MARTIAL LAW
The entire flow of the greater of the Two Forks streams lay harnessed
at last, after years of labor and an expenditure of millions. For
twenty miles there lay a lake where once a clear, gravel-bottomed
stream had flowed above the gorge of the mountain canyon. The gray
face of a man-made wall rose sheer a hundred feet above the original
bed of the stream, leaving it in part revealed; and this barrier
checked and stayed the once resistless flood against which an entire
mountain range had proved inefficient. Presently for hundreds of miles
each way the transmission lines would carry out power to those seeking
light, to those employing labor; and the used water would irrigate
lands far below.
Allied with this unit of the great dam was a lesser dam operating a
mill plant on the other Fork. Down this stream ship timbers once had
come. The camp of the reclamation engineers and construction men lay
upon a bench or plateau which once formed the bank of the stream upon
that side, now about half way up to the top of the great dam. The road
running up and down the valley ascended from this plateau to a
sufficient elevation to surmount the permanent water level above the
upper dam. On the opposite side rose a sheer and bare rock running
two-thirds up to the top of the mountain peak which here had shouldered
its way down as though in curiosity to look at the bottom of the gorge
itself. The great dam was anchored to the rock face on that side, and
it was there that the chutes and wells for the turbines were located,
as well as the spill gates which now were in temporary service. A wide
roadway of cement, with vast buttresses on each side, ran along the top
of the dam and looked down upon the abrupt surface of its lower face.
Here, and there, at either side of the dam, and at the original stream
level, stood low buildings of stone, to house the vast dynamos or care
for other phases of the tremendous industrial installation of the
National Government.
Here and there were stationed the armed guards, in the uniform of the
Army. They did sentry-go along the dam-top, and patrolled or watched
the lower levels of the works below the dam. They patrolled also the
street and the road above and below the camp.
Well paid human labor had erected this great dam, mixed with the
returned soldiers and a small per cent of labor sometimes sullen, with
no affection for its work. In time among such as these came agents of
a new and vast discontent, some who spoke of a "rule of reason,"
meaning thereby the crazed European rule of ignorant selfishness,
others who spoke of "violence" as the only remedy for labor against
capital. With what promises they deluded labor, with what hopes of any
change, with what possibilities of later benefits, with what chimeras
of an easier, unearned day, it matters not. They found listeners.
Against these covert forces working for the destruction of our
civilization, our Government developed an unsuspected efficiency,
sometimes through its department of justice, sometimes through a vast
and silent civilian body of detectives working all over the country and
again through its franker agencies of the military arm. Thus that able
engineer who had built the great power dam here at the Two Forks--a man
who had built a half score of railroads and laid piers for bridges
without number, and planned city monuments, with the boldest and most
fertile of imaginations, Friedrich Waldhorn his name, was a graduate of
our best institutions and those of Germany--long since had been watched
as closely as many another of less importance in charge of work
remotely or intimately concerned with the country's public resources.
Waldhorn--before the war an outspoken Socialist and free-thinker--may
have known that he was watched--must have known it when a young medical
officer given military duties quite outside his own profession, was put
over him in authority at the scene of his engineering triumph, and at
precisely the time of its climax. But the situation for Waldhorn was
this, that if he resigned and left the place he would only come the
more closely under immediate espionage. Whatever his motives, he
remained, sullen and uncommunicative.
Meanwhile the little camp sprawled in the sun, scattered along the
plateau on the side of the mountain gorge. Crude, unpainted, built of
logs or raw boards, it lay in the shadow for the greater part of the
day, deep down in the narrow cleft of the mountains, far out in the
wilderness. The great forest deepened and thickened, back of it, forty
miles into the high country.
Those who lived here in the canyon could not as yet understand the
nature of the thin blue veil which today obscured their scanty
sunlight, did not know that each minute of day was destroying trees
which had cost a thousand years to grow, which never in the knowledge
of man might be replaced. But when the party of Major Barnes came down
from Sim Gage's ranch, questions were answered. The forest had been
fired again. The soldiers swore the silent soldier oath of revenge.
Doctor Barnes did not pause even to help the women out of the car. He
hurried to the long, screened gallery in front of the residence and
office of Waldhorn, chief engineer.
Waldhorn met him at the door, well-fed, suave, polite, a burly man,
well-clad and bearing the marks of alertness and success. Always of
few words, he scarcely more than spoke at present, his mildly elevated
eyebrows making inquiry of the dusty man before him.
"Yes, Doctor, or--ah, Major?" he said, smilingly, insulting.
"Call it Major!" snapped Barnes. "I've come to tell you that I want
your house."
"Yes? When?"
"In two minutes."
"Why?"
"I want it for Government uses. A patient of mine has come down here
to stay a while--wife of one of my scouts."
"Well, now, my dear Major, I would not like to interfere with your
private graft in the practice of medicine in any way. But I'm engineer
in charge of this work, I fancy."
"Fancy something else while the fancying's good. Go on over to that
little log house, Waldhorn. You'll live there until we send you out."
"Send me out! What do you mean, sir?"
"This camp is under martial law. You're under arrest, if you like to
call it that way."
"You're going to arrest me? Why--what do you mean?"
"Call it what you like. But move, now, and don't waste my time."
"I beg pardon," drawled Waldhorn, smiling with a well-concealed sneer,
"but isn't this a trifle sudden? I'm willing to give up my place to
the ladies, of course, my dear Major, but I must ask some sort of
explanation as to this other procedure. Martial law? What is your
authority?"
"Call it Jehovah and the Continental Congress, my dear chap," said
Doctor Barnes, likewise drawling. "I'll take that up after a while.
I'm in charge here. If you go over there quietly to that other house
it may look like an act of courtesy. If you don't--it might be called
an act of God. Come, hurry--I can't talk here any longer."
Waldhorn saw two troopers coming at a fast walk from across the street,
saw that the eyes of Doctor Barnes watched his hand carefully.
Therefore, as though easily and naturally, he leaned with both his own
hands above his head resting against the jamb of the door.
"I suppose I'll have to charge this up to the fact that I'm of German
descent," said he. "I can't help that. I've lived here thirty years.
I'm as good a citizen as you, but I'll have to submit. Be sure I'm
going to take this up in the courts."
"Old stuff. Take it up where you damn please," said Barnes sharply.
"I'm as good an American as you are, too, even if my parents were _not_
born in Germany. Step outside."
He motioned to his men. "McQueston," he said, "watch him until I come
out."
"You're not going into my private rooms?--I forbid that. I'll never
forget that, you upstart!"
Doctor Barnes smiled. "I'll try to fix it so you won't." He stepped
on in across the gallery.
Waldhorn looked from the face of one to that of the other private
soldier who stood before him, and saw the cold mask not only of
discipline, but of more. Under their charge he marched over to the log
building indicated, and slammed the door behind him. The men stood one
on each side, out of range of the window.
Doctor Barnes was angry and frowning when he went back to the car to
drive it down to the door of the new quarters which had just been
vacated.
"Gee, Doc, you look sore," said Annie Squires casually. "Say, where do
you get the stuff you're pulling in here, anyway?"
"Never mind! You go in there and clean up the rooms and make a place
for Mrs. Gage. You'll find everything for cooking and housekeeping.
Don't touch anything else. I'm taking his Chink over to my place."
"Are you going there with the women?" he inquired, turning to Sim Gage.
Sim colored. "No. Wid and me'll be over with the soldiers. We're
going to stick together."
"Better bunk in my shack, then. Go over to the barracks, both of you,
and get rifles and an extra pistol each. I want both of you on patrol."
"You see," he explained, as he drew the two apart, "we don't know what
those anarchist ruffians up there may do. They may drop down here by
either fork any time, day or night."
He spoke briefly also to Mary Gage before he handed her in at the door
of her new domicile:
"Sim and Wid both think that only one car went back up the road above
the ranch. That means that the other car is up in the mountains
between the Two Forks, probably in the Reserve. For a time there
probably won't anything happen. You mustn't be scared--we're just
taking the proper precautions now. This is very valuable Government
property."
"Are we at the dam here?" asked Mary Gage. "I can hear the water--it's
very heavy, isn't it?"
"It never stops. We don't hear it, because we're used to it--I don't
think it will bother you very long. We'll try to make you comfortable."
He turned, offering her his arm, on which he placed her hand. He was a
trifle surprised to see that Sim Gage without a word had passed to the
other side of his wife, also giving her an arm. He walked along slowly
and gravely, limping, silent as he had been all the afternoon, but made
no sign of his own discomfort, indeed did not speak at all.
"Both of you are fit for the hospital. Well, all right, it may be a
good place for you after all." As he spoke, frowning, Doctor Barnes
stood back and allowed Annie to lead Mary Gage into the vacated rooms
of the chief engineer.
"Doc, what did you mean when you said that there just now?" asked Sim
Gage, when they turned back from the door. "About her and the
hospital?"
"I've brought her down here, Sim," said Doctor Barnes directly,
"principally because, with her consent and yours, I want to see if I
can't do something for her eyes."
"Her eyes! Why--what do you mean?"
"There's one chance in a hundred that she'll see again."
Doctor Allen Barnes, his face unshaven, dirty, haggard, a man looking
neither major nor physician now, turned squarely to the man whom he
addressed. "I don't know for sure," said he, "but then, it may be
true."
"Her eyes?-- Her eyes!"
Doctor Barnes felt on his arm as savage a grip as he ever had known.
Sim Gage's face changed as he turned away.
"Good God A'mighty! If she could _see_!" His own face seemed suddenly
pale beneath its grime.