Brayley and Conniston went together into the corral and picked up the
three revolvers. Then Conniston turned toward the stable to get his
horse. Brayley's eyes followed him, narrowing speculatively.
"Hey, Conniston," he called, sharply, "where you goin'?"
"To work. It's late now."
"Yes, it's late, all right. But you better go up to the bunk-house
first an' fix your hand up. Oh, don't be a fool. Come ahead. I'm goin'
to straighten out my face a bit."
So Conniston turned back, and the two men went to the bunk-house. The
cook was pottering around his stove, cleaning up his pots and pans. He
looked up curiously as they came in, realizing that by now they should
have been at work. The faint, careless surprise upon his face changed
suddenly into downright bewilderment as he saw the dust-covered
bodies, the cut lips, blood-streaked cheeks, and swelling eyes of the
two men. The song which he had been humming died away into a little
gasp, and with sagging lower jaw he stood and stared.
"Well," snapped Brayley, pushing back his hat and returning the cook's
stare fiercely. "Well, Cookie, what's eatin' you? Ain't you got
nothin' to do but stand an' gawk? By the Lord, if you ain't I know
where we can git a hash-slinger as is worth his grub!"
Cookie's bulging eyes ranged from one face to the other. Then he
turned back to his stove and began to wash over again a pan which he
had laid aside already as clean.
Conniston and Brayley washed with cold water in silence. Then they
found a bottle of liniment and applied it to their various cuts with a
bit of rag. Brayley, his big fingers unbelievably gentle, bandaged
Conniston's lame hand for him. And then they went back to the corrals.
"You can go out to the east end an' give Rawhide a hand," said
Brayley, as he swung up to his horse's back. "I reckon you won't be
much good for a day or two except jest ridin'. An' say, Con. I had a
talk with the Ol' Man about you this mornin'. He wanted to know if you
was makin' good. Lucky for you," with a twisted grin, "that he asked
before we had our little set-to! You're to git forty-five a month from
now on. An' at the end of the week you're to report over to
Rattlesnake to go to work."
As Greek Conniston rode out across the dry fields toward the east
there was a subtle exhilaration in the fresh, clean morning air which
he drew deep down into his lungs. For the moment the soreness of
bruised muscles, the biting pain in his crippled hand, were trifles
driven outward to the farthermost rim of his consciousness. His foot
was upon the first step of the long stairway which he must climb. He
had whipped Brayley in a fair, square, hand-to-hand, man-to-man fight.
He had done it through sheer dogged determination that he would do it.
He had set himself a task, the hardest task he had ever essayed. And
success had come to him as self-vindication.
But it had been to him more, vastly more, than a mere duty, although
from the outset he had looked upon it in that light. It had been a
test. Had the outcome been reversed, had he failed, had Brayley
worsted him, there was every likelihood that Conniston would have left
the range. But now, hand in hand with dawning regeneration, there came
confidence. There were many things which his destiny had set ahead of
him, and he was ready to face them with the same dogged determination
with which he had faced the big foreman.
Then, too, this morning he had received more than mere self-approval.
Brayley had indorsed his work in his consultation with Mr. Crawford.
And Mr. Crawford had seen fit to increase his daily wage. He had not
been worth a dollar a day a month ago, and he knew it. Now he was to
be paid a dollar and a half a day, and because he was worth that to
the Half Moon. So far, in the circumscribed area of his daily duties,
he "had made good." He felt that the first heat of the great race was
run, that in spite of his handicap he had held his own. The race
itself was almost a tangible thing ahead of him. Greek Conniston was
ready for it. And he dared think, with a sharp-drawn breath and a
leaping of blood throughout his whole being, of the golden prize at
the end of it--for the man who could win that prize.
He worked all that day with Rawhide Jones, his left hand upon his
reins, his right thrust into his open vest as a rude sort of sling. He
met Rawhide's surprise, answered his quick question by saying, simply,
without explanation, "I got hurt." Rawhide had grunted and dropped the
subject.
All day long one matter surged uppermost in Conniston's mind to the
exclusion of anything else: he was to be transferred from the Half
Moon to Rattlesnake Valley. He did not know whether to be glad at the
change or sorry. He was growing to know the men with whom he worked,
growing to like them, to find pleasure in their rude companionship.
Now, just as he was making friends of them he was to be shifted among
strangers. To-day he had found heretofore unsounded depths in the
nature of Brayley; he wanted to know the man better, to show him that
he had not been blind to rough, frank generosity, nor unappreciative
of it. Through these latter days, during which the scales had been
dropping from his eyes in spite of prejudice, he had been forced into
a grudging admiration of the man's capability. Brayley could read
little and spell less; he was a clown and a boor in the matter of the
finer, exacting social traditions; but he could run a cattle-range,
and he read his men as other men read books. Conniston realized
suddenly, shocked with the realization, that in Brayley there was that
same sort of thing which he had come to respect in Argyl Crawford, the
same open frankness, the same straightforward honesty, the same deep,
wide generosity.
Argyl, too, entered into the confusion of his gladness and
disappointment at the coming change of sphere. He had planned to spend
many an evening with her; and now, just as he was finding the door to
her comradeship opened to him, he was to be whisked away from her.
But on the other hand Conniston's optimism saw ahead of him, in the
new field of work, the dim, shadowy, and at the same time alluring
outline of a new and rare opportunity. He had not forgotten the things
which Mr. Crawford had said of his big project. And in spite of his
own deprecatory answer to Mr. Crawford's straightforward question,
Greek Conniston had not forgotten all of the engineering he had
absorbed during four years in the university. There was work to be
done, there were men wanted, above all, men who could understand
something beyond the pick-and-shovel end of the thing, men who knew
the difference between a transit and a telescope.
And the work itself appealed to him strangely now that that labor was
not without independence, not without a stern sort of dignity even. To
take a stretch of dry, hot sand, innocent of vegetation, to wrest it
from the clutch of the desert as from the maw of a devastating giant,
to bring water mile upon mile from the mountain cañons, to make the
sterile breast of the mother earth fertile, to drive back the horned
toad and the coyote, to make green things spring up and flourish, to
carve out homes, to cause trees and flowers and vines to give shade
and disseminate fragrance, even as time went on to wring moisture from
the lead-gray sky above--it was like being granted the might of a
magician to touch the desert with the tip of his wand, bringing life
gushing forth from death.
When night came Conniston trudged from the corrals to the bunk-house
and his evening meal devoutly thankful that the long day was gone. His
hand pained him constantly, and in the sharp twinges which shot
through it the lesser hurt of his cut cheek was forgotten. The greater
part of the other men was there before him. As he stepped in at the
door they were dragging their chairs noisily up to the table. Brayley,
one eye swollen almost shut, his lips thick like a negro's with the
blows which had hammered them, had just taken his seat. The men's eyes
were quick to catch the bruised countenance of the man at the door,
and ran swiftly from it to Brayley's face and back again. One man
chuckled aloud, Toothy giggled like a girl, and the others grinned
broadly. For a moment Brayley's face darkened ominously. Then his
frown passed, and he turned about in his chair toward the door.
"Hello, Con," he said, quietly.
"Hello, Brayley," Conniston answered, in the same tone.
Brayley's eyes went back to the men at the table, shifting quickly
from one to another. He ran his tongue along his swollen lips, but
said no word until Conniston had washed and taken his own chair. Then
he spoke, his words coming with slow distinctness.
"Conniston jumped me this mornin.' I had a lickin' comin' to me. You
boys know why. An' I got it."
He stopped suddenly, his eyes watchful upon the faces about him.
Conniston saw that they were no longer grinning, but as serious, as
watchful, as Brayley's.
"That was between me an' Conniston. There ain't goin' to be no makin'
fun an' fool remarks about it. He done it square, an' I'm glad he done
it! If there's any other man here as thinks he can do it I'll take him
on right now!"
Again he paused abruptly, again he studied the grave faces and
speculative eyes intent upon his own. No man spoke. And Conniston
noticed that no man smiled.
"All right," grunted Brayley. "That ends it. Cookie, for the love of
Mike, are you goin' to keep us waitin' all night for them spuds?"
The meal passed with no further reference, open or covert, to the
thing which was uppermost in the minds of all. Many a curious glance,
however, went to where Conniston sat. He was conscious of them even
when he did not see them, understood that a new appraisal of him was
being made swiftly, that his fellow-workers were carefully readjusting
their first conceptions and judgments of him.
When he had finished eating, Conniston went straight to his bunk. He
had no desire for conversation; he did want both rest and a chance to
think. He was straightening out his tumbled covers when Lonesome Pete
tapped him upon the shoulder.
"No hay for yours, Con," he grinned. "Not yet. Miss Argyl wants you to
come up to the house. Right away, she said, as soon as you'd et. She
said special she was in a hurry, an' you wasn't to waste time puttin'
on your glad rags."
Why did Argyl want him--to-night? He put his fingers to his cheek
where Brayley's fist had cut into the flesh. How could he go to her
like this? He was on the verge of telling Lonesome Pete that he could
not go, of framing some excuse, any excuse. But instead he closed his
lips without speaking, picked up his hat and went straight toward the
house.
She was waiting for him at the little summer-house upon the front
lawn. He saw the white of her lacy gown, the flash of her arms as he
came nearer, her outstretched hand as he came to her side. With his
hat caught under his right arm he put out his left hand to take hers.
"You were good to come so soon," she was saying.
"It was good to come," he rejoined, warmly. "You know how glad I am
for every opportunity I have to see you."
"What is the matter with your hand?" she asked, quickly. "Your right
hand?"
"I hurt it," he answered, easily. "Nothing serious. It will be well in
a day or two."
"How did you hurt it?" she persisted.
"Really, Miss Crawford," he retorted, trying to laugh away the
seriousness of her tone, "there are so many ways for a man to damage
his epidermis in this sort of work--"
She was standing close to him, looking intently up into his face
through the gathering darkness.
"Tell me--why did you do it?"
"What? Smash my fingers?"
"Yes. In the way you did!"
"What do you mean?" he hesitated, wondering what she knew.
"On Brayley's face! Why did you fight with him?"
"Who told you?"
"Brayley. He had to come to see father this evening. I saw his face. I
heard him tell father that he had had trouble with one of the men. I
was afraid that it was you! I followed him out into the yard and asked
him. It is no doubt none of my business--but will you tell me why you
fought with him?"
"I think that I would answer anything you cared to ask me, Miss
Crawford," he replied, quietly. "Will you sit down with me for a
little?" He moved slowly at her side, back to the seat in the
summer-house, grateful for any reason which gave him the privilege of
talking with her, watching her quick play of expression. "You see, my
object seemed so clear-cut and simple--and now gets itself all
tangled up in complexity when I try to explain it to you. For one
thing, ever since my first night on the Half Moon when Brayley put me
out I have felt that it was up to me to finish what was begun that
night. For another thing, I was trying to prove a theory, I imagine! I
didn't really believe that Brayley was the better man. And lastly, and
perhaps most important of all, I told you the other day that I was
going to lick him. It was a sort of promise, you know!"
She sat with her elbow upon her knee, her chin on her hand, her eyes
lost in the shadow of her hair. He knew that she was regarding him
intently. He guessed from the line of her cheek, from the slightly
upturned curve at the corner of her mouth, that she was half inclined
to be serious, and almost ready to smile at him.
"You are inclined to look upon Brayley as an enemy?" was all that she
said, still watching him closely.
"No!" he cried, warmly. "I sneered at him the other day, I know. Like
the little poppinjay I was I thought myself in the position to poke
fun at him. To-day I got my first true idea of the man's nature.
To-day I found out--can you guess what I found out? That Brayley in
many things is just like--whom, do you suppose?"
"Tell me."
"Like you! The discovery was a shock. It nearly bowled me over. But
it's the truth!"
"What do you mean?" she asked, plainly puzzled. "How in the world is
Brayley like me?"
"Aside from externals, from refinement, from polish, from all that
sort of thing"--he spoke swiftly--"his nature is much like yours.
There is the same frankness, the same sincerity, the same heartiness.
There is the same sort of generosity, the same bigness of--of soul."
He broke off abruptly, surprised to find himself talking this way to
her. "You must think I'm a fool," he blurted out, after a second. "I
talk like one. You have a right to feel offended--to liken Brayley to
you--"
"Since I believe you mean what you say--since I think I understand
what you mean--I am not offended! I am proud! Yes, proud if I can be
like Brayley in some things, some things which count! If you do
nothing beyond making a friend of that man your exile in this Western
country of ours will have been worth while. But you will do something
more. I did not ask you to come to me just to hear what you had to say
about your trouble with Brayley. He told me before you came--told me
that you had licked him, as you both put it, and that it served him
right! That is your business and Brayley's, and I should keep out of
it. But there was something else--I wonder if you think me meddlesome,
Mr. Conniston? If I _am_ meddlesome?"
"If we are going to be friends, you and I--and you promised that you
would let me make you my friend--hadn't we better drop that word?"
"Then I am going to tell you something. You are to go to work in the
Valley. Brayley told you that? Do you guess why--have you an
idea--why father is sending you over there?"
"I supposed because he is pushing the work--because he needs all the
men there he can get, can spare from the Half Moon."
"I am going to tell you. And I am afraid that father would not like
it, did he know. But I know that I am right. I may not see you again
before you go--I am going into Crawfordsville in the morning for a
few days. What I tell you, you will remember, is in strict
confidence--between friends?"
"In strict confidence," he repeated, seriously. "Between friends."
She leaned slightly forward, speaking swiftly, emphatically,
earnestly:
"You have heard of Bat Truxton? He is in charge there of all the men,
general superintendent of all the work. You will be put to work under
him. You will be in a position to learn a great deal about the project
in its every detail. Bat Truxton is an engineer, a practical man who
knows what he has learned by doing it. And he is a strong man and very
capable. Then there is Garton--Tommy Garton they call him. You will
work with him. He, too, is an engineer, and he, too, knows all there
is to know about the work."
She paused a moment, as though in hesitation. Conniston waited in
silence for her to go on.
"Father is sending you to the Valley because he has begun to take an
interest in you. Before the year is over there is going to be an
opportunity for every man there to show what there is in him. He is
giving you your chance, your chance to make good!"
Argyl got to her feet and stood looking away from him, out across the
duck pond. Presently she turned to him again, smiling, her voice gone
from grave to gay.
"The race is on, isn't it? The great handicap! And, anyway, I have
given you a tip, haven't I? Now you are coming up to the house with
me, and I'm going to make you a bandage for your broken hand."
She didn't stop to heed his protest, but ran ahead of him to the
house. And Conniston, pondering on many things, saw nothing for it but
to allow her to play nurse to him.
Saturday morning Greek Conniston pocketed the first money he had ever
earned by good, hard work. Brayley handed him three ten-dollar gold
pieces--his month's wage. Conniston asked for some change, and for one
of the gold pieces received ten silver dollars. He knew that Mr.
Crawford and Argyl had gone into Crawfordsville, so he gave one dollar
to Brayley, saying: "Will you hand that to Mr. Crawford for me? I owe
it to him for telegraph service on the first day I spent here." And
then he made a little roll of the indispensable articles from his
suit-case, tied it to the strings behind his saddle, and rode away
across the fields toward Rattlesnake Valley.
He was to report immediately at the office of the reclamation work in
Valley City. Following the trail he and Argyl had taken the other day,
he rode into the depression, or sink, about the middle of that long,
low hollow between the southern end and the clutter of uniform square
buildings which was planned to grow into a thriving town in the heart
of the desert.
Every foot of ground here now had a new personal interest for him. He
studied the long, flat sweep of level land with nodding approval,
trying to see just where the main canal should run, just how its
course could be shaped most rapidly, most cheaply, most
advantageously. For the mounds, the ridges where the winds had swept
the sand into long winnows, he had a quick frown. After all, he
realized suddenly, this desert was not the flat, even floor he had
imagined it to be. A mile, two miles to his right as he rode into the
"valley" he could see a slow-moving mass of men and horses, could
catch the glint of the sun upon jerking scrapers and plows. There the
front ranks of Mr. Crawford's little army was pushing the war against
the desert. There was where the brunt of Bat Truxton's responsibility
lay.
To his left, still several miles away, was Valley City. He swung his
horse toward the camp, which as yet was scarcely more than a man's
dream of a town, and rode on at a swift gallop. Now more than ever he
saw what some of the difficulties were in front of the handful of men
scarring the breast of this Western Sahara. For a moment he could see
the houses before him, even down to their doorsteps, and a moment
later only the roofs peered at him over the crest of a gently swelling
rise. Here the water, when it was brought this far, must be swung in a
wide sweep to right or left, or else many days, perhaps many weeks,
must be sacrificed to the leveling of a great sand-pile. He began to
wonder if there was enough water in the mountains for so mammoth a
project; if what of the precious fluid could be taken from the creeks
and springs would not be drunk up by the thirsty sands as though it
had been scattered carelessly by the spoonfuls, as a blotter drinks
drops of ink. He even began to wonder uneasily if Lonesome Pete had
been right when he had said that another name for such an attempt at
reclamation was simple "damn foolishness." The water had not come yet;
it was still running in its time-worn courses down the mountain-sides;
but something else was being drunk up daily by the parched gullet of
the dry country. And that something else was Mr. Crawford's money. His
fortune was no doubt very large; it must run into many figures before
Rattlesnake Valley grew green with fertility.
He came at last into the little town, passed the cottage where he had
worked with Argyl, and drew up before a four-roomed, rough, unpainted
building, with a sign over the door saying, "GENERAL OFFICE
CRAWFORD RECLAMATION COMPANY." Swinging down from his horse,
which he left with reins upon the ground, he went in at the open door.
Within there were bare walls, bare floor, and three or four cheap
chairs. Under the windows looking to the south there ran a long, high
table, covered with papers and blue-prints. Another long table ran
across the middle of the room. At it, facing him, perched upon a high
stool, a young man, a pencil behind each ear, his sleeves rolled up,
was working over some papers. In one corner of the same room another
young fellow, hardly more than a boy--eighteen or nineteen,
perhaps--was ticking away busily at a typewriter.
The man in shirt-sleeves working at the second long table looked up as
Conniston came in. He was a pale, not over-strong--looking chap,
somewhere about Conniston's own age, his short-cropped yellow hair
pushed straight back from a high forehead, his lips and eyes
good-humored and at the same time touched vaguely with a tender
wistfulness. Conniston imagined immediately that this was Garton, Bat
Truxton's helper.
"You're Mr. Garton?" he said, voicing his impression as he came
forward.
"No one else," Garton answered him, pleasantly. "Tom Garton at your
service. And you're Conniston from the Half Moon?"
He put out his hand without rising. Conniston took it, surprised as
he did so at the quick, strong grip of the slender fingers.
"I'm glad to know you, Conniston. Glad you're to be with us. Oh yes, I
knew a couple of days ago that you were coming over. Mr. Crawford
dropped in on us himself and told us about you. Have a chair."
They had shaken hands across the table. Now, as Conniston moved across
the room to the chair at which Garton waved, the latter swung about on
his high stool toward the boy at the typewriter.
"Hey there, Billy!" he called. "Come and meet Mr. Conniston. He's
going to be one of us. Mr. Conniston, meet Mr. Jordan--Billy
Jordan--the one man living who can take down dictation as fast as you
can sling it at him, type it as you shoot it in, and play a tune on
his typewriter at the same time!"
Stepping about the table to meet the boy who had got to his feet,
Conniston received a shock which for a second made him forget to take
young Jordan's proffered hand. For the first time now he saw Garton's
body, which had been hidden by the table; saw that Garton had had both
legs taken off six inches above the knees. He remembered himself, and
tried to hide his surprise under some light remark to Billy Jordan.
But Garton had seen it, and laughed lightly, although with a slight
flush creeping up into his pale cheeks.
"Hadn't heard about my having slept with Procrustes? Well, you'll get
used to having half a man around after a while. The rest do. I've
gotten used to it myself. Now sit down. Have a smoke?" He pushed a box
of cigarettes along the table. "And tell us what's the news on
Broadway."
"You're a New-Yorker?"
"Oh, I've galloped up and down the Big Thoroughfare a good many times
in the days of my youth," grinned Carton, helping himself to a
cigarette. "I'm an Easterner, all right; or, rather, I was an
Easterner. I guess I belong to this man's country now."
"What school?"
"Yale. '05."
"Why, that's my school! I was a '06 man."
"I know it." Garton nodded over the match he was touching to his
cigarette. "You're Greek Conniston, son of the big Conniston who does
things on the Street. But we didn't happen to travel in the same
class. I was shy on the money end of it. Oh, I remember you, all
right. I saw that record run of yours around left end to a touchdown.
Gad, that was a great day! I went crazy then with a thousand other
fellows. I remember," with an amused chuckle, "jumping up and down on
a fat man's toes, yelling into his face until I must have split his
ear-drum! Oh yes, I had two pegs in those days. The fat man got mad,
the piker, and knocked me as flat as a pancake! I guess he never went
to Yale."
For ten minutes they chatted about old college days, games lost and
won, men and women they both had known in the East. And then,
naturally, conversation switched to the work being done in Rattlesnake
Valley. Garton's face lighted up with eagerness, his eyes grew very
bright, he spoke swiftly. It was easy to see that the man was full of
his work, pricked with the fever of it, alive with enthusiasm.
"You seem to be mightily interested in the work," Conniston smiled.
"I am. I am in love with it! A man can't live here ten days and be a
part of it without loving it or hating it. It's the greatest work in
the world; it's big--bigger than we can see with our noses jammed up
against it! It's a man's work. And thank God we've got the right man
at the head of it!"
"Meaning Truxton?"
"Meaning the man who is the brain of it and the brawn of it; the heart
and soul and glorious spirit of it; yes, and the pocket-book of it!
That's John Crawford, a big man--the biggest man I ever knew. Who else
would have the nerve to tackle a thing like this, to tackle it
lone-handed? And to hold on to it in the face of opposition which
would crush another man, and with the risk of utter financial ruin
looming as big as a house, like a glorious, grim old bulldog! Oh, you
don't know what it means yet; you can't know. Wait until you've been
here a week, seeing every day of it a thousand dollars poured into the
sand, a few square yards of sand leveled, a few yards of canal dug,
and you'll begin to understand. Why, the whole thing as it stands is
as dangerous as a dynamite bomb--and John Crawford is as cool about it
as an anarchist!"
"You speak of opposition. I didn't know--"
Garton rumpled his upstanding yellow hair and laughed softly.
"I guess none of us know a great deal about it excepting John
Crawford. And John Crawford doesn't talk much. Oh, you will learn fast
enough all that we know about it. And now I suppose you'll be wanting
to know where you fit into the machine. Bring any things with you--any
personal effects?"
"A tooth-brush and an extra suit," Conniston laughed. "They're tied to
my saddle outside."
"You can bring 'em in here. I have a room in the back of this shack.
You're to share it with me, if you care to. You'll find a shed in the
back yard where you can leave your horse. There's a barrel of water
out there, too. And, by the way, you might as well learn right now not
to throw away a drop of the stuff; it's worth gold out here. When you
get back I'll go over things with you. Your first day's work, the
better part of it, will be to listen while I talk."
Conniston unsaddled and tied his horse in the little shed, coming back
into the office with his roll of clothes. Garton swung about upon his
stool and pointed out the room at the back of the house which was to
serve for the present as the sleeping-room for both men. There were
two cots along opposite walls, a chair, and no other furniture.
Conniston threw down his things upon the cot which Garton called to
him was to be his, and came back into the office. Pulling a stool up
to the table alongside of Garton, he began his first day's work for
the reclamation project.