Bryant had asked Carrigan to come to the office at two o'clock, stating that the company was insolvent and but enough money remained to square accounts with the contractor. Pat had cast a shrewd glance at Lee and nodded. This was during the morning. Afterward the engineer had gone for a visit to the dam, the drops, and the canal line, a last view of the project as a whole; and the ride was pursued in that peculiar melancholy of spirit which appertains to mortuary events. To him, indeed, the ride marked a burial, a burial of high hopes and ambition, and of his youth, with the partially excavated canal providing their pit and the concrete work standing as a headstone.
He came back to camp somewhat late for his appointment and found Pat waiting in the office, but not alone. Gretzinger stood, back to the stove, smoking a Turkish cigarette.
"Well, Bryant, I've returned to discuss our little business transaction," he greeted. "Judged this to be about the right time. How's the exchequer?"
"Little in it," said Lee, hanging his coat and cap on a hook. "But I made sure it was locked before leaving here; you might come any moment."
"Oh, I don't waste time on an empty box," was the light answer. "Mind if Carrigan hears what we say? Don't, eh?Neither do I. He knows, or ought to know, you're through. And besides, I'll want to discuss construction matters with him when you and I are done."
"Perhaps Bryant can yet secure a loan somewhere," the contractor remarked, mildly.
"From Menocal, possibly," Gretzinger suggested, cocking his eyebrows at Carrigan with mock enthusiasm. "If Bryant could have secured a loan, he would have had it in his pocket before this. I made inquiry of McDonnell when I reached Kennard concerning the company's cash account and discovered that it looked awful sick. No, he can't get money for the company except through me."
"I see," said Pat.
Gretzinger turned to Bryant.
"Now, Lee, let's get down to brass tacks. You're played out as manager and engineer-in-chief, so it's time for you to step out and give the men who are able a chance to complete the work. I made you one offer; I'm prepared to-day to make even a better one. The bondholders went thoroughly into the subject with me of what they could afford to pay you for your stock and a decision was finally reached to give you ten thousand dollars for your interest in the company. Considering everything, that's exceedingly liberal. I'm authorized to draw a check for that amount to your order when you've assigned the shares."
"Not enough," Lee replied. He sat down at his desk, lifted his feet to a window ledge, and held a match to his pipe.
"That's the limit."
"It's not enough; I need more."
"What you need and what you'll take are two different things," the other stated, sarcastically.
"Go higher," Lee said, with his gaze upon the window.
"Not a cent!"
"I owe McDonnell twenty thousand that has gone into the canal. I've put in my ranch, and land I traded for it, and months of work and organization—value twenty thousand; and I figure my present control of things worth twenty thousand more. But let us say fifty thousand. I'll sell for fifty thousand; that gives you my stock at fifty cents on the dollar. Exceedingly liberal, I call it."
The look the other directed at him was heavy with contempt.
"Ten thousand is all—and make up your mind to that," said he. Then he faced round toward Carrigan, whom he addressed. "I want you to increase the force to double its strength at once, so that the work—"
"What are you paying a yard for moving dirt?"
"The same as before."
"Not to me," Pat responded, complacently.
"What do you mean?" Gretzinger demanded, angrily.
"It's not enough."
"Not enough! You seem to imagine your contract doesn't bind you."
Pat slowly uncrossed his knees and stared at the speaker with a countenance of bewilderment.
"Now what in the world is the man talking about! Contract? The only contract I had with Bryant was an oral agreement to build the dam and move dirt at a certain day rate per man and per team, terminable at his option. Oh,you mean the first contract to construct the ditch in a year! We tore that up after he got notice from the Land and Water Board."
"Well, we'll continue the oral arrangement."
"Not any more," said Pat.
Gretzinger inspected the coal of his cigarette, replaced the latter between his lips, and glanced at Bryant. But the engineer was maintaining his consideration of objects on the outside of the window.
"So you're trying to hold me up," was Gretzinger's remark.
"You're slicing the fat off Bryant, and therefore I'll trim a bit off you," Carrigan replied. "You're not the only one who can work a knife. Once I used to sit back and let others keep all the easy money, but I don't any more, not any more." With considerable relish he rolled the words upon his tongue and nodded at Gretzinger.
The latter scowled.
"How much do you want?" he demanded.
Pat spat, then remained pursing his lips while he engaged in calculation. Once he shook his head and muttered, "Not enough," and again after a time repeated the words. The man by the stove glared at the seated contractor during the prolonged period of study as if he hoped his look would consume him.
"How much?" he questioned a second time, impatiently.
Pat looked up at Gretzinger from under his bushy eyebrows with a steely glint showing. The lines of his weather-beaten face had hardened.
"I don't like you," he stated. "I don't like you at all.When I work for people I don't like, it costs them money. I like you less and less all the time. If I go ahead and finish the ditch, I'll be liking you so little that I'll be hating myself. And when I don't like any one that much, I don't do it cheap. The job will cost you one hundred thousand dollars."
"You—you——" Gretzinger choked.
"Cash down before I move a wheel," Pat added, calmly.
The other was white with rage. He cast his cigarette upon the floor and ground it under his heel. His lips worked and twisted in a vicious snarl. Carrigan observed him unmoved; and Bryant had turned his head about to see.
"You grafters, you infernal thieves, you pair of rotten crooks!" he shouted, shooting murderous glances from one to the other. "You've 'framed' me! Arranged it between you. Been waiting for me to come back so you could spring your game! If there's any law in this state, I'll have you both where you belong for deliberately wrecking this company—in a cell!"
His raving outburst continued for a while in this strain. His voice had the high and squealing pitch of a wild pig caught fast by a foot; on his pink, fleshy face, now distended with anger, was a look, too, of porcine hate and fury. The cynical and patronizing manner he usually affected had dropped off, leaving revealed his actual coarse, spiteful, greedy, craven spirit—a creature of infinite meanness. At length, however, Gretzinger's torrent of abuse diminished until it ended in a last muddy dripping of threats and curses. With an effort he strove to pull himself togetherand assume a composure his eyes belied, while he lighted another of his offensive Turkish cigarettes.
After a time he said shortly:
"You can't bluff me. When you fellows get down to my figures, then we'll do business."
"Look out! Your coat is scorching—or is it only that tobacco?" Bryant rejoined.
Gretzinger stepped hastily aside and felt behind him, where his hand moved about on the hot cloth fabric with searching movements. The solicitude for his garment thus quickened seemed to effect the final dispersion of his inward heat.
"Well, are we going to get together on an arrangement?" he questioned, when assured his coat was uninjured.
"I stated my terms—fifty thousand," Lee said. "That or nothing."
"You won't get it."
"Then there's the alternative of the bondholders putting up money enough to finish the work."
"That, neither."
"All right, Gretzinger," Bryant stated, rising. "You have an idea that I'll give in——"
"Yes, I have. You'll grab this ten thousand I offer, grab it quick by to-morrow night, which is the limit I set for it to remain open. I've seen men before in a tight hole who swore they wouldn't take the terms handed them, but they always did in the end, and so will you. Only a fool wouldn't. And I fancy Carrigan won't sacrifice a good piece of work in a dull season and pull off his men and teams."
Pat hoisted himself off his seat stiffly.
"Why don't your outfit sell instead of trying to buy?" he asked, crossing to Lee's desk and obtaining a can of tobacco sitting there. "I suppose they'll sell." He began to stuff his pipe, pressing the tobacco into the bowl with a brown forefinger.
"Certainly; they would unload what they have in this rotten project so fast that the bonds would smoke. But who in the devil would touch them?"
"I might."
"You?" Gretzinger began to laugh. "What have you besides your outfit? They're not taking worn-out fresnos in exchange to-day, thank you."
"And what are the three bondholders you represent worth?" Pat inquired, in a nettled tone.
"Half a million each, or more."
Carrigan's brows rose contemptuously.
"Is that all?" he exclaimed. "Why, from the way you talked, I thought they were real financiers! And they're only piffling tin-horns, after all. What d'you know about that, Lee?" Pat turned to the engineer with an amazed air.
Gretzinger's anger surged up anew.
"You never saw half a million in your life," he sneered.
"I could buy out all three of them with what I have in one trust company in Chicago alone," was the unperturbed reply. "It's cheap sports like you that make a real man sick. How much for the bonds? You want to unload. Speak up; how much?"
Despite his anger, the other's brain perceived that the contractor was in earnest.
"The amount of the face of both bonds and stock, with interest on the former to date," he answered quickly.
"I buy only bargains," was Carrigan's dry statement.
"One hundred thousand then."
"You're still sailing way up in the clouds. The stock was a bonus, Gretzinger; it cost your parties nothing. So it's only the bonds that count. And the project is rotten, it may not be finished on time, be a dead loss; your men want to get out from under; they'll jump at the chance to sell, you say. All right. They can unload on me. Wire them to deposit the bonds and stock in any New York bank and draw on McDonnell for forty thousand dollars. That's what I'll give."
Gretzinger walked to the wall, where he reached down his overcoat and put it on.
"The ditch will go to weeds first," he said.
"The offer's open until to-morrow night," said Pat.
"You bloodsuckers can't put anything over on me," was the Easterner's departing declaration, as he opened the door. "I'm on to you, Carrigan. You're backing Bryant and will finish the ditch. We'll just sit tight on our bonds and stock."
Pat watched him go.
"I hate to make money for men like them," he remarked to the engineer, "but I guess I can't help it, because I'll not let you down, Lee, for a matter of cash payment. I'll advance what's necessary and take a company note. Maybe you're wondering why I let you sweat all this time? Because you needed the experience. You laid down too easy. All the time that you were thinking the game wasup, I was waiting for you to grab my leg and begin to pull. But you never did."
"You had done too much for me already, Pat; and though I supposed you were well-fixed I had no idea you were wealthy. The thought you might risk twenty thousand dollars——"
"Why not? I know this project better than any banker; it's sound, it's about completed," the old man interrupted. "All that's necessary is to take a long breath and push hard for three weeks more. Sometimes I think you have the making of a fair engineer, Lee, but you discourage me dreadfully when I try to picture you as a financier. I'm afraid you'll wind up like one of these bondholders of Gretzingers, just piffling."
Lee went to stand at the window, so that Carrigan could not see his face. Emotion had unmanned him. He would not have even Pat know how strongly he was moved by this act of magnanimity.
"Well, I better be getting back to the ditch," said the contractor, presently.
A week later the long-belated big storm appeared at hand. McDonnell telephoned Bryant one morning, a morning in February now, that the weather forecast predicted blizzard conditions sweeping down the Rocky Mountain region from the Northwest. A mile of excavation yet remained to do. Lee at once sent Saurez and other Mexicans abroad in the native settlements with offers of double wages and this drew the most indolent back to camp again. They were flung into the night shift, which toiled with increased vigour at news of the impending storm. For two days and nights the desperate effort was pushed while the sky continued clear, with the crews of both camps attacking the iron earth and steadily forging closer.
Bryant scarcely slept during that time, or ate. Toward morning, when the night shift went off, he would cast himself down fully dressed and drawing the blankets to his chin sleep restlessly for two or three hours, then again rise to drive the work. The third day came sunny and quiet, but with heavy warmth in the air wholly strange to the season. During the night both Lee and Pat had continually and anxiously watched the peaks of the Ventisquero Range for portent of the change imminent in the weather; and now on this morning they beheld about the crests long, low-lying layers of gray cloud.
Again McDonnell telephoned, but now with particulars of the storm. It was general in character, covering the states from the Canadian line southward, with very low temperatures and raging furiously, destroying wire communications and blocking railroads, and at the moment was bearing down across Utah, Colorado, and Kansas. The entire region from the Pacific coast to the Mississippi was in its grasp.
"Ten days is all that's left of our time," Lee said to the contractor, with a heavy heart. "And no one can tell how long this weather spree will last."
"It's not a mile we've got to go any more, any way. With what we'll do to-day it will be half a mile of dirt moved in three days. That leaves but half a mile. This storm may be played out when it reaches us." But the worry on his face showed that he put little faith in this possibility.
What he stated in regard to the ditch was true. The work of night and day had eaten well into the remaining mile between the two camps. To be sure, it had been rushed work: the sides of the ditch were gouged and ragged, the bottom uneven and rutted, and the removed dirt was piled anywhere along its banks. But nevertheless there was a canal, dug on grade and to measurement, and capable of carrying water.
During the afternoon a pair of men drove two lines of waist-high stakes to mark the survey of the short section of ground yet untouched, doing this under Carrigan's supervision. In case snow came, he told Lee, he wanted something he could see. "Nine hundred yards of unbuilt ditchwill be lying buried," he added, "and I don't propose to paw up the whole mesa finding this section."
About four o'clock Bryant rejoined him.
"Still lovely," said Pat with a grin. "I've just set some plows tearing up the scalp on another two hundred yards. If this storm will just hang off for three or four days longer, it can come and welcome. I'll have my fresnos stacked and waiting to go down to Kennard."
"Take a look at the northwest," said Bryant, significantly.
A smoky haze lay along the horizon.
"Aye, I see. That's her hair blowing out ahead. There will be plenty of wind after awhile, I'm thinking. Get word to the men in camp, will you, to make all the tents tight."
At sundown the haze in the west had thickened somewhat. The air, however, remained warm, almost oppressive, and the sharp cold that usually fell at night was wanting. The Ventisquero Peaks were hidden by a mass of cloud. At seven o'clock the night crew began work, as ordinarily; no wind was stirring and the steam that came from the horses' nostrils was light.
"I'm taking a little time to skip down to Sarita Creek and see if those girls are still there. If they took a notion to stick, they'd try to do it, whether McDonnell sent after them or not. But I'll pry them out. If the storm breaks in a hurry, get the men and teams into camp at once. Don't take any chances, Pat." Thus spoke Bryant.
"Aye, I've seen blizzards before," was the reply.
Lee sped rapidly toward Sarita Creek, with theheadlights of his car casting their glow before him upon the dark road. The silence of the night was broken only by the steady humming of his engine. The mesa seemed very hushed, unstirring, unnatural.
When he reached the girls' cabins, he saw that the windows of each were lighted. The girls were there. What incredible folly! Then his lamps brought into view an automobile. He breathed relief. Someone had come for them. Alighting he walked forward and knocked on Ruth's door. When it was opened by Ruth, he discovered Gretzinger seated within.
"Oh, it's you, is it? Well, come in," Ruth said.
She wore a pink party gown, with her throat and smooth, round arms showing through some filmy stuff that was part of the creation. Bryant had never seen her so dressed; she looked very youthful and charming, almost beautiful.
"There's a party at Kennard to-night," said she, before Lee could open his mouth to make an explanation of his presence, "and Mr. Gretzinger's taking me. He just came. Sorry you chose to-night to call, Lee. And we're starting immediately." She reached forth and gave Lee a pat on the cheek, at the same time smiling.
Bryant continued stony under the touch, under the smile, under the false affection. He gazed at her and detected beneath her apparent good spirits and loveliness a suppressed excitement. His glance went to Gretzinger; the man was observing them with a restless, frowning face. On the instant the truth flashed into Bryant's brain. She was cunningly playing him off against the New Yorker, usinghim as a lay figure in her despicable game, bestowing endearments to anger Gretzinger and arouse his jealousy.
"I came to tell you a big storm is brewing," he said quickly. "You and Imogene must plan to stay in Kennard for some time. If a heavy fall of snow occurs, the mesa will be closed for ten days or two weeks with the temperature very low."
"Then I'll pack my things in my suit-case so that I can remain that long," Ruth exclaimed. "I'll stay with Mabel Seybolt. Imogene's uncle sent up his car this morning, but I didn't imagine there was any really bad storm coming and sent it back. I doubt if the snow amounts to much, anyway. The weather's too warm." Nevertheless, she began to fill a suit-case.
"I'll tell Imogene also," Lee said.
Ruth's eyes turned toward Gretzinger with an inquiring look.
"There won't be room for three of us, will there?"
"No," he answered.
Her regard still continued directed at him.
"I'm sure there won't be," she said, with conviction. "It probably won't storm before to-morrow, in any case. I'll tell Mr. McDonnell in the morning and he can send up his big car for her."
"Or you can take her to town yourself," Gretzinger added in an indifferent tone.
"I can't spare the time," Lee said.
"But dearie, I'll be done packing in two minutes, while it will take Imogene half an hour," Ruth replied. "She's too slow to wait for. And she has one of her eternal headaches, too."
Ruth was hurriedly removing articles from her trunk to the suit-case.
"Listen, please," Lee said, addressing her. "If Imo remains she may become snowbound, and if snowbound, freeze. I can't go, I can't possibly go. With this storm coming, I must stay at camp. As things are, a blizzard may put me out of business."
Ruth straightened up to confront him.
"You mean the work would stop, that you couldn't finish it on time?"
"That's just what I mean."
"Why?" Gretzinger spoke. "You have ten days left."
"Yes, and what are ten days with two feet of snow on the ground and the mercury forty below zero?" Bryant retorted.
Gretzinger stood up, glanced at his watch, and buttoned his overcoat. He then bent down and set to work buckling the straps of the suit-case Ruth had closed.
"You do seem to get into every possible kind of trouble, Lee," the girl said.
"Perhaps I do. But the point now is about Imogene. Will you take her with you, or not?"
"Mr. McDonnell can send for her to-morrow; that will be soon enough."
"My God, you leave her! With a blizzard coming!"
"I don't think there'll be a blizzard. Or if there is, she can get along comfortably till her uncle comes."
"Are you ready, Ruth?" Gretzinger asked, impatiently.
"Yes, as soon as I fasten my gloves. Anyway, Lee, you can take her to Kennard if you want to. It's because you'rejust obstinate. Besides, she didn't have to come up here; I told her so; I could have got along without her—much better, probably, for she's always finding fault; she came on her own responsibility and so can look out for herself; and if you're so anxious for fear she'll freeze, why, take her. It won't make any difference about your ditch that I can see, for you say you'll very likely lose it, anyway. Now you'll have to excuse us; we're going. Blow out the light, please, and lock the door, our hands are full. Give the key to Imo to keep."
Two minutes later Gretzinger's car was gone with a swirl of the headlights as it circled and with a sudden roar of its exhaust. Lee extinguished the light and closed the cabin. To him that little house seemed poignant with tragedy; and he knew, whatever came, his foot would never be set in it again.
He found Imogene sitting beside her sheet-iron stove, wrapped in a quilt and coughing.
"I heard your car come after his; I knew it was you," she greeted him.
Lee regarded her closely.
"You're sick," he said. "You ought to be in bed. Ruth stated that you had a headache and now I discover you in a coughing fit bad enough to take off your head. Is your throat sore?"
"A little."
"Why in the name of all that's sensible haven't you gone to your uncle's? I begin to think you're unbalanced."
"I explained my reasons once, Lee." She coughed again, then continued, "Ruth and I quarrelled Christmasbecause of actions of hers and aunt said she must leave the house. That's why you were not asked then. But she made it up afterward and so I came when she did, for she was determined to live here where she could be free. I just had to come."
"And now she's leaving you in the face of the worst storm this winter, the ingrate!" Bryant exclaimed. "To-night's work finishes her with me. She may go to eternal damnation so far as I'm concerned. I'm done! She refused, she would have left you here to freeze, she set your life against her convenience! And after you had sacrificed your comfort and undergone hardships to save her good name! There's no limit to her selfishness and miserable hypocrisy. Our efforts and consideration haven't restrained her a particle, and she will tread the road she chooses irrespective of our desires or feelings. What fools we've been! You and I, Imogene Martin, aren't going to chase a will-o'-the-wisp any longer. We've wasted enough time on this delusion of saving Ruth Gardner; if she's to be saved, she must save herself—and if she will not do that, then the whole world together is of no avail. You're never going to come here again, or have anything to do with her, or let her have a part in your life. Nor am I. She walks out of our book, and we draw a pen across the bottom of the page."
Imogene had covered her face with her hands during his terrible denunciation and was weeping softly. She knew it was true. She knew that Ruth had gone out of her life, for such baseness as her one-time friend had shown was not to be forgiven.
"You're right—I can't go on here longer," she sobbed. "I'm sick, I'm really sick. I've been barely crawling about for the last two days. And she knew it and left me! Oh, Ruth, Ruth!"
"And would have left you, storm or no storm, and whether I came or not! In order to be alone with Gretzinger!" Her heart-breaking sobs went on. "Don't weep, Imogene. Put her out of your mind." He gently placed an arm about her shoulders. "Come, I will take you to Louise."
That she had been "crawling about the last two days" was apparent when she attempted to rise. Her strength suddenly vanished, her knees gave way. Bryant secured her coat and cap, wrapped her in blankets from the bed, and carried her out to the car. Then he put out her lamp and locked the door.
And that turning of the lock, Lee felt, terminated a painful chapter of his life.
As by the girls' cabins, so before the Graham house, Lee perceived a motor car. He brought his own machine to a stop near it and cut off his engine. At the same instant the door opened in the house, where by the light shining through the portal he saw Louise's and Charlie Menocal's figures. Menocal stepped forth.
"You will please go now," Louise was saying. "When you telephoned I told you then that I shouldn't go with you, or go to the dance at all."
Bryant had alighted and was arranging the blankets about Imogene. Charlie's voice spoke, rather truculently:
"I told you I was coming for you, didn't I? Now see what a position that leaves me in! People think you're coming. I promised to bring you."
"Then you were too presumptuous," Louise said. "Now go. You're only making a bad matter worse."
"See here, Louise——"
"You had my refusal and I've repeated it a dozen times," she interrupted, indignantly. "Must I shut the door in your face to silence you? And here's another car. Have some regard for my personal feelings, sir."
Lee by now had lifted Imogene into his arms and started toward the speakers.
"Be a good sport, Louise," Menocal pursued, in a toneintended to be wheedling. "Run upstairs and put on a party dress while I wait for you. You don't understand how much I want you to come along to this dance." His words were a little thick and stumbling.
"Hush! Don't you see someone has come? You've been drinking; and you're sickening to me."
"I don't care if someone is there! Let 'em hear, Louise. Let all the world hear, let your father hear, let anybody hear! Because I love you, and so you must come to the dance." Suddenly his tone changed to an angry hiss. "You've been treating me like a cur, refusing to see me or go with me, and not letting me come here. I came to-night! I've stood for enough from you; you can't play me for a fool any longer. And you're going to marry me, too."
Bryant perceived by the lamplight of the doorway that the fellow had snatched her hand, that the two were struggling. Burdened with Imogene as he was, Lee was helpless to enterfere. But he went hastily up the steps toward them. Louise tugged herself free.
"Oh, you contemptible creature!" she cried, in a voice of quivering passion. "It's only because you know father is out caring for stock that you dare stay here to insult me." Then looking past Menocal, she exclaimed, "Who is that?"
"I, Bryant," said Lee. "With Imogene. She's ill, she needs to be put to bed. There was no time to ask your permission to bring her, but I knew——"
"Of course! If this beast will stop making a scene and go!"
Charlie Menocal was pulling on his fur cap.
"So here's our swell-headed crook of an engineer buttingin again," he sneered. "You better be hunting up your own chicken, or Gretzinger will have her. Who y' say you got there?"
"Stand aside!"
Bryant's voice struck the other like the lash of a whip, and the half-drunken youth instinctively fell back a pace, so that Lee could pass with his charge into the house. But as Louise was about to follow Menocal seized her arm.
"Girlie, you're not going to throw me down? You'll be good to me and come——"
Louise shook off his hand, darted through the doorway, and quickly closing the door turned the key in the lock. Then still grasping the door-knob she leaned with her head against the panels, face white, lips trembling, and her breast rising and falling stormily.
"Oh, Lee! For you to be forced to see and hear that!" she said, in a tone of anguish.
"I think nothing of it; you could not avoid him."
After a moment she recovered herself and said, "Wait until I call Rosita."
When she returned with the Mexican girl, she conducted Bryant to an upper chamber where he placed Imogene upon a bed, pressed the latter's hand assuringly, and then left her in charge of the other two while he went below to telephone to her uncle. McDonnell had already set out for Sarita Creek, his wife informed Lee. He had started about half an hour before. Bryant went out of the house and entering his car drove down the lane to the main road, where he stopped.
Soon far away in the south there was a flash of light,repeated at intervals, until at length it grew into a steady, powerful glare that threw his own machine into strong relief, that dazzled and blinded him. Finally the other car stopped near by.
"What's the trouble, Jack?" McDonnell's voice came, addressed to his chauffeur.
Bryant went forward to the banker, who was leaning out of the limousine. He gave the information that neither of the girls was at Sarita Creek and explained that Imogene was at the Graham house, comfortable though ill.
"She's too sick to be removed and will probably need a nurse for a time," he concluded. "I brought her here as soon as I learned her condition. Miss Graham put her to bed."
"All right; I'll run in and see her. Much obliged to you, Bryant," was the answer. Then in a vexed strain he went on, "What I expected to happen has happened. Advice, pleadings, commands haven't prevented her from following out this crazy affair. You may not believe it, but she's as stubborn as a mule when she wants to be. My wife has been almost distracted all winter. Well, I'll send up a doctor and a nurse both as soon as I return to Kennard, if there's time before this storm. Still at work?"
"Still digging. Will keep at it till the last minute."
"Supposed you would. That's the lane there, isn't it?"
Next minute the big car had passed Lee's and was moving up the roadway between the rows of cottonwoods toward the house. But Bryant did not at once start for camp. His mind was busy with pictures—pictures of the two girls as he first had seen them at Perro Creek, and attheir cabins afterward, and finally to-night: Imogene, weak and racked by a cough and huddling in a quilt beside her sheet-iron stove, and Ruth in her own cabin, standing in the lamplight in her pink party dress with round arms and throat showing through its filmy gauze, unconcerned and intent upon her own ends.
At last he glanced up at the impenetrable sky. Something soft and wet had floated against his cheek. Then he saw here and there in the funnel of light projected by his car lamps what looked like solitary bits of white down sinking through the radiance. Snow!
The first flakes were but the precursors of a heavy fall of snow that almost immediately began, soundless, without wind, filling the air and whitening the earth, and that was still continuing unabated two hours later. It mantled the shoulders of the workmen and the withers of the horses; it clogged the wheels of the fresnos so that dirt was moved with ever-increasing difficulty; it veiled the flaring gasolene torches and choked the night. Where a plow ran or a scraper scooped earth, snow speedily obliterated the mark, and with the passing of time both men and animals found it necessary to struggle more and more desperately in the dirt cut against mud and snow and gloom.
Carrigan contracted his working line, placing the torches at shorter intervals and keeping the scrapers in close succession. The foremen informed him frequently that the men were growing exhausted and rebellious, but he ordered them to hold the crews at the task. He and Bryant moved to and fro constantly, giving encouragement or lending a hand to help start a stalled fresno. By sheer power of their wills they were combatting the snow, forcing the work ahead, deepening the stretch of excavation that had been opened that afternoon; by iron determination they were wrenching out the last spadeful of earth possible and exacting the final ounce of man power before the snow had its way.
The strange warmth continued. The temperature was not even down to freezing and the men, muddied and wet to the knees, dripped with perspiration, while the horses' flanks were soaked with both sweat and melted snow. It was difficult to breathe, what with the heavy, oppressive air and what with the fall of suffocating snow, constantly growing thicker. Horses slipped and went down, but were raised again; fresnos were mired, but freed once more; men gave out and were sent to their camp. And the fight kept on.
But about eleven o'clock Bryant felt a cool puff of air on his cheeks, light and of brief duration. It was followed by a second, this time quicker and stronger, blowing from the northwest and sending the snow a-scurry in a slanting fog of flakes past the flames of the torches. He studied this change for a moment, then sought out Carrigan.
"Time to make a break for cover," he announced. "Wind is coming and the devil will be to pay when once it picks up all this loose snow."
"Well, we're about at a standstill, anyway," was the reply. "I'll have the crews draw the scrapers and plows off at one side where we can get at them. I had a spare horse tent put at the disposal of the Mexicans, and have had men in both camps piling baled hay all evening around the big tents for windbreaks. We'll issue extra blankets and crowd the crews into the shacks and mess quarters where there are stoves."
"What about water if our pipe freezes?"
"Then the horses will eat snow like the range ponies, I guess—and the rest of us, too."
At that he went off to order the work stopped, as did Bryant. For some time the wind blew only in those fitful puffs Lee had noted or died down entirely for short periods; and of this fact the night shift took advantage to assemble the fresnos and plows beside the canal and to drive their horses to shelter. The crews of the north camp, being fewer, got away first; and thither Bryant plowed through the snow with them to see all made safe. When he returned, Carrigan was just herding the last man and team toward the main camp. Together the contractor and the engineer extinguished the torches, then made their way, carrying a flare with them, toward the glow showing at the edge of the camp, where an oil-soaked bale of hay burned as a guide. At their backs the wind and snow blew with gradually increasing strength.
They made the rounds of the horse tents packed with animals, the mess tents packed with workmen—with those men only come and those newly aroused from sleep and gathered here—of the shacks, the hospital, the engineers' headquarters and the big commissary tent, all crowded with white men and Mexicans, steaming with moisture, smoking cigarettes and pipes, giving off a rank smell of clay and human bodies and wet clothes and horses, who talked and laughed and waited restlessly. The pair waded around examining guy-ropes, stakes, the protective walls raised of hay bales. They took advantage of a sudden dropping of the wind to go among the small tents, thrusting their flares within each and having a look, to make certain no sleeper of the day shift had been overlooked. Then at last they stumbled up the street to Bryant's shack.
The wind now had utterly died away. The snow had resumed its thick, silent fall straight to earth. Carrigan was kicking his boots clean against the door-sill when Lee exclaimed, "Listen to that, Pat!"
Carrigan wiped the moisture from his ears and harkened.
"That's the Limited coming, and making no stops," he remarked. "Get in!"
They entered the little building. The office contained the engineering staff and several others. Tobacco smoke lay thick in the room.
Outside, the faint whining sound was growing steadily in volume until at last it deepened into a roar very like that of an approaching express train, as Pat had suggested. Followed a smart blow on the shack. Then it reeled and the night was filled with a howling tumult that deafened the men inside; the blizzard had burst upon the mesa. Through the windows one could see nothing, for the air had become a black maelstrom of whirling snow and darkness where a choked roar persisted as steadily as the bass thunder of Niagara. The warmth had vanished; a cutting cold, as if striking direct from arctic ice, minute by minute drove the mercury in the thermometer on Bryant's wall downward with unbelievable swiftness. If anything, the fury of the storm seemed to increase as time passed, swelling to such terrible violence that one imagined nothing could withstand its force, its mad blasts, its deadliness.
"Those mess tents and horse tents," Lee said to Carrigan, anxiously.
"They're safer under their lee of hay than is this little paper box we're sitting in," the contractor replied. "I'vebeen through blizzards before, and know how to meet them."
From by the stove one of the engineers spoke.
"But we'll never see some of those little tents any more. There are several travelling toward Mexico by now."
"And my new flannel shirt!" cried another, suddenly. "Washed it this noon and hung it out on a line and forgot all about it. Oh, Lord, where is it now?"
"Good-bye, little shirt, we'll never see you more!" said the first, sentimentally. "You'll be hanging on the Equator by morning."
"While we're left here in the drifts," said a third. "Oh, the lovely, big, white drifts there'll be to-morrow!"
Toward one o'clock the first furious rush of the storm had passed and it had settled into a fifty-mile-an-hour wind, bitterly cold, with snow that drove against the building in fine particles. Freezing air never ceased to enter the thin walls of boards and tar paper. It was necessary to keep the cast-iron stove red-hot to secure anything like comfort.
And to this dreadful cold and snow, thought Lee, Imogene would have been left deliberately by Ruth Gardner and Gretzinger!
Carrigan bade the others roll up in their blankets and get what sleep they could while he and Bryant tended the fire. Lee saw that Dave was warm and well-wrapped. The men, worn out by prolonged exertions, made themselves beds on the floor or stretched themselves out on their seats, drew their coverings closer, closed their eyes, slept.
The contractor and the engineer, together before the fire, continued to talk in low tones.
"Haven't told you yet," said Pat, presently, "but we picked up that Mexican this evening who was trying to start a drunk Christmas Eve. It was while you were at Sarita Creek. Saurez told me he had sneaked into camp and meant mischief. Some of us caught him behind the commissary tent with a can of oil, just ready to fire the camp."
"A fine night for us all to have been left without shelter," Lee remarked. "Where is he?"
"In the hospital tied up, with a trusty man to watch him. Here's what I found on him. Look inside." And Pat handed over a dirty leather bag with a long string. "Found this around his neck."
Lee extracted four pieces of paper from the sack—all checks drawn to the order of F. Alvarez. Besides these there were two twenty-dollar gold pieces, three rings, and several unset turquoises.
"Well, we can make use of these checks," he said, after thought. "I'll talk to the fellow to-morrow." He restored the miscellaneous collection of property to the sack.
On the panes of the small windows the snow beat and the wind hammered. Carrigan stuffed the stove with pine knots. Afterward he refilled his pipe, cast a sharp glance about at the sleeping occupants of the room, and said:
"You've got what you need now to mix medicine with the banker." He confirmed his words with several satisfied nods.
"Yes," said Bryant.
Carrigan proceeded to meditate.
"Awhile back I sent for some more dynamite," he stated, breaking the silence. "Didn't say anything to you about it at the time. It was there in the commissary tent under a stack of cases of peaches and bags of coffee. If this Alvarez had got his oil on that canvas and a fire going, there sure would have been some fire-works. You would have had a reservoir blown right in the middle of your project, I'm thinking."
"What in the name of heaven do you want with dynamite!"
"Well, my boy, there's a lot of ground that can't be dug, but I never saw any that nitro wouldn't move. What I got is dirt-blowing dynamite, the kind powder companies sell for making drainage ditches and blowing stumps and so on. I didn't know whether I should have to use it, but I always like to have a trick up my sleeve. Powder is ordinarily too expensive to employ when fresnos can work, yet it's just the thing in a pinch. We're in an emergency now. If it should set in and snow right along, with one storm on top of another, as may happen after so long a mild season, powder even may not help us out. These last eight hundred yards are going to make us weep before we're through, I'm guessing. But just the same, I'm counting on this dynamite. It can't blow like this forever, and the minute it quits we'll grab hold."
Lee twisted about to look at a window. The particles of snow were biting at the glass relentlessly, while the howl of the gale told only too plainly how the drifts were being heaped on the dark mesa.
"We'll finish this ditch on time even if hell freezes over,"he said, slowly. "I'm not going to be beaten at this late day."
He continued to sit gazing at the frosted panes and harkening to the roaring blasts. On the floor and in the chairs the blanketed men slept heavily. Pat fed the fire anew. But through the cracks of the walls the cold sifted more and more intense, while along the edges of the boards there formed thick fringes of glistening frost.