A day passed, two, and three. Nothing came to break the monotony at the big dam. Donkey engines screamed intermittently. Workmen still passed here or there with their barrows. Teams strained at heavy loads of gravel and cement. The general labor in the way of finishing touches on the undertaking still went on under the care of the foremen, monotonously regular. No one knew that Waldhorn, chief engineer, was a prisoner under guard.
Mary Gage was more ignorant than any prisoner of what went on about her. A hard lot, that of waiting at any time, but the waiting of the newly blind—there is no human misery to equal it. It seemed at times to her she must go mad.
She recognized the footfall of Doctor Barnes when one morning she heard it on the gallery floor inside the slamming screen door. "Come in," she said, meeting him. "What is it?"
He entered without any speech, cast himself into a chair. She knew he was looking at her steadfastly.
"Well," said she, feeling herself color slightly. Still he did not answer. She shifted uneasily.
"What are you doing?" she demanded, just a trace of the personal in her tone.
"Eavesdropping again. Staring. This is the day when I say good-by to you. I've come to say my good-by now."
"Why should it be like that?" she asked after a time.
"Will you be happy?"
She did not answer, and he leaned forward as he spoke.
"You left a happy world behind you. Do you want to see this world now, this sordid, bloody, torn and worn old world, so full of everything but joy and justice? Do you want to see it any more? Why?"
"It is my right to see the world," said Mary Gage simply. "I want to see life. There's not much risk left for me. But you talk as though things were final."
"I'm going away. Let's not talk at all."
For a long time she sat silent.
"Don't you think that in time we forget things?"
"I suppose in ten years I will forget things—in part."
"Nonsense! In five years—two—you'll be married."
"So you think that of me?" said he after a time. "Fine!"
"But you have always told me that life is life, you know."
"Yes, sometimes I have tried my hand at scientific reasoning. But when I say ten years for forgetting anything, that's pathological diagnosis, and not personal. I try to reason that time will cure any inorganic disease just as time cures the sting of death. Otherwise the world could not carry its grief and do its work. The world is sick, near to death. It must have time. So must I. I can't stay here and work any more. If you can see—if you get well and normal again—I'll be here."
She looked at him steadily. He wanted to take her face between his hands.
"Oh, I'll not leave here until everything is right with your case. There's good excuse for me to go out. It will be for you the same as though we had never met at all."
"That's fine of you! So you believe that of me?"
"Why not? I must. You're married. That's outside my province now. I've just come to tell you now that I don't think we ought to wait any longer about your eyes. We'll try this afternoon, in our little hospital here. I wish my old preceptor were here; but Annie will help me all she can, and I'll do my very best."
"I'm quite ready."
"I don't know whether or not to be glad that you have no curiosity about your own case," he said presently.
"That only shows you how helpless I am. I have no choice. I have lost my own identity."
"Didn't your doctor back in Cleveland tell you anything about what was wrong with your eyes?"
"He said at first it was retinal; then he said it was iritis. He didn't like to answer any questions."
"The old way—adding to all the old mummeries of the most mumming of all professions—medicine! That dates back to bats' wings and toads' livers as cure for the spleen. But at least and at last he said it was iritis?"
"Yes. He told me that I might gradually lose one eye—which was true. He thought the trouble might advance to the other eye. It came out that way. He must have known."
"Perhaps he knew part," said Doctor Barnes. "You had some pain?"
"Unbearable pain part of the time—over the eyes, in the front of the head."
"Didn't your doctor tell you what iritis meant?"
"No. I suppose inflammation of the eyes—the iris."
"Precisely. Now, just because you're a woman of intelligence I'm going to try to give you a little explanation of your trouble, so you will know what you are facing."
"I wish you would."
"Very well. Now, you must think of the eye as a lens, but one made up of cells, of tissues. It can know inflammation. As a result of many inflammations there is what we call an exudation—a liquid passes from the tissues. This may be thin or serum-like, or it may be heavier, something like granulations. The tissues are weak—they exude something in their distress, in their attempt to correct this condition when they have been inflamed.
"The pupil of your eye is the aperture, the stop of the lens. That is the hole through which the light passes. Around it lie the tissues of the iris. In the back of the eye is the retina, which acts as a film for the eye's picture.
"Now, it was the part of the eye around that opening which got inflamed and began to exude. Such inflammation may come from eye-strain, sometimes from glare like furnace heat, or the reflection of the sun on the snow. Snow-blindness is sometimes painful. Why? Iritis.
"In any case, a chronic irritation came into your case some time. Little by little there came a heavy exudation around the edges of the inflamed iris. It was so heavy that we call it a 'plastic' exudation. Now, that was what was the technical trouble of your eye—plastic exudation.
"This exudation, or growth, as we might call it, went on from the edges of the iris until it met in the middle of the pupil. Then there was spread across the aperture of your lens an opaque granulated curtain through which light could not pass. Therefore you could not see. The plastic exudation had done its evil work as the result of the iritis—that is to say, of the sufferings of the iris."
"I begin to understand," said Mary Gage. "That covers what seemed to happen."
"It covers it precisely, for that is precisely what did happen. It was not cataract. I knew, or thought I knew, that it was not from retinal scars due to inflammation in the back of the eye. It was just a filling up of the opening of the eye.
"So I know you lost sight in that last eye little by little, as you did in the other. You kept on knitting all the time. On your way out you struck the glare from the white sands of the plains in the dry country. At once the inflammation finished its exudation—and you were blind."
She sat motionless.
"Sometimes we take off the film of a cataract from the eye; sometimes even we can take out the crystalline lens and substitute a heavy lens in glasses to be worn by the patient."
"But in my case you intend to cut out that exudation from the pupil?"
"No. I wish we could. What we do is to cut a little key-hole aperture, not through the pupil, but at one side the pupil. In other words, I've got to make an artificial pupil—it will be just a little at one side of the middle of the eye. You will hardly notice it."
"But that will mean I cannot see!"
"On the contrary, it will mean that you can see. Remember, your eye is a lens. Suppose you put a piece of black paper over a part of your lens—paste it there. You will find that you can still make pictures with that lens, and that they will not be distorted. Not quite so much illumination will get into the lens, but the picture will be the same. Therefore you will see, and see finely.
"Now, you must not be uneasy, and you must not think of this merely as an interesting experiment just because you have not heard of it before. My old preceptor, Fuller of Johns Hopkins, did this operation often, and almost always with success. He could do it better than I, but I am the best that offers, and it must be done now.
"There is a very general human shrinking from the thought of any operation on the eye—it is so delicate, so sensitive in every way, but as a matter of fact, science can do many things by way of operation upon the eye. If I did not think I could give you back your sight, you may be sure I should never undertake this work to-day. The operation is known technically as iridectomy. That would mean nothing to you if I had not tried to explain it.
"Of course there will be wounds in the tissues of the iris which must be healed. There must not be any more inflammation. That means that for some time after the operation your eyes must be bandaged, and you will remain in absolute darkness. You will have to keep on the bandages for a week or more—you understand that. If after hearing this explanation you do not wish to go forward, this is the time to let me know."
"I am quite ready," said Mary Gage. "As though I could ever thank you enough!"
"Let me remain in your memory, as a picturesque and noble figure, my dear lady! Think of me as a Sir Galahad, which I am not. Picture me of lofty carriage and beautiful countenance, which is not true. Imagine me as a pleasing and masterful personality in every way—which I am not. You will not meet me face to face."
"I've been praying for my sight when it didn't seem to be any use to have faith in God any more. If I should get back my eyes I would always have faith in prayer. But—the other day you told me I'd not be married, then! May not a blind woman be a married woman also?"
"No! Not if she never saw her husband. How could she ever have chosen, have selected? How could either her body or her soul ever have seen?"
She rose before him suddenly. "You say that!" She choked. "You say that, who helped put me where I am! And now you say you are going away—and you say that's all wrong, my being married! What do you mean?"
"If I gave you back your eyes and your life, isn't that something?"
"Why, no! A fight which isn't fought is worse than defeat. But you're talking as though you really meant to go away and leave me—always!"
"Yes. I've come to say good-by—and then to operate. Two this afternoon. Annie will come for you. I have told her what to do."
"And my husband?"
"Said he couldn't stand it to see you hurt. Said he would stand outside the door, but that he couldn't come in. Said he would be right there all the time. There's a great man, Mrs. Gage."
"And you are a very wise man, are you not!" said she suddenly, smiling at him slowly, her dark eyes full upon him.
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, so much you know about life and duty and the rights of everybody else! If I had my eyes, I'd not be married! Did you ever stop to think what you have been taking into your own hands here?"
"Go on," said he. "I've got it coming."
"Well, one thing you've forgotten. I've been a problem and a trouble and a nuisance—yes. But I'm a woman! You treat me as though I were a pawn, a doll. I'm tired of it. I ought to tell you something, for fear you'll really go away, and give me no chance."
"I ought to have as much courage as you're showing now." He smiled, wryly.
"Then, if you have courage, you ought to stay here and see things through. You tell me this is right and this is not right—how do you know? I owe you very much—but ought you to decide everything for me? Let me also be the judge. If there's any problem in these matters, anything unsaid, let's face itall. Cut into my eyes, but don't cut into my soul any more. If you gave me back my sight, and did not give me back every unsettled problem, with all the facts before me to settle it at last, you would leave me with unhappiness hanging over me as long as ever I lived. Not even my eyes would pay me for it."
She rose, stumbling, reaching out a hand to save herself; and he dared not touch her hand even to aid her now.
"Oh, fine of you all," she said bitterly. "Did the Emperor of Prussia ever do more? You, whom I have never seen in all my life! Any situation that is hard here for you—take it. Haven't I done as much? If there's any other fight on ahead unsettled for you, can't you fight it out? Can't you give me the privilege—since you've been talking of a woman's rights and privileges—to fight out my own battles too—to fight out all of life's fights, even to take all of its losses? I'd rather have it that way. That means I want to see you, who you are, what you are, whether you are good, whether you are just, whether you are light, whether——"
"You have a keen mind," said he slowly. "You're telling me to stay here. If we could meet face to face as though you never had been blind—why, then—I might say something or do something which would make you feel that I believed you never had been married. I have told you that already."
"Yes! Then surely you will not go away. Because you have brought up a problem between you and me—— Aren't we big enough to fight that out between us? Ought we not? Give me my eyes! Give me my rights!
"Why, listen," she went on more gently, less argumentatively, "just the other day, when we were talking over this question about my eyes, I called out to you when you went away, and you did not hear me. I said No; I would not take my eyes from you and pay the price. I said it would be sweeter to be blind and remain deceived. But that's gone by. I've been thinking since then. Now I want it all—all! I want all the fight of it, all the risk of it. Then, after I've taken my chance and made my fight, I want all the joy of it or all the sorrow of it at the end! I want life! Don't you? I've always had the feeling that you were a strong man. I don't want anything I haven't earned. I'll never give what hasn't been earned. I won't ever pray for what isn't mine."
"Now I'm ready," she repeated simply. "I can't talk any more, and you mustn't. Good-by."
She felt her hand caught tight in both of his, but he could not speak to his hand clasp. "At two!" was all he managed to say.
And so, in this far-off spot in the wilderness, the science of to-day, not long after two by the clock, had done what it might to remedy nature's unkindness, and to make Mary Gage as other women. When the sun had dropped back of its shielding mountain wall, Mary Gage lay still asleep, her eyes bandaged, in her darkened room. Whether at length she would awaken to darkness or to light, none could tell. Allen Barnes only knew that, tried as never he had been in all his life before, he had done his surgeon's work unfalteringly.
"Doc," said Sim Gage tremblingly, when they met upon the gravel street in the straggling little camp, each white-faced from fatigue, "tell me how long before we'll know."
"Three or four days at least. We'll have to wait."
"You're sure she'll see?"
"I hope so. I think so."
"What'll she see first?"
"Light."
"Who'll she see first, Doc—Annie, you reckon?"
"If she asks for you, let her see you first," said Doctor Barnes. "That's your right."
"No," said Sim Gage, "no, I don't think so. I think she'd ought to see you first, because you're the doctor. A doctor, now, he ain't like folks, you know. He's just the doctor."
"Yes, he's just the doctor, Gage, that's all."
He left Sim Gage standing in the road, looking steadfastly at the door.
To those waiting for the threatened attack upon the power dam, the mere torment of continued inaction became intolerable, but as to material danger, nothing definite came. The keen-eyed young soldiers on their beat night after night, day after day, caught no sight or sound of any lurking enemy, and began to feel resentment at the arduous hours asked of them. Once in a while one trooper would say to another that he saw no sense in people getting scared at nothing out in No Man's Land. The laborers of the camp were more or less incurious. They did their allotted hours of labor each day, passed at night to the bunk house, and fell into a snake-like torpor. Life seemed quiet and innocuous. Liquor was prohibited. The régime was military. Soon after the bugle had sounded Retreat each evening the raw little settlement became silent, save for the unending requiem to hope which the great waters chafing through the turbines continually moaned. It was apparently a place of peace.
Doctor Barnes felt reasonably sure that the attack, if any, would come through the valley at the lower dam, for that would be the only practical entry point of the marauders marooned somewhere back in the hills. The trail between these two dams lay almost wholly above the rocky river bed. It would have been difficult if not impossible to patrol the bed of the river itself, for close to the water's edge there were places where no foothold could have been obtained even now, low as the water was. Therefore it seemed most needful to watch the main wagon trail along the canyon shelf.
It was sun-fall of the third day after Doctor Barnes had left Mary Gage for her long wait in the dark. The men had finished their work about the great dam, and were on their way to their quarters. Sim Gage, scout, beginning his night's work and having ended his own attempt at sleep during the daytime, was passing, hatted and belted, rifle in hand, to the barracks, where he was to speak with the lieutenant in charge. The two men of the color guard stood at the foot of the great staff, dressed out of a tall mountain spruce, at whose top fluttered the flag of this republic. The shrilling of the bugle's beautiful salute to the flag was ringing far and near along the canyon walls. The flag began to drop, slowly, into the arms of the waiting man who had given oath of his life to protect it always, and to keep it still full high advanced. It must never touch the earth at all, but remain a creature of the air—that is the tradition of our Army and all the Army's proud color guards.
Sim Gage stopped now, as every man in that encampment, soldier or laborer, had been trained punctiliously to do, at the evening gun. He stood at attention, like these others; for Sim Gage was a soldier, or thought he was. His eyes were fixed on this strange thing, this creature called the Flag. A strange, fierce jealousy arose in his heart for it, a savage love, as though it were a thing that belonged to him. His chest heaved now in the feeling that he was identified with this guard, waiting for the colors to come to rest and shelter after the day of duty. It stirred him in a way which he did not understand. A simple, unintelligent man, of no great shrewdness, though free of any maudlin sentiment, he stood fast in the mid-street and saluted the flag, not because he was obliged to do so, but because he passionately craved to do so.
He turned to meet Annie Squires, who was hurrying away from her own quarters. She held in her hand a letter which she waved at him as she approach.
"Look-it here!" she exclaimed. "Look what I found. Where's the Doc? I want to see him right away."
"He's like enough down at the lower dam by now," said Sim.
"Well, he'd ought to see this."
"What is it?" asked Sim, looking at it questioningly. "Who's it to?"
"Who's it to?" said Annie Squires. "Why, it's to Charlie Dorenwald, that's who it's to!"
"What? That feller that was up there—one you said you knew before you come out here?"
"Yes. But how does this Waldhorn chump in there know anything about Charlie Dorenwald? That's what I want to know."
"What chump? Mr. Waldhorn?"
"I found this in his desk. Well, I wasn't rummaging in his desk, but I had to slick things up, and saw it. I only run on it by accident."
"What's in it?" said Sim Gage.
"Well, now," said Annie, naïvely, "I only just steamed it a little. It rolled open easy with a pen-holder."
"Huh. What you find in it?"
"Why, nothing but nonsense, that's what I found. Listen here. 'Price wheat next year two-nineteen sharp signal general satisfaction.' Now, what does that mean? That's foolishness. That man's a nut! I bet he gets alone up in here and smokes hop, that's what he does, all by himself. No one but a dope fiend would pull stuff like that.
"But still," she added, a finger at chin, "what bothers me is, how does Charlie know Waldhorn? Unless——"
"Unless what?" asked Sim Gage, his brows suddenly contracting.
"Unless they're both in on this deal! What do you suppose the Doc thinks? What makes him keep this Waldhorn close as he does? Is he a prisoner?"
"No, I reckon not. We all just got orders to shoot him if he tries to get away. I think Doc's holding him until he gets word in from outside. Things seems to me to move mighty slow."
"Well, this letter's addressed to Charlie Dorenwald, and anything that's got Charlie Dorenwald's name on it is crooked, and you can gamble on that. Can't you find the Doc?"
As it happened, Doctor Barnes had not yet left his quarters for his nightly trip to the lower canyon. He had been trying to sleep. He rose now, full-clad and all awake, when he caught sight of Sim Gage's face at his door.
"What's up?" he said.
"This here," said Sim, "is a letter that Annie brung me out of the house where them two is living. She says she found it in there. We can't make nothing out of it. Seems like this Waldhorn here had something to say to Charlie Dorenwald. Annie says it's the same Dorenwald that was up above, at the ranch, the one Wid didn't get. Well, how come him and Waldhorn to know each other, that's what I want to know. So does Annie."
"What I want to know, too!" said Doctor Barnes, reaching out his hand.
"Annie says it's plumb nutty, the stuff in it," commented Sim. The other looked at him quizzically.
"She read it then?"
He read it now, himself, and stood stiff and straight at reading. "This is a cypher—code stuff! They know what it means, and we don't. 'Two-nineteen sharp'—I wonder what that means! This is the nineteenth day of the month, isn't it? 'Signal general satisfaction'—Lord! I'd give anything for a good night's sleep. Gage, go on over and tell all the men to keep full dressed, and with equipment handy all night long. I don't have any clear guess what this is all about, but we can't take any chances."
"Wid, he thinks them fellers ain't coming down here a-tall," said Sim confidentially.
"He doesn't know anything more about it than I do or you do," said Doctor Barnes somewhat testily. "You go and tell Annie to shut that desk up, and see that she keeps it shut. I'm coming over to seal it up."
Annie Squires meantime had hastened back to discuss these matters with her patient in the hospital room. It only added more to the nervous strain that already tormented Mary Gage.
"Annie, I'm scared!" she whispered. "Oh! if I could only take care of myself. Tell me, Annie—I'll get well, won't I?"
"Sure thing, Kid—it's a cinch."
"Where is he?" Mary demanded after some hesitation.
"Who? Him?" Annie employed her usual fashion of indicating the identity of Sim Gage.
"No, I mean Doctor Barnes."
"He'll be going down below pretty soon. He don't know anything more than I do about what that fool stuff in the letter means."
"But say," she added after a time, "I been kind of looking around in desks and places, you know—I have to red things up—and I run across another thing, some more writing."
"You mustn't do these things, Annie! It may be private."
"Oh, no, it ain't. It's only some writing copied from a magazine, like enough. It was on one of the desks in this house—just in there."
"Copied?—What is it?"
"I don't know. Poetry stuff—sounds mushy. I didn't know men would do things like copying out poetry from magazines. Never heard of Mr. Symonds—did you?"
"How can I tell, Annie?"
"I'll read it for you if you'll let me. It's dark, in here—I'll just go outside the door and read it through the crack at you, so's the light won't hurt you anyways."
And so, faintly, as from a detached intelligence, there came into Mary Gage's darkened room, her darkened life, some words well-written, ill-read, which it seemed to her she might have dreamed:
"As a perfume doth remainIn the folds where it hath lain,So the thought of you, remainingDeeply folded in my brain,Will not leave me; all things leave me:You remain.
"Other thoughts may come and go,Other moments I may knowThat shall waft me, in their going,As a breath blown to and fro.Fragrant memories; fragrant memoriesCome and go.
"Only thoughts of you remainIn my heart where they have lain,Perfumed thoughts of you, remaining,A hid sweetness, in my brain.Others leave me; all things leave me:You remain."
"Read them over again!" said Mary Gage, sitting upon her couch. "Read them again, Annie! I want to learn it all by heart."
And Annie, patient as ever, read the words over to her. The keen senses of Mary Gage recorded them.
"I can say them now!" said she, as much to herself as to her friend. And she did say them, over and over again.
"Annie," she cried, as she sat up suddenly. "I can't stand it any more! I can see! I can see!"
She was tearing at the bandages about her head when Annie entered and put down her hands, terrified at this disobedience of orders.
"Annie, IknowI can see! It was light—at the door there! I can see. I cansee!" She began to weep, trembling.
"Hush!" said Annie, frightened. "It ain't possible! It can't be true!Whatdid you see?"
"Nothing!" said Mary Gage, half sobbing. "Just the light. Don't tell him. Put back the bandage. But, oh, Annie, Annie, I cansee!"
"You're talking foolish, Sis," said Annie, pinning the bandages all the tighter about the piled brown hair of Mary Gage's head.
"But say now," she added after that was done, "if I was a girl and a fellow felt that way about me—couldn't remember nobody but me that way—why, me for him! Mushy—but times comes when a girl falls strong for the mushy, huh?
"Now you lay down again and cover up your eyes and rest, or you'll never be seeing things again, sure enough. I ain't going to read no more of that strong-arm writing at all."
Mary Gage heard the door close, heard the footsteps of her friend passing down the little hall. She was alone again. Her heart was throbbing high.
What she first had seen was the soul of a man; a man's confession; his recessional as well. Now she knew that he was indeed going away from her life forever. Which had been more cruel, blindness or vision?
The night wore on slowly. Midnight struck, and the cold of the mountain night had reached its maximum chill. To the ears of the weary patrols there came no sound save the continuous complaint of the waters, a note rising and falling, increasing and decreasing in volume, after the strange fashion of waters carried by the chance vagaries of the air. At times the sound of the river rose to great volume, again it died down to a low murmur, the voice of a beaten giant protesting against his shackles. Came two o'clock in the morning, and the guards walked their beats with the weariness of men who have fought off sleep for hours. Sim Gage, sleepless so long, was very weary, but he kept about his work.
At intervals of half an hour he crunched down the gravel-faced slope of the bank which ran from the bench level to the foot of the dam. Here he walked along the level of the great eddy, along the rocky shore, examining the face of the vast concrete wall itself, gazing also as he always did, with no special purpose, at the face of the wide and long apron where the waters foamed over, a few inches deep, white as milk, day and night.
Any attempt at the use of dynamite by any enemy naturally would be made on this lower side of the dam. There were different places which might naturally be used by a criminal who had opportunity. One of these, concealed from the chance glance of any officer, was back under the apron, behind the half-completed side columns of the spill gate, where a great buttress came out to flank the apron. A charge exploded here would get at the very heart of the dam, for it would open the turbine wells and the spillway passage which had been provided for the controlled outlet.
Ragged heaps of native rock lay along the foot of the dam, flanking the edge of the great eddy eastward of the apron. Here often the laborers stood and cast their lines for the leaping trout, which, wearied by their fruitless fight at the apron, that carried them only up to the insurmountable obstacle which reached a hundred feet above them, sometimes were swept back to seek relief in the gentler waters of the deep eddy, that swung inshore from the lower end of the apron.
Sim Gage saw all these scenes, so familiar by this time, as they lay half revealed under the blaze of the great searchlight. It all seemed safe now, as it always had before.
But when at length he turned back to ascend to the upper level, he saw something which caused him to stop for just an instant, and then to spring into action.
The power plant proper of the dam was not yet wholly installed, only the dam and turbine-ways being completed. In the power house itself, a sturdy building of rock which caught hold of the immemorial mountain foot beneath it, only a single unit of the dynamos had been installed. This unit had been hooked on, as the engineers phrased it, in order to furnish electric light to the camp itself, for the telephone service of the valley and for the minor machinery which was operated by this or that machine shop along the side of the mountain. A cable from the power house ran up to another house known as the lighting plant, which stood in the angle between the street level and the dam itself. Here was installed a giant searchlight which could be played at will along the face of the dam, to make its examination the more easy and exact by night. The steady stream of this light was a fixed factor, being held at such a position as would cover the greatest amount of the dam face.
Now, as Sim Gage topped the grade, gravel crunching under his feet, a trifle out of breath with his climb, since the incline itself was a thing of magnificent distances, he saw the searchlight of the power dam begin a performance altogether new in his own experience.
The great shaft of light rose up abruptly to a position vertical, a beam of light reaching up into the sky. An instant, and it began to swing from side to side. It swung sharply clear against the bald face of the mountain at the farther end of the dam. It swept down the canyon itself, or to its first great bend. It rose again and swept across the dark-fringed summit of the mountains on the hither side of the stream. Not once, but twice, this was done.
It was a splendid and magnificent thing itself, this giant eye, illuminating and revealing, fit factor in a wild and imposing panorama of the night. But why? No one ever had known the searchlight to be used in this way. What orders had been given? What did these zig-zag beams up and down the surface of the sky indicate? Was it a signal, or was some one playing with the property of the Company, there in the cupola of the light station?
Sim Gage reached the side of the plant just as the light came down to its original duty of watching the face of the dam. At first there was not any sound.
"Who's there?" he called out. No answer came. It seemed to him that he heard some sort of movement in the little rock house.
"Halt! Who goes there?" he called out in a formula he had learned.
He got no answer, but he heard a thud as of a body dropping out of the window of the further side of the house, against the slope of the dam which lay above it.
He ran around the corner of the little building, rifle at the ready, only to see a scrambling figure, bent over, endeavoring to reach the top of the dam, where the smooth roadway ran from side to side of the great gorge. That way lay no escape. The sentry was across yonder, and would soon return. This way, toward the east, a fugitive must go if he would seek any point of emergence from these surroundings.
"Halt! Halt there! Halt, or I'll fire!" cried Gage. "Halt!" He called it out again, once, twice, three times. But the figure, whoever or whatever it was, ran on. It now had reached the top of the dam, and could be seen with more or less distinctness, sky-lined against the starlight and the gray sky behind it.
Sim Gage, old-time hunter, used all his life to firearms, was used also to firing at running game. He drew down now deep into the rear sight of his Springfield, allowing for the faint light, and held at the front edge of the running figure as nearly as he could tell. He fired once, twice and three times—rap!—rap!—rap!—the echo came from the concrete—at the figure as it crouched and stumbled on. Then it stopped. There came a scrambling and a sliding of the object, which fell at the top of the dam. It slipped off the dam top and rolled and slid almost at his feet. He dragged it down into the edge of the beams of the searchlight itself.
Up to this time he had not known or suspected who the man might be. At first he now thought it was a woman. In reality it was a Chinaman, the cook and body-servant of Waldhorn, engineer at the power operations! He was dead.
Sim stood looking down at what he had done, trying in his slow fashion of mind to puzzle out what this man had been doing here, and why he had come. He heard the sound of running feet above him, heard challenges, shouts, every way. Others had heard the shot. "This way, fellers—— Come along!" he heard Wid Gardner call out, high and clear; for that night Wid also was of the upper guard.
But they were not running in his direction. They seemed to be back on the street. All at once Sim Gage solved his little problem. This Chinaman had been sent to do this work—sent by the owner of that house yonder, the engineer, Waldhorn. That prisoner must not escape now. He knew! It was he who had given the searchlight signal! Waldhorn—and Dorenwald! He coupled both names now again.
Sim Gage himself, having a shorter distance to go than his comrades, left his dead Chinaman, and started after the man higher up. He reached the Waldhorn quarters slightly before the others.
He heard the screen door of the log house slam, saw a stout and burly man step out, satchel in hand. The man walked hurriedly toward a car which Sim Gage had not noticed, since there was so much unused machinery about, wheel scrapers, wagons, plows and the like. Now he saw that it was Waldhorn and Waldhorn's car. He was taking advantage of this confusion to make his own escape.
This hurrying figure halted for a half instant in the dim light, for he heard footsteps on each side of him. He knew the guard was coming.
Sim Gage's summons rang high and clear. Yonder was the man—he was going to escape. He must not escape. All these things came to Sim Gage's mind as he half raised his weapon to his shoulder, challenging again, "Halt! Who goes there? Halt!" The bolt of his Springfield clinked home once more.
The man turned away, toward the sound of the greater number of his enemies, weapon in hand. The patrol was closing in. But before he turned he both gave and received death in the last act he might offer in treachery to this country, which had been generous and kind to him.
Sim Gage fired with close, sure aim, and cut his man through with the blow of the Spitzer bullet of the Springfield piece. But even as he did so Waldhorn himself had fired with the heavy automatic pistol which he carried. The bullet caught Sim Gage high in the chest, and passed through, missing the spine by but little. He sprawled forward.
Waldhorn's body was no better than a sieve, for he received the fire of the entire squad of riflemen who had approached from the other side, and so many bullets struck him, again and again, that they actually held him up from falling for an instant.
Now the entire street filled. Foreign or half-foreign laboring folk came out, soldiers and sailor boys came, jabbering in a score of tongues. None knew the plot of the drama which had been finished now. All they knew was that the chief engineer had been killed by the guard. Very well, but who had shot Scout Gage?
Sim Gage, looking up at the sky, felt the great arm of Flaherty, the foreman, under his head.
"Easy now, lad," said the big man. "Easy. Lay down a bit, till I have a look. Where's the Docther, boys?—Get him quick."
"What's the matter?" said Sim Gage. "Lemme up. I fell down—Who hit me?"
He felt something at his chest, raised a hand, and in turn passed it before his face in wonderment.
"Well, look at that!" said he. "Did that feller shoot me? Say, did I get him?"
"Sure, boy!" said Flaherty. "You got him. And so did a dozen more of the fellies. He's deader'n hell this minute, so don't you worry none over that. Don't worry over nothing," he added gently, folding his coat to put under Sim's head. He had seen gun shot wounds before in his life on the rough jobs, and he knew.
"Get a board, or something, boys," he said. So presently they brought a plank, and eased Sim Gage gently to it, men at each end lifting him, others steadying him as he was carried. They took him into the house which Waldhorn had just now left.
"Get a board, or something, boys"[Illustration: "Get a board, or something, boys"]
"Get a board, or something, boys"[Illustration: "Get a board, or something, boys"]
It was the turn of dawn now. The soft light of day was filtering through the air from somewhere up above, somewhere beyond the edge of the canyon.
"Better tell those women to stay away," said Flaherty to the young lieutenant. The latter met Annie Squires at the door of her house, ejaculating, demanding, questioning, weeping, all at once. It was with difficulty that she was induced to obey the general orders of getting inside and keeping quiet.
Other men came now, telling of the discovery of the dead Chinaman near the lighting station. The bits of information were pieced together hurriedly, this and that to the other.
Doctor Barnes had seen the light's play on the sky, had heard echoes in the mountains. He now reached the scene, coming at top speed up the canyon trail in his car. He met answers already formed for his questions.
"They got Sim," said Wid Gardner. "Waldhorn——"
He hurried into the room where they had carried the wounded man. "Why, of course," said Sim Gage dully, "I'll be all right. After breakfast I'll be out again all right. I've got to go over and see—I've got to go over to her house and see——" But he never told what he planned.
Doctor Barnes shook his head to Flaherty after a time, when the latter turned to him in the outer room. The big foreman compressed his lips.
"He's done good work, the lad!" said Flaherty; and Wid Gardner, still standing by, nodded his head.
"Mighty good. It was him got the Chink all right—hit him twict out of three, and creased him onct; and like enough this Dutchman first, too. Tell me, Doc, ain't he got a chanct to come through? Can't you make it out that way for pore old Sim?"
"I'm afraid not," said Doctor Barnes. "The shot's close to an artery, and like enough he's bleeding internally, because he's coughing. His pulse is jumpy. It's too bad—too damn bad. He was—a good man, Sim Gage!"
"What was it, Annie?" asked Mary Gage, over in their house. "There was shooting. Was anybody hurt?"
"Some of the hands got to mixing it, like enough," said Annie, herself pale and shaking. "I don't know."
"Was anybody hurt?"
"I haven't had time to find out. Oh, my God! Sis, I wish't we'd never come out here to this country at all. I want my mother, that's what I want! I'm sick with all this." She began to cry, sobbing openly. Mary Gage, now the stronger, drew the girl's head down into her own arms.
"You mustn't cry," said she. "Annie, we've got to pull together."
"I guess so," said Annie, sobbing, "both of us. But I'm so lonesome—I'm so awful scared."
The morning came slowly, at length fully, cool and softly luminous. The friends of Sim Gage, all men, stood near his bedside. His eyes opened sometimes, looking with curious languor around him, as though some problem were troubling him. At length he turned toward Wid, who stood close to him.
"Hit!" said he.—"I know, now."
No one said anything to this. After a time he reached out a hand and touched almost timidly the arm of his friend. His voice was laboring and not strong.
"Where's—where's my hat?" he whispered at length.
"Your hat?" said Wid. "Your hat?—Now, why—I reckon it's hanging around somewheres here. What makes you want it?"
But some one had heard the request and came through the little hallway with Sim Gage's hat, brave green cord and all.
The wounded man looked at it and smiled, as sweet a smile as may come to a man's face—the smile of a boy. Indeed, he had lived a life that had left him scarce more than a boy, all these years alone on outskirts of the world.
He motioned to them to put the hat on the bed side him. "I want it here," he said after a time, moving restlessly when they undertook to take it from him.
He touched it with his hand. At length he reached out and dropped it on the chair at the head of his bed, now and again turning and looking at it the best he might, laboring as he did with his torn lungs; looking at it with some strange sort of reverence in his gaze, some tremendous significance.
"Ain't shefine?" he asked of his friend, again with his astonishingly winsome smile; a smile they found hard to look upon.
A half hour later some man down the road said to another that the sagebrusher had croaked too.
That is to say, Sim Gage, gentleman, soldier and patriot, had passed on to the place where men find reward for doing the very best they know with what God has seen fit to give them as their own.