Farwell was by nature obstinate; he was also resourceful, and
accustomed to carrying out his instructions by hook or by crook. That
was one reason why he was such a valuable man. He accomplished his ends
or his employers' ends after some fashion. Therefore, when the almost
completed dam was destroyed, he recognized merely a temporary, if
expensive, setback. The company could afford to pay for any number of
dams; but, in order to push their sales, and, as a first step toward
acquiring other properties at a minimum figure, they wanted the water
on their lands at once. Very well, they should have it.
Though the dam was practically wrecked, the main canal was intact. Its
intake was just above the dam, solidly built of masonry, with sluice
gates to control the volume of water. Without the dam it carried a
comparatively small stream. With the dam, and the consequent raising of
the water level, it would roar full from wall to wall, a river in
itself.
Just at its lower lip Farwell began to drive piles at an angle
upstream. He sank brush with hundreds of bags of sand, made cribwork
filled with whatever rubbish came to his hand, and soon he had the
makings of a temporary dam, rude, but effective. It would serve three
purposes: It would fill the company's ditches; it would practically
empty the ranchers'; and it would render the rebuilding of the
permanent dam easier. Farwell was quite satisfied with himself.
Meanwhile, he found time to ride over to Talapus occasionally. His
footing there was anomalous, and he felt it. On the one hand he wished
the McCraes well and had done all he could for them; on the other he
was ruthlessly carrying out a project which would ruin them. Under
these circumstances he looked for no more than tolerance. He now owned
frankly to himself that he was in love with Sheila. He had made little
progress with his wooing, nor did he expect to make more just then. His
blunt assertiveness covered a natural shyness where women were
concerned, and he had about as much idea of the fine points of the game
as a logger has of cabinet-making. Still, he was drawn to her by a
desire which he was unable to resist. He had a profound belief in
himself and in his capacity for material success; he considered himself
an eligible match for any girl, and he relied on Sheila's good sense to
realize what he had taken pains to make plain--that while his loyalty
to his employers forced him to carry out their instructions, his
sympathies were with her and her family. Of this he had given
indubitable proof. He had no intention of dropping out of sight, of
discontinuing his visits, so long as they were tolerated, of leaving
the field clear to another, perhaps to Dunne. With her he bore a white
flag always, insisting that between them there was friendly truce.
He was of the opinion that the McCraes, father and son, had no hand in
the dynamiting; though he conceded that they could make an excellent
guess at the perpetrators. But Farwell thought he could do that
himself; he fixed the responsibility on Casey Dunne.
The McCraes did not mention the dam, but Farwell had no hesitation in
broaching the subject. He predicted speedy and exemplary punishment for
the guilty.
Donald McCrae listened gravely, his face expressionless. Sandy wore a
faint, ironic smile which irritated Farwell.
"You don't think so?" asked the engineer pointedly.
"You're doing the talking--I'm not," said Sandy.
Farwell reddened angrily. There was more in the tone than in the words.
It implied that talk was Farwell's long suit. Farwell disliked Sandy
extremely, but with a self-control which he rarely exercised, forbore
to retort. Hot-tempered as he was, he realized that he could not
declare his belief in the guilt of any person without some evidence.
His smouldering eye measured Sandy, taking him in from head to foot,
and rested on the smoky golden tan of a pair of new moccasins which he
wore.
Now, Sandy had acquired the moccasin habit in childhood and retained
it. It was rarely that he wore boots around the ranch. Farwell, looking
at the new moccasins, which were handsomely embroidered with silk
thread, noted the straight inner line of the foot, from toe to heel. It
was like the foot of an aborigine; undeformed, undeflected from
nature's lines by fashionable footgear. By suggestion the moccasin
track at the dam occurred to him. He recalled its straight inner line.
McCrae's moccasined foot would make just such a track. Was it possible
that he, at least, was one of the dynamiters?
Not only possible, Farwell decided, after a moment's reflection, but
probable. The elder man he exonerated mentally. The son, young,
hostile, possessing unlimited nerve, was just the man for such an
enterprise. And if he were concerned in it, and the fact were
ascertained what a devil of a mess it would make!
For a moment he was tempted to test his suspicion by some pointed
allusion, but thought better of it. And shortly after the two men
withdrew, leaving him with Sheila.
"This is a nasty business," said Farwell, after a long pause, reverting
to the former topic. "I wouldn't like it--no matter what turns up--to
make any difference between us."
"There isn't much difference to make," she reminded him.
"No, I suppose not," he admitted, slightly disconcerted. "We're merely
acquaintances. Only"--he hesitated--"only I thought--perhaps--we might
be friends."
Which was going very strong--for Farwell. He said it awkwardly,
stiffly, because he was quite unaccustomed to such phrase. Sheila
smiled to herself in the growing darkness.
"Well, friends if you like. But then we are of different camps--hostile
camps."
"But I'm not hostile," said Farwell. "That's nonsense. Business is
business, but outside of that it cuts no ice with me."
"Doesn't it?"
"Not with me," he declared stoutly. "Not a bit. You didn't blow up the
dam. Even if you had----"
"Even if I had----"
"I wouldn't care," Farwell blurted. "Thank the Lord I'm not
narrow-minded."
Sheila laughed. Her estimate of Farwell did not credit him with
wideness of outlook. But her reply was prevented by the _thud-thud_ of
rapid hoofs. A horse and rider loomed through the dark.
"Hello, Sheila!" the rider called.
"Why, Casey, this is luck!" she exclaimed. Farwell scowled at the
evident pleasure in her voice. "Light down. Better put your horse in
the stable."
"That you, McCrae?" said Dunne, peering at the glow of Farwell's cigar.
"I want to see you about----"
"It's Mr. Farwell," Sheila interjected quickly.
A pause. Casey's voice, smooth, polite, broke it.
"I didn't recognize you, Mr. Farwell. How are you?" He dismounted,
dropped his reins, and came upon the veranda. "Lovely night, isn't it?
Well, and how is everything going with you?"
"I'm fairly busy," Farwell replied grimly, "thanks to the actions of
some persons who imagine themselves unknown."
Casey Dunne lit a cigar and held the match in his hand till the flame
touched his fingers. He spoke through the ensuing greater darkness:
"I heard that your dam wasn't holding very well."
"Not very well," Farwell agreed, struggling with his temper. "Perhaps
you _heard_ that it was dynamited?"
"I think I've heard most of the rumours," Dunne responded calmly.
"I have no doubt of that," Farwell observed with meaning.
"Great country for rumours," Casey went on. "Somebody always knows your
inmost thoughts. Your intentions are known by others before you know
them yourself. You are no exception, Mr. Farwell. The mind readers are
busy with you. No action you might take would surprise them. They are
quite ready for anything."
"I may surprise these wise people yet," said Farwell. "I suppose they
counted on depriving our lands of water by destroying our dam?"
"That's certainly an original way of putting it," said Casey. "Well?"
"Well, they didn't foresee that, though our permanent work is wrecked,
and will take time to rebuild, we would put in a temporary wing of
logs, brush, and sand which would give us a partial supply."
"No, they didn't foresee that, likely," Casey admitted. "This wing dam
of yours is quite an idea. By the way, I'm not getting enough water
now, myself. Couldn't you get along with less than you are taking?"
"No," Farwell returned shortly.
"These wise people thought you could or would," said Casey, and,
turning to Sheila, asked for her father. A few minutes afterward he
strode off in search of him.
Farwell endeavoured to pick up the broken thread of conversation with
Sheila. But this proved difficult. She was preoccupied; and he himself
found Dunne's concluding words sticking in his memory. Did they hide a
sinister meaning? He disliked Dunne heartily, and he was jealous of him
besides, without having any definite cause; but he no longer underrated
him.
On his way to camp he turned the problem over and over in his mind, but
could make nothing of it, unless the words foreshadowed an attempt on
the temporary dam. But there seemed to be little chance for the success
of such an undertaking. Big acetylenes flared all night by the
makeshift structure, and two men with shotguns watched by it. The whole
camp was under almost martial law.
Farwell walked down to the river before he retired, to find the
watchman very wide awake and a torrent booming through the stone-faced
canal intake, to be distributed through a network of ditches upon the
company's lands miles away. Farwell, satisfied, instructed the watchmen
to keep a bright lookout, and turned in.
Once in the night he awoke with the impression that he had heard
thunder, but as the stars were shining he put it down to a dream and
went to sleep again. In the morning one of the watchmen reported a
distant sound resembling a blast, but he had no idea where it was.
Farwell attached no importance to it.
But in the middle of the morning his ditch foreman, Bergin, rode in
angry and profane. And his report caused similar manifestations in
Farwell.
The main canal and larger ditches had been blown up in half a dozen
places, usually where they wound around sidehills, and the released
water had wrought hideous damage to the banks, causing landslides,
washing thousands of tons of soil away, making it necessary to alter
the ditch line altogether or put in fluming where the damage had
occurred.
Nor was this all. Some three miles from the camp the main canal crossed
a deep coulée. To get the water across, a trestle had been erected and
a flume laid on it. The fluming was the largest size, patent-metal
stuff, half round, joined with rods, riveted and clinched. To carry the
volume of water there were three rows of this laid side by side,
cemented into the main canal at the ends. It had been a beautiful and
expensive job; and it reproduced finely in advertising matter. It was
now a wreck.
Farwell rode out with Bergin to the scene of devastation. Now trestle
and fluming lay in bent, rent, and riven ruin at the bottom of the
coulée. The canal vomited its contents indecently down the nearest
bank. A muddy river flowed down the coulée's bed. And the peculiarly
bitter part of the whole affair was that the water, following the
course of the coulée, ran back into the river again, whence it was
available for use by the ranchers. It was as if the river had never
been dammed. What water was diverted by the temporary dam got back to
the river by way of the canal and coulée, somewhat muddied, but equally
wet, and just as good as ever for irrigation purposes.
Bergin cursed afresh, but Farwell's anger was too bitter and deep for
mere profanity. He sat in his saddle scowling at the wreck.
Once more it had been put over on him. He thought he had taken every
possible precaution. Of course, ditches might be cut at any time; short
of a constant patrol there was no way of preventing that. But this
coulée was a thing which any man with eyes in his head and a brain back
of them might have seen and thought of. And he had allowed this costly
bit of fluming to lie open to destruction when it was the very key to
the situation, so far as the ranchers were concerned!
His instructions had been to take the water to bring them to a properly
humble frame of mind. It was part of his job to protect his employers'
property; that was what he was there for. He had taken ordinary
precautions, too, so far as the dam was concerned. But he had entirely
overlooked the fact, as obvious as that water runs downhill, that if
his canal were cut at the coulée its contents must flow back into the
river. Everything was now set back. With this second outrage land sales
would stop altogether. It was a sickening jolt. He thought of the
questions he would have to answer. He would be asked why he hadn't done
this. It would be no answer to point out that he had done that. People
were always so cursed wise after the event!
And then he remembered Casey Dunne's words. Dunne had said that he was
not getting enough water, had asked for more, had practically given him
warning. Now every rancher's ditches were running full, and all he had
to show for his work was a horrible mass of wreckage.
Farwell had disliked Dunne at first sight; now he hated him. He would
have liked to come to actual grips with him, to break that lean, wiry
body with his own tremendous strength, to bruise and batter that
quietly mocking face with his great fists.
But the worst of it all was that he had nothing to go on. There was not
a shred of evidence to connect Dunne with the destruction of the dam
and flume. The detective sent down by the company had looked wise but
had found out nothing. The only thing in the nature of a clew was a
moccasin track, and that led to young McCrae, whom, for Sheila's sake,
he did not wish to involve. He felt that through no fault of his own he
had made a mess of everything. The ranchers had won every round. As
Africa had been the grave of countless military reputations, so Farwell
saw his own repute interred along the Coldstream.
Something had to be done. He was tired of taking unavailing
precautions, of sitting passively waiting for attacks. In the nature of
things it was impossible to guard adequately works extending over miles
of uninhabited country. Guerilla warfare could not be met by regular
tactics.
As he scowled down at the muddy torrent an idea began to germinate in
his mind. The main thing was to crush these ranchers, to bring them to
their knees. After that all would be easy, there would be an end of
difficulties. The engineering problems were the least. He had a free
hand; he was backed by an enormous corporation which would go the
limit. He resolved to fight fire with fire--to give the ranchers a dose
of their own medicine.