With eager fingers Conniston struck a match. Almost the first thing which his searching eyes found was the heavy Winchester, three inches of its barrel protruding from a roll of bedding. He flung the bedding open upon the ground. There was half a box of cartridges with it. He made sure that the magazine was filled, threw a shell into the barrel, thrust the box into his pocket, and ran outside.
No one had seen him. There were no eyes for him. A very few stragglers moved unsteadily here and there; the great majority of the men were packed in a mass about the barrel. Tin cups, dippers, even buckets and pans ran from hand to hand, from those nearest the wagon to the clamorous fellows upon the outskirts of the crowd, spilling the liquor freely as they were jolted and jostled.
This his eyes took in at a quick glance. Then he saw that fifty yards from the group of men there was another wagon which had been drawn aside with its four empty barrels. Walking slowly now, the rifle held vertically close to the side which was turned away from them, he moved toward this second wagon. He reached it, attracting no attention. Springing into its low bed, he dragged the four barrels close together. The broadside of the wagon was turned toward the clamorous crowd. Keeping his body hidden behind the bulwark he had made, he watched and waited for more light.
Slowly the pale glow in the east lengthened and broadened and brightened. Once Conniston lifted his rifle quickly to see if he could find the sights. It was still too dark for quick, accurate work.
So again he waited. A strange, cool calmness had succeeded to his almost frenzied agitation of a moment ago. He knew the danger of the thing which he was about to do; he knew and realized clearly what he might be called upon to do in self-protection alone when once he had taken his stand. But there was no other way; and, no matter what the consequences, no matter what the results, he accepted the only chance which circumstances had left him. And moments of unswerving determination do not make for nervous excitement. It is the anxious uncertainty, like that through which he had just passed, that makes a man's finger tremble upon the trigger.
Louder and ever louder rose the throaty voices, faster and faster passed the cups and dippers. Ben and Mundy had their arms about each other. In the wagon the Lark had slipped down, and now lay upon his back, staring at the dim, swirling stars and babbling incoherent nothings.
Men sang in strident, raucous, unmusical voices. A swarthy little Italian was playing waltzes upon a harmonica, and heavy-booted feet shuffled and stamped upon the sand as men flung their brawny arms about one another and swayed back and forth. Conniston saw that when a man thrust his arm down into the barrel for a fresh cupful of whisky it did not disappear three inches above the elbow.
Swiftly the desert daylight came. Conniston stooped and tied his boot-laces, that they might not trip him when he moved. He stood up and whipped his revolver from its holster, spinning the cylinder,and then shoving it back. And then, laying the rifle across the top of one of the barrels, he cleared his throat and called out loudly.
One of the men nearest him heard him above the shouting and pointed him out to another. The two laughed loudly and turned away from him, forgetting him as they turned. Again he called, louder than before. No one heard him, no one looked to him. He waved his hat above his head. If any one saw, no one gave sign of seeing. He licked his lips and lifted the rifle.
"God see me through with it!" he muttered.
He fired high above their heads. The sudden report crashed through the babel of shoutings, a veritable babel into which half of the tongues of Europe mingled with Chinese and Japanese sing-song. As the crack of the gun died away all other sounds died with it. The desert grew as suddenly still as it ever is in the depths of its man-free solitudes. Staring, wondering faces which had first turned to one another turned now toward him.
Again there broke out a volley of abrupt cries, followed by as sudden a silence, as they watched him to see what he meant, what he would do. And Conniston took quick advantage of this short hush.
"Leave that wagon, every man of you!" he shouted. "Move toward the ditch. And move fast!"
No man of them stirred. Their numbers, their intoxication, gave them assurance. He was no longer the "boss." They were all just men now, and he was only one while they were two hundred. They began to laugh. The Italian with the harmonica struck up a fresh, jigging air. The heavy-booted feet took up the rhythm. A man climbedinto the wagon and scooped up a dipperful of whisky, holding it aloft before he drank.
The light was still uncertain, but the dipper was a bright, clear target. Conniston waited a moment, his teeth hard set, hardly breathing. Then, as the man lowered the dipper from his face and held it out invitingly over the heads of the men on the ground, he fired.
The bullet crashed through the tin thing, hurling it into the crowd. The man who had held it cried out aloud, and, clutching the fingers of his right hand in his left, leaped down from the wagon. The Lark rolled over and to the ground, dived between the wheels, and disappeared. And again came a sudden silence.
Now Conniston did not wait. He fired at the barrel itself, hoping to smash in the staves, to drill holes near the bottom through which the confined liquor could escape. And now the men ceased singing and dancing and leaped back, crowding away from the barrel, plunging and stumbling out of the line of bullets. For a moment Conniston thought that in that wild, headlong scramble for safety he saw the end of the thing. And almost before the thought was formed he knew better.
The men were talking sullenly. He could hear their angry, snarling voices, no longer shouting, but low-pitched. He began to make out their faces and saw nowhere an expression of fear, everywhere black wrath, restless fury. They no longer moved backward, but stood their ground, muttering. In a moment—he knew what would happen. He could read it in their faces, could sense it in their low, rumbling tones. And so he shouted to them again, his voice ringing clear above their mutterings.
"I drop the first man that takes a step this way!"
Tense, anxious, watchful, he waited. He saw hesitation, but saw, too, that the hesitation was momentary, that it would be followed by a blind rush if he could not drive fear into their hearts. And he realized with a sick sinking of his own heart that there was little fear in men like these.
"It looks like an end of things for Greek Conniston," he muttered, dully.
His watchful eyes saw a little commotion upon the fringe of the knot of men who had moved a little toward the tent. He saw one of the men step out quickly and raise a big revolver. The man, as he lifted the revolver, fired, not seeming to aim. The bullet struck one of the front wheels of Conniston's wagon. Almost at the same second Conniston fired. Fired and missed, and fired again. With the second report came a shrill cry from the man with the revolver, and Conniston saw him stagger, drop his gun, wheel half around, and fall. And where he fell he lay, writhing and calling out to his fellows.
For a moment the others hung back, hesitating. The man upon the ground lifted himself upon an elbow, glared at Conniston, and began to crawl slowly back toward the tent. Obviously, he had been struck in the thigh or side. The man who had shot him, and who was new to this sort of work, thanked God that he had not killed the fellow outright.
The next moment he forgot him entirely. Ben and Mundy were a pace or two in front of their men, who from force of habit had begun to flock toward their daily leaders. They were talking earnestly, their voices lowered so that the pressing forms about them had to crane their necks to listen.
Still the whisky-barrel stood scarcely more than touched. Conniston, seeing that as long as it stood there he could hope to do nothing toward a restoration of order, emptied the magazine of his rifle into it. He saw the splinters fly, saw that the bullets had torn great holes into the hard wood, heard the snapping of oaths from those of the men who had drunk only enough to arouse their thirst, and began slipping fresh cartridges into the magazine.
"There'll be precious little of that stuff left, anyway," he grunted, with grim satisfaction.
He had expected a charge, but it did not come. Ben and Mundy had in all evidence taken command now. Their backs were to him as they issued short orders which he could not catch. But their purport was plain enough. He took his revolver from its holster and laid it in front of him upon a board across the top of one of the barrels.
Silently the men were falling back. And as they retreated they spread out into a great semicircle, wider and wider. He saw that fifty, perhaps seventy-five, of them had revolvers in their hands. And he saw that these men stood in advance of their companions. In another five minutes, in less than five minutes, the semicircle would be a circle of which he would be the center. Then they would close in on him, and then—
There must be nothen. That was the one thing clear. He might shoot down a dozen of them, but they would get him in the end. At one end of the slowly widening arc was Ben the Englishman. At the other was Mundy.
"Ben!" shouted Conniston, sharply. "You've got to stop that! Mundy, stop where you are! Idon't want to kill you fellows, but I'll do it if you keep on!"
In the beginning he had hoped to bluff them. Now such hope had died out of him. These were the sort of men who would want to see the other man's cards laid down on the table. And he knew that he must make good his bluff or there would in sober truth be an end of him. His voice rang with cold determination. And Ben and Mundy stopped.
Conniston watched that line of black faces, and as his eyes clung to the threatening arc he thought with a queer twitching of the lips of the football line-ups which he had watched in other days. He was surprised that his feelings now were much as they had been then. It was a game, and that in the other games a goal had been the thing he schemed and battled for while now it was his life made little difference. He was surprised that he was cool, that his heart beat steadily, that his hands upon his gun were like rock.
There was something strange in the way the men were watching him, something in their sudden silence, in their eager faces, which puzzled him. Their whole attitude spoke of one thing—a breathless waiting. What were they waiting for? Had his words put the fear of death in them? Were they watching to see if he was going to shoot down the men who led them? Was there a chance—
His taut senses told him of a danger which he could not understand. Something was wrong; death hovered over him—close, closer. What was it? His eyes flashed up and down the long curve of motionless figures, seeking an explanation and finding none. A little shiver ran up and down his backbone. He could not understand—
A sound, scarcely louder than the footfall of a cat, but jarring harshly upon his straining, over-acute ears, told him. He swung about with a sharp cry. There was the explanation. There, just behind him, barefooted, bent almost double, crouching to leap upon him, a great Chinaman, a long, curved knife clenched in his hand, was not three feet away. Even as he swung about the giant Asiatic sprang forward, the knife flashing up and down. Conniston struck with his rifle—the range was too short for him to use the thirty-thirty save as a club. It struck the big man a glancing blow upon the shoulder.
The lean, snarling, yellow face was so close to his that he could feel the hot, whisky-laden breath. He parried, and the rifle was jerked from his grasp, falling with a clatter to the bed of the wagon. The knife struck and bit into the shoulder he had thrown forward. Again it was raised. Conniston sprang back, and as he leaped he swept up the revolver from the barrel-top. As the knife fell, cutting a long gash again in his shoulder, he jammed the muzzle of Lonesome Pete's gun against the Chinaman's stomach and fired. The Chinaman grunted, coughed, and sank limply, vomiting blood.
For a moment Conniston forgot the men out yonder, growing suddenly sick at the sight of the ugly, twitching thing at his feet. And then as quickly as it had come, the nausea was gone, and he was clear-headed and watchful. He snatched up his rifle and whirled toward Ben and Mundy and the men between them.
They had not moved, had taken no single step forward. He remembered having seen a man near Mundy standing with open mouth and bulging eyes; the fellow's jaw still sagged, his eyes were fixed inthe same strange stare, his eyelids had not so much as winked.
"That's one!" yelled Conniston. He laughed out loud, the laugh of a man whose nerves are strained almost to the point of snapping.
"Come on, come on! Who'll be next?"
They muttered among themselves; here and there a man called out sharply. But still they did not move. A thing like that which they had just witnessed drives the fumes of alcohol from a man's brain like a dip in ice-water. They could beat him down, they could take him, they could kill him as he had killed the Chinaman. But he could kill more than one of them before they could drop him. These things were clear. And the men hesitated.
"Afraid?" he laughed, taunting, jeering them, all discretion swept away from him. "Why don't you send some more men? There might be a little whisky left—if you hurry!"
He saw Ben and Mundy stir uneasily, saw them glance at each other, at the barrel with its shattered staves and gushing liquor, at the men whom they were self-elected to lead, and back to him. He saw the Lark and the man Peters standing close together, talking earnestly, seeming to argue with growing heat. And as the wave of hot blood left him and he grew cool and his saner judgment came back to him he called out to them sternly, but not threateningly, not mockingly:
"Ben! Mundy! you, Peters! and you, Lark! what's the use? Hasn't this thing gone far enough? You can kill me, but what good will it do? Your whisky is spilled, and you can't get it back. You know the wages I offered you fellows yesterday. You can go back to them, and nothing said. I have fivehundred more men coming from Denver. They can take your jobs if you like. You can go to Swinnerton, but when he knows that I have fired you he won't take you on. You know that he is just taking men to keep us from getting them. You'd be fools to give up your jobs now. What's the word, boys? Will you go back to work, Ben? And you, Peters? And you, Mundy and the Lark? Shall I tell the cook to get coffee ready? Talk up lively. What is it?"
A rumbling chorus of murmurs rose up to greet him. The men were sullen, and they snarled openly at him. But he could see that already the thing had gone further than the more law-abiding spirits had thought to see it go. A sudden soberness had fallen upon many of them, and with it a cooler sanity. They broke into quick talk everywhere up and down the line. He could see that no longer at least were they united against him. He could see that the argument between Peters and the Lark was strong, heated. And he hoped and prayed that good might come of it and of the brief hesitation.
Suddenly the Lark broke away from his comrades and ran forward. Conniston, ever watchful, ever suspicious, covered him with his rifle. But the Lark was grinning, and as he came closer he lifted his two hands.
"I'm with you!" he shouted. "I got a bellyful of this here racket. An'," with a glance over his shoulder, "I got a bellyful of that rotgut, too. Besides, it's all gone. How about coffee, boys?"
"And you, Mundy? How about you?" Conniston called, quickly. "Do you want to keep your job at the wages I offered you yesterday? Or shall I put another man in your place? Quick, man! Speak up!"
Mundy hesitated, glancing at Ben before he answered. And then slowly he stepped out to where the Lark already stood.
"I'll keep my job," he grunted, sullenly.
"Please, sir," grinned the Lark, shaking his hand high above his head like a ragged urchin in school, "kin I go git a drink? Water, I mean," he finished with widening grin.
"Yes," answered Conniston, trying to keep from his eyes the gladness which was surging up within him. "Come this way first. There—stop. Now throw your gun toward me. You've got some sense. Now go get your water."
Ben came forward; and slowly, reluctantly, with evil, red-rimmed eyes, Peters. And, as the Lark had done, they tossed their revolvers to the sand near Conniston's wagon and trudged off toward the nearest water-wagon. A dozen men followed them. Gradually the line broke up as the call of water grew imperative to parched throats.
From the corner of his eye Conniston saw these men go to the first wagon, tilt up the barrels, and go to the next. And suddenly he heard a great shout go up from them—a shout no longer of anger, but of sheer surprise.
In the bottom of every barrel there was an auger-hole. There was not a single drop of water in camp!
In a flash of inspiration Conniston saw the thing which he must say.
"Who wants to go to work for Swinnerton now?" he cried. "You know whose work this is; you know who is trying to block every move we make. You know as well as I do that it was Swinnerton, or one of the men working for Swinnerton, the same man who got Bat Truxton drunk, who has given you yourwhisky—and taken away your chasers! And you know as well as I do how many miles it is to water."
The rest of the men had flung down their guns and rushed to the empty barrels. Already the burning thirst engendered by the raw, vile whisky was making them lick their dry lips, making their throats work painfully. They pulled over barrel after barrel, seeking to find that somewhere there was a cupful of water. And they found none.
"It's Swinnerton's gang you have to thank for this, boys," Conniston shouted again, seeing and taking his opportunity. "Swinnerton, who wants to break us like a rotten stick. He will be a millionaire many times over if he breaks us. And if we put our work across, if we make a go of it, Swinnerton will be the rotten stick!"
He stopped suddenly and watched them. And as often as he heard them curse him he heard them curse Swinnerton.
"Ben," he cried, when he had waited for them to understand what he had said, "get the harness on some horses and take one of the wagons to Valley City. Take a couple of men with you. Go to the general office and ask for Tommy Garton. Tell him we've got to have water. You, Lark, take the rest of the wagons as fast as you can send your horses to the Half Moon for more water. Take what men you need. Cook, see if you have enough water in your tent to do any good. And then get us something to eat. Ben will be back from Valley City before you know it. The rest of you fellows better lie around and chew tobacco until water comes. We'll get an early start to-morrow to make up for lost time. Peters, you and Mundy see that somebody looks out for the men that are hurt. Take them to the tent.They get first water if the cook has any. If not, Ben, you take them with you to Valley City."
His orders came with staccato precision. There was no tremor of doubt in his tones. And there was no slightest hesitation in obeying the orders from the man who was again "boss." Ben shouted out his own commands to two men who stood close to him, and they ran for the horses. The Lark was at the same time snapping out his orders, and the men he called by name hurried for horses, and many hands made quick work of the hitching-up. Other fingers whittled plugs, wrapped them about with bits of sack, and drove them tight into the holes in the barrels. The cook sped to his tent, found a bucket half full of water, and was drinking thirstily when Mundy jerked it from his hands.
"None of that, you sneakin' skunk!" he shouted. "Them guys as got hurt gets the first show."
The fellow Conniston had shot in the thigh, and the man whom he had seen a companion strike with a knife, cutting him deeply in the neck, were carried into the tent, water thrust up to their parched lips, their wounds bound swiftly and gently. The Chinaman Mundy rolled over with his foot.
"Deader 'n hell," he grunted. "Might as well leave him where he is until plantin'-time."
Once more order had grown quietly out of chaos. The men stood here and there talking, chewing tobacco, cursing the thirst which as the minutes dragged by grew ever more tormenting. Already the sun had rolled upward above the flat horizon. Already the desert heat had leaped out at them. A dozen men climbed upon Ben's wagon, thinking to go to Valley City with him to get water there. But he drove them back, threatening them with his bigfists and cockney oaths, and they dropped down and watched him as the wagon, rocking and swaying and lurching, was drawn away from them by galloping horses.
At a sharp word from Conniston two of the men brought the broken barrel which had contained whisky to where the discarded revolvers lay glinting in the early light and tossed them into it. And then Brayley came.
"What's up, Con?" he asked, swinging down from his panting horse, his keen eyes taking in the fading excitement, the general idleness. And then, as he stooped forward and looked into the barrel: "Good heavens! Whatisthe matter?"
In a few words Conniston told him. For a moment Brayley said nothing, shaking his head and eying him curiously.
"You sure got your nerve, Con," he said, simply, after a minute.
Conniston laughed shakily. Again a sinking nausea made him faint and dizzy. He could remember now the way the nose of his revolver had sunk into the Chinaman's stomach, could see again all of the horror of the thing which he had done.
"I'm sick, Brayley," he said, unsteadily. "The thing will drive me mad. I—I had to kill a man—and I can't forget how he looked!"
"How you managed to stop 'em jest killingonegets me. Where is he?"
Conniston nodded to the wagon and turned away shuddering. The Half Moon foreman strode over to the wagon and looked closely at the limp body. And then he came to Conniston with long strides.
"Hell," he grunted, disgustedly. "I thought you said you'd killed a man! That's only a Chink!"
The few barefooted, tattered urchins of Valley City had scampered homeward through the quiet street, swept along upon the high tide of glee. Bat Truxton had got drunk again; Mr. Crawford had fired him; Miss Jocelyn had gone away with him to Crawfordsville; there was every reason for their glad optimism to see a long vacation before them. What was the importance of reclamation somewhere off in the misty future when vacation, unexpected and thence all the more delectable, smiled upon them now?
"Mr. Crawford has been just as mean to poor papa as he could be," Miss Jocelyn had confided to them, in tear-dampened scornfulness. "Papa doesn't want me to teach, anyway. And"—with a sniff and a toss of her head—"we'll be in town now where we can enjoy ourselves."
It is not a pretty thing to contradict a lady, but certainly if Miss Jocelyn's papa made the remark which she attributed to him it must have been at some time prior to his return from the camp to Valley City; prior, too, to his exit from Valley City to Crawfordsville. For her papa went out of the Valley reclining wordlessly upon a thick padding of quilts in the bed of a big wagon, with his few household effects so arranged about him as to screen him from the sun and the curious gaze of a chance passer-by, and in no condition to express himself upon any matter whatever.
There was in Crawfordsville, upon a pleasant, shady avenue, a little vine-covered cottage belonging to Bat Truxton, and thither the big wagon conveyed him, his scornful daughter, and his few household effects. And there shortly after twilight upon the third day after the closing of school in Valley City Mr. Roger Hapgood, sartorially immaculate in shining raiment, glorious as to tie and silken socks, presented himself.
Miss Jocelyn Truxton, a big, yellow-hearted rose peeping forth at him from a carefully careless profusion of brown hair, came out upon the porch at his knock, smiled at him saucily, and offered him her hand.
"How do you do, Mr. Hapgood? We didn't expect you again so soon. I thought that maybe you had forgotten us." And then, blushing prettily over the hand which Mr. Hapgood was still holding ardently in his, "Won't you come in?"
Mr. Hapgood, having assured her that he should forget all else in the world before he forgot her, called her attention to the fact that it was a deucedly fine evening, and that it would be too bad to lose any of it by going into the house. His smile and eloquent eyes pointed out that there was a not uncomfortable rustic bench, large enough to accommodate two nicely, at the cozy, vine-sheltered end of the porch.
"And how is Mr. Truxton?" he asked, his tone gently solicitous, when they were seated.
"I have had Dr. Biggs call since you were here," she told him, assuming the pose which a certain Broadway favorite had discovered (the photograph of the leading lady in this particular pose had been cut from the latest theatrical gazette which now lay upon the sitting-room table; it is denied us toenter the room set aside for Miss Jocelyn to see if the picture be pinned to the wall over her dresser!)—a pose which was not lost to the appreciative and admiring eyes of Mr. Hapgood. "Dr. Biggs says that papa's is a high-strung, nervous disposition which at times makes the taking of—of a little alcohol absolutely necessary. And that the—the stimulant is liable to upset him. It is entirely a nervous trouble, and in a few days, with perfect rest, he will be well again."
Mr. Hapgood nodded gravely, sympathetically.
"Mr. Truxton has been so great a factor in the reclamation project—he has been the very heart and soul of the actual work done—that I wonder how Mr. Crawford's schemes will get along without him?"
"I hope they fail," cried Jocelyn, hotly. "Papa has given the best in him to help them, and look how they send him adrift when—when he makes one little slip!"
"Do you know why Crawford really let him go?" Hapgood, speaking in hushed tones, continued to eye her keenly. "Don't you know that Crawford was just waiting and looking for an excuse—any excuse?"
Jocelyn turned widening eyes upon him. "What do you mean?"
Hapgood gave the impression of a man hesitating over a serious matter. And then, with a sudden burst of something remarkably like ingenuous ardor, he exclaimed:
"Why should I say anything? Perhaps I should keep my peace and let matters take their own course. I have a distinctive dislike to interfering in any way with the affairs of other people. And yet, Miss Jocelyn, I feel so strong an interest in you—you willforgive me if I have to speak plainly; you will pardon me when you know I mean no offense?—that I cannot keep my peace." A momentary struggle between his desire to befriend her and his dislike to say evil of others, and then with vehement intensity, "I willnotremain silent."
Whereupon he became immediately silent and remained so until the curiosity which he had fired urged him to go on.
"When Conniston left the Half Moon and went to work in the Valley under your father"—leaning forward, his low-toned voice again deeply confidential—"the whole plot was laid and perfected. He was to work there until he had learned all that Mr. Truxton could teach him, until the greater part of the work had been done, and then your father was to be discharged so that Conniston could take his place. Yes, and so that when the work was completed—the work which your own father had made possible—Conniston would reap the rewards of it, take all the honors."
He paused suddenly, and again his pale eyes, intent upon the girl's face, were keen with the shrewdness in them. Jocelyn sprang to her feet, her face flaming, her body tense.
"The—the wretches!" she gasped.
Roger Hapgood made no reply, content for the moment to rest upon his oars, watching the boat he had launched drift as it would.
"Why," asked Jocelyn, after a little, her face puzzled—"why do you tell me this, when you are one of Mr. Crawford's lawyers?"
He lifted his hand as though warding off a blow.
"Don't say that! Miss Jocelyn, did you think that I was the sort of man, so forgetful of his manhood, that I would remain in the service of such people when I had found them out? Did you dream that I could remain a part of a project a second after such a man as Conniston had been put at the head of it? Did you think," half sadly, half reproachfully, "that I could continue my affiliations with such men after the treatment which Mr. Truxton—your father—had received? Miss Jocelyn, I went straight to Mr. Winston and handed him my resignation. Thank God that if I must give up my position I can at least keep my self-respect!"
It was very effectively done, and Jocelyn thrilled with it.
"I am so sorry!" she said, softly, her light touch sympathetic upon his arm. "So sorry that because of us—"
"Don't say it—please don't, Miss Jocelyn! I can never forget that it was I, no matter how innocently, who helped them in getting the excuse they were looking for. And don't you see, I shall feel in a way that my fortune is linked with yours, I shall feel that there are certain bonds between us, I shall feel that in a small, very small way I am being of some light service to your father and," very softly—"and to you."
"But what will you do? You have so few friends here. This is a new country to you—"
"For a moment I thought of returning immediately to the East. But I could not. Why? I won't tell you now; I dare not." He paused long enough to look the things which short acquaintance forbade him saying, and then, as though shaking himself mentally, went on, "What shall I do? I have already done it. Just so long as I thought blindly that the right was with us I worked for reclamation as a man does not often work. And now that the scales have dropped from my eyes, do I hesitate? I have gone to Mr. Swinnerton. I have offered him my services. And he has seen fit to accept them. And now I shall not have to sit idly by, my hands in my lap, waiting to see the Crawfords reap the rewards and assume the honors which belong—elsewhere!"
Jocelyn had read stories of heroes. Never before had she known what it was to find herself in the actual bodily presence of one of these creatures. And small wonder she thrilled again, not alone because of the fact that this great-hearted gentleman had sacrificed himself upon the altar of righteousness, but, further, that in the reasons for such self-immolation had entered thoughts of her. A real, perfectly delightful romance was being enacted, andshewas its heroine!
"You are very good," she murmured, quite as the heroine should. "And papa will appreciate it when I tell him. And," shyly, "if you care to know it, I think that your generous kindness is the finest thing I have ever known."
It was the psychological time for a love avowal. But Mr. Hapgood had not played out his other rôle. He rose hastily, looking at his watch.
"I stopped in for just a moment," he said, quickly. "I am on my way to the post-office. I expect some important mail to-night. By the way," stopping with a glove half drawn on, "if your father cares to accept a position again soon I think that I know of one which would suit him. Mr. Swinnerton wants a competent engineer to aid him in a bit of work. I took the liberty to mention Mr. Truxton to him. He was delighted at the bare mention of yourfather's name. But"—and again the old shrewd look crept into his eyes—"maybe Mr. Truxton does not care to work against the reclamation? Maybe he is willing to see the Crawfords and that Conniston fellow succeed in their scheme?"
"I am going right in to talk with papa," she told him, quickly. "I am going to tell him the real truth. And I think, Mr. Hapgood, that you can tell Mr. Swinnerton that papa will come out to see him to-morrow or the next day."
Mr. Hapgood took the hand which she held out to him, bestowed upon her a look which spoke of warm admiration tinged with half-melancholy longing, sighed, relinquished her hand with a gentle pressure, and ran down the steps.
"Good night, Jocelyn," he called, softly, from the little gate.
"Good night, Roger," she whispered.
A certain old football phrase rang day and night in Conniston's brain, "It is anybody's game!" Anybody's game! For there was a chance for success in the Great Work, and he saw that chance clearly, and fought hard for it. If everything went smoothly now, if Mr. Crawford gave him five hundred more men, if there were no unforeseen obstacles set in his way, no smashing accidents, he would see the ditches in Rattlesnake Valley filled with water by the last day of September. He had figured on everything, he had sat late into many a night after the grind of a twelve or fifteen hour day, frowning over details, calculating to the cubic yard what he must do each and every day, going over his calculations with a care which missed no detail. And he knew that he could play this game safely and win—if they would only let him alone! And still he knew that it was anybody's game. Could Swinnerton block him in some way which he could not foresee, could Swinnerton make him lose a single day's work, could Swinnerton steal his five hundred men as he had stolen men in the past, it was Swinnerton's game.
Brayley was driving the work in the Valley now. Tommy Garton had his new legs from Chicago, and from the seat of a buckboard, sometimes from the ground where his crutches sank into the soft sand, he advised Brayley and watched the work. Conniston was in the mountains, and the Lark with fifty men was with him.
Once in Deep Creek, with the site of Dam Number One before him, Conniston studied long before he gave the order to the Lark to begin work. Here were the stakes of Truxton's survey, here were the foundations already laid, here was a nature-made dam-site. He had not needed the stakes to show him the spot. And still he hesitated.
Here, where plans had been made for the chief dam, Deep Creek belied its name. It ran clear and untroubled over a gentle slope, widening out until from edge to edge of the water it measured close upon forty feet. Still farther back upon either hand the sides of the cañon stood in perpendicular walls thirty feet high. Above the site the walls widened gradually until they formed a pocket, flat-bottomed, half a mile wide. Still farther up the creek's course these natural walls grew steadily closer together until perhaps three-eighths of a mile deeper in the cañon they drew so close together that there was scarcely more than the width of an ordinary room between them.
It was this point—the Lark had been here with Bat Truxton when the survey was made and called it the "Jaws"—that inspired Conniston's hesitation. Here was a second dam-site, and not until he had studied both long and carefully, with a keen eye to advantage and disadvantage, did he give the word to begin work.
If it were only a question of a site, with time not an element to success, he would have chosen as Truxton had done and without a second's doubt. Had he had only to consider the building of a dam across Deep Creek in the shortest possible time, he wouldhave chosen the site at the Jaws. But the thing which he wanted now was the largest possible dam in the shortest possible time. There was a pocket above the Jaws, but it was shorter, narrower. And above it the creek-bed plunged downward, at times broken into perpendicular waterfalls, until, yonder at a sharp bend, the water as it now frothed through its narrow, rocky cañon was on a level with the top of the Jaws. He needed to take out water in vast quantities, countless millions of gallons of it, to turn into the ditches thirty miles away across the dry desert.
"The one question," he told himself, as he stood upon a boulder whence he could overlook the two sites, "is, can I get the dam finished where Bat Truxton planned it—get it done in time?"
And in the end he told himself that if the five hundred men came he could have his dam completed in time; and that if the five hundred men did not come the whole task before him was hopeless. Then he waved his hand to the Lark, and the Lark shouted a command which set fifty idle men to work before the echoes of his voice had died away between the rocky walls of the cañon.
The materials he should require—the lumber for the great flume which was to turn the water from the weir into the cut which was to be made across the spine of the ridge separating Deep Creek from the wider cañon through which Indian Creek shot down upon the uplands of the Half Moon, the kegs of giant powder, the horses and implements—he had brought with him or had conveyed hither yesterday from Crawfordsville. He knew that in a very few days now the main canal would be completed, stretching like a mammoth serpent over the fivemiles of rolling hills through which it twisted intricately to avoid rocky ridges and knolls to follow natural hollows; that when at last Dam Number One should be an actuality of stone and mortar, with the water rising high above the flood-gates through which he could send it hissing and boiling into the flume, the way was open to shake his victorious fist in the face of nature itself, to drive water across thirty miles of desert and into the heart of Rattlesnake Valley.
Upon one thing Conniston had set his heart before he had been twenty-four hours in Bat Truxton's shoes. He would forget the date which had been marked in red numerals since his first talk with Tommy Garton; he would not think once of the first day of October. He would have everything in readiness upon the twenty-fifth day of September.
He knew that the water would at first run slowly through the dry canals, that the thirsty soil would drink up the first of the precious gallons, that he must allow himself those five days in order that he play safe. And now that he had seen the scope of the work to be done, now that he felt that he could manage without the auxiliary dam until after the first of October, that the two dams here on Deep Creek and Indian Creek would give him enough water to keep to the terms of the contract, he believed that he would have everything in readiness by the twenty-fifth of September.
For this he had hoped, at first half heartedly; for this he was now working. Besides the inducements he had offered his men he now promised them a wage of once and a half for overtime. That meant that from the first light of morning until dark, with often less than an hour off at noon, they worked day afterday. They fought with the uneven bed of the stream, they fought with great boulders, until their arms ached in their sockets and their scanty clothing was drenched with sweat. Conniston, while he urged them on to do all that was in them, marveled that they did not break down under the strain.
Nor did he spare himself. Many a night during the swift weeks which followed he had no more than three or four hours' sleep.
Until the Lark yelled to his men to "knock" off at night, Conniston labored with them. Then, when they had rolled heavily into their blankets, he more than once had saddled his horse and ridden down along the foothills across the stretch of sand and to Valley City to advise with Garton, to learn how the work was going there, to plan and order for the days to follow. He grew gaunt and nervous and hollow-eyed. Heavier and heavier the load of his responsibility rested upon his shoulders. Nearer and nearer came the end of the time allotted to him, and always the things still to do loomed ahead of him like mountains of rock. He went for two weeks without shaving, and scarcely realized it. His hands grew to be like the hands of his men, torn and cut and blackened with dirt ground into the skin. His boots were in strips before he thought of another pair; his clothes were ragged. He thought only of the Great Work.
In the Present, which came to him with tight-clenched, iron fingers gripping the promise which he must rend from them with the strength of brain and brawn, there was only the Great Work. The Past extended back only to the day when Bat Truxton had fallen and he had been called to take the place of command; and since then there had been only theGreat Work. And the Future, mocking him now, smiling upon him the next day, then hiding her face in her misty veil, held high above his head the success or the failure of the Great Work.
And as he grew haggard and tense-nerved and unkempt, little lines formed about the corners of his mouth which would have told William Conniston, Senior, that there had been wrought in his son a change which was not of the body, not of the mind alone, but even of the secret soul.
He thought that he should have heard from Mr. Crawford by now, and yet no word had reached him. When the day's work had been done upon the dam he rode the ten miles into Crawfordsville and inquired at the Western Union office for a telegram. No, nothing had come. The next day he was as short-spoken as Bat Truxton had been the day before Hapgood had tempted him, as irritable. He saw half a dozen men struggling with a great rugged mass of rock, and cursed them for their slowness. And then he turned away from the Lark's curious eyes, biting his lips. For he knew that they were doing all that six big iron-bodied men could do, and that he was not fit.
Again that night he rode to Crawfordsville. He thought that the telegraph agent grinned maliciously as he tossed a yellow envelope upon the counter.
"Sign here, Mr. Conniston," he said.
Conniston signed and, stepping outside, read the words which drove a groan to his lips: