THE LETTER FROM WASHINGTON
In spite of his weariness, Roger could not sleep. He scarcely had closed
his eyes when the memory of Dick's curious ugliness made him open them
and stare into the darkness. What in the world could induce a seemingly
pleasant fellow like Dick to go off apparently without cause into a deep
seated grouch?
Roger shook himself. What a fool he was to lie awake over a thing as
trivial as this. All men were moody. Roger told himself that, excepting
Ernest, every man he knew had unaccountable grouches. Then he closed his
eyes and opened them again. Would Dick row Charley? It was unthinkable
that a man should row a woman of her type. Roger had discovered that he
admired his old time playmate very much. She was so calm, so clear
headed and keen thinking. With all the dignity of her splendid boyish
physique added to her splendid intelligence, it was very unpleasant to
think of her having to submit to bullying.
Roger turned over with a sigh. After a time of tossing, moved by an
unaccountable impulse, he crept out of bed and peered from the tent flap
toward the ranch house. A faint speck of light flecked the darkness. He
scratched a match and looked at his watch. It was half past two. He went
back to bed, where he lay for a half hour, wondering what was going on
at the ranch house.
This was an unusual proceeding for Roger. Like most only children Roger
had grown up self-centered and more or less selfish. His work had tended
to increase these characteristics. Not since his mother's death, with
the single exception of his thoughtful affection for Mamma Wolf, had
Roger spent so much of himself on another's problem as he now was
spending on Charley's.
He rose again. The light still shone from the adobe. He slipped into his
clothes and noiselessly left the tent. It was nipping cold and he walked
as fast as the heavy sand permitted. As he neared the ranch, a second
light appeared and moved down to the corral. A few minutes later Roger
had reached the bars.
"Dick," he cried softly to the dark figure that was pulling the harness
off one of the horses. "It's Roger! Anything the matter? I saw the
light." The figure dropped the harness and ran over to the bar. As the
"bug" light caught her face, Roger saw that it was Charley.
"Oh, Roger!" she exclaimed. "I'm so glad, so glad to see you!"
He vaulted over the bar.
"Hush," she said, "Dick's sick and I've just gotten him to sleep."
"Sick! That accounts for his grouch then! Why couldn't he say so! Shall
I go for the doctor, Charley?"
"No! No! He's subject to these attacks. Did--did Ernest mind his being
cross?" In the candlelight Charley looked anxiously into Roger's face.
"Not a bit. He just wondered about it because the change came on so
suddenly. What is it? His stomach?"
"Yes, his stomach," replied Charley.
"Sure you don't want me to go for the doctor?"
Charley's voice trembled a little. "Very sure! But you can hang up the
harness for me while I hold the light." Then, as Roger obeyed with
alacrity, she asked: "What made you come up this hour of the night?"
"I couldn't sleep. Then I began to think about your brother's grouch. I
got up and took a look in this direction and saw the light. I don't know
just why I came. Restless, I guess!"
He tossed the lines over a peg and came back to take the lantern from
Charley. As the light flashed on her face he saw that she looked very
tired and that her lip was quivering. A wordless surprise swept over
Roger. The feeling he had had that Charley was like an interesting boy
whom he would wish to keep for a friend was rudely shocked by that
quivering lip. Only a girl's lip could tremble so.
"Something _is_ wrong," he said, anxiously. "Let me help you."
"You have helped me, more than you can know. Go home to bed now or you
won't be fit for work to-morrow. And that work is just about the most
important thing in this valley."
Roger could think of no adequate reply. He lowered the bars for Charley
and put them up again. The two stood in silent contemplation of the
desert night. The night wind was dying as dawn approached. Above and
below was one perfect blending of dusky blue, with only the faint fleck
of star silver to mark the sky from the earth. Roger's nerves quickened
to the wonder of the night. He turned to Charley.
"I don't feel as if I'd ever lived before," he half whispered.
"I know," replied the girl. "I don't believe a person could be a real
agnostic in the desert, do you?"
"No," said Roger, simply.
"You must go to bed," repeated Charley. "And you mustn't worry any more
about me." She turned to run quickly up the trail to the adobe.
Roger started campward.
He was wakened later in the morning by the sound of conversation.
"I'm sorry, madam, but I'm no cook, and I dislike olive oil, anyhow. If
you'll eat the pancakes as I fry 'em, in bacon fat, you're more than
welcome to all you wish. But if you want olive oil used, you must fry
them yourself."
"Where's the other young man?" asked Mrs. von Minden.
"Hey! Rog!" roared Ernest. "You're wanted."
Roger sat up on the edge of his cot with a yawn. As he did so, his eye
fell on the unopened letters on the trunk.
Without waiting to dress he opened the one postmarked Washington. He
read it through twice, then very deliberately rose and pulled on his
clothing. His face was pale beneath the tan as he stepped out into the
morning sun.
"Ernest, here's some bad news!" he called. "Come over to the tent a
moment."
As Ernest hurried up, Roger said slowly, "Austin is dead and the
Smithsonian Institute says it doesn't know anything about the deal with
me."
Ernest dropped the pancake turner he was holding. "Good God!" He read
the letter, then looked up into Roger's somber face. "Dropped dead in
New York three weeks ago. Poor chap!"
Roger nodded. "But what was he up to? The writer of that letter says
that although the Smithsonian was interested in a general way in our
work, Austin had no authority to go ahead. Now, where did he get the
money?"
"I suppose he was afraid some one else would get in on it while the
Smithsonian was hesitating, so he funded up himself. I suppose they'd
have paid him back. You remember his cursing out the delays and the red
tape that hampered everything connected with the government. I thought
he was hipped on the subject, but now--"
"What makes you think all that?" asked Roger.
"Well, don't you remember in St. Louis, when he was ordering stuff from
the Condit Iron Works he said he'd pay the bill himself, to get the
stuff started?"
Roger shook his head. "I don't remember. But I guess you're right. Lord,
what a good scout he was to have so much faith in me! I wonder how much
he spent on us, and whether his wife is provided for?"
"That won't be hard to find out. What we've got to worry about now is
the situation with the Smithsonian. They can't realize how far we've
gone."
"Yes, they do," replied Roger. "That letter from, what does he sign
himself--Hampton?--is in reply to the report I sent Austin from Archer's
Springs, two weeks ago. Why, they've got to go on with it!"
"If they won't, we are up against it," groaned Ernest. "I don't want to
ask father for money, and you and the Dean have tried every one in the
world."
"And who the devil wants you to ask your father for money for me?" Roger
shouted. "Haven't we got practically all the material we need, bought
and paid for? We don't need anything except food. We'll do the work
ourselves."
Ernest's gentle voice interrupted. "But, Rog--"
"Don't _but_ me," roared Roger. "I tell you nothing shall stop me now!
If it takes twenty years, I'll go through with this. I'd rather cut my
throat than not go on with it. I've waited for five years for this
chance. The death of one man won't stop me, nor the indifference of some
fool government clerk. This plant is going to be built."
"What I started to say," said Ernest quietly, "when you began your
brain-storm, was that if you'd sell your laboratory equipment up home it
would guarantee us food for six months. The Dean would attend to it for
you."
Roger sat down on his cot, rather suddenly. "That's a good idea, Ern,"
he said, meekly.
Ernest picked up the pancake turner. "I'm with you to a finish in this,
Roger. You don't have to jaw me, you know."
"Sorry, old man," muttered Roger.
"It's all right," replied Ernest. "I'll finish getting breakfast. We've
got all day to talk this over. One idea occurs to me. Perhaps this man
Hampton who signs this letter would be less cold to the project if he
had details. Why don't you give him the whole story, both of the plant
and of our relationship to Austin?"
"That's a good hunch," exclaimed Roger, immensely cheered up by the
suggestion. "Well," with a sigh, "I might have known I was having too
much luck."
"It's the old lady. She's a bird of ill omen. I knew it the minute I saw
her, this morning. Come out as soon as you can, Rog. I don't dare to be
alone with her."
Roger grinned, but did not hasten his shaving. Ernest could be
facetious. After all, the building of the plant was not Ernest's dream.
Roger was shocked by the news of Austin's death, but the shock was not
due to grief. Austin simply represented opportunity to the young
inventor. A sudden fear was clutching at his heart lest now the plant
would never be completed. Roger had learned much since his arrival in
the desert. He had begun to realize that the desert fights ferociously
any attempt to subdue her. He knew now that it was going to take much
longer than the outside margin he had allowed to build the plant. If a
driven well failed, he must try out the Prebles'. Perhaps Dick's
knowledge of irrigation would prove to be sketchy and that water supply
too would prove inadequate. He believed still that his plans for the
plant itself would not have to be changed.
"I heard every word you two said," Mrs. von Minden's voice rose
suddenly. "You needn't worry at all. I'll concentrate for you
immediately after breakfast."
"In that case, we are ruined," Roger muttered, smiling in spite of
himself, as he dropped the tent flap behind him.
The lady visitor was sitting on a bench beside the table in the cook
tent, contemplating a cup of coffee and a plate of crackers.
"Was it your idea, madam," said Ernest, attacking a pile of pancakes
some ten inches high, "that your husband would find you in this camp?"
"So the Yogis say," replied Mrs. von Minden.
"Why don't you fry yourself some cakes, Mrs. von Minden?" asked Roger.
"Part of my creed is never to prepare food for myself if it is possible
to get some one else to do it. A complete inertia is a vital step toward
Nirvana."
Roger grunted. "Then you'll never find Nirvana in this camp, I can tell
you."
"Good morning!" cried Felicia, appearing suddenly in the doorway.
"Dicky is sick," she announced, "and Charley sent me down here for the
day. She said please for you not to come up because Dicky is so cross,
she doesn't want any one around."
Ernest and Roger looked at each other.
"I think I'd better go up," said Roger.
"No, I'll go," insisted Ernest.
"Charley doesn't want you," cried Felicia. "She says so and she always
means what she says."
"Oh, you've found that out, have you?" asked Ernest. "Well, have a
flapjack; my cook is an artist."
"I've had breakfast, thank you," replied the little girl. "I'm going out
and look at the things in the wagon."
"Go to it!" exclaimed Ernest. Then to Roger, "I see you've struck water
at last. That news evidently impressed you less than other events, last
night."
Roger nodded. "There's not much of it and it's vile to taste. But it'll
take care of our camp wants and the engine. Charley suggested that if we
didn't strike an adequate supply when we drove the well farther, we'd
better set the plant up at their place. They'd be our first customers."
"Better not take her up till you've done a lot of experimenting down
here," said Ernest, quickly.
"I don't expect to do much experimenting," replied Roger. "But I've
started here and I'll keep on here, especially since this unexpected mix
up."
Mrs. von Minden, who seemed to have been lost in thought ever since
Felicia's appearance, now spoke suddenly, but with closed eyes.
"No, don't leave this spot. You are destined to great good luck here."
The two men looked at each other. Ernest shrugged his shoulders and
Roger sighed and asked:
"Did the pump come?"
"Yes, and the hose and the pipe for the condenser. We brought that and
the glass, the cement, more lumber, and the drum of sulphur dioxide.
There are two more big loads down there."
Roger nodded. "I'll take my turn at it to-morrow. Did you see Schmidt?"
"Yes, and he suggested that if we'd tie Preble's team to our wagon, he'd
drive a load back for us, so only you would need to come in."
"We can't afford to have Schmidt come out here now," sighed Roger.
"Let him come!" murmured the visitor, still with closed eyes. "He will
be provided for. It's a great work and must go on."
Roger jerked himself to his feet. "Let's go outside, Ern," he exclaimed.
Madam opened her eyes for a moment to say, "Send the child in to wash
the dishes!"
Ernest turned a chuckle into a hiccough and followed Roger over to the
well. "Roger, it won't cost much to keep him for a week and that
provides for getting Hackett's team back and stopping that expense."
Roger nodded. "Let's leave those dishes on the table till she does 'em
or we have to get lunch."
"O. K.! There she goes into her tent. Rog, she's plain crazy. Well, what
do we tackle to-day?"
"We'd better get the pump ready and then start to build the engine
house. I want it big enough to include the laboratory."
"Right-o! Dick suggested we save lumber by making the engine house of
adobe. He says the sand storms that'll blow next month will ruin our
apparatus if we don't cover it well."
"Where'll we get the adobe?" asked Roger.
"He said that that layer of clay we struck about four feet down in the
well is extra fine adobe and that he'll show us how to handle it. I
wonder how long he'll be sick, poor chap! Was Dick ever sick this way
before, Felicia?" he called.
"Lots of times!" the child called back. "Oh, Ernest, here's a little,
little bundle that's so soft it can't be a machine. Can't I open it? It
might be for me."
"Go ahead!" replied Ernest.
"If the adobe won't take too long, I like the idea," said Roger. "But
with our new financial problem, we're working against time."
"Oh, isn't it awful. Nothing but dish cloths for Charley!" shrieked
Felicia.
"She'll have all the small items in those wagons in a hard knot,"
exclaimed Roger. "Felicia! Come and help unpack the pump, there's a good
girl!"
When the wagon had been unloaded, the two men began the installation of
the pump. By noon they had not finished the job. Roger had infinite
patience with machinery. Ernest practically none.
"You'd have kicked the face off any human being that acted as mulish as
this pump, Rog," growled Ernest. "Hang the thing! Let's throw it away
and get a good one."
Roger laughed. "And you'd have no end of patience with a pupil as onery
as this pump, Ern. It's all right. We'll have it going in a moment."
And go she did, to the excited admiration of Felicia, who had been an
attentive audience during the entire performance. Mrs. von Minden did
not leave the confines of her tent until mid-afternoon, when she spent
some time preparing herself a meal. After lunch, Ernest would have gone
to offer his services at the adobe, had not Felicia protested to the
point of tears, that Charley would be angry. Somewhat to their own
amusement the two men gave in to the vehement small girl, and the ground
work for the absorber being complete, they began to clear space for the
engine house and consumer. Felicia with a kitchen knife and the pancake
turner, toiled away after the two men all the afternoon.
About five o'clock Ernest took her home. He was gone some time and Roger
had supper ready on his return. Ernest had fed the horses and milked
for Charley, who said that Dick would be around on the morrow.
"Then I'll write my letter to-night and start in with the two teams at
daylight," said Roger. "You finish grubbing off for the condenser,
Ernest, and make a carpenter's bench. And try not to kill our visitor."
But the visitor was invisible all the evening, nor had she appeared
before Roger left the next morning. He was well on his way toward
Archer's Springs by daylight. The wagons were empty and the horses
fresh, so that he reached the railroad station by mid-afternoon and had
the wagons loaded by dark ready for the return trip.
At the Chinese restaurant where he went for his supper he saw Schmidt.
"Well!" exclaimed the German. "You vas here at last, nicht wahr!"
Roger nodded. "I hear you are coming up for a visit."
"Visit? No! No! To stay. Ya! To stay!"
Roger shook his head. "Can't feed you, old man!" and then, before he
knew it, he was telling the sympathetic German of the Smithsonian's
dereliction.
"These American governments!" groaned Schmidt. "Vat a stupidness! In
Germany such a foolishness is impossible. Vell, I come for a veek and
bring my own grub. I haf a leetle money, enough to feed me. Vat I lack
is vork--vork to keep me from going crazy with the heim-weh in this
ocean of sand, and some one mit brain to talk to. The baggage-man--the
storekeeper--the Chinaman--Gott! I know their every mind like a primer,
so long have I talked to them."
There was to Roger something irresistibly likeable about Schmidt's
sentimental, jovial face.
"Come ahead, then!" he said. "You'll have to bunk in the cook-tent, and
bring your own bed with you, but we'll be delighted to have you with
us."
Schmidt rubbed his stubby hands together. "I go at vonce and pack up,"
he exclaimed. "Ve vill drive by my place in the morning and pick me up,"
and he started for the door.
At five o'clock the next morning the two heavily laden wagons crawled
out on the desert trail, campwards. It was slow going, particularly
after they struck the deep sand which began ten miles out of the town.
Gustav Schmidt was rather silent when they stopped at noon, to water and
feed their horses and to eat the lunch the Chinaman had put up for them.
He was heavily coated with dust and his face had burned badly.
Half way through the second sandwich he said: "Ve'll get even with that
sun, eh? Ve harness him and make him pump vater on us and on this damn
sand, eh? Gott, vat a country!"
"What's the matter with this country?" asked Roger, blowing the sand off
a ripe olive. "It's exactly the kind of country I want to make solar
power with and it's exactly the kind of country you want to cure your
bad lungs. If you don't like it--"
"Vait! Vait!" interrupted Schmidt. "I know vat you vill say. If I don't
like it, go back to Germany. Some day I do go back, but not yet. Ven I
go, I try to take you and young Wolf mit me. This is the land of
nature's opportunity. In the Fatherland, the government gif the
opportunity. This is the land for the adventure, for the exploitation,
nicht wahr? Germany the land for the thinker, like you? Nicht wahr?"
Roger shook his head. Nevertheless, his eyes were wistful. Many times
during the afternoon he thought of Schmidt's remark. Roger's education
and reading had long ago persuaded him that Germany was the land for the
thinker, that there a man would not have to struggle for ten years to
give birth to an idea such as his. He wondered why he never had cut
loose and gone to the Fatherland. Some subconscious sense of obligation
to his own country, he supposed. And yet, he thought bitterly what a
fool he had been! Surely there could be no passion, not even the love
for women, as deep-rooted, as overwhelming and as racially right as a
man's desire to express his dreams. And that expression was denied him
in his own country unless he put up a fight that depleted his creative
force, surely by half.
He sighed heavily and yet his thoughts returned to the little new power
plant with a vague heart warming as though already it spelled home to
him.
Toward sundown, a curiously picturesque group passed them on the trail.
Half a dozen squaws, with bare black heads and capes of red bandannas
sewed together, were plodding toward town laden with ollas. Roger pulled
up his team and called to them. Dick had told him to buy one of the
great Indian water jars at his first opportunity.
"Will you sell me one?" he asked.
The oldest squaw nodded and held up a fine two gallon jar. It was just
the color of the desert sand and was ornamented with swastikas and
triangles in lines of vivid black.
"How much?" asked Roger.
"Eight bits," she said.
Roger dropped a dollar into her slender brown palm. The squaw flashed
white teeth at him and a younger woman pressed forward holding up an
olla no bigger than a teacup, a duplicate in design of the one he had
just bought.
"I'll take that for Felicia," he murmured. "How much?"
"Two bits."
He tossed her the quarter. "You make 'em camp up there?" asked the old
squaw.
"Yes," replied Roger. "Come and call on us, ladies."
"We bring 'em baskets, maybe," replied the squaw.
Roger nodded and started the horses on, looking back from time to time
for pure pleasure in the beauty of those scarlet fluttering capes.
They reached the camp about ten o'clock and were vociferously welcomed
by Ernest, who, before taking the horses up to the corral, insisted on
showing them his day's work.
"Nothing doing on the carpenter's bench," he said, flashing the
"lightning bug" toward the site of the engine house. "Look here. Dick
came over right after breakfast and we were hard at this all day."
All the lumber in the camp had been requisitioned to make adobe molds.
"We mixed the adobe with that clutter of broken hay that the glass came
in," explained Ernest. "Dick says the Mexicans use stable scrapings,
but I couldn't stomach that. You see you just peg the boards up in the
sand, a foot apart and pack them full of the adobe. That'll be the
thickness of the house. Then when the strips are dried, we'll cut them
the length we want. Two days more work will give us all we need."
"Vat a country!" exclaimed Gustav.
Ernest and Roger laughed. "I take it Dick is O. K. again," said Roger.
"Quite himself. Said Charley was used up, but she came down late this
afternoon with Felicia and she said she was feeling fine. Felicia made
those little bricks yonder. Charley has put her into overalls. She's
simply ravishing in them."
"And how is your guest?" asked Roger. "I've been telling Schmidt about
her. He's heard of Von Minden at Archer's. And it seems she outfitted
there. Claimed to have come up from Phoenix and said she had an
engagement with us."
"Well, she was invisible, practically until noon to-day. Then she
brought her rocking chair here where Dick and I were at work and
concentrated on us all the afternoon."
"Concentrated? Vat iss concentrated?" asked Gustav.
"Well, she rocks in the chair, holding the pink umbrella till Dick
lashed it to the chair back for her. She keeps her eyes closed and
doesn't speak, though she did explain that she was talking to her
mother, who is on the seventh plane, concerning the successful erection
of the engine house. Dick seems quite smitten by her. He gazes on her
and gazes as if fascinated, then he goes off behind the living tent and
laughs."
"My God, what a country!" groaned Roger.
"I've got a bed fixed up for you in the cook tent, Schmidt," said
Ernest. "You'll be safe if none of Mrs. von Minden's spirit friends
bother you. She told me that she heard them playing the accordion in the
cook tent last night."
"I love music," was Schmidt's response, and the three men went laughing
to bed. Roger wakened in the night but once. Through the open tent flap
he beheld Mrs. von Minden rocking silently in the starlight before her
tent.
"She's going to get on my nerves," he murmured and fell asleep again.
Dawn was just breaking over the mountains the next morning when Roger
entered the cook tent. He was greeted by Gustav, who was purple with the
cold but grinning cheerfully, and the smell of coffee.
"It vas not so soft, sleeping on Frau Nature's heart in the desert,
nicht wahr!" he exclaimed. "Coyotes vere eating the garbage last night
mit gulps and snortings and I slept not. It vas not the music I had been
promised. So I make the breakfast early."
"I didn't sleep well myself the first night or two," said Roger. "Desert
silence makes a lot of noise to a town-bred man. Hey!"--going to the
door--"Ern! You lazy Dutchman! The new cook'll leave if you don't get up
for your breakfast."
Gustav and Roger were half through the meal when Ernest appeared.
"Mud-pie making is hard work," he groaned, sliding stiffly onto the
bench beside Roger.
"I certainly hate to make adobe brick when every day counts so," said
Roger. "Let's use sheet iron."
"It'll be better to take Dick's advice," insisted Ernest. "He says the
dust storms are frightful here and the heat worse. The adobe shelter
will be grateful on many counts."
"Ve'll all vork hard," said Gustav, "and the 'dobe vill be up strong,
before ve know it. Ven it is done, it is done good, and that is right. I
vash the damn dishes. You go make the mud mixing. Then I come."
"We're going to hate to let that chap go when his visit's up," said
Roger, as he and Ernest began work on the adobe.
"Maybe we won't have to let him go," replied Ernest. "You stir the mess
up, Rog, and I'll put it into the molds. Dick is going on with his
grading, but he'll be over in a day or so and show us how to begin the
house building."
"The trouble with you is, Ern, that you're flighty-minded. You're tired
of making a Sun Plant and all excitement over building a mud house."
"I wouldn't have a single track mind like yours for a million dollars,"
returned Ernest cheerfully.
Roger grinned and presently began to whistle as he worked. Mrs. von
Minden proved to be an exceedingly unexacting guest. After it was
evident to her that her hosts had not the slightest intention of doing
special cooking for her she did her own. She ate only two meals a day,
preparing one at mid-morning and one at sundown. The remainder of the
day she spent within her tent, reading or rocking in her chair,
concentrating on the camp work. She seldom talked and then only on the
matter of what she called Yogi-ism.
Gustav took a violent dislike to her and refused to work if she looked
at him. Roger declared that on the next trip to town he was going to
telegraph Phoenix and see if she had not escaped from an insane
asylum. But Ernest only laughed.
"Poor old soul! She's not crazy except on her religion. Let her alone.
She's no expense and no trouble!"
"She gives me the willies," insisted Roger. "I never knew before that I
had a temperament."
"Gosh, I could have broken that to you twenty-five years ago," said
Ernest. "Only I supposed obvious facts were as plain to you as to other
people. Here she comes for her afternoon's work, bless her, pink
umbrella, pink nighty and all. What a lucky dog Von Minden is."
Roger chuckled and joined Gustav, who moved hastily to continue his
brick making back of the lady's chair.
Working so, he was facing the ranch and presently he saw Charley cross
the alfalfa field to join Dick. A moment later, the two figures were
following the team across the field. Next Felicia flashed down the
trail, a tiny dot of blue, and shortly he saw Dick lift her to one of
the horse's backs. Roger's mind harked back to old days. He recalled
Charley's father giving her and him just such a ride over the fertile
corn fields of home. And he pondered for a moment on the thing called
fate.
There was a little hand that clung to his as he and Charley scuffled up
the dusty road to the farm. There was Dick's ruddy boyish face, sternly
disapproving. There was a childish treble, "I shall love Charley. She'll
take such care of me as never was on sea nor land. Aunt May says so."
And finally there was the woman's voice. "Go home to bed now, or you
won't be fit for work to-morrow. And that work is about the most
important thing in this valley now."
And now, Charley drove a team over a desert field, while he--what was he
doing after all? Roger rose abruptly and lighting his pipe began to
stroll aimlessly around the camp. Was this dream that had worked itself
into the very fiber of his nature worth while? The desert, shimmering in
endless silence about him, seemed very far from that world of machinery
that he had worshiped so long. Supposing that Charley did bring the
desert to bearing. Supposing that he did harness the sun and start an
empire to building in these barren wastes. To what avail?
Though his dream were the very foundation of their existence, men would
fight here for the supremacy of riches, just as of old. And why not?
Through the welter of cut-throat striving man had won his intelligence.
Who was he to endeavor to lessen that competition?
How restless, how discontented he had been for nearly ten years! Was he
not missing the best of life and was not happiness the real goal of
living? And did not men get the only real joy from wife and child? Did
any work that did not focus round these two bring real content?
A sudden swelling of his heart, a sudden rush of blood through his
brain, a sudden thrill of his lean strong body that seemed to extend to
the very heart of the desert, brought Roger to pause in his walking. He
gazed for a long moment at the little blue figure astride the horse, and
at the tall figure in khaki beside Dick.
The March afternoon was hot but with a clear tang that was as
exhilarating as winter frost. The range back of the ranch house was
brown where the sky line shone clear. But the gashed and eroded sides of
the mountains were filled with drifts of purple clouds that melted now
in soft blue billows into the sky, now in ragged streams of crimson into
canyons black in the distance. The little sounds of the camp were as
nothing. The pygmy figures in the alfalfa field were infinitesimal. A
new sense of the immensity of the universe poured into Roger's soul with
devastating force and for the first time in his life Roger realized his
own lack of importance.
A moment of this and then the instinct that has lifted man above the
brutes spoke in him again. He would not belong to life only through
children. He would make himself immortal through his work, work by which
men should live and think and have their being for ages to come.
With a long sigh, Roger tossed his black hair back from his face and
returned to his brick making.