"Wm. Conniston, Jr.,"Rattlesnake Valley."Drop everything. Come home immediately. Your father insists. Particulars when you arrive."Corliss.""Edw. Corliss,"New York."Can't get away. Under contract. Love to dad."Wm. Conniston, Jr.""Wm. Conniston, Jr."Rattlesnake Valley."Smash contract. Will pay damages. Your father wants you in New York in five days."Corliss.""Edw. Corliss,"New York."Impossible. Can make hurried trip East after October first."Wm. Conniston, Jr.""Wm. Conniston, Jr.,"Rattlesnake Valley."Orders imperative from your father. Cables from Paris drop everything immediately and come home."Corliss.""Edw. Corliss,"New York."I refer you to wire of yesterday."Wm. Conniston, Jr."
"Wm. Conniston, Jr.,
"Rattlesnake Valley.
"Drop everything. Come home immediately. Your father insists. Particulars when you arrive.
"Corliss."
"Edw. Corliss,
"New York.
"Can't get away. Under contract. Love to dad.
"Wm. Conniston, Jr."
"Wm. Conniston, Jr.
"Rattlesnake Valley.
"Smash contract. Will pay damages. Your father wants you in New York in five days.
"Corliss."
"Edw. Corliss,
"New York.
"Impossible. Can make hurried trip East after October first.
"Wm. Conniston, Jr."
"Wm. Conniston, Jr.,
"Rattlesnake Valley.
"Orders imperative from your father. Cables from Paris drop everything immediately and come home.
"Corliss."
"Edw. Corliss,
"New York.
"I refer you to wire of yesterday.
"Wm. Conniston, Jr."
Then came a message which puzzled Greek Conniston more deeply than the others had done—a messageviacable and telegraph and telephone from his father himself:
"Wm. Conniston, Jr.,"Rattlesnake Valley."Come home. Leave that work alone. Start minute you get this. Wiring you thousand dollars Crawfordsville. Corliss will advance all you want in New York. Do as I command immediately or I disinherit you."Wm. Conniston, Sr.""Wm. Conniston, Jr.,"Rattlesnake Valley."At your father's orders have wired thousand to you Crawfordsville."Corliss.""Edw. Corliss,"New York."Money you wired remains subject your orders. I don't need it. Inform dad."Wm. Conniston, Jr."
"Wm. Conniston, Jr.,
"Rattlesnake Valley.
"Come home. Leave that work alone. Start minute you get this. Wiring you thousand dollars Crawfordsville. Corliss will advance all you want in New York. Do as I command immediately or I disinherit you.
"Wm. Conniston, Sr."
"Wm. Conniston, Jr.,
"Rattlesnake Valley.
"At your father's orders have wired thousand to you Crawfordsville.
"Corliss."
"Edw. Corliss,
"New York.
"Money you wired remains subject your orders. I don't need it. Inform dad.
"Wm. Conniston, Jr."
When William Conniston, Junior, received the second message from William Conniston, Senior, a swift understanding came to him, an understanding not only of the reason for the attitude Corliss had taken, but of what Oliver Swinnerton had had in mind when he had talked slyly of Conniston's intentions, and had expressed his confidence that the young superintendent was preparing to double cross his employer.
"Wm. Conniston, Jr.,"Rattlesnake Valley."Am starting for New York. Meet me. Drop work. I have a million dollars at stake in Oliver Swinnerton project. Will lose all if you don't quit."Wm. Conniston, Sr."
"Wm. Conniston, Jr.,
"Rattlesnake Valley.
"Am starting for New York. Meet me. Drop work. I have a million dollars at stake in Oliver Swinnerton project. Will lose all if you don't quit.
"Wm. Conniston, Sr."
And it gave Greek Conniston a great, unbounded joy to answer:
"Wm. Conniston, Sr.,"Paris."Sorry, dad. You lose million. I have reputation at stake."Wm. Conniston, Jr."
"Wm. Conniston, Sr.,
"Paris.
"Sorry, dad. You lose million. I have reputation at stake.
"Wm. Conniston, Jr."
The days ran on, each twenty-four hours seeming shorter, swifter than the preceding twenty-four. Although everywhere in the Valley there was a glad confidence that the reclamation project was an assured thing, although feverish anxiety had been beaten back and driven out, there was no slightest slackening of unremitting toil. Upward of seven hundred men worked as they had never worked before. As the end of the time drew nearer, as success became ever more assured, they worked longer hours, they accomplished swifter results. For each man of them, from Brayley to the ditch-diggers, was laboring not only for the company, but for himself. Each and every man had been promised a bonus for every day between the time when water was poured down into the sunken Valley and the coming of high noon upon October the first. And Conniston still held to his determination to have everything in readiness by the twenty-fifth of September.
Upon the evening of the twenty-fourth of September Conniston called upon Mr. Crawford at his cottage in Valley City. He found his employer smoking upon the little porch alone.
When he was seated and had accepted a cigar, Conniston began abruptly what he had to say.
"If you have time, Mr. Crawford, I want to make a partial report to you to-night. Thank you. Tobegin with, I have completed the big dam, Dam Number One. It is all ready for business. The flume is finished, the cut made across the ridge to Dam Number Two across Indian Creek. Dam Number Two is ready. From these two dams the main canal runs, completed entirely, thirty miles and into Valley City. Dam Number Three, Miss Crawford's Dam, is finished, and the branch canal from it to the main canal will be completed in two days. I do not believe that this dam is going to be an absolute necessity to us now. I think that we are going to have all the water from Deep Creek and Indian Creek that we need. But Dam Number Three makes us more than confident. And when later you want to extend your area of irrigated acreage you will want it.
"I have examined the country about the spring which Miss Crawford discovered, and have men working there now boring wells. There is water there—how much I do not yet know. I have a hope, which Tommy Garton thinks foolish, that we may strike artesian water out there in the sand. At any rate, we'll get enough out of it eventually to aid in the irrigation of that location, to be useful when you get ready to found your second desert town. About Valley City itself I have all the cross-ditches required by your contract with Colton Gray of the P. C. & W."
He paused, and Mr. Crawford after a moment's thoughtful silence said, quietly:
"In other words, Mr. Conniston, you have completed all of the work which the contract calls for?"
"Except one thing." Conniston smiled. "I have not put the water on the land yet. A rather important matter, isn't it?"
"But you are ready to do that?"
"I shall be ready to do that to-morrow at noon. And I want you to help me. Will it be possible for you and Miss Crawford to come out to Dam Number One in the morning?"
"You are kind to ask it," Mr. Crawford said, inclining his head. "We shall be glad to come, Mr. Conniston. Is that the extent of your report?"
"Yes. I have something else I want to say to you—but it is not about reclamation."
"Shall I make my report to you first? For I feel that after all you have done for me I should like to report, too. Every one of my cattle-ranges is mortgaged to the hilt. I do not believe that I could raise another thousand dollars on the combined ranges. I have been driven so close to the wall that I could not go another step. I have been forced to sell during the last two weeks over a thousand of my young cattle—to sell them at a sacrifice in order to obtain ready money. I have enough money in the bank to conclude the financing of our reclamation project. After the first day of October, when the P. C. & W. begins its road out to us, I can raise whatever more funds I want, and raise them easily.
"You have succeeded, Mr. Conniston, and thereby you have saved me from being absolutely, unqualifiedly ruined. Within six months I shall have doubled my fortune. And I shall have lived to see the most cherished dream of my older manhood materialize. I owe very much to you, I am very grateful to you, and I am very proud to have been associated in business with a man of your caliber. And there is my hand on it!"
"I am glad to have been of service," Connistonreplied, as the two men gripped hands. "And I appreciate your confidence. Besides," with a quick, half-serious smile, "I think that I have profited as greatly as any one else could possibly do."
"I know what you mean. And I agree with you. Now, you said that there was another matter—"
"Yes. I have had a cable from my father in Paris. Because I could not agree to do a certain thing which he requested he has seen fit to disinherit me."
"I know. Tommy Garton told me about it. And I know what the thing was which he required of you. I did not thank you for your answer to him, Conniston, for we both know that you did only your duty. But I know what it meant, I know what your stand cost you, and I am prouder to have known you, to feel that outside of our business relations I can say that William Conniston, Junior, is my friend, than I have ever been in my life to have known any other man!"
His voice was deep with sincerity, alive with an intensity of feeling which drove a warm flush into Conniston's tanned face.
"As you say, I did only what a man must do were he not a scoundrel. But, too, as you say, it means a great deal. It means that when you will have paid me my wages I shall have not another cent in the world. And being virtually penniless, still my chief purpose in coming to you this evening has been to tell you that I love Argyl, and that I want your consent to ask her to marry me."
For a moment the older man made no reply. For a little he drew thoughtfully at his cigar, and as in its glow his grave face was thrown into reliefConniston saw that there was a sad droop at the corners of the firm mouth.
"You have told Argyl?" he finally said.
"Yes. I told her that day in the desert. I had meant to wait until the work was done, until she could have seen that I was honestly trying to live down my utter uselessness. But—I told her then."
"And she?"
"She said that I might speak to you."
"I am selfish, Conniston—selfish. Argyl has been daughter to me and son, and the best friend I have ever had. I shall miss her. But if she loves you—Well," with a gentle smile, "she is too true a woman to hold back from your side, no matter what I might say. And since she must leave me some day, I am very glad that you came into her life. I congratulate you, my boy."
While the two men were talking and waiting for Argyl to come in, Tommy Garton, his new legs discarded for the day, was lying on his cot in the back room of the general office, blowing idle puffs of cigarette-smoke at the lamp-chimney, watching the smoke as the hot draft from the flame sent it ceilingward. He was thinking of the talk he had had with Conniston, how Conniston had gone to Argyl's father.
"After all," he grunted to himself, as he pinched out his cigarette and lighted another, "they were made for each other. And I lose my one chief bet this incarnation. Hello! Come in!" For there had come a sudden sharp knocking at the outer door.
The door was pushed open and a big man, dusty from riding, came slowly into the front room, cast a quick glance about him, and came on into Garton's room. Garton started as he saw who the man was.
"Hello, Wallace!" he said, sitting up and putting out his hand. "What in the world brings you here?"
Wallace laughed, returned the greeting, and sat down upon the cot across the room. And as he came into the circle of light thrown out by the lamp a nickeled star shone for a moment from under his coat, which was carelessly flung back.
"Jest rampsin' around, Tommy," he answered, quietly, making himself a cigarette. "Jest seein' what I could see. You fellers keepin' pretty busy, ain't you?"
"Yes. Too busy to get into trouble, Bill." He lay back and sent a new cloud of smoke to soar aloft over the lamp-chimney. "We haven't had a visit from a sheriff for six months."
"Oh, I know you been bein' good, all right. If everybody was like you fellers I'd have one lovely, smooth job. Goin' to make a go of this thing, ain't you, Tommy?"
"You bet we are!" cried Garton, enthusiastically. "There's nothing can stop us now. I expect," with a sharp look at the sheriff, "Swinnerton is feeling a bit shaky of late?"
"Couldn't say," replied Wallace, slowly. "Ain't seen Oliver for a coon's age."
They talked casually of many things, and Tommy Garton, to whom the sheriff's explanation of the reason for his visit to the Valley was no explanation whatever, sat back against the wall, his head lost in the shadow cast by a coat hanging at the side of the window and between him and the lamp, a frown in his eyes.
"Any time big Bill Wallace drifts this far from his stamping-ground just to look at a ditch I'm dreaming the whole thing," he told himself, as his eyes neverleft the sheriff's face. "And as for not having seen Swinnerton, that's a lie."
Tommy Garton was already scenting something very near the actual truth when the telephone in the front room jangled noisily.
"Want me to answer it?" Wallace was already on his feet.
"Thanks," Garton told him. "But I've got it fixed so that I can handle it from here."
He picked up the telephone which was attached to the office instrument and which he kept on the floor at his bedside. And as he caught the first word he pressed the receiver close to his ear so that no sound from it might escape and reach his alert visitor.
It was the Lark's voice, tense, earnest, trembling with the import of the Lark's message.
"That you, Con? Garton? Conniston there? No? Tell him for me to keep under cover. Lonesome Pete has jest rode into camp, an' he's seen that canary of his, an' she's been blowin' off to him. Hapgood's thicker'n thieves with Swinnerton. He's put him up to this. Swinnerton has sent the sheriff after Con. He's to jug him for killin' that Chink! Get me? Jest to hold him in the can so's he can't work until after October first. Get me, 'bo? You'll put Con wise? Wallace ought to be there any minute—"
Garton answered as quietly as he could:
"All right. I'll attend to everything. Good-by." And then, setting the telephone back upon the floor, he took a fresh cigarette from his case, lighted it over the lamp, his face showing calm and unconcerned, and, leaning back, began to think swiftly.
Conniston was now with the Crawfords. Presently he would leave them and return to the office to spend the night with Garton. Bill Wallace evidently knew this, and was content to wait quietly until his man came. Lonesome Pete had done his part, had ridden with all possible speed to Deep Creek, where he had supposed Conniston was. The Lark had done his part. The rest was up to Tommy Garton. For he knew that with Conniston left to continue his work the work would be done. He knew that Conniston had every detail now at his fingers' ends. He knew that if Swinnerton could succeed in this coup he might be able to put some further unexpected, some fatal obstacle in the way of the Great Work. And that then, with Conniston out of it, it again would be "anybody's game."
Wallace was talking again about unimportant nothings, Garton was answering him in monosyllables and striving to see the way, to find out the thing which he must do. It was plain that Conniston must be prevented from coming to the office to-night. And when he saw the way before him he asked, carelessly:
"You'll stay with me to-night, Bill?"
"If you got the room, Tommy." He glanced about the little room. "This bed ain't workin'?"
"Conniston, our superintendent, will sleep there to-night. He'll be in in an hour or so. But I've got blankets, and if you care to make a bed on the floor, there's lots of room."
"I'll do it," laughed the sheriff, stretching his great legs far out in front of him. "It'll do me good. I been sleepin' in a bed so many nights runnin' lately I'll be gettin' soft."
"All right. And if you'll pardon me a minute I want to telephone my assistant. I've just gotword of some work which must be ready by morning. Not much rest on this job, Bill."
He picked up the telephone again and called Billy Jordan.
"I wish you'd run around for a minute, Billy," he said, his tone evincing none of the tremor which he felt in his heart. "Bring the fifth and seventh sheets of those computations you took home with you. Yes, the figures for the work we are to do at the spring. Yes, you'd better hurry with them, as I want to look 'em over before morning. There's a ball-up somewhere. So long, Billy."
He had seen that Bill Wallace, whose business it was to be suspicious at all times and of all men, had regarded him with narrowed, shrewd eyes.
When Billy Jordan came in, ten minutes later, in no way surprised at the summons, since he had been called on similar errands many times, he found Bill Wallace telling a story and Tommy Garton chuckling appreciatively.
"You know each other?" Garton asked. "Wallace says he's just over here to look around at the beauties of nature, Billy. I've an idea," with a wink at Wallace, "that he's looking for somebody. You haven't been passing any bad money, have you, Billy? Much obliged for the papers." He glanced at them and pushed them under the pillows of his cot. "That's all now, Billy. Except that on your way home I want you to drop in and see Mr. Crawford. Tell him that if he sees Conniston I want him to tell him to be sure and come right around. There's a ball-up in the work out at the spring. Wait a second." He scribbled a note upon the leaf of the note-book which lay upon the window-sill. "Give that to Mr. Crawford. It's an order to Mundy tocut the main ditch out there down to four feet, and to stop work on the well that is causing trouble, until further orders. Mundy will be going out again to-night, and will stop at Crawford's first. Good night, Billy. And come in early in the morning."
Mundy's name did not appear in the note. Mundy was at the time twenty miles from Valley City. But Mr. Crawford's name was there, and after it was "Urgent," underlined. The note itself ran:
"Wallace is here to arrest Conniston for murder of Chinaman shot in whisky rebellion! A put-up game with Swinnerton to stop his work. Tell Conniston to go back to Deep Creek to-night. Send Brayley to me immediately. Let no one else come. I'll entertain the sheriff to-night."Garton."
"Wallace is here to arrest Conniston for murder of Chinaman shot in whisky rebellion! A put-up game with Swinnerton to stop his work. Tell Conniston to go back to Deep Creek to-night. Send Brayley to me immediately. Let no one else come. I'll entertain the sheriff to-night.
"Garton."
Billy loitered a minute, yawned two or three times, and finally said good night and strolled leisurely away.
"I think," said Wallace, rising as the door closed behind Billy Jordan, "I'll go out an' unsaddle my cayuse. Got a handful of hay in the shed, Tommy?"
"Sure thing, Bill. Help yourself."
Wallace picked up his hat and turned to the door. Garton rolled over suddenly, thrust his hand again under his pillow, and sat up.
"Say, Bill!" he called, softly.
Wallace turned, and as he did so he looked square into the muzzle of a heavy-caliber Colt revolver upon which the lamplight shone dully.
"Stop that!" cried Garton, sternly, as the sheriff's hand started automatically to his hip. "I've got the drop on you, Bill. And, sheriff or no sheriff, I'll drop you if you make a move. Put 'em up, Bill."
Snarling, his face going a sudden angry red, the sheriff lifted his two big hands high above his head.
"What do you mean by this?" he snapped.
"I mean business! Now you do what I tell you. Walk this way, and walk slowly."
"D——n you, you little sawed-off—" roared the big man, only to be cut short with an incisive:
"Never mind about calling names. And remember that no matter if only half a man is behind this gun it 'll shoot just the same. Keep those hands up, Bill! Now turn around. Back up to me. And let me tell you something: you can whirl about and bring your hands down on my head, but that won't stop a bullet in your belly. The same place," he said, coolly, "that Conniston shot the Chinaman!"
Bill Wallace had got his position as sheriff for two very good reasons. For one thing, he belonged to Oliver Swinnerton. For another, he was a brave man. But he was not a fool, and he did what Garton commanded him to do. And Tommy Garton, with the muzzle of his revolver jammed tight against the small of Wallace's back, reached out with his left hand and drew the sheriff's two revolvers from their holsters, dropping them to the floor behind his cot.
"And now, Bill, you can go and sit down. And you can take your hands down, too."
"I'd like to know," sputtered Wallace, as he sat glaring across the little room at the strange half-figure propped up against the wall and covering him unwaveringly with a revolver, "what all this means!"
"Would you? Then I'll tell you. It means that no little man like Oliver Swinnerton, and no smooth tool belonging to Oliver Swinnerton, is going to keep us from living up to our contract with theP. C. & W. Not if they resort to all of the dirty work their maggot-infested brains can concoct!"
When Brayley came in he found two men smoking cigarettes and sitting in watchful silence. And when Brayley understood conditions fully he took a chair in the doorway, moved his revolver so that it hung from his belt across his lap, and joined them in quiet smoking.
"To-morrow," Conniston was saying to Argyl, just as Tommy Garton called to Wallace to put his hands up, "we are going to open the gates at Dam Number One, and the water will run down into the main canal and find its way to Valley City. I think we have won, Argyl!"
Conniston instantly saw the need of haste, the urgent necessity of acting speedily upon the advice tendered by Tommy Garton in his note.
"Arrest you!" Argyl had cried, indignantly. "Arrest you for being a man and doing your duty!"
"No, Argyl," he told her, a bit anxiously. "Their reasons for causing my arrest now are simply that that man Swinnerton, not knowing when he is beaten, wants me out of the way for a few days. He is ready to spring another bit of his villainy, I suppose. But I do not think that Wallace is going to serve his warrant in a hurry."
They laid their plans swiftly, Mr. Crawford agreeing silently as Conniston outlined the thing to be done. When the horses were ready Conniston walked cautiously to Tommy Garten's window and peered in. And he was grinning contentedly when he returned to Mr. Crawford and his daughter.
"Tommy is the serenest law-breaker you ever saw," he told them, as he swung to his horse after having helped Argyl to a place at her father's side in the buckboard. "It's a cure for the blues to see him sitting there on his cot covering his tame sheriff with a young cannon. There'll be a fine, I suppose, for interfering with an officer in the pursuit of his duty."
"I think," Mr. Crawford said, quietly, as he sent his horses racing into the night, "that Oliver Swinnerton won't be looking for any more trouble from now on."
Where the road forked, one branch running straight on to Crawfordsville, the other turning off toward Deep Creek, Mr. Crawford took Conniston's horse, and Conniston got into the buckboard. Mr. Crawford was to ride alone to Crawfordsville, see Colton Gray, of the P. C. & W., tell him that the Crawford Reclamation Company had made good its part of the contract, invite him out to Dam Number One to see what was done, and to insist that the P. C. & W. keep to its part of the contract, beginning work immediately upon the railroad into the Valley. Conniston and Argyl were to drive on to the dam, and to open the gates controlling the current to be poured into the big flume.
The darkness had not yet gone, but was lifting, turning a dull gray, when Argyl and Conniston came to the dam. And now the engineer told her of two things which until now he had mentioned to no one save the men whom he had been obliged to call in to do the work for him. From Dam Number One for thirty miles, reaching to Valley City, there were small groups of his men stationed a mile apart. Each group had piled high the dry limbs of trees, scrub brush, and green foliage brought from the mountains. Each group was instructed to watch for the water which was to be turned at last into the ditch and to set fire to its pile of brushwood when the precious stuff came abreast of them. And so, by day or night, there was to be thirty miles of signal fires to proclaim with flame and smoke that the Great Work was no longer a man's dream, but an accomplished, vital thing.
The second thing he explained as Argyl walkedwith him to the dam across Deep Creek. He showed her the accomplished work, showed her the deep, wide flume, and as they stood upon the dam itself pointed out an intricate set of levers controlling the great gates.
"Argyl," he told her, speaking quietly, but knowing that there was a tremor in his voice which he could not drive from it—"Argyl, do you know how much to-day means to me? Do you know that it is the most gloriously wonderful day I have ever known? Do you know that I have fought hard for this day, and that the hardest fighting I had before me was the fight against Greek Conniston the snob? Do you know that at least I have tried to make a man of myself, even as I have tried to build ditches and dams? You do know it, Argyl? You do know that as hard as I have worked for reclamation I have worked for regeneration! And I have not failed altogether."
His tone was suddenly firm, suddenly stern. He was a man weighing himself and his work, and he was speaking with a voice which rang with simple frankness and deep sincerity.
"There is the work to say that I have not failed utterly. There it is, ditch and dam, to say that I have done a part of the thing I have set my hand to. I am not boasting of it, for what many men could have done I should have been able to do. But I am proud of it. And, Argyl, while I am not a man yet as I would be, not a man full grown as your father is, while I can never hope to be the man your father is, yet I have done what I could to be less of a fop, less of a drone in the world. Do you understand me, Argyl?"
"Yes, Greek." She answered him softly, her faceturned up to his, her eyes frankly filled with love and pride for what he had done, what he was. "I understand."
"Then, Argyl Crawford, just so sure as I have done a little thing or a big thing in working the reclamation of this desert, just so certainly have you done a big thing or a little thing in making less barren the waste places in my own soul. Don't you see what you have done, Argyl? It is not I who have done anything; it is you who have done everything. If I am in any way responsible for success to our work, then are you responsible for every bit of it. That dam, that ditch, everything, all of it belongs to you! The success belongs to you!"
"Greek"—she smiled at him through a sudden gathering of tears—"you mustn't say such things—"
"And so," he went on, quietly, "since the whole work has been your work, I want the completion of the work to be yours. Look here, Argyl."
He touched a long, slender lever reaching from the flume to the bank where they stood.
"When the sun comes up it is going to bring a new day for all of us," he continued, slowly. "A new day which, for me, you have made possible. And just as the sun comes up will you put your hand to this lever and press it down?"
She looked up at him quickly. "Oh," she cried, her hand clutching at his arm, her voice quivering, "you mean—"
He laughed happily. "I mean that when you press that lever it will throw open the water-gates. I mean that it will be your hand which turns the first mad current down into the flume. I mean that it will be you, Argyl, who actually sends the first water to reclaim Rattlesnake Valley. Are you glad, Argyl?"
If Argyl was glad, she did not say so. For a moment she stood with her face in her two hands, sobbing. And then, laughing softly, the tears upon her cheeks catching fire from the first rays of the rising sun, she lifted her face to Greek Conniston's, and, drawing his face down, kissed him.
The new day had leaped out at them, whipping the last shreds of misty darkness from the face of the earth. Down yonder, below them upon the slope of the hills, they saw the Lark and his hundred men preparing for breakfast. Only in the bed of Deep Creek alone, below the dam where a trickle of water ran thread-like, was there any shadow. And suddenly something moving within the breaking darkness there caught Conniston's eye.
It was a man running, running swiftly downstream, running as though pursued by no less terrible a thing than death, stumbling, rising, running again. Something in the man's carriage struck Conniston as familiar, while he could not make out who it was. Then the light grew stronger, rosier, and he cried out in surprise.
"Hapgood!" he exclaimed. "Roger Hapgood!"
And almost before the words had left his lips he cried out in a new tone, a tone of horror, and, seizing Argyl's hand in his, ran with her, crying for her to hurry, urging her to run with him, away from the dam. For his eyes had seen another thing in the creek-bed, a something just at the base of the dam at its lowest side. It was a little sputtering flame, such a flame as is made by a burning bit of fuse.
Hapgood, still running, had climbed up the steep right bank, had run almost into the men's camp, had turned suddenly and dashed back down the bank, to run across the creek and climb the fartherside. Conniston and Argyl as they fled from the threatened dam could see him as he clambered upward, could see the loose stones and dirt set sliding, rattling from under his hurrying feet and clawing hands.
Then came the thundering roar of the explosion. The great dam, the citadel of all hopes of success, tottered like a stone wall smitten with a thousand battering-rams, tottered and shook to its foundations. And then, as a dozen explosions merged into one, the whole thing leaped skyward, as though hurled aloft from some Titan's sling, and, leaping, burst asunder, flying in a thousand directions, raining rock and mortar far and wide along the slopes of the mountains. And Conniston, dragging Argyl after him, cried out brokenly. Upon the dam he had toiled for weeks, and now there was no one stone left of it! And the first day of October was but five days off.
"Look!" Argyl was clinging to him wildly, her arm trembling as it pointed. "Look! Oh, God!"
She did not point toward the dam. Her quivering finger found out a moving figure far below it in the creek-bed. It was Hapgood. The explosion which had demolished the work of weary weeks had shaken the ground under his flying feet so that the loose soil no longer held him. He had cried out aloud, had fought and clawed, had even bit with blackened teeth into the steep bank. And it mocked him and slipped away from him and hurled him, bruised and cut, to the bottom of the cañon.
Even as Conniston looked the freed waters which had chafed in the great dam leaped forward, a monster river of churning white water and whirling debris, and like a live thing, wrathful, vengeful, was charging downward through the steep ravine. Hapgood had heard. They had seen his white face turned for an instant over his shoulder. And then his shriek rose high above the thunder of waters as he ran from the merciless thing which his own hands had unchained.
They saw his one hope; saw that he, too, had seen it. With the water hurling itself almost upon him, he gained the bank ten feet farther downstream, where the sides were more gently sloping. They saw him climb to a little shelf of rock a yard above the bottom of the creek. They saw his hands thrust out above his head, grasping at the root of a stunted tree. One more second—
But the fates did not grant the one single second. The churning, frothing, angry maelstrom had caught at his legs, whipping them from under him. They heard his shriek again, throbbing with terror, vibrant with a fear which was worse than despair. They saw his face, white and horrible, as he glanced again for a moment at the thing behind him. And then the swirling water leaped up at him, snarling like some mighty beast, and clutched at his throat, at his hands, and flung him like a thing of no weight far down into its own tumultuous bosom. For a moment they saw his arms, then they saw his hands clutching at the foam-flecked face of the water—and then even the hands disappeared.
"Who was it?"
It was Mr. Crawford's voice, calm, expressionless. Conniston and Argyl swung about, the horror of the thing which they had seen still widening their eyes, and saw Mr. Crawford, Jimmie Kent, and a man whom Conniston took to be Colton Gray.
"Hapgood," he answered, his eyes going back to the tumult of water sweeping away the hopes of many men.
Mr. Crawford stepped forward and put his hand on Conniston's arm.
"We lose, my boy." His voice was as steady as it had been before, but Conniston saw that his lips quivered despite the iron will set to keep them steady. "And it could not be helped. And Conniston, my boy, my son," his tones ringing out so that all there could hear, "I am proud of you, and proud that I may call you my son!"
"Greek! Poor Greek!" Argyl was clinging to him, everything lost to her but a great pity for him. "Is it to be only defeat, after all?"
"Defeat!"
He whirled about, his clenched fist raised high above his head, his body rigid, his haggard face dead white. "Defeat!" He laughed, and Argyl shivered at the strange tone in his laughter. "Defeat!" he cried a third time. "We have five days!"
He was upon a boulder, standing where all menmight see him, might hear him. And his voice as it rang out through the roar of the leaping water was sharp, clear, decisive, confident.
"Here you, Lark! Rush fifty men with crowbars to the Jaws! Make the rest of your men hitch up to their plows and scrapers and rush them to the Jaws as fast as their horses can run! Send me five good men. Pete," as Lonesome Pete's red head surged forward through the crowd of working-men, "come here!"
Pete came, and came running.
"Get on your horse. Kill him getting to Miss Argyl's Dam. Open the gates there and turn the water into the canal. And for God's sake hurry!"
And Lonesome Pete, with one wild yell of understanding, fled. The Lark had swung about, calling upon his men by name, and as he called fifty big, quick-eyed men leaped forward to fall quickly into the sections bossed by the men whose names the Lark was shouting. The dirt and stones had not ceased rolling and rattling down the rocky walls of the cañon when fifty men with picks and crowbars were rushing along its banks to the Jaws. And as Greek Conniston hurled his orders at the Lark and the Lark snatched them up, shouting to the men about him, horses were hitched to plows and scrapers and driven, galloping, to the Jaws.
The five men for whom Conniston had called and whom the Lark had selected came to him quickly.
"Get into Mr. Crawford's buckboard," he called, sharply, to two of them. "Drive to Dam Number Two and open the gates there, turning every bit of water you can into the canal! You three men get saddle-horses. You," to one of them, "rush toCrawfordsville and telephone to Tommy Garton. Tell him what has happened. Tell him to send me two hundred men on the run.On the run, do you hear? Tell him to tie Bill Wallace up and put two men to watch out for him. Now go! And you two fellows get your horses saddled and bring them here and wait for orders."
He got down from the boulder, and as he did so Mr. Crawford came to his side.
"Do you mean, Greek," he said, anxiously, "that there is a chance yet?"
"A chance? Yes! There is more than a chance! We are going to make a go of it. Listen: Truxton put in his foundations here, and I went ahead with the superstructure for the simple reason that here is a perfect dam-site, here are solid rock walls and creek-bed that would hold any concrete structure in the world. And up there at the Jaws you have to contend with shale, full of seams, in places lined with clay. And right there I am going to make a rock-filled dam, and make it fast! It's going to be a temporary job and a makeshift, but it's going to sling the water into a flume that will carry it back into the old cut and down into the Valley. And it will do until Mr. Colton Gray and his people are satisfied."
The man who had accompanied Mr. Crawford and Jimmie Kent from Crawfordsville came forward and put out his hand.
"Mr. Conniston," he said, quickly, "I am Colton Gray. And I am already satisfied. If my influence is worth anything the P. C. & W. is going to stand by its old contract. And I believe that when I tell the P. C. & W. what I know they will complete what you have done and inform Mr. Oliver Swinnertonthat they can have no further dealings whatever with a criminal of his type."
Conniston shook hands with him warmly.
"Thank you. But you are going to have no points to strain. We are going to have water, plenty of water, in Rattlesnake Valley before the first day of October."
Conniston left them and ran to join his men at the Jaws. Never had he heard of a dam to match the one he saw growing under his eyes. There was no time for scientific perfection of work; here and now was only a crying need for an obstruction, any kind of an obstruction which would withstand the great and growing pressure of water, which would drive it up to the banks, which would turn it into the flume which was being made for it even as the dam grew. Trees were lopped down, great, tall pines, their branches shorn off with flashing ax-blades, the trunks cut into logs upon which many men laid hold.
In the bed of the creek between the Jaws the logs were laid as one lays logs to build him a log house. Sand and gravel and rock went rattling and hissing into the log-surrounded spaces, piled high and higher, with the water backing angrily up against it. Boulders were rolled down from the mountain-side, hurled into the bottom of the cañon by blasts of giant powder and dynamite, gripped with rapidly adjusted log-chains, and dragged to their places by straining horses.
Steadily the dam rose, and steadily the muddy water crept up with it. Men toiled in the bed of the stream with the foaming, coffee-colored water washing about their hips, seething as it climbed up to their great, hairy, panting chests. With no thought of finishing the breakfast which they hadbarely begun, they worked upon the banks with sweaty, hot bodies and calm, cool minds. Stripped to their waists, almost naked many of them, black with dirt and running sweat, they strained and strove against the rising stream. The morning died, noon came, and Conniston had a dozen men distribute sandwiches and hot coffee. The afternoon wore on and brought with it the men whom Tommy Garton had sent.
Then Conniston called to every man of the hundred who had toiled for him since sunrise to drop his tools. In their places he put a hundred new men. And again the work went on in great strides, and the strange dam rose swiftly. The other men whom Garton had sent, Brayley with them, he put to work to begin the restoration of the broken dam, that the thing which the hapless Hapgood had torn down might be ready against the time of need after the first of October. For he could find no place for more than a hundred men working between the Jaws and upon the banks above them.
Night had come down upon the mountain-slopes. Argyl and Conniston were standing by a sinking camp-fire talking quietly. Lonesome Pete, returned from his errand, had gone into the grove at the edge of which their fire burned for fresh fuel. There came to them through the silence the clatter of hoofs; the vague, shadowy form of horse and rider rose against the sky-line, and Jocelyn Truxton threw herself to the ground. Moaning hysterically, she ran to Argyl!
"Argyl, Argyl," she cried, stopping abruptly, her two hands pressed to her breast, "I am so wretched!I don't deserve to live! I have been so mean, so little—" She broke off into passionate weeping.
Argyl went swiftly to her, putting her arms about the girl's shaking shoulders.
"Jocelyn, dear," she said, softly. "Don't!"
"I have been wicked, wicked!" Jocelyn was sobbing. "They told me what has happened—about the dam—about Roger Hapgood!" She broke off, shuddering.
"But," Argyl was saying, trying to soothe her, "that is not your fault, Jocelyn."
"Oh!" cried Jocelyn, wildly. "You don't know. It was I, I who suggested the horrible thing to Roger Hapgood. It is I who am to blame for everything."
"Hush, child! You have been a naughty little girl, that is all. You didn't know what it was that you were doing—and you are not a bit to blame!"
"And—and—and I have been such a little fool! I have just been a vain, conceited little fool. And I hated you—because I knew all the time that you were prettier than I am. And—and I was ashamed of Pete, and I made fun of him—and now he has gone away and—and I love him. I don't care if he has got red hair and can't read! I love him—so there!"
Lonesome Pete, coming back with his armful of firewood, dropped it, and for a moment stood staring from one to another, his mouth wide open. And then, forgetful of Conniston, pushing Argyl away as he came forward, he took Jocelyn's quivering form into his arms and drew her close to him.
"Miss Jocelyn," he cried, suddenly, "I ain't goin' away! Don't you think it. An' you ain't to blame for nothin' whatever! You're jest a little girl as hasmade a slip or two—who in hell ain't, huh?"—with belligerent, flashing eyes—"an' I'll dye my hair any color you say as you like better 'n red!"
"I am going East to-morrow, Mr. Conniston." Jimmie Kent was speaking, his eyes very keen. "Before I go I'd like to make you a proposition. First, do you know what firm it is I represent? Maybe you have heard of the W. I. R.? That means the Western Improvement and Reclamation Company. The board of directors met the other day in Denver, and against his protest made Mr. Crawford its first vice-president. The company plans on the reclamation of many thousands of square miles of sand and sage-brush in Colorado and Nevada. The company wants a competent engineer to act as general superintendent of all of its operations. Do you want the job? Who am I to offer it to you?" He laughed softly. "Oh, I'm just its president."
Filled to bursting with hopeful toil, the days ran by. Again it was night, the night before the first day of October. With the desert about them, with the stars low flung in the wide arch of heaven, Argyl and Greek Conniston stood at the edge of a deep canal which ran with water to its level banks. And as they spoke to each other, looking down into the future which belongs to them, contented, confident, eager for the coming of the Great Day, a boy rode up to them upon a shaggy pony and called:
"Mr. Conniston?"
"Yes," Greek answered. "What is it?"
It was a telegram. He read it by the light of the match he had swept across his thigh. Argyl, bending forward, read it with him. It was from New York.