LEVELS AND SLANTS
At sunrise the next morning Blake screwed his level on its tripod and
set up the instrument about a hundred yards away from the ranch house.
Ashton held the level rod for him on a spike driven into the foot of
the nearest post of the front porch. Blake called the spike a
bench-mark. For convenience of determining the relative heights of the
points along his lines of levels, he designated this first "bench" in
his fieldbook as "elevation 1,000."
From the porch he ran the line of level "readings" up the slope to the
top of the divide between Plum Creek and Dry Fork and from there
towards the waterhole on Dry Fork. At noon Isobel and Mrs. Blake drove
out to them in the buckboard, bringing a hot meal in an improvised
fireless-cooker.
"And we came West to rough-it!" groaned Blake, his eyes twinkling.
"You can camp at the waterhole where Lafe did, and I'll send Kid out
for that bobcat," suggested the girl. "You could roast him, hair and
all."
"What! roast Gowan?" protested Blake. "Let me tell you, Miss
Chuckie--you and my wife and Ashton may like him that much, but I
don't!"
"You need not worry, Mr. Tenderfoot," the girl flashed back at him.
"Whenever it comes to a hot time, Kid always gets in the first fire,
without waiting to be told."
"Don't I know it?" exclaimed Ashton. "Maybe you haven't noticed this
hole in my hat, Mrs. Blake. He put a bullet through it."
"But it's right over your temple, Lafayette!" replied Mrs. Blake.
"Lafe was lifting his some-berero to me, and Kid did it to haze
him--only a joke, you know," explained Isobel. "Of course Lafe was in
no danger. It was different, though, when somebody--we think it was
his thieving guide--took several rifle shots at him. Tell them about
it, Lafe."
Ashton gave an account of the murderous attack, more than once
checking himself in a natural tendency to embellish the exciting
details.
"Oh! What if the man should come back and shoot at us?" shuddered Mrs.
Blake, drawing her baby close in her arms.
"No fear of that," asserted Isobel. "Kid found that he had fled
towards the railroad. That proves it must have been the guide. He
would never dare come back after such a crime."
"If he should, I always carry my rifle, as you see," remarked Ashton;
adding, with a touch of bravado, "I made him run once, and I would
again."
"I'm glad Miss Chuckie is sure he will not come back," said Blake. "I
don't fancy anyone shooting at me that way."
"Timid Mr. Blake!" teased the girl. "Genevieve has been telling me how
you faced a lion with only a bow and arrow."
"Had to," said Blake. "He'd have jumped on me if I had turned or
backed off.--Speaking about camping at that waterhole, I believe we'll
do it, Ashton, if it's the same thing to you. It would save the time
that would be lost coming and going to the ranch."
"Save time?" repeated Isobel. "Then of course we'll bring out a tent
and camp kit for you tomorrow. Genevieve and I can ride or drive up to
the waterhole each day, to picnic with you."
"It will be delightful," agreed Mrs. Blake.
"You ride on ahead and wait for us in the shade," said her husband.
"We'll knock off for the day when we reach that dolerite dike above
the waterhole.--If you are ready, Ashton, we'll peg along."
He started off to set up his level as briskly as at dawn, though the
midday sun was so hot that he had to shade the instrument with his
handkerchief to keep the air-bubble from outstretching its scale. His
wife and the girl drove on up Dry Fork to the waterhole.
Mrs. Blake was outstretched on her back, fast asleep, and Isobel was
playing with the baby under the adjoining tree, when at last the
surveyors came up on the other side of the creek and ended their day's
run with the establishment of a bench-mark on the top of the dike
above the pool. Blake seemed as fresh as in the morning. He took a
moderate drink of water dipped up in the brim of his hat, and without
wakening his wife, sat down beside her to "figure up" his fieldbook.
Ashton had come down to the pool panting from heat and exertion. It
was the first time that he had walked more than half a mile since
coming to the ranch, for he had immediately fallen into the cowboy
practice of saddling a horse to go even short distances. He had his
reward for his work when, having soused his hot head in the pool and
drunk his fill, he came up to rest in the shade of Isobel's tree. Very
considerately the baby fell asleep. To avoid disturbing him and his
mother, the young couple talked in low tones and half whispers very
conducive to intimacy.
Ashton did his utmost to improve his opportunity. Without openly
speaking his love, he allowed it to appear in his every look and
intonation. The girl met the attack with banter and raillery and
adroit shiftings of the conversation whenever his ardent inferences
became too obvious. Yet her evasion and her teasing could not always
mask her maidenly pleasure over his adoration of her loveliness, and
an occasional blush betrayed to him that his wooing was not
altogether unwelcome.
He was in the seventh heaven when Mrs. Blake awoke from her
health-giving sleep and her husband closed his fieldbook. The girl
promptly dashed her suitor back to earth by dropping him for the
engineer.
"Mr. Blake! You can't have figured it out already?" she exclaimed.
"What do you find?"
"Only an 'if,' Miss Chuckie," he answered. "If water can be stored or
brought by ditch to this elevation, practically all Dry Mesa can be
irrigated. Our bench-mark there on the dike is more than two hundred
feet above that spike we drove into your porch post."
"Is that all you've found out today?"
"All for today," said Blake. "I could have left this line of levels
until later, but I thought I might as well get through with them."
"You would not have run them if you had thought they would be
useless," she stated, perceiving the point with intuitive acuteness.
"I like to clean up my work as I go along," he replied. "If you wish
to know, I have thought of a possible way to get water enough for the
whole mesa. It depends on two 'ifs.' I shall be certain as to one of
them within the next two days. The other is the question of the depth
of Deep Canyon. If I had a transit, I could determine that by a
vertical angle,--triangulation. As it is, I probably shall have to go
down to the bottom."
"Go down to the bottom of Deep Canyon?" cried the girl.
"Yes," he answered in a matter-of-course tone. "A big ravine runs
clear down to the bottom, up beyond where your father said you first
met Ashton. I think it is possible to get down that gulch.--Suppose we
hitch up? We'll make the ranch just about supper-time."
Ashton hastened to bring in the picketed horses. When they were
harnessed Isobel fetched the sleeping baby and handed him to his
mother; but she did not take the seat beside her.
"You drive, Lafe," she ordered. "I'm going to ride behind with Mr.
Blake. It's such fun bouncing."
All protested in vain against this odd whim. The girl plumped herself
in on the rear end of the buckboard and dangled her slender feet with
the gleefulness of a child.
"Mr. Blake will catch me if I go to jolt off," she declared.
The engineer nodded with responsive gayety and seated himself beside
her. As the buckboard rattled away over the rough sod, they made as
merry over their jolts and bounces as a pair of school-children on a
hayrack party.
Mrs. Blake sought to divert Ashton from his disappointment, but he
had ears only for the laughing, chatting couple behind him. The fact
that Blake was a married man did not prevent the lover from giving way
to jealous envy. Chancing to look around as he warned the hilarious
pair of a gully, he saw the girl grasp Blake's shoulder. Natural as
was the act, his envy flared up in hot resentment. Except on their
drive to Stockchute, she had always avoided even touching his hand
with her finger tips; yet now she clung to the engineer with a grasp
as familiar as that of an affectionate child. Nor did she release her
clasp until they were some yards beyond the gully.
Mrs. Blake had seen not only the expression that betrayed Ashton's
anger but also the action that caused it. She raised her fine
eyebrows; but meeting Ashton's significant glance, she sought to pass
over the incident with a smile. He refused to respond. All during the
remainder of the drive he sat in sullen silence. Genevieve bent over
her baby. Behind them the unconscious couple continued in their
mirthful enjoyment of each other and the ride.
When the party reached the ranch, the girl must have perceived
Ashton's moroseness had she not first caught sight of her father. He
was standing outside the front porch, his eyes fixed upon the corner
post in a perplexed stare.
"Why, Daddy," she called, "what is it? You look as you do when playing
chess with Kid."
"Afraid it's something that'll annoy Mr. Blake," replied the cowman.
"What is it?" asked Blake, who was handing his wife from the
buckboard.
As the engineer faced Knowles, Gowan sauntered around the far corner
of the house. At sight of the ladies he paused to adjust his
neckerchief.
"Can't understand it, Mr. Blake," said the cowman. "Somebody has
pulled out that spike you drove in here this morning."
"Pulled the spike?" repeated Gowan, coming forward to stare at the
post. "That shore is a joke. The Jap's building a new henhouse. Must
be short of nails."
"That's so," said Knowles. "I forgot to order them for him. I'm mighty
sorry, Mr. Blake. But of course the little brown cuss didn't know what
he was meddling with."
"Jumping Jehosaphat!" ejaculated Gowan. "That shore is mighty hard
luck! I reckon pulling that spike turns your line of levels adrift
like knocking out the picket-pin of an uneasy hawss."
Blake burst into a hearty laugh. "That's a fine metaphor, Mr. Gowan.
But it does not happen to fit the case. It would not matter if the
spike-hole had been pulled out and the post along with it, so far as
concerns this line of levels."
"It wouldn't?" muttered Gowan, his lean jaw dropping slack. He
glowered as if chagrined at the engineer's laughter at his mistake.
Without heeding the puncher's look, Blake began to tell Knowles the
result of his day's work. While he was speaking, they went into the
house after his wife and the girl, leaving Gowan and Ashton alone.
Equally sullen and resentful, the rivals exchanged stares of open
hostility. Ashton pointed a derisive finger at the spike-hole in the
post.
"'Hole ... and the post along with it!'" he repeated Blake's words.
"On bridge work it might have caused some trouble. But a preliminary
line of levels--_Mon Dieu_! A Jap should have known better--or even a
yap!" With a supercilious shrug, he swung back into the buckboard and
drove up to the corral.
Gowan's right hand had dropped to his hip. Slowly it came up and
joined the other hand in rolling a thick Mexican cigarette. But the
puncher did not light his "smoke." He looked at the spike-hole in the
post, scowled, and went back around the house.