"William Conniston, Jr.,"General Supt., Crawford Reclamation, Crawfordsville."No success yet. May have to go to St. Louis for the money. Hope to have men in four or five days."John W. Crawford."
"William Conniston, Jr.,
"General Supt., Crawford Reclamation, Crawfordsville.
"No success yet. May have to go to St. Louis for the money. Hope to have men in four or five days.
"John W. Crawford."
He did not see Jocelyn Truxton in front of the post-office as he rode past, did not see Hapgood come out of the two-story building and join her. He saw only the days which were rushing down upon him, offering him a broken, blunt weapon to fight a giant.
Never once had Conniston doubted as he doubted now. Never before had all glint of hope been lost in rayless blackness. If he had the five hundred men,if he had them now, there was a fighting chance. But if he must wait another week before they came—
To-day the telephone line had been completed to Valley City. All day he had looked forward to a talk with Argyl. Now he swept by the little office without lifting his head. He could not talk with her; he could not talk with Tommy Garton even. They would know soon enough, and they would know from other lips than his.
That night he slept little, but sat staring at the stars, searching stubbornly to find his lost hope, struggling over and over to see the way. And all that he could see was a long, dry, ugly cut in the desert, a vain, foolish, stupid thing; Mr. Crawford a ruined, broken man; Argyl smitten with sorrow and disappointment; himself the vanquished leader of a mad campaign; Oliver Swinnerton and his servitors flushed with victory. Still he fought to find the way, and shut his lips tight together, and strove to shut from his mind the pictures which his insistent fancy painted there. And when morning came and he walked to the dam which was taking form, pale, worn with the fatigue of the night after the fatigue of the day, he snapped out his orders half viciously, and watched with a hard smile while his handful of men resumed their mammoth task.
"Take it from me"—the Lark was regarding him curiously—"you better go git some sleep, or it's goin' to be a redwood box for yours."
The sun had just pushed a shining edge of its burning disk over the mountain-tops when Conniston suddenly cried out like a man awaking from the clutch of a frightful nightmare, and pointed with shaking finger to the road winding up the cañon.
"What's up, 'bo?" asked the Lark, swinging upon him.
"I don't know," Conniston said, harshly. "I—guess I'm just seeing things. Look!"
A wagon had crept around a turn in the road, and its long bed was close packed with the forms of men standing upright, their hands upon the back of the high seat or upon one another's shoulders to steady themselves as the wagon pitched and lurched over the ill-defined road. Around the bend another wagon, similarly loaded with a human freight which taxed the strength of four puffing horses, came into view. And behind that another and another—
"Am I seeing things?" snapped Conniston, his hand biting into the Lark's shoulder. "What is that?"
"Them," grunted the Lark, wriggling like an eel in Conniston's grip, "is your five hundred new guys, or I'm a liar! An' fergit you're the strong man in a sideshow doin' stunts with a rag doll—"
But Conniston did not hear him. Already he was running toward the wagons. And there was a light in his eyes which had not been there for many days. A little, youngish man, sandy of hair, with bird-like brightness of eye and the grin of a sanctified cherub, swung down from the seat of the foremost wagon, lifted his hand, thereby stopping the laboring procession, and came forward to meet Conniston.
"I want to talk with the superintendent," he said, as the two men met. "Where is he?"
"I'm the superintendent. I'm Conniston. You want me?"
"All right, Mr. Conniston. I'm Jimmie Kent."
He put out his hand, which was painfully small, but which gripped Conniston's larger hand like a vise. "There are your five hundred men. Or, to be exact, five hundred and five. I started with five hundred and seven. Lost two on the road."
"But," interrupted Conniston, staring half incredulously at him, "Mr. Crawford's telegram—"
Jimmie Kent laughed.
"Mr. Crawford kicked like a bay steer over that telegram. And in the end, when he wouldn't put his name to a lie, I did the trick for him."
"But why?"
"Simply, sir, because I am under contract to deliver five hundred men into your hands. Simply because the telegraph agent in Crawfordsville belongs body and soul, bread and butter, to our esteemed friend Mr. Oliver Swinnerton. Know Oliver personally? Capable man, charming host, but the very devil to buck when he has his back aloft! And they tell me that he is playing high this trip. It was just as well, don't you think, that I sent that wire? Had Oliver known that this consignment of hands was coming, and when they were coming—well, I don't know how he would have managed it, but one way or another he would have come mighty close to taking them off my hands. And now," whipping a big, fat note-book from his pocket, "will you sign right there?"
Kent removed the cap from a gold-filigreed fountain-pen, handed it with a bit of paper and thenote-book to Conniston, and pointed out where the signature was wanted. And Conniston set his name down under a statement acknowledging the receipt from James Kent of five hundred and five men, "in good and satisfactory shape."
"Thank you, Mr. Conniston," as he blotted and returned the document to his breast pocket. "Perhaps, however, you would have preferred to have counted before signing?"
"That's all right. I'll take your word for it. If there aren't five hundred, there are as good as five hundred. And thank God, and you, Jimmie Kent, that they are here!"
"Need 'em pretty bad? Well, I'm glad I got 'em to you in time. And you might as well know how I did it. I unloaded my men at Littleton, two hundred miles east of here. And then I chartered a freight and sneaked 'em into Bolton at night. Got into Bolton last night, and came right out. I don't believe," with a genial grin, "that our friend Oliver knows a thing about it yet. I do believe that that wire to you at Crawfordsville has got him sidetracked."
Conniston called the Lark to him.
"I am going to put two hundred more men to work right here and right now," he said, swiftly. "You get double salary to act as general foreman over the two hundred and fifty. Divide your old gang of fifty into five parts, ten each. Break up the new gang of two hundred into five sections, forty men to a section. Then put ten of our old men to work with each section of forty, making, when that is done, five gangs, fifty men to the gang. Understand?"
The Lark nodded, his eyes bright.
"Then pick out from your old gang the five best men you have. No favoritism—understand me? The five best men! You know them better than I do. I want them to do the sort of thing you have been doing, each of them to act as section boss, under you, over fifty men. Send them to me. And get a move on!"
The Lark shot away, losing no time in question or answer. A moment later five big, strapping fellows stood before Conniston, eying him curiously.
"You fellows," Conniston told them, bluntly, "are to act as section bosses. You are to get the wages the Lark here has been getting. You are to get the same money I offered him for every day between the first of October and the day we get water into the Valley. You are to take orders from him and no questions asked. You can hold your jobs just as long as you do the work. If you can't do the work you'll get fired and another man put in your place. Come along with me. And you," to the Lark, "come too."
He swung off toward the wagons, the five men and Jimmie Kent following him. At the first wagon he called to the men to "climb out." As they clambered down the men in the other wagons got to the ground and came forward.
"I want forty men," Conniston called. "Walk by me single file so I can count."
When the fortieth had passed him he raised his hand.
"You," he said to the one of the new foremen nearest him, "take these forty men, add ten of the old section to them, and go to work on the dam. Wait a minute. Have you boys had any breakfast?"
They had not.
"Go to the cook, then," he ordered. "Tell him to give you the best he can sling out at quick notice. Tell him that there will be one hundred and sixty more to feed. I'll send for more grub right away."
The men passed on to the cook's tent, and one after another Conniston counted off the other sections of forty and sent them to be fed.
"The rest of you," he called to the three hundred men who had watched their fellows move away, "go to the Valley. You can loaf until we scare up something to eat for you and until the horses rest a bit. I'll send right away to Crawfordsville—"
"Mr. Conniston," interrupted Jimmie Kent, "in those two wagons back there is a lot of grub. And tools," he added. "Mr. Crawford had me pick them up in Littleton."
Never had Conniston known a busier forenoon, never a happier. The fatigue, the despondency, the utter hopelessness of the early morning was swept away. He felt a new life course through his veins, there came a fresh elasticity to his stride, his voice rang with confidence. For he was as a leader of a lost hope within the walls of a beleaguered city to whom, when all hope was gone, reinforcements had come.
He felt that now nothing could tire him in body or in mind, nothing drive from his heart his glorious conviction of success to come.
And yet he had no faintest idea how busy the day was to be. When two hours had passed and the wagons carrying three hundred men had started for the Valley, Conniston had the two hundred and fifty men at Deep Creek working with a swiftness, an effectiveness which would have told a chance observer that they had been familiar many days with the work. He was to leave them before noon, to hurry on horseback to overtake the wagons that he might personally oversee the arrangements to be made upon their coming into the Valley. And there was much to be done, many specific orders to give the Lark, before he dared leave.
Upon the dam itself he put a hundred men to work. The remaining hundred and fifty he set to building the great flume which was to carry the stored waterfor five hundred yards along the ridge, then into the cut in the crest of the ridge and into Dam Number Two. He saw that he must have more horses, more plows and scrapers. But for the present he could do without them. There was blasting to be done upon the rugged wall of the cañon, there were tall pines bunched in groves, many of which must come down before the flume could be completed or the ditch made. And men with axes and crowbars and giant powder were set to their tasks.
Everywhere he went the Lark dogged his heels, listening intently to the orders which his superior gave him.
"The main thing," Conniston told him, when he had outlined the work as well as he could, "is to keep your men working! Don't lose any time. I'll be back as soon as I can make it, some time to-morrow, and if you don't know how to handle anything that comes up put your men on something else. The dam has got to be made, the flume has got to be built, the cut has to be dug, a lot of trees and boulders have to come out. You will have enough to keep you busy."
"Do you know, Mr. Conniston," Jimmie Kent told him, as they sat down together for a bite of lunch, "I've got a hunch. A rare, golden hunch!"
Conniston laughed—he was in the mood to laugh at anything now—and asked what the rare "hunch" was.
"Just this: there's going to be some fun pulled off in this very same neck of the woods before the first of October! And, by Harry, I'd like to see it! Have you any objection to my sort of roosting around and keeping my bright eye on the game? Oh, I don't want a salary; I'll pay for my grub, and you can have my valuable advice gratis. Can I stick around?"
When Conniston told him that he should be glad to have him stay, and as his and the company's guest, Jimmie Kent beamed.
"That's bully of you! If you don't mind, and we can scare up a horse for me, I'd like to ride into Valley City with you? I can send a wire from there to my firm asking for an indefinite vacation. Oh, they'll grant it, all right. They want a man like me in their business."
It was after one o'clock, work was in progress, and Conniston and Jimmie Kent swung into their saddles and started for Valley City. Before they had ridden a mile down the mountainous road Conniston heard Kent whistle softly, and ahead of them, coming to meet them, saw a light pole buggy swiftly approaching. A moment later and the man driving had stopped his horses and was looking with small, shrewd eyes into Conniston's.
He was a short man, round of face, round of eyes, round of stomach. Very fair, very bland, very red under the flaming sun, the sweat trickling down his face and upon the crumpled white of his shirt-bosom. His eyes were mildly surprised as they rested upon Kent. They were only smiling as they returned to Conniston.
"I was looking for Mr. Conniston, the superintendent," he said, in a soft, fat voice. "Can you direct me—"
"I am Conniston. And I am in a very big hurry. What can I do for you?"
The man in the buggy swelled pompously.
"I am Oliver Swinnerton," he said, with dignity. And then suffering what he might have been pleased to consider austerity to melt under a soft, fat smile, "Glad to know you, Conniston. Shake!"
He put out a soft, fat hand. Conniston stared at him in amazement.
"Swinnerton!" he cried, sharply. "Oliver Swinnerton! And what in the world do you want with me?"
When it was obvious that Conniston was not going to lean forward in the saddle to take his hand Mr. Swinnerton withdrew it to mop his moist forehead.
"Oliver Swinnerton," he repeated, nodding pleasantly. "And I wanted to talk with you about"—his left eyelid, red and puffy, drooped, and his right eye squinted craftily—"about reclamation."
"I can't imagine what common interests you and I have in reclamation. And I am in a hurry."
Oliver Swinnerton chuckled as at a rare jest.
"How do, Kent?" was what he said, having seen Jimmie Kent, it would seem, for the first time. "And what might you be doing in this part of the country?"
Jimmie Kent's voice was as pleasant as Swinnerton's had been.
"Maybe you remember how you did me up in the matter of the Bolton town lots, Mr. Swinnerton? Well, I am just sticking around for the fun of seeing some one do you up."
Mr. Swinnerton's chuckle was softer, oilier than before. He smiled upon Kent as though the sandy-haired man were in truth the apple of his eye.
"Always up to your little repartee, ain't you, Jimmie? Well, well! And now, Mr. Conniston—Jimmie, you'll pardon us?—may I have a word in private with you?"
"No," Conniston flared out, "you may not! I don't know you, Mr. Swinnerton, and I don't want to."
Only a something akin to the hurt surprise of a child in voice and look alike as Swinnerton queried softly:
"No? Pray, why not? What have I done, Mr. Conniston?"
"You have proven yourself a scoundrel!" burst out Conniston, angrily. "A fair fight in the open is one thing. Such cowardly means as you take to gain your ends is another. And if you will turn your horses and drive back off of Crawford territory I'll be glad to see the back of you."
For a moment Swinnerton stared at him in stupefaction. And then he broke into a delighted giggle which drove the tears into his eyes. Jimmie Kent looked from one to the other, and then, whistling softly to himself and saying no word, rode on down the road.
"I don't know what you are gurgling about," Conniston said, shortly. "But if you will follow Mr. Kent and get off and stay off this land I shall be much obliged to you."
Mr. Swinnerton wiped the tears from his eyes and gasped from the depths of his mirth:
"You'll do, Conniston! He, he! Oh, you'll certainly do!"
"I don't know what you're talking about," snapped Conniston. "But I tell you what I will do if you don't get out of here. I'll just naturally pitch you out!"
"I'd never have guessed it," chuckled Swinnerton. "Never in the world. I'd never even have thought of such a thing. Conniston, it's the bulliest scheme I ever heard of! How you managed it so easily—"
"Managed what?" Conniston's curiosity, in spiteof him, had for the moment the upper hand of his anger. "What do you mean?"
"Close-lipped, eh? Close-lipped to the end! That's business—mighty good business, too. Oh, you'll do."
"Are you going to tell me what you mean? I tell you I haven't any time to waste, and I want to see your back, and see it moving, too. If you have anything to say, say it quick."
"That's the stuff, Conniston. Close-lipped to the end. But," and with a glance over his shoulder at Jimmie Kent, now out of hearing, and leaning a pudgy arm upon a pudgy knee as he smiled confidentially into Conniston's frowning face, "ain't it pretty close to the end now?"
"I give you my word, Swinnerton, that if you can't tell me straight out what you are driving at, off of this land you go."
The stern assurance of Conniston's tone seemed to surprise Swinnerton.
"Come, come," he said, rather sharply. "What's the use of this shenanigan? Can't I see through clear window-glass? Am I a fool? Oh, I didn't guess, I didn't know that such a man as you were alive; I didn't so much as know your name until yesterday. But—know a man named Hapgood?" And his eyes twinkled again.
"Yes," bluntly. "What about him?"
"Oh, nothing much. Only he told me about you. And now what he didn't guess I know, Mr. William Conniston, Junior."
"And, pray, what might that be?"
"Want me to tell you, eh? Want to be sure that I know, do you? Want to see if Oliver Swinnerton is a fool, blind in both eyes? All right." His voicedropped yet lower, and he blinked with cunning eyes as he finished. "You are up to the same game I am! You are going to slip the knife into John Crawford clean up to the hilt. You are going to make a bluff at getting work done until the last minute, and then you are going to have nothing done. You are going to throw him into my hands like I would throw a sick pup into a ditch."
"Am I?" asked Conniston, coolly, mastering the sudden desire to take this little fat man into his two hands and choke him. "You know a great deal about what I intend to do, Mr. Swinnerton. And now, if you are not through talking your infernal nonsense, I am through listening to it. There is room to turn right here. Understand?"
"But—" began Swinnerton, only to be cut short with:
"There are no buts about it!"
He stooped, seized the bit of one of Swinnerton's horses, and jerked it about into the road.
"Get out!"
"I tell you," yelled Swinnerton, "Conniston or no Conniston, you can't bluff me. Do you hear?"
Conniston made no reply as he jerked the horses farther around. When their heads were turned toward the way which Swinnerton had come he lifted his quirt high above his head. Oliver Swinnerton went suddenly white and raised his arm to protect his face. But only Conniston's laugh stung him as the quirt fell heavily across the horses' backs. The buggy lurched, the horses leaped forward; Oliver Swinnerton's surprised torrent of curses was lost in the rattle of wheels, his red face obscured in the swirling dust.
"I wonder what he was driving at?" mutteredConniston as he watched the horses race down the road.
Jimmie Kent, reining his horse aside as Swinnerton swept by him, smiled and called, pleasantly:
"Good-by, Oliver. Seem to be in a hurry!"
Conniston and Kent, riding swiftly, side by side, overtook the wagons conveying the three hundred men to the Valley, and, passing them, arrived at Brayley's camp before the men there had quit work for the day. Brayley was more than half expecting them, as Kent had telephoned to the office from Bolton to learn where Conniston was and had told Tommy Garton of his errand.
"An' now," proclaimed Brayley, with deep satisfaction, "we'll have the big ditch clean through Valley City an' the cross-ditches growin' real fast before a week's up."
"I've told the drivers to stop when they get here, Brayley. Some of the men have blankets with them. We can rush more from Mr. Crawford's store in Crawfordsville. We can make out as to food. Have you figured out what more horses, what further tools you'll need? That's good. Send a man to the Half Moon right now with word to Rawhide Jones to rush us the horses. Put your new men to work in the morning if you have to make them dig ditch with shovels. Also send a hundred of them into Valley City as soon as it's daylight to begin the cross-ditches. Let Ben go with them. He can get his instructions there from me or from Tommy Garton. How is everything going?"
Brayley reported that the work was running smoothly, that his foremen were as good men as heever wanted to see, that he had no fault to find anywhere.
"An' this ol' ditch is sure growin', Con," he finished, with a sudden gleam of pride.
Conniston did not wait for the arrival of the wagons to ride on into Valley City. Kent he left behind him at the camp.
"I've a tremendous curiosity to see how you do this sort of thing," Kent confided to him, as he handed Conniston the message he wished sent from Valley City to Clayton & Paxton, of Denver. "I think that if Mr. Brayley has no objections and can spare me a blanket and some bread and coffee I'll roost here and watch the ditch grow in the morning."
Tommy Garton was still perched upon his high stool when Conniston came to the office.
"Just through, though," he said, as he climbed down and with the aid of his crutches piloted his new legs toward the door, grasping Conniston's hand warmly. "Good news, eh, Greek?"
"The best, Tommy. If we don't put this thing across now we ought to be kicked from one end of the desert to the other. By the way, I had a visit from Swinnerton this afternoon."
He told of what had passed, and ended, thoughtfully:
"What do you suppose was his object, Tommy? Just wanted to get a peek at what we have done?"
Garton laughed softly.
"You poor old innocent. Don't you know what the little man was after? Didn't he make it plain that he wanted you to double cross the old man? Didn't he make it plain that he was in a position to make it worth your while? If our scheme fails, don't you see that you can go to Swinnerton anddemand and get a good job working for his scheme? He has bought many a man, Greek. It is his theory that he can buy any man he wants to buy."
"And I let him get away without slapping his little red face," muttered Conniston, disgustedly.
He left Garton a few minutes later, promising to return and spend the night with him, to talk at length with him in the morning, and went down the street to the Crawford cottage. He knew that since Argyl's father had left for Denver Mrs. Ridley, the wife of the proprietor of the lunch-stand, had been staying with her. It was Mrs. Ridley who answered his knock.
"Miss Argyl ain't come back yet, Mr. Conniston," she told him. "She went out this mornin' an' ain't showed up since. I reckon, though, she'll be back real soon now. It's after supper-time already."
"Do you know where she went?"
"No, sir. She didn't say. Won't you come in an' wait for her?"
"No," he answered, after a moment. "I'd better not. If Miss Crawford has been all day in the saddle she will be tired. I'll drop in in the morning."
"Maybe that would be better," Mrs. Ridley nodded at him. "We're up early—breakfast at five. You might run in an' eat with us?"
Conniston promised to do so, and returned to the office, more than a little disappointed at not having seen Argyl, wondering whither her long ride could have taken her. Until late that night he and Garton talked, planned, and prepared for the work of to-morrow. It was barely five the next morning when he again knocked at the cottage door. Again Mrs. Ridley answered his knock.
"Am I too early?" Conniston smiled at her. "Inoticed your smoke going. Is Miss Crawford up yet?"
"Miss Crawford—" He saw that she hesitated, saw a nervous uneasiness in her manner as she plucked with quick fingers at the hem of her apron. "She ain't come in yet!"
"What!" cried Conniston, sharply. "What do you mean? Where is she?"
"I—I don't know, sir. She ain't come back yet."
"You mean that Miss Crawford left yesterday morning and that she has not returned since that time? That she has been gone twenty-four hours—all night?"
"Yes, sir." The old woman was eying him with eyes into which a positive fear was creeping, her lips trembling as she spoke. "You don't think anything has happened—"
"I don't know!" he cried, sternly. "Why didn't you let me know last night?"
"I didn't know what to do." The tears had actually sprung into her eyes. "I thought she must be all right. I thought mebbe she'd gone to Crawfordsville or to the Half Moon."
Conniston left her abruptly and hastened to the office.
"Tommy," he called, from the doorway, "do you know where Miss Crawford is? Where she went yesterday?"
"No. Why?" Garton, sensing from the other's tones that something was wrong, swept up his crutches and hurried forward.
"She left yesterday morning," Conniston told him, as he went to the desk and picked up the telephone. "She hasn't come back yet. Mrs. Ridley doesn't know anything about her." And to the operator:
"Give me the Crawford house. Quick, please! Yes, in Crawfordsville."
Upon the face of each man there were lines of uneasiness. Garton propped himself up against the desk and lighted a cigarette, his eyes never leaving Conniston's face.
"Can't you get anybody?" he asked, after a moment.
"No. What's that, Central? They don't answer? Then get me the bunk-house at the Half Moon. Yes, please! I'm in a hurry."
It was Lonesome Pete who answered.
"No, Con," he answered. "Miss Argyl ain't here. Anything the matter?"
Conniston clicked up the receiver and swung upon Garton.
"It is just possible," he said, slowly, "that she is in Crawfordsville, after all. May have left the house already. I can call up the store as soon as it opens up and ask if she has been there."
Billy Jordan had entered at the last words.
"Who are you talking about?" he asked, quickly. "Not Miss Crawford?"
"Yes." Conniston whirled upon him abruptly. "Do you know where she went yesterday?"
"No, I don't know where she went. But as I was coming to the office I met her, just getting on her horse in front of her house, and she gave me a message for you."
"Well, what was it?"
"'If you see Mr. Conniston,' she said, 'tell him that I have gone to investigate the value of the Secret.' I don't know what she meant—"
"She said that!" cried Conniston, his face going white.
"But she's all right," Billy Jordan hastened to add. "She's back now."
"You saw her?"
"No." He shook his head. "But I saw the horse she was riding. Just noticed him tied to the back fence as I came in."
Again Conniston hurried to the cottage. Mrs. Ridley was upon the porch.
"Miss Crawford is back?" he called to her from the street.
She shook her head.
"Not yet. Ain't you—"
He did not wait to listen. Running now, he came to the little back yard, and to a tall bay horse, saddled and bridled, standing quietly at the fence. At first glance he thought, as Billy Jordan had thought, that the animal was tied there. And then he saw that the bridle-reins were upon the ground, that they had been trampled upon and broken, that the two stirrups were hanging upside down in the stirrup leathers as stirrups are likely to do when a saddled horse has been running riderless.
She had been to investigate the Secret! She had been gone all day, all night! And now her horse had come home without her! He dared not try to think what had happened to her; he knew that she must have dismounted while at the spring to examine the ground; he knew that there were sections of the desert alive with rattlesnakes.
The Great Work which had walked and slept with him for weeks, which had never in a single waking hour been absent from his thoughts, was forgotten as though it had never been. The Great Work was suddenly a trifle, a nothing. It did not matter; nothing in the wide world but one thing mattered.Failure of the Great Work was nothing if only a slender, gray-eyed, frank-souled girl were safe. Success, unless she were there to look into his eyes and see that he had done well, was nothing.
Unheeding Mrs. Ridley's shrill cries, he swung about and ran back to the office.
"Tommy," he cried, hoarsely, "her horse is back—without her! She rode away into the desert yesterday morning. She is out there yet. Billy, my horse is in the shed. Don't stop to saddle, but ride like the very devil out to Brayley's camp. Tell him what has happened. Tell him to rush fifty men on horseback to me. Tell him to see that each man takes two canteens full of water. And, for Heaven's sake, Billy, hurry!"
Billy Jordan, terror springing up into his own eyes, sped through the door. And Conniston and Garton turned grave faces upon each other.
"Have you any idea," Garton was asking, and to Conniston his voice seemed to come faintly from a great distance, "which way she rode?"
"North. I don't know how far. Tommy, have you a horse here I can ride?"
"You are going to look for her?"
"Yes."
He was already at the door, and turned impatiently as Garton called to him:
"It's up to you, Greek. But—do you think that you could do any more to help her than the men you are sending out?"
"No. But, man, I can't sit here without knowing—"
"Greek!" There was a note in Tommy's voice, a look in his eyes which held Conniston. "I know how you feel, old man. And don't you know that another man might be fool enough to—to love her as much as you do?"
"Tommy!"
"Yes," with a hard little smile. "Why not? I'm only half a man, old fellow, but the head and the heart of me are left. And I've got to sit here and wait. And," his tone suddenly stern, "that's whatyou've got to do! You can't help by going—and you are the only man who has got to keep his head clear, who has got to stay here and direct the new forces which our good fortune has given to us."
For a moment Conniston stood staring incredulously. Then he turned, and his frowning eyes ran out toward the north, across the far-stretching solitudes of the desert. Somewhere out there, a mile away, ten miles away, twenty miles away, alone, perhaps tortured with thirst, perhaps famishing, perhaps—He shuddered and groaned aloud as he tried in vain to shut out the pictures which his leaping imagination drew for him. And here Garton's quiet voice was telling him that he had responsibilities, that he had work to do, that he, to whom she meant more than success or failure, life or death, must hold back from going to her.
"I won't—I can't!" he cried, wildly. "She is out there, Tommy, alone. She needs me—and I am going to her! What do I care about your cursed work!"
"There's a horse and saddle in the shed by the lunch-stand." Garton turned and hobbled back to his stool.
And Conniston, without a glance over his shoulder, hastened toward the shed. Before he had gone half the distance he stopped, swung about, and went slowly back to the office.
"You were right, Tommy," he said, as he stopped in the doorway. "I was a fool. Understand," he added, quickly, "that if I thought I could be of one particle more value than the men I shall send in my place the work here could go to eternal perdition! But I can tell them all that I know of the way she has gone—and she would want me to stay here and push the work as if nothing had happened."
Mrs. Ridley, hysterically crying that Argyl was dead, that sheknewthat she was dead, and that she herself was to blame, came sobbing and moaning and wringing her hands into the office.
"Don't do that!" Conniston cried, angrily. "If you want to do any good, go down to the lunch-counter and help your husband put up fifty lunches. The men may be gone all day. Put up plenty."
She hurried away, drying her eyes now that there was something for her to do; and the two men, never looking at each other, sat and waited the coming of Brayley's men.
All that long, endlessly, wretchedly long forenoon, Conniston went about his work like a man under sentence of death, his face white and drawn, his step heavy, his voice silent save when necessity drove him to short, sharp, savage commands.
Again and again he forgot what it was that he was doing, forgot the ditches which were branching off from the main canal, right and left, as his eyes ran out across the sun-blistered sands, as his fancies ran ahead of them, searching, searching, searching—and half afraid to find what they sought. He had seen the questing riders push farther and farther into the desert, had seen them drop out of sight. Now they were gone; no moving dot told him where their search had taken them, what they had found. In the middle of an order he found himself breaking off and turning again to the north, looking for the return of the party, hoping to see the men waving their hats that all was well, straining his ears for their reassuring shouts. And the desert, vast, illimitable, threatening, mysterious, full of dim promise, full of vague threats, gave no sign.
At eleven o'clock he saw one of the men returning.Why one man alone? What would be the word which he was bringing? His heart beat thickly. His throat was very dry. He felt a quick pain through it as he tried to swallow. He lifted his head, and his eyes asked the question of the man who had jerked in his sweating horse at his side. The rider shook his head.
"Nothin'—we ain't found nothin' yet. Mundy sent me back. He says to tell you they're about ten mile out now, an' the hosses is gettin' done up for water. He says will you send a water-wagon or will you send out a fresh party?"
Conniston's heart leaped at the man's first word. He knew then how he had feared to know what they had found. And then it sank as fear surged higher into it. They had not found her yet—already she had been gone a whole day, a whole night, half the second day—
"Get a fresh horse and go back," he said, when the man waited for an answer. "Tell Mundy that I am starting a six-horse wagon, carrying water, right away. Tell him to keep on looking. You men keep close enough together for the most part to be able to hear a gun fired from the man nearest you. I'll send the wagon due north. You can pick it up by the tracks."
The man rode away, and Conniston strode to the office.
"Tommy"—and his voice was steady and determined—"you'll have to get into a buggy and watch the work this afternoon. I've got the men started—and now I am going to her."
"All right, Greek," Garton answered, gently. "I can keep things going."
Conniston turned and left him. He saddled hishorse with eager fingers, gave the order for the wagon carrying water to move steadily northward until it came up with the men who had gone ahead, put a lunch and a flask of whisky into his pocket, filled his own canteens, and rode out across the hot sands.
"I am going to find her," he told himself, with quiet confidence.
He rode slowly at first, curbing his crying impatience with the knowledge that restraint now meant the reserve of endurance to his horse upon which he might be forced to call before he had found her. He held to a course due north, remembering what Argyl had told him about the location of the spring.
When he had gone nearly five miles he began to search to right and left, still holding to a general northerly direction, but often turning out of his course to ride to the tops of the knolls which rose here and there about him. And now he had let his horse out into a swinging gallop, urged to spare neither animal nor himself, prompted to make what haste he might by the thought that already noon had passed, that the day was half gone, that what he was to do must be done before the night came.
Once—he thought that Valley City must be at least eight or nine miles behind him—his heart leaped with sudden hope and fear as he saw, half a mile to the east, a cluster of little sand-hills like those Argyl had told him surrounded her spring.
He did not know that he was cutting his horse's bleeding sides with his spurs as he galloped up the gradual slopes; long ago he had forgotten all thought of conserving the beast's strength. He knew only that the very soul of him cried out aloud that he might at last come to her, and that his eyes, everseeking, seeking, seeking, were more than half afraid to rest upon every shadowy, stirring bunch of scrub brush, more than half afraid to run ahead of him down the far sides of the low hills.
Nothing before him as he jerked in his panting horse, nothing but the desert, still, hot, thirsty, a great tortured thing under the merciless sky. Nothing but long level stretches so bleak, so barren, that a jackrabbit could not have hidden his gaunt, gray body. Nothing as he looked with narrowing eye far to east and west, north and south, but a vast, silent monotone of plain that would seem to conceal nothing, as open under the bright rays of the sun as the palm of a man's hand, an unsmiling, grave-faced, hypocritical thing which hid and held from him all that he wanted in the world.
A frenzy of terrified rage upon him, he stiffened in his stirrups, he shook his clenched fist at the quiet, jeering face whose very unmoved stillness was like a deep contempt, and cursed it, his voice springing harshly through his dry lips, rising almost into a sobbing shriek, dying away without an echo, leaving the face of the desert quietly contemptuous. For he grew suddenly as silent, a word cut in two by the click of his teeth, the sound of his own voice in his ears tricking him.
Breathless, a man turned to stone, he listened.
He had heard something—heknewthat he had heard a voice, not his own, a voice hardly more than a faint whisper, calling to him, calling again, then lost in the all-engulfing silence. About him the miles were laid bare in the sunlight. There was nothing.
Driven from the moment of inactivity into a madness of haste, tormented afresh at the thought thathe had lost one precious minute, he cut anew with his red-roweled spurs into the torn flanks of his horse, and rode on, careless of all save that he must hurry, that his was a great race against the racing day, that he must find her before the night had sought her out. The very shadow which he and his horse cast—a distorted, black centaur sort of thing, running silently across the desert—was one with the desert in its cursed menace. For a moment ago it had hidden under his horse's belly, and now it ran beside him, ever lengthening, ever pushing farther to the eastward, a grim avowal that the day was passing.
The miles fled behind him like lean greyhounds. The miles before him reached out in unshortened endlessness. It was one o'clock. He had been gone two hours—he had done nothing. Now, far ahead, he caught sight of moving figures, saw a man yonder on horseback, saw another, hardly more than a drifting dot against the sky-line to the east, another yet to the west.
They were still searching for her, still pushing deeper and deeper into the burning solitudes; they had found nothing. They must be, he estimated roughly, twenty miles from Valley City. Had she ridden so far? Why hadn't she told him more about the location of the spring? If therewasa spring, had she clung close to it when her horse had left her? Then she would not die for want of water! Or had she dug with breaking nails into the soil which had in it moisture enough to feed the roots of the yellow willows but which would but mock her as the desert mocked him, refusing to yield up one single drop of water?
Gradually, steadily he swung toward the left, riding a little to westward so as not to be seeking over the same territory across which the men before him had ridden. And as he rode he saw, a mile away from him, still farther to the west, a ring of hills, and he prayed that he might come upon the spring there and upon Argyl. And his moving lips were not still before he had found her.
He had swept down into a little hollow, the slightest of depressions in the sandy level, not to be seen until a man was upon its very rim, floored with scanty, dry brush. His tired horse threw up its head and shied. But Conniston had seen her first, a huddled heap, almost at his feet.
"Argyl!" he cried, loudly, dropping to his knees beside her, leaving his horse to stand staring at them. "Argyl!"
She lay as she had fallen, her right arm stretched straight out in front of her, her left arm lying close to her side, her face hidden from him in the sand. She did not move. Had he called to her an hour ago she would have turned her wide eyes upon him wonderingly. Now, if he had shouted with the voice of thunder she would not have heard. She was dead, or death was very close to her. For a moment, a moment lengthened into an eternity of hell, he did not know whether the shadowy wings of the stern angel were now rustling over her head or if already the wings had swept over her and had borne away from him the soul of the woman he loved.
"Argyl, Argyl dear!" he whispered. "I have come to save you, Argyl. To take you home. Oh! don't you hear me, Argyl?"
He put his arms about her, and as he knelt lifted her and put his face to hers. She was not cold;thank Heaven, she was not cold! But she did not move, she was heavy in his arms, the warmth of her body might have been from the ebbing tide of life or from the sun's fire. He could not feel her breathe, could not feel the beating of her heart.
He held her so that he could look into her face, and the cry upon his lips was frozen into a grief-stricken horror. Her hair unbound, hanging loose, tangled about her face, dull and soiled with the gray sand-dust, her lips dry, cracked, unnaturally big, her cheeks pinched and stamped at the corners of her mouth with the misery through which she had lived—was this Argyl?
He laid her back upon the sand, his body bent over her to shut out the sun, and unslung his canteen. He washed her mouth, let the water trickle over her brow and cheeks, forced a little of the lukewarm stuff between her teeth. He bathed her head, bathed her throat, and again forced a few drops into her mouth. And then, when she did not move, he would not believe that she was dead. She could not be dead. It was impossible. She would open her eyes in a minute, those great, frank, fearless, glorious gray eyes, and she would come back to him—back from the shadow of the stern angel's wing, back to herself and to him.
He unstoppered his flask of whisky and, holding her to him, thrust it to her lips. And the thing which had been a curse to Bat Truxton, which had hurled him downward from his leadership of men, which had threatened to wreck the hopes of the Great Work, brought Argyl back from the last boundaries of the thing called Life, back from the misty frontiers of the thing called Death to which she was journeying.
Her eyes opened, she stared at him, her eyes closed again.
Again he forced her reluctant throat to swallow the whisky, a few drops only. And again he bathed her with water—brow and throat and quiet wrists. Her eyes did not open now, but he saw that she was breathing. Presently he made her take a little water. He washed her dusty nostrils that she might breathe better. And that breath might come into her tired lungs more easily he gently, reverently loosened the clothing about her breasts.
Not once did his eyes leave her face. He did not fire the shot which was to be a signal to the others, because he knew that they could not hear. Soon he would look for the wagon. It would pass closely enough for him to see it, near enough for him to make himself seen. Now he could do alone as much for her as could fifty men, as could any one.
An hour passed, two hours. He had watched the color of life creep back into her face faintly, slowly, but steadily. She had again opened her eyes, had turned them for a puzzled second upon his tense face, had closed them.
Now she seemed to be sleeping.
He had exhausted the contents of one canteen, had gone to his saddle for the other, when far to the south he saw the wagon. He had waved his hat high above his head, standing like a circus-rider in the saddle, and had emptied the cylinder of his revolver into the air. He had seen that the driver had heard him, that he had fired an answering volley, that he had turned westward. And then he had gone back to Argyl.
She had heard the shots. Her eyes were openand turned curiously upon him as he came swiftly to where she lay.
"Will you give me some water?" she whispered.
He lifted her head, and she drank thirstily, looking with reproachful surprise at him when he took the canteen from her lips.
"That is all now, Argyl," he told her, his voice choking. And then, all power of restraint swept away from him by the joyous, throbbing love which so long he had silenced, he drew her close, closer to him, crying, almost harshly: "Oh, Argyl, thank God! For if you hadn't come back to me—I love you, love you! Don't you know how I love you, Argyl?"
Her hand closed weakly upon his.
"Of course, dear," she answered him, faintly, her poor lips trying to smile. "Of course we love each other. But can't I have a little water, dear?"
It was the twentieth day of September by the calendar—ten days before the first of October as every man, woman, and child in the Valley measured time.
Conniston came and went superintending every part of the work, and, although he was still the gaunt, tired man he had been two weeks ago, he was no longer tight-lipped and somber-eyed. He smiled often; he laughed readily, like a boy. Argyl, her clean, healthy, resilient young body and spirit having shaken off the effects of the clutch of the desert, was the same Argyl who had raced for the Overland Limited that day when Conniston had first seen her; her laugh was as spontaneous as his, sparkling and free and buoyantly youthful. Mr. Crawford was quiet, saying few words, but the little lines of care had gone from the corners of eyes and mouth. Tommy Garton was the proverbial cricket on the hearth of the Valley's big family. Brayley looked upon his ditches with the gleam in his eye bespeaking a deep pride like the pride of ownership and a big, strong love. Jimmie Kent assured whomever would listen that he was glad that he had stayed, and that he had a mind to call on his old friend Oliver to see how he was feeling. Rattlesnake Valley had become the Happy Valley. With the first of October ten days off there was no shadow of doubt in a single heart that the Great Work would be a finished,actual, successful thing before the dawn of the Great Day.
Upon the twentieth day of September Greek Conniston, being in Valley City, received a telegram which puzzled him. It was from Edwin Corliss, private secretary and confidential man of affairs of William Conniston, Senior, of Wall Street. Conniston replied immediately and by wire. During the three days following he received and despatched several telegrams. Since the messages have a certain bearing upon the Great Work, they are given below in the order in which they were received in the Valley and despatched from it: