'The bud may have a bitter taste,But sweet will be the flower.'"
'The bud may have a bitter taste,But sweet will be the flower.'"
Elijah rose as he spoke, holding in one hand the stripped orange, in the other the rind.
"This fruit is typical of life. It is fair to look upon. Its acrid rind burns the lips; the thoughtless cast it aside. Only those who can see beneath the bitter rind, the sweet, refreshing fruit, are worthy to taste of it. We have tasted the bitterness, little girl, let us refresh ourselves with the sweetness."
He raised the orange to his lips. Helen and Amy did the same. Helen was still conscious of the tense muscles shaping her lips in a smile.
"Oatmeal?" Elijah was filling a dish and looking at Helen. Her face flushed slightly.
"If you please."
Elijah laughed, and Amy gazed in mild wonder.
"It's our joke," he explained. "Miss Lonsdale said that she would have fed me with something better than oatmeal if she had been my wife."
To this, Amy made no reply. She was absorbed in her thoughts. Her fear of Helen was diminishing. In a way, she was enjoying her own cleverness. It was clever in her to have drawn from Helen the secret of her hold upon Elijah, without arousing any suspicions. "It's not so very hard, just a little puzzling once in a while." These words stood out so sharply and clearly. Amy's face clouded. She must not forget, and her memory was not good. "A little practice and the thing is done." This was clear. "A paper and pencil, a—" "What was it? Some kind of books." Her face grew more perplexed and clouded. "Oh! What if she should forget? It would never do to ask Helen again, Helen would suspect. She must remember." Her eyes grew dim with tears that were demanding to be shed. "Any book-seller has them." Her face cleared. She felt like shouting her triumph. She could go to any book-seller and he would tell her what she wanted to know.
"That's all." Elijah sprang from the table. He lifted Amy from her feet, caught her in his arms, kissed her and darted through the house and out into the drive-way.
"Hook up the horses, José! Move lively! We've got a long drive."
Helen and Amy were standing under a rose-covered trellis. Helen was sober, Amy was peaceful.
"Sorry to leave you so soon, little girl. We're going out on business." The team pulled up beside them. "We'll be home tonight." The words floated back through the crush of wheels on the gravel.
Amy watched them drive away. This time she held no Fate-dealing daisy in her hands; a full-blown rose was there instead. The flush of it was on her cheeks, its perfume in her nostrils as she cleared the table, and washing the dishes, put them away. She sang softly to herself, with her sewing in her lap, as she rocked gently to and fro through the long, hot day. In the shade of the rose and the honeysuckle, the tempered sunbeams fell on her hair, on her work, the sweet perfume of the air mingling with the perfume of her dreams.
It was almost six o'clock when Elijah and Helen returned. Following them closely was a dusty horseman. Without dismounting the horseman handed a note to Elijah. Elijah tore open the envelope, his face clouding as he read. He turned to Helen.
"You're right, as usual. The Pacific will close its doors tomorrow. We've got to get back to Ysleta tonight. The cashier tells me that we can get our money out if we're on hand early when the bank opens in the morning." Elijah turned to the stable man. "Take out these horses and put in Chica and Lota. Hurry!" He slipped his arm through Amy's. "Too bad, little girl. Thought we'd have an evening together. Let's go in and have a bite. José will be ready in fifteen minutes. Sixty miles is a long drive for one day; are you good for it?" He looked sharply at Helen.
"Of course I am." The answer was brusque. The day, for very good reasons, had not eased Helen's mind.
Amy stood bright-eyed and smiling, as Elijah kissed her goodbye. A fleeting wonder swept over Elijah's mind; but he had no time for riddles. Amy was still smiling as Elijah and Helen drove away. The setting sun rested a halo on her hair, shone softly in her triumphant eyes. A long time she stood looking towards the great ocean, then she turned to the cottage. "A pencil and paper, and a little practice and the thing is done."
The Rio Vista was the famous hostelry of Ysleta. With full appreciation of the truth of the old adage that the path to a man's heart leads through his stomach, the promoters of the Ysleta boom had built a gorgeous edifice and equipped it with a cuisine not equalled west of the Mississippi. It is true that their artistic palates were not so finely educated as were their gastronomic, but the glitter of plate glass windows and the constant warfare of hostile colors, affected not at all the delicate viands which were placed before the guests. Since her connection with the Las Cruces, Helen Lonsdale had made this palace her home.
As she ascended the steps of the Rio Vista, after her return from the Berl ranch, Helen's attention was attracted to an old man who was seated near the head of the broad stone steps that led to the broader verandah. He seemed utterly out of harmony with his surroundings. His clothes were not shabby, but they were evidently worn more with an eye to the useful than to the ornamental. The heavy boots were wrinkled and worn, yet solid, and the blacking suggested a reluctant concession to custom rather than to a sense of propriety. His trousers were baggy and his coat hung in loose folds from a pair of broad, square shoulders. A white shirt was topped by a high old-fashioned collar, held by a flowing tie of navy blue. These incongruities, in sharp contrast to the finished specimens of well-groomed humanity who circled around him, first attracted Helen. It was the face that compelled from her more than a passing notice.
As she looked at the face, more especially the eyes, a sense of relief from oppression, an almost irresistible impulse to laughter came over her. It was not ridicule, but a light-hearted response to the contagious humor radiating from every line and wrinkle. Yet the weathered face, with its closely-cropped fringe of gray beard, resting like a sphere on the sharp lips of the high collar, carried the conviction that the mobile lines could set hard as frozen metal, that the humorous eyes, deep beneath overhanging brows, could pierce like sharpened steel. Perhaps it was her imagination, but the eyes seemed to answer her own and the face to turn as as she passed, in order to prolong the interchange of wordless messages.
Later in the day Helen was seated apart from the crowd in the rotunda. She wanted to get away from herself but there was no desire to seek companionship. Consequently she was annoyed at the sound of footsteps which evidently had her for an object. She was more annoyed when a chair was dragged from its position and thrust beside her own. She did not even turn her head when she heard a slump in the chair which testified that the intruder intended to maintain his position. With no preliminary cough, a rugged voice remarked:
"Pretty considerable goin' on in these parts, if 'tis three thousand miles from nowhere, an' a hard road at that."
Helen's annoyance vanished. She turned brightly to the old man.
"Please excuse me. I didn't know who it was till you spoke."
"If you know now, you've got the advantage 'o me, in one sense. I'm Uncle Sid Harwood, retired sea captain, at present cruisin' for pleasure."
Helen bowed with sedate humor.
"I'm Helen Lonsdale and nothing in particular."
Uncle Sid Harwood surveyed his companion leisurely.
"First time I ever found nothin' in particular worth while. You come from around here?"
"Yes, I'm Californian, born and bred."
"Glad to know it. I've been lyin' at anchor here some days lookin' for a pilot. I reckoned you knew the harbor. Met a young fellow by the name o' Berl?"
"Elijah Berl?" Helen asked in surprise.
"That's him."
"Why yes, of course I have. He's president of the Las Cruces Irrigation Company."
"Praisin' the Lord an' callyhootin' around like a sky rocket with its tail a-fire?" pursued Uncle Sid.
Helen laughed at the apt though rather superficial analogy.
"Yes, but he's not all fire and fizz after all. He is doing things worth while."
"Don't doubt it." Uncle Sid spoke with conviction. "He always carried high steam, an' I guessed he'd do something, if he got hitched to an engine that would stand the pressure."
"Wouldn't you like to see him? He's in the hotel now, I think. I'll send for him."
Uncle Sid made no objections and Helen beckoned a waiter.
"Please see if Mr. Berl is in his room and tell him he's wanted."
"Eunice an' I thought maybe we'd see 'Lige. That's one reason why we came here instead o' somewhere's else. Eunice's my sister," Uncle Sid added.
Before Helen had time to reply, she heard the quick beat of Elijah's feet on the floor.
"That's him," Uncle Sid remarked, as he rose to his feet.
The footsteps halted and Helen saw Elijah standing in mute surprise before the old man. The next instant he had Uncle Sid's outstretched hand in both his own with crushing grasp.
"Well! well! Uncle Sid! You're looking as natural as life."
Uncle Sid winced.
"I'm feelin' as natural's life too, just this very minute. Cast off, 'Lige! I brought my rheumatiz with me."
Elijah turned to Helen.
"How under the sun did you come to know Uncle Sid?"
"She don't know me. We're just gettin' acquainted."
"Uncle Sid is worth knowing, Helen, I can vouch for that." Elijah surveyed Uncle Sid with a beaming face. "Where's your sister, Mrs. MacGregor; why didn't you bring her with you?"
"I did. She'll be down in a minute. Sit down. How do you make it out here, 'Lige? You used to be great on temperance back East, but I haven't seen any water worth drinkin' out here."
"There's plenty of water, all right, and good water too. We'll show him, won't we, Helen?"
"I'll believe that when I see it. Lucky thing the Lord didn't start in makin' man in this section," growled Uncle Sid, "he wouldn't have had water enough to have pasted him together with. He'd a had dust enough, goodness knows. I want a handbellus, to blow off some o' this dust. Just as sure as I touch water I shan't be nothin' but a mud puddle."
"You can afford to even up, Uncle Sid. You've had more than your share of water all your life. A little soil won't hurt you now."
"Huh!" Uncle Sid grunted. "I was on top of the water then, an' I kept there. This dirt gets on top o' me an' inside me an' everywhere it ain't no business to be. Here's Eunice now. Look here, Eunice, here's an old friend o' yours, and here's Miss Lonsdale, a new friend o' mine, and I won't swap either."
A tall woman, deliberate in all her motions, advanced upon the little party. Her eyes rested for a moment upon Elijah as he rose with extended hand, then, acknowledging the introduction to Helen, they slipped from Elijah and glanced slowly over Helen from her boots to the coils of dark hair that crowned her head. Helen experienced a creeping sensation. The touch of the deliberate eyes reminded her of the inquisitive fingers of a jockey feeling for blemishes on the smooth limbs of a horse.
Mrs. MacGregor seated herself with studied elegance.
"It occurs to me, Sidney, that Miss Lonsdale may object to your rather broad claims to her friendship upon so short an acquaintance."
"I guess she's able to let me know her own mind. We took to each other like ducks to a patch o' wild rice. I'm too old to be dangerous an' young enough to know what's good for me."
Mrs. MacGregor ignored her brother's remark. She turned to Elijah.
"How does the change from sedate New England to this new life affect you, Elijah?"
"Not at all, personally, Mrs. MacGregor. I'm just the same 'Lige you used to know."
Uncle Sid broke in.
"Perhaps not your innards, but your outards ain't the same. You ain't goin' around here barefoot, with two kinds o' cloth in your pants."
Mrs. MacGregor's eyes were wandering from Helen to Elijah. She was comparing the evidences of sight gathered from personal inspection, with those of hearsay, the result of her indirect inquiries among the hotel guests, as to Elijah's standing in Ysleta. At length she arose, holding out her hand to Elijah.
"I shall hope to renew our old acquaintance. It is a great pleasure to find one's estimates of an old friend more than exceeded."
Elijah took Mrs. MacGregor's hand. In spite of his bewilderment over their implied intimacy in the past, he felt a glow of pride that she felt it worth her while to expand the mustard seed of their former acquaintance into a luxuriant growth. He gave the limp hand a warm pressure.
"Let me do anything I can for your pleasure, Mrs. MacGregor. I am always at your service."
Mrs. MacGregor bowed formally to Helen.
"We shall meet again, I hope. You are stopping here?"
"Yes." Helen could hardly bring herself to this curt response. She felt more like slapping.
It did not escape Mrs. MacGregor, who was following Uncle Sid from the room, that Helen had begun to move as well, and that she was checked by an almost imperceptible gesture from Elijah.
"What about tomorrow, Helen?" he asked.
"You mean the Pacific bank?"
"Yes. It's not our secret now. Every one knows that the run will begin when the bank opens."
"There's only one thing to be done. You must be the first in line."
Elijah took a few quick turns then came to a sudden halt before Helen.
"That's impossible. The line's a mile long now." He laughed uneasily over the exaggeration.
"Then we are out of it, after all."
Elijah hesitated.
"Not necessarily."
Helen leaped to the point of Elijah's meaning.
"You can't do that. You mustn't!"
"Why not? It's our money."
"You know why not." Helen spoke sharply.
"Mellin has fixed it all up." Elijah insisted.
"You know what that means, as well as I do." Helen's voice was sharper and more decided.
Elijah was again striding up and down. He looked at his watch, then snapped it shut and thrust it into his pocket.
"Well, goodnight, Helen, I'll think it over."
"Don't do it. It's dangerous to think about some things."
Helen was alone, walking thoughtfully to her room. Her old mood had returned with even darker shadows. Why couldn't she act on her own keen suggestion and stop thinking about dangerous things? This question occurred to her. Another point suggested itself. Mellin was reading clearly in Elijah that about which she had only vague presentiments.
The first brick in Ysleta's speculative row had toppled against its fellow and the whole line was threatened with collapse. Some worthless speculator had begun it by trying to "cash in." The news had spread like wild-fire that the Pacific was to be the first point of attack. There was no time for aid to reach it from the San Francisco banks, even had they been disposed to tender assistance. As for the local banks, they were too busy furling their own sails for the coming storm, to think of going to the rescue of the storm's first victim.
Early as was the hour, the sharp-lined figures of the depositors jammed against the closed doors of the bank and faded to dim shadows at the far end of the line. Men, who a few hours before had bowed with deference to their fellow men, were now like savage tigers, holding their places with tooth and claw bared for immediate and merciless action. Woe to the luckless one who in the jam, was crowded from his position. There was no hope for him but in the far distance where men were shadows. No word was spoken. There was no need of words where moonlight gleamed coldly on shining steel. A hand to hand fight meant the end of the line for the defender as well as the one who attacked.
Only one thing could have broken the solid ranks. Could any one in that fierce array of self-seekers have seen a man slink from a half-opened window in the rear of the bank, creep from shadow to shadow in the direction of the Rio Vista, and finally disappear within a secluded arbor, a timid fox in a pack of ravening hounds would have had a better chance of life than he.
Pale as the moonlight that lay soft and white about him, Elijah stood, awaiting Mellin.
"I have decided that I cannot take the money."
"What the devil are you here for then?"
"To tell that I will take chances with the rest."
"The devil you will." Mellin's voice showed the contemptuous scorn he felt; but Elijah's course was not new to him. His experience in life had taught him that in business the saint and the sinner stand on the same plane. He had noted that the sinner did without a qualm that which the saint did with moaning and tears. The result was the same in either case.
"I suppose you know that we are carrying five hundred thousand in deposits. We have one hundred thousand with which to meet the run."
"But the receivership that will follow?"
Mellin laughed.
"You are not so innocent as all that. You know our line of business. Real estate loans!" Mellin indulged in a sarcastic smile. "Two millions hard cash and five millions of Ysleta lots that aren't worth record."
"We took our chances with the other depositors and we will stay with them." Elijah's words were firm, but his voice gave them the lie.
Mellin was very patient. It never occurred to Elijah to ask why. Mellin was worldly wise; Elijah was not. Therefore Elijah never asked the question, "What does the other man want me to do for him when he is so anxious to do something for me?"
Mellin was worldly wise. He had read Elijah aright. Elijah was open to conviction as to what was right and what was wrong. His well-known professions only strengthened Mellin in his belief that Elijah relied upon others for guidance more than upon himself. So he made answer:
"You are not on the same footing as the other depositors. I am cashier. Yesterday morning I got a tip that there would be a run on the bank and I passed it on to you. It's no one's business that you had a friend on the inside. You were out of town and I sent a messenger after you. After sending him, things thickened. I saw that you wouldn't get back in time, so I drew for you. Here's the stuff." Mellin held out a compact bundle carefully wrapped and tied. Elijah's hand closed upon it. He moistened his dry lips as the package rested in his hand and was transferred to his pocket. Without a word he turned toward the hotel. The parting of the ways was behind him and he was on the wrong path. The return was not irrevocably barred; but,—would he return?
The shadows that had gathered around Elijah during the night were not dispelled with the dawn of the following day. On his way to the office, he was anticipating Helen's criticism of his act in taking the money from the bank in the face of her strong opposition. He found on arrival, that the devil had a way of his own in making smooth the path of his disciples, for a time at least.
Helen greeted him as usual.
"My last night's advice was unnecessary, wasn't it?"
"How so?"
"I went around by the bank this morning. It was a sight, I can tell you. I didn't see you in the line." There was an indirect question in Helen's eyes.
"I wasn't in line." Elijah could not restrain a sigh of relief as he spoke the half-truth.
"They say the line was begun before ten o'clock last night."
"I know it was, and it was kept too." Elijah turned to his desk and became absorbed in his work.
Whether or not Helen grasped the fact that her indirect question of Elijah remained unanswered, she pursued it no farther.
Toward noon, Elijah went to the safe which stood in the back of the office. He opened the door, took from his pocket a bunch of keys and unlocked his private box. Helen's back was towards him. Without taking his eyes from her, he drew from his pocket a small package and slipped it beneath a pile of papers. Then he closed and locked the door and returned the keys to his pocket. He reseated himself, swinging his chair from his desk.
"Are you busy, Helen?"
"Not very."
"What do you think this business means?"
"What, the run on the Pacific?"
"Yes."
"It's the beginning of the end, and I'm glad it's come." Helen spoke with decision.
"The end of everything?"
"No; only a weeding out. It was bound to come, only I didn't think it would be so soon."
"I don't feel so sure that anything will be left."
"Things that are worth while, will be."
Elijah made no immediate reply. He could not get away from the thought of the thing that he had done; the thing that Helen had almost commanded him not to do. He knew what she would think could she know of the packet which he had stealthily slipped into his private box. He raised his eyes, to meet Helen's looking frankly into his own, or—was it his imagination? Was there an anxious questioning, born of a half suspicion? He put the thought from him.
"Ysleta was worth while," he ventured.
"In itself, it was." Helen's face was firm with conviction. "But these scheming rascals have made it not worth while for a long time. There will be room for Ysleta if Las Cruces is managed right."
"It's going to be." Elijah spoke with no less conviction.
"Yes, it's going to be just so long as you keep clear of boomers' methods. Not one of the boomers has cared a snap of his fingers for Ysleta's future. Every one has wanted all he could get, now."
"Now?" Elijah repeated.
"Yes, now; but we have towaitfor things that are worth while."
"Good Heavens, Helen! Haven't I waited?"
"Wait a little longer." Her voice was eager, almost pleading.
"About the Pico ranch?"
"Just that, Elijah." Helen made no attempt to restrain the sigh of relief that escaped her.
"I can't wait, Helen. You saw where that ditch line was going. Others will see it. You saw that only a hill lay between it and Pico's ranch. Others will see it. A tunnel suggested itself to you. It will suggest itself to others. We were the first to see these things, why should we not take advantage of them?"
"But Seymour and Ralph, Elijah. It isn't fair to them."
"I have given them enough."
"Yes, but—"
Elijah interrupted her.
"I want to do things. You want to do things." He was striding back and forth across the floor of the office in growing excitement. "I don't care for money. You don't care for money. Look!" He laid his hand on her arm and pointed to the dusty street. "'Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.' Because of this, it is falling! falling! But one can breathe the breath of life into these dry bones. It shall rise from its ashes. Deliver these lands from the hands of them who have wrought this,"—he flung his hand toward the street,—"from them and their kind, and Ysleta shall yet live. It shall look forth upon waters of plenty flowing from the mountains, upon green hillsides, and upon valleys standing out with fatness." He paused, his voice dropped almost to a whisper, but vibrating with intense emotion. "The vision of the future came to me. I was alone and I waited. Then you came into my life. What I lack, you have; patience, sympathy. You don't know what it means to me."
Helen's eyes were not frank and fearless now. They were shrinking, questioning, doubting; but they could not drop from Elijah's. She felt rather than knew her feet were trembling on the brink, but she could not turn back. The old fascination was yet strong upon her, but she felt its strength as a whole. Of its elemental compounds she was ignorant; the religious fanaticism that with frenzied kisses wears smooth a block of worthless stone; the merciless vanity that comes to one who is fixed in the belief that he is God's elect; the human element that demands love, sympathy and unswerving devotion to the idols he worships, whatever the cost to others. These were strong elements and Helen felt their power even as Ralph and others had felt it. There was in Elijah an unshaken, unshakable belief in himself. His work appealed to others as it had appealed to Helen. Others selected with unclouded judgment the grains of Elijah's enthusiasm from the chaff of his fanaticism. Others had not a woman's heart; Helen had. She was not conscious of it, of how it was blinding her judgment, of where it was leading her. This consciousness was dimly suggesting itself to her, not from herself but from Elijah. Let him arouse that consciousness to active life, then she would know, then she would act!
Helen drew a deep, inspiring breath, looking up again. Her eyes were fiercely questioning.
No! This zealous passion that strode sure-footed on the brink of destruction, could not be assumed, was not assumed. Helen was quick to judge and quick to decide when she saw clearly. She was clean of heart and pure of mind. She could not know that a human soul, lashed to frenzy by the stings of an outraged conscience, can yet clothe itself in robes that might be worn by an angel of light.
"Then I saw in my dream that there was a way to hell, even from the gates of heaven, as well as from the city of destruction."
Whether warned by intuition that one more step would be fatal, or whether his blinded sense of right was asserting itself, the fact remained that for several days, Elijah was hardly ever in the office and even then for only a brief time. He seemed to Helen, absorbed if not sullen. At first she noticed this with positive relief; later she had misgivings which grew more insistent as time went on. She saw and she could not see. She saw the dream of Elijah's solitary years daily taking shape and form. She saw that his work had roots which struck deep in solid, lasting worth; she saw Ysleta founded on drifting sand. The one had solid business principles; the other had glittering promises as worthless as fairy gold. Was this all? From here on, her vision was blurred. Was this principle which one had and the other had not, after all, rooted deep in the mysterious influence which guided Elijah's life?
It was with positive gratitude one morning that she heard Uncle Sid's ponderous knock on her door and his raucous voice calling to her.
"Come, Helen. Let's you and me take a walk before the sun has burned the dust all off o' the grass."
"All right, Uncle Sid! I'll be there in a moment."
She was up and dressed almost before the echo of Uncle Sid's voice had died away.
Uncle Sid eyed her approvingly as she stepped into the hall.
"Pretty trim lookin' craft," he remarked. "Don't take you long to get under way, either."
"Where are you going, Uncle Sid?"
"Anywhere, so I get out o' the smell o' varnish! Sand's better'n that." Uncle Sid wrinkled his nose in deep disgust. "You can blow sand off; but this stuff! It just soaks into you till you can taste it."
Helen laughed.
"It is penetrating."
"Penetratin'!" Uncle Sid snorted. "I should say it was. If starvin' cannibals just got one whiff of us they'd never think o' cookin' us unless they'd got used to lunchin' off pitch pine."
They passed through the office, startling a dozing clerk and porter to forced attention; but these, discovering that their services were not needed, settled themselves to their former positions.
The outside air was heavy with the indescribable odor of newness and of hustling activity in drowsy repose.
Uncle Sid had a bag in his hand which bumped softly against the outer door as he opened it.
"Oranges," he explained. "Hope to Gracious they ain't infected. I gave 'em a good chance. I kept 'em in my room last night."
Outside the door, he gained his first knowledge of a California fog. The sticky, clammy chill penetrated their garments like water. Uncle Sid buttoned his sailor jacket as he descended the broad steps.
"This settles it!"
"Settles what?" Helen inquired, her teeth chattering.
"This 'ere fog has given me an idea. I'm goin' down to the river, the Christopher Sawyer, or some such heathen name. I just bet it's one of those uncanny sort o' streams that fit this country like a wet sail to a spar."
"You'll have to explain, Uncle Sid; I'm stupid this morning."
Uncle Sid looked sceptical, but resumed his point.
"Just look at this fog! I bet that the Christopher Sawyer gets out o' bed nights and distributes itself through the air general, an' waits for the sun to herd it back. I'm goin' down to see."
Helen followed the old gentleman, absently humoring him in his fancy. She was in a listening mood rather than a talkative one, and Uncle Sid distracted her thoughts from her own perplexities.
"Gosh a'mighty!" Uncle Sid was out in the street, peering through the mist. "Seems like wadin' through skim milk."
"Which way?" Helen paused beside him.
"I snum to Gracious if I know! I didn't adjust my compasses last night, an' I guess I'll have to sail by dead reckonin'. Every country that ever I was in before, an' I've been in most of 'em, the water ran down hill. Now here, what there is of it, don't seem to pay any attention to grades. When it comes to a hill, it just changes to gas, coagulates on the other side, an' goes on."
Uncle Sid was under way; Helen, absorbed in thought, followed absently in his wake. The palms which the industrious boomers had planted along the streets, loomed hazily through the fog ahead, gradually sharpened in outline, and again grew hazy with distance, as they passed them by. From each palm, a tuft of yellow-green spears stood up defiantly above a cluster of gray spikes pointing downward to their warty trunks; a picture of hope eternal in spite of inevitable death, as cheerfully suggestive of mortality, as the upward pointing hands, and the downward-drooping willows on the tombstones of New England's puritan dead.
Helen was wondering what possible pleasure there could be in this walk, but it was new and strange to Uncle Sid and he ploughed steadily ahead. In spite of the dragging sand that made her feet feel like lead, the exercise did not stir her blood to a glow of warmth. The physical chill of the fog, the tawny sand that seemed to tinge the creeping mist, the mental chill of her mood affected her so that it suddenly seemed to her as if she could not take another step.
"Aren't you hunting needless trouble, Uncle Sid?" she suddenly cried, stopping short and looking at Uncle Sid. "Let's go back. We can be no end more miserable in our awful hotel with only half the trouble."
"I ain't seen no signs of the Christopher Sawyer yet, exceptin' this." Uncle Sid clove a semicircle through the mist with his outstretched arm.
"Oh, well, if it's a scientific voyage, Uncle Sid, let's go right on."
"Must be that. It's something an' it ain't no pleasure excursion, that's sure!"
They plodded on. It seemed to Helen as if it were miles, she was certain it was hours. At last it grew lighter, and the yellow tawn of the sand appeared to have risen higher and higher, till the whole of the shrouding mist was a yellow haze.
"I can't go another step, Uncle Sid." Helen stopped short and sat down on a hummock of sand.
"What's the matter little girl? You seem sort o' done up this mornin'," Uncle Sid dropped beside her with a sounding slump. "There! here I be! If I didn't ring, it ain't because I ain't hollow."
He unfolded a paper bag and drawing forth some formidable sandwiches passed one to Helen and began eating one himself. The sandwiches disposed of, he again investigated the bag. This time he brought out two large oranges.
"They do one thing shipshape in this country." He was eyeing Helen keenly while tearing the rind from his orange. "They do up water in mighty neat shape, but they do charge for it though. That's what they do!" he rattled on. "These yellow water-balls cost me five cents apiece, they did!" He parted the segments carefully, anxious lest a drop of the juice should be wasted. Again his eyes rested thoughtfully on Helen's somber face.
"What's the trouble, Helen?"
Helen's answer was accompanied by a blended look of assent to Uncle Sid's assumption and a humorous denial of it.
"One is often absent minded over troubles that can't be explained even to one's best friends."
"Well," Uncle Sid was not wholly satisfied, "perhaps by the time I'm your best friend, you'll be ready to tell me."
"I think that may be very soon," said Helen soberly, as she finished her orange.
"Have another?" Uncle Sid held out the bag cordially.
Helen was morally certain that Uncle Sid's New England thrift was dwelling on the five cents apiece; but she took the proffered orange. Uncle Sid rose clumsily to his feet.
"Now for the Christopher Sawyer."
The mist was rapidly clearing. Without visible means of locomotion, wisps of fog rose from the ground in the distance, trailed along like a sea-bird rising from the water, then melted in the air. They were standing on the edge of a mesa. Below them, tall cottonwoods rose in a straggling, sinuous line, their trunks matted with clinging vines, their branches loaded almost to the breaking point with clusters of parasitic plants. A line of shrubs, filling in between the trees, were bowed in a mat of tangled verdure that was dotted and sprinkled with rainbow colors. White-rimmed ditches appeared from behind projecting promontories of yellow sand, crawled under wire fences whose crooked, ghostly sticks, like the legs of some gigantic centipede, straggled around patches of wheat and barley. Outside these patches of green, adobe huts were surrounded by other scraggly sticks, driven into the ground and held upright by wires which were stretched out to them from occasional cottonwoods.
Back of them, Ysleta was lost to sight behind a rising grade of yellow sand, dotted by clumps of chaparral and cactus. Across the barranca, over the tops of the highest cottonwoods, the rolling mesa stretched as barren and forbidding as that on which they were standing.
"I bet that's the Christopher Sawyer!" Uncle Sid was pointing to the tangled mass of vegetation. "These are the first things I've seen that look as if they'd had enough to drink."
Helen was looking in another direction.
"How queer those cattle are acting."
She was watching a bunch of cattle about three hundred yards away. They were clustered thickly, their heads pointed towards herself and Uncle Sid. In front of the herd, a huge bull was pawing the sand. There was a muffled bellowing and from beneath the nostrils of his low-hanging head, spurts of dust rose in the air.
"Those critters do look hostile, an' there ain't no fence to get over an' not a gosh-hanged tree to climb." Uncle Sid spoke uneasily.
Across the barranca, they caught sight of another cloud of dust, from which swung wildly gesticulating arms. At the same time, from one of the adobes, they saw a vaquero emerge. His arms too, were wildly waving. In response to his cries which they heard only faintly, two bunches of yapping gray fur swept across the white-rimmed ditches and rolled up the bank.
There was evidently an unwonted excitement of which Helen and Uncle Sid were an important part. Then the cattle came to a conclusion and, with lowered heads and tails sticking upright, they charged straight for Uncle Sid and Helen.
The horsemen, meanwhile had crossed the barranca, and the next instant, horses and riders with the yapping fur, had turned the vigorously charging cattle to an equally vigorous retreat.
Winston sprang from his horse in front of Uncle Sid. His face was white with anger.
"Where did you come from?—" he began.
"From God's country, young man, and we got lost." Uncle Sid was unabashed. Winston's face broke into a smile; then he caught sight of Helen.
"You ought to know better than this, Helen."
"Better than what, young man?"
"Better than to go walking around here. You see these cattle are more than half wild. They don't often see a footman, and when they have calves, they are dangerous. If you had been mounted, you could have ridden through the bunch and they wouldn't have noticed you."
"Well; we shall have to walk back, apparently." Helen's smile was not wholly spontaneous.
"To God's country? It's a long way." Ralph was smiling at Helen's chagrin.
Helen laughed.
"Perhaps you could show us the way?"
"You would better go down to Pedro's ranch and wait. Our supply wagons will be along shortly, and they will take you to town."
"Young man," Uncle Sid broke in, "you seem to know this country. Is that strip o' damp sand down there, the Christopher Sawyer?"
"The what?" For a moment, Ralph's face was blank astonishment, then he burst into a hearty laugh.
"Oh, the Sangre de Christo! Yes."
"They both mean the same thing. Whew! Helen, I've got another idea about this country. It's a great country for raisin' ideas, if it ain't good for anything else. It's prolific! It would make a stone man think." He paused, fanning himself vigorously. "There ain't any use talkin'; it's great! Soaks thinks full o' fog-water nights, an' then the sun comes out mornin's and boils 'em. If it wasn't for fogs 'twould roast 'em. I don't wonder 'Lige Berl gets a broad view o' Providence. You can get all sorts o' vittles in this country, roasted, boiled and dried. I bet those critters are carryin' around dried beef on their bones right now."
Ralph's look of amusement gave way to one of inquiry.
"Are you a friend of Elijah Berl?" he asked. "Helen, why don't you introduce us?"
But Uncle Sid again interrupted.
"Worse than that, young man, worse than that. It's most as bad as blood relations. Me and 'Lige Berl's folks have been brought up in the same neighborhood back in New England for ages."
Ralph started to reply to Uncle Sid, but a glance at Helen changed his mind.
"Let's get down to Pedro's ranch, in the shade. The wagons won't be along for an hour yet." He tried to walk by Helen's side, but she waited for Uncle Sid.
The last remnant of the fog had departed; the sun was blazing fiercely. Toward Ysleta, the air was already shimmering over the sand. By the ditches and among the vines, was the music of many birds and the cheerful notes of Bob White.
Half stifled with the choking dust, they scuffled and slid down the steep trail that led to Pedro's adobe.
Pedro was following, his stolid face stifling his emotions. At the gate, the vaquero and Winston, drawing their reins over their ponies' heads, dropped them on the ground. Pedro stepped forward, swept his hat from his head and held the gate open for his guests to pass through. Following them, he pointed to an inviting hammock, swung between two fruit trees. Again he swept his hat from his head.
"Perhaps the señorita will honor my poor hammock by reposing in it."
Helen stepped to the hammock. Another graceful bow from Pedro.
"At your feet, señorita."
Uncle Sid, uninvited, explored the garden. Pedro was marching to the adobe. To Helen it seemed as if she had never before experienced such a delicious sensation as the resting of her tired body in the perfectly adjusted hammock. Ralph was watching her.
"Pedro has departed, may I take his place?" Assuming an affirmative answer, he stretched himself at her feet.
"Helen, what's wrong?" he asked anxiously.
"Nothing, that I know of." She replied evasively.
"Is it the office?" persisted Winston.
"Why can't you believe me?" There was a trace of annoyance in her manner.
"Because when your eyes tell me one thing and your lips another, I'm going to take my choice."
"I really don't like to ask you to attend to your own business, Ralph." There was a flash of the old humor in her voice.
"You oughtn't to say that to me, Helen, for the sake of old times—if for nothing more," he added deliberately.
Helen understood the conditional "if", as well as the expression of his eyes. A suggestion of red tinged the clear olive of her cheeks.
"This is no place for confidences, even if I had any to exchange!"
"Later on then." Ralph's lips were decided. "Who is your friend?" he added.
"Uncle Sid? He is an old friend of Elijah's. He and his sister are stopping at the Vista."
There sounded the leisurely chut-chut of the lumbering wagons. Ralph rose to his feet.
"There come the wagons."
At the wagon, Helen insisted upon riding in the driver's seat. Uncle Sid was stowed in the rear. Ralph flashed a look toward Helen.
"My horse won't lead," he declared. "You ride him in, Jim, and I'll drive."
If Ralph had counted upon a quiet talk with Helen during the ride to Ysleta, he was certainly disappointed. Uncle Sid's position in the background was the only thing in the rear which he accepted. In the matter of conversation, he was well to the front.
"What's 'Lige Berl doin' in this country anyway?" he questioned Ralph.
"'Lige?" repeated Ralph. "Oh, he dreamed a dream; was five years at it. He dreamed of oranges, big fellows without seeds; of mountains with too much water and of deserts without enough. Then he dreamed of bunching the three together for their mutual benefit. He convinced some Eastern capital that it was no dream after all. Now we are trying to make good."
Uncle Sid grunted.
"That's tolerably condensed."
Ralph laughed at Uncle Sid's disapproval.
"If you are really interested, you'd better let us show you around a little. You can see a good deal better than I can tell you."
Uncle Sid's face had lost its humorous wrinkles.
"'Lige is really doin' something worth while out here, is he?"
"He's got me on the jump. That's a good deal in itself."
"What are you doin'?"
"Oh," Ralph laughed. "I'm being bossed."
Uncle Sid looked sharply at Ralph.
"If I was on the quarter deck as I used to be, an' saw you afore the mast, I'd think over my orders before I handed 'em to you. If 'Lige has any sense with his dreamin', he'll do the same."
"Helen's helping 'Lige to boss me. When he isn't around, she does it alone."
Uncle Sid looked at Helen. The humorous wrinkles returned to his face.
"What's the matter with you? You swallowed your tongue?"
"No; I'm holding it." She answered Uncle Sid's look as well as his words.
The lumbering wagon drew up in front of the Rio Vista. Before Ralph could dispose of the reins, Helen was on the ground and ascending the steps of the hotel. At the top she paused, speaking to Ralph.
"I'm going to take Uncle Sid out to the works before long." Then she entered the door.
Uncle Sid turned to Ralph.
"I don't guess you're bein' bossed quite so much as you say." He slowly clambered from the wagon and stood, looking at Ralph, his hand on the wheel. "I ain't askin' questions just for fun," he began.
Ralph interrupted.
"I won't answer your questions in fun either. But you do what Helen says. Come out to the works."
Perhaps it was because she had expected too much, but Helen was disappointed in the morning. Certain things had been disquieting. Ralph's words "For the sake of old times, if for nothing else"—had at first annoyed her. The annoyance changed to a questioning disquietude. The very annoyance suggested possibilities which had never distinctly occurred to her before. She did not, she could not resent it as she would like to do. She could not avoid a comparison between the clear, steady eyes of Ralph Winston and the glowing, shifting ones of Elijah Berl which had moved her so profoundly.
The contrast between the two men forced itself upon her. The convincing alertness of Ralph Winston, clear and cool and bracing, the glowing mystical enthusiasm of Elijah Berl that breathed upon her, laid hold upon her like languorous exhalations from a tropic growth. She recalled her childhood days with Ralph Winston. His masterful ways which flashed out in open revolt against her impetuous temper, that took her in his arms and in spite of her panting protests, soothed her into forgiving smiles. There was no yielding to her wrongs, no tyranny in his right, but a subtle stimulating air that suggested no personality, rather an impersonal force which compelled him, even as it did her.
There were tears in her eyes now. There was a great longing to go to Ralph as she had gone years ago, to hear again the words which had melted her darkness into clear light. An almost irresistible impulse came to her. "Why not go to him now?" He had opened the way. A word, a motion, a glance from her eyes and the way would open again. She rose to her feet and laid her hand upon the door.
Had Winston been in the hotel that night! But he was miles away and she returned to her seat. Her brain went on and on, twisting and turning the same old problem. Ralph knew Elijah Berl, yet he had cast in his lot with him. Ralph trusted in his own strength, why should not she trust in hers? She drew a long, shuddering breath. Elijah had asked her for bread. Could she give him a stone?
Winston had been in earnest when he invited the old sea captain to make him a visit. He had felt as strongly attracted to the kindly old man as Uncle Sid had been to him. To a certain extent he was curious to know just why Elijah's affairs so deeply interested him. The chance remark of the old captain to the effect that he had known Elijah from childhood up, was a partial explanation that opened the door to the desire to know the cause in full. Evidently the youthful Elijah had displayed the same characteristics which maturer years had developed in California. Winston guessed that the weak spots in Elijah which had aroused his own opposition, had not escaped the eyes of the captain. As day after day passed by, he concluded that Uncle Sid was waiting for Helen and that Helen was too busy to accompany him.
Whether Uncle Sid had become tired of waiting for Helen or whether he decided that a proper time had elapsed since the invitation had been given, matters not. Late one afternoon, one of the supply wagons delivered him at Ralph's tent.
The flaps of the tent were open and Ralph was there explaining some blue prints to one of his assistants. He looked up at the sound of the wagon.
"Oh, hello, Captain! I'm mighty glad to see you. I had about given you up."
"Huh!" the old man grunted. "That ain't over complimentary. From what I've heard, you ain't over quick at givin' up what is worth while."
"Give me a chance, Captain. You don't want to believe all that you hear."
"I don't. That's what I'm up here for."
"Now we're even on compliments. Let's call it quits."
Uncle Sid looked up shrewdly.
"Figures and doin' things ain't all that you're quick at." He paused, taking in the assistant. "Don't mind me. You go on stuffin' that young man. He ain't full yet."
"Just a minute; then I'm yours truly." Ralph devoted a few moments to the "young man" who, having been "stuffed", departed. "How would you like to take a little drive up the line!"
"Just how much is your little?"
"It's fifteen miles to the next camp. If you say so, we will drive up there and stay all night and the next day we can make the dam in the mountains. I think you'll like it, if it isn't too much." Ralph purposely touched up Uncle Sid with his last remark.
"I ain't too old to know when I've got enough an' I ain't bashful at hollerin' about it, either. You just drive on till I holler, unless you get enough before."
Uncle Sid had little to say on the way, but his keen eyes were taking in everything along the line. Ralph's explanations were listened to in silence. Ralph was not slow to note the absorbed interest of his companion, nor the fact that not a word of his explanations was lost. At every gang of men, Ralph was halted by alert foremen, and often he left the team in charge of Uncle Sid while he went forth to untangle some snarled bit of work or to give further directions in advancing it.
The sun was down when they drew up before the camp and surrendered the team to a waiting Mexican.
Uncle Sid glanced at Ralph with a look at once appreciative and cynical.
"The next time you tell me about a place, you just say how long it is, not how far."
"You'll have to excuse me there. You see I know distances, but I can't always say about the time."
Ralph was up the next morning even before the captain who believed in early rising.
"Good morning, Captain. Ready for another trip?"
"I guess so."
"I can tell distance and time all right today. Do you see what you're up against?" Ralph pointed to the towering San Bernardinos. "It's horseback from here and we ought to be there by three o'clock anyway."
At the mouth of the cañon, Ralph explained the dam that was being built across the river and the heavy gates that were being put in.
"You see we let the water come from the reservoir as far as this, in its natural bed. If anything should happen along the canal we can shut off the water at this point first. Later, we could shut it off at the reservoir."
Uncle Sid asked a few questions, then they began to climb the steep mountains. They passed loaded pack-mules going up and empty trains coming down the trail. In places the trail was a narrow shelf along the face of a nearly perpendicular cliff. Below them ran the river in its narrow gorge, above them gleamed a slender strip of sky cut into ragged edges by towering cliffs. Just as the trail climbed to the edge of the cañon it seemed to end against a smooth wall of granite. A sharp turn to the left, and Uncle Sid could not repress an exclamation of awed delight at the scene before him. The trail led out upon a broad terrace. Two hundred feet below, a treeless valley wound out and in among rounded tree-clad domes of granite. Here and there, on either side, stately spires of naked rock thrust up into the sky, the bare brown of their sides striped with bands of dazzling white.
The dam was to be situated between two granite bluffs at the head of the cañon. The masonry gatehouses were already the height of the proposed dam. The gates themselves were closed and the valley was a great lake. The sight was great, awe-inspiring yet peaceful.
"What do you think of it?"
"Who thought of this?" Uncle Sid glanced at Ralph with shrewd eyes.
"It thought itself." Ralph answered evasively. "We are really only doing here what nature herself did and then undid. You can see that this valley was once a great natural lake. The Sangre de Cristo cut through the cañon and drained the lake. Now we are putting in a dam and restoring it."
Uncle Sid did not take his eyes from Ralph's impassive face.
"Young man, there's a lot o' dust around here, but you can't blow it into my eyes, not that way. You can't do it by keepin' still either, any more than 'Lige Berl can by talkin' about it."
Ralph laughed quietly.
"Oh, well, that doesn't matter. We're going to get what we're after and that's the main thing. Let's go down to camp."
They rode down the winding trail that led from the upper terrace. The remainder of the afternoon was spent in an inspection of the work. After supper, their pipes lighted, they sat looking out over the valley.
"Engineering is a great business," Uncle Sid observed meditatively.
"Yes," Ralph assented, "so is anything, if you push it."
"I guess not." Uncle Sid chuckled. "I ran away to sea when I was twelve years old. My education was got dancin' at a rope's end when the captain's mess didn't sit well on his stomach." Uncle Sid paused, again chuckled. "A rope's end makes a boy mighty observin.'"
"You didn't learn navigation that way, did you?"
"No-o." Uncle Sid pulled meditatively at his pipe. "A rope's end is also mighty stimulatin' to the imagination. It struck me that I had got all I needed. At the same time, I saw old sailors with bald heads an' gray whiskers, still a dancin'. The only difference I could see between them an' the captain was that the captain could squint at the sun through a spyglass with a half moon hitched to it, an' tell the man at the wheel to hold the ship's head nor'-nor'east."
"Then what?"
"Then? Oh, I just got me a nautical almanac and learned to squint too. The first thing I knew I was mate, then first officer an' by squintin' long enough I squinted myself on the quarter deck."
Ralph waited a moment, then spoke laughingly.
"I guess my rope's end wasn't so very different from yours, only I had mine in college."
"You didn't run away to college, did you?"
"No, I didn't; but I had a gad flying around my heels, just the same. After I got out of college, I was engaged as assistant to a famous hydraulic engineer. He sent me into the mountains to make a preliminary survey. There weren't many men as big as I was when I strapped a level and a transit to my mule's back and started off. I was going to show that old bomb-shell that he'd got a man worth having, and I wasn't going to stop with him either." Ralph paused to give way to a reminiscent chuckle.
"Well! I wish you could have seen those mountains as I saw them. Talk about taking the starch out of a man! Why, Captain, you could have wadded me up and drawn me through a finger ring like one of those Arabian Nights shawls. There were mountains and mountains, and gulches and gulches, precipices and cañons, and rushing, yelping torrents that I was to lead over them, or through them or around them, and the old man hadn't given me a suggestion that I could hang a guess on. The more I thought, the more scared I got. I put up a stiff front, or tried to before my men, but all the time I imagined them laughing at me, or cursing me for making them wade that strip of ice water, or break their shins dragging a chain over the slippery rocks. I was thankful when the sun went down, but that didn't last long. Even in my sleep I saw those mountains jiggering and grinning. They moved into places that I had picked out for my line, and away from them when I had abandoned it. I stood it for a week, then I poured out my woes in a long letter to my chief and sent it out by a special messenger."
Ralph again paused. The old man waited for a moment.
"Well?" he asked.
"In a week my answer came. Just five sentences. 'You are going at your work the wrong way. You are asking it questions. By and by your work will ask you questions. Then you're getting on. Keep at it.'"
"And the line?" persisted Uncle Sid.
"Oh, the line? I made the profile and sent it in. My old man came up and looked it over. He was in a hurry as usual. 'You have laid out the line; now go ahead and build it', then he was off."
"You built it?"
"Yes, after a fashion. It helped to wash the gold out of the Yuba river sand till the anti-debris laws headed it off. Then I came down here."
"How did you happen to hit in with Elijah Berl?"
"He was the only man in Southern California who was doing anything that was worth while."
"Yes, it is worth while." Uncle Sid brought down his open hand upon his knee with a resounding slap. Then he laid his hand on Ralph's with emphasizing beats, looking earnestly into his face. "Don't you let go, either, or it won't be worth shucks."
Ralph returned the Captain's earnest look.
"I'll hang on," he answered briefly.
"That's right. You stick to it. You an' Helen Lonsdale are goin' to make this thing go, if it's a goin'."
"I think I appreciate what Helen is doing as well as what Elijah has done; she's the life of the whole business."
Uncle Sid appeared to take up Ralph's words. Then he changed his mind, speaking reminiscently.
"I've known 'Lige Berl ever since he was so high an' before." Uncle Sid measured Elijah's former height with his hand. "He's a queer mixture. He was always a mixture of ideas an' prayer meetin's an' the flesh pots of Egypt. You can't no more help commendin' his prayer-meetin' moods than you can help cussin' his lickin' the flesh pots. He ain't changed a bit out here. He'll just look at you with his eyes wide open an' you'll feel like a man that's just got religion an' you won't suspect that he's picked your pocket till you put your hand in to pay your grocer's bill."
Ralph smiled grimly.
"There's not much profit in talking about this. But—well, you know 'Lige all right."
"Wait a minute, I ain't through." Uncle Sid's eyes were fixed on Ralph like a steel needle pointing to a magnet. "Money's the root of evil, but there's a power of good in the roots if they're used right. I've got quite a bunch of the roots handy. You're goin' to need them, an' young man, they're at your call when you say so, an' if I ain't mistaken, it won't be long either."
"Thank you." Ralph answered briefly. "I'll remember."
The Captain did not drop his eyes, but they softened.
"You've known Helen Lonsdale for a long time, haven't you?"
"Ever since she was a little girl."
"An' you're a friend of hers?"
"Yes." Ralph did not say how much more than a friend she was coming to be to him.
Uncle Sid felt the repellent air of Ralph's changed mood more than his rather curt reply, but he held doggedly to his point.
"Smallpox is a mighty mean disease an' you don't always know that you're a catchin' it till it breaks out."
Ralph rose to his feet. Uncle Sid was breaking ground that he had thought about, but which he had not yet brought himself to touch.
"Helen has always been able to take care of herself and I don't think she will allow any one to suggest that she can't do it now."
Uncle Sid was on his feet too, his hand on Ralph's shoulder.
"Helen's a woman, Ralph. I don't know much about women, but I do know that a man like 'Lige Berl and a woman like Helen Lonsdale is a mighty dangerous mixture, an' the woman's bound to get the worst of it. Helen's goin' to need friends who'll stand by her, an' I guess when you think it over, you'll agree with me."
Ralph made no reply, but he did as the Captain had said he would do. He thought it over and the seed did not fall on stony or barren ground.