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 fivesuccessive 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 acoup 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 toocheaply 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.
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 satdown. 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."
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 vehementassertion. 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 the spirit of the man from what it had been that day of his going down to Kennard, when he strolled with her in her garden. He was less bouyant, less manifest, less elated, but more poised and sure. A change, yes.
Then her thoughts reverted to his tremendous undertaking.
"How long have you known this?" she inquired.
"Since the day before yesterday. Pat Carrigan, my contractor, and I came to the capital at once to discuss the affair with the Board. The news was—well, a good deal of a facer."
She nodded.
"It would be," were her words. "You'll need more workmen and horses, of course."
"All I can get. Pat went to Denver last night, and the labour agencies there and at Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Santa Fé, El Paso, and places farther east doubtless by now are rounding up men. We picked up an idle grading outfit yesterday in Santa Fé; it will be loaded and started by to-night."
Her face became a little rueful.
"That all sounds so big that I hesitate to make the offer I had in mind when I asked," she said.
"What was it, Miss Graham?"
"Father has twelve or fifteen teams and some scrapers used on the ranch. The horses aren't working at this season. He would be glad to let you have them, I know, if he thought they would be of any aid. But with what you'll have, perhaps you——"
"I want them; I'll be more than grateful for them. I need every man and horse available. I can't get too many. Each labourer and each horse counts just that much more. It's a great kindness on your part to suggest their use to me, and I'll stop on the way to camp to see your father."
"He'll consent to your employing them," said she, confidently. "Dad likes a man who puts up a good fight, and you're doing that. A fight against great odds."
Bryant's face lightened with a smile almost sunny.
"By heavens, it's comforting to have a friend like you," he exclaimed, "when one's in a tight place!"
The waiter began to place her meal, and he turned his head to look out of the window while his mind recalled his talk with Ruth in the hotel parlour at Kennard. Little comfort he had had from her then. Her interest in the project, in fact, as he reviewed the summer, had been slight, always casual, concerned only with its financial factor, never particularly sympathetic, never warm, never eager. The thought struck him unpleasantly. It had never occurred to him before. He wondered if this indifference would continue when they were married, if in ten years—when he wasabout forty, say—she would be even less inclined to know his work, like the wives of some men he could name who had their own separate interests, who gave their husbands no sympathy at their tasks, nor courage, nor heart, and whose single cognizance of it had to do with the size of the income.
But he drove this depressing and disloyal speculation from his mind. Ruth was young and perhaps restless, but she was sweet and full of promise. Time would round out her character; and when she had matured, she would be one in a million—a mate who cheered and inspired. Every bit of that! She would presently see the real values of things; Charlie Menocal's monkey tricks would no longer amuse her, and she would perceive what a shallow harlequin he was, while she would comprehend Gretzinger's vicious, unprincipled sophistry and turn in disgust from the man. She was inexperienced, that was all.
"It will be good to be back once more where one has plenty of room," Louise Graham remarked. "In that liking, you see, I'm a genuine Westerner. That's what I missed most when at school in the East, at Bryn Mawr—space. I wanted my big mountains and wide mesa and long, restful views. And how I galloped on my pony through the sagebrush when I came back during summer vacations!"
The recollection set her eyes glistening.
"You still do it when you return from a trip, I'll venture to say," Lee stated, marking the glow of her face.
"Yes, I do. Almost the very first thing. It clears my brain of city noise and sights and grime. It soothes my nerves. Nothing does that like our keen air with its scent of sagebrush."
"Then I should see you riding up my way soon."
"Oh, I'll certainly want to follow the progress of your work, Mr. Bryant. With father's teams working for you, I'll feel as if we had a part in the race." After a pause she proceeded, "The contractor's outfit went up and you were just starting the dam and excavation about the time I went East. Father mentioned in a letter to me that he had dropped in at your camp once or twice when at Bartolo."
"Yes, I showed him what we were doing. We've had other visitors occasionally. Miss Gardner and Miss Martin—at Sarita Creek, you remember—come at times. Miss Martin is a niece of Mr. McDonnell, of Kennard."
"So Mrs. McDonnell told me. Just before I left I called at their cabins again. But I had no more luck that time than the first; they were away somewhere. Well," she concluded, with a smile, "perhaps the third time will win; that's the rule. I'll go another time soon."
"You'll like them, I'm sure. They're both charming, I think. Unusual girls."
"I'll go soon," she repeated.
"My desire possibly will be understood by you," said he, after a slight hesitation, "when I say that Miss Gardner and I are engaged to be married. So it would please me immensely if you two became good friends."
Louise Graham showed some surprise. But this immediately changed to smiling interest.
"Accept my congratulations, Mr. Bryant," she said. "You may count on our being friends. Hereafter she and Miss Martin must come to our ranch whenever they will. I suppose they ride up where you are nearly every day; MissGardner, in particular, must be tremendously devoted to your project and now tremendously excited, too, over your race against time. Who wouldn't be, in her place!"
"Naturally," said Lee, with all the heartiness he could muster in his voice. But to himself, at least, his tone rang hollow.
When an hour or so after they had finished their meal they alighted from their Pullmans at Kennard, the echo of his forced reply still sounded in his mind with persistent irony. He was glad he had an interview with McDonnell before him that would silence it, the negotiating of a large private loan.
For Bryant there now began a period of activity compared to which his earlier efforts were mere play. Headquarters were moved down to Perro Creek, ten miles nearer Kennard. In an endless procession streamed northward automobiles crammed with labourers, wagons heaped with lumber, cement, implements, food, tents, forage, and long lines of fresnos. From distant Mexican settlements came natives in ramshackle wagons and driving half-wild ponies. Out of the hills came sheep-herders and prospectors. The word of big wages ran everywhere. The drive was on.
By the dam and on the tongue of ground extending from the mountain side where the canal would swing out upon the mesa, excavation for the intake gate and weir and the drops was in progress, with a crew of carpenters swiftly erecting wooden forms to receive the concrete when the diggers finished and retired. On the mesa half a dozen young engineers, using Bryant's notes and fixed points, ran anew the ditch line and set grade stakes. North of Perro Creek white tents gleamed in the sunshine; and beyond these a swarm of men and horses gashed a yellow streak in the mesa, ever extending as the days passed—cutting sagebrush, ripping through sod, flinging up earth with plow and scraper.
Yes, the fight was on. The fight to secure and keephorses, to get and hold workmen, to feed and use them both mercilessly, to press them ahead like a shaft of steel, to drive them forward under lash, mile by mile, rod by rod, foot by foot, forcing a channel through the resistant earth and across the mesa—a fight to outwit frost, to outstrip time, to outreach and overcome the impossible.
Bryant himself was everywhere, now at the dam, now with the carpenters, now at Perro Creek. Morgan, in charge of the north camp, succumbed to Bryant's own restless energy and matched it. The gang, now beginning to pour concrete behind the carpenters, caught the infection of his ardor. Foreman and crew on the hillside section, at his word that they had the most difficult part of the dirt work, toiled the harder. The other engineers promised to give him their best and gave him more. And in the main camp at Perro Creek Pat Carrigan extracted the last ounce of effort from man and beast.
In Kennard Bryant had said to McDonnell, "Give me a good man for this end, one who can work twenty hours a day." And the banker had given him such an one: a short, bow-legged clerk with a pugnacious jaw, who took the typewritten list of Bryant's immediate requirements, read it, jerked on his hat, and bolted out of the door. He it was who kept the road north from Kennard a-jiggle with freight wagons.
The fierce struggle against time became generally known. Ranchers visited the mesa for a sight of the toiling camps. Wagonloads of Mexican families, curious, observant, came and went. Automobile parties from Kennard and elsewhere made inspection trips to the spot. Even a journalistrepresenting a Denver paper appeared, made photographs, and obtained an interview from Bryant consisting of "Finish it on time? Certainly. Can't talk any longer." Which, together with the pictures and the special writer's account, filled a page of a Sunday issue.
The anxiety ever in Bryant's and Carrigan's minds was of that grim and implacable enemy, cold. Autumn had lasted amazingly; November yielded to December, with the days still fine; but who could tell when the white spectre, Winter, would lay his icy hand upon the earth? The peaks and upper slopes of the mountains were already mantled with snow. Each morning the engineer and the contractor marked with care the fall of the thermometer during the night, examined the frost upon the grass and tested its depth in the soil. They watched the barometer like hawks. They observed every cloud along the Ventisquero Range. They studied the wind, the sun, the sky. But the weather held fair. So calm was the air that at times sounds of the dynamite blasts at the granite outshoot, where a pair of miners were clearing a path for the canal, came travelling down to Perro Creek.
"The Lord surely has his arms around us," said Pat, one morning.
Bryant nodded, but Dave spoke up, "A cattleman who went by here yesterday, an old-timer, said: 'When December's clear, then January's drear.'"
"And an old-timer once told me that same thing when I was building a railroad grade in Kansas," Pat remarked, "and I had to ship in palm-leaf fans and ice to keep my 'paddies' from fainting with the January heat." A slightexaggeration, to be sure, but showing the old contractor's contempt for wise saws pertaining to weather. Yet no one understood more than he the law of probabilities, or the balance of seasons. Some time cold must follow warmth, foul follow fair, to work the inevitable mean. And it was too much to hope that this natural law would be suspended for them until the middle of February.
In fact, the nights while remaining clear were hardening. The mercury in the tube sank by possibly a degree every two nights, at last touching zero; and it correspondingly failed to arise by as much at noon. The days were cruelly short. Darkness lasted until eight in the morning; it dropped down again at five. The frost crept deeper into the earth.
But construction advanced. The dam of brush and uncemented smooth brown stones, stretching across the Pinas, was gradually rising. The hillside section of ditch through the fields was finished and only the miners continued at the granite reef, the ring of their hammers on drills going steadily and the roar of the shots now and again booming out at nightfall. Excavation went forward in the spaces between the drops on the ridge leading forth upon the mesa. The carpenters had finished and returned to Kennard. The concrete gang had moved their mixer from the dam to the drops, for the intake gate and its accompanying flood weir were made, and Bryant had had their wooden frames knocked off so that the structures stood white and imposing beside the dam, like pillars of accomplishment. From Perro Creek the main camp had moved toward the northwest on the arc it must pursue, until its tents touchedthe horizon and the clean yellow trench, fifteen feet wide at the bottom, thirty feet wide at the top, and five feet deep, with its flanking embankments, alone was left behind, a forced and undeviating course through the sagebrush, the water way driven by a determined man.
Meanwhile Lee, under relentless pressure of work, saw less and less of Ruth. She had come a number of times at the beginning of the drive, sometimes with Gretzinger, sometimes with Imogene, to watch the feverish spectacle on the mesa; as had Louise Graham, her father, and at rare intervals Mr. McDonnell. Bryant, on his part, had gone evenings to Sarita Creek when he could spare an hour, and, for that matter, when he could not. But the meetings with her were infrequent, and always left him with a sense of inadequacy, of dissatisfaction, because partly Ruth and he seemed to have no common interests and partly that she now let her affection go for granted. Her talk was not of the subjects usually discussed by an engaged couple—of their coming marriage (though no date had been fixed) and a home and prospective joys together; it dealt wholly with amusements, dances, friends at Kennard. And though her own eyes glistened at the recital, Lee's lost their light and his speech was quenched. For his was the rôle of an outsider.
Certain friendships that she maintained, moreover, were exceedingly distasteful to him.
"Ruth, I've nothing against your going around so much with Gretzinger," he said one evening, "except that I don't like the fellow and believe he's crooked, and it may, under the circumstances, create gossip."
"Nonsense, Lee, don't be jealous. Gretzie never takes me anywhere except in a crowd. And don't say he's crooked, or I shall be angry."
"Well, let him pass," he went on. "It's Charlie Menocal I've more in mind. He talks openly against my project; he calls me a thief and a ruffian; he's an avowed enemy. Yet you run around with him as if that were of no importance, as if it made no difference. The scoundrel no doubt counts it a brilliant bit of smartness to carry about in his car the fiancée of the man he hates, and brags of it. It reflects on us both, Ruth. I ask you to consider my feelings at least that far."
She regarded him speculatively for a time. Then the touch of obstinacy hardened her chin and pushed up her under lip the barest trifle. But there was no resentment in her voice when she answered and, indeed, her tone was too casual.
"Oh, nobody pays any particular attention to what Charlie says," she remarked. "You surely don't really believe what you've just stated about his bragging? I don't. Of course, he hasn't brains like Mr. Gretzinger, but he's gentlemanly. And he's very kind. And so is Mr. Menocal, his father. I've eaten dinner with a party of young folks at their house twice. Your ideas of them are altogether wrong, for they've been at pains to tell me that a business difference like that with you shouldn't affect personal relations. I think the same. But that isn't all. You never take me anywhere, you won't go to the parties and shows and things. Am I to sit here every day and every night at Sarita Creek until your canal is built?" By nowher words were not only casual but carried a trace of disdainfulness.
"No, Ruth," said he. "I want you to have a good time and derive every pleasure that you rightly can. My greatest regret is that I can't take you and share the fun. But it goes without saying that I can't. Only, Charlie Menocal——"
"Lee, what's got into you to-night? If it were not for Mr. Gretzinger's and Charlie's thoughtfulness, I'd have died of lonesomeness long before this. You know how I hate this life, this homestead business. You know I'm only waiting until you've finished and we can be married and go away where there is something worth while. Now be reasonable. You work too hard, so that every little speck looks like a mountain. And it's making you narrow, too, or will if you don't watch out. I have to kill time somehow till we can be married and so you ought not to find fault with my doing it. Run along over and talk to Imo in her cabin now, Lee; that's a good boy. I didn't get back home from town last night until after midnight, and I'm sleepy."
He did not go to Imo's cabin, but to camp instead. For the bitterness of his disappointment at his failure to move her made him desire the darkness and solitude of the ride home. With her, it seemed, he was in a worse predicament than he had been when faced with the problem of his ditch; for that he had found an answer, found something to take hold of. But she was not like the mesa, to be mastered by sheer will and incessant labour. Character is intangible, and he found himself balked. One cannot lay hands on thedesires in a heart and pluck them out, or on the spirit and twist it straight.
His bitterness became acute when some time later Charlie Menocal came driving with Ruth along the rutted trail by the canal to where he stood inspecting a new drop.
"You wait, Charlie; I'll not be long," she said, as she alighted. "Come with me out of earshot, will you, Lee?"
They moved to a spot that satisfied her.
"I heard you were doing this and I asked Charlie to bring me here," she began. "I wanted to see for myself. And it's true. You're going ahead and make these things out of concrete. I'm indignant, I'm hurt. After you led me to rely——"
Bryant stopped her sharply.
"No, Ruth, not that. I'm sorry that you gained the impression I should use wood instead of concrete; and it never was in my mind to do so, to use wood. My decision was fully made when you raised the matter in the hotel parlour at Kennard, and I explained my reasons for the decision. I didn't tell you bluntly, perhaps. I waited, trusting that you would come round to my way of thinking and realize that I could only follow my own best judgment."
"I haven't changed my mind not one particle," she exclaimed, vehemently.
"But, Ruth——"
"I think you're throwing away good money, deliberately. That is, if you really ever make any money on your project. You may lose everything."
"I may not, also. But if I should, the father of the fellow sitting in the car yonder waiting for you would beresponsible. As for these drops, Ruth, Gretzinger was wrong and I was right, and so they're being built of concrete. Now please forget all about it."
"And that you refused my request, I suppose."
"Yes."
"Well, I can't do that; it's too much to ask." An angry gleam shot from her eyes. "You might have thought more of me and less of yourself. You put your old canal first and me second." With which she swung about and marched off to the car, and it went away, rocking and lurching down the uneven trail.
Lee stood looking after it. Her last words brought up the memory of the occasion when she had playfully uttered the like, one night in August, with the added inquiry, "What if you had to choose between us?" Were things drifting to such an issue? Would she at last force upon him that hard choice? He flung up a hand in a gesture of despair. Some metamorphosis had occurred in her; she was not the simple and loving Ruth to whom he had offered himself that day they picked berries in the cañon. Or was it that only now her real self was revealed? Was it that she was capable of loving only selfishly? Did she love him at all?
The questions bit like acid into his heart. And a new one, that startled and dismayed his soul: Did he love her? Yes—the Ruth she yet was. But he could never love the woman she seemed on the way to become, breathing an exciting and unhealthy atmosphere, seeking purely personal gain, indifferent to worthy objects, selfish, hard, mercenary, worldly. No, that kind of Ruth would kill love.
He still stood there when Morgan, who had been on an errand to headquarters, came galloping back on his way to the dam.
"Accident down below," he said. "Man hurt in the mixer. Arm crushed."
Bryant jerked his head about to look at the drop two hundred yards farther down the ridge. He saw the workmen grouped together. The huge cylindrical machine was motionless.
"I'll see," he exclaimed, hurrying to his runabout.
He drove recklessly to where the injured man lay, helped lift him into the car, and bidding the foreman stand on the running board and support the unconscious labourer, set off for headquarters at such speed as was possible. Into the low shack used for hospital purposes the two carried their charge, and as the doctor was absent Bryant began a search to find him. He ran down the camp street shouting the doctor's name and along the ditch where the teams moved, until he encountered Carrigan.
"Doc ain't here. Who's hurt?" Pat asked. For a call for the doctor could mean but one thing.
Bryant described the nature of the accident and both men hastened back to the hospital. The door was now closed. Before it, stood the foreman of the concrete gang, who was narrating for the benefit of a group of cooks and freighters details of the mishap.
Bryant turned the knob, but the door was locked.
"He stationed me here to keep men out," the foreman said.
"Then he's in there."
"Yes, came a-running. Was loafing out there in the brush and having a smoke. Said he was going to operate at once, then locked the door."
"Not alone!" Lee exclaimed.
"No, he has help. One of the engineers from the office, who had come trotting over to see what was wrong, and a girl."
"A girl! What girl?"
The foreman shook his head.
"Don't know who she is. She came riding in from the south. When she saw us hustling round, she asked what had happened and jumped off her horse and inquired of the Doc whether she could be of any help. He looked at her, then said yes. She's in there now. One of the men is caring for her horse."
"A bay horse?"
"Yes. And a pretty girl, too. I'd almost lose an arm to have a good-looker like her hovering over me."
"All right, Jenks. You can go back now. Get another man for your crew from Morgan. I'll obtain this fellow's name and his address, if he has any, from the time-keeper, in case he passes in his checks."
The foreman started away. The group before the door disintegrated and presently disappeared. Pat glanced at the sun, lighted a cigar, and asked:
"Do we start a night shift?"
"Yes; whenever you can bring in the men."
"Then I'll wire for some right away. The thermometer was five below this morning, and only twenty-two above this noon. She's cold at last."
"Go to it, Pat. I'll stay here till Doc is through."
When Carrigan had left him, Bryant sat down on a discarded oil tin lying on the ground—one of the square ten-gallon cans common about camps. He gazed at the door of the hospital shack. He could hear faint sounds from within, a footfall on the board floor, an indistinct word or murmur. Behind him and farther down the street, in the big cook tents where the crews ate, was the rattle of pans and an occasional oath or burst of laughter. There the cooks were peeling potatoes and mixing great pans of biscuit dough and exchanging jests, while here in the shack a fight was going on for a life.
Bryant saw again that unshaven, heavy-faced workman, with the terribly mangled arm, whom he had brought hither. Poor devil! Some oversight, some carelessness, some mistake on the part of himself or another; and if not a dead man, then one-armed for the rest of his days. He, Bryant, could not consider these accidents with Pat Carrigan's philosophic calm—a calm acquired from decades of camp tragedies and disasters. They harrowed his spirit. Though they appeared inevitable where men delved or builded or flung forth great spans, they made the cost of constructive works seem too great. They took the glamor from projects and left them hard, grim, uninspiring tasks.
Lee felt a weariness like that of age. The strain under which he laboured, the sustained effort of driving this furrow through earth that was like iron, his unavailing endeavours to reclaim Ruth, afflictions such as this of the past hour, the uncertainty of everything—all sapped his energy andshook his faith. Yet before him there were weeks of the same, or worse. He had put his hand to the plow; he could not turn back.
All at once the door of the shack opened. Louise Graham came out, without hat, garbed in a great white surgical apron. Her knees seemed about to give way. Her eyes were half shut. Her face was without colour, drawn, dazed. With her from the interior came a reek of chloroform.
She had been the girl in there! Bryant had guessed it, feared it. He ran forward and put an arm about her shoulders and led her to the tin oil canister on which he urged her to be seated.
"No, I won't faint," she said, weakly. He knelt beside her and supported her form. "I just feel dizzy and a little sick," she went on. "Better in a moment." Lee observed her shudder. Presently she murmured, "Stuck it out, anyway. Dad says—dad says, 'Never be a quitter.' And I wasn't one."