At Conniston's knock Argyl's voice from somewhere in the back of the
cottage called "Come in!" He opened the door, went through the cozy
sitting-room, which was scarcely larger than the fire-place at the
range-house, and at a second invitation found his way into the rear
room. There an oil-stove was shooting up its yellow flames about a
couple of stew-pans, and there Argyl herself, in blue gingham apron,
her sleeves rolled up on her plump, white arms, was completing
preparations for the evening meal. She turned to nod to Conniston and
then back to her cooking.
"You'll find a chair in the corner," she told him, as he stopped in
the doorway, looking amusedly at her. "That is, of course, if you care
to call on the cook? Otherwise you will find cigars and a last month's
paper in the sitting-room."
"There isn't any otherwise," he laughed back at her. And after a
moment, in which she was very busy over the stove and he very content
to stand and watch her: "We're even now. Last time we were here I was
the hired man and tacked down carpets for you. Now I'm the guest of
the family, if you please, and you're the cook."
"You can have two cupfuls of water to wash your hands and one for your
face. You'll find the barrel and basin upon the back porch. And don't
throw the water away! I'll save it for you to use the next time you
come."
"Thank you. But I washed over at Garton's. He lets me have two cupfuls
for my face. And now I'm going to help you. What can I do?"
"Nothing. If you wanted to work, why did you wait until the last
minute? Unless you know how to set a table?"
"I can set anything from an eight-day clock to a hen," he assured her,
gravely. "Where's Mr. Crawford? Has he come yet?"
"No. I expect him any minute. But we won't wait for him. It's against
the law in the Crawford home to wait meals for anybody."
Under her direction he found the dishes in a cupboard built into the
walls, knives, forks, spoons, and napkins in drawers below, and
journeying many times from kitchen to dining-room, stopping after each
trip to stand and watch his hostess in her preparations for dinner, he
at length had the table set. And then he insisted upon helping play
waiter with her until she informed him that he was positively
retarding matters. Whereupon he made a cigarette and sat upon the
kitchen table and merely watched.
For many days Conniston had longed to see Mr. Crawford, to talk with
him concerning the big work. Now, as he and Argyl sat down together,
his one wish was that Mr. Crawford be delayed indefinitely. As he
looked across the table, with its white cloth, its few cheap dishes,
its simple fare, he was conscious of a deep content. He helped Argyl
to the _pièce de résistance_--it consisted of dried beef, potatoes,
onions, and carrots all stewed together; she passed to him the
biscuits which she had just made; they drank each other's health and
success to the Great Work in light, cooled claret made doubly
refreshing with a dash of lemon; and they dined ten times as merrily
as they would have dined at Sherry's.
He told her of Tommy Garton, and suddenly surprised in her a phase of
nature which he had never seen before. Her eyes filled with a quick,
soft sympathy, a sympathy almost motherly.
"Poor little Tommy," she said, gently. "He laughs at himself and calls
himself 'half a man,' while he's greater than any two men he comes in
contact with once in a year. I call Tommy my cathedral--which sounds
foolish, I know, but which isn't! Do you know the feeling you get when
you steal all alone into one of those great, empty, silent churches,
where it is always a dim twilight? Not that Tommy is as somber and
stately as a great cathedral," she smiled. "Just the opposite, I know.
But his sunny nature, his unruffled cheerfulness affect me like a
sermon. When I allow myself to descend into the depths and see how
Tommy manages it, I feel as if I ought to be spanked. I think," she
ended, "that I have pretty well mixed things up, haven't I? But you
understand what I mean?"
"I understand. And since we have drunk to the Great Work, shall we
drink to a Great Soul who is a vital part of it? I don't know how we'd
manage without Tommy Garton."
They touched glasses gravely and drank to a man who, as they sat
looking out upon life through long, glorious vistas, dawn-flushed, lay
alone upon his cot, his face buried in his arms.
They finished their meal, cleared away the dishes together, and still
Mr. Crawford had not come. Then Conniston dragged two of the chairs
out to the front porch, took a cigar from the jar where it had been
kept moist with half an apple, and they went out to enjoy the cool
freshness of the evening. The sun had sunk out of sight, the mood of
the desert had changed. All of the dull gray monotone was gone. All
the length of the long, low western horizon the dross of the garish
day was being transmuted by the alchemy of the sunset into red and
yellow gold, molten and ever flowing, as though spilled from some
great retort to run sluggishly in a gleaming band about the earth.
A little wandering breeze had sprung up, and went whispering out
across the dim plains. It swirled away the smoke from Conniston's
cigar; he saw it stir a strand of hair across Argyl's cheek. The glory
of the desert was still the wonderful thing it had been, but it was
less than the essential, vital glory of a girl. Suddenly a great
desire was upon him to call out to her, to tell her that he loved her
more than all of the rest of life, to make her listen to him, to make
her love him. And with the rush of the desire came the thought, as
though it were a whispered voice from the heart of the desert: "What
are you that you should speak so to her. _What have you done to make
you worthy of this woman?_ You, a laggard, as frivolous a thing until
now as a weathercock, and by no means so useful a factor in the world,
your regeneration merely begun; she the Incomparable Woman!"
It was Argyl who spoke first, and only after nearly an inch of white
ash had formed at the end of Conniston's cigar.
"People who do not understand--they are aliens to whom the desert has
never spoken!--ask why father gives the best part of a ripe manhood to
a struggle with such a country. Does not an evening like this answer
their question? No people in the world can so love their land as do
the children of the desert. For when they have made it over they are
still a part of it and it has become a part of them."
He told her all that he could of the work and Truxton and the men,
going into detail as he found that she followed him, that Tommy Garton
had not exaggerated when he had said that she knew every sand-hill and
hollow. She listened to him silently, only now and then asking a
pertinent question, her eyes upon his face as she leaned forward in
her chair, her hands clasped about her knees. And when he had finished
he found that his cigar had long since gone out and that she was
smiling at him.
"It has got you, too!" she cried, softly. "You are as enthusiastic
already as Tommy Garton is. I wonder if you realized it? And I
wonder," her eyes again upon the fading colors in the west, the smile
gone out of them, "what it would mean to you if, after all, our dream
came to nothing, if it proved that we were more daring than wise, if
we lost everything where we are staking everything?"
"I have been a small, unnecessary cog in a great machine for only a
week," he told her, slowly. "And yet you will know that I am telling
you the plain truth when I say that such a failure would bring to me
the biggest disappointment I have ever felt. Failure," he cried,
sharply, as though he had but grasped the full significance of the
word after he himself had employed it--"there won't be failure at the
end of it for us! There can't be. It means too much. I tell you that
we are going to drive the thing to a successful conclusion. It's got
to be!"
"Yes," she repeated, quietly, after him, "it has got to be. I don't
doubt the outcome for one single second. Down in my heart I _know_.
And I know, too, how much there is yet to be done, how much you men
have to contend with, how swiftly the time is slipping by us. Do you
realize, Mr. Conniston, how little time we have ahead of us before the
first of October?"
"Yes, I know. And there are four miles of main canal to dig, mile
after mile of smaller cross ditches, to irrigate the land after we get
the water here, and two dams to complete." He got to his feet, his
cigar again forgotten, his eyes frowning down upon her. "Truxton is
right. We've got to get more men--many more men. And we've got to get
them in a hurry."
"Father, when he comes to-night, will know about the men we have been
expecting from Denver. He has been all day in Crawfordsville. What do
you think of Bat Truxton?"
"He is a good man who knows his business. He is a skilful, practical
engineer, and he knows how to get every ounce of power out of the men
under him. He is as much the man for the place as if he and the job
had been created for each other."
She was now standing with him, watching his face eagerly.
"Have you noticed," she asked, quietly--through the gathering dusk he
thought that he could see a faint shadow upon her face which was not a
part of the thickening night--"any sort of change in the man since you
went to work with him?"
Conniston hesitated, frowning, before he answered. "He has been
irritable," he finally admitted, with slow reluctance. "But the reason
is not far to seek and does not discredit him. He is heart and soul in
this work, Miss Crawford. Like all of us--you, your father, Tommy
Garton, me--I think that he feels his responsibility heavily, very
heavily. And when day after day rushes by and finds the work far from
being finished, and he has to have more men, and the men don't
come--good heavens! isn't it enough to make a man restive?"
For a long time Argyl made no answer, but, rising, stood looking far
out into the misty obscurity, as though she would look beyond to-day
and deep into the future for an answer to many things. The short
twilight passed, the warm colors in the west faded, the breeze of a
moment ago died down in faint and fainter whispers, the stars grew
brighter, ever more thick-set, in the wide arch of the heavens.
"I hope that you are right," she said, slowly, at last. And then, with
a queer little laugh which jarred upon Conniston strangely: "I am
getting fanciful, I suppose, and faint-hearted! Never has our
undertaking seemed so big to me; never have the obstacles loomed so
high. I find myself waking up with a start night after night from some
horrible dream that the water has failed in the mountains, or that
Oliver Swinnerton has stolen all of our men, or that Bat Truxton has
gone over to the opposition! Oh, I know that I am foolish. For, as you
say, we _can't_ fail. Everything has got to come out right! And now,"
in the manner native and natural to her--frank, hearty, even eager--"I
am going to tell you some good news. In the first place, I see that I
have been doing nothing too long, and that always makes one morbid, I
think. I am going to get back to work. Isn't that good news? It is to
me, at least. And, secondly, I have made a discovery. You'd never
guess."
Conniston shook his head. "What is it?"
"What," she asked him, laughingly, and yet with a serious note in her
voice, "is the one thing which we should like to discover here? If a
good old-style genie straight from between the covers of the _Arabian
Nights_ were to drop down in front of you and say, 'Name the thing
which thou wouldst have, and thou shalt have it!' what would that
thing be?"
And Conniston, with his thoughts upon the Great Work, knowing that her
thoughts were with his there, answered quickly:
"Water! But that is impossible!"
"My secret--yet," she answered him. "I had not meant to say anything
about it so soon. Promise to say nothing about it until I give you
leave, and I'll tell you a little--oh, a very little--about my
secret."
Conniston promised, and she went on, speaking swiftly, earnestly:
"It was last week. I was riding out into the desert to the north of
here--no matter how far--when I came upon it. It is a spring. Oh, not
much of a spring to look at it. Just a few square feet of moist soil,
here and there a sprig of drying grass, three or four brown willows.
But those things mean that there is water there. How it came there
while all of the rest of the desert so far as we know it is bone-dry
does not matter so much as _what can we do with it?_ I hardly dare
hope," she finished, thoughtfully, "that my spring is going to prove a
factor in our irrigation scheme. But I hope that it may help to supply
us here with drinking-water, water for our horses. That in itself
would mean a good deal, wouldn't it, Mr. Conniston?"
"There is no end to what it might mean--may mean. If your spring can
be made to supply Valley City and the men working out yonder with
water, to supply the horses and mules, it will mean that all the men
and teams being used daily to haul from the Half Moon creek can be put
to active work on the ditch. And--who knows?--if you can find water at
all in the desert we may be able to use it to irrigate! God knows we
want water on this land soon--and the mountains are still a long way
off! But," and he tried to make out her features in the darkness, "how
does it happen that this spring has never been found before?"
"The country all about it is what the desert is everywhere. No one
would dream of water in it. Then there is a rude circle of low-lying
sand-hills. Within their inclosure, consequently shut off from view
unless one rides to the crest of the hills as I happened to do, is the
spring."
He thought that she was going to add something further, perhaps more
in the way of a description of the location of the spring, when he
heard horses' hoofs and the rattle of dry wagon-wheels, and she broke
off suddenly.
"It is father at last," she said, softly. "Remember, Mr. Conniston, I
want to keep this a secret from father for a while--until I know what
it is worth."
"I'll remember," he answered, rising with her and turning toward the
two figures which had leaped down from the wagon and were hastening
toward the cottage. The man slightly in front of his companion, coming
first into the rays of the lamp streaming through the window, was Mr.
Crawford. And Conniston saw with a quick frown that the other man was
Roger Hapgood.
"Argyl, my dear," said Mr. Crawford, as he kissed the girl who had
gone to meet him, "I am sorry we are late. You'll be sorry, too, for
I'm amazingly hungry. Anything left? Ah, Mr. Conniston, isn't it? Glad
to see you." He took Conniston's hand in a strong grip. "Haven't seen
you since you came to the Valley. I'm glad you're here. I want to talk
with you about the work."
He went on into the house, Argyl with him. She had shaken hands with
Roger Hapgood, and, with an invitation to him and Conniston to follow,
went ahead with her father.
For a moment the two men faced each other in silence through the
half-darkness. Then Hapgood turned upon his heel and went into the
house. In a moment Conniston followed him, smiling.
He took a chair at the side of the room and lighted a fresh cigar
while he watched the two men at table and Argyl bringing them their
supper. He saw that Mr. Crawford's manner was what it always had
been--bluff, frank, open, cheery. But he saw, too, or thought that he
saw, little lines of worry upon the high forehead which had not been
there a month ago.
Hapgood's face, seen now clearly, was as smug as ever, but there had
been wrought in it a subtle change. In place of the fresh, pink
complexion, the desert had given him a healthy coat of tan. But that,
while Conniston was quick to note it, was not the change that startled
him. There was an indefinable something in Hapgood's eyes, at the
corners of his thin-lipped mouth, that had not been there before.
Conniston wondered if the hand of this Western country had touched the
inner man as it had the outer, if the new life had found certain small
seeds of strength in the heretofore futile Hapgood and were developing
them?
Hapgood's manner, however, was unchanged, irreproachable. He placed
salt and pepper, bread, butter, whatever it was that Mr. Crawford
wanted, before him before the older man had realized that he wanted
it. His attitude toward Argyl was at all times deferential, eloquent
of respectful admiration. Hapgood was nothing if not urbane. Toward
Conniston, however, he did not once glance. To his way of thinking,
evidently, there were but three people in the room--the wonderfully
masterful Mr. Crawford, the radiantly beautiful Argyl, the deeply
appreciative Hapgood--and certain negligible, necessary furniture.
During the short meal Mr. Crawford spoke little, contenting himself
with a few light remarks to Argyl and the others. Often he ate in
silence, abstractedly. Argyl had looked curiously at him and
thereafter offered few words. Hapgood took his cue from the masterful
Mr. Crawford. Conniston smoked and watched the three of them, his eyes
finding oftenest Argyl and resting longest upon her. Finally, when he
had finished and pushed away his plate, taking the cigar Argyl offered
him, Mr. Crawford spoke shortly, emphatically.
"I got word to-day from the men we have been expecting from Denver.
They have gone to work by now."
"Under Bat Truxton?" demanded Conniston, quickly.
The older man cut off the end of his cigar, rolled the black perfecto
between his lips, and lighted it before he replied.
"They have gone to work," he repeated, as though discussing a matter
of no moment, "for Oliver Swinnerton. Shall we go into the front
room? I want to ask you some questions about the work, Conniston. I
did not have a chance to see Truxton this afternoon."
He rose and led the way into the other room. Conniston, casting a
swift glance at Argyl's face, which had suddenly gone white, followed
him. Argyl had stepped forward as though to go with them when Hapgood
laid a detaining hand lightly, respectfully, upon her arm.
"May I speak with you a moment, Miss Argyl?" he whispered, but not so
low that Conniston did not catch the words distinctly. "It will take
just a moment, and--and it is very important."
Reluctantly she paused. Conniston went out and heard Hapgood shut the
door after him. He shrugged his shoulders.
Mr. Crawford did not again refer to the bad news which he had brought,
but instead seemed to have forgotten it. He asked Conniston question
after question, seeking significant details, demanding to know how
many feet the ditch had been driven upon each separate day of the
week, what difficulties had been met, how the men did the parts
allotted them, what Truxton counted upon accomplishing upon each day
to come. And after ten minutes of sharp, quick questions he leaned
forward and, with his eyes steady and searching upon Conniston's,
demanded, abruptly:
"Is Truxton showing any signs of nervous irritability?"
"Yes." Conniston hesitated, wondering what was in the other man's
thoughts. He began an explanation such as he had made Argyl, but Mr.
Crawford cut him short.
"That will do. Thank you. That is all that I wanted to know."
He got to his feet and strode back and forth in the little room, his
brows bunched together. Conniston, seeing for the first time in this
man whom he had held unendingly resourceful, indomitable, signs of a
militating anxiety, felt a sudden chill at his heart. Were they, after
all, playing a losing game? Was the combination of desert and
Swinnerton and capital going to prove too much for them? Was John
Crawford even now looking clearly into the future and seeing himself a
beaten, broken man?
For a moment of torture, during which he realized to the uttermost
what success would mean, what failure, he feared that the vision which
he had thought to have glimpsed through this sturdy pioneer's eyes was
the true vision, feared that the fight was going out of John Crawford.
And a moment later a little shiver tingled through him as John
Crawford stopped in front of him, looking down at him, as he saw that
the make-up of this man was not broken, but that it was being bent
like a powerful spring which draws its strength from outside pressure.
He thought swiftly that the greater the weight put upon a powerful
spring the greater was its recoil, the greater weights might it fling
aside. Mr. Crawford was half smiling. His lips were calm. In his eyes
there was no hint of fear or of failure. Instead a steady light there
spoke with clear forcefulness of an unshaken determination, and more
than hinted of a certain grim joy of combat.
"Young man," he said, almost gently, "you are mighty fortunate."
Conniston rose, making no reply, as he waited for an explanation.
"Yes, mighty fortunate. You are taking hold. I know what you were when
you came to us; I know what you are now. I can see what you are going
to grow to be. I congratulate you. And I congratulate you upon being
placed in a position from which you are going to see the biggest fight
that was ever heard of in this part of the country. Things are going
dead against us these days. Do you know what that means?" He squared
his shoulders, and for a moment his lips came together in a straight
line. Then he smiled again.
"Are you never--afraid of the outcome?" asked Conniston.
"I believe in God, Mr. Conniston. I believe in my work. I believe in
myself. We are not going to fail."
In that one brief, fleeting second Conniston had a view of John
Crawford he had never glimpsed before. He made no reply. For a moment
there was complete silence, broken after a little by Hapgood's voice
from the dining-room. Mr. Crawford, walking composedly back and forth,
drawing thoughtfully at his cigar, gave no evidence of so much as
hearing the low-toned voice. To Conniston, who thought that he could
guess what it was that had put the pleading note into the guarded
tones, the words came in an indistinguishable murmur. Conniston,
having no desire to play the part of eavesdropper, strolled out upon
the porch.
It was only a moment later when the door which he had softly closed
behind him was thrown violently open, and Roger Hapgood, his hat
crushed in his hand, hastened out, ran down the steps, and with no
word of farewell disappeared into the darkness. Conniston gazed after
him in wonderment a moment, and then turned toward the open door
behind him.
Argyl had come into the room, her face flushed, her eyes bright with
anger. Mr. Crawford, looking up from his papers, was saying, quietly:
"What is it, Argyl? What is the matter with Hapgood?"
"I told him to go," she cried, hotly. "I told him never to speak to me
again, never to come into this house!"
Mr. Crawford stroked his chin thoughtfully.
"For good and sufficient reasons, Argyl dear?" he asked, gently.
"Yes. And--and I slapped his face, too!"
A little smile rippled across her father's face.
"Then I am sure that the reason was good and sufficient. And I shall
take pleasure in horsewhipping the little man for you, dear, if you
wish."
Argyl ran to him and threw her arms about his neck.
"God bless you, daddy!" she cried, softly. "I just love you to death.
And," holding him away from her and smiling brightly at him, "I don't
think that it is necessary. I slapped him _hard_!"
Conniston came back into the room.
Argyl was speaking swiftly, emphatically. "Mr. Hapgood has just done
me the honor to ask me to marry him. He told me that he had acquainted
Mr. Conniston with his intentions, so it is no secret. No, I did not
slap him for that. But you, father, and you, too, Mr. Conniston, since
you are one of us in our work, ought both to know what he threatened.
He says that we are upon the very brink of failure; that Swinnerton
has almost sufficient strength to ruin us and our hopes. And he
threatened, if I did not marry him, to turn his back upon us and join
the opposition. And I slapped his face."
Mr. Crawford took her hand and kissed it.
"I can think of no more forceful answer you could have made him, Argyl
girl. Fortunately, I have not confided in him to any dangerous extent.
He knows--"
"He knows," she cried, quickly, "all that you have let Mr. Winston
know! Everything you have told your lawyer--"
She paused, hesitating. Mr. Crawford looked at her sharply.
"What?" he demanded, a vague hint of anxiety in his tone.
"He knows--for he told me--the exact condition of your finances."
"Had I not better go?" suggested Conniston. "I do not want--"
"No. You are with us. If Hapgood knows, if he is going to peddle what
he knows, you might as well know too! What did he say, Argyl?"
"He said, father, that you had played to the end of your string. He
said that you did not have ten thousand dollars in the world. He said
that you did not know where to turn to raise the cash for the rest of
the work we have before us. I--I--" She looked anxiously at him. "Did
I do wrong, father? Should I have temporized with him--ought I to have
kept him from going away angry?"
"You should have let me throw him outdoors. I am not afraid of him."
He turned from her to Conniston. His face was very grave, his eyes
troubled, but he spoke firmly, confidently. "You see, Mr. Conniston,
that we have a fight ahead of us. Some people would say that we are
on a sinking ship. What do you think?"
"I think," said Conniston, simply, "that we will win out in spite of
what people say. I hope I may help you."
"Thank you. To-morrow morning I am coming out to see what you and
Truxton are doing. I shall want to have a talk with him--and with you.
You will of course say nothing of what has happened to-night."
Out in the darkness Conniston walked slowly toward the office
building, his brows drawn, his eyes upon the ground, a fear which he
could not argue away in his heart. With untold capital to back them
the fight against the desert was such a fight as most men would not
want upon their hands. With Oliver Swinnerton and the gold behind him
which he was spending with the recklessness of assurance, the fight
was tenfold harder. And now, when it was clear that the great bulk of
John Crawford's fortune was already sunk into the sand, the fight
seemed hopeless.
It had been a bad night for lovers. At the office building, leaning
against the wall, a cigarette dangling dejectedly from his lips,
Lonesome Pete was waiting for him.
"That you, Con?"
"Yes. What are you doing here?"
"Waitin' for you, an' meditatin' mos'ly." He cast away his cigarette,
sighed deeply, and began a search for his paper and tobacco. "I was
wantin' to ask you a question, Con."
Conniston said, "Go ahead, Pete," and made himself a cigarette.
"It's this-a-way." The cowboy lighted a match and let it burn out
without applying the flame to his brown paper. For a moment he
hesitated, and then blurted out: "You've knowed some considerable
females in your time, I take it. Huh, Con?"
"Well?" Conniston repeated.
"I gotta be hittin' the trail back to the Half Moon real soon. I
wanted to ask you a question firs'." Again he hesitated, again broke
out suddenly: "I take it a lady ain't the same in no particulars as a
man. Huh, Con?"
Conniston, thinking of Argyl, said "No," fervently.
"If a man likes you real well you can tell every time, can't you? An'
if he ain't got no use for you, you can tell that, too, can't you?"
Conniston nodded, thinking that he began to guess Pete's troubles.
"Don't you know--can't you tell--how Miss Jocelyn feels toward you,
Pete? Is that it?"
"That's it, only how in blazes you guessed it gets me! Con, I tell
you, I can't tell nothin' for sure. It's worse 'n gamblin' on the
weather. One day I'm thinkin' she likes me real well, an' she shows me
things about grammar an' stuff, an' we git on fine. An' then--maybe
it's nex' day an' maybe it's only two minutes later--she's all
diff'rent somehow, an' she jest makes fun of the way I talk, an' you'd
suppose she wouldn't wipe her feet on me if I laid down an' begged her
to."