Rymer, a sandy-haired, blue-eyed young fellow, one of Bryant's staff, walked out of the shack, pulling on his coat. He had a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, at which he was sucking rapidly. In spite of its dark lacquer of tan his face had a grayish tinge.
"Sick?" he asked of Bryant, jerking a nod toward Louise Graham.
"A bit. Have Doc give you a little brandy in a glass. And bring out her things, too."
Rymer went back into the shack, presently returning with the liquor and accompanied by the young doctor, who still had his sleeves rolled up. Louise swallowed the fiery dram.
"That—that would raise the dead!" she gasped, wiping sudden tears from her eyes. She sat up, pushed back the hair from her brow, and began to glance about.
"How's your man?" Bryant asked the doctor.
"Right as a trivet—if no complications set in. Have him stowed on a cot in the inner room. Bring on your next."
"You ought to be the next," said Lee, darkly.
"Because I grabbed her? Well, I'll use her another time if she's about. Steady as a pin. No wasted motion, either. Passed me instruments and things like a veteran nurse. I just gave a nod or glance and she had the righttray. I wanted to pat her on the shoulder. Can't give people that thing; it's a born knack. Knowing exactly what's wanted at the instant. She has it, has it to the tips of her fingers."
Lee said no more. The young doctor was still labouring under the excitement of the past hour and swimming in exultation at performing an operation that would have taxed the skill of an experienced surgeon. It had been one of those wicked cases—arm crushed to the shoulder, everything gone into a hodge-podge of flesh and arteries and splintered bone, a case for fast work and at the same time for delicate closure of the stump. This had been thrust at Higginson like a flash, he out of a medical school but a year and a half, still coaxing a moustache, so to speak. Lee perceived it all. The matter for Higginson had been like the ditch with Bryant: something tremendous, something to be met with the means at hand, something to be accomplished at all costs. And now his brain was ringing with triumph. He was superior to anything Bryant might think or say or do. For the moment he was quite ecstatic. One in his exalted state could conceive nothing unmeet in having haled a strange, sensitive girl into the ghastly business for an assistant.
"I'll conduct Miss Graham to my office, where she can remain until she's wholly herself," Bryant said. "This air is too sharp. You have everything, Rymer—cap, coat, gauntlets? Bring them along."
"But I'm feeling better now," Louise protested.
"You're not yet fit to start home. Over there it's warm and quiet." He rose to help her remove the great apron.
In the shack at the head of the street where he led her, he made her comfortable in an old arm-chair from his ranch house with a Navajo rug over her lap. As he stirred up the fire, she gazed about at the room. In one corner was a desk knocked together of boards, littered with papers; near it on the floor were boxes stuffed with rolls of blue-prints; the wall spaces between windows were filled with statements and reports; bulging card-board files rested on a shelf; from nails hung an old coat and a camera; in another corner leaned a tripod, rod, and a six-foot brass-edged measure specked with clay; and piled in a heap beyond the stove were a saddle, a pair of boots, chunks of piñon pine, and a discarded flannel shirt on which lay a gray cat nursing a kitten. Through the inner door, standing open, she had a glimpse of two cots with tumbled blankets. The place was the office and temporary home of a busy man, a rough board-and-tar-paper habitation that went forward on skids as the camp went forward, the workshop and living-quarters of a director who was stripped down to the hard essentials of toil and whose brain was the nerve centre of a desperate effort by a host of horses and men.
"You have companions, I see," Louise remarked, indicating the mother cat and kitten.
"Dave's," was his reply, as he finished at the stove. "He found them somewhere. There were four kittens to begin with, but only one is left. It's a hard game for cats to survive in a camp like this."
"Poor little things!"
"Dave says he'll save this kitten, or know why."
"What about Dave himself with all these rough men?"
"It leaves him untouched," Lee said. "Doesn't hurt a boy when he's made of the right stuff. He'll be better for it, in fact. Many a grown man would be more competent with the knowledge Dave's picking up here, young as he is. He's learning what work means and what men are and what's what generally. When this job is done, I'm going to send him off to school; and he'll eat up his studies. Just watch and see." Bryant laughed. "He's aching to become an engineer. He has his mark already fixed, which not one boy in a thousand at his age has. And all this is priming him to go to his mark like a shot."
"I hadn't thought of that," she stated.
"Actually he's soaking up more arithmetic, geology, physics, veterinary knowledge, and so on, by pumping Pat Carrigan, the engineers, and the men, than I supposed his head could hold," Lee continued. "When he gets at his books, they won't be meaningless things to him. Not much! He'll understand what prompted them and what they open up. Well, now, are you feeling better?"
"Yes, I think so." Then she said, "But I'm keeping you away from your work. You go, and when I'm—"
"Wouldn't think of it. Nothing pressing." And Bryant began to move about thoughtfully, now going to gaze out a window and now returning to stand and fix his eyes upon her intently.
"That was a distressing experience for you," he went on, presently. "I feel all upset at your being in there. Higginson was desperate, I suppose, and grasped at you because you happened to be there and he could not wait."
She put out a hand toward Lee.
"Don't scold him please," she said.
"Little good it would do now," he replied. "He'll be so cocky that he'll dare me to fire him if I say a word, and grin in my face, for he knows now that he's a good man and that I know it and will never let him go."
"Higginson, is that his name?" Louise asked. "Well, he is a good man. When he started the engineer using the chloroform and me arranging things, he was swallowing hard. I saw he was terribly nervous and keyed up. But he went right at the operation without faltering and with a sort of doggedness. As if nothing should stop him. I myself was doing rather mistily what he wanted. The chloroform, the smell of antiseptics, the shiny instruments, the cutting, the nipping of blood-vessels with forceps and tying them, the clipping with scissors, the sewing—all went to my head. And I constantly had to tell myself, 'Don't be silly! You're not going to faint. He might fail if you did. That tray, those forceps, those sponges, that thread, that's what he wants now. Keep your head. Don't be a quitter.' And so on through eternity—it seemed an eternity, anyway. I think the young engineer with me thought so, too. He turned quite green once or twice. But then I must have looked that way throughout. All at once it was over, suddenly. Quite unexpectedly, too. I had come to believe that it would go on and on forever. But, as I say, all at once it was done and the men were wheeling the bandaged fellow into the other room. Then the doctor called over his shoulder at me, 'Open the door, girl; let in some air.' So I opened it as he wanted, and came out."
Bryant was greatly affected by that simple recital. Hebegan to walk back and forth beside Louise, restlessly thrusting his hands in his coat pockets but immediately pulling them out as if there were no satisfaction in the action, and casting troubled glances at her from under close-drawn brows. His disquietude moved her to speak.
"You're worrying about me, Mr. Bryant; you mustn't do that. In a few minutes more I'll be entirely recovered. I should be foolish to pretend that the happening wasn't a shock to me, but I'm not a weakling—I've health and strength. I'll not permit the thought of the operation to depress my spirits. Indeed, I know I'll be very proud of what I did this afternoon, for it was a chance to do a real, disinterested service. And I can guess what father will say when he learns of it—'Louise, you did just right. Exactly what you should do under the circumstances.'"
Already the colour had reappeared in her cheeks. A resilience of nature was indeed hers, he perceived, that enabled her to undergo ordeals that would prostrate many women. It came, undoubtedly, from the same springs out of which rose her splendid courage, her fine sympathy. Ah, that golden quality of sympathy! Because of it her duty that day had seemed plain and clear.
"Louise—may I not use that name, for we're friends?—Louise, you're the bravest, kindest girl I have ever known. I mean it, really. I've never forgotten your generous act that day when someone so brutally killed my dog Mike, how you tried to save him. I didn't know you then, but that made no difference to you. And now when you find an opportunity to help save a man's life, you never flinch."
"Why, it's the natural thing to do."
"Is it? I was beginning to think selfishness was the natural thing," he said, with a hard, twisted smile.
She rested her hand on his sleeve for an instant. A smile and a shake of her head accompanied the action.
"I know better than that, Lee Bryant," she rejoined. "You're not selfish yourself and will never arrive at a time when you'll believe what you said."
"But there are selfish people, many of them."
"Yes. Of course."
"And one can't change them, and they cause infinite anxiety in others——"
"Yes; that, too. Has Mr. Menocal been troubling you in some new way?"
Lee rose hastily. "I wasn't thinking of him," said he; and he went to a window and stared out at the engineers' shack across the street. Her touch on his arm, her tone, her solicitude, agitated him more than he dared let her see. Why in the name of heaven couldn't he have a Ruth who was like her? A Ruth who was a Louise, with all of her lovable qualities and splendid courage and fine nobility of heart?
He swung about to gaze at her. She yet sat half turned in her seat so that her clear profile was before his eyes. Her soft chestnut hair glinted with gleams of the fire that escaped through a crack in the door. Her features were in repose. Something in her attitude, in her face, gave her a girlish appearance, as she might have looked when sixteen—an infinite candor, an innocence and simplicity, that alone comes from a serene spirit.
Presently he discovered that she had moved her headabout, that she was looking straight at him. Bryant experienced a singular emotion.
"Some serious trouble is disturbing you," she said.
Her eyes continued fixed upon his, increasing his uneasiness. He felt himself flushing. He made a gesture as if whatever it was might be disregarded, then said, "Yes."
"You're not still anxious concerning me? I'm rested—see!"
She sprang up, casting off the rug and spreading her arms wide for his scrutiny. The heat of the fire had put the glow into her cheeks again; a smile rested on her lips; she seemed poised for an upward flight.
"I'll take you home," he said, abruptly.
"Oh, no. I can ride——"
"One of the boys will bring your horse to you in the morning," he continued, as if she had not spoken. "It would be dark before you reached home; dusk is already at the windows. And you would be chilled through. You've no business to be riding after what you've been through. I'll bring my car to the door while you're putting on your things."
A vague fear sent him out of the door quickly. Ruth in his mind was like a figure projected far off in the landscape, occupied, distant, facing away; but Louise Graham was by, and despite his wish or will, or her knowledge, drawing his heart. What he had sought in Ruth was in her possession, the possibility of happiness. Life had deluded him and seemed about to crush him in a savage clutch. As he moved along the street, this apprehension lay cold in his breast; he could not dismiss it; it persisted like a dull throb of pain.A sudden fury swept him. The place was becoming intolerable, the mesa a hell. He burned to chuck the whole wretched business.
When he returned with the car he was at least outwardly calm. He helped Louise into the seat.
"I'll have you home in no time," said he.
"And you must stay for supper."
"Yes; why not. Might as well."
"And we'll pick up the girls; all of us can crowd in here somewhere."
The slightest pause followed before his answer.
"Certainly," he said. "We can all ride."
Imogene's cabin, however, was the only one showing a light when they stopped before the pair of little houses, and only Imogene was at home. She was delighted to go with Lee and Louise. Ruth had driven with Charlie Menocal to Kennard earlier in the afternoon, she briefly stated. Then she remarked:
"Aren't you dissipating frightfully to-night, Lee?"
"Like a regular devil," was the response.
Imogene had been startled by a note in Lee's answer to her bantering question that she never before had heard him use. Though his words were uttered lightly, there nevertheless was a hard ring to them, a grate, as if his teeth were on edge. Something had happened. Ruth had driven during the afternoon to see him and returned exceedingly put out. If anything had occurred, Imogene hoped it was—well, one certain thing.
When Bryant brought her home that evening, he went with her into her cabin. In silence he built up the fire, fussed for a time with the lamp-wick, lighted a cigarette, took a turn across the cabin, inspected thoughtfully the back of one hand, and then lifted his gaze to Imogene. She had been waiting, with a vague alarm. And this his stern visage and burning eyes increased.
"Will Ruth marry me at once, do you think?" he questioned. "To-morrow—or the next day?" His tone was calm. He might have been speaking of the cabin, asking if it kept out the wind.
Imogene was dumbfounded by that voice and that inquiry. She had expected anything but either.
"Not then; not so soon, I suspect," she said, at length.
"When? At the end of a week, the end of a fortnight?"
"I can't say," she replied with a sensation now of beingharried. This would not do; she must get herself in hand. "The fact is, Lee, I'm not in Ruth's confidence. Haven't been for some considerable time. We've drifted a little apart."
"Only a little?"
"Only a little—I hope."
The cigarette Bryant held had gone out. Presently he glanced at it, then crushed it in his palm and dropped it into a coat pocket.
"Don't fence with me, Imogene," he said. "Give me the truth."
The truth—well, why not? He was entitled to it. Besides, since he had eyes and a brain with which to reason he was not ignorant of the girls' waning friendship. Pretense was foolish. Imogene leaned forward in her seat and rested her crossed arms upon her knees, directing her look at the floor. Her fluffy golden hair had been slightly disarranged when she removed her hat and so remained. Her face was thinner than in the summer, with a pinched aspect about her lips.
"The situation is this," she began, slowly. "Ruth and I are not really on good terms and we've been perilously near a break several times. But I've restrained my temper and my tongue to avoid one, because I feel I must remain as long as she does. No, I can't leave her here alone—that would be brutal. And ruinous for her, too. I've thought it all out pretty carefully. You see, we both agreed to stay when we came, until we agreed to go or had proved up on our claims. Probably I don't make myself very clear to you. I think now that I made a mistake and that neither of us ought ever to have attempted homesteading. So muchhas happened that is different from what I anticipated. Not the existence itself; I don't mean that. Other things. Ruth's change, chiefly. See, Lee, I speak frankly, for we've usually been frank toward each other. You two are engaged, but"—she straightened up in order to meet his eyes—"she's treating you abominably and shamelessly. Ordinarily, I would hold my peace, I've held it hitherto, but I can no longer. Why, I choke sometimes! Going constantly with Gretzinger, who's so despicable that he tries to use her as a tool to reach and corrupt you, or Charlie Menocal, who's your out-and-out enemy, it's too much for me, Lee. And uncle and aunt are furious with me for staying. She listen to me? Ruth listens neither to me nor any one." She rose and came close to Bryant. "You're right to marry her immediately. If you two love each other, that is." Her look was penetrating, questioning. "For she needs a restraining influence. People in Kennard are talking——"
"My God!" Bryant cried, hoarsely. "No, no; not Ruth! She couldn't do anything wrong!"
"No, there's nothing bad. But she has given grounds for gossip, she and some other girls. She sees too much of this Gretzinger and Charlie Menocal and men like them; and the time may come when I'll tremble. I've begged her to be discreet and considerate of your good opinion and love, but she always declares that she's acting eminently proper. Lee."
"Yes."
"There's something more. Gretzinger's not only finding amusement in her company, he's in love with her. After the women he's been accustomed to in New York, the rougedand jaded type he naturally would know, her freshness and spirits appeal to him. But you know what sort of man he is—cynical, unscrupulous, without principles."
A long time passed before Bryant made a response. He stood knitting his brows, as if preoccupied. Imogene wondered if he had been following her at the last.
"I'll speak to him about his principles in connection with Ruth," he said. The utterance was amazingly dispassionate. Then quite unexpectedly he remarked, "I've never yet had to kill a man, never as yet."
Imogene shuddered, and she was terrified. It was as if a curtain had been jerked aside disclosing figures grouped for tragedy.
"It must never come to that," she breathed.
Bryant stirred, then began to look about the room. He grew observant.
"This is bad for you, Imogene," he said, presently. "Impossible! Your uncle is right. This wretched cabin doesn't keep out cold or wind; you have to chop wood and carry water, tasks beyond your strength; you're lonely, you're ill at times—"
"And Ruth?"
"Well?"
"You know her situation. Financial, I mean."
"I less than any one know it. Extraordinary, too, now that I think of it," he said, reflectively. "What is her situation?" Immediately he added, "Of course, I guess that she has no great means and she has said that she lacks training to earn a livelihood. But her family?"
"She lived with an aunt until she came here, Lee."
"So she mentioned."
"They didn't get on well together after Ruth went to stay with her on her parents' death," Imogene explained. "The woman was narrow-minded and exacting, especially in matters of amusements and religion. You know the type." Bryant nodded. "And Ruth was young, exuberant, and, as I now see, wilful. Their clashes were the cause of her desire to come West. We had been good friends, but not intimates; and I marvel at myself now at having gone so rashly into a thing like this, without inquiring whether our habits, tastes, desires, natures, everything, fitted us for prolonged companionship. Yes, I marvel." She sat motionless, staring at the lamp fixedly. "However, I'm in it now up to my neck. Ruth declares that she will never return to her aunt."
"And she can't earn a living."
"Nor would if she could, I fear," Imogene added, a little sadly. "At least, now. It would be too dull."
"Then I must marry her at once."
Imogene gave him a strange look.
"She is waiting," said she.
"For marriage?"
"No, to see how you succeed. Oh, to have to say these things is dreadful, Lee!" she exclaimed. But Bryant brushed this aside with a gesture almost august in its indifference. "If you finish your project on time, she will be ready for the ceremony," the girl went on. "If you fail, she'll postpone it until you're able to provide more than just a roof, a chair, and a broom. Her very words! Love must not prevent people from being practical, from herviewpoint. So, as I say, she's waiting to discover the outcome." A corner of her mouth twisted up while she paused. Then she concluded in a low voice, "And probably something else."
Bryant had again fallen into study. Imogene doubted if he had heard her added remark, and she could not divine from his countenance how fierce or in what direction his covered passion was beating.
"It will be too late," said he, suddenly and, as it seemed to her, irrelevantly.
Then she thought that she understood.
"He's going home in a few days, for the Christmas holidays," she stated. "Possibly then Ruth will—I'm planning for us all to be at uncle's, you with us."
"Gretzinger wasn't in my mind."
"You said 'too late'," she pursued. "Naturally I supposed your reference to be of them."
The gravity of his face deepened.
"I was thinking of myself," said he, turning his eyes upon her. "If we're not married soon, very soon, it will be too late. I mean that it would be a mockery. For me, at any rate. One may wish to go one way, and be swept another, especially when the mooring line is slack." His breast rose and fell at a quick, agitated breath. "But promise me that you'll not speak of this to Ruth."
"The very thing to bring her round, perhaps."
"More likely to fill her with despair."
This was something Imogene could not grasp. It was so inexplicable, so extravagant, so perverse, that her cheeks grew hot.
"I can't follow you at all," she cried, indignantly. "Ruth alarmed, jealous, in doubt—yes, I can credit her with any one of those feelings. But despair! She lays her plans too far ahead to be led into despair."
"Even if she knew I had ceased to love her? When she understood our marriage would be a hollow ceremony?"
"Would it be that if you succeed with your project?"
Bryant's eyes blazed suddenly.
"Great God, you talk as if she were to marry the canal!" he exclaimed. He glowered for a time. "I see now what you mean. You believe she would marry me if I win out with the ditch. Being practical, she would accept money as a substitute for love. That reminds me: she herself once declared that if circumstances necessitated she could take a rich man for his riches." Bryant uttered a harsh laugh. "My Lord, I was frightened lest in a fit of anguish at losing my love she should go to the devil!" Again he yielded to an outburst of laughter that made Imogene shudder. "I fancied that at finding herself out of money, unable to work, disinclined to work, unloved, miserable, she would recklessly hurl herself into perdition. And I was going to save her from that, marry her at once, sacrifice myself! Like an egotistical fool! When all the while there was never the slightest danger or need, when all the while she held the string, not I. And love isn't a consideration whatever. And she will marry me when I've completed the project. And complete it I must, of course. Not a way out, not a single loop-hole. Oh, my Lord, my Lord, Imogene, did you ever know of anything so devilishly laughable!" And his bitter, sardonic merriment broke forth anew.
The girl was appalled. All she could do was to gasp, "Oh, Lee, Lee! Don't laugh like that, don't think of it like that. You make it out worse than it is."
He stopped short. By his look he might have detested her.
"I state it as it is," he said. "Wherein is the actual situation better?"
"You could break your engagement; certainly she has given you sufficient cause."
"Yes, break with her, as might you. Why don't you?"
Imogene put out a hand in protest.
"You know why, Lee; I've told you," she said, earnestly.
"No more can I, for the same reason," was his reply. He turned and lifted his hat and gloves from the table. "I will have no act of mine cut her adrift and push her under. Much better to stand the gaff. I suppose one hardens to anything in time." His look wandered about the room. "And the diabolic part of it all is that this squeamish feeling of responsibility for another may achieve as much harm in the long run as its lack. Who knows?"
He glanced at her as if expecting an answer. Imogene remained silent; indeed, nothing need be said to so evident an enigma. For that matter, nothing more said at all. Bryant drew on his gloves and bade her good-night. At the door he remarked, quite in his accustomed manner:
"I'll send Dave over in the morning with more blankets and have him chop some wood. There's a drop in the temperature coming."
The predicted cold weather came, bringing winter in earnest. The frost went deeper into the ground and construction grew slower, but the days continued fine and without gales, those fierce and implacable winds that sometimes rage over the frozen mesa hours at a time under a dull, saffron sun, sharp as knives, shrieking like demons, and driving man and beast to cover. They had not yet been unleashed.
Night work was begun, amid a flare of gasolene torches that gave a weird aspect to the plain. The yellow lights; the moving, shadowy forms of the workmen and horses; the cries and shouts—all made a scene gnome-like in character. Frost gleamed upon the earth in a silvery sheen under the torches' smoky flames. The headquarters building and the mess tents now glowed from dusk until dawn. Fires where workmen could warm their cheeks and hands were burning continually, fed from the great piles of wood brought from the mountains. And so by day and by night, without halt and despite cold, the restless life was maintained and the toil kept going and the hard furrow driven ahead.
With the approach of Christmas the advance of the project was marked. The dam was nearing completion, with its long, gently inclined, upstream face constructed of smooth cobbles—a slope up which any vast and sudden rush of cloudburst water would slide unchecked to the crest and harmlesslypass over. All of the drops, as well as the head-gate and flood weirs, were finished, standing as if hewn out of solid white stone. The miners had blasted out a channel through the reef of rock, and gone. From the dam the canal section all along the hillside and following the ridge, from drop to drop, and out to a point on the mesa a mile beyond, was excavated, a great clean ditch; while from Perro Creek the canal ran northward for six miles to the main camp, curving in the great arc that constituted its line. Three and a half miles, and complements, constructed at one end; six miles at the other. Between, five miles of unbroken mesa. Seven weeks remained for the small camp working down from the north and the great camp pushing from the south to dig through those miles and meet—seven weeks; but in the most bitter season of the year.
It seemed that it was with infinitely greater effort that the two sections of the canals were forced ahead each day. The surface of the ground was like stone, only by repeated attempts pierced by plows and torn apart; while the subsoil immediately froze if left unworked. The weaker labourers began to break: the scrawny Mexicans, the debilitated white men, the drifters and the dissatisfied; and they left the camps. These the labour agencies found it harder and harder to replace as the cold weather persisted, so that the force showed a considerable diminishment.
A few days before Christmas Gretzinger paid Bryant a visit. He had not been to camp for a week and therefore on this occasion examined the progress of work with care, studying the rate of excavation and calculating the result.
"You'll just about make it through, Bryant, if nothinghappens to put a crimp in your advance," he stated when he was about to take his departure from the office, where he and Lee conferred.
"Yes," said Bryant.
"And if anything should happen, then good-bye canal."
"That doesn't necessarily follow," said Lee, calmly.
Gretzinger ignored this reply. He thrust an arm into his fur-lined overcoat and began to draw it on. That evening he was leaving Kennard for New York, and now was desirous of returning to town by noon, where he had a luncheon engagement with Ruth Gardner. He had casually mentioned to Bryant that the girls had gone the day before to the McDonnells for the holidays.
"My people were certainly handed a phony deal here," he remarked shortly, as he buttoned the coat collar about his throat. "Questionable title to the water! Extravagance and poor management! Rotten project all through! If I had lined this thing up, I should have learned what I actually had before a cent was expended. But of course if the thing goes smash, we in the East have to stand the loss; you're losing no cash, you have nothing in it but a shoestring. Well, I'm expecting you to put your back into the job and do no loafing and pull us out of the hole you've got us into."
Bryant's face remained impassive.
"I'll attend to my end," said he, "if the bondholders take care of theirs. They'll have to dig up more cash."
"What's that!"
"More money, I said."
"They'll see you in hell before they do."
"Then that's where they'll look for payment of their bonds. You're not fool enough, are you, to imagine a system can be built in winter and under high pressure for what it could be constructed in summer and not in haste? Strange the idea never occurred to you before—you, Gretzinger, irrigation expert, though you never saw an irrigation ditch till you came West. The sixty thousand dollars from bonds and twenty thousand more I've put with it will be gone sometime next month. Possibly I can stretch it out to the first of February. After that, the bondholders will have to come forward to save their investment."
Gretzinger unbuttoned his overcoat and sought his cigarette case. His scowl as he struck a match was lighted by vicious gleams from his eyes.
"Why didn't you stop work when you received notification from the state engineer of the Land and Water Board's action?" he demanded. "When you yet had the bulk of the money?"
"I preferred to continue."
"And now you're sinking it all."
"It costs money to move frozen dirt," said Bryant.
"Well, I tell you the bondholders won't put up another penny unless——" The Easterner paused, growing thoughtful. Some minutes passed before he resumed: "There's one condition on which they'll do it, and I'll guarantee their support."
"And the condition?"
"That you surrender your stock to them."
"For the twenty or twenty-five thousand dollars more that will be needed? My shares representing a hundredthousand? And I presume I should have to withdraw altogether."
"Naturally," Gretzinger responded. "I should then take charge."
Bryant's expression exhibited a certain amount of curiosity.
"Do you really think you could finish the ditch on time?" he inquired.
A slight sneer was the answer. Gretzinger was one not given to wasting time with men of Bryant's type.
"How about it? Am I to take back to New York with me your agreement to this?" he asked, curtly.
The other spread his feet apart and hooked his thumbs in his coat pockets and directed his full regard at the speaker.
"You think you have me in a hole, Gretzinger," he said. "You propose to take me by the throat and shake everything out of my pockets and then throw me aside. Well, I'm in a hole, no use denying that. But you haven't me by the throat and you're not going to loot me. If I go broke, it won't be through handing over what I have to you and your gang of pirates, just make up your mind to that."
"Then you intend to wreck this project. A court action will stop that, I fancy."
"The only court action you can demand is a receivership for the company, and not until my money-bag is empty at that," Lee rejoined, coolly. "And the time will expire and the company be a shell before it's granted, at the rate courts move."
The New Yorker considered. Finally he began to re-button his overcoat.
"I'll leave the offer open," said he. "I was uncertain before about returning, but I'll probably do so now. You'll find as the pinch comes that my proposition will look better—and we might pay you two or three thousand so you'll not go out strapped. Besides, if we took over and completed the project, it would save your face; you wouldn't be wholly discredited; you would be able to get a job somewhere afterward. Might as well make the most you can for yourself out of a bad mess. Think it over, Bryant." He set his cap on his head with a conclusive air.
Lee pointed at a chair by the table.
"Sit down for a moment; there's another matter." He crossed to his desk, put his hand in a drawer for something, and came back. "Look at that," he said, tossing a revolver cartridge on the table before Gretzinger.
The man picked it up and turned it over between thumb and finger, examining it with mingled surprise and curiosity.
"What about it?" he questioned.
"I understand you're interested in a certain young lady," Bryant stated, smoothly.
Gretzinger straightened on his seat, flashing his look up to the other's. A sudden tightening of his lips accompanied the action and he ceased to revolve the cartridge he held.
"I'll not discuss my personal affairs with you or——"
"When they touch mine, you will," was the answer.
"Are you jealous?" Gretzinger asked after a pause, with a trace of insolence. "Believe you are. I thought, along with your other shortcomings, you weren't capable ofeven that. Now that we're talking, I'll say that I've taken Ruth round and found her entertaining. What about it? And I've given her my opinion of the way you've run this work, because she asked for it. I told her that you had botched the business from the beginning. I told her you were unpractical, incompetent, small-gauged, and lightweight, and would make a failure of everything you touched. There you have it all. Well?"
Bryant's brows twitched for an instant.
"I guessed as much." He stood staring in silence at the table, but presently brought himself to attention. "Honour is something you don't understand. So I thought that bullet might focus your mind on possible consequences."
"What's all this rot!"
Lee leaned forward with his fists resting on the table and his eyes probing Gretzinger's.
"If any harm comes to Ruth through you, that bullet will pay it out," he said, harshly. "You've felt its weight. It's forty-four calibre, plenty heavy enough to do the business. I can smash a potato at thirty paces. One shot is all I shall ask. I won't do any hemming and hawing over the matter, or——"
Gretzinger sprang up.
"See here, Bryant!" he cried.
"Or advertising in the newspapers," the other went on, in a level tone. "I'll attend to your case, quickly and quietly. Here, or in New York, or wherever you are. That's all."
Gretzinger had gone a little pale. He was nervously drawing on his cap.
"Listen to me for a moment——"
"I said that's all. Get out." And Bryant's mien brooked no temporizing.
It was of Lee's nature not to brood on such matters. He had given the warning and must await the issue. Meanwhile, the burden of work and the needs of the project would afford sufficient occupation for his mind.
Christmas came. Bryant had ordered that labour cease for twenty-four hours, as the gruelling fight of weeks had worn down the spirit of the men. A holiday would rest them, while a big turkey dinner and unlimited cigars and pails of candy would put them in a good humour. At dark on the afternoon before the day shift at both camps ceased work, the horses were stabled, the torches left unlighted, the fires along the ditch allowed to die down, and the project was idle. A light skift of snow had fallen during the morning, whitening the earth, but the clouds had passed away, so that the still air and clear sky gave promise of a fine morrow.
Christmas Eve, however, did not lapse without a disturbing incident. About supper time Dave came running to Bryant and Pat Carrigan in Lee's shack. He had seen workmen going furtively into a tent in numbers that aroused his curiosity, and had crept unseen under the lee of the canvas shelter, where, lifting the flap, he beheld in the interior a keg on the ground and a Mexican, by light of a candle, serving labourers whisky in tin cups.
"Whisky in camp!" Lee roared. "Come with me, Pat." The two men, guided by Dave, strode down the street. Before the tent indicated they halted to listen. Theshelter glowed dimly; formless shadows stirred on its canvas walls; and from within came low, guarded voices and once a muffled laugh.
Jerking the flaps apart Bryant entered, followed by the contractor. He forced an opening through the group of workmen by a savage sweep of his arms and came to the keg, where the Mexican at the moment was bending down and holding a cup under the spigot. When the man perceived the engineer, he leaped up. The fellow's short, squat figure and stony expression had for Bryant a vague familiarity—that face especially, brown, stolid, brutal, with a fixed, snake-like gaze.
But Lee had no time to speculate on the Mexican's identity. The liquor was the important thing. The man stood motionless, holding in his left hand the half-filled cup that gave off a pungent, sickening smell of whisky; his eyes were intent on the engineer. Behind Lee, Carrigan was already herding the others from the tent.
"Where did you get that stuff?" Bryant demanded. But as the Mexican only shook his head, he changed to Spanish. "Trying to start a big drunk here?"
"To-morrow is a fête day, señor," was the reply. "A friend made me a present; I share it with the others. Besides, in cold weather it keeps one warm."
"How long have you worked here?"
"Three days."
"There's a camp order: 'No liquor allowed in camp.' You can't say that you don't know it, for it's posted everywhere on placards in English and in Spanish."
He received no response. A faint shrug of the shoulders,perhaps. The Mexican's glistening, sinister eyes, on the other hand, continued as rigid as orbs of polished agate, and his face as expressionless.
"Well, we'll lock you up and see if we can learn who your 'friend' is that sent this barrel in," Lee stated.
There was a slight movement of the man's elbow.
"Watch him—his right hand!" Pat cried, sharply.
The hand had darted swiftly to the fellow's hip, but Bryant's fist was as quick. It shot up, catching the man's jaw and hoisting him off his feet. Next instant the engineer had disarmed the prostrate ruffian.
"The Kennard jail for you," said he, in English. "A badhombre, eh! Up with you, quick."
But what followed neither the engineer nor the contractor anticipated. With a lightning-like roll of his body the man vanished under the side of the tent. When the others rushed out in search of him he had made good his escape; and a search through the dark camp would be useless. They therefore emptied the keg upon the ground, extinguished the lamp, and returned to Lee's office. Though the Mexican had got away, they nevertheless had put a foot on the malicious scheme.
All at once Dave, who was walking at Bryant's and Pat's heels up the street, exclaimed:
"I've got that greaser's number now! We saw him once at the depot in Kennard, Lee. He was watching you, remember?"
"I guess you're right; I recall him."
"Bet that old devil in Bartolo put him up to this." Dave asserted.
"Tut, tut, kid! Language like that on Christmas Eve! Charlie might—but not his father, I imagine."
Dave, however, was not altogether to be suppressed.
"Well, I don't put anything past either of them," he sniffed.