, now
listening to her words, in a desire to stretch the last minute to the
uttermost. Her head came just even with his shoulder, so that she had
to raise her face to gaze at him when he spoke, and in the act there
was something simple, winning, blithe, as likewise in the swing of her
lissom figure beside his own there was an inimitable jauntiness and
cheer. He divined her eager, ardent spirit; and the closeness of her,
this comradeship, set his blood humming.
Abruptly he halted, laying a finger on her arm.
"I mustn't go the whole way, you know," he said, "though I should like
to. For, by heavens, you've opened my eyes! Didn't realize how
satiated with myself I'd become. But I'll make up for that now, Miss
Ruth, and it won't be very long before you and your friend will be
planning how to rid yourselves of me."
"Just try us and see," she exclaimed.
"Well, I shall. Till to-morrow, then."
"Till to-morrow, yes." She moved forward some paces and wheeled about,
pointing her forefinger at his head and working her thumb.
"Beware--and don't forget!" Then after another advance and face about
she concluded by blowing him a kiss off the palm of her hand, with
which performance she did actually start for home, weaving her way
through the sagebrush and going farther and farther off.
"What a pretty little witch she is!" thought Lee; and he, too, made
his way from the spot.
Dave's hot, harassed face greeted him at the door.
"Where is she? Didn't she come?" he cried, peering about everywhere.
"Well, thank goodness for that! But if that isn't the way with a
girl--and after I'd swept up and made the beds and scraped all the
skillets, too!"
CHAPTER IX
That Sunday afternoon at Sarita Creek! The dinner, so savoury, so
delectable; the two girls, arrayed in cool white lawn, rosy-cheeked,
beaming; the gay talk and banter and laughter; the blissful hours
together on the grass beneath the trees, with the wide mesa diffusing
an immense languor, with the mountains bestowing a vast peace, with
the brook at their feet murmuring an accompaniment to their
words--hours to treasure, hours of pure gold: Little wonder that Dave,
lying full length and gazing upward through the boughs at the blue
vault, allowed his eyelids to sink and at last to close. Little wonder
the girls' faces grew dreamy and their voices gentle. And none, none
at all, that Lee succumbed to the spell.
He was still under the enchantment when toward sunset Ruth suggested
they go up the cañon. But Imogene, arousing herself, declared that she
had letters to write; and Dave, still fast asleep, was already on
roamings of his own. Ruth and Lee therefore went alone up the path
through the trees and underbrush, until they emerged in the cool,
dusky gorge formed by the contracting of the rocky walls. The brook
rippled by over stones and moss. A few insects hovered over the stream
with their tiny bodies shining like bronze. From somewhere came a
sweet, honeyed smell of flowers.
"Imo writes letters regularly," Ruth explained concerning her friend,
"to an instructor in a university in the East. I don't think they're
exactly affianced, but expect to be. Waiting, apparently. Waiting
until he's a professor--and until her health is better, too, I
imagine. An agreement to let things rest as they are for the present,
one might say. Imogene talks very little about it, and of course I ask
no questions."
She sat down on a fallen tree, patting its trunk to signify a place
for him at her side. Pointing at crevises in the cañon wall, she began
to tell him the names she and Imogene had given them--Bandit's Stair,
Devil's Crack, Bear's Hole, and to enumerate those assigned the
jutting points and knobs along the rim that by a stretch of the
imagination bore a resemblance to animals or human heads.
As she talked, with her gray eyes at times turning to his to learn if
he was interested, he felt anew the charm of her youthfulness, of her
vivid personality. It dwelt in her small, firm hands pointing now
here, now there, in her slender, rounded form faced toward him, in her
red lips, her soft smooth cheek, her brow, in her glances and her
animated words. He noted again, as a quality altogether delicious, the
air of unconscious friendliness that he had perceived at their very
first encounter. It quite offset the slight touch of obstinacy in her
chin--but, in truth, did the latter require an offset? He had earlier
thought that with such a trait one could not foretell where its
possessor might go, or what do, or what exact, under stress of
feeling. He smiled at that now. How ridiculous the notion! Why
shouldn't a girl have a bit of determination in her make-up? Well, she
should. It gave force to her character. It made her more individual,
more attractive. It coloured a nature so essentially feminine as Ruth
Gardner's with elusive and delightful possibilities.
"See, up yonder at the top!" she exclaimed. "That piece of rock like a
man's head and shoulders I named Lee Bryant, after you."
"Do I look as block-headed as that?"
"No. It was not because of any resemblance, but because you kept your
back so long toward us. Now, however, since you've repented and ceased
to neglect us, I shall call it after someone else. Perhaps after the
stage-driver who takes our letters down to Kennard; he sits hunched up
like that. I'll seek a much nicer rock to represent you."
"That's wholly unnecessary, for I intend to keep before your eyes in
person."
"Which will be the nicest of all," said she, smiling.
He continued to gaze at her, to listen to her voice, with a pleasure
he made no effort to conceal. And she, on her part, seemed to
surrender herself to the enjoyment of the moment; her eyes remaining
longer on his, her tones softening to a slow, tender utterance almost
carrying a caress, her face keeping its languorous smile; as if the
honey-sweet fragrance from the unseen flowers had invaded her spirit.
A pause came in their talk. They sat unmoving, without stir of hand or
head, quiescent. Then Lee all at once experienced a feeling of
profound compassion for Ruth as he regarded her, a poignant stab in
his breast like pain. Sitting there without movement, with her hands
idle upon her lap, with her face a little lifted and her eyes
wistfully bent on the great wall opposite, she seemed so young and
small to be dwelling at such a place, so helpless, so solitary, that
her presence appeared a cruel irony of fate. Her homesteading was a
desperate clutch at security; and her situation was utterly different
from that of her friend, Imogene Martin, who viewed the matter as in
the nature of a health-seeking holiday, and who was sustained by the
knowledge that she had wealthy relations at Kennard to whom she could
return. Far different, indeed. At the thought of the homesickness that
at times Ruth must know, of the lonesomeness of mountain and mesa from
which she must suffer, of the deprivations, the hard bareness of the
life, the moments of despair, he had a sensation of the bitter
unfairness of things and a desire to snatch her safe away from the
harsh pass in which she stood. It would be only right, it would be
only just.
When presently she looked about and found his eyes rapt on her face, a
quick blush spread over her throat and cheeks.
"I think--think we should go home now," she said, with a catch of her
breath.
"Yes," said he, rising.
He leaped the log on which they had been sitting and then put up a
hand to help her mount. Holding his fingers she raised herself upon
the tree trunk. But suddenly the bark gave way; she slipped, lost her
balance, and pitched forward. Lee caught her in his arms.
For an instant she rested there in his clasp, her surprised eyes
gazing into his. A quiver passed over her form. Her lips were parted,
but she had ceased to breathe. Likewise in Bryant's breast the breath
had stopped. A fierce passion swept him to hold her always thus, warm
and close and secure. His arms trembled at the thought; at which her
eyelashes began to flutter and her breath to come once more, as
hurried as the beat of her heart. And then, yielding utterly to the
swirl of mad impulse, he kissed her--once, twice, and twice again.
Afterward he set her on her feet.
"I guess that ends our friendship," he said, with a wavering smile.
"Lost my head altogether. Couldn't help it. I looked at you and--and
it just happened. All my will and sense vanished in an instant.
Bewitched!"
The colour was still in her face, and her air was uncertain,
disturbed. But at his words, so palpably sincere and self
condemnatory, she began to smile.
"Perhaps--if we just forget----"
The smouldering fire in his eyes flared suddenly.
"Forget? I'll never forget that minute, those kisses," he exclaimed.
"Hanged if I want to, or will!"
"If, then, we don't repeat them, and are more circumspect, why, I'll
overlook it," she said, a little confusedly. "I know you meant no
discourtesy." He gave a savage shake of his head. "And Imogene and I
both prize your friendship."
"Thank you, Ruth. You take an awful load off my heart."
She glanced up at him, now once more composed. Her eyes gleamed with a
veiled impishness.
"No girl ever died from being kissed. But what a splendid lover you
would make!" Away she darted a few steps, to whirl and point and
waggle a finger at the dumfounded youth. "Are you coming? Because I
don't consider this a wise place to be with a flighty, irresponsible
man, first name Lee. Besides, it's beginning to grow dark in here."
Bryant joined her. The glow was still in his eyes, but in all other
respects he was his usual self, calm, collected. Together they went
down the cool, dim cañon, with its honey scent of flowers drifting
with them; and though they talked lightly of things of no importance,
there was a little smile on the lips of each and sometimes their eyes
met, as if sharing a new, sweet intimacy.
Thereafter, frequent as were Lee's calls at Sarita Creek of evenings,
he seldom had Ruth to himself and on more than one occasion had to
share her company with Charlie Menocal, much to his impatience. When
Imogene sometimes succeeded in detaining the fellow at her side,
Bryant silently gave her unutterable thanks. And Ruth seemed day by
day more receptive to his passion.
"I think of only two things, my canal and you," he declared to her one
night.
"When you put me first and the canal second, why, who knows what I may
think then?" she said, tantalizingly. "But to esteem an irrigation
ditch before me, the idea! What if you had to choose between us?" And
she continued thus to tease him, fanning the fires hotter in his
breast.
By the end of August Bryant had completed the survey of the canal line
down to a point where it touched the northern boundary of the ranch,
tapping the latter's system of distributing ditches. Pinas River,
Perro Creek, and the tract to be watered were thus united. Though
later, doubtless, it would be necessary to make minor corrections, as
always, the surveying was finished. One tracing showed the entire
irrigation scheme from the dam on the Pinas to the tips of the
laterals branching out in a gridiron over the land. There were other
tracings, too, on a larger scale and of successive sections, ready to
be taken to Kennard in order to make blueprints.
"Town for us to-morrow, Dave," Lee exclaimed one day, as he rolled and
tied his maps in a waterproof canvas. "We're due for a rest; our job
is done for the present. We'll leave the instruments and note-books
with the girls at Sarita Creek, who've agreed to keep them until we
return. The Mexicans are still hanging around."
Toward the middle of the afternoon they appeared at the cabins, where
they disengaged Dick from his burden of freight and turned him out to
graze. Imogene was nursing an obstinate headache in her darkened
bedroom, and Dave immediately settled himself under a tree with a
novel of the girls'. So Ruth and Lee were left to themselves.
"I'm going up the creek to gather raspberries, and you came just in
time to carry the basket," said she. "I discovered a large thicket of
them half way up the cañon; the more you pick, the more you'll have
for supper to-night. And if you don't bring Imo and me a box of
chocolates, and a big box, when you come back from wherever you're
going to-morrow, you need never show your lean brown face again at our
doors! I'm dying for some. Oh, Lee, I really am. They help so when
one's lonely."
The pathetic tone in which she uttered the final words sent Bryant off
in a fit of laughter.
"You may count on them," he said, at length.
"Your heart's of stone to laugh like that. Bonbons _do_ help when one
is low-spirited."
Nevertheless, her spirits were high enough on this afternoon. All the
while that they were gathering raspberries she kept up a lively
chatter, and when Lee suggested, now that the basket was full, leaving
it at the spot and making an excursion to the head of the gorge, she
readily assented. The sun was still far from setting; the air between
the rocky walls was pleasant; and the cañon held forth a fresh
enticement. They walked for an hour, and though they failed to gain
the end of the long mountain crevice they ascended to where the
springs that fed the brook had their source, and where the rivulet
trickled over ledges and among boulders, finding themselves in the
heavy timber that forested the upper mountains. There they sat on a
rock, Ruth holding the wild flowers she had plucked on the way, and
talked.
"Does your going now have to do with your project?" she questioned.
"Yes; I've finished the preliminary work."
"But Charlie Menocal said you were making no progress, that you were
blocked."
"What Charlie doesn't know would fill lots of space," Lee said. "In
spite of the Menocals' opposition and tricks, I've established my
survey--but don't breathe it yet! And now I'm ready for the financing
of the scheme. When that's done, I'll begin actual work."
Ruth considered him with shining eyes.
"I'm glad you succeeded; I knew you would succeed," she exclaimed.
"You've worked so hard. And I hope that it makes you famous and
wealthy."
"So do I," he laughed. "I need the money."
She nodded.
"One needs money to be happy in this world."
"Oh, I don't know about that," he responded, thoughtfully. "I've
probably been as happy while hammering out this survey as I'll ever
be, that is, happy in my work. Of course, money means comforts and
luxuries. But I doubt if it really ever brings contentment."
The obstinate touch grew in her chin.
"If I had plenty of money I'd have the contentment, or I'd soon find
it," she declared. "Pretty clothes, and fine furniture, and
automobiles, and servants, and parties, and so on, are things--at
least with women--that go a long way toward satisfaction. I sometimes
don't blame girls who marry rich old men; they can put up with them
for the pleasures their money will procure."
"Ruth, Ruth, don't utter such nonsense! At any rate, you've too much
common sense ever to waste yourself on a doddering money bags."
"I'll never have the chance," said she. "But if I had, I'd think it
over carefully. A young man with money I could be especially nice to,
and I might even set out to catch him. You see, I'm quite frank and
open about it."
"Nonsense," he repeated. "You'd marry no one just for his money."
"That depends whether or not he caught me at a moment when I was
feeling sick of everything and reckless. Look at my hands, all
calloused from work. If I have to work, I shall do it for myself; not
marry to work."
Bryant lifted her hands and regarded them.
"They please me immensely as they are; they're lovely hands," he
asserted.
"Then your vision is poor."
"It's clear enough when I look at you, Ruth. And when you talk as you
have, I become impatient because I know you don't mean it. But
nonetheless, you deserve the best that any man can give, and you ought
to have all the comforts and pretty things any woman has, for you're
too sweet and good for a bare, commonplace life." He pressed gently
the fingers he yet retained. "I told you once that you had bewitched
me. It was true; I am bewitched, have been ever since I touched your
dear lips. And I love you. It hurts my heart to think of you at this
homesteading business--"
"What else was there for me?" she asked. "I've had no business
training, nothing but two years in a college, no knowledge of anything
that a girl needs to hold a position. And I'm not even a good
homesteader." Her tone rang with a trace of bitterness.
"You ought not to have to do it--and you shall not, Ruth, if I have my
way. I want to save you from it, and make life pleasant and happy for
you. The money I have now is little, but I'm going ahead; I'm going
ahead, and nothing shall stop me, I tell you. Soon I shall have ample
means. Within a year or two. Already I've told you I love you, though
this you must have known, for I've made no effort to conceal my love.
To me you're the dearest, sweetest girl in the world; and all I ask is
the chance to strive and toil for you, and make a home for you, and
relieve you of anxiety and care, and have you for a joyous companion
and mate."
Ruth closed her hands on his, while her eyes grew wet.
"You mean it, Lee?"
"Ah, I do, I do! I love you; I hold you dearer than anything in the
world."
The smile she gave was tender, trustful.
"I believe you," she said.
She yielded to his arms. Her head fell back upon his shoulder and her
look lifted to his blissfully. When he kissed her a thrill of passionate
desire answered, as when on that fragrant evening in the cañon he first
had fiercely pressed her lips. This was happiness--happiness. If it
could but last forever!
"And my love is yours, too, Lee," she exclaimed, so earnestly that he
felt his heart quiver. "I want to be happy; I want to be loved; I
don't want to live a life of just dreary commonplaceness, alone,
uncared for, with no outlook, with no prospect of joys. I want the
most there is in happiness--every girl wants that; and this monotonous
existence has been robbing me, stifling me, until sometimes I've been
wild enough to leap off a high rock. But now!"
Bryant's arms went closer about her.
"It shall be different now," he murmured.
"Yes, yes; it must, it shall. There's no sense in people not being
happy when the world was made for that very purpose."
"Whenever you say, we'll be married," Lee stated.
Ruth was silent for a time, considering this. It, indeed, left her a
little startled.
"But it mustn't be too soon," she replied, at last. "We had best go on
as we are while your project is being started, for I wouldn't be so
selfish as to make a command on your time at a critical moment, Lee
dear. And I must plan clothes and things. Knowing that happiness is
ahead of us, oh, homesteading then will be only a lark! I'll never
need follow it up, but just abandon it when we're ready. Kiss me
again, Lee, and then we must start back."
They retraced their steps down the cañon, obtaining the basket of
berries on the way. Once, as they neared the cabins, Ruth paused,
gazing at her lover.
"I had actually come to hate these claims," she said. "I felt chained
to the spot, as if something would keep me in the miserable place for
the rest of my life. Had I known how lonely I should be here, I never
would have come."
"But that's over now, Ruth. A little while longer, that's all."
She gazed at him with an odd, intent, anxious expression upon her
countenance.
"You'll not let your irrigation project keep you here always?" she
asked. "Or live in other places like it? These mountains and this
desolate mesa get on my nerves. If I thought you were going to stay
away from other people, foregoing all the pleasures of cities and the
like, I think I should lose my courage and not be able to love you
enough to stand it. I want you most of all, but shall want other
things, too."
He smiled indulgently.
"A few years perhaps," he replied. "Till I'm solid on my feet--till I
get going well--we're both young--and then----" He dismissed the
matter with a wave of the hand.
But that evening, when Lee and Dave had gone, when Imogene was asleep,
when the soft darkness was thickening over the mesa, Ruth walked forth
to the edge of the sagebrush.
"I wonder," she murmured, leaving her thought unfinished.
The hush of the mountains, the silence of the plain, the vastness, the
emptiness, the seeming purposelessness of it all, irritated and
oppressed her spirit. And she so yearned to be where the world was
alive and throbbing!
"I wonder if I really love him enough, or if I made a little fool of
myself this afternoon?" she muttered to herself. "I wonder!"
CHAPTER X
Charlie Menocal's object in calling upon the young ladies at Sarita
Creek was merely diversion. He was fond of girls, especially lively
ones, and knew a good many here and there within reach of his motor
car, including a number of pretty Mexican maidens of humble parentage.
But his serious attentions centred about Louise Graham of whom in
secret he was very jealous. Whenever he could find an excuse, and
frequently when not, he went to the Graham ranch on Diamond Creek,
five miles south of the girls' claims, where his figure was as
familiar (and of about as much interest) as the magpies in the
pasture. He fully meant to marry Louise, whose beauty and gracious
manner even to the smallest bare-legged Mexican boy on the ranch
captivated him and stirred in his breast a maddening desire for
possession, so that he might cut off the rest of the world from her
sweetness, so that it might alone feed his passion. Yes, he meant to
have Louise.
When he was with her his black eyes would shine and a ruddy tinge
appear in his dusky cheeks that were as soft and smooth as a Mexican
girl's, and he would restlessly finger a point of his little, silky,
black moustache and feel unutterable agitations proceeding in his
heart. Louise Graham did not allow him to declare his adoration, which
he would have done every moment they were together; when he tried,
she walked away. But Charlie counted on his good looks and his
father's wealth to win her in the end. One fear alone lurked in his
heart, that some young American might come along who would win her
interest; and earlier in the summer he had a decided uneasiness lest
Bryant prove to be the man. The scoundrelly engineer, however, had
fallen head over heels in love with Ruth Gardner, so that Charlie's
mind was relieved on that point. To his knowledge, Louise and Bryant
had never met--which was as it should be.
Charlie, having stopped about ten o'clock in the morning at the Graham
ranch for a chat with Louise while on his way to Kennard, was
considerably surprised and exceedingly nettled at beholding the
engineer, with Dave behind him on the horse, presently riding up the
lane between the rows of cottonwoods. Young Menocal had persuaded
Louise to leave her household duties for the moment to sit on the
veranda and talk with him. But now had come this impudent upstart!
Charlie's warning of someone at hand was when Louise ceased to speak
and gazed intently along the lane. His annoyance at the interruption
changed to a quick jealousy as his companion rose, descended the
steps, bade the engineer welcome, and extended her hand in greeting.
Bryant explained that he was dropping Dave here to take the stage for
Kennard when it came along after dinner. He himself was riding on.
"He'll eat dinner with us, of course, and I'll put him aboard the
stage myself," she exclaimed, with a pat on the shoulder of the boy
who had now dismounted. "Won't you stop for a moment, Mr. Bryant?
I'll give you a glass of fresh buttermilk to speed you on your way; a
stirrup cup, we'll call it. The woman has just finished churning."
Lee declared that he would drink a glass with very great pleasure. He
was thirsty, he said, and in addition was fond of buttermilk.
Menocal listened and watched him dismount and ground his teeth. Louise
knew the thief, after all. Where the devil had they become acquainted?
It was but one more instance of the engineer's pushing in where he
wasn't wanted. And she had not invited him, Charlie, to partake of
buttermilk, though, to be sure, she knew he did not like it. He felt
slighted.
When Bryant and Louise ascended the veranda, Dave loitering below, the
engineer said nonchalantly, "Hello, Charlie, how are tricks? Anything
new up your sleeve?"--in a way that set the other's blood boiling; and
when he carelessly added, "What about that story the stage-driver's
telling of you and a señorita going into a ditch with your car at
Rosita the other night?" he was quite ready to murder both Bryant and
the stage-driver.
So upset was Charlie that he was unable to share in the conversation.
He curtly refused a glass when Louise brought a pitcher of buttermilk,
then changed his mind, and ended by choking over the wretched stuff.
The situation was intolerable; his pride was smarting; the others
talked on with unperturbed countenances, ignoring his silence; and his
self-respect required some action in the face of the affront. He
abruptly stood up and announced that he was departing.
In Louise's manner at this news there was no repining that he could
observe. She did not protest. Her words were impersonally pleasant as
ever, but vague; and he perceived that she only half heeded his going;
and that her eyes brightened when once more she turned to her visitor.
This was the final stab. With hatred in his heart and a wicked glitter
in his eyes, Charlie Menocal went down the steps to his automobile,
feeling the need of a victim, preferably the engineer. Bryant had
insulted him at the ford; he was attempting to rob him and his father;
he had insolently threatened the elder Menocal; he stopped at nothing;
and now he was intruding here and deceiving Louise with his arrogant
pretentions. He came on Dave, standing beside the car and examining
the latch of a door.
"Keep your hands off that!" he snapped. At the same time he gave the
boy a cuff that sent him sprawling. "That will teach you!"
In two bounds Lee Bryant was at the spot. He caught the still-extended
hand in an iron grip.
"You miserable coward! Striking a boy!" he said, harshly. "Feeling
that you must vent your spite on someone, you pick on this unoffending
lad. If you ever raise so much as a finger against him again----"
"Let him keep away from my machine! And drop my wrist!" Charlie
Menocal snarled.
"And you leave him alone hereafter, in any case," Lee warned, shoving
the speaker away in disgust. Then he helped Dave to rise.
Charlie straightened his disarranged tie and coat with trembling
fingers. He could scarcely retain his rage; his body shook all over;
his foot slipped twice when he sought to mount into his car. Leaning
forward from his seat, he shook a finger in Bryant's face, exclaiming,
"You'll get what's coming to you! Like your damned dog!" His face was
entirely viperish. His finger came within an inch of the engineer's
nose. His words carried a furious hiss.
Then he whirled his car about and went tearing down the lane with
exhaust wide open and roaring.
When Bryant, leading Dave, rejoined Louise Graham, a flush of
embarrassment dyed his face. She had sprung up at Menocal's blow
knocking the boy over and remained standing, an indignant observer of
the scene. When Menocal had departed, the engineer recalled suddenly
what Ruth had said concerning Charlie and Louise Graham being
practically engaged; and as he now saw her rigid figure and displeased
countenance, he imagined he had lost her friendship. Still, he could
not have acted otherwise.
"I'm very sorry for this occurrence, Miss Graham," he said,
contritely. "Especially as I understand Charlie Menocal is very high
in your esteem."
"Who dares say that!"
"Well, Charlie himself is the authority, I believe," Lee responded,
with a slight smile.
Her eyes flashed at that.
"Well, it's not the case; and if it had been, this exhibition of bad
manners and bad nature on his part would have changed it. Father and I
consider him--well, a nuisance. There, I'm giving you a confidence.
We've tolerated him because Mr. Menocal senior is a gentleman, and a
friend. Now I hope you'll not think me too talkative, but an
explanation was necessary; and as far as Charlie Menocal is concerned,
I'd be pleased if I never saw his face again. To knock your young
friend over so heartlessly! You treated him with altogether too much
leniency, Mr. Bryant."
"I never do my fighting in the presence of ladies," Lee remarked, with
a grin. "In fact, I try to confine my combats to those of wits."
She nodded.
"Of course," said she; and continued, "this is the second time he has
acted disgracefully to you when I've been by. The first occasion was
at Perro Creek ford. I could have sunk into the earth for shame of him
when he knew no better than to fling you money after you had filled
his radiator; it was pure insolence, to begin with, to ask you to do
it when he should have attended to the matter himself. I admired your
conduct and self-control under the circumstances, Mr. Bryant." And
addressing Dave, she asked, "Will you drink another glass of
buttermilk if I pour it?"
Dave could and did, an example Lee followed. The subject of Menocal
was dismissed, and the man and the girl fell into a conversation of
general matters. She assured the engineer, when he inquired, that he
was not detaining her from household affairs; and urged him, on
learning of his prospective absence, to leave Dick at Diamond Creek
and he himself to proceed to Kennard by stage. She owed Dick a return
for the favour of carrying her home that day her own horse went lame;
he could run in the pasture with the other horses, where Bryant would
know he was safe. The plan included Bryant's remaining for dinner,
naturally.
"Have I your permission, Dave?" Lee asked. "Or do you refuse to share
this pleasure with me?"
Dave looked at Louise and blushed furiously.
"I guess you've made your mind up," he said, to Bryant.
"I guess I have," Lee admitted.
Toward noon Mr. Graham joined them and laughingly stated that he was
glad to make the acquaintance of the man who was causing such a furor
among the Mexicans along the Pinas. He asked a number of questions and
listened with interest to the engineer's brief exposition of the plan
to unite the water rights of the Pinas River and of Perro Creek in a
common system, though Bryant disclosed nothing of his survey on the
mesa. Of the opposition Lee had met or might yet encounter the rancher
was aware, for he remarked, "You have a fight on your hands." But that
was his only comment.
After dinner they all continued to talk while the men were smoking
cigars. Graham suggested that if Bryant should need an attorney it
would be well to employ one from Kennard, as those in Bartolo were
nearly all Mexicans. The engineer jotted down the name of one the
rancher recommended, saying that he had his injunction suits to meet
in the September term of court.
"Winship, the sheriff, appears to be one man in Bartolo who's all
right," Lee stated.
"Yes, he's a good man," Graham replied. "Can't be influenced or
bought; and is perfectly square and impartial in the execution of the
duties of his office. He has served twenty years, with exception of
one term when he and Menocal had a disagreement. Menocal controls the
votes in this county, you know; that's general knowledge. But things
became so lax under the Mexican sheriff who displaced him that he was
put back in office. Menocal ordered it; he has much property and
believes in law and order; and there's little or no stealing with
Winship in the sheriff's saddle. I've heard that he first required the
banker to support him unconditionally before resuming the place."
"I can believe that after a look at Winship," Lee said, smiling.
Mr. Graham presently went away to a field where his men were cutting
and stacking alfalfa, after thanking Bryant for rendering assistance
to his daughter on the road and inviting him to call again. Louise
then showed him her flower garden, ablaze with poppies, nasturtiums,
sweet peas, and other blossoms he could not name; and the orchard
where apples and pears and plums weighed the branches. She was
remarkably beautiful, he thought; and was quite sure the roses in the
garden had no petals pinker or softer than her cheeks, and was sure
the water rippling in the little, grassy orchard canals was no clearer
than her brown eyes, or the sky more serene than her brow. She was not
in the least proud or vain or haughty, as he imagined when he first
beheld her at the ford. He had had doubts of that after her kindly
treatment of his dying dog Mike. And now to-day he knew that such an
opinion did her an injustice, was absurd.
Louise, too, was thinking as they strolled about. Which of the two
girls on Sarita Creek did he love? For Charlie Menocal had said that
he was infatuated with one. Charlie Menocal! Her cheeks grew warm.
What he had boasted in regard to herself, and doubtless Mr. Bryant
had softened the truth, filled her with anger. She would treat the
insufferable wretch differently hereafter. And very likely his gossip
of the engineer's feelings for one of the homesteaders was likewise a
falsehood, though there was no reason in the world why Mr. Bryant
shouldn't love one of them if he chose. She had never met them. They
were very nice girls, she imagined. She had intended to call, but
something had always prevented. As for Mr. Bryant, he seemed a very
estimable young man, and good company, and an engineer of ability and
will.
She continued to speculate after he and Dave had departed on the
stage, with a vague sense of missing them. That, she reasoned, was
because Lee Bryant had "personality." And presently her thoughts
followed him. Lee's mind, however, was ranging back to Sarita Creek;
but Dave's was loyally with the lady of Diamond Creek ranch, as was
manifest when he murmured thickly, having fallen asleep during the
warm ride:
"No more chicken, thank you--or jelly--or apple pie."
CHAPTER XI
In Kennard next morning Lee Bryant betook himself to a civil
engineering firm, which he engaged to print a number of sets of
blue-prints from his tracings, one set to be ready for delivery early
that afternoon. Then while his suit of gray clothes, from out of his
suit-case, was being pressed, he and Dave visited a florist, purchased
a wreath of lilies-of-the-valley that Dave chose, and went to the
cemetery to place it on the grave of the lad's mother. After that they
proceeded to a clothier's, where the boy was fitted out with a new
suit, a hat, shirts, underwear, and a tie. All of this caused Dave to
swallow hard--but he swallowed hardest of all when Lee led him to a
horse dealer's and helped him pick out a pony for trial, a gift from
Bryant. He hadn't expected all this. He was too overcome to speak. "By
golly, Lee, I--I----" he stammered; and stopped, and furtively wiped
the moisture from his eyes. Finally they visited a savings-bank, where
the engineer deposited a check to Dave's credit, his wages for a month
and a half, forty-five dollars, to start an account, and the boy
received a small yellow book whose one entry he thereafter studied at
frequent intervals, for it was earning according to Bryant's statement
four per cent a year, though Dave had not the remotest idea of how it
did the earning. Then with all this business transacted they returned
to the hotel, bathed, dressed in their fresh clothes, and went into
luncheon.
"Luncheon, what do they call dinner that for?" Dave whispered to Lee
across the table.
Along in the afternoon Bryant, having obtained a set of blue-prints
and sent his young companion to a "movie" show, called upon the man
that he all the while had had in view, Imogene Martin's uncle. A
large, strong-bodied man, with a deeply lined, determined face, the
latter swept his visitor with a quick, appraising look, invited him to
take a seat, and to state his business.
"In five minutes you can tell," said Lee, "whether or not you wish to
listen longer to my proposition."
"Yes."
"I now own the Perro Creek ranch, of five thousand acres. It was
originally owned by Mr. Menocal, of Bartolo, but recently by a man
named Stevenson, from whom I bought it."
"I know the place, Mr. Bryant. Proceed."
"It's worth possibly three dollars an acre as it stands, or a total of
fifteen thousand dollars," Lee continued. "But it has an unused water
right of one hundred and twenty-five second feet from the Pinas River,
sufficient to water the whole tract. How much will the ranch be worth
when water is actually delivered?"
"A good deal more than fifteen thousand dollars."
"Rather," said the engineer, smiling. "The appropriation was secured
from the state by Mr. Menocal thirty years ago; it's never been
cancelled, and is good to-day. He, however, has been using the water
on ranches he owns down the river. A canal from the Pinas along the
mountain sides to Perro Creek would be expensive to construct,
possibly prohibitive; it appears the natural line; and I suppose this
deterred him. I've located a new and practical course for a ditch on
the mesa, have surveyed and mapped it in detail, calculated the cost,
and compiled a statement of estimates, and can build the project for
sixty thousand dollars. The tract of five thousand acres can then be
sold for fifty dollars an acre, or two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars. Shall I stop, or do you wish to hear more?"
Now it was the banker's turn to smile. This visitor knew how to make a
point.
"Go ahead," he said.
"All right. A Mexican dam across the Pinas, a mile and a half of
hillside canal, some concrete drops, twelve miles of curving mesa
ditch, and the ranch is reached. In addition, the flood water of Perro
Creek can be utilized; I've worked this out, as well as the entire
system of laterals for the land. As stated, the cost of the whole
project will be about sixty thousand dollars, present price of
material and labour. I'm on my way now to the capital to file
application for a change in the present canal line, which, since it
involves only government land, will naturally be allowed. Of course
Mr. Menocal isn't taking kindly to my proposed use of this water." And
Lee paused.
"What has he done? Anything yet?"
"Not much so far, except a little futile skirmishing," the engineer
remarked, with twinkling eyes. "When I paid off his mortgage on the
land, I advised him that I should use the water: and he threatened to
have the water right cancelled. But he backed up on that line when I
promised to lodge him in jail for making false affidavits if he tried
those tactics. Thought I'd head him off in that direction at the
start. I got the jump on him there. Well, now, he's using indirect
means to keep control of the water, sending half a dozen Mexicans to
file claims at the base of the mountains where he imagines the canal
will have to go. He thinks these have blocked me; and I didn't
undeceive him. He knows nothing about my actual line of survey on the
mesa. Of course, the loss of this water that he fancied he had hits
him where it hurts, but from what I can gather Mr. Menocal isn't a man
to resort to illegal methods. He's wily, that's about all. So that's
the situation."
The banker regarded Bryant for a time with a noncommittal face.
"State your proposition now," said he.
"This is it," Bryant went on. "I propose to bond the ranch and water
right for enough to build the project, then construct it, then market
the land in farms at fifty dollars an acre. The canal system can be
completed easily next year, and sales and colonization proceed
immediately when done. Naturally, as a sale is made, the mortgage and
notes will be put up behind the bonds to secure the latter. The
purchasers will pay down some cash, say, ten dollars an acre; that
makes fifty thousand cash and two hundred thousand dollars in notes
against sixty thousand dollars in bonds. A visible profit of one
hundred and ninety thousand. That amount will be covered by a stock
issue. I shall set aside sixty thousand of it as a bonus to whoever
purchases the bonds. Thirty thousand more shall go to whoever markets
the bonds, as a commission. The remaining hundred thousand of
stock----"
"Goes to you, I presume."
"Yes; I keep that. It's payment for the ranch and water right, for my
developing the scheme and building the project. What I need is someone
to sell the bonds; I'll take care of everything else. And because you,
Mr. McDonnell, know the character of the land hereabouts and know
water rights, the fertility of the soil when watered, and the
soundness of a proper irrigation project as an investment, I've come
first to you. Millions aren't involved; it's a small project; the cost
is uncommonly cheap and the security therefore exceptional; you know
the property personally; I, as builder, and having everything at
stake, would see that the construction is right. So small an issue of
bonds should be quickly placed in the East. And the commission isn't
to be sneezed at."
Mr. McDonnell's features relaxed into a smile.
"I never saw an irrigation scheme yet that didn't look a money-maker
on paper," he stated, "nevertheless, seventy-five per cent. of them
wind up in the hands of a receiver."
"Because of faulty estimates and wasteful construction, yes. Because
they're generally too big, and the interest eats them up before the
land is sold. Because some start building on a shoestring. Or because
of changes in the projects that are costly, or rows in the management,
or insufficient water, or bad land titles--I know, I know. I've
studied and analyzed their troubles. And I propose that this Perro
Creek scheme of mine shall be one irrigation project that shall
succeed."
"And you think you've taken all precautions?"
"Yes."
"With Mr. Menocal, even?"
"Even with Mr. Menocal, yes. Once my application for changes has been
approved and I have the money to build, what can he do?"
"You seem quite sure of yourself."
"I'm sure of this irrigation project, anyway. I'm going to build it."
Conviction absolutely dominated his lean brown face; and the banker
looking at the speaker's chin, his firm mouth, curving nose, and gray
eyes full of purpose, wondered if Menocal had met his match.
"Well, suppose you leave your maps and estimates for me to look over,"
he said. "When do you go to the capital?"
"This evening."
"See me again on your return. My attorney will examine your title to
the land and the water right. How are the young ladies on Perro Creek
getting along?"
"They have plenty of fresh air and scenery," Lee responded, relaxing
from the tension under which he had been.
"It was rather a wild notion, their taking claims, but they wanted the
experience. I hope my niece is benefited in respect to her health. My
wife and I run up once in a while to see if they're comfortable." Then
he added, "Perhaps I had best confess that Imogene had told me of what
you were at up there, and of your involvement with Mr. Menocal. So
this thing isn't wholly new to me."
Bryant returned to the hotel, well satisfied with the progress he had
made. In the lobby of the hotel he ran across Charlie Menocal, who
gave him a venomous look and passed into the bar without speaking.
What the young fellow might feel or think gave Lee no concern, though
he might have taken warning from that hostile regard. For it was by
Charlie's instructions that a short, stout, swart Mexican went from a
native saloon to the depot that evening, where he presently identified
Bryant and lounged nearer the spot. Dave at length noticed him and
called Lee's attention to the fellow, whose face had a particularly
sinister cast and whose eyes were fixed upon the engineer in a stony,
unblinking stare. That look gave one the sensation of being gazed at
by something poisonous in a clump of sagebrush. But the feeling was
forgotten when the train came in on which they were departing and
Bryant and Dave mounted the steps of a coach.
The Mexican, on his part, returned to the saloon, where eventually he
was joined by Charlie Menocal. Charlie's face was flushed and his
breath alcoholic; he was a little drunk. At a corner table they
conferred, drinking whisky.
"You will know him now, the snake!" Charlie asked.
"I would know him in the dark, señor," was the reply.
They spoke in Spanish, since young Menocal's companion knew no other
tongue. The latter was a newcomer to Kennard, of the name of Alvarez.
He had come up from across the line, where he had been first with
Carranza, and then with Zapata in his black troop, and then with
Pancho Villa. He already had considerable reputation in the low
Mexican quarter of the town: he had participated in many fights and
raids "down there"; he was fearless; he could use a gun; he had many
killings to his credit. When earlier in the day Charlie had made
private inquiry of the saloon-keeper, an old friend, concerning a man
of nerve that he could engage who would ask no questions, Alvarez was
pointed out to him.
Presently an agreement was reached between them and Charlie produced
his check-book and a fountain-pen.
"Here's a check for one hundred dollars," he said, writing. "Come to
Bartolo, get you some blankets and food, and camp somewhere near. From
time to time we'll meet and I'll tell you what's to be done. There's a
saloon at Bartolo, if you get thirsty. Another hundred dollars will be
yours when the job is finished, perhaps more. Meantime, you will act
before others as if you did not know me. Here's the check."
Alvarez rose and walked to the bar.
"Is this money; a hundred dollars?" he inquired of the Mexican
proprietor of the saloon.
"One hundred dollars, yes," said the latter, with an assuring smile.
"Made payable to you, Alvarez. Good? Good at any bank, good here at my
saloon, good as gold. Better than gold, Alvarez, because easier to
carry. Do you wish the money for it?"
The Mexican ex-bandit jingled some dollars in his trousers' pockets.
"I have enough to eat and drink," said he. "If the paper is good, if
you will give me gold for it, then I will wait until I return. As you
say, it's not so heavy to carry."
"Bring it to me when you return. Mr. Menocal is very wealthy, very
rich. He has much land and many sheep. Besides, he owns a bank full of
gold and silver. The paper is good."
Alvarez was impressed. He stood in thought.
"Those sheep and that bank full of money! In Mexico we would form a
company of revolutionists and help ourselves," he said.
"That isn't the custom here," was the reply.
Alvarez again stared at the check, then folded it, bit the edge with
his teeth, placed it in a small leather bag suspended under his shirt
by a cord about his neck, and returned to the table where Charlie
Menocal waited.
"I will go up yonder in a few days, señor," he stated. "There are
girls there, are there not?"
* * * * *
One day a week later, after Bryant and Dave had returned to Kennard,
and after numerous conferences with Mr. McDonnell, his attorney and an
engineer called in for consultation, Lee exclaimed to his companion,
"We win. McDonnell will take hold of it. Bully for him!" And he went
about clearing up the odds and ends of business at a great rate.
Moreover, McDonnell believed he could dispose of the bonds within a
fortnight, by the middle of September. That would enable Bryant to
make good headway with the dam on the Pinas River while the water was
low and before cold weather set in. The attorney would look after the
incorporation of the company and the stock and bond issues. Lee could
at once engage a staff of assistant engineers and arrange to let the
building contract. In the matter of the canal line, he had received
ample assurance from members of the Land and Water Board at Santa Fé
that the changes he asked would be granted. Everything was propitious,
everything exactly as he would wish.
"Out of those town duds, Dave," he exclaimed. "You can't be a sport
any longer. Back to Perro Creek for us and your new spotted pony. And
it's high time, too, for I saw you making eyes at that girl with
yellow hair and angel blue eyes, whose mamma----"
"You never did!" Dave yelled, crimson with ire.
CHAPTER XII
October. And the last golden leaves twirling down from cottonwood and
aspen and mountain maple; the lofty brown peaks fresh powdered with
snow; the air dazzling, keen, heady like wine; frost a-sparkle of
mornings on stone, fence-post, roof, with a rainbow coruscation of
diamonds; clear, high moons; marvellous, moonlit nights.
It was the middle of the month. Three weeks previous, with the bonds
sold and the injunction suits dismissed, the contractor employed had
unloaded his outfit at Kennard, moved up the Pinas River, raised in a
day his camp at the mouth of the cañon above Bartolo, and begun his
task. This man, Pat Carrigan, had been in Bryant's mind from the
first: a Pueblo contractor of Irish extraction, born in a railroad
camp, trained on a dump, and now grizzled and aging but unequalled in
handling men, in keeping them satisfied, in moving dirt. In his time
he had turned off jobs from Maine to California, from Wisconsin to
Texas. Already along the hillside a yellow gash was deepening from the
dam site through the fenced fields where ran the right of way; while
in the Pinas, low at this season, the traverse section of the river
bed had been cleaned out and the base of the dam was building of
stones and brush.
Late on a certain afternoon Ruth Gardner and Imogene Martin stood
waiting by a gray runabout at the edge of the camp. A storm was
sweeping up the Ventisquero Range from the south, one of the autumn
storms that marked the change of seasons, enveloping, as it advanced,
the gray peaks one after another in its fog and trailing over the mesa
gauzy brown streamers of rain. In the west the sun still shone
unobscured, but with its light failing to a chill saffron glare as the
cloud expanded over the sky.
Bryant and another man, a newcomer in the last few days, an engineer
from the East representing the bondholders, were walking toward the
girl from the dam. As the men walked, they engaged in rather spirited
argument.
"You'd better hurry, you two," Ruth called. "Don't you see that rain
coming? Imo and I want to reach home, Mr. Gretzinger, without being
soaked."
Bryant's companion waved an assuring hand without ceasing his rapid
and forceful statement addressed to his fellow. Half a head shorter
than Lee, he was of stockier build, a man somewhere near thirty-five
or six years of age, with hair tinged with gray above his ears. Both
in manner and speech he exhibited by turns superficial gayety, latent
cynicism, and an egregious assumption. When Lee had introduced him to
the young ladies at Sarita Creek, he had made himself at home in three
minutes. He had the latest witticisms of restaurants and theatres, the
newest stories, the most recent slang; his clothes were of the
autumn's extreme mode; he was intelligent if frankly materialistic;
and he interested, amused, and diverted the two girls. From his gay
and airy talk they gathered that he had been married and divorced,
that the West might have the scenery but New York had the bright
lights; that money could buy anything from food to fame; and that
"movies" were a bore. To the girls he was like a breath from the
metropolis itself, that hard, throbbing, restless, glaring, convivial,
avid, fascinating city in which is centred everything of wealth and
misery, everything intense and abnormal, and everything to satisfy the
desires. But the effect upon the girls was different. Imogene, though
entertained, continued calm, unimpressed, unenvious; Ruth, however, as
she listened and asked questions, the better they became acquainted,
was bright-eyed and excited. "Don't you think him a remarkable man?"
she had exclaimed to Imogene. "So experienced, so polished, so--well,
everything." This was after his second visit, which he made without
Bryant, stopping on his way from the dam camp to Kennard where he made
the chief hotel his headquarters. Imogene had replied, "Oh, he's
amusing company, and he can't be accused of being diffident, at least.
But I wonder if he would wear well. His divorced wife's opinion would
be valuable on that point, I fancy." That had caused Ruth to sniff.
She said, "You heard his explanation; they didn't agree and so they
just separated. That was sensible. When two people find they're not
compatible, they shouldn't live together a minute. And I shouldn't be
surprised if she was a cat."
Gretzinger's speech as he and Bryant advanced toward the girls and the
gray runabout was quick, determined, and uncompromising. His fleshy,
aggressive face, that lacked the tan of his companion's, was fixed in
dogmatic lines. From time to time he switched his gauntlets against
the skirt of his fashionably cut ulster with lively impatience.
"I certainly demand that these changes be made and shall recommend to
the bondholders," he was saying, "that they also insist on them."
"Can't help it if you do," was Lee Bryant's reply. "I know what I'm
talking about: concrete is necessary. No irrigation engineer to-day
who knows his business would think of anything else. Mr. McDonnell's
man approved its use, the state engineer likewise. The latter wouldn't
allow the change even should I ask it."
"Pah! He'd not concern himself either way. I know how these state
officers run things. Leave it to me; I'll arrange the matter."
"Not with my consent. And he'll never grant the change over my
opposition."
Gretzinger gave his knee an angry slap.
"I tell you it must be different, Bryant. In addition to the bonds my
men have their share of stock. They consider this stock bonus as part
of their investment. It is. And they intend to see that that stock
earns every dollar--every dollar, do you understand?--that's to be
made out of the project. I'm here to protect their interests, and
shall do it."
"Well?"
"Now, Bryant, be reasonable. It means more profit in your own pocket,
too. You're no philanthropist pure and simple, I take it, and want to
make money out of this thing. So agree to this change. You'll make a
saving both in time and cash. Carrigan's contract doesn't include the
building of these drops; you plan to do that yourself; and if you
substitute wood for concrete in these drops and in the gate-frames,
it would lessen the labour cost, the material cost, the freighting
cost, the----"
"And in five years the wood will have rotted and then concrete will
have to be put in after all," Lee interrupted. "More than that, the
water will undercut wooden drops, then rip the devil out of the canal
along the ridge, making the cost of rebuilding ten times what it is
now and very likely causing a water shortage in the middle of an
irrigating season so that the farmers' crops will be a dead loss.
Fine! I suppose you didn't allow yourself to think that far."
"Why should I?" Gretzinger retorted. "It's not our business to figure
on all the calamities that may occur in the next fifty years, or the
next ten, or the next five. We build the canal, then it's up to the
farmers to keep it in shape after we turn it over to them. If anything
happens, that's their lookout and the lookout of the engineer in
charge."
The two had come to a halt just out of earshot of the runabout. Bryant
could discover on the speaker's face no other expression than a fixed
intent to maintain his view.
"Leaving out the injustice of such a course----"
"Injustice, nothing!" the New Yorker derided. "This is cold business.
The project must be built as cheaply as possible in order to give the
investors the largest return. My father is one of them, and when he
puts money into a thing he wants all out of it that's coming to him.
So do his associates."
"Let me finish what I started to say," Lee remarked. "Aside from what
purchasers of land under this canal scheme have the right to expect,
and what they would suffer from a disaster, it hits our own pockets in
the end. Poor construction always turns out to be expensive
construction. Aside from the initial cash payments from buyers, all we
have from them will be notes--mortgage notes that can be paid only by
crops from the land. The water insures these crops. Let the canal
system go smash, and where are these notes? Nowhere. I don't propose
to lose fifty or sixty thousand dollars for a short-sighted gain of
ten."
Gretzinger laughed, then tapped the other's shoulder with a
forefinger.
"Do you imagine for a minute we'll keep the paper?" he inquired.
"Well, I should say not! We'll discount it ten, and if necessary
twenty, per cent. to make a quick clean-up and be out. A mortgage
company in the East will attend to that part of the business. These
mortgages run for ten years; you certainly don't think we'll sit
around that long waiting for our money and profits. The discount will
make the paper attractive to small investors, among whom it will be
peddled and who want long-time securities. And you'll profit from that
along with the rest of us; we couldn't leave you out if we wished."
"No, you can't leave me out of your calculations," said Bryant,
grimly.
"You see now, I hope, why it's to your interest as well as ours to
make the change I suggest," Gretzinger continued. "It will equal the
amount of the discount. In a year or so we'll all be out from under
with bonds and stock liquidated dollar for dollar. In other words,
with our profits in cash in the bank instead of in notes."
"And somebody else holding the sack, eh?" Bryant's aquiline nose came
down a little as he asked the question. "No, Gretzinger, you haven't
persuaded me, and you never will by that argument. A pretty rotten
scheme, that of yours. I shall go right ahead and use concrete."
"Then you don't intend to consider bondholders as having a voice in
matters?"
"No."
"Well, they're stockholders as well."
"Minority stockholders, that's all," Lee stated, coolly. "You've said
this is a matter of cold business. Very well; I'm the majority
stockholder and have the control. I consider it cold business to build
the drops of concrete as planned. I consider it cold business and good
business to provide the farmers with a safe system. And I shall do
that."
Again came Ruth's call, urging Gretzinger to hurry. He answered and
spoke a last word to Bryant, with a suddenly altered mien.
"You're an obstinate devil, Lee," he exclaimed, cheerfully. "I'll have
to think up some new arguments to get you over, I find. Now I must run
along, or the ladies will be up in arms--and not my arms, either."
Bryant helped him to button the curtains on the hood of the car, found
an instant when he could press Ruth's hand unobserved and murmur a
word in her ear, and stated that if the rain did not last he would run
down (he had picked up a second-hand Ford in Kennard) to Sarita Creek
after supper.
"I don't see half enough of you," Ruth said, giving him a pat on the
cheek with the gloved finger that now wore a diamond solitaire. To Mr.
Gretzinger she continued, "If you get us home without a wetting, you
may stay and eat with us; but if you don't, why, you can go straight
on to town."
Off the car sped down the trail toward Bartolo where it would gain the
well-travelled mesa road, a hand thrust through the curtains waving
back at Bryant.
The engineer did not go to Sarita Creek that night, for the rain
settled into a steady drizzle that lasted until well toward morning.
After supper he went, however, to the adobe dwelling of the Mexican
who once had warned him from his field. The man's seven-year-old boy
had fallen from a horse the day previous and fractured a leg; half
fearfully, half recklessly, the parent had come running to camp for
medical aid; and Lee had despatched the camp doctor, a young fellow
recently graduated, to treat the injury. Bryant was admitted into the
house. The youngster, he learned, was resting comfortably and had been
visited by the doctor that afternoon. Lee was even conducted to the
bedside, where the boy's leg thick with splints and wrappings was
exhibited for his benefit.
"The doctor, he said I was to speak to you about his pay," the Mexican
stated after a time, when he and Bryant had talked awhile in Spanish.
Bryant waved the words aside.
"There's no charge, nothing," said he. "I was delighted to send the
doctor. I hope your son improves rapidly. The physician will continue
to pay you calls until the boy no longer requires them. Those are very
pretty geraniums you have in the window, señora. Are they fragrant?"
Lee crossed the room and bent his face above them.
The man's wife rubbed her hands together under her apron with much
pleasure. Thus politely for him to notice and praise her flowers! In
her heart, as in the heart of her husband, there formerly had been
resentment at this white canal-builder for cutting their field with a
big ditch, an occurrence which the county judge somehow had stupidly
permitted. But now she did not know what to feel. Yesterday he had
sent them a doctor for nothing, and this evening was smelling her
flowers admiringly. He could not be exactly a monster. Removing one
hand from beneath her apron, she inserted a finger-nail in her black
hair and scratched her scalp, considering the subject. Winter was
coming, too. Food would be needed--and besides, she long had desired
one of those loud phonographs at Menocal's store, and also needed a
new stove. She perceived that her husband was staring at Bryant's back
with a thoughtful air. Undoubtedly he was thinking the same thing as
she.
"You yet want men and teams for your work, señor?" she inquired.
"All I can get."
"If a man falls sick while at work, would he have the services of the
doctor?"
"Yes, without charge. There will be work on the dam most of the
winter, where the building is only a matter of stone and brush. I can
use all who want employment. Then in the spring there will be the
digging of the ditch on the mesa."
"Five dollars for a man and his team, is it not so?" the Mexican
inquired.
"Yes."
"What if a man's wife or children fall sick?" the woman asked.
Bryant hid a smile at this shrewd bargaining. Yet he was perceiving an
opportunity. There were no Mexicans at work on the project; one and
all they had held off. Likewise they refused to sell him grain and
hay, which necessitated the hauling of feed from a distance. But now
this accident to the boy might prove a heaven-sent chance to break
Menocal's monopoly of influence.
"In case of sickness in the man's family, the doctor shall attend
free," he stated.
The woman took thought afresh.
"And if the man's horses are taken sick?"
"Nay, he's not a horse doctor," said Lee, smiling. And even the woman
smiled.
"But there's another matter. I fear it prevents," the man remarked.
"It is a note for fifty dollars that the bank holds against me. If I
work, Menocal will make trouble about that. I think we had best talk
no more of employment."
"Suppose I advance the amount in case he does, letting you work out
the debt. I could keep, say, two dollars out of each day's five until
you owed nothing."
"That would be agreeable to me, señor. But what if he then refuses to
sell me goods from his store?"
"You can buy at the commissary," Lee said. "Why should you lose five
dollars a day because of Menocal's bad feeling for me? You remain
idle--but does he pay you, or feed you? And the wages I offer you, and
the doctor's services, and the other accommodations, I also offer to
other Mexicans who will work. You may tell them so. Remember, there
will be teaming on the ditch until it freezes up, then work on the dam
throughout the winter, then scraper work on the mesa in the spring.
Five dollars a day coming in the door! You can buy meat and flour and
clothes and tobacco and candy for the children and a new wagon and
pictures of the Madonna, yes, all. But now I must go."
"But Menocal would be very angry," said the man, with a shake of his
head.
Bryant bade them good-night and departed. He went up the muddy road
through the wet darkness to the camp. Domination of the native mind by
Menocal appeared too strong for him to break.
But to his surprise next morning the Mexican came driving his team
into the camp. Lee sent him to Pat Carrigan, who gave him a scraper
and set him to work on the ditch. Toward noon the engineer encountered
him moving dirt from the deepening excavation; the sight had an
amusing feature. The man, Pedro Saurez, laboured in his own field
building the canal at about the spot where he had warned Bryant away
when surveying.
When Saurez beheld Lee, he grinned and removed the cigarette from his
lips.
"It will be a fine ditch, this," was his remark.
CHAPTER XIII
Work on the canal section near the river advanced without incident
until, one morning early in November, the plows unexpectedly uncovered
a forty-foot-wide body of granite just beneath the surface. This
particular difficulty was not serious, and was the contractor's; but
Pat Carrigan was no more pleased than any other contractor would have
been at finding rock, even a small amount, when he had figured his
excavation costs on a dirt basis.
"That wipes out a piece of my profits," he remarked to Bryant, after a
first profane explosion. "I'll send out for some dynamite and shoot
it. If it wasn't for damned troubles like this, I'd been a retired man
and fat and rich long ago. Don't grin, you heartless blackguard!
You'll have miseries of your own before we're done."
Pat Carrigan was a true prophet. A blow of fatal nature, indeed, was
preparing at the moment and fell within a week. From the state
engineer Lee received a letter advising him that an application for
use of the water appropriated to Perro Creek ranch had been made by a
man of the name of Rodriguez, of Rosita, under an old statute long
forgotten. This law was mandatory upon the Land and Water Board. It
required the latter to cancel rights and to reappropriate water
elsewhere to the amount in excess of what a canal actually carried, or
what a canal had failed to carry for five successive years if it were
not shown within ninety days after a filing for reappropriation that
the said canal had been enlarged to a capacity to carry the original
appropriation, and proof given of the owner's intention to employ said
appropriation.
Menocal once more! He had been very quiet all this while; he
apparently had made no effort to dissuade the Mexicans who, following
Saurez's lead, had come in increasing number to work on the canal or
the dam; the man had almost passed from the engineer's mind. But he
had not been idle. He had had shrewd legal talent seeking a deadly
weapon for him among the musty statutes, with which he could deal the
irrigation project a _coup de grâce_. And as the import of the letter
penetrated Bryant's brain, his heart seemed to turn to ice. Ninety
days--finish dam and canal in ninety days! As well fix a limit of
ninety hours!
Finally he rushed off to Pat Carrigan superintending scraper work and
dragged him aside.
"For God's sake, read that, Pat!" he cried. "Read what the Land and
Water Board are going to do. They're going to cut the heart right out
of us! Kill the project! All for a law nobody ever heard of! Read it!"
Pat knit his brows and slowly extracted the meaning from the state
engineer's formal, involved announcement. That something serious had
occurred he guessed before Bryant had opened his lips. He had never
seen the engineer so wrought up, so white, so agitated.
"Let me get this right," the old contractor said, at length. "They're
going to cancel your water right."
"Yes."
"But not at once. You've ninety days to----"
"Ninety days! We can't do a year's work in ninety days, and in winter
time at that!" Lee cried.
"Of course not," was the answer. "But it gives you time to argue with
'em and fight this thing. My advice is to go see this Board at once.
Maybe if you explain the situation, they'll call off this fellow
Rodriguez."
Bryant, however, remained depressed. Clearly the officials had no
liberty of action in the matter.
"I don't know that it will do any good," he said, "but it's all that's
left to do. Pack your grip, Pat; I want you to go with me. Leave
Morgan in charge. Can you start in half an hour?"
The ride to Kennard was made at high speed, and on the way the men did
little talking. Both wanted to weigh the disaster confronting the
project. In town they sought out McDonnell, who promised to have his
attorney go into the matter at once and who appeared very grave at the
news. Then they returned to the hotel to await their train.
Here Lee was surprised to encounter Ruth in company of Gretzinger,
Charlie Menocal, and a Kennard girl with whom he was not acquainted.
Ruth and Imogene, he learned, had come down the day before with the
New Yorker and were staying at the McDonnell home.
"We're just roaming around and amusing ourselves," Ruth said, slipping
her arm within Lee's. "Come on and join us."
Lee smilingly shook his head.
"Can't possibly do it," said he. "I'm leaving for the capital soon."
Ruth drew him aside.
"But give me ten minutes of your time before you go, will you, dear?"
she asked. "Come, we can go into one of the parlours where we'll be
alone." And when they were seated there, she continued, "I know why
you're going to Santa Fé. Charlie said he understood you were involved
in some new legal trouble and that you might lose your whole project.
Mr. Gretzinger laughed at him and so did I, for we knew it couldn't be
true. But it's bothering you, I see; your face is anxious. I hope
you'll clear up the horrid matter, whatever it is, while you're gone."
Then after a pause, she remarked, "Perhaps Mr. Gretzinger could be of
assistance to you."
"Not in this matter," said Lee.
"He has a great deal of influence, especially in the East."
"But this is the West--and I don't care much for Gretzinger, besides,"
he stated.
"So he says. More than once he has wished you would be more friendly.
Isn't it a little inconsiderate of you, Lee, to hold him off at arm's
length, especially when he's here as representative of the
bondholders? He has a vital interest in the canal and its success.
Really, I think he might be of great help if you'd permit. And it
would be of great advantage to us in the future, his friendship and
that of the men behind him, for they are wealthy and influential.
That's one reason why you ought to cultivate him, Lee."
"Go on," said he, as she paused.
"Well, I thought we should discuss the matter. I'm of the opinion that
you misunderstand him. You'll not deny that he's a man of ability."
"No--though I know little of him."
"He is, though, Lee. And an engineer of high standing, too, and of
experience. Wouldn't it be wise to consult him a little more than you
do? He has talked to me at times about the project and has, I believe,
ideas you could use. For instance, he says that if you made certain
changes in the canal there would be a considerable saving of money, by
which the stockholders would benefit, you among them. He says that if
in certain places wood were used instead of concrete it would mean
thousands of dollars in your pocket."
"It would, but it would also endanger the canal."
"Mr. Gretzinger said you asserted that as your reason," she proceeded,
"but he claims there's no more prospect of danger from that source
than from a fly. And anyway, isn't it a matter that concerns only the
buyers afterward? He says so. I don't know much about such matters, of
course, but you really must look after your own best interest
first--and mine. I say mine because mine will be yours after we're
married. Mr. Gretzinger says your share of the saving would be at
least five thousand dollars and possibly more. Lee, do this for me."
"What he proposes is dishonest, Ruth."
"But why? He says the state board would grant the change if proper
representations were made. If the officials allowed it, I can't see
where it would be dishonest."
"The officials would have to be deceived to gain their consent to such
a change," Lee said, patiently. "But the real point at issue is the
permanency of the water system, Ruth. The poor devils who buy the land
and who toil for years to pay for it are to be considered. If the
canal is too cheaply constructed, they'll probably lose their crops;
and losing their crops means ruin. As far as possible an engineer must
insure against this danger when he builds the canal; then if any
accident happens later, his conscience, at any rate, is clear."
"But he says you over-estimate the risk, that wood is perfectly safe.
And he's an expert engineer, too. More experienced than you, Lee."
"You seem to have discussed this thing with him at great length,"
Bryant remarked, dryly.
"I have, indeed I have, because I have your success so greatly at
heart, dear. I want to see you receive every penny that you earn and
all the credit you deserve; I want you to go ahead in your profession
and become both wealthy and famous; but sometimes I think that you're
so absorbed in the engineering part of the work that you're careless
of the future. One has to be practical, too. One has to look out for
one's own interests. And I don't see why your responsibility for the
project doesn't end when you've built the canal, sold the land, and
turned the system over to the farmers. You can't go on looking out for
them after that; you're not answerable to the 'hay-seeds' who settle
here for what may or may not happen. And we shall need the money that
would be saved by using wood instead of concrete, Lee. When you're
through here, we shall want to live in New York at least part of the
time. With Mr. Gretzinger's friendship you could perhaps form a
connection so that you could be there all the while, and make a big
fortune. You will do this for me, won't you, Lee? It means just that
much more happiness for us."
She slipped her arms about his neck and kissed him impulsively,
eagerly. Lee felt himself tremble at that clasp, at that kiss. Words
seemed futile. His anxiety over the fate of his project gave way to a
profound sickness of soul. That Ruth should thus reveal such a
cloudiness of spiritual vision, such an inability to distinguish
between moral values, such a ready acceptance of Gretzinger's vicious
philosophy, was the final drop in his bitter cup this day.
"It's not a question of either wood or concrete just at present," he
said, rising. "It's whether I'm to have a project at all. I'll not go
with you, Ruth, to your friends; I must think over what I'm to do and
say at Santa Fé to-morrow."
As he rode thither with Carrigan that night it seemed as if he now was
at grapple with forces, invisible, powerful, malevolent, that strove
to dispossess him of everything that was dear. His project! What
means, what help, what law was there of which he could make use to
ward off this deadly assault on it? And Ruth! How should he save
her--save her from herself, clear the mist from her eyes, arouse her
drowsing soul? All that he had aimed at and all that he had striven
for hung on finding answers to those questions.
CHAPTER XIV
By noon Bryant and Carrigan had concluded their interviews with
members of the Land and Water Board. All of them had listened, asked
questions, expressed their regret at the situation in which Perro
Creek project found itself, but stated that the Board had no course
other than that of executing the law evoked in the case. They
suggested that Bryant bring an action in the courts to test the law;
they admitted that his company might be forced into the hands of a
receiver; they inquired concerning the possibility of gaining the
consent of the adverse party to a withdrawal of his application. Their
hands, however, said one and all, were tied in the matter.
The engineer and the contractor went down the steps of the state house
and found a seat on a bench at a shady spot of the grounds.
"Just as I expected it would be," Bryant said, grimly.
He sat humped over, his elbows on his knees and his cheeks between his
fists. His eyes were dull, heavy; he had not closed them during the
previous night. He wore the mud-caked lace boots and stained khaki, as
did Carrigan, in which he had departed from camp.
"Well, we haven't quit breathing yet," Pat remarked, licking the
wrapper on the cigar he was about to light.
Lee sat silent for several minutes.
"Anyway, I'll see you don't lose, Pat," he said. "You can figure out
what profit you would have made on your contract if the ditch had been
built and I'll pay you that. Then you can call off your crew."
"Oh, I'll let you down easy, Lee. That wasn't worrying me any," was
the rejoinder. "I was just thinking----" But his words broke off
there, and he again gave his attention to the cigar wrapper that
persisted in coming loose.
Bryant continued his gloomy cogitation. The muscles of his cheeks
moved in hard lumps beneath his fists as if he were champing some
resistant substance. Over his eyes his lids from time to time drooped
sleepily. But all at once he leaped up.
"If I but had something I could take hold of, Pat!" he exclaimed.
"Something I could lay hands on and move, like that bed of rock you
uncovered! So I could go ahead! A law is so damned immaterial that one
has nothing to work against. It leaves a man nowhere, helpless. It
lifts him off the ground and holds him kicking futilely in the air.
Just that. By God, I'm desperate enough to try anything--to try
building the ditch--try whipping Menocal even under this moth-eaten
law he's dug up!"
Pat shut one eye against the smoke curling into it.
"I was speculating a little along the same line," said he, slowly.
"But twelve miles of ditch in ninety days! The whole mesa line! We'd
be crazy to think of it. Let's talk of something else."
Lee's mouth, nevertheless, was twitching, while gleams like light came
and went on his face.
"I always had a weakness for the bad bets," said Pat.
"But twelve miles of ditch!"
"And the nights freezing harder every week," the old contractor added.
"And the days short."
"Yes, and nerve shorter yet," said Pat.
The remark was airily given, but the inference was plain. Lee took a
step aside and stood staring across the capitol grounds, with brows
knit, with lips compressed, the prey of struggling hopes and doubts.
"Pat," he said, turning.
"Well?"
"Do you think we could do it?"
"God knows; I don't. But we could give the job an awful whirl," the
contractor stated.
"The thing looks impossible, preposterous, but if you see the
slightest chance of success I want you to say so. Dirt moving is your
game, not mine. Ninety days; that's thirteen weeks. Almost a mile a
week. Can it be done? Can you do it?"
Pat at last threw away the cigar that refused to draw.
"With men and teams enough I could build a ditch to tide-water in that
time," said he, with sudden energy. "Men and scrapers, scrapers and
men--that's all. You can rip the insides out of any dirt job on earth
if you have the crews. Of course, it takes money, big wages, to get
and hold them."
"Money! What do I care for that if we build the canal? How much more
will it take? How much will you need?"
"Say twenty thousand more."
"Get out your pencil and begin figuring it."
"I don't need a pencil," Carrigan answered. "I haven't been moving
dirt for fifty years without figures sticking to my hair. I've
digested your blue-prints and know what's to come out of the ground.
Now I'll tell you what it would be if there was no frost in the
ground, as in summer--and we'll afterward allow for the frost; and
what's necessary in men, horses, fresnos, shacks, horsefeed, food,
clothes, and general supplies."
And thereupon Carrigan began to pour forth a stream of data so exact,
so comprehensive, so full, that Bryant listened in astonishment. All
carried in his head, ready for use!
"I hope I know my business at your age as you know yours," Lee
exclaimed.
"You will, or ought to. I've paid for what I know in mistakes and
miscalculated jobs, as does every man some time or other--paid in hard
cash. What he learns is all he gets out of losses. Now, the figures I
gave were for summer work; winter dirt moving is another kind of
animal. Work is slower, men are harder to keep, weather is generally
bad."
"This autumn has been later than usual, and it may last," said Lee.
"And it may not," Carrigan stated, emphatically. "It's that that
worries me about this thing. As it is, the ground freezes on top every
night. Let the thermometer make a low drop, and we won't be able to
stick a plow-point into it anywhere."
"There's no moisture to speak of in the soil of the mesa."
"Enough to freeze the dirt, just the same," said Pat.
"We can leave the dam out of consideration."
"Yes; no trouble about finishing that. And your concrete work, Lee,
won't lose you any sleep. A carload of cement from here, gravel from
the river, and a dozen Kennard carpenters to knock together gate and
drop frames--no trick to crack that nut. Frost, lad, frost! It's the
thing to set us groaning."
Bryant sat down and put his hand on the speaker's knee.
"Pat, if we go into this thing and put it through, there will be a
good fat bonus for you."
"Maybe there will be and maybe there won't. Maybe you'll have some
money left when we're done and maybe you'll not have a red cent. In
any case, the old man is with you, Lee, to the end of the scrap--if
you go ahead. What about your bondholders? Will they stand for risking
what's not yet spent? They will save considerable by your stopping
now; they'll lose all if we fail."
"What do you----"
Pat's raised hand halted him.
"Ask me nothing," said he. "That's for you alone to settle. If you
spend their money and win, they'll say 'Thank you'--maybe; and if you
go under, they'll damn you up one side and down the other and probably
try to send you to the pen. You're the chief; you have to decide; you
can't share the responsibility--anyway, not with me. And if you're
inquiring, I'll remark that its considerable responsibility. Go off
yonder by yourself and think it over a bit."
Bryant left the old contractor lighting a fresh cigar. He walked to
another bench a short distance away, where he sat down. In his first
exultation at perceiving a fighting chance to save the project he had
seen only the opportunity, but Carrigan's unexpected turn of the
subject had brought him back to earth. He was guardian, as well as
dispenser, of company funds. He had obligations to the bondholders.
Therefore, would he be justified in risking the money on such a
desperate venture? His soul sank.
But his mind would not cease to revolve about the undertaking, for he
could not at once relinquish his long-cherished dream. The thought of
tame surrender was as wormwood in his mouth. To stand by acquiescent
while the project collapsed! That prospect he could not endure. Never
again, if he capitulated now, would he be able to strike out with the
same courage as in this project; never with the same courage, or
spirit, or faith. The project was his creation! The thing of his brain
and will! Part of himself! And how confidently he had made his plans
and acquired the property and started work! No doubts of his ability
to carry it through! No question of his right to go ahead! No fear of
the task!
The engineer came suddenly to his feet.
Builders throughout the world took equal risks and overcame as great
obstacles every day; it was the measure of their genius and will.
Engineers elsewhere crushed a way through earth and rock to their
goals, and under adverse circumstances, with no thought of failure.
Were there not men who would unhesitatingly take hold of this project
now and complete it in the time allotted? Yes, any number. For the
very same reason that he had launched the scheme. Because they had the
ability, because they had the will, because, most of all, they had
faith--faith in their own powers.
Lee went back to Pat Carrigan.
"We shall build it," said he. "And in ninety days."
The contractor rose.
"You talk like a real 'chief' now, Bryant," he replied. "I was waiting
for that. Come along; we'll start burning the wires."
CHAPTER XV
Louise Graham, entering the dining car for breakfast, received a
surprise at beholding Lee Bryant half way along the aisle at one of
the smaller tables. He laid down the spoon with which he was delving
into a half of a cantaloupe and got quickly to his feet to greet her.
"So you're home again," he said, after shaking hands. "Your father
told me when I met him that you were in the East. Will you share my
table?"
"I use 'shopping' as a pretext for a jaunt now and then," she laughed,
when they were seated. "Once in a while the lure of city dissipations
seizes me; I had a week in Washington and three in New York with
friends, which will satisfy me for a few months. You were just
starting work on your project when I went away. Are you making good
progress?"
"Very. But I'll make still better from now on. It's a case with me of
do or be 'done', of dig out or be buried. I may as well be open about
it, for everyone will know presently, anyway. The project must be
completed in ninety days."
"Ninety days? Great heavens!"
"That's what I said, too," Lee stated, with a smile. "Several times,
in fact. There is an old law, it seems, that enables interested
parties to hold a stop-watch on me."
"And what's the penalty if you fail to finish the work in those three
months?"
"Cancellation of my water right."
"Cancellation? Surely not."
"I tried to convince the Land and Water Board of that in Santa Fé, but
made no headway."
"How outrageous!" she exclaimed.
The waiter at her elbow recalled her to the requirements of the
moment. Still with a trace of colour in her cheeks, the result of her
indignation, she scanned the menu and wrote out her order.
"The thing is so utterably unreasonable," she resumed, more calmly.
"Why did they let you start if they proposed afterward to hang a sword
above your head?"
"The Board was ignorant of this law, as was everybody else, until it
was brought to light by the applicant for cancellation," said Lee, "a
certain Rodriguez, of Rosita."
"Who is he?"
Bryant shook his head.
"Don't ask me. No friend, at any rate."
She regarded him steadily for a moment.
"Probably a man put forward by Mr. Menocal."
"I suppose so," said he.
"But the idea of expecting you to build all those miles of ditch in
ninety days and in the winter time! I wonder that you can be so calm."
"Why shouldn't I be calm? My mind's made up. I'm going to complete the
project on time."
The words were uttered in a matter-of-fact tone that impressed Louise
Graham far more than would any vehement assertion. As he had stated,
his mind was made up, quite made up on the point. Others might think
what they pleased: it carried no weight with him. The thing was
certain.
She examined the engineer with a new interest. There was a difference
in him, what would be hard to say. One couldn't exactly put finger on
it. Something in his gray eyes, perhaps; something in the sharper
stamp of his aquiline nose, of his lips, of his bronzed jaw; something
in his whole bearing. It went deeper than features, too; she sensed a
change in
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