like his own. "I can't hear you speak this way, and I will not."
"Do you go with him or do you not?" thundered the Colonel.
It was Meade who answered for her.
"She goes with you. I love her and she loves me, but I won't drag
her down in my ruin."
"It is he who renounces and not I," said the woman. "I am ready to
marry him now if he wishes."
"I do not wish," said the man.
And no one could ever know how hard was the utterance of those simple
words.
"I am glad to see honor and decency are in you still," said the
Colonel, "even if you are incompetent."
"If you say another word to him I will never go with you as long as I
live," flashed out Helen Illingworth.
"I deserve all that he can say. Your duty is with him. Good-by,"
said Meade.
"And I shall see you again?"
"Of course. Now you must go with your father."
Helen Illingworth turned to the Colonel.
"I shall go with you because he bids me, not because----"
"Whatever the reason," said the old soldier, "you go." He paused a
moment, looking from the dead man to the living one. "Meade," he
exclaimed at last, "I am sorry for your father, I am sorry for you.
Good-by, and I never want to see you or hear of you again. Come,
Helen."
The woman stretched out her hand toward her lover as her father took
her by the arm. Meade looked at her a moment and then turned away
deliberately as if to mark the final severance.
With bent head and beating heart, she followed her father out of the
room. There he had to fight off the reporters. He denied that his
daughter was going to marry young Meade. She strove to speak and he
strove to force her to be quiet. In the end she had her way.
"At Mr. Meade's own request," she said finally, "our engagement has
been broken off. Personally I consider myself as much bound as ever.
I can say nothing more except to add that my feelings toward Mr.
Meade are unchanged. If possible they are enhanced, but in deference
to his wishes and to my father's----"
"Have you said enough?" roared the Colonel, losing all control of
himself at last. "No, I will not be questioned or interrupted
another minute. Come."
He almost dragged the girl from the room.
Within the private office the physician said that everything pointed
to a heart lesion, but only an autopsy would absolutely determine it.
Meanwhile the law would have to take charge of the body temporarily.
It was late at night before Bertram Meade and old Shurtliff were left
alone. Carefully seeing that no one was present in the suite of
offices Meade turned to Shurtliff.
"You know the combination of the private safe?"
"Yes, sir."
"Open it."
The old man went to the door of the safe and discovered that it was
not locked.
"It's open," he said.
"Get me that memorandum I wrote to my father. You know where he kept
it."
"Yes, sir, separate from the other papers concerning the
International, in the third compartment." He turned the big safe
door slowly. The third compartment was empty. "It's gone," he said.
Meade looked at him sharply.
"The plans are there?"
"Yes, sir, in the other compartment just above it."
"Look them over."
"It's not here, sir," answered Shurtliff, making a bluff at going
rapidly through the papers.
Meade went to the safe, a small one, and examined it carefully and
fruitlessly. His letter was not there with the other papers, where
it should have been if it were in existence. It was not anywhere.
"Father told me he was going to destroy it, but from indications he
let drop I rather thought that he had changed his mind and was
keeping it to have some fun with me when the bridge was completed,"
he said at last.
"Yes, sir, that was his intention. In fact, I know he did not
destroy it at first. He told me to file it with the plans."
"And did you?"
"I did."
"Where is it, then?"
"I don't know, sir."
"Shurtliff, you knew my father better than anyone on earth, didn't
you?"
"Yes, sir, and loved him."
"Do you think he is the kind of man who would relieve himself at my
expense, or at anybody's?" Meade almost shouted the words at the
secretary.
"No, of course not."
"Where is it, then?"
"I don't know, sir. On second thoughts he must have destroyed it
later. I haven't looked in this compartment for weeks."
"Well, it couldn't be anywhere but here unless it is in his desk at
home. I'll look there and you search the office here. When it is
found it must be destroyed. You understand?"
"I understand; trust me, Mr. Meade."
"I'll never forget the lie you told to back me up, Shurtliff. I can
see you loved him as much as I."
"No one will ever know the truth from me, sir. You have saved your
father's name and fame."
"I couldn't save his life, though."
"No, but what you saved was dearer to him than life itself."
"I think we had better search the office now. I wouldn't have that
paper come to life for the world," said Meade.
Shurtliff was the most orderly of men. The care of the old
engineer's papers and other arrangements had devolved upon him. The
search was soon completed. The letter could not be found, and it
never occurred to Meade to search Shurtliff!
"I guess he must have destroyed it," said the young man, "but to be
sure I will examine his private papers at home. Good-night. You
will be going yourself?"
"In a few minutes, sir."
"Come to me in the morning after the autopsy and we will arrange for
the funeral," said the younger man as he left the office.
Shurtliff waited until his footsteps died away in the hall. He
waited until he heard the clang of the elevator gate. Even then he
was not sure. He got up and in his cat-like way opened the door of
the office and peered down the hall. It was empty. He stood in the
door waiting, while the night elevator made several trips up and down
without pausing at that floor. He sat down at the dead man's desk.
From his pocket he drew forth a packet of papers.
There were three of them. The letter the young man had written to
his father, with the plan and the last note the old man had written
to the papers. Shurtliff had not delivered them. He could not make
up his mind to do it. He had correctly forecasted what Bertram would
attempt to do. He had not gone near the _Gazette_ office. He had
withheld these papers from the press. He had said nothing about them
to anyone, in the hope that he and the young man could persuade the
father to silence before the irreparable admission became known. And
finally a Power greater than he and the son together could exercise
had sealed the old man's lips forever.
In his hands the devotee held the fame and the honor of the dead man
he had so loved. What that dead man would have had him do he knew
beyond a shadow of a doubt. He had not done it. He could not do it
now. He had disobeyed. He had lied. He had a keen conscience, too,
but the devotional habit of a lifetime was not to be altered for any
other man. Meade could live it down. Shurtliff had lived down his
failure. There would be some way. The young man was alive, he could
fight. The old man was dead. The secretary would better destroy the
papers.
He struck a match, held it to the two letters and the plan and then,
as the paper broke into a tiny flame, he threw the match aside and
crumpled it out in his hands. The well-remembered face of the dead
man, the recollection of his commands, forbade him. He did not have
to give up those papers but he could not destroy them. He put them
back into the pocket of his coat and bent his head over the desk, his
left arm extended across it and clenched just in the last position of
the man he loved. He wished that he could die, too, and follow
after, faithful servant and friend that he was--or was he traitor and
recreant after all?
XVII
THAT WHICH LAY BETWEEN
There were no legal proceedings, of course, that could be brought
against the dead engineer or his son, although there were many
inquests at the bridge. The cause of the failure was clear. Man
cannot be punished in law for honest errors in judgment. It was
recognized by everyone, whose opinion was worth considering, that the
disaster had resulted from a mistake which any engineer could have
made. As a matter of fact there was no experience to guide the
designers. There never had been such a bridge before. Certain
elements of empiricism had to enter into their calculations. They
had made the plan after their best judgment and it had failed. They
could be blamed, censured, even vilified as they were in the press,
but that was the extent of their punishment; of Bertram Meade's
punishment, rather, because Rodney and the other reporters had made
much of his assumption of the blame. There might have been a doubt
of it, engineers at least might have suspected the truth, but the
evidence of Shurtliff put it beyond reasonable doubt. The older
Meade escaped lightly. Men could only point out his mistake in
committing such responsibilities to so young a man. And his dramatic
death in large measure disarmed criticism.
The bitter weight of censure fell entirely upon Bertram Meade. His
ruin as an engineer was immediate and absolute. He was the
scapegoat. No one had any good to say of him except Rodney, who
fought valiantly for his friend and classmate, at least striving to
mitigate the censure by pointing out the quick and ready
acknowledgment of the error which might have been ascribed to the
dead man without fear of contradiction.
An effort was made by competitors and stock speculators to ruin the
Martlet Bridge Company. By throwing into the gap their private
fortunes to the last dollar and by herculean work on the part of
their friends, the directors saved the Martlet Company, although its
losses were tremendous and almost insupportable, not only in money,
but in prestige and reputation. Colonel Illingworth came out of the
struggle older and grayer than ever. He went through the fires in
his effort to save the concern which had been the foundation of his
fortune and in which he felt a greater interest than in anything else
in life save his daughter. He had led his company, his battalion,
and finally his regiment, on many a hard-fought field in the War, but
no battle had ever been fiercer or called upon him for greater
efforts than this. The terrific combat had left him almost broken
for a time, and his daughter saw that it was not possible even to
mention Bertram Meade to him, then.
She had a great sympathy, as well as a tender affection, for her
father. Albeit of a different kind, it was almost as great and
abiding as her sympathy and affection for her lover. She had seen
Meade only once since that day he had taken her to his heart by the
body of his dead father and then put her away.
The funeral of the great engineer had been strictly private. Only
his confrères, men who stood high in scientific circles, certain
people for whom he had made great and successful designs, a few
others whose ties were personal, had been invited to the house for
the services. The interment was in the little Connecticut town of
Milford, in which the older Meade had been born, and from which he
had gone forth as a boy to conquer the world.
Shurtliff, the clergyman, and a few of his father's oldest friends,
accompanied the young engineer to the car that was to take them to
that village. They rode with him to the quaint old cemetery and
stood by while those last words that are said over the greatest and
the weakest, over youth and age, over beauty and ugliness, over
virtue and shame, over triumph and defeat alike, were uttered, and
then at his wish they all went away. They felt deeply for the ruined
young engineer, who bade them good-by and stood by the side of the
grave with Shurtliff, while the men filled it in. The special car
would take the others back to New York. Meade would come later at
his own time.
"Shurtliff," said the engineer, after the mound had been heaped up
and covered with sods and strewn with flowers and the workmen had
gone, "I have left everything I possess in your charge. You have a
power of attorney to receive and pay out all moneys; to deposit,
invest, and carry on my father's estate. The office is to be closed
and the house is to be sold. My will, in which I leave everything to
Miss Illingworth, is in your hands. You are empowered to draw from
the revenue of the estate your present salary so long as you live.
If anything happens to me you will have the will probated and be
governed accordingly."
"Mr. Meade," said the old man, and he somehow found himself
transferring the affection which he had thought had been buried
beneath the sod on that long mound before him, to the younger man.
He had loved and served a Meade all his life and he began to see that
he could not stop now, nor could he lavish what he had to give merely
on a remembrance, "Mr. Meade," he said, "you are not going to do
yourself any hurt?"
"If you knew me as well as you knew my father you would not ask the
question."
"I beg your pardon, sir, but we seem to be rather alone, you and I,
in the world."
"Yes," said Meade.
"Well, forgive your father's old if humble friend, if he asks where
you are going and what you intend to do?"
"I don't know where I shall go, or what I shall undertake
eventually," said the man. "I'm going to leave everything behind now
and try to get a little rest at first. Then, I shall try to make
another place for myself in the world, if I can, and I'm going to do
it without any of the advantages or disadvantages of the period of my
life which ends today."
"And you will keep me advised of your whereabouts?"
"I shall see that you get news of my death if I die, Shurtliff, and
if I do anything or become anything----"
"The world will advise me of that, you mean?"
"Perhaps--I don't know. One last injunction: you are not to tell
anyone the truth."
"God forbid," said Shurtliff, "we have lied to preserve the honor and
fame of him we loved who lies here."
"Don't render our perjuries of non-effect."
"I will not, sir. I haven't found that paper. I guess it was
destroyed."
"I presume so. And now, good-by."
"Aren't you coming with me?"
"I want to stay here a little while by myself."
Shurtliff looked at the young man standing so strong and splendid by
the grave of his father. He put out his hand. He never condemned
himself so much before. He began to wonder if he had pursued the
right course. He began to question whether he who lay beneath the
sod would approve of his suppression of the truth; of the lie he had
told to save the father's fame and honor and to back up the assertion
of the son. No, on the whole, Shurtliff did not question that. He
knew that if it were possible the older man would rise from his grave
to assume the responsibility, to proclaim the younger man innocent.
Well, Shurtliff would save his beloved chief in spite of himself.
He released the young man's hand, turned, and walked away. When he
reached the road, down which he must go, he stopped and faced about
again. Meade was standing where he had been. The old man took off
his hat in reverent farewell.
Meade was not left alone. Beyond the hillside where his father had
been buried rose a clump of trees. Bushes grew at their feet. A
woman--should man be buried without woman's tears?--had stood
concealed there waiting. Helen Illingworth had wept over the
dreariness, the mournfulness of it all. She had hoped that Meade
might stay after the others went and now that he was alone she came
to him. She laid her hand upon his arm. He turned and looked at her.
"I knew that you would be here," he said.
"Did you see me?"
"I felt your presence."
"And would that you might feel it always by your side."
The man looked down at the grave.
"That," he said with a wave of his hand, "lies between us, that and
the ruined bridge."
"Listen," said the woman. "You are wrecking your life for your
father's fame. A man has a right perhaps to do with his own life
what he will, but, when he loves a woman and when he has told her so
and she has given him her heart, did it ever occur to you that when
he wrecks his life he wrecks hers, and has he a right to wreck her
life for anyone else?"
"What would you have me do?" asked Meade. "Unsay those words I said?
Put the blame on the dead, destroy in a breath that great record of
achievement, that vast reputation, the honor of a great name?"
"Ah, but on this side is a woman's heart."
"Oh, my God," said Meade, "this is more than I can bear."
"I don't want to force you to do anything you don't want to do and
you are not in any mood to discuss these things," she said in quick
compassion. "Some day you will come back to me."
"If I can ever hold my head up among men, look them straight in the
eye because I have enforced their respect, I shall come."
"I shall wait."
"The task before me daunts me. It is beyond human achievement."
"Even for love like mine?"
He stretched out his hands toward her over the grave.
"I don't know," he cried. "I dare not hope."
"With love like ours," she answered, "all things are possible."
"I can't bind you. You must be free."
"I shall be free, free to love you, free to work in my own way. No
loyalty"--she pointed down--"to him binds me. My loyalty is all to
you."
"But you must consider my wishes."
"No," said the woman boldly. "Have you considered mine?"
"It is just," he said slowly, turning his head. "You are breaking my
heart, but I shall live and fight on for love and you."
"God bless you."
"You are going away?" she asked at last.
"Yes."
"Where?"
"I don't know."
"You will write to me?"
He shook his head.
"I must break with everything. I must give you your chance of
freedom."
"Very well," said the woman. "Now hear me. You can't go so far on
this earth or hide yourself away so cunningly but that I can find you
and maybe follow you. And I will. Now, I must go. I left my car
down the road yonder. Will you go with me?"
The man shook his head and knelt down before her suddenly and caught
her skirt in his grasp. His arms swept around her knees. She
yielded one hand to the pressure of his lips and laid the other upon
his head.
"Go now," he whispered, "for God's sake. If I look at you I must
follow."
She was great enough to heed his request, to understand his mood, and
as the old secretary had done she walked across the grass and down
the road. Her last long glimpse of him was of a bent figure bowed
over a new-made grave on a wind-swept hill.
III
DAM
[Illustration: (sketch of dam area)]
XVIII
PICKET WIRE AND KICKING HORSE
There are no more beautiful valleys anywhere than those cut by the
waters of primeval floods through the foothills of the great
snow-covered Rocky Mountains. The erosions and washings of untold
centuries have flung out in front of the granite ramparts a
succession of lower elevations like the bastions of a fortress. At
first scarcely to be distinguished from the main range in height and
ruggedness these ravelins and escarpments gradually decrease in
altitude and size until they turn into a series of more or less
disconnected, softly rounded hills, like outflung earthworks, finally
merging themselves by gradual slopes into the distant plains
overlooked by the great peaks of the mountains.
The monotony of these pine-clad, wind-swept slopes is broken even in
the low hills by out-thrustings of stone, sometimes the hard igneous
rock, the granite of the mountains, more frequently the softer red
sandstone of a period later, yet ineffably old. These cliffs,
buttes, hills, and mesas have been weathered into strange and
fantastic shapes which diversify the landscape and add charm to the
country.
The narrow cañons in which the snow-fed streams take their rise
gradually widen as the water follows its tortuous course down the
mountains through the subsiding ranges and out among the foothills to
the sandy, arid, windy plains beyond. At the entrance of one of the
loveliest of these broad and verdant valleys, a short distance above
its confluence with a narrower, more rugged ravine through the hills,
lay the thriving little town of Coronado.
Some twenty miles back from the town at a place where the valley was
narrowed to a quarter of a mile, and separating it from the
paralleling ravine, rose a huge sandstone rock called Spanish Mesa.
Its top, some hundreds of feet higher than the tree-clad base of the
hills, was mainly level. From its high elevation the country could
be seen for many miles, mountains on one hand, plains on the other.
It stood like an island in a sea of verdure. Little spurs and ridges
ran from it. Toward the range it descended and contracted into a
narrow saddle, vulgarly known as a "Hog-back," where the granite of
the mountains was hidden under a deep covering of grass-grown earth,
which formed the only division between the valley and the gorge or
ravine, before the land, widening, rose into the next hill.
And people came from miles away to see that interesting and curious
mesa, much more striking in its appearance than Baldwin's Knob, the
last foothill below it. Transcontinental travelers even broke
journey to visit it. The town prospered accordingly, especially as
it was admirably situated as a place of departure for hunters,
explorers, prospectors, and adventurers, who sought what they craved
in the wild hills. There were one or two good hotels for tourists,
unusually extensive general stores of the better class, where hunting
and prospecting parties could be outfitted, and the high-living,
extravagant cattle ranchers could get what they demanded. Besides
all these there were the modest homes of the lovers of the rough but
exhilarating and health-giving life of the Rocky Mountains. Of
course there were numerous saloons and gambling halls, and the town
was the haunt of cowboys, hunters, miners, Indians--the old frontier
with a few touches of civilization added!
What was left of the river, which had made the valley--and during the
infrequent periods of rain too brief to be known as the rainy season,
it really lived up to the name of river--flowed merrily through the
town, when it flowed at all, under the name of Picket Wire. Singular
lack of ability to bestow a poetic nomenclature upon nature might at
first seem to be exhibited by the pioneer in this nondescript title.
Not so the truth.
The pioneer was a poet unconsciously and filled with a spirit of
romance. No man adventures, unless under the pressure of some
inexorable necessity, into unknown lands as the pioneers did, without
imagination, romance; vision, if you will. Plain though he may
appear, the pioneer is the real dreamer of dreams. In the bleak and
arid present, rough, wild, and unpromising, he can see the future,
his the eyes of the seer and prophet. But when he tries to translate
what he feels and sees, even in the simplest ways by exercising the
privilege of Adam in naming the places he passes or stays by, he
seems to lack expression to fit his soul.
For instance one of the most beautiful and romantic mountain streams,
ever fresh and clear, ever dashing madly through one of the most
stupendous cañons of Colorado, is known as the Big Thompson! Shades
of Poseidon! What has water ever done to be so called? Another
example is a great swelling peak, which strives to hold up its head
when people point out that it is called Mount Bill Williams! Bill it
might have stood, or Williams, but the combination!
Well, there were romance and appositeness about the silver stream
that came dashing down from the snow-line, and in the springtime it
might fairly be said to dash, called the Picket Wire. Into that very
valley and at the base of that mesa in which the four centuries since
had effected so little change had come, in the following of Coronado,
for whom the town was named, a little party of Spanish explorers.
Why they ascended the valley over which the mesa stood sentry and why
they camped there rather than on the other side is not told in the
tradition which alone sets forth their fate. That does not enter
into this story. Suffice it, therefore, to say that a cloudburst in
the hills, a thing which seems to have been as old as the hills
themselves, wiped them out entirely. All unprepared, unblest,
unshriven, they were swept away. Battered bodies, torn garments
below the mesa told the story to those that hunted for tidings
afterward. The valley was a place of horror. The river of lost
souls, "_Rio de las Animas_," the Spaniards named it.