"Not at all," he interrupted. To cover her evident confusion he held up his white hand in the scorching sunrays and commented jovially: "Talk about Eastern heat—this is a hundred and five Fahrenheit at the very least! A-a-ah!" He drew in a deep breath of the dry pure air. "This is something like! When you get your land under ditch, you'll have a paradise."

"Oh, but you do not understand," she replied. "We want you to find out and tell us that Dry Mesa cannot be watered. Irrigation would break up Daddy's range and put him out of business. It is just what we do not want."

"I see," said Blake, with instant comprehension of the situation.

"I know it cannot be done. But there are so many reclamation projects, and Daddy has read and read about them until he almost has a bee in his bonnet."

"Yet you sent for me—an engineer."

"Because I knew that when you told him our mesa couldn't be watered, he would stop worrying. You know, you are quite a hero with us. We have read all about your wonderful work."

Blake's pale eyes twinkled. "So I'm a hero. Will you dynamite my pedestal if I figure out a way to water your range?"

She flashed him a troubled glance, but rallied for a quick rejoinder: "Even you can't pump the water out of Deep Canyon, and Plum Creek is only a trickle most of the year."

"I see you want me to make my report as dry as I can write it," he bantered.

"No," she replied, suddenly serious. "We wish the exact truth, though we hope you'll find it dry."

"Then you are to blame if the matter does not figure out your way," he warned her. "You've given me a problem. If there is any possible way for me to irrigate your mesa, I am bound to try my best to work it out. Hadn't you better head me off before I start in? At present I haven't the remotest desire to do this except to comply with your wishes."

"It's as I told Daddy," she said. "If there really is a way, the sooner we know it the better. It is the uncertainty that is bothering Daddy. If your report is for us, all well and good; if against us, he will stand up and fight and forget about worrying."

"Fight?" asked Blake.

"Fight the project, fight against the formation of any irrigation district. He owns five sections. The reservoir might have to be on his patented land. He'd fight fair and square and hard—to the last ditch!"

"Isn't that a Dutchman's saying?" asked Blake humorously.

The girl's tense face relaxed, and she burst out in a ringing laugh. She shifted the conversation to less serious subjects, and they cantered along together, laughing and chatting like old friends.

By this time Ashton and Mrs. Blake had gradually come to the same stage of pleasant comradeship. Ashton had started the drive in a sullen mood, his manner half resentful and wholly embarrassed. Of this the lady was tactfully oblivious. Avoiding all allusion to the catastrophe that had befallen him, she told him the latest news of the mutual friends and acquaintances in whom ordinarily he would have been expected to be interested.

She even spoke casually of his father. His face contracted with pain, but he showed no bitterness against the parent who had disowned him. After that her graciousness towards him redoubled. With Isobel for excuse, she gradually shifted the conversation to ranch life and his employment as cowboy. In many subtle ways she conveyed to him her admiration of the manner in which he had turned over a new leaf and was making a clean fresh start in life.

After delicately intimating her feelings, she at once turned to less personal topics. The last traces of his embarrassment and moodiness left him, and he began to talk quite at his ease, though with a certain reserve that she attributed to the vast change in his fortunes. In return for her kindness, he repaid her by showing a real interest in Thomas Herbert Vincent Leslie Blake.

That young man spent his time chuckling and crowing and kicking, until overcome with sleep. Two hours out from Stockchute he awoke and vociferously demanded nourishment. Promptly the party was brought to a halt. They were among the pinyons on one of the hillsides. While the baby took his dinner, Isobel laid out the lunch and the men burned incense in the guise of a pair of Havana cigars produced by Blake.

The lunch might have been put up in the kitchen of a first-class metropolitan hotel. The fruit was the most luscious that money could buy; the sandwiches and cake would have tempted a sated epicure; the mineral water had come out of an ice chest so nearly frozen that it was still refreshingly cool. But—what was rather odd for a lunch packed in a private car—it included no wine or whiskey or liqueur. Blake caught Ashton's glance, and smiled.

"You see I'm still on the waterwagon," he remarked. "I've got a permanent seat. There have been times when it looked as if I might be jolted off, but—"

"But there's never been the slightest chance of that!" put in his wife. She looked at Isobel, her soft eyes shining with love and pride. "Once he gets a grip on anything, he never lets go."

"Oh, I can believe that!" exclaimed the girl with an enthusiasm that brought a shadow into the mobile face of Ashton.

"A man can't help holding on when he has something to hold on for," said Blake, gazing at his wife and baby.

"That's true!" agreed Ashton, his eyes on the dimpled face of Isobel.

Refreshed by the delicious meal, the party prepared to start on. But they did not travel as before. While Ashton was considerately washing out the dusty nostrils of the horses with water from his canteen, Isobel decided to drive with Mrs. Blake. Declaring that it would be like old times to sit a cowboy saddle, the big engineer lengthened the girl's stirrup leathers and swung on to the pony. This left Rocket to his owner.

At first Ashton seemed inclined to be stiff with his new road-mate. But as they jogged along, side by side, over the hills and across the sagebrush flats, Blake restricted his talk to impersonal topics and spared his companion from any allusion to their past difficulties. Throughout the ride, however, the two men maintained a certain reserve towards each other, and at no time approached the cordial intimacy that developed between the girl and Mrs. Blake before the end of their first mile together.

After telling merrily about her dual life as summer cowgirl and winter society maiden, Isobel drifted around, by seemingly casual association of ideas, to the troublesome question of irrigation on Dry Mesa, and from that to Blake and his work as an engineer.

"I do so hope Mr. Blake finds that there is no project practicable," she went on. "He has warned me that if there seems to be any chance to work out an irrigation scheme on our mesa he is bound to try to do it."

"And he would do it," added Mrs. Blake with quiet confidence.

"Then I hope and pray he will find there is no chance, because Daddy would have to oppose him. That would be such a pity! He and I have read so much about Mr. Blake's work that we have come to regard him as our—as one of our heroes."

Mrs. Blake smiled. It was very apparent, despite the quietness and repression of her high-bred manner, that she was very much in love with her husband.

The girl continued in a meekly deferential tone: "So you will not mind my worshiping him. He is a hero, a real hero! Isn't he?"

The words were spoken with an earnestness and sincerity that won Mrs. Blake to a like candor. "You are quite right," she said. "Lafayette may have told you how Mr. Blake and I were wrecked on the most savage coast of Africa. He saved me from wild beasts and tropical storms, from fever and snakes,—from death in a dozen horrible forms. Then, when he had saved me—and won me, he gave me up until he could prove to himself that he was worthy of me."

"He did?" cried the girl. "But of course!—of course!"

"Yet that was nothing to the next proof of his strength and manhood," went on the proud wife. "He destroyed a monster more frightful than any lion or tropical snake—he overcame the curse of drink that had come down to him from—one of his parents."

"From—from his—" whispered the girl, her averted face white and drawn with pain.

Mrs. Blake had bent over to kiss the forehead of her sleeping baby and did not see. "If only all parents knew what terrible misfortunes, what tortures, their transgressions are apt to bring upon their innocent children!" she murmured.

"He told me that he won his way up out of the—the slums," said Isobel. "It must be some men fail to do that because they have relatives to drag them down—their families."

"It seems hard to say it, yet I do not know but that you are right, my dear," agreed Mrs. Blake. "Strong men, if unhampered, have a chance to fight their way up out of the social pit. But women and girls, even when they escape the—the worst down there, can hardly hope ever to attain—And of course those that fall!—Our dual code of morality is hideously unjust to our sex, yet it still is the code under which we live."

The girl drew in a deep, sighing breath. Her eyes were dark with anguish. Yet she forced a gay little laugh. "Aren't we solemn sociologists! All we are concerned with is that he has won his way up, and there's no one ever to drag him down or disgrace him; and—and you won't be jealous if I set him up on a pedestal and bring incense to him on my bended knees."

"Only you must give Thomas Herbert his share at the same time," stipulated the mother.

The girl burst into prolonged and rather shrill laughter that passed the bounds of good breeding. Her emotion was so unrestrained that when she looked about at her surprised companion her face was flushed and her eyes were swimming with tears.

"Please, oh, do please forgive me!" she begged with a humility as immoderate as had been her laughter. "I—I can't tell you why, but—"

"Say no more, my dear," soothed Mrs. Blake. "You are merely a bit hysterical. Perhaps the excitement of our coming, after your months of lonely ranch life—"

"You're so good!" sighed the girl. "Yes, it was due to—your coming. But now the worst is over. I'll not shock you again with any more such outbursts."

She smiled, and began to talk of other things, with somewhat unsteady but persistent gayety.



CHAPTER XIV

A DESCENT

When the party arrived at the ranch, the girl hostess took Mrs. Blake to rest in the clean, simply furnished room provided for the visitors. Blake, after carrying in their trunk single-handed, went to look around at the ranch buildings in company with Ashton.

On returning to the house, the two found Knowles and Gowan in the parlor with the ladies. Isobel had already introduced them to Mrs. Blake and also to her son. That young man was sprawled, face up, in the cowman's big hands, crowing and valiantly clutching at his bristly mustache.

Gowan sat across from him, perfectly at ease in the presence of the city lady. But, with his characteristic lack of humor, he was unmoved by the laughable spectacle presented by his employer and the baby, and his manner was both reserved and watchful.

At sight of Blake, Isobel called to her father in feigned alarm: "Look out, Daddy! Better stop hazing that yearling. Here comes his sire."

Knowles gave the baby back to its half-fearful mother, and rose to greet his guest with hospitable warmth: "Howdy, Mr. Blake! I'm downright glad to meet you. Hope you've found things comfortable and homelike."

"Too much so," asserted Blake, his eyes twinkling. "We came out expecting to rough-it."

"Well, your lady won't know the difference," remarked Knowles.

"You're quite mistaken, Daddy, really," interposed his daughter. "She and Mr. Blake were wrecked in Africa and lived on roast leopards. We'll have to feed them on mountain lions and bobcats."

"If you mean that, Miss Chuckie," put in Gowan, "I can get a bobcat in time for dinner tomorrow."

The girl led the general outburst of laughter over this serious proposal. "Oh! oh! Kid! You'll be the death of me!—Yet I sent you a joke-book last Christmas!"

"Couldn't see anything funny in it," replied the puncher. "I haven't lost it, though. It came from you."

To cover the girl's blush at this blunt disclosure of sentiment, Mrs. Blake somewhat formally introduced her husband to the puncher. He shook Blake's hand with like formality and politeness. But as their glances met, his gray eyes shone with the same cold suspicion with which he had regarded Ashton at their first meeting. Before that look the engineer's friendly eyes hardened to disks of burnished steel, and his big fist released its cordial grip of the other's small, bony hand. He gave back hostility for hostility with the readiness of a born fighter. Gowan was the first to look away.

The incident passed so swiftly that only Knowles observed the outflash of enmity. His words indicated that he had anticipated the puncher's attitude. He addressed Blake seriously: "Kid has been with us ever since he was a youngster and has always made my interests his own. Chuckie has been telling us what you said about putting through any project you once started."

Blake nodded. "Yes. That is why I suggested to Miss Knowles that she call off the agreement under which I came on this visit. We shall gladly pay board, and I'll merely knock around; or, if you prefer, we'll leave you and go back tomorrow morning."

"No, Daddy, no! we can't allow our guests to leave, when they've only just come!" protested Isobel.

"As for any talk about board," added her father, "you ought to know better, Mr. Blake."

"My apology!" admitted Blake. "I've been living in the East."

"That explains," agreed the cowman. "Even as far east as Denver—I've got a sister there; lives up beyond the Capitol. But I've talked with other men there from over this way. They all agree you might as well look for good cow pasture behind a sheep drive as for hospitality in a city. Sometimes you can get what you want, and all times you're sure to get a lot of attention you don't want—if you have money to spend."

"That's true. But about my going ahead here?" inquired Blake. "Say the word, and I put irrigation on the shelf throughout our visit."

Knowles shook his head thoughtfully. "No, I reckon Chuckie is right. We'd best learn just how we stand."

"What if I work out a practical project? There's any amount of good land on your mesa. The lay of it and the altitude ought to make it ideal for fruit. If I see that the proposition is feasible, I shall be bound to put water on all of your range that I can. I am an engineer,—I cannot let good land and water go to waste."

"The land isn't going to waste," replied Knowles. "It's the best cattle range in this section, and it's being used for the purpose Nature intended. As for the water, Chuckie has figured out there isn't more than three thousand acre feet of flood waters that can be impounded off the watershed above us. That wouldn't pay for building any kind of a dam."

"And the devil himself couldn't pump the water up out of Deep Canyon," put in Gowan.

"The devil hasn't much use for science," said Blake. "It has almost put him out of business. So he is not apt to be well up on modern engineering."

"Then you think you can do what the devil can't?" demanded Knowles.

"I can try. Unless you wish to call off the deal, I shall ride around tomorrow and look over the country. Maybe that will be sufficient to show me there is no chance for irrigation, or, on the contrary, I may have to run levels and do some figuring."

"Then perhaps you will know by tomorrow night?" exclaimed Isobel.

"Yes."

"Well, that's something," said the cowman. "I'll take you out first thing in the morning.—Lafe, show Mr. Blake the wash bench. There goes the first gong."

When, a little later, all came together again at the supper table, nothing more was said about the vexed question of irrigation. Isobel had made no changes in her table arrangements other than to have a plate laid for Mrs. Blake beside her father's and another for Blake beside her own.

The employes were too accustomed to Miss Chuckie to be embarrassed by the presence of another lady, and Blake put himself on familiar terms with them by his first remarks. If his wealthy high-bred wife was surprised to find herself seated at the same table with common workmen, she betrayed no resentment over the situation. Her perfect breeding was shown in the unaffected simplicity of her manner, which was precisely the same to the roughest man present as to her hostess.

Even had there been any indications of uncongeniality, they must have been overcome by the presence of Thomas Herbert Vincent Leslie Blake. The most unkempt, hard-bitten bachelor present gazed upon the majesty of babyhood with awed reverence and delight. The silent Jap interrupted his serving to fetch a queer rattle of ivory balls carved out one within the other. This he cleansed with soap, peroxide and hot water, in the presence of the honorable lady mother, before presenting it to her infant with much smiling and hissing insuckings of breath.

After supper all retired at an early hour, out of regard for the weariness of Mrs. Blake.

When she reappeared, late the next morning, she learned that Knowles, Gowan and her husband had ridden off together hours before. But Isobel and Ashton seemed to have nothing else to do than to entertain the mother and child. Mrs. Blake donned one of the girl's divided skirts and took her first lesson in riding astride. There was no sidesaddle at the ranch, but there was a surefooted old cow pony too wise and spiritless for tricks, and therefore safe even for a less experienced horsewoman than was Mrs. Blake.

Knowles and Gowan and the engineer returned so late that they found all the others at the supper table. Blake's freshly sunburnt face was cheerful. Gowan's expression was as noncommittal as usual. But the cowman's forehead was furrowed with unrelieved suspense.

"Oh, Mr. Blake!" exclaimed Isobel. "Don't tell us your report is unfavorable."

"Afraid I can't say, as yet," he replied. "We've covered the ground pretty thoroughly for miles along High Mesa and Deep Canyon. If the annual precipitation here is what I estimate it from what your father tells me, it would be possible to put in a drainage and reservoir system that would store four thousand acre feet. Except as an auxiliary system, however, it would cost too much to be practicable. As for Deep Canyon—" He turned to his wife. "Jenny, whatever else happens, I must get you up to see that canyon. It's almost as grand and in some ways even more wonderful than the Canyon of the Colorado."

"Then I must see it, by all means," responded Mrs. Blake. "I shall soon be able to ride up to it, Isobel assures me."

"Within a few days," said the girl. "But, Mr. Blake, pardon me—How about the water in the canyon? You surely see no way to lift it out over the top of High Mesa?"

"I'm sorry, but I can't even guess what can be done until I have run a line of levels and found the depth of the canyon. I tried to estimate it by dropping in rocks and timing them, but we couldn't see them strike bottom."

"A line of levels? Will it take you long?"

"Maybe a week; possibly more. If I had a transit as well as my level, it would save time. However, I can make out with the chain and compass I brought."

"Mr. Blake is to start running his levels in the morning," said Knowles. "Lafe, I'd like you to help him as his rodman, if you have no objections. As you've been an engineer, you can help him along faster than Kid.—You said one would do, Mr. Blake; but if you need more, take all the men you want. The sooner this thing is settled, the better it will suit me."

"The sooner the better, Daddy!" agreed Isobel, "that is, if our guests promise to not hurry away."

"We shall stay at least a month, if you wish us to," said Mrs. Blake.

"Two months would be too short!—And the sooner we are over with this uncertainty—Lafe, you'll do your utmost to help Mr. Blake, won't you?"

"Yes, indeed; anything I can," eagerly responded Ashton.

Gowan's face darkened at sight of the smile with which the girl rewarded the tenderfoot. Yet instead of sulking, he joined in the evening's entertainment of the guests with a zeal that agreeably surprised everyone. His guitar playing won genuine praise from the Blakes, though both were sophisticated and critical music lovers.

Somewhat earlier than usual he rose to go, with the excuse that he wished to consult Knowles about some business with the owner of the adjoining range. The cowman went out with him, and did not return. An hour later Ashton took reluctant leave of Isobel, and started for the bunkhouse. Half way across he was met by his employer, who stopped before him.

"Everybody turning in, Lafe?"

"Not at my suggestion, though," replied Ashton.

"Reckon not. Mr. Blake and his lady are old friends of yours, I take it."

"Mrs. Blake is," stated Ashton, with a touch of his former arrogance. "We made mud-pies together, in a hundred thousand dollar dooryard."

"Humph!" grunted Knowles. "And her husband?"

The darkness hid Ashton's face, but his voice betrayed the sudden upwelling of his bitterness: "I never heard of him until he—until a little over three years ago. I wish to Heaven he hadn't taken part in that bridge contest!"

"How's that?" asked Knowles in a casual tone.

"Nothing—nothing!" Ashton hastened to disclaim. "You haven't been talking with Miss Chuckie about me, have you, Mr. Knowles?"

"No. Why?"

"It was only that I explained to her how I came to be ruined—to lose my fortune. You see, the circumstances are such that I cannot very well say anything against Blake; yet he was the cause—it was owing to something he did that I lost all—everything—millions! Curse him!"

"You've appeared friendly enough towards him," remarked Knowles.

"Yes, I—I promised Miss Chuckie to try to forget the past. But when I think of what I lost, all because of him—"

"So-o!" considered the cowman. "Maybe there's more in what Kid says than I thought. He's been cross-questioning Blake all day. You know how little Kid is given to gab. But from the time we started off he kept after Blake like he was cutting out steers at the round-up."

"Blake isn't the kind you could get to tell anything against himself," asserted Ashton.

"Well, that may be. All his talk today struck me as being straightforward and outspoken. But Kid has been drawing inferences. He keeps hammering at it that Blake must be in thick with his father-in-law, and that all millionaires round-up their money in ways that would make a rustler go off and shoot himself."

"Business is business," replied Ashton with all his old cynicism. "I'll not say that H. V. Leslie is crooked, but I never knew of his coming out of a deal second best."

"Well, at any rate, it's white of Blake to tell us beforehand what he intends to do if he sees a chance of a practical project."

"Has he told you everything?" scoffed Ashton.

"How about his offer to drop the whole matter and not go into it at all?" rejoined Knowles.

Ashton hesitated to reply. For one thing, he was momentarily nonplused, and, for another, the Blakes had treated him as a gentleman. But a fresh upwelling of bitterness dulled his conscience and sharpened his wits.

"It may have been to throw you off your guard," he said. "Blake is deep, and he has had old Leslie to coach him ever since he married Genevieve. He could have laid his plans,—looked over the ground, and found out just what are your rights here,—all without your suspecting him."

"Well, I'm not so sure—"

"Have you told him what lands you have deeds to?"

"No, but if he knows as much about the West as I figure he does, he can guess it. Fence every swallow of get-at-able water to be found on my range this time of year, and you won't have to dig a posthole off of land I hold in fee simple. Plum Creek sinks just below where Dry Fork junctions."

"But you can't have all the water?" exclaimed Ashton incredulously.

"Yes, every drop to be found outside Deep Canyon this time of year. There's my seven and a half mile string of quarter-sections blanketing Plum Creek from the springs to down below Dry Fork, and five quarter-sections covering all the waterholes. That makes up five sections. A bunch of tenderfeet came in here, years ago, and preempted all the quarter-sections with water on them. Got their patents from the government. Then the Utes stampeded them clean out of the country, and I bought up their titles at a fair figure."

"And you own even that splendid pool up where I had my camp?"

"Everything wet on this range that a cow or hawss can get to, this time of year."

Ashton considered, and advised craftily: "Don't tell him this. Does Miss Chuckie know it?"

"She knows I have five sections, and that most of it is on Plum Creek. I don't think anything has ever been said to her about the waterholes. But why not tell Blake?"

"Don't you see? Even if he finds a way to get at the water in Deep Canyon, he will first have to bore his tunnel. He and his construction gang must have water to drink and for their engines while they are carrying out his plans. You can lie low, and, when the right time comes, get out an injunction against their trespassing on your land."

"Say, that's not a bad idea. The best I could figure was that they might need one of my waterholes for a reservoir site. But why not call him when he first takes a hand?" asked Knowles.

"No, you should not show your cards until you have to," replied Ashton. "With all Leslie's money against you, it might be hard to get your injunction if they knew of your plans. But if you wait until they have their men, machinery and materials on the ground, you will have them where they must buy you out at your own terms."

"By—James!" commented Knowles. "Talk about business sharps!"

"I was in Leslie's office for a time," explained Ashton. "Your interests are Miss Chuckie's interests. I'm for her—first, last, and all the time."

"Um-m-m. Then I guess I can count on you as sure as on Gowan."

"You can. I am going to try my best to win your daughter, Mr. Knowles. She's a lady—the loveliest girl I ever met."

"No doubt about that. What's more, she's got grit and brains. That's why I tell you now, as I've told Kid, it's for her to decide on the man she's going to make happy. If he's square and white, that's all I ask."

"About my helping Blake with his levels," Ashton rather hastily changed the subject. "I am in your employ—and so is he, for that matter. Don't you think I have a right to keep you posted on all his plans?"

"Well—yes. But he as much as says he will tell them himself."

"Perhaps he will, and perhaps he won't, Mr. Knowles. I've told you what Leslie is like; and Blake is his son-in-law."

"Well, I'm not so sure. You and Kid, between you, have shaken my judgment of the man. It can't do any harm to watch him, and I'll be obliged to you for doing it. If it comes to a fight against him and the millions of backing he has, I want a fair deal and—But, Lord! what if we're making all this fuss over nothing? It doesn't stand to reason that there's any way to get the water out of Deep Canyon."

"Wait a week or so," cautioned Ashton. "In my opinion, Blake already sees a possibility."



CHAPTER XV

LEVELS AND SLANTS

At sunrise the next morning Blake screwed his level on its tripod and set up the instrument about a hundred yards away from the ranch house. Ashton held the level rod for him on a spike driven into the foot of the nearest post of the front porch. Blake called the spike a bench-mark. For convenience of determining the relative heights of the points along his lines of levels, he designated this first "bench" in his fieldbook as "elevation 1,000."

From the porch he ran the line of level "readings" up the slope to the top of the divide between Plum Creek and Dry Fork and from there towards the waterhole on Dry Fork. At noon Isobel and Mrs. Blake drove out to them in the buckboard, bringing a hot meal in an improvised fireless-cooker.

"And we came West to rough-it!" groaned Blake, his eyes twinkling.

"You can camp at the waterhole where Lafe did, and I'll send Kid out for that bobcat," suggested the girl. "You could roast him, hair and all."

"What! roast Gowan?" protested Blake. "Let me tell you, Miss Chuckie—you and my wife and Ashton may like him that much, but I don't!"

"You need not worry, Mr. Tenderfoot," the girl flashed back at him. "Whenever it comes to a hot time, Kid always gets in the first fire, without waiting to be told."

"Don't I know it?" exclaimed Ashton. "Maybe you haven't noticed this hole in my hat, Mrs. Blake. He put a bullet through it."

"But it's right over your temple, Lafayette!" replied Mrs. Blake.

"Lafe was lifting his some-berero to me, and Kid did it to haze him—only a joke, you know," explained Isobel. "Of course Lafe was in no danger. It was different, though, when somebody—we think it was his thieving guide—took several rifle shots at him. Tell them about it, Lafe."

Ashton gave an account of the murderous attack, more than once checking himself in a natural tendency to embellish the exciting details.

"Oh! What if the man should come back and shoot at us?" shuddered Mrs. Blake, drawing her baby close in her arms.

"No fear of that," asserted Isobel. "Kid found that he had fled towards the railroad. That proves it must have been the guide. He would never dare come back after such a crime."

"If he should, I always carry my rifle, as you see," remarked Ashton; adding, with a touch of bravado, "I made him run once, and I would again."

"I'm glad Miss Chuckie is sure he will not come back," said Blake. "I don't fancy anyone shooting at me that way."

"Timid Mr. Blake!" teased the girl. "Genevieve has been telling me how you faced a lion with only a bow and arrow."

"Had to," said Blake. "He'd have jumped on me if I had turned or backed off.—Speaking about camping at that waterhole, I believe we'll do it, Ashton, if it's the same thing to you. It would save the time that would be lost coming and going to the ranch."

"Save time?" repeated Isobel. "Then of course we'll bring out a tent and camp kit for you tomorrow. Genevieve and I can ride or drive up to the waterhole each day, to picnic with you."

"It will be delightful," agreed Mrs. Blake.

"You ride on ahead and wait for us in the shade," said her husband. "We'll knock off for the day when we reach that dolerite dike above the waterhole.—If you are ready, Ashton, we'll peg along."

He started off to set up his level as briskly as at dawn, though the midday sun was so hot that he had to shade the instrument with his handkerchief to keep the air-bubble from outstretching its scale. His wife and the girl drove on up Dry Fork to the waterhole.

Mrs. Blake was outstretched on her back, fast asleep, and Isobel was playing with the baby under the adjoining tree, when at last the surveyors came up on the other side of the creek and ended their day's run with the establishment of a bench-mark on the top of the dike above the pool. Blake seemed as fresh as in the morning. He took a moderate drink of water dipped up in the brim of his hat, and without wakening his wife, sat down beside her to "figure up" his fieldbook.

Ashton had come down to the pool panting from heat and exertion. It was the first time that he had walked more than half a mile since coming to the ranch, for he had immediately fallen into the cowboy practice of saddling a horse to go even short distances. He had his reward for his work when, having soused his hot head in the pool and drunk his fill, he came up to rest in the shade of Isobel's tree. Very considerately the baby fell asleep. To avoid disturbing him and his mother, the young couple talked in low tones and half whispers very conducive to intimacy.

Ashton did his utmost to improve his opportunity. Without openly speaking his love, he allowed it to appear in his every look and intonation. The girl met the attack with banter and raillery and adroit shiftings of the conversation whenever his ardent inferences became too obvious. Yet her evasion and her teasing could not always mask her maidenly pleasure over his adoration of her loveliness, and an occasional blush betrayed to him that his wooing was not altogether unwelcome.

He was in the seventh heaven when Mrs. Blake awoke from her health-giving sleep and her husband closed his fieldbook. The girl promptly dashed her suitor back to earth by dropping him for the engineer.

"Mr. Blake! You can't have figured it out already?" she exclaimed. "What do you find?"

"Only an 'if,' Miss Chuckie," he answered. "If water can be stored or brought by ditch to this elevation, practically all Dry Mesa can be irrigated. Our bench-mark there on the dike is more than two hundred feet above that spike we drove into your porch post."

"Is that all you've found out today?"

"All for today," said Blake. "I could have left this line of levels until later, but I thought I might as well get through with them."

"You would not have run them if you had thought they would be useless," she stated, perceiving the point with intuitive acuteness.

"I like to clean up my work as I go along," he replied. "If you wish to know, I have thought of a possible way to get water enough for the whole mesa. It depends on two 'ifs.' I shall be certain as to one of them within the next two days. The other is the question of the depth of Deep Canyon. If I had a transit, I could determine that by a vertical angle,—triangulation. As it is, I probably shall have to go down to the bottom."

"Go down to the bottom of Deep Canyon?" cried the girl.

"Yes," he answered in a matter-of-course tone. "A big ravine runs clear down to the bottom, up beyond where your father said you first met Ashton. I think it is possible to get down that gulch.—Suppose we hitch up? We'll make the ranch just about supper-time."

Ashton hastened to bring in the picketed horses. When they were harnessed Isobel fetched the sleeping baby and handed him to his mother; but she did not take the seat beside her.

"You drive, Lafe," she ordered. "I'm going to ride behind with Mr. Blake. It's such fun bouncing."

All protested in vain against this odd whim. The girl plumped herself in on the rear end of the buckboard and dangled her slender feet with the gleefulness of a child.

"Mr. Blake will catch me if I go to jolt off," she declared.

The engineer nodded with responsive gayety and seated himself beside her. As the buckboard rattled away over the rough sod, they made as merry over their jolts and bounces as a pair of school-children on a hayrack party.

Mrs. Blake sought to divert Ashton from his disappointment, but he had ears only for the laughing, chatting couple behind him. The fact that Blake was a married man did not prevent the lover from giving way to jealous envy. Chancing to look around as he warned the hilarious pair of a gully, he saw the girl grasp Blake's shoulder. Natural as was the act, his envy flared up in hot resentment. Except on their drive to Stockchute, she had always avoided even touching his hand with her finger tips; yet now she clung to the engineer with a grasp as familiar as that of an affectionate child. Nor did she release her clasp until they were some yards beyond the gully.

Mrs. Blake had seen not only the expression that betrayed Ashton's anger but also the action that caused it. She raised her fine eyebrows; but meeting Ashton's significant glance, she sought to pass over the incident with a smile. He refused to respond. All during the remainder of the drive he sat in sullen silence. Genevieve bent over her baby. Behind them the unconscious couple continued in their mirthful enjoyment of each other and the ride.

When the party reached the ranch, the girl must have perceived Ashton's moroseness had she not first caught sight of her father. He was standing outside the front porch, his eyes fixed upon the corner post in a perplexed stare.

"Why, Daddy," she called, "what is it? You look as you do when playing chess with Kid."

"Afraid it's something that'll annoy Mr. Blake," replied the cowman.

"What is it?" asked Blake, who was handing his wife from the buckboard.

As the engineer faced Knowles, Gowan sauntered around the far corner of the house. At sight of the ladies he paused to adjust his neckerchief.

"Can't understand it, Mr. Blake," said the cowman. "Somebody has pulled out that spike you drove in here this morning."

"Pulled the spike?" repeated Gowan, coming forward to stare at the post. "That shore is a joke. The Jap's building a new henhouse. Must be short of nails."

"That's so," said Knowles. "I forgot to order them for him. I'm mighty sorry, Mr. Blake. But of course the little brown cuss didn't know what he was meddling with."

"Jumping Jehosaphat!" ejaculated Gowan. "That shore is mighty hard luck! I reckon pulling that spike turns your line of levels adrift like knocking out the picket-pin of an uneasy hawss."

Blake burst into a hearty laugh. "That's a fine metaphor, Mr. Gowan. But it does not happen to fit the case. It would not matter if the spike-hole had been pulled out and the post along with it, so far as concerns this line of levels."

"It wouldn't?" muttered Gowan, his lean jaw dropping slack. He glowered as if chagrined at the engineer's laughter at his mistake.

Without heeding the puncher's look, Blake began to tell Knowles the result of his day's work. While he was speaking, they went into the house after his wife and the girl, leaving Gowan and Ashton alone. Equally sullen and resentful, the rivals exchanged stares of open hostility. Ashton pointed a derisive finger at the spike-hole in the post.

"'Hole ... and the post along with it!'" he repeated Blake's words. "On bridge work it might have caused some trouble. But a preliminary line of levels—Mon Dieu! A Jap should have known better—or even a yap!" With a supercilious shrug, he swung back into the buckboard and drove up to the corral.

Gowan's right hand had dropped to his hip. Slowly it came up and joined the other hand in rolling a thick Mexican cigarette. But the puncher did not light his "smoke." He looked at the spike-hole in the post, scowled, and went back around the house.



CHAPTER XVI

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.



CHAPTER XVII

A SHOT IN THE DUSK

They returned to their grazing ponies, and at once started the descent of the mountain, after crossing the ravine where they had seen the wolf. Blake chose a route that brought them down into the valley above the waterhole shortly before five o'clock. They cantered the remaining distance along the wide, gravelly wash of the creek bed to the dike.

Looking down from the dike, they saw that Knowles and Gowan had come up the creek and were waiting for them in company with the ladies. Ashton set spurs to his horse and dashed across above the pool, to descend the slope to the party. Blake descended on the other side, to water his horse and slake his own thirst.

To Ashton's chagrin, Isobel joined Genevieve in hastening to meet the engineer. He rode down beside the two men and jumped off to follow the ladies. But Gowan sprang before him.

"Hold on," he said. "Mr. Knowles wants your report."

"If you'll oblige us, Lafe," added the cowman. "I'm pretty much worked up."

"You have cause to be!" replied Ashton. "He says the only question left is whether the water in the canyon is not at too low a level. We measured across from the creek gulch to the canyon. A tunnel is practicable, he says."

"Through all that mountain?" scoffed Gowan. "It's solid rock, clean through. It would take him a hundred years to burrow a hole like that."

"You know nothing of engineering and its tools. We now have electric drills that will eat into granite like cheese," condescendingly explained Ashton.

"Think I don't know that? But just you try to figure out how he's going to get his electricity for his drills," retorted Gowan.

Without stopping for his disconcerted rival to reply, he turned his back on him and started towards Isobel. The girl was running up from the pool, her face almost pitiful with disappointment.

"Oh, Daddy!" she called, "Mr. Blake says that if the water in the canyon—"

"Needn't tell me, honey. I know already," broke in her father, hastening to meet her.

She flung her arms about his neck, and sobbed brokenly: "I'm—I'm so sorry for you, D-Daddy!"

"There, there now!" he soothed, awkwardly patting her back. "'Tisn't like you to cry before you're hurt."

"No, no—you! not me. It doesn't matter about me!"

"Doesn't it, though! But I'm not hurt either, as yet. It's a long ways from being a sure thing."

"All the way down to the bottom of Deep Canyon!" put in Ashton.

"And then some!" added Gowan. "I've hit on another 'if,' Miss Chuckie."

"You have? Oh, Kid, tell us!"

"It's this: How's he going to get electricity to dig his tunnel?"

Blake was coming up from the pool, with his baby in one arm and his wife clinging fondly to the other. He met the coldly exultant glance of Gowan, and smiled.

"The only question regarding the power is one of cost, Mr. Gowan," he said. "There is no coal near enough to be hauled. But gasolene is not bulky. If there was water power to generate electricity, a tunnel could be bored at half the cost I have figured. The point is that there is no water power available, nor will there be until the tunnel is finished."

"What! You talk about finishing the tunnel? Didn't you say it is still uncertain about the water?" demanded Knowles.

"I was merely explaining to Mr. Gowan," replied Blake. "The question he raised is one of the factors in our problem as to whether an irrigation project is practicable. We now know that we have the land for it, the tunnel site, the reservoir site—" he pointed to the valley above the dike—"and I have figured that the cost of construction would not be excessive. All that remains is to determine if we have the water. I have already explained that this will require a descent into the canyon."

"You say that that will decide it, one way or the other?" queried Knowles, his forehead creased with deep lines of foreboding.

"Yes," replied Blake. "I regret that you feel as you do about it. Consider what it would mean to hundreds, yes, thousands of people, if this mesa were watered. I assure you that you, too, would benefit by the project."

"I don't care for any such benefit, Mr. Blake. I've been a cowman for twenty-five years. I want to keep my range until the time comes for me to take the long trail."

"It would be hard to change," agreed the engineer. "However, the point now is to find what Deep Canyon has to tell us."

"You still think you can go down it?"

"Yes, if I have ropes, a two-pound hammer, and some iron pins; railroad spikes and picket-pins would do."

"Going to rope the rocks and pull them up for steps?" asked Gowan.

"I shall need two or three hundred feet of half-inch manila," said Blake, ignoring the sarcasm.

"They may have it at Stockchute," said Knowles. "Kid, you can drive over with the wagon and fetch Mr. Blake all the rope and other things he wants. I can't stand this waiting much longer."

"There will be no time lost," said Blake. "It will take Ashton and me all of tomorrow to carry a line of levels up the mountain."

"Why need you do that, Tom?" asked his wife.

"Yes, why, if all that's left is to go down into the canyon?" added Isobel, dabbing the tears from her wet eyes.

Ashton thrust in an answer before Blake could speak. "We must see how high the upper mesa is above this one, Miss Chuckie, and then compare the difference of altitude with the depth of the canyon, to see whether its bottom is above or below the bottom of the gulch."

"Oh—measure up and then down, to see which way is longest," said Genevieve.

"Sorry, ma'am," broke in Knowles. "We'll have to be starting now to get home by dark. If you think you can trust me with that young man, I'd like the honor of packing him all the way in. I've toted calves for miles, so I guess I can hold onto a baby if I use both hands."

"You shall have him!" replied Genevieve, smiling like a daughter as she met the look in his grave eyes. "Tom, give Thomas to Mr. Knowles—when he is safe in the saddle."

Even Gowan cracked a smile at this cautious qualification. He hastened to bring Isobel's horse and hold him for her—which gave Ashton the opportunity to help her mount. Both services were needless, but she rewarded each eager servitor with a dimpled smile. When Blake handed the baby up to Knowles, his wife, untroubled by mock modesty, gave him a loving kiss. He lifted her bodily into the saddle, and she rode off with her three companions.

Isobel, however, wheeled within the first few yards, and came back for a parting word: "You can expect us quite early tomorrow. We will overtake you on your way up the mountain. I wish Genevieve to see the canyon. Good night—Pleasant dreams!"

She had addressed Ashton, but her last smile was for Blake, and it was undisguisedly affectionate. As she loped away after the others, Ashton frowned, and, picking up his rifle, started off up the valley. Blake was staring after the girl with a wondering look. He turned to cast a quizzical glance at the back of the resentful lover.

When the latter had disappeared around the hill, the engineer took the frying pan and walked up into the creek bed above the dike. After going some distance over the gravel bars, he came to a place where the swirl of the last freshet had gouged a hole almost to bedrock. Scooping a panful of sand and gravel from the bottom of the hole, he went back and squatted down beside the pool within easy reach of the water.

He picked the larger pebbles from the pan, added water, and began to swirl the contents around with a circular motion. Each turn flirted some of the sand and water over the pan's beveled edge. Every little while he renewed the water. At last the pan's contents were reduced to a half dozen, irregular, dirty, little lumps and a handful of "black sand" in which gleamed numbers of yellow particles.

Blake put the nuggets into his pocket and threw the rest out into the pool. He returned to the tent and sat down to re-check his level-book and his calculations on the approximate cost of the tunnel. Sundown found him still figuring; but when twilight faded into dusk, he put away his fieldbook and started a fire for supper.

He was in the act of setting on a pan of bacon when, without the slightest warning, a bullet cut the knot of the loose neckerchief under his downbent chin. In the same instant that he heard the ping of the shot he pitched sideways and flattened himself on the ground with the chuck-box between him and the fire. A roll and a quick crawl took him into the underbrush beyond the circle of firelight. No second bullet followed him in his amazingly swift movements. He lay motionless, listening intently, but no sound broke the stillness of the evening except the distant wail of a coyote and the hoot of an owl.

Half an hour passed, and still the engineer waited. The dusk deepened into darkness. At last a heavy footfall sounded up on the dike. Blake rose, and slipping silently to the tent, groped about until he found a heavy iron picket-pin.

Someone came down the slope and kicked his way petulantly through the bushes to the dying fire. He threw on an armful of brush. The light of the up-blazing flame showed Ashton standing beside the chuck-box, rifle in hand. But he dropped the weapon to pick up the overturned frying pan, which lay at his feet.

"Hello, Blake!" he sang out irritably. "I supposed you'd have supper waiting. Haven't turned in this early, have you?"

"No," replied Blake, and he came forward, carelessly swinging the picket-pin. "Thought I saw a coyote sneaking about, and tried to trick him into coming close enough for me to nail him with this pin."

"With that!" scoffed Ashton. "But it would do as well as my rifle. I took a shot at a wolf, and then the mechanism jammed. I can't get it to work."

"You fired a shot?" asked Blake.

"Yes. Was it too far off for you to hear? I circled all around these hills."

"No, I heard it," replied Blake, looking close into the other's sullen face. "You may not have been as far away as you thought."

"I was far enough," grumbled Ashton. "I've walked till I'm hungry as a shark."

"Do you realize that you want to be careful how you shoot with these high-power rifles?" asked Blake. "They carry a mile or more."

"I've carried mine more than that, and it won't carry an inch," complained Ashton. "Wish you would see if you can fix it, while I get on some bacon."

Blake took his scrutinizing gaze from his companion's face, and picked up the rifle. Ashton showed plainly that he was tired and hungry and very irritable, but there was no trace of guilt in his look or manner. While he hurriedly prepared supper, Blake took apart the mechanism of the rifle. He discovered the trouble at once.

"This is easy," he said. "Nothing broken—just a screw loose. Have you been monkeying with the parts, to see how they work?"

"No; I don't care a hang how they work. What gets me is that they didn't work!"

"Queer, then, how this screw got loose," said Blake as he tightened it with the blade of his pocket knife. "It sets tight enough. Of course it might have come from the factory a bit loose, and jarred out with the firing; but neither seems probable."

"Is it all right now?" queried Ashton.

"Yes.—Seems to me someone must have loosened this screw."

"What's the difference how it happened, if it will not happen again?" irritably replied Ashton. "Guess this bacon is fried enough. Let's eat."

Blake recoupled the rifle, emptied the magazine, tested the mechanism, refilled the magazine, and joined his ravenous companion in his ill-cooked meal.

Immediately after eating, Ashton flung himself down in the tent. A few minutes later Blake crept in beside him and struck a match. The young man had already fallen into the deep slumber of utter physical and mental relaxation. Blake went outside and listened to the wailing of the coyotes. Difficult as it was to determine the direction of their mournful cries, he at last satisfied himself that they were circling entirely around the camp.

A watchdog could not have indicated with greater certainty that there was no other wild beast or any human being lurking near the waterhole. Blake crept back into the tent and was soon fast asleep beside his companion.



CHAPTER XVIII

ON THE BRINK

Early to bed, early to rise. The two men were up at dawn. During the night the coyotes had sneaked into the camp. But Blake had fastened the food in the chuck-box and slung everything gnawable up in the branches out of reach of the sly thieves.

At sunrise the two started out on their day's work, Ashton carrying his rifle and canteen and the level rod, Blake with the level and a bag containing their lunch and a two-quart sirup-can of water.

"We'll run a new line from the dike bench, around the hill and across the valley the way we rode out yesterday," said the engineer, as they climbed the slope above the waterhole. "That will give us a check by cross-tying to the line of the creek levels where it runs into the gulch."

"Can't you trust to the accuracy of your own work?" asked Ashton with evident intent to mortify.

Blake smiled in his good-natured way. "You forget the first rule of engineering. Always check when you can, then re-check and check again.—Now, if you'll kindly give me a reading off that bench."

Ashton complied, though with evident ill will. He had wakened in good spirits, but was fast returning to his sullenness of the previous day. He took his time in going from the bench-mark to the first turning point. Blake moved up past him with inspiring briskness, but the younger man kept to his leisurely saunter. In rounding the corner of the hill twice as much time was consumed as was necessary.

When they came to the last turn at the foot of the rocky slope, where the line struck out across the valley towards the foot of the mountain side, Ashton paused to roll a cigarette before holding his rod for the reading. Small as was the incident, it was particularly aggravating to an engineer. The reading would have taken only a moment, and he could then have rolled his cigarette and smoked it while Blake was moving past him for the next "set up." Instead, he deliberately kept Blake waiting until the cigarette had been rolled and lighted.

Blake "pulled up" his level and started forward, his face impassive. Ashton leaned jauntily on the rod, sucked in a mouthful of smoke, and raising his cigarette, flicked the ash from the tip with his little finger. At the same instant a bullet from the crags above him pierced the crown of his hat. He pitched forward on his face, rolled half over, and lay quiet.

Most men would have been dumfounded by the frightful suddenness of the occurrence—the shot and the instant fall of Ashton. It was like a stroke of lightning out of a clear sky. Blake did not stand gaping even for a moment. As Ashton's senseless body struck the ground, he sprang sideways and bent to lay down his instrument, with the instinctive carefulness of an old railroad surveyor. A swift rush towards Ashton barely saved him from the second bullet that came pinging down from the hill crest. It burned across the back of his shoulder.

Heedless of the blood spurting from the wound in the side of Ashton's head, Blake snatched up the automatic rifle and fired at a point between two knobs of rock on the hill crest. Promptly a hat appeared, then an arm and a rifle. It might have been expected that a bullet would have instantly followed; yet the assassin was strangely deliberate about getting his aim. Blake did not wait for him. He began to fire as fast as the automatic ejector and reloader set the rifle trigger. Three bullets sped up at the assassin before he had time to drop back out of sight.

Blake started up the hillside, his pale eyes like white-hot steel. He was in a fury, but it was the cold fury of a man too courageous for reckless bravado. He went up the hill as an Apache would have charged, dodging from cover to cover and, wherever possible, keeping in line with a rock or tree in his successive rushes. At every brief stop he scanned the ridge crest for a sign of his enemy. But the assassin did not show himself. For all that Blake could tell, he might be waiting for a sure shot, or he might be lying with a bullet through his brain.

To avoid suicidal exposure, the engineer was compelled to veer off to the right in his ascent. He reached the ridge crest without a shot having been fired at him. Leaping suddenly to his feet, he scrambled up to the flat top of a high crag, from which he could peer down upon the others. The natural embrazure from which the assassin had fired was exposed to his view; but the place was empty. He looked cautiously about at the many huge bowlders behind which a hundred men might have been crouching unseen by him, advantageous as was his position. To flush the assassin would require a bold rush over and around the rocks.

Blake set his powerful jaw and gathered himself together for the leap down from his crag. At that moment his alert eye caught a glimpse of a swiftly moving object on the mesa at the foot of the far side of the hill. It was a horse and rider racing out of sight around the bend of a ridge point.

Blake whipped the rifle to his shoulder. But the cowardly fugitive had disappeared. He lowered the rifle and started back down the hill faster than he had come up. Leaping like a goat, sliding, rushing—he raced to the bottom in a direct line for Ashton.

The victim lay as he had fallen, his head ghastly red with blood, which was still oozing from his wound. Blake dropped down beside the flaccid body and tore open the front of the silk shirt. He thrust in his hand. For some moments he was baffled by the violent throbbing of his own pulse. Then, at last, he detected a heartbeat, very feeble and slow yet unmistakable.

He turned Ashton on his side, and washing away the blood with water from the canteen, examined the wound with utmost carefulness. The bullet had pierced the scalp and plowed a furrow down along the side of the skull, grazing but not penetrating the bone.

"Only stunned.... Mighty close, though," muttered Blake. He looked at the ashen face of the wounded man and added apprehensively, "Too close!... Concussion—"

Hastily he knotted a compress bandage made of handkerchiefs and neckerchiefs around the bleeding head, and stretching Ashton flat on his back, began to pump his arms up and down as is done in resuscitating a drowned person. After a time Ashton's face began to lose its deathly pallor. His heart beat less feebly; he drew in a deep sighing breath, and stared up dazedly at Blake, with slowly returning consciousness.

"I'll smoke all I please and when I please," he murmured in a supercilious drawl.

Blake dashed his face with the cupful of water still left in the canteen. The wounded man flushed with quick anger and attempted to rise.

"What—what you—How dare you?" he spluttered, only to sink back with a groan, "My head! O-o-oh! You've smashed my head!"

"You're in luck that your head wasn't smashed," replied Blake. "It was a bullet knocked you over."

"Bullet?" echoed Ashton.

"Yes. Scoundrel up on the hill tried to get us both."

"Up on the hill?" Ashton twisted his head about, in alarm, to look at the hill crest. "But if he—He may shoot again."

"Not this time. I went up for him. He went down faster, other side the hill. Saw him on the run. The sneaking—" Blake closed his lips on the word. After a moment his grimness relaxed. "Came back to start your funeral. Found you'd cheated the undertaker. How do you feel now?"

"I believe I—" began Ashton, again trying to raise himself, only to sink back as before. "My head!—What makes me so weak?"

"Don't worry," reassured Blake. "It's only a scalp wound. You are weak from the shock and a little loss of blood. I'll get you a drink from my can, and then tote you into camp. You'll be all right in a day or two."

He fetched the can of water from his bag, which he had dropped beside the level. Ashton drank with the thirstiness of one who has lost blood. When at last his thirst was quenched, he glanced up at Blake with a look of half reluctant apology.

"I said something about your striking me," he murmured. "I did not understand—did not realize I had been shot. You see, just before—"

"That's all right," broke in Blake. "I owe you a bigger apology. Last evening, while you were out hunting, someone took a shot at me. It must have been this same sneaking skunk. I thought it was you."

"You thought I could try to—to shoot you?" muttered Ashton.

"Yes. There's the old matter of the bridge, and you seem to think I am responsible for what your father has done. But after you came in, I soon concluded that you had fired towards the camp unintentionally."

"If you had asked," explained Ashton, "I was around at the far end of these hills, nearly two miles from the camp, when I shot at the wolf and the rifle went wrong."

"That was a fortunate occurrence—your going out and seeing the wolf;" said Blake. "If you hadn't taken that shot, we would not have known your rifle was out of gear. My first bullet merely made the sneak rise up to pot me. If the rapidity of the next three shots hadn't rattled him, I believe he would have potted me, instead of running."

"So that was it?" exclaimed Ashton. "Do you know, I believe it must be the same scoundrel who attacked me the first day I rode down Dry Fork. No doubt he remembered how I ripped loose at him with the automatic-catch set."

"Your thieving guide?" said Blake. "But why should he try to kill me?"

"I'm sure I don't know," murmured Ashton. "Another drink, please."

"I shall tote you back to camp, and—No, I'll lay you over there in the shade and go up to see if he is in sight."

Picking up the wounded man as easily as if he had been a child, the engineer carried him over under a tree, fetched him the can of water, and for the second time climbed the rocky hillside. Scaling his lookout crag, he surveyed the country below him. A mile down the creek two riders were coming up towards the waterhole at an easy canter. He surmised that they were his wife and Miss Knowles.

Their approach brought a shade of anxiety into his strong face. He swept the landscape with his glance. A little cloud of dust far out on the mesa towards Split Peak caught his eye. He looked at it steadfastly under his hand, and drew a deep breath of relief as he made out a fleeing horse and rider.

He descended to Ashton, and taking him up pick-a-back, swung away for the camp with long, swift strides. Before he had gone half the distance, he felt Ashton's arms loosening their clasp of his neck. He caught him as he sank in a swoon. Without a moment's hesitation, he slung his senseless burden up on his shoulder like a sack of meal, and hastened on faster than before.

Swiftly as he walked, the ladies reached the camp before him. When he came to the top of the dike slope, his wife had dismounted and Isobel was handing down the baby to her. As the girl slipped out of the saddle she looked up the slope. With a startled cry, she darted to meet Blake.

Quick to forestall her alarm, he called in a gasping shout: "Not serious—not serious!"

"Oh, Tom—Mr. Blake!" she cried. "What has happened?"

"Scalp wound—faint—blood loss," Blake panted in terse answer.

"He is wounded? O-o-oh!" She ran up and looked fearfully at the bloodsoaked bandages across Ashton's hanging head.

Blake staggered on down the slope without pausing. Genevieve had started to meet him. But at her husband's panting explanation, she laid the baby on the nearest soft spot of earth and darted to the kit-chest. She was opening a "first aid" box when Blake crashed through the bushes and sank down with his burden under the first tree.

Genevieve hastened towards the men, calling to her companion: "Water, Chuckie—that pail by the fireplace."

The girl flew to fetch a bucket of water from the pool.

Blake was peering anxiously down into Ashton's white face. "Didn't—know—but—that—" he panted.

"No," reassured his wife. "He will soon be all right."

She drew the unconscious man flat on his back and held a bottle of ammonia to his nostrils. The powerful stimulant revived him just as the girl came running back with the water. He opened his eyes, and the first object they rested upon was her anxious pitiful face. He smiled and whispered gallantly: "Don't be afraid. I'm all right—now!"

"Then I'll drink first," said Blake.

He took a deep draught from the pail, doused a hatful of water over his hot head and face, and stretched out to cool off. Genevieve, assisted by the deeply concerned girl, took the handkerchief bandage from Ashton's head and washed the wound with an antiseptic solution. She then clipped away the hair from the edges and drew the scalp together with a number of stitches.

In this last the hardy cowgirl was unable to help. She clasped Ashton's hand convulsively and sat shuddering. Ashton smiled up into her tender pitying eyes. Genevieve had numbed his wound with cocaine. He was quite satisfied with the situation.

Another antiseptic washing and a compress of sterilized cotton bound on with surgical bandages completed the operation. Then, when it was all over with, the young mother, who had gone through everything with the aplomb and deftness of a surgeon, quietly sank back in a faint. On the instant Blake was reaching for the ammonia bottle.

A whiff restored his wife to consciousness. She opened her eyes, and smiling at her weakness, sought to rise. He held her down with gentle force and ordered her to lie quiet.

"I shall fetch Tommy," he added. "We'll all take a siesta until noon."



CHAPTER XIX

THE PLOTTERS

When Blake came back with the baby, Isobel begged him for a full account of how Ashton had been wounded. In relating the affair he sought to minimize the danger that he had incurred, and he omitted all mention of the bullet shot at him the previous evening. But his account was frequently interrupted by exclamations from his wife and Isobel.

At the end he dwelt strongly on the cowardly haste of the assassin's flight; only to be met by a shrewdly anxious rejoinder from the girl: "He ran away after he attacked Lafe the other time. He will come back again!"

"Oh, Tom!" cried Genevieve—"if he does!"

"We will get him, that is all there is to it," replied her husband. "What do you say to that, Ashton?"

"We will not have the chance," said Ashton. "I don't believe he has nerve enough to try it the third time. But if he should—"

"No, no! I hope he keeps running forever!" fervently wished Isobel. "Don't you realize how close a miss that was, Lafe?—and the other time, too?"

"I like having one Miss close," he punned.

The girl blushed, but failed to show any sign of resentment.

Blake looked significantly at his wife. "Don't know but what I've changed my mind about a siesta," he remarked. "Here's Tommy gone to sleep just when I wanted to fight him. Do you think Miss Chuckie can keep him and Ashton from running away if I go to bring in the level?"

"You say you had started to run the line of levels across to the mountain?" she asked.

"Yes.... This little pleasantry has knocked us out of a day's work and you out of your trip to the canyon."

"But why couldn't I rod for you?" she suggested. "I noticed Lafayette the other day. It seems easier than golfing."

"It is."

"Then I shall do it. A good walk is exactly what I need."

"Genevieve!" hastily appealed Isobel. "Surely you'll not go off and leave me—us!"

"Thomas is asleep, and Lafayette needs to be quiet," was the demure reply. "Come, Tom. We'll run the levels over to the foot of the mountain, at least."

With a reproachful glance at the smiling couple, the girl slipped over to put Thomas Herbert between herself and Ashton. Blake found another bag and can, which last he filled with water from the bucket. Genevieve put on the cowboy hat that she had borrowed at the ranch, and sprang up to join him.

He paused for a question: "How about leaving the rifle?"

Isobel put her hand to a fold in her skirt and drew out her long-barreled automatic pistol. "I can do as well or better with this," she answered.

"What a wicked looking thing!" exclaimed Genevieve. "Surely, dear, you do not shoot it?"

"Shoot it!" put in Ashton. "Hasn't she told you about saving me from a rattler?"

"She did?"

"Yes," he replied, and he told about the rattlesnake in the bunkhouse.

"But I ought to have shot quicker," Isobel explained, when he finished. "I missed the head, though I aimed at it."

"The way we've left Thomas about on the ground!" exclaimed Genevieve. "Are there any of the horrid things around here? Is that why you carry the pistol?"

"No, no, don't be afraid. We've killed them out here, long ago, because of the cattle. I carry my pistol on the chance of killing wolves. They're dreadfully harmful to the calves and colts, you know."

"Good for you," praised Blake, as he picked up the rifle. "Well, we're off."

He started away, hand in hand with his wife. They were soon at the top of the dike slope and almost dancing along over the dry turf. It was months since they had been alone together in the open, and they were still deeper in love than at the time of their marriage—if that were possible.

They soon reached the place where the shooting had occurred. Here they picked up the lunch bag, Ashton's canteen and his hat, now punctured with another bullet hole; and at once started to carry the line of levels out across the valley. A few words of instruction made an efficient rodwoman of Genevieve, so that they soon reached the foot of the ridge up which her husband had led Ashton the previous day. Here he established a bench-mark, and turned along the base of the escarpment to the mouth of Dry Fork Gully, where he checked the line of levels that had been run up the bed of the creek.

"Good work—less than three tenths difference, and all that I am concerned about is an error in feet," he commented. "It's getting along towards noon. We'll go up the gulch, and eat our lunch in the shade. This place is almost as much of a sight as the canyon."

Genevieve more than agreed with her husband's opinion when he led her up into the stupendous gorge and the walls of rock began to tower on each side ever steeper and loftier.

"Oh, I do not see how anything can be so grand, so awesome as this!" she cried, gazing up the precipices. "It makes me positively giddy to look at such heights!"

"Better stop off for a while," advised Blake. "We are almost to where the bottom tilts skyward. You can stargaze while we are eating lunch. It's rougher along here. We can get on faster this way."

He picked her up in his arms as though she were a feather, and carried her on up the gulch to the foot of the Titanic chute. Here, resting on a flat rock in the cool semi-twilight of the gorge bottom, they ate their lunch and talked with as much zest as if they were still new acquaintances.

"Those awful cliffs!" she murmured, lowering her gaze from the colossal walls above her. "I cannot bear to look at them any longer. They overpower me!"

"Wait till you look down into the canyon," replied her husband. "In some ways it is more tremendous than the Grand Canyon of the Colorado—the width is so much narrower in proportion to the depth."

"What makes these frightful chasms?—earthquakes?"

"Water," he replied.

"Water? Not all these hundreds and thousands of feet cut down through the solid rock!"

"Every foot," he insisted. "Think of water flowing along in the same bed and always washing sand and gravel and even bowlders downstream—grind, grind, grind, through the centuries and hundreds of centuries."

"But there is no water here, Tom."

"Not now, and no chance of any this time of year, else I wouldn't have brought you in here. A sudden heavy June rain up above there would pour down a torrent that would drown us before we could run three hundred yards. Imagine a flood roaring down that bumpy shoot-the-chutes."

"I can't! It's too terrifying. Is that the way it will be if you get the water and dig the tunnel?"

"No. At this end, the tunnel may terminate any place from down here to a thousand feet up, but in any event far below the top. I hope it proves to be well up. The greater the drop to the level of the mesa, the more turbines could be put in to generate electricity."

"That sounds so inspiring! But, Dear—" Genevieve looked at her husband with a shade of anxiety—"even if this project is feasible, do you feel you should carry it through?"

"You mean on account of Miss Chuckie and her father," he replied. "I have considered their side of the matter, and even at the first I saw how—Listen, Sweetheart. No one knows better than you that I'm an engineer to the very marrow of my bones. My work in life is to construct,—to harness the forces of nature and compel them to serve mankind; and to save waste—waste material, waste energy—and put it to use."

"Don't I know, Tom!"

"Well, then," he went on, "in the bottom of Deep Canyon is a river—waste waters down there beyond the reach of this rich but waterless land, down in the gloom, doing no good to anything or anybody, frittering away their energy on barren rocks. Why, it's as bad as the way Ashton, with all the good qualities we now see he has in him—the way he dissipated his strength and his brains and his father's money."

"Ah, Dear! wasn't it a splendid thing when he was thrown out of his rut of wastefulness?"

"Otherwise known as the primrose path, or the great white way," added Blake. "It certainly was a throw out. I'm as pleased as I am astonished that he seems to have landed squarely on his feet."

"What a marvelous change it has made in him!" exclaimed Genevieve. "Sometimes I hardly can believe it really is Lafayette. He is so serious and manly."

"Good thing he has changed," replied Blake. "If Miss Chuckie hadn't told us he had made a clean breast of that bridge, I should begin to feel worried about—Do you know, Sweetheart, it's the strangest thing in the world the way I feel towards that girl. It's not because she is so lovely. Of course I enjoy her beauty, but that's not it. If Tommy were a girl and grown up—that's how I feel."

"She is a very dear, sweet girl."

"So are several of your friends—our friends," said Blake. "This is different. The very first day we met her, there was something about her voice and face—seemed as though I already knew her."

"She knew you, through what she had read of you. She warned me, in that frank, charming way of hers, that you were a hero to her and I must not mind if she worshiped you openly."

Blake laughed pleasedly. "Isn't she the greatest! And the way she chums with me! Wonder if that is what makes Ashton so sore at me? The idiot! Can't he see the difference?"

"Lovers always are blind," said Genevieve.

"I'm not," he rejoined, his eyes, as he gazed down into hers, as blue and tender as Isobel's.

The young wife blushed deliciously and rewarded him with a kiss.

"But about Chuckie?" she returned to the previous question. "You were going to tell me—"

"I am going to tell you something you will think is very fanciful—and it is! Do you know why I am so taken with that girl? It's because she reminds me of my sisters—what they might have grown to be!... God!—" he bent over with his face in his shaking hands—"God! If only they had gone any other way than—the way they did!"

"My poor dear boy!" soothed his wife, her hand on his downbent head. "Let us trust that they are in a happier world, a world where sorrow and pain—"

"If only I could believe that!" he groaned.

Genevieve waited a few moments and with quiet tactfulness sought to divert him from his grief: "If Chuckie reminds you of them, Dear—"

"She might be either—only Mary, the older one, had dark brown eyes. But Belle's were blue like Chuckie's."

"What a pure blue her eyes are—the sweet true girl! Why can't you regard her as your sister, and—and give over further thought of this irrigation project?"

Blake looked up, completely diverted. "You little schemer! So that's what you've been working around to?"

"But why not?" she insisted.

"I'll tell you. It is because I am so fond of Chuckie that I am determined to get water on Dry Mesa, if it is possible."

"But—"

"To make use of those waste waters," he explained; "to turn this dusty semi-desert into a garden; and to benefit Chuckie by doubling the value of her father's property."

"How could that be, when the farmers would divide up his range?"

"He owns five sections, Chuckie told me. What are they worth now? But with water on them, even without a single tree planted, they would sell as orchard land for more than all his herd; and he would still have his cattle. He could sell them to the settlers for more than what he now gets shipping them over the range."

"I begin to see, Tom. I might have known it."

"I'm telling you, of course. We're to keep it from them as a happy surprise, because it may not come off. There's still the question whether the water in the canyon—"

"But if it is! How delightful it will be to help Mr. Knowles and Chuckie, besides, as you say, turning this desert into a garden!"

"That valley is a natural reservoir site to hold flood waters," continued the engineer. "All that's needed is a dam built across the narrow place above the waterhole, with the dike for foundation. I would build it of rock from the tunnel, run down on a gravity tram."

"You've worked it all out?"

"Not all, only the general scheme. If the tunnel comes through high enough up here, we shall be able to manufacture cheap electricity to sell. Just think of our settlers plowing by electricity, and their wives cooking on electric stoves."

"You humorous boy!"

"No, I mean it. There's another thing—I wouldn't whisper it even to you if you weren't my partner as well as my wife. I have reason to believe the creek bed above the dike is a rich placer. I've planned to take Knowles and Ashton in on that discovery—Gowan, too, if Knowles asks it."

"A placer?"

"Yes, placer mine—gold washed down in the creek bed. But it's a small thing compared with another discovery I've made. Up there—" Blake pointed up the steep ledges that he had climbed—"I found a bonanza."

"Bonanza? What is that, pray?"

"A mint, a John D. bank account, a—Guess?"

"A gold mine! Oh, Tom, how romantic!"

"Yes; it's free-milling quartz. We can mill it ourselves, and not have to pay tribute to the Smelting Trust. That's romance—or at least sounds like it. You will pay for all the development work, in return for one-third share. I shall take a third, as the discoverer, and Chuckie gets the remaining third as grub-staker."

"As what?"

"She is staking us with grub—food and supplies. If she had not sent for me to come and look over the situation, I should not have been here to stumble on this mine. So she gets a share."

"I'm glad, glad, Tom! Isn't it nice to be able to do fine things for others? I'm so glad for Chuckie's sake, because, if Lafayette keeps on as he is doing now, he may win his father's forgiveness."

"What has that to do with Chuckie?"

"You and I know what she is, Dear; yet if she had no money, his father might insist on regarding her as a mere farm girl. He is as—as snobbish as I was when we were flung ashore by the storm, there in Mozambique."

"I fail to see that it matters any to Chuckie what Ashton senior thinks."

"Of course you don't see. You're as blind as when I—" the lady blushed—"as when I had to fling myself at you to make you see. The dear girl is as deeply in love with Lafayette as he is with her."

"No? She doesn't show it. How can you tell?"

"You know that Mr. Gowan is desperately in love with her."

"That stands to reason. He couldn't help but be. Can't say I like the fellow. He may be all right, though. Must have some good qualities—Chuckie seems to be very fond of him."

"As fond as if he were a brother. No; Lafayette is to be the happy man—unless he backslides. We must help him."

Blake nodded. "That's another thing that hangs on this project. If it proves to be feasible, I can give Ashton a chance to make good as an engineer. I used to think he must have bought his C.E. Now I see he has the makings."

"He can be brilliant when he chooses. If only he were not so—so scatter-brained."

"What he needed was a jolt heavy enough to shake him together. It seems as though his father gave it to him."

"That shock, and being picked up by Chuckie," agreed Genevieve.

"We'll help her keep him braced until the cement sets," said her husband. "It's even worse to let brains go to waste than water."

"Far worse! What is the good of all your engineering—of all the machinery, yes, and all the culture of civilization, if not to uplift men and women? May the next generation work for the uplifting of all mankind, both materially and spiritually!"

"We might make a try at it ourselves," said Blake. "As for the future, I know it will not be your fault if our member of the next generation fails to do his share of uplift work."

The young mother placed her hand on her bosom, and sprang up. "We should be going back, Dear. Thomas will be wakening."



CHAPTER XX

INDIAN SHOES

They returned along the shadowy bottom of the great gorge to the glaring sunshine of the open creek bed, where they had left the rod and level. Blake placed both upon one of his broad shoulders, and gave his wife the unencumbered arm to assist her somewhat hurried pace.

As they approached the dike her hasty steps quickened to a run. She darted ahead down to the camp. Thomas Herbert Vincent was vociferating for his dinner. Blake followed at a walk. He was only a father.

When he came down to the trees he found Isobel and Ashton alone. The girl's manner was constrained and her color higher than usual. Ashton, comfortably outstretched on a blanket with her saddle for pillow, frowned petulantly at the intruder. But Isobel sprang up and came to meet Blake, unable to conceal her relief.

"I was so glad to see Genevieve," she said. "You came back just in time."

"How's that?" asked Blake, his eyes twinkling.

She blushed, but quickly recovered from her confusion to dimple and cast a teasing glance at Ashton. "Baby woke up," she answered. "You may not know it, but babies cry when they fail to get what they want."

"He's getting what he wants—I'm not!" complained Ashton.

"I—I must see if Genevieve needs anything," murmured the girl, and she fled to the tent.

"I need you!" Ashton called after her without avail.

"How're you feeling?" inquired Blake.

Ashton's frown deepened to a scowl.

"Didn't mean how you feel towards me," added Blake. "I can guess that. My reference was to your head."

"I'm all right," snapped Ashton. "Needn't worry. I'm still weak and dizzy, but I shall be quite able to do my work tomorrow."

"That's fine," said the engineer, with insistent good humor. "However, if you feel at all shaky in the morning, I can perhaps get Gowan, or maybe Miss Chuckie would like to—"

"No!" broke in Ashton. "She shall not! I will do it, I tell you."

"Very well," said Blake. He put down the level and rod, but retained the rifle. "Tell the ladies I shall be back before long. I am going to look for something I forgot this morning."

Without waiting for the other's reply, he returned up the dike slope and around the bend of the hill to where Ashton had been shot. That for which he was looking was not here, for he at once turned and started up the hill. He climbed direct to the place where the assassin had lain in wait.

The bare ledge told Blake nothing, but from a crevice nearby he picked out two long thirty-eight caliber rifle shells. He put them into his pocket and went over to scan the mesa from the top of his lookout crag. He could see no sign of the fugitive murderer. Down below the mesa side of the hill, however, he saw a man riding up the bank of Dry Fork, and recognized him as Knowles.

Trained to alert observation by years of life on the range, the cowman had already perceived Blake. He wheeled aside and rode towards the hill when the engineer waved his hat and began to descend. The two met at the foot of the rugged slope.