METAL AND METTLE
At dawn Blake and Ashton drove up to the waterhole on Dry Fork with
their camp equipment. There they left the outfit in the buckboard and
proceeded with the line of levels on up the creek bed into the gorge
from which it issued.
For more than a mile they carried the levels over the bowlders of the
gradually sloping bottom of that stupendous gash in the mountain side.
So far the work was fairly easy. At last, however, they came to the
place where the bed of the gulch suddenly tilted upward at a sharp
angle and climbed the tremendous heights to the top of High Mesa in
sheer ascents and cliff-like ledges. Blake established a bench-mark at
the foot of the acclivity, and came forward beside Ashton to peer up
the Titanic chute between the dizzy precipices. From where they stood
to the head of the gulch was fully four thousand feet.
"What do you think of it?" asked the engineer.
"I think this is where your line ends," answered Ashton, and he rolled
a cigarette. He had been anything but agreeable since their start from
the ranch.
"We of course can't go up with the level and rod," said Blake, smiling
at the absurdity of the suggestion. "Still, we might possibly chain it
to the top."
Ashton shrugged. "I fail to see the need of risking my neck to climb
this goat stairway."
"Very well," agreed Blake, ignoring his companion's ill humor. "Kindly
take back the level and get out the chain."
Ashton started off without replying. Blake looked at the young man's
back with a regretful, half-puzzled expression. But he quickly
returned to the business in hand. He laid the level rod on a rock and
inclined it at the same steep pitch as the uptilt of the gorge bottom.
Over the lower end of this he held a plumb bob, and took the angle
between the perpendicular line of the bob-string and the inclined line
of the rod with a small protractor that he carried in his notebook.
The angle measured over fifty degrees from the horizontal.
Having thus determined the angle of inclination, the engineer picked a
likely line of ascent and started to climb the gulch chute. He went up
in rapid rushes, with the ease and surefootedness of a coolheaded,
steel-muscled climber. He stopped frequently, not because of weariness
or of lack of breath, but to test the structure and hardness of the
rocks with a small magnifying glass and the butt of his pocket knife.
At last, nearly a thousand feet up, his ascent was stopped by a sheer
hundred-foot cliff. He had seen it beetling above him and knew
beforehand that he could not hope to scale such a precipice; yet he
clambered up to it, still examining the rock with minute care. As he
walked across the waterworn shelf at the foot of the sheer cliff, his
eye was caught by a wide seam of quartz in the side wall of the
gulch.
Going on over to the vein, he looked at it in several places through
his magnifying glass. Everywhere little yellow specks showed in the
semi-translucent quartz. He drew back across the gorge to examine the
trend of the vein. It ran far outward and upward, and in no place was
it narrower than where it disappeared under the bed of the gorge.
His lips pursed in a prolonged, soundless whistle. But he did not
linger. Immediately after he had estimated the visible length and dip
of the seam, he began his descent. Arriving at the foot without
accident, he picked up the level rod and swung away down the gulch.
He saw nothing of Ashton until he had come all the distance down
across the valley to the dike above the pool. His assistant was in the
grove below, assiduously helping Miss Knowles to erect a tent that the
girl had improvised from a tarpaulin. Genevieve and Thomas Herbert
were interesting themselves in the contents of the kit-box. The two
ladies had ridden up to the camp on horseback, Isobel carrying the
baby.
When Blake came striding down to them, the girl left Ashton and ran
to meet him, her eyes beaming with affectionate welcome.
"What has kept you so long?" she called. "Lafe says the gulch is
absolutely unclimbable. I could have told you so, beforehand."
"You are right. I tried it, but had to quit," replied Blake, engulfing
her outstretched hand in his big palm.
When he would have released her, she caught his fingers and held fast,
so that they came down to his wife hand in hand. Oblivious of Ashton's
frown, the girl dimpled at Mrs. Blake.
"Here he is, Genevieve," she said. "We have him corralled for the rest
of the morning."
"Sorry," replied Blake, stooping to pick up his chuckling son. "We
can't knock off now."
"But if you cannot continue your levels?" asked his wife. "From what
Lafayette told us, we thought you would not start in again until after
lunch."
"No more levels until tomorrow," said Blake. "But I must settle one of
my big 'ifs' by night. To do it, Ashton and I will have to go up on
High Mesa and measure a line. There's still two hours till noon. We'll
borrow your saddle ponies, Miss Chuckie, and start at once, if Jenny
will put us up a bite of lunch."
"Immediately, Tom," assented Mrs. Blake, delighted at the opportunity
to serve her big husband.
"When shall we take Genevieve to see the canyon?" asked the girl. "I am
sure she can ride up safely on old Buck."
"We have only the two saddle horses today," replied Blake. "If our
measurement settles that 'if' one way, I shall start a line of levels
up the mountain tomorrow morning, if the other way, any irrigation
project is out of the question, and we shall go up to the canyon merely
as a sightseeing party."
"Ah!" sighed the girl. "'If!' 'if'--I do so hope it turns out to be
the last one!"
Blake looked at her with a quizzical smile. "Perhaps you would not,
Miss Chuckie, if you could see all the results of a successful water
system."
"You mean, turning our range into farms for hundreds of irrigationists,"
she replied. "I suppose I am selfish, but I am thinking of what it
would mean to Daddy. Just consider how it will affect us. For years
this land has been our own for miles and miles!"
"Well, we shall see," said Blake, his eyes twinkling.
"Yes, indeed!" she exclaimed. "Lafe, if you'll help me saddle up and
help Mr. Blake rush up to do that measuring, I'll--I'll be ever so
grateful!"
Though all the more resentful at Blake over having to leave her
company, Ashton eagerly sprang forward to help the girl saddle the
ponies. When they were ready, she filled his canteen for him and took
a sip from it "for luck." Genevieve had packed an ample lunch in a
gamebag, along with her husband's linked steel-wire surveyor's chain.
Ten minutes after Blake's arrival, he handed the baby to its mother
and swung into the saddle. Ashton had already mounted, fired by a kind
glance from the girl's forget-me-not eyes. In his zeal, he led the way
at a gallop around the craggy hill and across the intervening valley
to the escarpment of High Mesa. Had not Blake checked him, he would
have forced the pace on up the mountain side.
"Hold on," called the engineer. "We want to make haste slowly. That
buckskin you're on isn't so young as he has been, and my pony has to
lug around two hundred pounds. We'll get back sooner by being
moderate. Besides you don't wish to knock up old Buck. He is about the
only one of these jumpy cow ponies that is safe for Jenny."
"That's so," admitted Ashton. "Suppose you set the pace."
He stopped to let Blake pass him, and trailed behind up the mountain
side. He had headed into a draw. The engineer at once turned and began
zigzagging up the steep side of the ridge that thrust out into the
valley between the draw and the gulch of Dry Fork. At the stiffest
places he jumped off and led his pony. None too willingly, Ashton
followed the example set by his companion. There were some places
where he could not have avoided so doing--ledges that the old
buckskin, despite his years of mountain service, could hardly scramble
up under an empty saddle.
Long before they reached the point of the ridge, Ashton was panting
and sweating, and his handsome face was red from exertion and anger.
But his indignation at being misguided up so difficult a line of
ascent received a damper when he reached the lower end of the ridge
crest. Blake, who had waited patiently for him to clamber up the last
sharp slope, gave him a cheerful nod and pointed to the long but
fairly easy incline of the ridge crest.
"In mountain climbing, always take your stiffest ground first, when
you can," he said. "We can jog along pretty fast now."
They mounted and rode up the ridge, much of the time at a jog trot.
Before long they came to the top of High Mesa, and galloped across to
one of the ridges that lay parallel with Deep Canyon. Climbing the
ridge, they found themselves looking over into a ravine that ran down
to the right to join another ravine from the opposite direction, at
the head of Dry Fork Gulch. Blake turned and rode to the left along
the ridge, until he found a place where they could cross the ravine.
The still air was reverberating with the muffled roar of Deep Canyon.
From the ridge on the other side of the ravine, they could look down
between the scattered pines to the gaping chasm of the stupendous
canyon. But Blake rode to the right along the summit of the ridge until
they came opposite the head of Dry Fork Gulch. Here he flung the reins
over his pony's head, and dismounted. Ashton was about to do the same
when he caught sight of a wolf slinking away like a gray shadow up the
farther ravine. He reached for his rifle, and for the first time
noticed that he had failed to bring it along. In his haste to start
from camp he had left it in the tent.
"_Sacre!_" he petulantly exclaimed. "There goes twenty-five dollars!"
"How's that?" asked Blake. He looked and caught a glimpse of the wolf
just as it vanished. "Why don't you shoot?"
"Left my rifle in camp, curse the luck!"
"Keep cool," advised Blake. "It's only twenty-five dollars, and you
might have missed anyway."
"Not with my automatic," snapped Ashton. "You needn't sneer about the
money. You've seen times when you'd have been glad of a chance at half
the amount."
"That's true," gravely agreed the engineer. "What's more, I realize
that it is far harder for you than it ever was for me. I want to tell
you I admire the way you have stood your loss."
"You do?" burst out the younger man. "I want to tell _you_ I don't
admire the way you ruined me--babbling to my father--when you
promised to keep still! You sneak!"
Blake looked into the other's furious face with no shade of change in
his grave gaze. "I have never said a word to your father against you,"
he declared.
"Then--then how, after all this time--?" stammered Ashton, even in his
anger unable to disbelieve the engineer's quiet statement. He was
disconcerted only for the moment. Again he flared hotly: "But if you
didn't, old Leslie must have! It's all the same!"
"No, it is not the same," corrected Blake. "As for my father-in-law,
if he said anything about--the past, I feel sure it was not with
intention to hurt your interests."
"Hurt my interests! You know I am utterly ruined!"
"On the contrary, I know you are not ruined. You have lost a large
allowance, and a will has been made cutting you off from a great many
millions that you expected to inherit. But you have landed square on
your feet; you have a pretty good job, and you are stronger and
healthier than you were."
"If you break up Mr. Knowles' range with your irrigation schemes, I
stand to lose my job. You know that."
"If the project proves to be feasible, I shall offer you a position on
the works," said Blake.
"You needn't try to bribe me!" retorted Ashton. "I'm working for Mr.
Knowles."
"Well, he directed you to help me with this survey," replied the
engineer, with imperturbable good nature. "The next move is to chain
across to the canyon."
He pulled his surveyor's chain from the bag and descended the ridge to
an out-jutting rock above the head of the tremendous gorge in the
mountain side. Ashton followed him down. Blake handed him the front
end of the chain.
"You lead," he said. "I'll line you, as I know where to strike the
nearest point on the canyon."
Ashton sullenly started up the ridge, and the measurement began. As
Blake required only a rough approximation, they soon crossed the ridge
and chained down through the trees to the edge of Deep Canyon. Ashton
was astonished at the shortness of the distance. The canyon at this
point ran towards the mesa escarpment as if it had originally intended
to drive through into Dry Fork Gulch, but twisted sharp about and
curved back across the plateau. Even Blake was surprised at the
measurement. It was only a little over two thousand feet.
"Noticed this place when out with Mr. Knowles and Gowan," he remarked,
gazing down into the abyss with keen appreciation of its awful
grandeur. "They told me it is the nearest that the canyon comes to the
edge of the mesa, until it breaks out, thirty or forty miles down."
"How--how about that 'if' you said this measurement would settle?"
asked Ashton.
"What's the time?"
Ashton looked at his watch, frowning over the evasive reply. "It's
two-ten."
"I'll figure on the proposition while we eat lunch," said Blake. "I
can answer you better regarding that 'if' when I have done some
calculating. Luckily I climbed up to examine the rock in the gulch."
He smiled quizzically at his companion. "You were right as to its
being unclimbable; but I found out even more than I expected."
Ashton silently took the bag from him and arranged the lunch and his
canteen on a rock under a pine. The engineer figured and drew little
diagrams in his fieldbook while he ate his sandwiches. Ashton had half
drained the canteen on the way up the mountain. Before sitting down
Blake had rinsed out his mouth and taken a few swallows of water.
After eating, he started to take another drink, noticed his
companion's hot dry face, and stopped after a single sip.
"Guess you need it more than I do," he remarked, as he rose to his
feet. "Time to start. I wish to go around and down the mountain on the
other side of the gulch."
"How about the--the 'if'?" inquired Ashton.
"Killed," answered Blake. "There now is only one left. If that comes
out the same way, Dry Mesa will have good cause to change its name."
"You can tunnel through from the gulch to the canyon?" exclaimed
Ashton.
"Yes; and I shall do so--if Deep Canyon is not too deep."
"I hope it is a thousand feet below Dry Mesa!" said Ashton.
"In the circumstances," Blake replied to the fervent declaration, "I
am glad to hear you say it."
Ashton stared, but could detect no sarcasm in the other's smile of
commendation.