It was Saturday morning, and Lysander and Melissa were irrigating the
orange-trees. Old Withrow sat by the ditch at the corner of the orchard,
watching them with a feeble display of interest, while two or three of
the children climbed and tumbled over him as if he were some inoffensive
domestic animal.
The old man had hung about the place longer than was his wont, filled
with a maudlin glee over his own importance as having been in some way
instrumental in the trade with Forrester; and he had followed Lysander
to the orchard this morning with a confused alcoholic idea that he ought
to be present when the water from Flutterwheel Spring was turned on
for the first time.
"You'll git a big head," he had said to his wife, as he started,--"a
deal bigger head 'n ever. I tole Forrester I'd tell ye it was a good
trade, an' I done what I said I'd do. Forrester knowed what he was doin'
when he got me"--
"G'long, you old gump!" his spouse had hurled at him wrathfully, ceasing
from a vigorous wringing of the mop to grasp the handle with a gesture
that was not entirely suggestive of industry.
The old man had put up his hand and wriggled in between Melissa and
Lysander with a cur-like movement that brought a grim smile to his
son-in-law's face, and made Melissa shrink away from him noticeably. Out
in the orchard, however, he ceased to trouble them, being content to
smoke and doze by the ditch, while the water ran in a gentle, eddying
current from one basin to another, guided now and then by Lysander's
hoe.
The boom of the blasting could be heard up the canon, fainter as the
afternoon sea-breeze arose, and Melissa, standing barefoot in the warm,
sandy soil, let the water swirl about her ankles as she mended the
basins, and thought of the tall young surveyor who had bound up her
wounded arm.
"I'm a-goin' to take his hankecher to him to-morruh. Bein' it's Sunday
they won't be blastin'."
She leaned on her hoe and looked up the canon, where the blue of the
distant mountains showed soft and smoky among the branches of the
sycamores.
"M'lissy!" Lysander called from the lower end of the row of
orange-trees, "hain't the ditch broke som'ers, or the water got into a
gopher-hole? There ain't no head to speak of."
The girl turned quickly and looked about her. The water had settled into
the loose soil of the basins, and was no longer running in the furrow.
She walked across, following the main ditch to the edge of the canon,
looking anxiously for the break. The wet sand rippled and glistened in
the bottom of the ditch, but no water was to be seen. Lysander, tired of
waiting, came striding through the tarweed, with his hoe on his
shoulder.
"I guess it's broke furder on up the canon, Sandy."
Melissa stepped back, as she spoke, to let him precede her on the narrow
path, and the two walked silently beside the empty ditch. Lysander's
face gathered gloom as they went.
"It's some deviltry, I'll bet!" he broke out, after a while. "Danged if
I don't begin to think yer maw's right!"
Melissa did not ask in what her mother was vindicated; she had a dull
prescience of trouble. Things seemed generally to end in that way. She
turned to her poor hopeless little dream again, and kept close behind
Lysander's lank form all the way to Flutterwheel Spring.
Alas! not to Flutterwheel Spring. Where the spray had whirled in a
fantastic spiral the day before, the moss was still wet, and the ferns
waved in happy unconsciousness of their loss; but the stream that had
flung itself from one narrow shelf of rock to another, in mad haste to
join the rush and roar of Sawpit Canon, had utterly disappeared.
Lysander turned to his companion, his face ashen-gray under the week-old
stubble of his beard. Neither of them spoke. The calamity lay too near
the source of things for bluster, even if Lysander had been capable of
bluster. In swift dual vision they saw the same cruel picture: the
shriveling orange-trees, the blighted harvest of figs dropping withered
from the trees, the flume dry and useless, the horse-trough empty and
warping in the sun,--all the barren hopelessness of a mountain claim
without water, familiar to both. And through it all Melissa felt rather
than imagined the bitterness of her mother's wrath. Perhaps it was this
latter rather than the real catastrophe that whitened the poor young
face, turned toward Lysander in helpless dismay.
"Danged if I don't hate the job o' tellin' yer maw," said the man at
last, raking the dry boulders with his hoe aimlessly,--"danged if I
don't. I can't figger out who's done it, but one thing's certain,--it
beats the devil."
Lysander made the last statement soberly, as if this vindication of his
Satanic majesty were a simple act of justice. Seeming to consider the
phenomenon explained by a free confession of his own ignorance, he
ceased his investigation, and sat down on the edge of the ditch
hopelessly.
"Don't le' 's tell mother right away, Sandy. Paw's fell asleep, an'
he'll think you turned the water off. Mebbe if we wait it'll begin to
run again." The hopefulness of youth crept into Melissa's quivering
voice.
Lysander shook his head dismally.
"I'm willin' enough to hold off, M'lissy, but I hain't got much hope.
There ain't any Moses around here developin' water, that I know of. The
meracle business seems to have got into the wrong hands this time;
danged if it hain't. It gets away with me how Forrester can dry up a
spring at long range that-a-way; there ain't a track in the mud around
here bigger 'n a linnet's,--not a track. It's pure deviltry, you can bet
on that." Lysander fell back on the devil with restful inconsistency,
and fanned himself with his straw hat, curled by much similar usage into
fantastic shapelessness.
"I don't believe he done it," said Melissa, obstinately charitable. "I
don't believe anybody done it. I believe it just happened. I don't think
folks like them care about folks like us at all, or want to pester us. I
believe they just play on things and sing,"--the color mounted to her
face, until the freckles were drowned in the red flood,--"an' laugh, an'
talk, an' act pullite, an' that's all. I don't believe Colonel Forrester
hates mother like she thinks he does at all. I think he just don't
care!"
It was the longest speech Melissa had ever made. Her listener seemed a
trifle impressed by it. He rubbed his hair the wrong way, and distorted
his face into a purely muscular grin, as he reflected.
"I've a mind to go and see Poindexter," Lysander announced presently.
"Poindexter's a smart man, and I b'lieve he's a square man. 'T enny
rate, it can't do any good to keep it a secret. Folks'll find it out
sooner or later. You stay here a minute, M'lissy, and I'll go on up the
canon."
The young girl seated herself, with her back against a ledge of rocks,
and her bare feet straight out before her. She was used to waiting for
Lysander. Their companionship antedated everything else in Melissa's
memory, and she early became aware that Lysander's "minutes" were
fractions of time with great possibilities in the way of physical
comfort hidden in the depths of their hazy indefiniteness.
She took off her corded sunbonnet, and crossed her hands upon it in her
lap. The shifting sunlight that fell upon her through the moving leaves
of the sycamores lent a grace to the angularity of her attitude. She
closed her eyes and listened drearily to the sounds of the canon. The
water fretting its way among the boulders below, the desultory gossip of
the moving leaves, the shrill, iterative chirp of a squirrel scolding
insistently from a neighboring cliff,--all these were familiar sounds to
Melissa, and had often brought her relief from the rasping discomfort of
family contention; but to-day she refused to be comforted. She had the
California mountaineer's worship of water, and the gurgle of the stream
among the sycamores filled her with vague rebellion.
"Why couldn't he 'a' let us alone?" she mused resentfully. "As long as
he had a share o' the spring it didn't show any signs o' dryin' up.
Mother never said nothin' about Flutterwheel to him; it was all his
doin's. But it's no use." She dropped her hands at her sides with a
little gesture of despair. "He never done it, but mother'll always think
so. She does hate him so--so--_pizenous_."
There was a sound of approaching footsteps, and the girl scrambled to
her feet. It was not Lysander coming at that businesslike pace.
Sterling, hurrying along the path, became conscious of her standing
there, in the rigid awkwardness of unculture, and touched his hat
lightly.
"Your father says the spring has stopped flowing," he said, pushing
aside the ferns where the rocks were yet slimy and moss-grown. "It is
certainly very strange."
"Yes, sir," faltered the girl, rubbing the sole of one foot on the
instep of the other. "But Lysander ain't my father; he's my
brother-'n-law; he merried my sister."
"I beg your pardon," returned the young man absently, running his eye
along the stratum of rock in the ledge above them. "I believe he did
tell me he was not your father."
No one had ever begged Melissa's pardon before. She meditated a while as
to the propriety of saying, "You're welcome," but gave it up, wondering
a little that polite society had made no provision for such an
emergency, and stood in awkward silence, tying and untying her
bonnet-strings.
Sterling pursued his investigations in entire forgetfulness of her
presence, until Poindexter appeared in the path. Lysander followed,
managing, by length of stride, to keep up with the engineer's brisk
movements.
There was much animated talk among the three men, which Melissa made no
attempt to follow. The two engineers smiled leniently at Lysander's
theory concerning Forrester, and fell into a discussion involving terms
which were incomprehensible to both their hearers. All that Melissa did
understand was the frank kindliness of the younger man's manner, and his
evident desire to allay their fears. Colonel Forrester, he assured
Lysander, was the kindest-hearted man in the world,--a piece of
information which seemed to carry more surprise than comfort to its
recipient. He would make it all right as soon as he knew of it, and they
would go down and see him at once; that is, Mr. Poindexter would go, and
he turned to Poindexter, who said, with quite as much kindliness, but a
good deal less fervor, that he was going down to Santa Elena that
evening to see the Colonel, and would mention the matter to him.
"Don't worry yourself, Sproul," he added guardedly. "If we find out that
the work in the canon has affected the spring, I think it will be all
right."
"I reckon you won't be back before Monday?" said Lysander, with
interrogative ruefulness.
"Well, hardly; but that isn't very long."
"Folks can git purty dry in two days, 'specially temperance folks, and
some of our fam'ly 'll need somethin' to wet their whistles, for
there'll be a good deal o' talkin' done on the ranch between this and
Monday, if the water gives out." Lysander turned his back on Melissa,
who was pressing her bare foot in the soft wet earth at the bottom of
the ditch, and made an eloquent facial addition to his remarks, for the
benefit of the two men.
Sterling looked mystified, but his companion laughed.
"Oh, is that it? Well, turn some water from the sand-box into the old
flume and run it down to your new ditch until I get back. I presume the
ownership won't affect the taste. It isn't necessary to say anything
about it; that is, unless you think best." He looked toward Melissa
doubtfully.
"M'lissy won't blab," returned her brother-in-law laconically.
The young girl blushed, in the security of her sunbonnet, at the
attention which this delicately turned compliment drew upon her, and
continued to make intaglios of her bare toes in the mud of the ditch.
It occurred to Sterling for the first time that she might represent a
personality. He went around the other two men, who had fallen into some
talk about the flume, and stood in the path beside her.
"I have not seen you since you were up the canon," he said kindly. "I
hope your arm did not pain you."
Melissa shook her head without looking up.
"It was only a scratch; it didn't even swell up. I never said nothin'
about it," she added in a lower tone.
The young man entered into the situation with easy social grace, and
lowered his own voice.
"You didn't want to alarm your mother"--
"M'lissy," interrupted Lysander, "I guess I'll go on up to the sand-box
with Mr. Poindexter and turn on some water. I wish you'd go 'long down
to the orchard and look after the basins till I git back. I won't be
gone but a minute."
Sterling lifted his hat with a winsome smile that seemed to illuminate
the twilight of poor Melissa's wilted sunbonnet, and the three men
started up the canon, the bay that they pushed aside on the path sending
back a sweet, spicy fragrance.
Melissa shouldered her hoe and proceeded homeward.
"He does act awful pullite," she mused, "an' he had on a ring: I didn't
know men folks ever wore rings. I wish I hadn't 'a' been barefooted."
Poor Melissa! Sterling remembered nothing at all about her except a
certain unconsciously graceful turn she had given her brown ankle as she
stood pressing her bare foot in the sand.