That night Conniston sat up late, perched high on the corral fence,
staring at the stars while he tore down and builded up the World.
He had ridden to Rattlesnake Valley with Argyl, and had spent a big
part of the day there with her. He saw scores of men at work with
scrapers, picks, and shovels, and understood little enough of what
they were doing. He rode with her into a town, a brand-new town, of
twenty small, neat houses, as alike as rows of peas. In one of the
houses he worked for Argyl, tacking down carpets in the empty rooms,
moving furniture which he had uncrated in the yard. This was to be her
father's camp, she told him, where he would soon have to spend a part
of each week superintending the work which Bat Truxton was pushing
forward seven days out of the week. Then they had at last ridden home
together, and he had left her at the house, going slowly back to the
corrals with the two horses. And now, his day's work done, he stared
at the stars, rearranging the universe.
He knew that he was William Conniston, the son of William Conniston of
Wall Street. That fact was unchanged, unchangeable. But in some new
way, vaguely different, it was not the all-important fact which it had
been. It was still something to be glad of, something which he was not
going to forget or underestimate. But it was not everything.
Sitting there alone, his pipe dead between his teeth, Greek Conniston
asked himself many questions which had never suggested themselves to
his complacency before. And he answered them, one by one, without fear
or favor. In what was he better than Brayley, than Toothy even? Was he
a better man physically? No. Was he a better man morally? No. Was he a
better man intellectually? He had thought he was; now he hesitated
long before answering that question. Certainly he had had an education
which they had missed. Certainly his intellect had been trained, in a
fashion, by great men, by learned university professors. But was it
any keener than Brayley's and Toothy's; was it any stronger; was it,
after all, any more highly trained? In a crisis now was his intellect
any better than theirs? In his present environment was it any better?
And finally he answered that question as he had answered the others.
Was he a better man in the composite, in the grand total of manhood?
Measured by all the standards by which men are measured, stripping off
the superficialities of surface culture and clothes, the thin veneer
of education which in his case, as in the cases of the great majority
of young men who have been graduated from this or that university, had
imparted only a sort of finish, a neat, gleaming polish, and no great
metamorphosis of the inner and true being, was he a better man? If
there was any one particular, no matter how small, in which Greek
Conniston was a better man than the men among whom he had moved with
careless contempt, he wanted to know what it was!
"I have been a howling young ass!" he told himself, his contempt
suddenly swerving upon himself. "A conceited fool and a snob! Lordy,
lordy, why didn't somebody tell me--and kick me? A snob--a d--d,
insufferable, conceited snob!"
Three weeks ago the things which Argyl Crawford had said to him would
have amused the very self-satisfied young man. A week later, when
something of the truth had begun to filter in dimly upon him, he would
have felt hurt, insulted. Now he was ready to go to her, to thank her,
to tell her that a fool was dead, that he hoped a man was being born.
"And I would right now," he muttered to himself, "only I suppose that
anything I said would sound like the braying of a jackass!"
The one thing which she had said to him which now returned with
ever-increasing significance was the reason, as she had explained it,
why he had been chosen to go with her to Rattlesnake Valley. Out of
the dozens of men who worked under Brayley's orders he was absolutely
the only one who could be spared from the day's work! Every other man
had a quicker eye, a stronger body, a firmer hand; every other man was
a better rider, a better herder, a better roper, a better all-round
man. When there was work that must be done, man's work, he was the one
who could be spared from it.
By nature headlong, when Greek Conniston went into a thing he was in
the habit of going deep into it. When he drove a new car he drove it
night and day and at top speed. When he spent money he spent lavishly,
generously, recklessly. When he wasted time he wasted it profligately.
And now that he abandoned an old position he did it as thoroughly as
he had dissipated his father's money. He was plunging from what had so
long seemed to him a great height. Plunging; not cautiously lowering
himself inch by inch down a dizzy precipice of self-respect, not
looking the while for the first ledge upon which he might rest;
plunging headlong from the zenith of self-conceit to the nadir of
self-contempt. And the depths into which he hurled himself seemed to
him very deep, very black.
He ignored considerations by the way. That he had been handicapped in
the race did not suggest itself to him to comfort him. He merely saw
that the race was on and that he was far in the rear, choked with the
dust of the going. He saw, and saw clearly, that of all the men who
took their dollar a day from John Crawford he, Greek Conniston, did
the least to earn his. That he was not only not the best man on the
range, but that he was the poorest man. He was just his father's son.
_A man's son, not a man!_
He had not eaten supper, had forgotten that he had not eaten. Long he
sat in the thickening night, alone, feeling the part of a man marooned
by his dawning understanding upon a desert island, vast, impassable,
restless seas between him and his race. He watched the stars come out
until they were thick set in the black vault above him, flung in
sprays, flashing and scintillating down to the low horizons about him.
His brooding eyes ran out across the floor of the plain toward
Rattlesnake Valley.
He remembered that he had promised to call to see Argyl to-morrow
night, to tell her then what he had decided. What was he going to
decide? The obvious thing was not clear to him yet. He would work over
it half the night. Out of the confusion into which he had been hurled
two things alone stood out to him now as he tried to review them; two
things gathered the light which abandoned all other considerations to
darkness. The first thing, the clearest thing, the most important
thing in all of the new world which was being built up about him was
that he loved Argyl Crawford.
Loved her, not as Greek Conniston would have loved yesterday, could
have loved then, but with the love which was a part of the Greek
Conniston who was being born to-night. Loved her, not with the shallow
affection which would have been the tribute of a Greek Conniston of
yesterday, but with that deeper, eternal urge of soul to soul which is
true love. Loved her gravely, almost sternly, as a strong man loves.
Upon only two days had it been given him to speak with her. He thought
of that, but he knew that made no iota of difference. For he knew her
better than he knew any woman with whom he had danced or driven or
attended theaters and dinners. In that first glimpse from the Pullman
window he had seen the purposeful character of her. To-day he had seen
it again. To-day he knew that he knew Argyl Crawford, that she had
been herself to him, unaffected, honest, womanly. Her nature was
simple, straightforward, open, unassuming. Its beauty struck one as
the beauty of a Grecian temple, its lines pure and noble, the whole
edifice the more wonderful in that it depended upon itself alone and
needed no adornment.
She had shaken hands with him last night when he left her at the
house, not perfunctorily, but firmly, as the strong-handed cowboys
shook hands, and had said to him, simply:
"I wish you luck, Greek Conniston, in the fight you are about to
make."
He remembered the hand-clasp. She seemed unable to do anything, no
matter how small, without putting her whole self into it, her
frankness, her sincerity, her eagerness. And Conniston of to-night,
scowling at the match which he had swept across his thigh to light his
pipe and now let die down to his fingers, muttered, not without cause,
that he had his nerve with him even to think about her.
The other thing which was clear to him was that he must "lick"
Brayley. If he did nothing else in all of his futile life, if he quit
work or were fired the next minute, he must "lick" Brayley. It did not
strike him as amusing, as even strange, that these two things and
these alone should be the only things of which he was sure. He merely
accepted them as inevitable. He felt no particular resentment toward
Brayley. The man had treated him fairly enough since that first night
in the bunk-house. He looked upon the matter calmly, almost
impersonally, as a duty to which he must attend. And he was not going
to wait for an excuse. An opportunity would do.
It was half-past ten, and very late for cow-puncher land, when Greek
strode away through the darkness to the bunk-house.
When morning came it happened that Brayley rose fifteen minutes early,
Conniston fifteen minutes late. The foreman left immediately for a far
corner of the range, and Conniston, having made a quick breakfast,
went about his own work. In the corral he selected a horse which
heretofore he had carefully left alone, knowing the brute's half-tamed
spirit and not caring to trust to it. But now it was different. He
waited his opportunity before throwing his rope. Then, as the horse,
seeming to know that he had been singled out, shot by him, he cast his
lasso. And there was a grim light, but at the same time a light of
deep satisfaction in Conniston's eyes as he saw that his whirling
noose had gone unerringly, settling as Toothy's rope would have done.
He blindfolded the big, belligerent horse to mount him. When his feet
were securely thrust into his stirrups he leaned forward and with a
swift jerk snapped the handkerchief from the horse's eyes. For a
moment the animal's sides between his knees trembled and throbbed like
an overtaxed engine. Then there was the sudden jerk which told of a
mighty bunching of muscles, a gathering of force. And as Conniston
shot his spurs home, with the reins gripped tight in his left hand so
that the horse could not get his head down, the forelegs were lifted
high in air as the animal reared. A quick blow of the quirt and the
forelegs sought earth again, and Conniston began to realize what it
was to ride a bucking bronco.
A series of short jumps, every one threatening to unseat him, every
one jerking him so that his body was whipped this way and that, so
that he had much ado to keep his feet from flying out of the stirrups,
and could hardly hold his right hand back from going to the horn, from
"pulling leather." The bucks came so close together that it seemed to
him that he did not rest a second in the saddle; that each time the
big brute struck the ground with his four feet bunched together, to
pause for a breathless moment, gathering every ounce of strength to
wrench, leaping sideways, he must surely be thrown. But in spite of
all he did not pull leather, he did not cease to ply spur and quirt,
and he was not thrown. It was a perfectly quiet horse he rode away
across the fields only three minutes later.
He did a man's work that day, all that day, until long after the red
sun had gone down. And when he came up from the corral to his supper,
if he was tired, if the muscles of his body ached, it did not show in
his steady stride or in his quiet eyes.
The suit-case which he had left in Indian Creek had been brought out
last week. He shaved himself and changed his clothes, putting on the
first white silk shirt he had worn for many a day. He even found an
old can of shoe-polish and touched up the pair of dusty shoes. And
then, laughing at the looks the men turned upon him, at the few
jesting remarks which they chose to make, he walked through the trees
and to the range-house.
The glow of electric lights through the wide-opened front doors ran
out across the lawn to meet him. Striding along the walk, his heels
crunching in the white gravel, he again marveled at the comfort, the
luxury even, which John Crawford had brought across the desert. He ran
lightly up the broad steps. Before he could ring Argyl was at the
door, her eyes quick to find his searchingly. He knew what they sought
to find in his. And when she put out her hand to him, swiftly,
impulsively, he trusted that they had found what they sought.
He followed her through the big front room and into the library. Here
there were many deep, soft leather chairs, here there was a blue
atmosphere of tobacco smoke, and here Mr. Crawford, immaculate in
white flannels, rose to meet him, his hand outstretched.
"How do you do, Conniston?" Mr. Crawford took his hand warmly, the
fine lines of his stern old face softening genially. "I was mighty
glad when Argyl told me that she had asked you over. Sit down, sit
down. Have something to smoke. Tell us about yourself, and how"--the
deep-set eyes twinkling--"you like the work?"
Conniston saw that Argyl had seated herself and dropped into one of
the big chairs himself, his whole body enjoying the luxury of it. At
his elbow was a little table with cigars and cigarettes. Mr. Crawford
laughed when he saw that Conniston, having glanced at the table, drew
out his own cheap muslin bag of tobacco and rough, brown papers.
"I'm getting used to them," Greek apologized. "And do you know that
I'm beginning to like to roll my own 'cigareet'?"
Argyl clapped her hands, laughing with her father.
"I told you so, daddy!" she cried, merrily. "Didn't I say that Mr.
Conniston was born to be a good cow-puncher!"
"And I'm half persuaded that you are right, Argyl," came from behind
the dense cloud of cigar-smoke. "But you haven't told us how you like
the work, Conniston."
"If you had asked me a week ago I should have had to ask to be excused
from trying to tell you in the presence of ladies. I would have quit
if I hadn't been too much of a coward. But now--"
"Now?" asked Argyl, quickly.
And it was to her that he made his answer, not to her father.
"Now I like it. And I am going to stick--unless I get fired for
incompetency!"
"I like that," said Mr. Crawford, slowly. "Yes, I like that. I was
afraid that it was rather too much for you. It's hard work, Conniston,
and long hours and little pay. But Brayley tells me that you have the
makings of a rattling good cow-hand."
"Thank you, sir. It was very decent of Brayley."
"I ought not to mix business into a social call, I know, but I want to
tell you personally that I am very much pleased with the way you are
tucking in. You asked if any one needed a good man the day you came.
We all do. I do. Why, I always want more of them than I can find. A
young man like you, with your advantages, your education--there are
all kinds of opportunities. Yes, right with me. The West is the place
for young men--provided simply that they are men! That's as true
to-day as it was in forty-nine. And truer. Opportunities are greater,
the need of men is more urgent. Right now, right to-day, I am looking
for a man, a young man, who knows a thing or two about engineering,
who can build bridges and cut irrigation ditches and save me money
doing it." He threw out his hands. "And I can't get him!"
"Will you tell me about the position?" asked Conniston, with keen
interest in voice and eyes alike.
"Certainly. I am running four cattle-ranges, using close to eighty
thousand acres doing it, too. That, of course, you know. But that is
getting to be a side issue with me. I am doing something else which is
going to be a thousand times bigger--ten thousand times more worth
while. Have you been to Crawfordsville?"
"No. I have been within a couple of miles of it. I saw it one day from
Blue Ridge."
"Well, then you know something of it. It is in a valley ten miles long
which has always been one of the richest valleys I ever saw; sheltered
by the mountains, watered by the springs which create the source of
Indian Creek. The climate is like that of the California foothills.
And the soil is fertile--anything will grow there. I saw that twenty
years ago. I knew that the place was made for a town-site--and I made
the town. There are a lot of smaller valleys about it; there are
orchards there now and vineyards. There are mines, paying mines. There
is no end to the herds of cattle running through the valleys and at
the bases of the hills. The town has a railroad, a narrow-gage from
Bolton on the Pacific Central & Western. Building such a town, giving
it railroad connection, electric lights, and all the things which go
with unlimited water-power was simple enough."
Conniston sat back and watched the man who spoke of city building as
of the making of a summer home. Mr. Crawford was leaning forward in
his chair, his cigar between his fingers, his eyes very steady upon
Conniston's.
"But now," he went on, his eyes clear, but his brows drawn over them,
"we come to something different--entirely different. Out yonder in the
lap of the desert is what they call Rattlesnake Valley. It is no
valley at all, merely a great depression, a sort of natural sink. It
is twenty miles wide, forty miles long. I have found no drop of water
within thirty miles of it, no single spring, no creek. It is nothing
but sand--dry, barren, unfertile sand--five hundred square miles of
it, to look at it. And right there, in the heart of that sink, I am
going to build a town."
He spoke quietly, his voice low, no hint of boastfulness in his tone,
no hint of doubt. He spoke as a man who has studied his ground and who
knows both the difficulties which lie ahead of him and the
possibilities. Conniston, seeing only the impossibility, the madness
of such a project, looked questioningly from him to the girl. Argyl's
face was flushed, her eyes were very bright with an intense eager
interest.
"It sounds so big," Conniston hesitated, his gaze coming back to the
older man's face. "So daring, so impossible!"
"It is big! Bigger than I have even hinted at. It is daring. Of
course, I take a chance of sinking everything I have out there and
finding only failure in the end."
He shrugged his shoulders, and Conniston noticed for the first time
how big and broad they were.
"But it is not impossible. It is merely the repetition of such work as
has been done successfully in the Imperial Valley. The stuff which
looks to be sand--barren, unfertile sand--is the richest soil in the
world. Put water on it and you can raise anything. Reclamation work is
a fairly new thing with us, Conniston. Men have been content
heretofore to squat in the green valleys and let the desert places
remain the haunts of the horned toad and coyote. But now the green
valleys are filling up, and there are hundreds of thousands of square
miles like the country you rode over from Indian Creek to the Half
Moon which are calling to us. To redeem them from barrenness, to do
the sort of work which our friends have done in the Imperial Valley,
is pioneer work. The pioneers ever since Adam, be it the Columbuses of
early navigation or the Wrights of aerial navigation, have always
taken the long chances. They are the ones who have suffered the
hardships, and who, often enough, have been forgotten by the world in
its mad rush along the trail they have opened. But they are the men
who have done the big things. The pioneers are not yet all gone from
the West, thank God! And their work is reclamation work!"
"And it's for the work over there that you want an engineer?"
"Yes. I want him bad, too. Do you happen to know one?"
"I know one. I won't say how much good he is, though. I'm an engineer
myself."
"You!" It was Argyl's voice, surprised but eager.
"My father is a mining engineer. He always wanted me to do something
for myself, you know." Conniston laughed softly. "He sent me to
college, and since I didn't care a rap what sort of work I did, I took
a course in civil engineering to please him. Civil, instead of
mining," he added, lightly, "because I thought it would be easier."
"Had any practical experience?" demanded Mr. Crawford. Conniston shook
his head. "It's too bad. You might be of a lot of use to me over
there--if you'd ever done anything."
Conniston colored under the plain, blunt statement. There it was
again--he had never done anything, he had never been anything. His
teeth cut through his cigarette before he answered.
"I didn't suppose that you could use me." He still spoke lightly,
hiding the things which he was feeling, his recurrent self-contempt.
"I don't suppose, that I know enough to run a ditch straight. I've
been rather a rum loafer."
Mr. Crawford smiled. "I suppose you have. But you are young yet,
Conniston. A man can do anything when he is young."
There was the grinding of wheels upon the gravel outside, a man's
voice, and then a man's steps.
A moment later Roger Hapgood, immaculate in a smartly cut gray suit
and gloves, came smiling into the library, his hand outstretched, his
manner the manner of a man so thoroughly at home that he does not stop
to ring. He did not at first see Conniston half hidden in his big
chair. But Conniston saw him, was quick to notice the air of
familiarity, the smile which rested affectionately upon Mr. Crawford
and ran on, no doubt meant to be adoring and certainly was very soft,
to Argyl--and Conniston was seized with a sudden desire to take the
ingratiating Roger Hapgood by the back of the collar and kick him upon
the seat of his beautifully fitting trousers.
"Good evening, Mr. Crawford. I ran in on a little business for Mr.
Winston. Ah, Miss Argyl! So glad to see you."
His little hand, which had been swallowed up in one of Mr. Crawford's,
and which emerged rosy and crumpled, was proffered gallantly to the
girl. And then Hapgood saw Conniston.
"Oh, I say," he stammered, a very trifle confused. "It's Conniston. I
didn't know--"
His pale eyes, under nicely arched brows, went from father to daughter
as though Roger Hapgood were willing to admit that anything which they
thought fit to do was all very right and proper, but that he was none
the less surprised to find them entertaining one of the hired men.
"Yes, I'm still with the Half Moon," Conniston said, still nettled,
but more amused, making no move to rise or put out his hand. "How are
you, Roger?"
"How do, Conniston?" replied Mr. Hapgood, the rising young lawyer.
Conniston idly wondered what had made his friend go to work. On the
surface the reason seemed to be Argyl. Yet Hapgood showed a new side,
a determination most unusual in him. Later Conniston was to know, to
understand.
"And you like it?"
"Immensely. You ought to try it, Roger!"
Hapgood shuddered. "Couldn't think of it. A lark, no doubt, but I
haven't the time for larks nowadays. I'm in the law." He turned to Mr.
Crawford. "Thanks to you. Fascinating, and all that, but it does keep
a man busy. I hated to disturb you to-night," with an apologetic smile
at Argyl, "but Mr. Winston thought that the matter ought to be brought
up before you immediately."
He was bursting with importance, some of which seemed to have popped
out of his inflated little being and now protruded from an inside
pocket in the form of some very legal-looking papers.
Mr. Crawford, upon his feet, said bluntly: "If we've got business,
Hapgood, we'd better be at it. Let's go into the office. Argyl, you
will excuse us? And you, Mr. Conniston?"
He went out. Hapgood tarried a moment for a lingering look at Argyl.
"You will excuse us, Miss Argyl? I'll hurry through with this as fast
as I can."
"I say, Roger," Conniston called after him, "I want to congratulate
you. I'm immensely glad that you have gone to work." He turned to the
girl who was watching them with thoughtful eyes. "Miss Crawford, what
do you say to a little stroll out on the front lawn while these men of
business transact their weighty affairs? It's the most wonderful night
you ever saw."