Revolution, and not less, had occurred within a month at Sim Gage's ranch. This was not so much evidenced by the presence of a hard-bitten corporal and his little army of four men; nor so much more by the advent of Annie Squires; neither was it proved by the new buildings that had risen so quickly; nor by the appearance of new equipment. It was not so much in the material as in the intangible things of life that greatest change had come.
Karen Jensen smiled now as she talked with her new friend, Annie Squires. Even Mary Gage, for some reason, had ceased to weep. But the main miracle was in the instance of Sim Gage himself.
Perhaps it was the hat which did it, with its brave cord of green, humblest of all the insignia of those who stand at the threshold of the Army. To Sim's vague soul it carried a purpose in life, knowledge that there was such a thing as service in the world. Daily his face now was new-reaped, his hands made clean. He imitated the erectness and alertness of these young soldiers whom he saw, learned the jerk of the elbow in their smart salute. Enriched by a pair of cast-off breeches, and the worn leggins thereto, he rode now with both feet in the stirrups and looked square between his horse's ears. Strong as are many lazy men, not cowardly, and therefore like many timid men, he rode straight, with his campaign hat a trifle at one side, like to the fashion of these others.
And he wished that She might see him now, in his new uniform. He wondered if she knew how much larger and more important a man he was now. Into the pleached garden of his life came a new vision of the procession of the days; and he was no longer content. He saw the vision of a world holding the cares and duties of a man.
That this revolution had come to pass was by reason of the presence of this blind woman who walked tap-tapping, led by a little dog; a blind woman who for some reason had begun to smile again.
As for Doctor Barnes, he had been the actual agent, to be sure. This new order of things was the product of his affirmative and initiating mind. Mary Gage, consciously or unconsciously, within a few weeks, learned his step as surely as his voice, could have told you which was his car had a dozen come into the yard at the same time. Therefore, on this certain morning, she knew his voice, when, after stopping his car in the dooryard, he called out to the men before he approached the door of her own home. It was then that Mary Gage did something which she never yet had done when she had heard the step and voice of her lawful lord and master—something she had not done since her arrival here. Blind, she turned unconsciously to the mirror which she knew Annie had hung on the wall! She smoothed back her hair, felt for the corners of her collar to make it neat. She really did not know that she did these things.
She was young. Life was still buoyant in her bosom, after all, and far more now than at any time in her life. New graciousness of face and figure began to come to her. Well-being appeared in her eye and her cheek. The clean air of this new world had done its work, the actinic sun had painted her with the colors of the luckier woman, who expects to live and to be loved. It was a lovely face she might have seen in yonder mirror—a face flushed as she heard this step at the door.
"Greetings and salutations!" said he as he entered. "Of course you know who I am."
"I'm trained in hide-and-seek," said she. "Sit down, won't you?"
He tossed his hat on the table. "Alone?" he asked.
"I always am. Annie is busy almost all day, over at the soldier house, you know."
"I suppose he is up in the hills to-day?"
She knew whom he meant. "Yes. Annie tells me he goes up every other day to look around. I should think he would be afraid."
"Annie told you?—doesn't he tell you what he does?"
"No. Sometimes in the evening he comes in for a moment."
"Well, of course," he went on, "in my capacity as Pooh Bah, Major and doctor too, I've got to be part medico to take care of the poor devils who blow off their hands or drop things on their feet, or eat too much cheap candy at the store. How is Sim's knee by this time?"
"He limps a little—I can hear it when he walks on the boards. Annie says that Wid Gardner says that Sim says that his leg's all right." She smiled, and he laughed with her.
"That's fine. And how about Madam herself, Mrs. Gage?"
She shivered. "I wish you wouldn't call me that. It—well, don't, please. Let's not ever joke."
"What shall I call you?"
"I don't know. What'swronghere, Doctor?" She faced him now.
He evaded. "I was wondering about your health."
"Oh, I'm very well. Sometimes my eyes hurt me a little, as though I felt more of the light. Subjective, I suppose."
She could not feel him look at her. At length, he spoke, quietly. "I've some news for you, or possible news. It has very much to do with your happiness. Tell me, if it were in my power to give you back your eyes, would you tell me to do that?"
"My eyes? What do you mean? To see again?"
"If I gave you back your sight, I would be giving you back the truth; and that would be very, very cruel."
He saw the fluttering of her throat, the twitching of the hands in her lap, and so hurried on.
"Listen! There's a chance in a hundred that your sight can be restored. My old preceptor writes me, from what I've told him, that there is about that chance. If it did succeed——"
"Then I'd see again!"
"Yes. So you would be very unhappy."
"You say a thing like that!"
He winced, flushed.
"You come here now with hopes that you ought not to offer, and you qualify even that! Fine—fine! You think I can stand much more than I have?"
Still the trembling of her hands, the fluttering at her throat. He endured it for a time, but broke out savagely at last. "You'd be perfect then—as lovely as ever any woman—why, you're perfect now! And yet without that one flaw where would you be? You'd not be married then, though you are now."
"Go on!" she said at length, coldly.
"You don't know one of us here except that girl, Annie, as different from you as night is from day. You don't know about the rest of us. You only think about us, imagine us—you don't see us, don't know us. Ah, God! If you only could! But—if you did!"
The last words broke from him unconsciously. He sat chilled with horror at his own speech, but knew he had to go on.
"I am going to do what shall leave us both unhappy as long as we live. I'll give you back your eyes if I can."
"I am helpless." She spoke simply.
"Yes! Why, if I even look at you, I feel I'm an eavesdropper, I'm stealing. You can't see in my face what your face puts there—you can't see my eyes with yours. You can't understand how you've made me know things I never did know until I saw you. Why, cruel? yes! And now you're asking me to be still more cruel. And I'm going to be."
"Don't!" she broke out. "Oh, God! Don't! Please—you must not talk. I thought you were different from this."
"And yet you have asked me a dozen times what's wrong here. Why, everything's wrong! That man loves you because he can see you—any man would—but you don't love him, because youhaven'tseen him. You're not a woman to him at all, but an abstraction. He's not a man to you at all, but an imagination.That'snot love of man and woman. But when you have back your eyes,—thenyou're in shape to compete with the best women in the world for the best man in the world. That's love! That's marriage! That's right! Nothing else is."
He paused horrified. Her voice was icy. "I asked you what was wrong here. I begin to see now. You spoke the truth—everything is wrong."
"You'll hate me all your life and I hate myself now as I never have before in my life—despise myself. What a mockery we've made of it all. God help those who see!"
She sat silent for a very long time. "You say I shall be able to see him—my husband?"
"You say I shall be able to see him—my husband?"[Illustration: "You say I shall be able to see him—my husband?"]
"You say I shall be able to see him—my husband?"[Illustration: "You say I shall be able to see him—my husband?"]
"Yes, I think so," he said.
"And you also?"
"No! Him, but not me. You never will. I'll be an imagination forever. You'll never see me at all."
"Under what star of sadness was I born?" said Mary Gage, simply. "What a problem!"
"Good-by," he replied. "I don't need to wait."
She held out her hands to him, gropingly. "Going?"
"Yes. I'm coming back, week after next, to get you. I'll not talk this way ever again. Don't forgive me—you can't.
"You'll have to go down to our hospital, perhaps for a couple of weeks," he concluded.
He stepped from the room so silently, passed so quickly on the turf, that she was not sure he had gone. He never saw her hands reach out, did not hear her voice: "No, no! I'll not go! Let me be as I am!"
Two figures stood regarding Doctor Barnes as his car turned into the willow lane out-bound for the highway.
"Why didn't he say good-by, anyways, when he left?" commented Wid, turning to Annie Squires. "Went off like he'd forgot something."
"That's his way," replied Annie, rolling down her sleeves. They had met as she was passing from the barracks cabin. "He's a live wire, anyways. God knows this country needs them."
"Why, what's the matter with this country?" demanded Wid mildly. "Ain't it all right?"
"No, it ain't. Till I come here it was inhabited exclusively with corpses."
"Well, then?"
"And since then, if it wouldn't of been for the Doctor yonder, you and Sim Gage would be setting down here yet and looking at the burned places and saying, 'Well, I wonder how that happened?'"
"Well, if you didn't like this here country, now what made you come here?" demanded Wid calmly and without resentment.
"You know why I come. That lamb in there was needing me. A fine sight you'd be, to come a thousand miles to look at! You and him! Say, hanging would be too good for him, and drowning too expensive for you."
"Oh, come now—that's making it a little strong, now, Miss Annie, ain't it? What have I done to you to make you feel that way?Iain't ever advertised for no wife, have I? Comes to that, I can make just as good bread as you kin."
"Huh! Is that so!"
"Yes, and cook apricots and bacon, and fry ham as good as you can if there was any to fry. Me, I'd be happy if they wasn't no women in the whole wide world. They're a damn nuisance, anyways, ask me about it."
He was looking out of the corner of his eye at Annie, witnessing her wrath.
"The gall of you!" exclaimed Annie, red of face and with snapping eye. "Oh, they're damn nuisances, are they? Well, then, I'll tell you. I fixed your socks up last night for you. Holes? Gee! Me setting in there by a bum lamp that you had to strike a match to see where it was. Never again! You can go plumb to, for all of me, henceforth and forever."
"I ain't never going to wear them socks again," said Wid calmly. "I'm a-going to keep them socks for soovenirs. Such darning I never have saw in my born days. If I couldn't darn better'n that I'd go jump in the creek. I didn't ask you to darn them socks noways. Spoiled a perfectly good pair of socks for me, that's what you done."
The war light grew strong in Annie's eyes. "You never did need but one pair anyways, all summer. Souvenirs! Why, one pair'd last you your whole life. I suppose you wrop things around your feet in the winter time, like the Rooshians in the factory. Say, you're every way the grandest little man that ever lived alone by hisself! Well, here's where you'll get your chance to be left alone again."
"You ain't gone yet," said Wid calmly.
"What's the reason I ain't, or won't be?"
"Well," said Wid Gardner, reaching down for a straw and moving slowly over toward a saw horse that stood in the yard, "like enough I won't let you go."
"What's that you say?" demanded Annie scoffingly. None the less she slowly drew over to the end of another saw horse and seated herself. "I'll go when I get good and ready."
"Of course, you can't tell much about a woman first few weeks. They put on their best airs then. But anyways, I've sort of got reconciled to seeing you around here. I had a po'try book in my house. Like it says, I first endured seeing you, and then felt sorry for you, and then——"
"Cut out the poetry stuff," said Annie. "It ain't past noon yet."
"I ain't had time to build my own house over yet. Pianny and all gone now, though."
"Gee, but you do lie easy," said Annie. "You're the smoothest running liar I ever did see."
"And all my books and things, and pictures and dishes."
"All of your both two tin plates, huh?"
"And my other suits of clothes, and my bedstead, and my dewingport, and everything—all, all gone, Miss Squires!"
"Is that so! Oh, sad! sad! You must of been reading some of them mail order catalogues in your dreams."
"And my cook stove too. I've just been cooking out in the open air when I couldn't stand your cooking here no more—out of doors, like I was camping out."
"If any sheep herder was ever worse than you two, God help him! You wasn't one of you fit for her to wipe a foot on,—that doctor least of all, that got me out here under pretences that she was married happy. And I find her married to that! I wish to God she could see all this, and see you all, for just one minute. Just once, that's all!"
"Yes," said Wid Gardner, suddenly serious. "I know. There ain't nothing I can do to square it. But all I've got or expect to have—why, it's free for you to take along and do anything you can for her and your own self, Miss Annie, if you want to, even if you do go away and leave us.
"But look at my land over there." He swept a long arm toward the waving grasses of the valley. "I've got my land all clear. She's worth fifty a acre as she lays, and'll be worth a hundred and fifty when I get water out of the creek on to her. I got three hundred and twenty acres under fence. I been saving the money the Doc's paying me here.
"Say," he added, presently, "what kind of a place is that Niagry place I been reading about? Is it far from Cleveland?"
"Not so very," replied Annie to his sudden and irrelevant query.
"It's a great place for young married folks to go and visit, I reckon? I was reading about in a book onct, before my books was burned up. Seems like it was called 'A Chanct Acquaintance.' Ever since, I allowed I'd go to Niagry on my wedding journey."
"Well," said Annie, judicially, "I been around some, what with floor-walkers and foremen and men in the factory, but I'm going to say that when it comes to chanct acquaintances, this here place has got 'em faded for suddenness! Go on over home and rub your eyes and wake up, man! You're dopy."
"No, I ain't," said Wid. "I'm in a perfectly sane, sound and disposin' mind. You're getting awful sun-burned, but it only makes you good-lookinger, Miss Annie.
"But now lemme tell you one thing," he went on, "I don't want to see you making no more eyes at that corporal in there. Plenty of men in the Army has run away and left three, four wives at home."
"I don't care nothing about no man's past," said Annie. "They all look alike to me."
"Well, I can't say that about you. Some ways you're a powerful homely girl. Your hair's gettin' sunburned around the ends like Karen Jensen's. And your eyes—turn around, won't you, so I kin remember what color your eyes is. I sort of forgot, but they ain't much. Not that I care about it. Women is nothing in my young life."
"Huh! you're eighty if you're a day."
"It's the way I got my hair combed."
Extending a strong right arm she pushed him off the end of the saw horse. He rose, dusting his trousers calmly. "Oh, dear, I didn't think so much sinfulness could be packed in so young a life! But say, Annie, what's the use of fooling? I got to tell you the truth about it sometime. Like on my flour sack: 'Eventual, why not now?' And the plain, plumb truth is, you're the best as well as the pertiest girl that ever set a foot on Montana dirt."
Annie's face was turned away now.
"Your hair and eyes and teeth, and your way of talking, and your way of taking hold of things and making a home—haven't you been making a home fer all of us people here? I told you I'd have to tell the truth at last. Besides, I said I was to blame for everything that's gone wrong here. I was. But I'll give you all I am and all I got to square it, anyways you like."
"Well, anyways," said Annie Squires, drawing a long breath, "I think if you took on something, you'd see it through; and you wouldn't pass the buck if you fell down."
"That's me," said Wid.
"I get you," said Annie.
"You said that to me right out here in broad daylight, in presence of witnesses, four hens and a dog."
"I said I understood you. That was all."
Wid Gardner turned to her and looked her squarely, in the eyes. "Not appropry to nothing, neither here nor there, ner bragging none, I'm able to put up as much hay in a day as any two Mormons in the Two Forks Valley. In the hay fields of life, it's deeds and not words that counts. I read that in a book somewheres."
"Say," he went on, suddenly, "have you noticed how perty the moonlight is on the medders these nights? You reckon it shines that same way over at Niagry?"
Annie did not answer at the instant. "Well," said she at last, "in some ways this country is a lot like Cleveland. Go on over to your own house, if you've got one, and don't you never speak to me again, so long as you live."
"Well, anyways," said Wid, chuckling, "you didn't really call me a sheep man. But listen—I've told you almost the truth about everything. Now I got to be going."
"I wasafraidyou'd be making some break," said Annie Squires. "I wasexpectingyou'd do some fool thing or other. I almostknewyou'd do it. But then——"
"Yes; and but then?"
"But then——" concluded Annie.
Mary Gage, sitting alone in her cabin, could hear the hum of voices as Wid Gardner and Annie Squires talked together in the open sunlight. Presently she heard the footfall of Annie as she came to the door.
"Well, Sis," said that cheerful individual, "how are you getting on?"
"Couldn't you come in for a while, Annie? I'm very lonesome. What were you talking about?"
"I just told that man out there I'm going to take you back home."
Mary Gage sat silent for a time. "We'll have to get a better solution than that."
"It's a fine little solution you've got so far, ain't it now?" commented Annie. "Highbrows always have to lean on the lowbrows, more or less. You listen to me."
"Sometime, I suppose," she went on after a moment's pause, "I'll have to talk right out with you. For instance, you being a farmer's wife! Now, as for me, I was raised on a farm. When I was ten years old I was milking five cows every day. When I was twelve I was sitting up at night knitting socks for the other kids. That was before I got the idea of going to the white lights after my career. Well, it's lucky I met you, like enough. But me once talking of getting married to Charlie Dorenwald! I should admire to see him, me handy to a flat iron."
"But, Annie, I'd die if it wasn't for some one to help me all the time. Some pay for that with money. How can I pay for it at all? Tell me, Annie." She turned suddenly. "If I—if I could get my eyesight back again, what ought I to do?"
"I wouldn't talk about that, Sis, if I was you. But just wait, there's some one coming—it's him."
Mary could hear Sim Gage's rapid step as he came around to the door, pausing no more than to throw down his horse's bridle over its head.
Sim Gage was excited. "Where's the Doc?—he been here this morning?"
"He went away less than an hour ago," replied Mary Gage. "How long was it, Annie? Why?"
"Well, I got to go down to the dam. Something up in the hills I don't like."
"Not those same men?" Mary Gage's face showed terror.
"I don't know yet. Two cars was in camp on the creek, half way up towards the Reserve. I seen 'em and sneaked back."
"Telephone down, why don't you?"
"I hadn't thought of that," said Sim. "I ain't used to them things. Say, Miss Squires, supposin' you see if you can get the doctor down at the dam?"
But when Annie tried to use the telephone her ring sounded idle and vacant in the box. The instrument was dead.
"Out of order!" said Annie, "right when you want it. When you want to make a date the girls says, 'Party's line's out of order.' Of course it is!"
"Well, then I'll have to start down right away. I got to see the Doc about this. I hate to leave you alone."
"Let him go," said Annie to Mary Gage. "The soldiers 'll be back for supper pretty soon."
"I've got to go over to Wid's," said Sim; "got to get another horse."
He turned and left the room without more word of parting than he had shown of greeting. He walked more alertly than ever he had in his life.
He found Wid Gardner and told his news. His neighbor listened to him gravely.
"It may be only some people in there fishing," said Wid, "but it's no time to take chances. You say the wire's down? That looks so bad, I reckon you'd better ride on down. How far have you rode today?"
"Round thirty, forty miles."
"Forty more won't hurt you none," said Wid. "The roan bronc can stand it. I'll go on over and tell the women folks not to be afraid."
"Gee, but this is some quiet place!" said Annie Squires, as the two women sat alone in nervous silence. "You can cut it with a knife, can't you?"
"Did you say Mr. Gardner was coming over here before long?" asked Mary. "Annie, I'm so afraid!"
"Hush, Sis! It's like enough only a scare. I wish't that doctor man had stayed. But tell me, was he saying anything to you about your eyes?"
"Yes."
"What?"
"He said he was coming up here in a week or two to take me down to the hospital. He said he thought perhaps he could save my eyes! Oh, Annie, Annie!"
"Hush, Sis! I told you to forget it. You mustn't hope—remember, youmustn'thope, Mary, whatever you do."
"No, I mustn't hope. I told him I wouldn't go."
"Some folks is grand little jokers. Women can't help stringing a man along, can they? Of course you'll go."
She cast her arms about Mary Gage, and held her tight. "You poor kid!" said she. "You get your eyes first, and let's figure out the rest after that. You make me tired. Cut out all that duty and sacrifice stuff. Live and get yours. That's the idea!"
"Now, you sit here." She rose and placed a comforting hand on Mary's shoulder. "Just keep quiet here, and I'll go out and see if I can call Henry Gardner. He seems to me like a man that wouldn't scare easy. I'll go as far as the fence and yoo-hoo at him. I'll be right back."
But Annie Squires did not come back for almost an hour. Wid Gardner, coming across lots by the creek path, found Mary Gage alone, and sat with her there in an uneasiness he could not himself conceal, wondering over the girl's absence. Mary was well-nigh beside herself when at length they heard Annie coming rapidly, saw her at the door.
"Get back in!" she said. "Sit down, both of you! Wait, now—Listen! Who do you think I found right out here, almost in our very yard, Mary?"
Panting, she seated herself, and after a time began more coherently. "I'll tell you. I just walked out to the gate, and says I to myself, I'll yoo-hoo so that Mr. Gardner can hear over there and come on down. So I yoo-hooed. Did you hear me?"
Wid shook his head. "I didn't hear nothing."
"Well, I heard some one holler back, soft-like, 'Yoo-hoo!' It didn't sound just right, so I walked on a little more. 'Yoo-hoo!' says I. Then I seen a man come out of the bushes. I seen it wasn't you, all right. He come on right fast, and Mary—I couldn't of believed it, but it's the truth. It was Charlie—Charlie Dorenwald! I couldn't make no mistake about them legs.
"When I seen who it was I turned around to run. I was scared he'd shoot me. He hollered at me to stop, and I stopped. He come after me and caught me by the arm, and he laughs. I was scared silly—silly, I tell you. He laughs some more, and then he sobers down to solid talk.
"'Why, Charlie,' says I, 'it can't be you. I'm so glad.' I allowed the best thing was to jolly him along. I knew he'd make trouble. I wanted a chance to think.
"We stood out there so close I could see the cabin all the time—and we talked. That fellow couldn't help bragging about himself. He was half loaded. Says I to him, 'What made you come out here, Charlie? To find me?'
"'Yes,' says he. 'I knew you was here.'"
"'How did you know it?' I asked him.
"'That's a good question,' says he. 'Haven't I got plenty people working for me that could tell me where you was, or anything else I wanted to know? The free brothers work together.'"
Wid Gardner's eyes were full on her. He did not speak.
"So we turned and moved further up the lane then," went on Annie. "I kept on asking him how he come here. I told him I'd been too proud to send for him. But now he'd come, how could I help loving him all over again!"
"You didn't mean that," said Wid quietly.
"How much do you think I'd mean it? That Dutch snake! Listen— He told me more than the papers ever told. He told me he'd been a sort of chief there in Cleveland right along, along in the war, and after peace was signed. He pulled off some good things, so he said, so they sent him out here. He was after me. Folks, that man took himself apart for me. He made me promise to go along with him, all dolled up, and in our own car!"
"You ain't going," said Wid, quietly.
"One guess! But there'll be trouble. I've only told you a little part of it that that fellow spilled to me. Dorenwald's nutty over these things. He tells what the German Socialists will do when they get to America. He says this is the world revolution,—whatever he means. Oh, my God!"
Annie began to weep in a sudden hysteria.
"Which way did that man go from here?" she heard Wid Gardner's voice at length.
"I don't know. He said he had a man with him, a 'brainy-cat,' he called him, to lecture in halls. He made me promise to be out there at the gate at sun-up to-morrow morning to go away with him. I'd have promised him anything. I'm awful scared. Why don't the men come back?"
Annie Squires was sobbing now. "And this was our country. We let them people in. I know it's true, what he said. And I told him that at sun-up——"
"Don't bother about that," said Wid Gardner quietly. "Now you two set right here in the house," he added, as he rose and picked up the rifle he saw hanging on its nails. "I'm going out and lay in the willers along the lane a little while, near the gate. I can hear you if you holler. I think it's best for me to go out there and keep a watch till the fellers come back. Don't be a-scared, because I'll be right there, not far from the gate."
He stepped out, rifle in hand. The two women sat alone, shivering in nervous terror, starting at every little sound.
They sat they knew not how long, before the clear air of the moonlight night was rent by sharp sounds. A single piercing shot echoed close at hand; scattering shots sounded farther up the lane; then many shots; and then came the sound of a car passing rapidly on the distant highway.
The roan horse which Sim Gage rode was in no downcast frame of mind, but he himself, engrossed with his errand, did not at first notice that it was the same half wild animal with which he had had combat at an earlier time. He fought it for half an hour or more down a half dozen miles of the road, but at length the brute made matters worse by picking up a stone, and going dead lame, so that any great speed was out of the question.
Night was falling now across the winding trail which passed along the valley lands and over the shoulders of the mountains. It was wild country even yet, but beautiful as it lay in the light of the fading day. Sim Gage had no time to note the play of light or shadow on the hills. He rode. It was past midnight when he swung off his now meek and wet-sided horse, cast down the bridle rein, and went in search of Doctor Barnes.
The latter met his caller with the point of an electric torch at the door.
"Oh, it's you, Gage?" said he. "Come in."
Sim Gage entered and seated himself, his hurt leg stiffly before him on the floor. Briefly as he could, he told the reason of his errand and the reason for his delay.
"Leave your horse here," said Doctor Barnes, already preparing for his journey. "We'll take my car."
A half hour later the two were again en route. The head light of the car, swinging from side to side around the steep and unprotected curves of the mountain slopes, showed the rude passageway, in places risky enough at that hour and that speed. At that latitude the summer nights are short, and their journey was unfinished when the gray dawn began to turn to pink upon the mountain tops. In the clearer light Doctor Barnes saw something which caused him to pull up.
"There's the wire break," he exclaimed. "Look here."
They both left the car and approached the nearest pole. It bore the fresh marks of a linesman's climbing irons. "Professional work. And that's a cut with nippers—not a break. Keep away from the free end, Gage's, it's probably a live wire. You're right. That gang is back in here again. But tell me, what's that?—Do you smell anything?"
Sim Gage nodded. "Smoke," said he.
As the light grew stronger so that the far slopes of the mountain were visible they saw the proof. Smoke, a heavy, rolling blanket of smoke, lay high over the farther summits.
"Damn their souls!" said Doctor Barnes fervently and tersely. "They've set the forest afire again."
A half hour later they swung into the ranch yard. The call of "Halt!" came, backed by a tousled head nestled against the stock of a Springfield which protruded from a window.
"Advance, friend!" exclaimed the corporal when he got his countersign, and a moment later met his Major in the dooryard. They were joined by Wid Gardner, who rose from the place where he had sat, rifle across his knees, most of the night crouched against the end of the cabin.
"We've got him in here," said the Sergeant, leading the way to the barracks door.
"Got what?"
"The one we shot. He's deader'n hell, but I thought you might like to look through his pockets."
Wid Gardner unemotionally accompanied them into the room of the barracks where, on a couple of boards, between two carpenter's trestles, lay a long figure covered with a blanket.
"Scout Gardner got him last night about nine o'clock, sir," said the Sergeant; "out in the lane behind the gate. Called to him to halt, and he didn't stop."
"He didn't have no chanct to halt," said Wid Gardner calmly. "I hollered that to him after I had dropped him. He wasn't the one I was after, neither."
"The rest of them got away," went on the Sergeant. "We heard the shot when we was just coming down the road. We come on to the head of the lane and heard brush breaking. They was trying to get to their car, down a little further. They whirled and came back through us in the car, and we shot into them, but I don't know if we got any of 'em, the horses was pitching so. They went back up the trail, or maybe up on the Reserve road—I dunno. We come on down here to get orders."
Doctor Barnes slipped back the blanket. There was revealed the thin, aquiline face of a man dressed in rather dandified clothing. There were rings on both hands, a rather showy but valuable stickpin in the scarf. The hands were not those of a laboring man. At the bridge of the nose a faint depression showed that he wore eyeglasses. His complexion was blond, and his eyes, open now only to a slit, might also have been light in color. There was on his features, indefinably foreign, the stamp not to say of birth so much as of education. The man apparently once was used to easy if not gentle ways of life.
"Tell me how it happened," said Doctor Barnes to Gardner, who stood by.
"She can tell you more'n I can," said Wid—"Miss Squires. This ain't the feller. The real one that I want she used to work with—he was foreman back East in the shops where she worked. His name was Dorenwald. She promised to meet him out there at sun-up this morning. I went out last night to see what I could see. I found this feller. He was coming down the trail. I waited till he got clost enough—about forty yard. Onct was enough."
"How many cars did you see?" Doctor Barnes demanded of the sergeant.
"One."
"Gage says he saw two."
"The other may be back in the hills yet."
"Well, here's work! Tell me, Gardner, is there any way those people can get out on the other side of the Reserve, down the West Fork? You know the backwater above the little dam, two miles below the big dam? Most of the timber we intended to float out that way, to the mill at the little dam. They may have gone on across in there.
"Now, Corporal, leave McQueston and two men here. I want the rest of you with me—we'll go up in the hills with my car. McQueston, take one man and go and fix the break in the line three miles down the road. We'll either come back in my car or send it back to you somehow. The fire may block us. Get your men ready. March!"
It was anxious enough waiting at the ranch, but the wait might have been longer. It was not yet eleven o'clock when the two women heard the hum of the heavily loaded car and saw the men climb out again. It was Doctor Barnes who came to the cabin.
"It's no use," said he. "The fire has cut off the Tepee Creek trail. The best fir is gone, and there's no hope of stopping the fire now. If they took their car up, they must have left it in there—some of them went back up the trail. They may be over on the West Fork; and if they've got there, they've got a shorter route down to the dams than around by the Valley road."
He turned now to Mary Gage more specifically. "We've got a company of troops down there to guard the big dam. It's safer there than it is here. What do you think of going back now, to stop until this row is over? We can take better care of you there than we can here."
She sat for a moment, her face turned away.
"Will you come?" he repeated.
"One guess!" said Annie Squires for her. "In a minute!" And by that time she was throwing things into the valises.
The entire flow of the greater of the Two Forks streams lay harnessed at last, after years of labor and an expenditure of millions. For twenty miles there lay a lake where once a clear, gravel-bottomed stream had flowed above the gorge of the mountain canyon. The gray face of a man-made wall rose sheer a hundred feet above the original bed of the stream, leaving it in part revealed; and this barrier checked and stayed the once resistless flood against which an entire mountain range had proved inefficient. Presently for hundreds of miles each way the transmission lines would carry out power to those seeking light, to those employing labor; and the used water would irrigate lands far below.
Allied with this unit of the great dam was a lesser dam operating a mill plant on the other Fork. Down this stream ship timbers once had come. The camp of the reclamation engineers and construction men lay upon a bench or plateau which once formed the bank of the stream upon that side, now about half way up to the top of the great dam. The road running up and down the valley ascended from this plateau to a sufficient elevation to surmount the permanent water level above the upper dam. On the opposite side rose a sheer and bare rock running two-thirds up to the top of the mountain peak which here had shouldered its way down as though in curiosity to look at the bottom of the gorge itself. The great dam was anchored to the rock face on that side, and it was there that the chutes and wells for the turbines were located, as well as the spill gates which now were in temporary service. A wide roadway of cement, with vast buttresses on each side, ran along the top of the dam and looked down upon the abrupt surface of its lower face. Here, and there, at either side of the dam, and at the original stream level, stood low buildings of stone, to house the vast dynamos or care for other phases of the tremendous industrial installation of the National Government.
Here and there were stationed the armed guards, in the uniform of the Army. They did sentry-go along the dam-top, and patrolled or watched the lower levels of the works below the dam. They patrolled also the street and the road above and below the camp.
Well paid human labor had erected this great dam, mixed with the returned soldiers and a small per cent of labor sometimes sullen, with no affection for its work. In time among such as these came agents of a new and vast discontent, some who spoke of a "rule of reason," meaning thereby the crazed European rule of ignorant selfishness, others who spoke of "violence" as the only remedy for labor against capital. With what promises they deluded labor, with what hopes of any change, with what possibilities of later benefits, with what chimeras of an easier, unearned day, it matters not. They found listeners.
Against these covert forces working for the destruction of our civilization, our Government developed an unsuspected efficiency, sometimes through its department of justice, sometimes through a vast and silent civilian body of detectives working all over the country and again through its franker agencies of the military arm. Thus that able engineer who had built the great power dam here at the Two Forks—a man who had built a half score of railroads and laid piers for bridges without number, and planned city monuments, with the boldest and most fertile of imaginations, Friedrich Waldhorn his name, was a graduate of our best institutions and those of Germany—long since had been watched as closely as many another of less importance in charge of work remotely or intimately concerned with the country's public resources.
Waldhorn—before the war an outspoken Socialist and free-thinker—may have known that he was watched—must have known it when a young medical officer given military duties quite outside his own profession, was put over him in authority at the scene of his engineering triumph, and at precisely the time of its climax. But the situation for Waldhorn was this, that if he resigned and left the place he would only come the more closely under immediate espionage. Whatever his motives, he remained, sullen and uncommunicative.
Meanwhile the little camp sprawled in the sun, scattered along the plateau on the side of the mountain gorge. Crude, unpainted, built of logs or raw boards, it lay in the shadow for the greater part of the day, deep down in the narrow cleft of the mountains, far out in the wilderness. The great forest deepened and thickened, back of it, forty miles into the high country.
Those who lived here in the canyon could not as yet understand the nature of the thin blue veil which today obscured their scanty sunlight, did not know that each minute of day was destroying trees which had cost a thousand years to grow, which never in the knowledge of man might be replaced. But when the party of Major Barnes came down from Sim Gage's ranch, questions were answered. The forest had been fired again. The soldiers swore the silent soldier oath of revenge.
Doctor Barnes did not pause even to help the women out of the car. He hurried to the long, screened gallery in front of the residence and office of Waldhorn, chief engineer.
Waldhorn met him at the door, well-fed, suave, polite, a burly man, well-clad and bearing the marks of alertness and success. Always of few words, he scarcely more than spoke at present, his mildly elevated eyebrows making inquiry of the dusty man before him.
"Yes, Doctor, or—ah, Major?" he said, smilingly, insulting.
"Call it Major!" snapped Barnes. "I've come to tell you that I want your house."
"Yes? When?"
"In two minutes."
"Why?"
"I want it for Government uses. A patient of mine has come down here to stay a while—wife of one of my scouts."
"Well, now, my dear Major, I would not like to interfere with your private graft in the practice of medicine in any way. But I'm engineer in charge of this work, I fancy."
"Fancy something else while the fancying's good. Go on over to that little log house, Waldhorn. You'll live there until we send you out."
"Send me out! What do you mean, sir?"
"This camp is under martial law. You're under arrest, if you like to call it that way."
"You're going to arrest me? Why—what do you mean?"
"Call it what you like. But move, now, and don't waste my time."
"I beg pardon," drawled Waldhorn, smiling with a well-concealed sneer, "but isn't this a trifle sudden? I'm willing to give up my place to the ladies, of course, my dear Major, but I must ask some sort of explanation as to this other procedure. Martial law? What is your authority?"
"Call it Jehovah and the Continental Congress, my dear chap," said Doctor Barnes, likewise drawling. "I'll take that up after a while. I'm in charge here. If you go over there quietly to that other house it may look like an act of courtesy. If you don't—it might be called an act of God. Come, hurry—I can't talk here any longer."
Waldhorn saw two troopers coming at a fast walk from across the street, saw that the eyes of Doctor Barnes watched his hand carefully. Therefore, as though easily and naturally, he leaned with both his own hands above his head resting against the jamb of the door.
"I suppose I'll have to charge this up to the fact that I'm of German descent," said he. "I can't help that. I've lived here thirty years. I'm as good a citizen as you, but I'll have to submit. Be sure I'm going to take this up in the courts."
"Old stuff. Take it up where you damn please," said Barnes sharply. "I'm as good an American as you are, too, even if my parents werenotborn in Germany. Step outside."
He motioned to his men. "McQueston," he said, "watch him until I come out."
"You're not going into my private rooms?—I forbid that. I'll never forget that, you upstart!"
Doctor Barnes smiled. "I'll try to fix it so you won't." He stepped on in across the gallery.
Waldhorn looked from the face of one to that of the other private soldier who stood before him, and saw the cold mask not only of discipline, but of more. Under their charge he marched over to the log building indicated, and slammed the door behind him. The men stood one on each side, out of range of the window.
Doctor Barnes was angry and frowning when he went back to the car to drive it down to the door of the new quarters which had just been vacated.
"Gee, Doc, you look sore," said Annie Squires casually. "Say, where do you get the stuff you're pulling in here, anyway?"
"Never mind! You go in there and clean up the rooms and make a place for Mrs. Gage. You'll find everything for cooking and housekeeping. Don't touch anything else. I'm taking his Chink over to my place."
"Are you going there with the women?" he inquired, turning to Sim Gage.
Sim colored. "No. Wid and me'll be over with the soldiers. We're going to stick together."
"Better bunk in my shack, then. Go over to the barracks, both of you, and get rifles and an extra pistol each. I want both of you on patrol."
"You see," he explained, as he drew the two apart, "we don't know what those anarchist ruffians up there may do. They may drop down here by either fork any time, day or night."
He spoke briefly also to Mary Gage before he handed her in at the door of her new domicile:
"Sim and Wid both think that only one car went back up the road above the ranch. That means that the other car is up in the mountains between the Two Forks, probably in the Reserve. For a time there probably won't anything happen. You mustn't be scared—we're just taking the proper precautions now. This is very valuable Government property."
"Are we at the dam here?" asked Mary Gage. "I can hear the water—it's very heavy, isn't it?"
"It never stops. We don't hear it, because we're used to it—I don't think it will bother you very long. We'll try to make you comfortable."
He turned, offering her his arm, on which he placed her hand. He was a trifle surprised to see that Sim Gage without a word had passed to the other side of his wife, also giving her an arm. He walked along slowly and gravely, limping, silent as he had been all the afternoon, but made no sign of his own discomfort, indeed did not speak at all.
"Both of you are fit for the hospital. Well, all right, it may be a good place for you after all." As he spoke, frowning, Doctor Barnes stood back and allowed Annie to lead Mary Gage into the vacated rooms of the chief engineer.
"Doc, what did you mean when you said that there just now?" asked Sim Gage, when they turned back from the door. "About her and the hospital?"
"I've brought her down here, Sim," said Doctor Barnes directly, "principally because, with her consent and yours, I want to see if I can't do something for her eyes."
"Her eyes! Why—what do you mean?"
"There's one chance in a hundred that she'll see again."
Doctor Allen Barnes, his face unshaven, dirty, haggard, a man looking neither major nor physician now, turned squarely to the man whom he addressed. "I don't know for sure," said he, "but then, it may be true."
"Her eyes?— Her eyes!"
Doctor Barnes felt on his arm as savage a grip as he ever had known. Sim Gage's face changed as he turned away.
"Good God A'mighty! If she couldsee!" His own face seemed suddenly pale beneath its grime.