CHAPTER XXXIXTHE BATTLE IN THE NIGHT
GATHERING on the bank were the camp groups to watch the last stand of the river against the rock bombardment. The reporters from the outside, pads and pencils in hand, were there, and Brandon; Molly Silent, with little Jim in her arms, who had crept down from the Crossing, full of fears. Out there, somewhere on the trestles, on one of those rock cars was her Jim. She sat on the bank by Innes and Mrs. Marshall, who at last had laid aside her knitting. Tony, his white cap askew, danced from group to group, finding poor audiences. Later, he forced a heartier reception when he returned, bearing sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs, his Indian “help” carrying a pot of steaming coffee.
“That’s a capital idea, Tony,” commended Rickard, stopping for a snatch of lunch. “Tell Ling to do the same; here, MacLean, you tell him. We’ll keep coffee and bread and beans going all day. A lunch-counter on the bank.” He was off, his hands full of sandwiches.
A great wave broke into an obliterating eruption of spray. A cry burst from Molly Silent. “Oh, I thought it was gone. There’s Jim. He’s on the car that’s pulling in!”
“Give me the boy,” Mrs. Marshall reached out her unpractised arms. “Run down and speak to your husband.”She shook her head ominously at Innes as the mother stumbled heavily down the bank. “This excitement is bad for her. Before Christmas, she tells me.” She held the little body close to hers. Innes, watching her rapt look, felt her eyes warm up with tears.
Molly toddled back, radiant.
“I saw him!” she glowed.
“I got him asleep!” whispered Mrs. Marshall. “Don’t take him; you’ll awaken him. Isn’t he looking a little pale?”
There was a fear in the face which leaned over the sleeping child. “He’s not right. I don’t know what’s the matter with him. I’d take him out, but I can’t leave Jim—so soon. It isn’t until Christmas. I’ll have to go then. Do you think he looks sickly?” Her anxious eyes questioned the two women.
Heartily, Innes said she thought he was looking stronger.
“Let me take him out,” suggested Mrs. Marshall. “We’ll be going this week. I’ll take the best of care of him; there’s a splendid children’s doctor in Tucson.”
“Oh, do!” cried Innes. And what a charity for Mrs. Marshall, her empty arms aching for what they that moment held!
“Oh!” cried Molly, pain and relief in her tone.
“Think about it,” whispered Mrs. Marshall. “You don’t have to tell me now.”
Molly lifted her head from a scrutiny of the pallid baby face to see Mrs. Hardin, floating by in her crisp muslins. A few feet behind stalked Godfrey, his eyes on the pretty figure by his side. Innes, watching too, turned from his look, abashed as though she had been peering through a locked door.
Gaily, with a fluttering of ruffles, Gerty established herself on the bank, a trifle out of hearing distance. Innes saw her raise an inviting smile to the Englishman who stood looking uncertainly from her to the river. He dropped beside her on the sand. As Innes pulled her eyes away from them, she met those of Molly Silent, who had also been staring at Tom Hardin’s wife.
A hard little smile played on the lips accented with Parisian rouge. The blue eyes were following the two men who were directing the bombardment; the childish expression was gone; her look accused life of having trifled with her. But they would see—
“Don’t look so unhappy, dearest,” whispered the man at her side. “I’m going to make you happy, dear!” She flushed a brilliant, finished smile at him. Yes, she was proud of him. His success buoyed her faith in her destiny. Everybody knew Godfrey; his voice had subdued whole continents. He satisfied her sense of romance, or would, later, when she was away from here, a dull pain pricking at her deliberate planning. She was tired, tired of scheming, planning; unfair it seemed to her that some women have all that she had had to struggle for tossed into their careless laps. She was proud. She could not be a nobody, crushed by humiliations and adversity. She had not brought any of his trouble on Tom Hardin. It was he, he and Rickard who had ruined her life. Not quite ruined! She was stepping out before it was too late. Godfrey found her young, young and distracting. His life had been hungry, too; the wife, up there in Canada somewhere, had never understood him. Godfrey was ambitious, ambitious as she was. She would be his wife; she would see the cities of the world with him, the welcomed wifeof Godfrey; she would share the plaudits his wonderful voice won.
His eyes were on her now, she knew, questioning, not quite sure of her. She had worried him yesterday because she would not pledge herself to marry him if he sued for his divorce. Her intuition told her that something was uncertain, his affection for her, or that other woman’s tie, if he hinged his divorce on her promise. “I’m not sure of you! Will you give me your word? When I am free, you, too, will be free, waiting for me?”
She had shivered away from his question. Terrible that life put that obstacle, that dreadful process in her way. Always life blocked her. His doubt gave her doubts of him. Would he be faithful, a silver-voiced Godfrey; absent, other, younger women hanging on his voice? It did not hurt to keep a man guessing. She had told him to ask her that after the courts had set him free. She could not have him sure of her. Men tire when they are sure; Rickard had been too sure of her.
An exclamation from him recalled her. She found that he was no longer staring at her; his eyes were fixed on the trembling structure over which a “battle-ship,” laden with rock, was creeping.
“Jove!” he cried. “Those men are heroes.”
Everything irritated her to-day. She felt out of sorts, though she was going to be happy! She was going to grasp, and keep what was within reach of her hand. But this river, this dirty sordid work, was getting on her nerves. Even Godfrey now was staring at the trestles as though they were circus rings! Rickard crossed her vision, on the run, his face grotesque withsoot and perspiration. She saw him stoop to speak to the group of women; he stood for a minute by Innes. The grime shielded his expression, but she had seen the girl’s face! Her own eyes darkened with anger. But she was going to be happy. Her teeth clicked over that slogan. No one should stand in the way, Hardin, or that other. Rickard would see that she had never cared for him—hateful that it must be long before she could show him. She wanted him to know it right away, before those two flung their secret in her face, before Innes secretly triumphed over her.
Rickard, she could see, was turning in her direction. She sent another brilliant, dazzling smile at Godfrey, who remembered to smile back at her. She wanted to have Rickard see them together, absorbed in each other. It would pique his vanity, perhaps, to see how little she cared. He would see that he had been only one of many to her. She sent a tender little whisper after the smile.
But Godfrey had been growing restless. It began to irk him, to tease his superb muscle to be the only man without work—“sitting on the bank like Cor’nel down yonder!” He answered Gerty, turning away to her annoyance to hail Rickard.
“Going all right?”
“Bully,” cried Rickard, not stopping.
“Haven’t you something for me to do? Can’t I help?”
“We can use everybody,” Rickard called back over his shoulder.
Uncomfortable to find that that voice still had power to make her tremble. Even when she loved Godfrey. For she did love him. She intended to love him. Else what did life mean? Those broken beginnings, thosefalse starts? It was hate, she told herself, hate that shook her, when Rickard came near. With all her soul she hated him.
Godfrey was itching to be off, but he would not offend Mrs. Hardin. After a deliberate interval, she got up, shaking out her ruffles. “One gets stiff sitting so long. Don’t let me keep you.”
He saw he had hurt her. “I want to stay with you, you know that, dearest. But it doesn’t feel right to see them all working like niggers and me loafing here. You don’t mind?”
Oh, no, Gerty did not mind! She was tired, anyway! She was going back to her tent!
“Won’t you wait for the closure?”
Her laugh was airy and detached. “Oh, they are always closing that river. They will always be closing it. It’s no novelty. You can tell me all about it.”
He thrust a yellow paper into her hands. “I sent that off to-day. Perhaps you will be glad?”
She flung another of her inscrutable smiles at him, and went up the bank, the paper unread in her hands. Godfrey’s uncertain glance followed her. He had vexed her, some way. He should follow her, see her to her tent. She expected those little attentions. He loved to please her, but his eyes went back, yearning, to the river. Those men working like tigers—! He was down the bank in a trice.
“Give me something to do!”
The long afternoon wore away. On a giant rock on a flat car, Silent stretched his muscles, and looked at his watch. Mortally tired he was. He thought of his bed, and a cup of steaming coffee. An hour more! They were now dynamiting the largest rocks on the carsbefore unloading them. The heavy loads could not be emptied quickly enough. Not dribbled, the rock, but dumped simultaneously, else the gravel and rock might be washed down-stream faster than they could be put on. The job called for an alert eye and hand working together. Many cars must be unloaded at once; the din on Silent’s train was terrific. His crew looked like devils, drenched from the spray which rose from the river each time the rock-pour began; blackened by the smoke from the belching engine. The river was ugly in its wrath. It was humping itself for its final stand against the absurdity of human intention; its yellow tail swished through the bents of the trestle.
“It isn’t what I’d call pretty,” yelled Wooster to Bodefeldt, as they passed in a flat car. The noise of the rock-pouring began again.
“Not a picnic,” cried Bodefeldt.
But there was a thrill in it. They were working against the most formidable force in nature, against time, and moreover without precedent. Not one of them would risk a hazard as to the next move of the wily Dragon. A swift rise, and swift rises of the Gila were always to be feared, and their barrier would be flung down the channel as a useless toy. Haste was their only chance. The breath of the workers came quick and short. The order came for more speed. Rickard moved from bank to raft; knee deep in water, screaming orders through the din; directing the gangs; speeding the rock trains; helping Wooster, who was driving large gangs of Mexicans and Indians. The river must not be allowed to creep around the bulwark, to catch them unawares; the work must not halt for an instant; the force of the thwarted river growing fiercer with each pour of rock.Haste against strength, or the victory the river’s! Hardin oscillated between the levee and dams, taking orders, giving orders. His energy was superb. His heavy run was like a bulldog’s, full of ferocious purpose. Marshall halted him as he thumped past, straight from the levees.
“It’s going all right,” he assured the man who had humiliated him. His sense of wrong was sleeping; the battle developed the real soldier. “The levee will stand if we can work quick enough.”
“Good!” cried Marshall. “We’ll win yet, old man!”
It had grown dark, but no one yet had thought of the lights, the great Wells’ burners stretched across the channel. To Marshall’s war-trained ear, the glut of raining rock sounded like cannonading. It was a queer scene, the dark pocket of battle-ground, the clouds of smoke, the dashing mountains of spray; men rushing to and fro like masked dwarfs, trains thundering on to the trestles. Suddenly, the lights flared out.
Marshall found himself standing by Captain Brandon, who had his note-book in his hand. The dark had stolen on him; but he kept on scribbling his report to theSun. He did not hear Marshall’s inquiry.
Behind them, coming closer, broke a rhythmic beat. Molly Silent’s waiting ear heard it, too—it was the night shift coming on! She hastened clumsily to the rock filled end of the trestle, and waited for Silent to leave his train.
As he let himself down from the cab, she could hear him say that it was about time. “I’m all in.” Just then, the Dragon lashed its mighty foaming tail; the trestle shook as though it were a mouse in the sharp teeth of a terrier.
The engineer who was taking Silent’s place, drew back.
“That’s your train,” said Silent, who did not yet see his wife.
There was another lash of the angry tail. The engineer shook his head. “It don’t look good to me.” A whistle blew. The trestle was still shuddering as though in the grip of an earthquake.
“I’ve been an engineer for twenty years, but God Almighty Himself’d not take me out on that bridge to-night. I’d give up my job first.”
“It’s up to me, then,” said Silent. And then two arms were thrown around his neck.
“Why, lassie,” he cried. “Why, little mother.”
She clung to him. The whistle blew again.
“Why, lassie!” He put her away from him, and she saw him, though mistily, climb back into the cab, the man-work swallowing him again.
Not one of those who labored or watched would ever forget that night. The spirit of recklessness entered even into the stolid native. The men of the Reclamation forgot this was not their enterprise; the Hardin faction jumped to Rickard’s orders; there was a whip of haste in the air. Brandon’s old style came back to him as he wrote, standing now under the great swinging light, his report for theSun. “Bertha will be reading it to-morrow!” He despatched one bulletin, and began another. His periods rolled off, sonorously syllabled. Down by the trestle, humped up like a camel, the mud washed from his hair which fell like stiff wires from his head, watched Cor’nel. He had not eaten, had not stirred from his place that day.
The rain of rocks, by midnight, had settled into asteady storm. The momentum was gigantic. The watchers on the bank sat tense, thrilled out of recognition of aching muscles, or the midnight creeping chill. No one would go home. Mrs. Marshall and Molly Silent carried the sleeping boy into thePalmyra, where he was laid in Mrs. Marshall’s bed.
“He’ll lie till morning, once he’s asleep,” whispered his mother, and they crept down to the bank again. The swinging lights had turned the darkness into a pale twilight. Each searched through the uncertain light for a familiar figure, for the soldier she had lent. Wistfully, Claudia was wondering if Tod’s flannels were wet. Once, he came within reach of her hand, but she dared not ask him. He was on the run. “Hell! what’s the matter with that train?”
To Innes, the struggle was vested in two men, Rickard running down yonder with that light foot of his as swift as though Ling’s mustard had not been needed a few days before; and Hardin with the fighting mouth tense. And somewhere, she remembered, working with the rest, was Estrada. Those three were fighting for the justification of a vision—an idea was at stake, a hope for the future. There was no fear, only a wild exultation, when she once saw Rickard jump on to an outgoing train of “battle-ships,” heavily laden with rock. It was a battle of giants, to her; drastic and dramatic.
Rickard passed and repassed her, running, or again walking slowly, talking eagerly to Marshall. And had not seen her! Not during those hours would he think of her, not until the idea failed, or was triumphant, would he turn to look for her. Knowing, the thought unfolded slowly, knowing he would find her there!
The real work of the world is man-work; no matterhow she or other women might yearn, theirs not the endurance. All they can do is negative; not to get on the track! Neither with pretty ruffles, nor tender fears!
Knowing he would find herthere. Suppose she were not there, she were off building a house when he came home to find her, craving her comfort or her laurels? Suppose she had promised to deliver a plan, and that pledge involved her absence, or her attention when the world work, the man-work released him—his story on his eager lips, her ears deaf to hear? She saw Brandon under the swinging light, and his loneliness came knocking at her door. Was it still necessary for that wife to help with the bread-getting? On some women, that problem is thrust, but her college study, her later reading, had taught her that all women should seek it. An economic waste, half of the world spending more than the other half can earn! To the woman who has been spared the problem, comes the problem of choice. Has any one, born a woman, the daring to say—“I will not choose. I will take both! I will be man and woman, too!” Suppose she were not at home when he stumbled back to her! As soon leave that corner of the bank!
Her muscles grew stiff. Once in a while, the watching women stirred, or shifted their positions, but they did not get up. They would stay where their man, Marshall, or Silent, Rickard, Hardin, could find them. Only one woman symbolized that thought, and she followed it until it curved, bringing her back to that twilight of clamor, the fight between disorder and plan, waste and conservation, herself sitting on the bank waiting.
Visibly, the drama moved toward its climax. Before many hours passed, something would happen, the river would be captured, or the idea forever mocked. Each time a belching engine pulled across that hazardous track, it flung a credit to the man-side. Each time the waters, slowly rising, hurled their weight against the creaking trestles where the rock was thin, a point was gained by the militant river. Its roar sounded like the last cry of a wounded animal to Innes’ ear; the Dragon was a reality that night as it spent its rage against the shackles of puny men.
Down in the shadow of a lamp-pole, the light flaring riverward, crouched Coronel. His eyes were fixed on those approaching walls of rock. Motionless, he watched the final tussle, a grunt following each glut of rock. Somewhere, his muscles ached, but his brain did not receive their message. It was off duty. His mind was sending that car across the trestle; it was hastening the charge, that quick clattering downfall of shattered rock.
Molly Silent had seen her husband’s train pull in. She watched for it to go out again. The whistle blew twice. Something was wrong. She left her place in time to see Silent, his face shining ghastly pale under the soot, pull himself up from the “battle-ship” where he had been leaning. Estrada, sent by Rickard to find out why the train did not pull out, saw him the same instant as did Molly. Silent swayed, waving them back unseeingly, like a man who is drunk.
“God, man, you can’t go like that!” cried Estrada.
“Who’s going?” demanded Silent, his tongue thick with thirst and exhaustion. The whistle blew again.
“Iwill!” The train moved out on the trestle, as thewhistle blew angrily twice. Only Molly and Silent saw Estrada go. Silent staggered unseeingly up the bank, toward the camp, Molly heavily following.
Workers and watchers felt a queer light playing on their faces, but no one stopped to look at the lamps swinging across the channel, or they would have seen that they were growing dim. The test of strength was coming; no time to brush the damp hair from their eyes. The river was humping out yonder; the rolling mass came roaring, flank-on, against the dam.
“Quick, for God’s sake, quick,” yelled Rickard. His signals sounded short and sharp. “Dump it on, throw the cars in!” Marshall was dancing, his mouth full of oaths, on the bank edge. Breathlessly, all watched the rushing water fling itself over the dam. For several hushed seconds, the structure could not be seen. When the foam fell, a cheer went up. The dam was standing. Silent, it was supposed, was bringing in his train.
Above the distant jagged line of mountains, rose a red ball. A new day began. The light fell on the facet of the fighting men; Indians and Caucasians alike black with river mud and soot. The work went on. And again the Dragon rose; a mountain of water came rolling damward.
“Hump yourselves,” screamed Marshall. The signals sounded like hoarse cries.
Three trains ran steaming on the rails.
“We’ll get those rocks over before the river kicks,” cried Rickard. “Be ready, Irish, to run in when they come back. Don’t stop now to blast the big ones. Pour ’em on!”
There was a long wait before any rock fell. Marshalland Rickard waited for the pour. The whistles blew again.
“Why in Hades,” began Marshall, and then they saw what was wrong. The morning light showed a rock weighing several tons which was resisting the efforts of the pressing crew. Out of the gloom sprang other figures with crowbars.
“Why don’t they try to use mountains?” swore Marshall, and the rock tottered, fell. The river tossed it as though it were a tennis ball, sent it hurtling down the lower face of the dam. The river’s strength was never more terrible.
“Damn those almighty fools!” screamed Tod Marshall.
“A fluke,” yelled Rickard.
Things began to go wild. The men were growing reckless. They were sagging toward exhaustion; mistakes were made. Another rock, as heavy as the last, was worked toward the edge. No one listened to the frantic signals to dynamite that rock, break it on the car. Men were thick about it with crowbars. There was another wait, the whistles confusing the men on the train. They hurried. One concerted effort, drawing back as the rock toppled over the edge. One man was too slow, or too tired. He slipped. The watchers on the bank saw a flash of waving arms, heard a cry; they had a glimpse of a blackened face as the foam caught it. The waters closed over him.
There was a hush of horror; a halt.
“God Himself couldn’t save that poor devil,” cried Marshall. “Have the work go on!”
Pour rocks on that wretch down there? Pin him down? Never had it seemed more like war! “A mandown? Ride over him! to victory!” Soberly, Rickard signaled for the work to go on.
The rock-pour stuttered as if in horror. The women turned sick with fear. No one knew who it was. Some poor Mexican, probably.
Some one standing near Rickard said that it was Arnica Jack; he said he had seen his face. He had gone out on that train. Rickard thought of the saved salary.
“Why doesn’t that train come in? What is the matter with Silent?” His signals brought in the battle-ships, moving as though they were funeral carriages.
“Where is Silent?” demanded Rickard, running down to the track. A blackened figure was letting himself down from the car. The smell of something pungent struck sharply against Rickard’s nostrils. Arnica! “Where’s Silent?” he demanded.
“’E didn’t take hout this ’ere train.” The hobo’s eyes looked owlish.
“Then who?” the engineer was beginning, when it came to him. He himself had sent Estrada to question Silent! He knew what the tramp was going to tell him!
“The young Mexican, Hestrada. ’E tried to ’elp. ’E wasn’t fit.”
“Who was it?” Marshall had run down to see why the work paused.
Rickard turned shocked eyes on his chief. “Estrada!” The beautiful mournful eyes of Eduardo were on him, not Marshall’s, horrified.
“But it came again; it kept coming. I had it while you were all talking, just now!”
If that terrible smell didn’t take itself off! He hated the stupid wretch standing, open-jawed before him, becauseit was Estrada’s and not those owlish eyes that were lying in those waters yonder.
“Rickard!” The engineer did not recognize the quenched voice. “The work has got to go on.”
It came to Rickard as he gave the orders for the trains to run “and be quick about it,” that Eduardo was closer to Marshall than to him. “As near a son as he’ll ever have.”
He turned a minute later to see his chief standing bareheaded. His own cap came off.
“We’re burying the lad,” said Marshall. A rain of rock struck the nerves of all of them, though less than six people knew who it was who had paid the tribute of life to the river. Rickard kept the smell of arnica in his nostrils. It nauseated him. Never would its sharp breath blow on him but that scene would shake him in all its horror,—the sad beautiful face under those malignant waters, the rocks nailing it down. “It kept coming. I had it while you were all talking—just now!”
The minute of funeral had to be pushed aside. The river would not wait. Train after train was rushed on to the trestles; wave after wave hit them. But perceptibly, the dam was steadying. The rapid fire of rock was telling.
Another ridge of yellow waters rose. Every eye was on that watery mountain; it appeared to wait, as if summoning its strength for a final onslaught. The river’s stillness was ominous to the sweating men who watched as they labored that bulge of yellow water. Car after car ran on to the track; load after load of clattering rock was dumped. The roll of water came slowly, dwindling as it came; it broke against the trestle weakly. For the first time, the trestle never shuddered. Workersand watchers breathed as a unit the first deep breath that night. There was a change.
Hardin came rushing down to the track where the rock cars ran on to the trestles.
“It’s stopped rising!” he bellowed.
“Then work like hell!” bawled Rickard.
There followed some minutes of intensity when the rock-pour was almost continuous. Was not that another bulge of yellow waters, swelling there to the east? Every eye was on the river where it touched the rim of the dam. Suddenly, a chorused cry rose. The river had stopped rising!
“Don’t stop! She may hump yet!” Rickard was splitting his voice against the cheers. The whistles screamed themselves hoarse.
“We’ve got her!” screamed Hardin. “She’s going down!”
And then a girl, sitting on the bank, saw two men grab each other by the hand. She was too far away to hear their voices, but the sun, rising red through the banks of smoke, fell on the blackened faces of her brother and Rickard. She did not care who saw her crying.
A small sound started down the river. It grew into a swelling cheer, the pæan of victory. It demoralized into wild yells. Suddenly, the noise stopped. Simultaneously, Marshall and Rickard had held up their hands. The whistles had blown.
“What was that for?” demanded Mrs. Marshall.
“I suppose they can’t afford to waste any time.” Innes’ reply was uncertain. She, too, was wondering.
Rickard, they could hear, again, screaming directions. The battle was won; but it must be kept won. But nocheering! The men didn’t know who it was who was buried out yonder.
When things were well under way, Rickard discovered that his head was hot, his skin chilly. He would lay off for an hour. He would put Hardin in his place, Hardin or Irish.
He found Hardin, who was having his minute of reaction. This was not his triumph. Sullenly, he accepted Rickard’s place. Rickard turned back. “Had you heard? That was Estrada out there.”
Hardin’s expression followed him, the gloom of sullen egotism passing slowly from the face of unwilling horror. He had not spoken, but his look said: “Not Estrada! Any one but Estrada!”
“Any one but Estrada! He’s about the only man in this camp without enmities,” thought Rickard, and then he wondered if any one had told Innes Hardin. He went in search of her, passing Coronel, whose head rested on his chest. His snores could be heard above the noise of the rock bombardment.
Mrs. Marshall, weeping, was being led back to the car by her husband. Innes, he could see, had heard! Her eyes, fixed on the conquered waters, were seeing Estrada, buried out there.
Rickard turned away without being seen. The minute he had been waiting for was not his. It belonged to Estrada.