He remembered that he had promised to call to see Argyl to-morrow night, to tell her then what he had decided. What was he going to decide? The obvious thing was not clear to him yet. He would work over it half the night. Out of the confusion into which he had been hurled two things alone stood out to him now as he tried to review them; two things gathered the light which abandoned all other considerations to darkness. The first thing, the clearest thing, the most important thing in all of the new world which was being built up about him was that he loved Argyl Crawford.

Loved her, not as Greek Conniston would have loved yesterday, could have loved then, but with the love which was a part of the Greek Conniston who was being born to-night. Loved her, not with the shallow affection which would have been the tribute of a Greek Conniston of yesterday, but with that deeper, eternal urge of soul to soul which is true love. Loved her gravely, almost sternly, as a strong man loves.

Upon only two days had it been given him to speak with her. He thought of that, but he knew that made no iota of difference. For he knew her better than he knew any woman with whom he had danced or driven or attended theaters and dinners. In that first glimpse from the Pullman window he had seen the purposeful character of her. To-day he had seen it again. To-day he knew that he knew Argyl Crawford, that she had been herself to him, unaffected, honest, womanly. Her nature was simple, straightforward, open, unassuming. Its beauty struck one as the beauty of a Grecian temple, its lines pure and noble, the whole edifice the more wonderful in that it depended upon itself alone and needed no adornment.

She had shaken hands with him last night when he left her at the house, not perfunctorily, but firmly, as the strong-handed cowboys shook hands, and had said to him, simply:

"I wish you luck, Greek Conniston, in the fight you are about to make."

He remembered the hand-clasp. She seemed unable to do anything, no matter how small, without putting her whole self into it, her frankness, her sincerity, her eagerness. And Conniston of to-night, scowling at the match which he had swept across his thigh to light his pipe and now let die down to his fingers, muttered, not without cause, that he had his nerve with him even to think about her.

The other thing which was clear to him was that he must "lick" Brayley. If he did nothing else in all of his futile life, if he quit work or were fired the next minute, he must "lick" Brayley. It did not strike him as amusing, as even strange, that these two things and these alone should be the only things of which he was sure. He merely accepted them as inevitable. He felt no particular resentment toward Brayley. The man had treated him fairly enough since that first night in the bunk-house. He looked upon the matter calmly, almost impersonally, as a duty to which he must attend. And he was not going to wait for an excuse. An opportunity would do.

It was half-past ten, and very late for cow-puncher land, when Greek strode away through the darkness to the bunk-house.

When morning came it happened that Brayley rose fifteen minutes early, Conniston fifteen minutes late. The foreman left immediately for a far corner of the range, and Conniston, having made a quick breakfast, went about his own work. In the corral he selected a horse which heretofore he had carefully left alone, knowing the brute's half-tamed spirit and not caring to trust to it. But now it was different. He waited his opportunity before throwing his rope. Then, as the horse, seeming to know that he had been singled out, shot by him, he cast his lasso. And there was a grim light, but at the same time a light of deep satisfaction in Conniston's eyes as he saw that his whirling noose had gone unerringly, settling as Toothy's rope would have done.

He blindfolded the big, belligerent horse to mount him. When his feet were securely thrust into his stirrups he leaned forward and with a swift jerk snapped the handkerchief from the horse's eyes. For a moment the animal's sides between his knees trembled and throbbed like an overtaxed engine. Then there was the sudden jerk which told of a mighty bunching of muscles, a gathering of force. And as Conniston shot his spurs home, with the reins gripped tight in his left hand so that the horse could not get his head down, the forelegs were lifted high in air as the animal reared. A quick blow of the quirt and the forelegs sought earth again, and Conniston began to realize what it was to ride a bucking bronco.

A series of short jumps, every one threatening to unseat him, every one jerking him so that his body was whipped this way and that, so that he had much ado to keep his feet from flying out of the stirrups, and could hardly hold his right hand back from going to the horn, from "pulling leather." The bucks came so close together that it seemed to him that he did not rest a second in the saddle; that each time the big brute struck the ground with his four feet bunched together, to pause for a breathless moment, gathering every ounce of strength to wrench, leaping sideways, he must surely be thrown. But in spite of all he did not pull leather, he did not cease to ply spur and quirt, and he was not thrown. It was a perfectly quiet horse he rode away across the fields only three minutes later.

He did a man's work that day, all that day, until long after the red sun had gone down. And when he came up from the corral to his supper, if he was tired, if the muscles of his body ached, it did not show in his steady stride or in his quiet eyes.

The suit-case which he had left in Indian Creek had been brought out last week. He shaved himself and changed his clothes, putting on the first white silk shirt he had worn for many a day. He even found an old can of shoe-polish and touched up the pair of dusty shoes. And then, laughing at the looks the men turned upon him, at the few jesting remarks which they chose to make, he walked through the trees and to the range-house.

The glow of electric lights through the wide-opened front doors ran out across the lawn to meet him. Striding along the walk, his heels crunching in the white gravel, he again marveled at the comfort, the luxury even, which John Crawford had brought across the desert. He ran lightly up the broad steps. Before he could ring Argyl was at the door, her eyes quick to find his searchingly. He knew what they sought to find in his. And when she put out her hand to him, swiftly, impulsively, he trusted that they had found what they sought.

He followed her through the big front room and into the library. Here there were many deep, soft leather chairs, here there was a blue atmosphere of tobacco smoke, and here Mr. Crawford, immaculate in white flannels, rose to meet him, his hand outstretched.

"How do you do, Conniston?" Mr. Crawford took his hand warmly, the fine lines of his stern old face softening genially. "I was mighty glad when Argyl told me that she had asked you over. Sit down, sit down. Have something to smoke. Tell us about yourself, and how"—the deep-set eyes twinkling—"you like the work?"

Conniston saw that Argyl had seated herself and dropped into one of the big chairs himself, his whole body enjoying the luxury of it. At his elbow was a little table with cigars and cigarettes. Mr. Crawford laughed when he saw that Conniston, having glanced at the table, drew out his own cheap muslin bag of tobacco and rough, brown papers.

"I'm getting used to them," Greek apologized. "And do you know that I'm beginning to like to roll my own 'cigareet'?"

Argyl clapped her hands, laughing with her father.

"I told you so, daddy!" she cried, merrily. "Didn't I say that Mr. Conniston was born to be a good cow-puncher!"

"And I'm half persuaded that you are right, Argyl," came from behind the dense cloud of cigar-smoke. "But you haven't told us how you like the work, Conniston."

"If you had asked me a week ago I should have had to ask to be excused from trying to tell you in the presence of ladies. I would have quit if I hadn't been too much of a coward. But now—"

"Now?" asked Argyl, quickly.

And it was to her that he made his answer, not to her father.

"Now I like it. And I am going to stick—unless I get fired for incompetency!"

"I like that," said Mr. Crawford, slowly. "Yes, I like that. I was afraid that it was rather too much for you. It's hard work, Conniston, and long hours and little pay. But Brayley tells me that you have the makings of a rattling good cow-hand."

"Thank you, sir. It was very decent of Brayley."

"I ought not to mix business into a social call, I know, but I want to tell you personally that I am very much pleased with the way you are tucking in. You asked if any one needed a good man the day you came. We all do. I do. Why, I always want more of them than I can find. A young man like you, with your advantages, your education—there are all kinds of opportunities. Yes, right with me. The West is the place for young men—provided simply that they are men! That's as true to-day as it was in forty-nine. And truer. Opportunities are greater, the need of men is more urgent. Right now, right to-day, I am looking for a man, a young man, who knows a thing or two about engineering, who can build bridges and cut irrigation ditches and save me money doing it." He threw out his hands. "And I can't get him!"

"Will you tell me about the position?" asked Conniston, with keen interest in voice and eyes alike.

"Certainly. I am running four cattle-ranges, using close to eighty thousand acres doing it, too. That, of course, you know. But that is getting to be a side issue with me. I am doing something else which is going to be a thousand times bigger—ten thousand times more worth while. Have you been to Crawfordsville?"

"No. I have been within a couple of miles of it. I saw it one day from Blue Ridge."

"Well, then you know something of it. It is in a valley ten miles long which has always been one of the richest valleys I ever saw; sheltered by the mountains, watered by the springs which create the source of Indian Creek. The climate is like that of the California foothills. And the soil is fertile—anything will grow there. I saw that twenty years ago. I knew that the place was made for a town-site—and I made the town. There are a lot of smaller valleys about it; there are orchards there now and vineyards. There are mines, paying mines. There is no end to the herds of cattle running through the valleys and at the bases of the hills. The town has a railroad, a narrow-gage from Bolton on the Pacific Central & Western. Building such a town, giving it railroad connection, electric lights, and all the things which go with unlimited water-power was simple enough."

Conniston sat back and watched the man who spoke of city building as of the making of a summer home. Mr. Crawford was leaning forward in his chair, his cigar between his fingers, his eyes very steady upon Conniston's.

"But now," he went on, his eyes clear, but his brows drawn over them, "we come to something different—entirely different. Out yonder in the lap of the desert is what they call Rattlesnake Valley. It is no valley at all, merely a great depression, a sort of natural sink. It is twenty miles wide, forty miles long. I have found no drop of water within thirty miles of it, no single spring, no creek. It is nothing but sand—dry, barren, unfertile sand—five hundred square miles of it, to look at it. And right there, in the heart of that sink, I am going to build a town."

He spoke quietly, his voice low, no hint of boastfulness in his tone, no hint of doubt. He spoke as a man who has studied his ground and who knows both the difficulties which lie ahead of him and the possibilities. Conniston, seeing only the impossibility, the madness of such a project, looked questioningly from him to the girl. Argyl's face was flushed, her eyes were very bright with an intense eager interest.

"It sounds so big," Conniston hesitated, his gaze coming back to the older man's face. "So daring, so impossible!"

"It is big! Bigger than I have even hinted at. It is daring. Of course, I take a chance of sinking everything I have out there and finding only failure in the end."

He shrugged his shoulders, and Conniston noticed for the first time how big and broad they were.

"But it is not impossible. It is merely the repetition of such work as has been done successfully in the Imperial Valley. The stuff which looks to be sand—barren, unfertile sand—is the richest soil in the world. Put water on it and you can raise anything. Reclamation work is a fairly new thing with us, Conniston. Men have been content heretofore to squat in the green valleys and let the desert places remain the haunts of the horned toad and coyote. But now the green valleys are filling up, and there are hundreds of thousands of square miles like the country you rode over from Indian Creek to the Half Moon which are calling to us. To redeem them from barrenness, to do the sort of work which our friends have done in the Imperial Valley, is pioneer work. The pioneers ever since Adam, be it the Columbuses of early navigation or the Wrights of aerial navigation, have always taken the long chances. They are the ones who have suffered the hardships, and who, often enough, have been forgotten by the world in its mad rush along the trail they have opened. But they are the men who have done the big things. The pioneers are not yet all gone from the West, thank God! And their work is reclamation work!"

"And it's for the work over there that you want an engineer?"

"Yes. I want him bad, too. Do you happen to know one?"

"I know one. I won't say how much good he is, though. I'm an engineer myself."

"You!" It was Argyl's voice, surprised but eager.

"My father is a mining engineer. He always wanted me to do something for myself, you know." Conniston laughed softly. "He sent me to college, and since I didn't care a rap what sort of work I did, I took a course in civil engineering to please him. Civil, instead of mining," he added, lightly, "because I thought it would be easier."

"Had any practical experience?" demanded Mr. Crawford. Conniston shook his head. "It's too bad. You might be of a lot of use to me over there—if you'd ever done anything."

Conniston colored under the plain, blunt statement. There it was again—he had never done anything, he had never been anything. His teeth cut through his cigarette before he answered.

"I didn't suppose that you could use me." He still spoke lightly, hiding the things which he was feeling, his recurrent self-contempt. "I don't suppose, that I know enough to run a ditch straight. I've been rather a rum loafer."

Mr. Crawford smiled. "I suppose you have. But you are young yet, Conniston. A man can do anything when he is young."

There was the grinding of wheels upon the gravel outside, a man's voice, and then a man's steps.

A moment later Roger Hapgood, immaculate in a smartly cut gray suit and gloves, came smiling into the library, his hand outstretched, his manner the manner of a man so thoroughly at home that he does not stop to ring. He did not at first see Conniston half hidden in his big chair. But Conniston saw him, was quick to notice the air of familiarity, the smile which rested affectionately upon Mr. Crawford and ran on, no doubt meant to be adoring and certainly was very soft, to Argyl—and Conniston was seized with a sudden desire to take the ingratiating Roger Hapgood by the back of the collar and kick him upon the seat of his beautifully fitting trousers.

"Good evening, Mr. Crawford. I ran in on a little business for Mr. Winston. Ah, Miss Argyl! So glad to see you."

His little hand, which had been swallowed up in one of Mr. Crawford's, and which emerged rosy and crumpled, was proffered gallantly to the girl. And then Hapgood saw Conniston.

"Oh, I say," he stammered, a very trifle confused. "It's Conniston. I didn't know—"

His pale eyes, under nicely arched brows, went from father to daughter as though Roger Hapgood were willing to admit that anything which they thought fit to do was all very right and proper, but that he was none the less surprised to find them entertaining one of the hired men.

"Yes, I'm still with the Half Moon," Conniston said, still nettled, but more amused, making no move to rise or put out his hand. "How are you, Roger?"

"How do, Conniston?" replied Mr. Hapgood, the rising young lawyer. Conniston idly wondered what had made his friend go to work. On the surface the reason seemed to be Argyl. Yet Hapgood showed a new side, a determination most unusual in him. Later Conniston was to know, to understand.

"And you like it?"

"Immensely. You ought to try it, Roger!"

Hapgood shuddered. "Couldn't think of it. A lark, no doubt, but I haven't the time for larks nowadays. I'm in the law." He turned to Mr. Crawford. "Thanks to you. Fascinating, and all that, but it does keep a man busy. I hated to disturb you to-night," with an apologetic smile at Argyl, "but Mr. Winston thought that the matter ought to be brought up before you immediately."

He was bursting with importance, some of which seemed to have popped out of his inflated little being and now protruded from an inside pocket in the form of some very legal-looking papers.

Mr. Crawford, upon his feet, said bluntly: "If we've got business, Hapgood, we'd better be at it. Let's go into the office. Argyl, you will excuse us? And you, Mr. Conniston?"

He went out. Hapgood tarried a moment for a lingering look at Argyl. "You will excuse us, Miss Argyl? I'll hurry through with this as fast as I can."

"I say, Roger," Conniston called after him, "I want to congratulate you. I'm immensely glad that you have gone to work." He turned to the girl who was watching them with thoughtful eyes. "Miss Crawford, what do you say to a little stroll out on the front lawn while these men of business transact their weighty affairs? It's the most wonderful night you ever saw."



CHAPTER X

When morning came, Conniston was the last man to crawl out of his bunk. At breakfast he was the last man to finish. He dawdled over his coffee until the cook stared curiously at him, he used up a great deal of time buttering his hot cakes, he ate very slowly. Only after every other man had left the table did he push his plate aside and go out into the yard. His manner was unusually quiet this morning, his jaw unusually firm, his eye unusually determined. He saw with deep satisfaction that all of the Half Moon men except Lonesome Pete and Brayley had ridden away upon their day's work. The red-headed cowboy was even now going down to the corrals, a vacant look in his blue eyes, the corners of a little volume sticking out of his hip-pocket, his lips moving to unspoken words. Brayley was going through the fringe of trees toward the house, evidently to speak with Mr. Crawford upon some range business. Conniston strolled slowly down toward the corrals, stopping and loitering when he had got there.

Now and then he caught a glimpse of Lonesome Pete mending his saddle just within the half-open stable door, but for the most part his eyes rested steadily upon the little path which wriggled through the grove and toward the house. He made and smoked a cigarette, tossing away the burned stub. He glanced at his watch, noticed that he was already half an hour late in going to work, and turned back toward the house, his expression the set, even, placid expression of a man who waits, and waits patiently. Five minutes passed—ten minutes—and he stood still, making no move to get his horse and ride upon his day's duties. And then, walking swiftly, Brayley came out of the trees and hurried, lurching, toward the corral.

"What are you waitin' for?" he cried, sharply, when twenty paces away. "Ain't you got nothin' to do to-day?"

Conniston made no answer, turning his eyes gravely upon Brayley's face, waiting for the man to come up to him.

"Can't you hear?" called Brayley again, more sharply, coming on swiftly. "What are you waitin' an' loafin' here for?"

"I want to talk with you a minute." Conniston's voice was very quiet, almost devoid of expression.

"Well, talk. An' talk fast! I ain't got all day."

Brayley was standing close to him now, his eyes boring into Conniston's, his manner impatient, irritated. For just a moment Conniston stood as though hesitating, leaning slightly forward, balanced upon the balls of his feet. Then he sprang forward suddenly, without sign of warning, taking the big foreman unawares, throwing both arms about the stalwart body, driving the heavier body back with the impact of the one hurled against it. Brayley, standing carelessly, loosely, his feet not braced, but close together, unprepared for the attack, fell heavily, lifted clean off his feet, born backward, and slammed to the ground with the breath jolted out of him, Conniston on top of him.

"You d—n coward!" he bellowed, as his breath came back into his body. "Sneakin' coward!"

He bunched his great strength and hurled it against the man, who clung to him. Still he was at a disadvantage, being under the other and having both arms locked to his side by the clinging embrace which held him powerless. For a moment the two men lay writhing and twisting upon the ground, half hid in their quiet struggle by the dust which puffed up from the dry ground about them. Then, as Brayley again gathered his strength in a mighty effort to rid himself of the man who held him down, Conniston loosened his hold, springing back and up to his feet. And in each hand Conniston held one of Brayley's guns. A quick gesture, and as Brayley rose to his feet he saw his two revolvers flying skyward, over the high fence and into the big corral.

"You got 'em!" Brayley cried, hoarse with anger. "Shoot, you coward—an' be d—d to you!"

For answer Conniston jerked his own gun from his belt, tossing it to lie with Brayley's two in the dust of the corral.

"We're ruling guns out of this, Brayley," he said, quietly. "It's going to be just man to man."

For a moment Brayley stood, open-mouthed, staring at him. Then, as understanding came to him, a great roar burst from his lips, and with his huge fists clenched he rushed at Conniston. In the sudden access of rage which blinded the man Conniston might have stepped aside. But it was no part of his grim purpose to temporize. As Brayley rushed upon him Conniston, too, sprang forward, and the two men met with a dull, heavy thud of panting bodies. Brayley's weight was the greater, his rush fiercer, and Conniston was flung back in spite of his dogged determination not to give up an inch. He had felt Brayley's iron fist before, but not with the rage behind it which now drove it into Conniston's face. The blow laid open his cheek and hurled him backward, to land upon his feet, his body rocking dizzily, his back jammed against the corral. And only the corral kept him from falling.

Again Brayley's great sledge-hammer fists shot out, Brayley's eyes glowing redly behind them. Conniston knew that one more blow like the last one, full in the face, and again he would have been beaten by Brayley. He remembered—and, strangely enough, the remembrance came to him calmly even while the heart within him beat as though bursting against the walls of his chest and the blood hammered hot in his ears—what Argyl had said the other day as they rode to Rattlesnake Valley. She had told him that Brayley had licked him because Brayley had been the better man. He knew that if Brayley beat him down now it would be because he was the better man. And he had told Argyl that he was going to lick Brayley. She had laughed. None the less, it was a promise to her, his first promise, and he was going to keep it.

As Brayley charged for a second blow, Conniston stepped aside swiftly and swung with his right arm, collecting every ounce of his strength and putting it into the blow. Brayley tried to lift his arm to protect himself, but the fraction of a second too late. Conniston's fist landed squarely upon the corner of the foreman's jaw, just below the ear. Brayley's arms flew out, and with a groan driven from between his clenched teeth he went down in a heap.

For a moment he lay unable to rise, the black dizziness showing in his swimming eyes. A month ago Conniston could not have struck such a blow by many pounds. Already the range had done much, very much, for him. But before a man could count five both the pain and astonishment had gone from Brayley's eyes, giving place to the red anger which surged back. And with the return of clamoring rage Brayley's dizziness passed and he sprang to his feet. Again was Conniston ready, again telling himself that he had a promise to keep, and that now or never was the time to make good his word. He was over the man whom he had set out to whip, and as Brayley struggled to his feet it was only to receive Conniston's fist full in the face again, only to be hurled back to the ground with cut, bleeding lips.

Again bellowing curses which ran into one another like one long, vicious word, Brayley got to his feet. And again Conniston's fist, itself cut and bleeding and sore, drove into his face, knocking the man down before he had more than risen. As the blow landed upon the heavy bone of the cheek, Conniston's hand went suddenly limp and useless, his face went sheet-white from the pain of it. Some bone had broken, he realized dully. He couldn't clench the hand again. The fingers hung at his side, shot through with sharp pain, feeling as though they were being slowly crushed between two stones.

Brayley got slowly to his feet, swaying like a drunken man, reeling when he first stood up, and lurching sideways until his shoulders struck the high fence of the corral. Conniston put up his left arm, his right hanging powerless at his side, and followed him. Brayley, his deep chest jerking visibly as his breath wheezed through his swelling lips, waited for him, the anger gone once more from his eyes, which followed Conniston's movements curiously.

For a moment they stood motionless save for the heaving of muscles with their quick breathing, eying each other, measuring each other. One thing stood uppermost in Conniston's mind: the foreman, with every deep breath he drew, was shaking off his dizziness, was regaining his strength. The spirit within him, with all of the battering he had received, was still unbroken. And Conniston himself felt his right arm growing numb to the elbow. In a very few seconds he would be like a rag doll in the other's big, strong hands....

"Well," panted Brayley, "what are you waitin' for? I'll lick you yet!"

Conniston came on, stepping slowly, cautiously. Brayley stood still, his clenched fists at his waist, his back against the fence. His eyes left the other's face for a second and ran to the broken hand swinging at his side. A quick light of understanding leaped into the big cattle-man's face, and he laughed softly. And as he laughed he stepped forward, lifting his fists.

Conniston swung at him with his left hand. The blow whizzed by Brayley's ear, for he had foreseen it and had ducked. But as he retaliated with a crushing blow, Conniston sprang to the side, ducking. Now it was Brayley again who rushed, a leaping light of hope of victory, surety of victory, in his eyes.

But Conniston saw his one chance and took it. He did not give back. And he did not offer the poor defense of one arm against the flail of blows. Instead he stooped low, very low, jerking his body double, dropping suddenly under Brayley's threshing arms, and hurled himself bodily to meet the attack, his left shoulder thrust forward, striking Brayley with the full impact of his hundred and eighty pounds just below the knees. They both went down, down together, and with Conniston underneath. But to Brayley the thing had come with a stunning shock of unexpectedness just as he saw the end of the fight, and Conniston was on his feet a second the first. Again as Brayley sprang up, Conniston stood over him. Again Conniston's fist, his left, but driven with all of the power left in him, beat mercilessly into the already cut face, driving Brayley down upon his knees. Now he was swaying helplessly, hopelessly. But still the dogged spirit within him was undefeated. A strange sort of respect, involuntary, of mingled admiration and pity; surged into Conniston's heart. He was not angry, he had not been angry from the beginning. This was merely a bit of his duty, a part of the day's work, the beginning of regeneration, the keeping of a promise. He was sorry for the man. But he was not forgetting his promise. Brayley was swaying to his feet, his two big hands lifted loosely, weakly, before him. Through their inefficient guard Conniston struck once more, the last blow, swinging from the shoulder. And Brayley went down heavily, like a falling timber, and lay still.

For a little Conniston stood over him, watchful, wiping the blood from the gash in his cheek. He saw that Brayley's eyes were closed, and felt a quick fear that he had killed him. Then he saw the eyelids flutter open, close, open again, as the foreman's eyes rested steadily upon his. He waited. Brayley lifted his head, even struggled to his elbow, only to fall back prone.

They were not ten feet from the empty corral. Lonesome Pete, his saddle mended, rode slowly around the corner of the stable toward the gate. The horse which he was riding was a half-broken three-year-old, but Lonesome Pete was at home upon the backs of half-broken three-year-olds. And his red head was full of Jocelyn Truxton and "Macbeth." He rode with his hat low over his eyes, one hand holding his horse's reins, the other grasping firmly a little book. So it happened that Lonesome Pete rode through the gate and close to the two men and did not see them.

But the horse did see them, did see a man lying stretched upon the ground, and with the sharp nostrils of its kind the horse scented fresh blood. The result was that the frightened brute reared, snorting, and wheeled suddenly, plunging back through the corral gate. And Lonesome Pete, taken unawares as he sat loosely in the saddle, was jerked rudely out of his dreamings of the fair Jocelyn and the bloody Macbeth to find his horse shooting out from under him, and to find himself sitting upon the hard ground with his legs in Brayley's lap.

Brayley's strength of lungs came back to him with a new anger. "You howlin' idiot, what are you tryin' to do?"

"I was a-readin'," responded Lonesome Pete, still grinning vapidly, still not quite certain whether the things which he saw about him were real things or literary hallucinations.

"A-readin'!" snapped Brayley, sitting up. "That what I'm payin' you for, you blame gallinipper!"

With a glance from Brayley's lacerated face to the bloody smears on Conniston's, Lonesome Pete got to his feet and, shaking his head and dusting the seat of his overalls as he went, turned and disappeared into the stable after his horse. Brayley glared after him a second, grunted, and got to his feet.

"Well," he snarled, facing Conniston. "You licked me. Now what? Want to beat me up some more?"

"No, I don't," Conniston answered him, steadily. "You know I had to do it, Brayley. You had it coming to you after that first night in the bunk-house. Now—I want to shake hands, if you do."

With a keen, measuring glance from under swelling eyelids, and no faintest hesitation, Brayley put out his hand.

"Shake!" he grunted. "You done it fair. I didn't think you had it in you. And"—with a distorted grin—"I'll 'scuse the left hand, Con!"



CHAPTER XI

Brayley and Conniston went together into the corral and picked up the three revolvers. Then Conniston turned toward the stable to get his horse. Brayley's eyes followed him, narrowing speculatively.

"Hey, Conniston," he called, sharply, "where you goin'?"

"To work. It's late now."

"Yes, it's late, all right. But you better go up to the bunk-house first an' fix your hand up. Oh, don't be a fool. Come ahead. I'm goin' to straighten out my face a bit."

So Conniston turned back, and the two men went to the bunk-house. The cook was pottering around his stove, cleaning up his pots and pans. He looked up curiously as they came in, realizing that by now they should have been at work. The faint, careless surprise upon his face changed suddenly into downright bewilderment as he saw the dust-covered bodies, the cut lips, blood-streaked cheeks, and swelling eyes of the two men. The song which he had been humming died away into a little gasp, and with sagging lower jaw he stood and stared.

"Well," snapped Brayley, pushing back his hat and returning the cook's stare fiercely. "Well, Cookie, what's eatin' you? Ain't you got nothin' to do but stand an' gawk? By the Lord, if you ain't I know where we can git a hash-slinger as is worth his grub!"

Cookie's bulging eyes ranged from one face to the other. Then he turned back to his stove and began to wash over again a pan which he had laid aside already as clean.

Conniston and Brayley washed with cold water in silence. Then they found a bottle of liniment and applied it to their various cuts with a bit of rag. Brayley, his big fingers unbelievably gentle, bandaged Conniston's lame hand for him. And then they went back to the corrals.

"You can go out to the east end an' give Rawhide a hand," said Brayley, as he swung up to his horse's back. "I reckon you won't be much good for a day or two except jest ridin'. An' say, Con. I had a talk with the Ol' Man about you this mornin'. He wanted to know if you was makin' good. Lucky for you," with a twisted grin, "that he asked before we had our little set-to! You're to git forty-five a month from now on. An' at the end of the week you're to report over to Rattlesnake to go to work."

As Greek Conniston rode out across the dry fields toward the east there was a subtle exhilaration in the fresh, clean morning air which he drew deep down into his lungs. For the moment the soreness of bruised muscles, the biting pain in his crippled hand, were trifles driven outward to the farthermost rim of his consciousness. His foot was upon the first step of the long stairway which he must climb. He had whipped Brayley in a fair, square, hand-to-hand, man-to-man fight. He had done it through sheer dogged determination that he would do it. He had set himself a task, the hardest task he had ever essayed. And success had come to him as self-vindication.

But it had been to him more, vastly more, than a mere duty, although from the outset he had looked upon it in that light. It had been a test. Had the outcome been reversed, had he failed, had Brayley worsted him, there was every likelihood that Conniston would have left the range. But now, hand in hand with dawning regeneration, there came confidence. There were many things which his destiny had set ahead of him, and he was ready to face them with the same dogged determination with which he had faced the big foreman.

Then, too, this morning he had received more than mere self-approval. Brayley had indorsed his work in his consultation with Mr. Crawford. And Mr. Crawford had seen fit to increase his daily wage. He had not been worth a dollar a day a month ago, and he knew it. Now he was to be paid a dollar and a half a day, and because he was worth that to the Half Moon. So far, in the circumscribed area of his daily duties, he "had made good." He felt that the first heat of the great race was run, that in spite of his handicap he had held his own. The race itself was almost a tangible thing ahead of him. Greek Conniston was ready for it. And he dared think, with a sharp-drawn breath and a leaping of blood throughout his whole being, of the golden prize at the end of it—for the man who could win that prize.

He worked all that day with Rawhide Jones, his left hand upon his reins, his right thrust into his open vest as a rude sort of sling. He met Rawhide's surprise, answered his quick question by saying, simply, without explanation, "I got hurt." Rawhide had grunted and dropped the subject.

All day long one matter surged uppermost in Conniston's mind to the exclusion of anything else: he was to be transferred from the Half Moon to Rattlesnake Valley. He did not know whether to be glad at the change or sorry. He was growing to know the men with whom he worked, growing to like them, to find pleasure in their rude companionship. Now, just as he was making friends of them he was to be shifted among strangers. To-day he had found heretofore unsounded depths in the nature of Brayley; he wanted to know the man better, to show him that he had not been blind to rough, frank generosity, nor unappreciative of it. Through these latter days, during which the scales had been dropping from his eyes in spite of prejudice, he had been forced into a grudging admiration of the man's capability. Brayley could read little and spell less; he was a clown and a boor in the matter of the finer, exacting social traditions; but he could run a cattle-range, and he read his men as other men read books. Conniston realized suddenly, shocked with the realization, that in Brayley there was that same sort of thing which he had come to respect in Argyl Crawford, the same open frankness, the same straightforward honesty, the same deep, wide generosity.

Argyl, too, entered into the confusion of his gladness and disappointment at the coming change of sphere. He had planned to spend many an evening with her; and now, just as he was finding the door to her comradeship opened to him, he was to be whisked away from her.

But on the other hand Conniston's optimism saw ahead of him, in the new field of work, the dim, shadowy, and at the same time alluring outline of a new and rare opportunity. He had not forgotten the things which Mr. Crawford had said of his big project. And in spite of his own deprecatory answer to Mr. Crawford's straightforward question, Greek Conniston had not forgotten all of the engineering he had absorbed during four years in the university. There was work to be done, there were men wanted, above all, men who could understand something beyond the pick-and-shovel end of the thing, men who knew the difference between a transit and a telescope.

And the work itself appealed to him strangely now that that labor was not without independence, not without a stern sort of dignity even. To take a stretch of dry, hot sand, innocent of vegetation, to wrest it from the clutch of the desert as from the maw of a devastating giant, to bring water mile upon mile from the mountain canons, to make the sterile breast of the mother earth fertile, to drive back the horned toad and the coyote, to make green things spring up and flourish, to carve out homes, to cause trees and flowers and vines to give shade and disseminate fragrance, even as time went on to wring moisture from the lead-gray sky above—it was like being granted the might of a magician to touch the desert with the tip of his wand, bringing life gushing forth from death.

When night came Conniston trudged from the corrals to the bunk-house and his evening meal devoutly thankful that the long day was gone. His hand pained him constantly, and in the sharp twinges which shot through it the lesser hurt of his cut cheek was forgotten. The greater part of the other men was there before him. As he stepped in at the door they were dragging their chairs noisily up to the table. Brayley, one eye swollen almost shut, his lips thick like a negro's with the blows which had hammered them, had just taken his seat. The men's eyes were quick to catch the bruised countenance of the man at the door, and ran swiftly from it to Brayley's face and back again. One man chuckled aloud, Toothy giggled like a girl, and the others grinned broadly. For a moment Brayley's face darkened ominously. Then his frown passed, and he turned about in his chair toward the door.

"Hello, Con," he said, quietly.

"Hello, Brayley," Conniston answered, in the same tone.

Brayley's eyes went back to the men at the table, shifting quickly from one to another. He ran his tongue along his swollen lips, but said no word until Conniston had washed and taken his own chair. Then he spoke, his words coming with slow distinctness.

"Conniston jumped me this mornin.' I had a lickin' comin' to me. You boys know why. An' I got it."

He stopped suddenly, his eyes watchful upon the faces about him. Conniston saw that they were no longer grinning, but as serious, as watchful, as Brayley's.

"That was between me an' Conniston. There ain't goin' to be no makin' fun an' fool remarks about it. He done it square, an' I'm glad he done it! If there's any other man here as thinks he can do it I'll take him on right now!"

Again he paused abruptly, again he studied the grave faces and speculative eyes intent upon his own. No man spoke. And Conniston noticed that no man smiled.

"All right," grunted Brayley. "That ends it. Cookie, for the love of Mike, are you goin' to keep us waitin' all night for them spuds?"

The meal passed with no further reference, open or covert, to the thing which was uppermost in the minds of all. Many a curious glance, however, went to where Conniston sat. He was conscious of them even when he did not see them, understood that a new appraisal of him was being made swiftly, that his fellow-workers were carefully readjusting their first conceptions and judgments of him.

When he had finished eating, Conniston went straight to his bunk. He had no desire for conversation; he did want both rest and a chance to think. He was straightening out his tumbled covers when Lonesome Pete tapped him upon the shoulder.

"No hay for yours, Con," he grinned. "Not yet. Miss Argyl wants you to come up to the house. Right away, she said, as soon as you'd et. She said special she was in a hurry, an' you wasn't to waste time puttin' on your glad rags."

Why did Argyl want him—to-night? He put his fingers to his cheek where Brayley's fist had cut into the flesh. How could he go to her like this? He was on the verge of telling Lonesome Pete that he could not go, of framing some excuse, any excuse. But instead he closed his lips without speaking, picked up his hat and went straight toward the house.

She was waiting for him at the little summer-house upon the front lawn. He saw the white of her lacy gown, the flash of her arms as he came nearer, her outstretched hand as he came to her side. With his hat caught under his right arm he put out his left hand to take hers.

"You were good to come so soon," she was saying.

"It was good to come," he rejoined, warmly. "You know how glad I am for every opportunity I have to see you."

"What is the matter with your hand?" she asked, quickly. "Your right hand?"

"I hurt it," he answered, easily. "Nothing serious. It will be well in a day or two."

"How did you hurt it?" she persisted.

"Really, Miss Crawford," he retorted, trying to laugh away the seriousness of her tone, "there are so many ways for a man to damage his epidermis in this sort of work—"

She was standing close to him, looking intently up into his face through the gathering darkness.

"Tell me—why did you do it?"

"What? Smash my fingers?"

"Yes. In the way you did!"

"What do you mean?" he hesitated, wondering what she knew.

"On Brayley's face! Why did you fight with him?"

"Who told you?"

"Brayley. He had to come to see father this evening. I saw his face. I heard him tell father that he had had trouble with one of the men. I was afraid that it was you! I followed him out into the yard and asked him. It is no doubt none of my business—but will you tell me why you fought with him?"

"I think that I would answer anything you cared to ask me, Miss Crawford," he replied, quietly. "Will you sit down with me for a little?" He moved slowly at her side, back to the seat in the summer-house, grateful for any reason which gave him the privilege of talking with her, watching her quick play of expression. "You see, my object seemed so clear-cut and simple—and now gets itself all tangled up in complexity when I try to explain it to you. For one thing, ever since my first night on the Half Moon when Brayley put me out I have felt that it was up to me to finish what was begun that night. For another thing, I was trying to prove a theory, I imagine! I didn't really believe that Brayley was the better man. And lastly, and perhaps most important of all, I told you the other day that I was going to lick him. It was a sort of promise, you know!"

She sat with her elbow upon her knee, her chin on her hand, her eyes lost in the shadow of her hair. He knew that she was regarding him intently. He guessed from the line of her cheek, from the slightly upturned curve at the corner of her mouth, that she was half inclined to be serious, and almost ready to smile at him.

"You are inclined to look upon Brayley as an enemy?" was all that she said, still watching him closely.

"No!" he cried, warmly. "I sneered at him the other day, I know. Like the little poppinjay I was I thought myself in the position to poke fun at him. To-day I got my first true idea of the man's nature. To-day I found out—can you guess what I found out? That Brayley in many things is just like—whom, do you suppose?"

"Tell me."

"Like you! The discovery was a shock. It nearly bowled me over. But it's the truth!"

"What do you mean?" she asked, plainly puzzled. "How in the world is Brayley like me?"

"Aside from externals, from refinement, from polish, from all that sort of thing"—he spoke swiftly—"his nature is much like yours. There is the same frankness, the same sincerity, the same heartiness. There is the same sort of generosity, the same bigness of—of soul." He broke off abruptly, surprised to find himself talking this way to her. "You must think I'm a fool," he blurted out, after a second. "I talk like one. You have a right to feel offended—to liken Brayley to you—"

"Since I believe you mean what you say—since I think I understand what you mean—I am not offended! I am proud! Yes, proud if I can be like Brayley in some things, some things which count! If you do nothing beyond making a friend of that man your exile in this Western country of ours will have been worth while. But you will do something more. I did not ask you to come to me just to hear what you had to say about your trouble with Brayley. He told me before you came—told me that you had licked him, as you both put it, and that it served him right! That is your business and Brayley's, and I should keep out of it. But there was something else—I wonder if you think me meddlesome, Mr. Conniston? If I am meddlesome?"

"If we are going to be friends, you and I—and you promised that you would let me make you my friend—hadn't we better drop that word?"

"Then I am going to tell you something. You are to go to work in the Valley. Brayley told you that? Do you guess why—have you an idea—why father is sending you over there?"

"I supposed because he is pushing the work—because he needs all the men there he can get, can spare from the Half Moon."

"I am going to tell you. And I am afraid that father would not like it, did he know. But I know that I am right. I may not see you again before you go—I am going into Crawfordsville in the morning for a few days. What I tell you, you will remember, is in strict confidence—between friends?"

"In strict confidence," he repeated, seriously. "Between friends."

She leaned slightly forward, speaking swiftly, emphatically, earnestly:

"You have heard of Bat Truxton? He is in charge there of all the men, general superintendent of all the work. You will be put to work under him. You will be in a position to learn a great deal about the project in its every detail. Bat Truxton is an engineer, a practical man who knows what he has learned by doing it. And he is a strong man and very capable. Then there is Garton—Tommy Garton they call him. You will work with him. He, too, is an engineer, and he, too, knows all there is to know about the work."

She paused a moment, as though in hesitation. Conniston waited in silence for her to go on.

"Father is sending you to the Valley because he has begun to take an interest in you. Before the year is over there is going to be an opportunity for every man there to show what there is in him. He is giving you your chance, your chance to make good!"

Argyl got to her feet and stood looking away from him, out across the duck pond. Presently she turned to him again, smiling, her voice gone from grave to gay.

"The race is on, isn't it? The great handicap! And, anyway, I have given you a tip, haven't I? Now you are coming up to the house with me, and I'm going to make you a bandage for your broken hand."

She didn't stop to heed his protest, but ran ahead of him to the house. And Conniston, pondering on many things, saw nothing for it but to allow her to play nurse to him.

Saturday morning Greek Conniston pocketed the first money he had ever earned by good, hard work. Brayley handed him three ten-dollar gold pieces—his month's wage. Conniston asked for some change, and for one of the gold pieces received ten silver dollars. He knew that Mr. Crawford and Argyl had gone into Crawfordsville, so he gave one dollar to Brayley, saying: "Will you hand that to Mr. Crawford for me? I owe it to him for telegraph service on the first day I spent here." And then he made a little roll of the indispensable articles from his suit-case, tied it to the strings behind his saddle, and rode away across the fields toward Rattlesnake Valley.

He was to report immediately at the office of the reclamation work in Valley City. Following the trail he and Argyl had taken the other day, he rode into the depression, or sink, about the middle of that long, low hollow between the southern end and the clutter of uniform square buildings which was planned to grow into a thriving town in the heart of the desert.

Every foot of ground here now had a new personal interest for him. He studied the long, flat sweep of level land with nodding approval, trying to see just where the main canal should run, just how its course could be shaped most rapidly, most cheaply, most advantageously. For the mounds, the ridges where the winds had swept the sand into long winnows, he had a quick frown. After all, he realized suddenly, this desert was not the flat, even floor he had imagined it to be. A mile, two miles to his right as he rode into the "valley" he could see a slow-moving mass of men and horses, could catch the glint of the sun upon jerking scrapers and plows. There the front ranks of Mr. Crawford's little army was pushing the war against the desert. There was where the brunt of Bat Truxton's responsibility lay.

To his left, still several miles away, was Valley City. He swung his horse toward the camp, which as yet was scarcely more than a man's dream of a town, and rode on at a swift gallop. Now more than ever he saw what some of the difficulties were in front of the handful of men scarring the breast of this Western Sahara. For a moment he could see the houses before him, even down to their doorsteps, and a moment later only the roofs peered at him over the crest of a gently swelling rise. Here the water, when it was brought this far, must be swung in a wide sweep to right or left, or else many days, perhaps many weeks, must be sacrificed to the leveling of a great sand-pile. He began to wonder if there was enough water in the mountains for so mammoth a project; if what of the precious fluid could be taken from the creeks and springs would not be drunk up by the thirsty sands as though it had been scattered carelessly by the spoonfuls, as a blotter drinks drops of ink. He even began to wonder uneasily if Lonesome Pete had been right when he had said that another name for such an attempt at reclamation was simple "damn foolishness." The water had not come yet; it was still running in its time-worn courses down the mountain-sides; but something else was being drunk up daily by the parched gullet of the dry country. And that something else was Mr. Crawford's money. His fortune was no doubt very large; it must run into many figures before Rattlesnake Valley grew green with fertility.

He came at last into the little town, passed the cottage where he had worked with Argyl, and drew up before a four-roomed, rough, unpainted building, with a sign over the door saying, "GENERAL OFFICE CRAWFORD RECLAMATION COMPANY." Swinging down from his horse, which he left with reins upon the ground, he went in at the open door. Within there were bare walls, bare floor, and three or four cheap chairs. Under the windows looking to the south there ran a long, high table, covered with papers and blue-prints. Another long table ran across the middle of the room. At it, facing him, perched upon a high stool, a young man, a pencil behind each ear, his sleeves rolled up, was working over some papers. In one corner of the same room another young fellow, hardly more than a boy—eighteen or nineteen, perhaps—was ticking away busily at a typewriter.

The man in shirt-sleeves working at the second long table looked up as Conniston came in. He was a pale, not over-strong—looking chap, somewhere about Conniston's own age, his short-cropped yellow hair pushed straight back from a high forehead, his lips and eyes good-humored and at the same time touched vaguely with a tender wistfulness. Conniston imagined immediately that this was Garton, Bat Truxton's helper.

"You're Mr. Garton?" he said, voicing his impression as he came forward.

"No one else," Garton answered him, pleasantly. "Tom Garton at your service. And you're Conniston from the Half Moon?"

He put out his hand without rising. Conniston took it, surprised as he did so at the quick, strong grip of the slender fingers.

"I'm glad to know you, Conniston. Glad you're to be with us. Oh yes, I knew a couple of days ago that you were coming over. Mr. Crawford dropped in on us himself and told us about you. Have a chair."

They had shaken hands across the table. Now, as Conniston moved across the room to the chair at which Garton waved, the latter swung about on his high stool toward the boy at the typewriter.

"Hey there, Billy!" he called. "Come and meet Mr. Conniston. He's going to be one of us. Mr. Conniston, meet Mr. Jordan—Billy Jordan—the one man living who can take down dictation as fast as you can sling it at him, type it as you shoot it in, and play a tune on his typewriter at the same time!"

Stepping about the table to meet the boy who had got to his feet, Conniston received a shock which for a second made him forget to take young Jordan's proffered hand. For the first time now he saw Garton's body, which had been hidden by the table; saw that Garton had had both legs taken off six inches above the knees. He remembered himself, and tried to hide his surprise under some light remark to Billy Jordan. But Garton had seen it, and laughed lightly, although with a slight flush creeping up into his pale cheeks.

"Hadn't heard about my having slept with Procrustes? Well, you'll get used to having half a man around after a while. The rest do. I've gotten used to it myself. Now sit down. Have a smoke?" He pushed a box of cigarettes along the table. "And tell us what's the news on Broadway."

"You're a New-Yorker?"

"Oh, I've galloped up and down the Big Thoroughfare a good many times in the days of my youth," grinned Carton, helping himself to a cigarette. "I'm an Easterner, all right; or, rather, I was an Easterner. I guess I belong to this man's country now."

"What school?"

"Yale. '05."

"Why, that's my school! I was a '06 man."

"I know it." Garton nodded over the match he was touching to his cigarette. "You're Greek Conniston, son of the big Conniston who does things on the Street. But we didn't happen to travel in the same class. I was shy on the money end of it. Oh, I remember you, all right. I saw that record run of yours around left end to a touchdown. Gad, that was a great day! I went crazy then with a thousand other fellows. I remember," with an amused chuckle, "jumping up and down on a fat man's toes, yelling into his face until I must have split his ear-drum! Oh yes, I had two pegs in those days. The fat man got mad, the piker, and knocked me as flat as a pancake! I guess he never went to Yale."

For ten minutes they chatted about old college days, games lost and won, men and women they both had known in the East. And then, naturally, conversation switched to the work being done in Rattlesnake Valley. Garton's face lighted up with eagerness, his eyes grew very bright, he spoke swiftly. It was easy to see that the man was full of his work, pricked with the fever of it, alive with enthusiasm.

"You seem to be mightily interested in the work," Conniston smiled.

"I am. I am in love with it! A man can't live here ten days and be a part of it without loving it or hating it. It's the greatest work in the world; it's big—bigger than we can see with our noses jammed up against it! It's a man's work. And thank God we've got the right man at the head of it!"

"Meaning Truxton?"

"Meaning the man who is the brain of it and the brawn of it; the heart and soul and glorious spirit of it; yes, and the pocket-book of it! That's John Crawford, a big man—the biggest man I ever knew. Who else would have the nerve to tackle a thing like this, to tackle it lone-handed? And to hold on to it in the face of opposition which would crush another man, and with the risk of utter financial ruin looming as big as a house, like a glorious, grim old bulldog! Oh, you don't know what it means yet; you can't know. Wait until you've been here a week, seeing every day of it a thousand dollars poured into the sand, a few square yards of sand leveled, a few yards of canal dug, and you'll begin to understand. Why, the whole thing as it stands is as dangerous as a dynamite bomb—and John Crawford is as cool about it as an anarchist!"

"You speak of opposition. I didn't know—"

Garton rumpled his upstanding yellow hair and laughed softly.

"I guess none of us know a great deal about it excepting John Crawford. And John Crawford doesn't talk much. Oh, you will learn fast enough all that we know about it. And now I suppose you'll be wanting to know where you fit into the machine. Bring any things with you—any personal effects?"

"A tooth-brush and an extra suit," Conniston laughed. "They're tied to my saddle outside."

"You can bring 'em in here. I have a room in the back of this shack. You're to share it with me, if you care to. You'll find a shed in the back yard where you can leave your horse. There's a barrel of water out there, too. And, by the way, you might as well learn right now not to throw away a drop of the stuff; it's worth gold out here. When you get back I'll go over things with you. Your first day's work, the better part of it, will be to listen while I talk."

Conniston unsaddled and tied his horse in the little shed, coming back into the office with his roll of clothes. Garton swung about upon his stool and pointed out the room at the back of the house which was to serve for the present as the sleeping-room for both men. There were two cots along opposite walls, a chair, and no other furniture. Conniston threw down his things upon the cot which Garton called to him was to be his, and came back into the office. Pulling a stool up to the table alongside of Garton, he began his first day's work for the reclamation project.



CHAPTER XII

Tommy Garton spoke swiftly, clearly, concisely, explaining those essentials of the work in hand which Conniston must grasp at the beginning. Filled with an ardor no whit less than Mr. Crawford's, there seemed to be no single detail which he did not have at his fingers' ends.

Taking from the drawer of his table a map which bore his own name in the corner, he pointed out just where their source of water was, and just how it was to be brought down from the mountains into the "valley." He indicated where the work was being pushed now. He showed where the big dam had already been thrown across a steep-walled, rocky canon; how, when the time came, a second dam (this purely a diversion weir) was to be constructed across a neighboring canon, higher up in the mountains, deflecting the waters which poured down through it into the lower dam, and from it turning them into the main canal at the upper end of Rattlesnake Valley. He pointed out, five miles to the north of these two big dams, the place where a third was to be flung across yet another canon, imprisoning a smaller creek and turning it toward the southwest to join the overflow of the others in the main canal. He ran over blue-print after blue-print, to show the type of construction work being done. He explained where there was leveling called for, where the canal must be turned aside.

"We'd bring her straight through, and d—n the little knolls," he cried, banging his fist down upon his table in sudden vehemence, "but there is a time-limit on this thing, Conniston. And we've got to get water here, right here in Valley City, when the last day is up. Not twenty-four hours late, either. No, not twenty-four minutes!"

He ran the back of his hand across his moist forehead, and sat staring out of the window as though he had forgotten Conniston's presence.

"What sort of a time-limit? I thought that Mr. Crawford was alone in this thing, that he had the rest of his lifetime to finish it in if he wanted to take that long."

Garton snorted.

"He's got until just exactly twelve o'clock, noon, on the first day of October. If he is five minutes late—yes, five minutes!—there'll be men right here holding stop-watches on the thing like it was a blooming foot-race!—he'll be busted, ruined, smashed, and the whole project a miserable abortion!" He paused a moment, biting the end of his pencil. And before he went on he had turned his eyes steadily upon Conniston's face, studying him. "If you're going to work with us, to get into it with your sleeves rolled up like Bat Truxton and Billy there and me and a few others of us, you might as well know in the beginning what's what in this scrap. For it is a scrap—the biggest scrap you ever saw, a fight to the finish, with one man lined up against—do you have any idea what John Crawford is bucking?"

Conniston shook his head. "I know virtually nothing of this thing, Garton."

"Well, I'll tell you. Single-handed that man is fighting the desert! And he'd beat it back, too, and conquer it and muzzle it and make it eat out of his hand if they'd only let him alone. But they won't, the cold-blooded highway robbers! He's got them to fight with his left hand while he hammers away at the face of the desert with his right! Who are 'they'? 'They' are a syndicate; organized capital. 'They' spell many millions of dollars ready to be spent to defeat John Crawford."

He stopped suddenly, frowning and gnawing at his pencil. Conniston was about to ask a question when Garton went on rapidly, such hot indignation in his tones that Billy Jordan dropped his hands from the keys of his machine to listen to what he had heard many a time before.

"You know already how Mr. Crawford built the town which is named after him? He made that town just as a man takes clay into his hands and makes a modeled figure out of it. And when the job was done he went to the Pacific Central & Western and showed them why it would pay them to build a narrow-gage railroad from Bolton, on the other side of the ridge, thirty miles through mountainous country. He had that planned out long before the first shack was put up in Crawfordsville. And he knew what he was doing. The P. C. & W. built the road and have run an accommodation train back and forth daily ever since. And they have made money at it hauling freight, merchandise from the main line, building-material, farming implements—everything which had to go into Crawfordsville; hauling farm produce from the new settlement back into Bolton.

"Because he had shown the P. C. & W. that the thing could be done on a paying basis, because it was done and did pay, the P. C. & W. listened to him when he made a second proposition to them. He went straight to Colton Gray, and Colton Gray listened to him. What Gray advises, the P. C. & W. does. In the end, after many interviews and much investigation and discussion, Crawford made Gray see the matter the way he saw it. The P. C. &. W. contracted to begin work on a line from Crawfordsville to Valley City and on across the desert to the main transcontinental railroad at Indian Creek the day that sufficient water to irrigate fifty square miles of land had been brought into this part of the 'valley.' It was agreed by both contracting parties that the water was to be brought to this spot by noon of October first, or all contracts became null and void.

"The day that Gray agreed for the P. C. & W. Mr. Crawford put men to work on the first preliminary survey. He had already the necessary water concessions. He had studied his ground, made his plans with a carefulness which overlooked nothing which a man could foresee, and had every reason to believe, to be positive, that he could have all the water he wanted in the valley a whole month before the first of October.

"And I tell you he could have done it if they had just let him alone! But they wouldn't. Within thirty days after the first shovelful of earth was turned there was a strong organization perfected to defeat him. Why? In the first place there is a certain bloated toad in our local puddle named Oliver Swinnerton who has his hatchet out on general principles for the Old Man. In the town of Bolton he's the mayor and the chief of police and the board of city fathers and the municipal janitor all rolled into one pompous, pot-bellied little body. He's got money and he's got brains. No sooner does word get about of the Old Man's contract with the P. C. & W. than Oliver Swinnerton gets busy. He went straight to Colton Gray, and at first he could do nothing with him. Gray had taken time for his investigations of Mr. Crawford's scheme, had been convinced that it was feasible, and now stood pat. But Swinnerton with his counter-scheme interested a lot of other capital, and through some of the men he got in with him he got the ear of some of the higher-ups on the P. C. & W. He even got his scheme into the private office of the president, and from the president word ran down to Gray. I think even Gray began then to get shaky in the knees. I tell you, Conniston, the Old Man's project is so big that until it is consummated there will always be a doubt in other men's minds whether the thing ever can be done. If it can't, if it proves impracticable to irrigate this country, to build first Valley City and then a string of settlements across the desert, why then of course there would be nothing in it for the P. C. & W. to run a spur across to Indian Creek.

"And Oliver Swinnerton made it his business to show the management of the railroad that the thing was impossible, that it was a mad fool's dream, that when the first day of October came there would be nothing accomplished because there never could be anything accomplished. He scored his point, and then he played his trump card. He showed that the same money which the railroad would have to spend in stringing rails across the sand here could be spent more advantageously in another direction.

"On the other side of Bolton there are grassy foothills, well watered—a big stretch of country very much like that about Crawfordsville. Already there are orchards there, considerable small farming, grain-raising and hay. Swinnerton planned to build a town out there in the heart of that fertile country where there are now a number of settlements and to have the P. C. & W. run a seventy-five-mile spur out that way. The management naturally will not stand for the expense of both roads at the same time, since both would be very largely in the nature of experiments. Swinnerton's scheme looked more promising than the Old Man's. Swinnerton got his contract with the railroad. And that contract says that if on the first day of October Mr. Crawford has not made good he will be given not a day's grace, but work will be begun on the other road into Swinnerton's country. Do you see now what I mean by opposition? Do you see what will happen if we don't come up to time on our end of the game? Swinnerton is so confident that he holds the winning hand that he has already founded his town, already sunk a pile of money in it. Somebody is going to go to the wall when the first day of October comes."

"But," demurred Conniston, "Swinnerton and his corporation are doing nothing actively to retard our work—can do nothing. If—"

"He isn't?" snorted Garton. "That's all you know about it! How do we get all of our implements, our supplies, all of our men? They come to us by rail, don't they? And that means they come to us over the P. C. & W., doesn't it? And the P. C. & W. is scared out of its life, praying every day to its little gods for Crawford's failure. What happens? We get delayed shipments, we wait for our stuff, and it lies sidetracked somewhere; we get our men stolen from us before they ever get to Bolton, and shunted off to work for the opposition! There are a hundred ways in which Swinnerton and the bigger men in with him can slip their knife into us every day of the week. And they are not missing very many bets, either. Oh, Gray's all right; he's square enough and willing enough to stand by his word. But he can't do everything. It takes time to get matters up to him, and it takes time for him to adjust them. And right now he's in San Francisco attending a railroad conference, and he'll be there fifteen days, I suppose. What sort of service do you suppose we get in the mean time? You get that idea out of your head that Swinnerton isn't doing anything actively to retard us. He's doing everything he can think of, and I told you at the jump that the man has brains."

As well as a man could understand it without actually going over the ground, Conniston learned that afternoon all that Bat Truxton's assistant could tell him. He learned, roughly, of course, how much had been done already, what remained to be done first, what could be allowed to wait until more men came to swell the forces now at work, what chief natural difficulties and obstacles lay across the path of the great venture.

Little Tommy Garton's enthusiasm was so keen a thing, so spontaneous, so whole-souled, that long before time came for the noon meal Conniston felt his own blood pounding and clamoring for action. Swiftly he was granted the first true glimpse which had ever come to him of the real nature of work. Such work as he was now about to engage in was so infused with the elements of hazard, of risk, of uncertainty, of opposition, that it was shot through with a deep, stern fascination. It was not drudgery, and almost until now he had looked upon all work as that. It was a great game, the greatest game in the world. He already began to look forward to to-morrow, when he was to leave the office and go out upon the field of action with Bat Truxton with an eagerness such as he had felt in the old college days on the eve of the big Thanksgiving football game. Something of the spirit which had made old William Conniston the dynamic, forceful man of business which he had always been, and which had never before manifested itself in old Conniston's son, suddenly awoke and shook itself, active, eager, the fighting spirit of a fighting man.

At noon Billy Jordan pushed back his chair and got to his feet, stretching his arms high over his head.

"Time to eat," he said, picking up his hat. "Coming, Mr. Conniston?"

"And you?" Conniston asked of Garton.

"Oh, me!" laughed Garton. "I don't travel that far. Not until my new legs come. I had trouble with 'em," he explained. "Had to send 'em back to Chicago. I'm hoping," with a whimsical smile, "that they don't get sidetracked with the rest of our stuff on the P. C. & W. Go with Billy, Conniston. He'll show you where to eat."

He whirled about on his stool, squirmed suddenly over on his stomach, and lowered himself to the floor. Swinging the leathern-capped stumps of his legs between his hands, which he placed palm down on the floor, as a man may swing his body between crutches, he moved with short, quick jerks into the room where the two cots were. Conniston turned away abruptly.

With Billy Jordan he went nearly to the end of the short street before they came to a rude lunch-counter, set under a canvas awning, where a thin, nervous little man and his fat, stolid wife set canned goods and coffee before them. Billy produced a yellow ticket to be punched, Conniston paid his two bits, and they strolled back to the office. When Conniston suggested that they take something to Garton, Billy told him that a boy took him his meals.

There was so much to be got over that day, Conniston was so eager to learn what details he could, Tommy Garton so eager to impart them, that it was scarcely half-past twelve when the two men were back at the long table going over maps and blue-prints. There were no interruptions. An imprisoned house-fly buzzed monotonously and sullenly against a pane of glass, his drone fitting into the heavy silence on the face of the hot desert so that it became a part of it.

At four o'clock a handful of ragged children, barefooted, bronzed of legs and hands and faces, scampered by on their noisy way home from school. A pretty young woman in neat walking-habit and big white straw hat followed the children, smiling in through the open door at Garton, noting Conniston with a flash of big brown eyes and quickly dropping lids. Billy, in seeming carelessness, had wandered to the door when the children passed, and stepped outside, chatting with her for five or ten minutes.

"Miss Jocelyn," Garton told him. "Bat Truxton's daughter, and the village schoolmistress. Billy thinks he's rather hard hit, I fancy."

"I've heard of her," Conniston replied, frowning at the map he was holding flat on the table. "Dam Number Two is the one which is completed, isn't it? And Number Three is the smaller auxiliary dam? How about Number One, which seems to be the most important of the lot? When do we go to work on that?"

Garton chuckled. "You're going to be as bad as I am, Conniston! Can't even stop to look at a pretty girl? The Lord knows they're scarce enough out here, too. Yes, Dam Number One is the important one of the lot. It will be the biggest, the hardest, and most expensive to build, and it will control the water-supply which is going to save our bacon."

Whereupon he, too, forgot Miss Jocelyn and Billy, and launched into further explanation. At six o'clock Billy Jordan covered his typewriter and put on his coat and hat. He came over to the table and leaned his elbow on it, waiting for Garton to finish something that he was saying.

"I'm going around to Truxton's a little while this evening," he said, trying to speak as a man of the world should, but flushing up under Garton's twinkling eyes. "If you find time dragging on your hands you might come along, Mr. Conniston. Miss Jocelyn"—he hesitated a moment—"Miss Jocelyn said I might bring you around."

Conniston thanked him and asked him to thank Miss Jocelyn, but assured him that instead of having time lagging for him he had more to do than he could manage. So Billy went on his way alone. Nor did he seem disappointed at Conniston's refusal to accompany him. It was only when it began to grow dusk and the boy brought Garton's supper that Conniston got up and went down the street to his own solitary evening meal at the lunch-counter.

It was after nine o'clock, and Conniston was lying on his cot in the little rear room of the office-building listening to Tommy Garton talk about reclamation—it seemed the only thing in the world he cared to talk about during working-hours or after—when the outside door was flung open and a man's heavy tread came through the office and to their sleeping-room.

"That'll be Truxton," Garton said. "Wants to see you, I guess."

The heavy tread came on through the office, and the door to Garton's room was flung open with as little ceremony as the front door had been. In the light of a kerosene-lamp upon the chair near his cot Conniston saw a short, squat, heavy-set man of perhaps forty-five, very broad across the forehead, very salient-jawed, his mustache short-cropped and grizzled, his mouth large and firm-lipped, his eyes steady and keen as they turned swiftly upon Conniston from under shaggy, tangled, iron-gray brows. The man had nodded curtly toward Tommy Garton, and then stood still in the doorway regarding young Conniston intently.

"You're Conniston."

It was a positive statement rather than a question, but Conniston answered as he sat up on the edge of his cot:

"Yes. I'm Conniston."

"All right." Truxton removed the lamp from the one chair in the room, placed it upon the window-sill, and sat down, pulling the chair around so that he faced Conniston. "You're goin' to work with me in the mornin'. Now, what do you know?"

His manner was abrupt, his voice curt. Conniston felt a trifle ill at ease under the man's piercing gaze, which seemed to be measuring him.

"Not a great deal, I'm afraid. You see, I—"

"I thought you were an engineer?"

"I am—after a fashion. Graduate of Yale—"

"Ever had any actual, practical experience?"

"Only field work in college."

"Ever had any experience handlin' men? Ever bossed a gang of men?"

"No."

"Ever do any kind of construction work?"

"In college—"

"Forget what you did with a four-eyed professor standin' over you! Ever build a bridge or a grade or a dam or a railroad?"

"No." Conniston answered shortly, half angrily.

"Then," grunted Truxton, plainly disgusted, "I'd like to know what the Old Man meant by sendin' you over here! I can't be bothered teachin' college boys how to do things. What I need an' need bad is an engineer that can do his part of the day's work."

"Look here!" cried Conniston, hotly. "We all have to begin some time, don't we? You had your first job, didn't you? And I'll bet you didn't fall down on it, either! It's up to you. If you think I'm no good, all right. If you give me my work to do I'll do it."

"It ain't up to me. The Old Man sent you over. You go to work in the mornin'. If I was doin' it I wouldn't put you on. I don't say you won't make good—I'm just sayin' I wouldn't take the chance. I'll stop here for you at four o'clock in the mornin'." He swung about from Conniston and toward Garton. "How're they comin', Tommy?"

All of the curt brusqueness was gone from his tone, the keen, cold, measuring calculation from his eye. With the compelling force of the man's blunt nature the whole atmosphere of the room was altered.

"First rate, Bat," Tommy answered, cheerfully. "How's the work going?"

"Good! The best day I've had in two weeks. We get to work on those seven knolls to-morrow. You remember—Miss Argyl calls 'em Little Rome."

"What have you decided? Going to make a detour, or—"

"Detour nothin'. I'm goin' right straight through 'em. It'll take time, all right. But in the end we'll save. I'll cut through 'em in four days or four an' a half."

"And then—it's Dam Number One?"

Truxton swore softly. "If I can get the men, it is! Swinnerton stole my last gang—seventy-five of 'em. The blamed little porcupine offered 'em two bits more than we're payin' an' grabbed every one of 'em. The Old Man has wired Denver for a hundred more muckers. Swinnerton can't keep takin' men on all year. He's got more now than he knows what to do with. I guess this gang 'll come on through. As soon as they come, Tommy, I'll have that big dam growin' faster'n you ever saw a dam grow before."

For half an hour the two men talked, and Conniston lay back listening. In spite of Bat Truxton's sour acceptance of him, Conniston began to feel a decided liking for the old engineer. After all, he told himself, were he in Truxton's place he would have small liking for putting a green man on the job. He realized that there was nothing personal in Truxton's attitude toward him. Truxton was not looking for a man, but for an efficient, reliable machine, one that had already been tested and found to be strong, trustworthy, infallible.

Again the question had been put to him, "What have you done?" And it was nobody's fault but his that he had done nothing.

"I wish you had two legs, Tommy," Truxton said, when at last he got up and went to the door. "You an' me workin' together out there—well, we'd make things jump, that's all."

Tommy laughed, but his sensitive mouth twitched as though with a sharp physical pain.

"Oh, I'm doing all right inside," he answered, quietly. "Somebody's got to attend to this end of the game. And Conniston will be on to the ropes in a few days. He'll help you make things jump."

Truxton made no answer. For a moment he stood frowning at the floor. Then he turned once more to Conniston for a short, intent scrutiny.

"You have your blankets ready, Conniston," he said, shortly. "You'll sleep on a sand-pile to-morrow night."

And he went out, slamming the door behind him.



CHAPTER XIII

At half-past three, Conniston, awakened with a start by the jangle and clamor of Tommy Garton's little alarm-clock, got up and dressed. At the lunch-counter the man who had been fidgety yesterday and was merely sleepy this morning set coffee and flapjacks and bacon before him. Before four he had saddled his horse, rolled into a neat bundle a blanket and a couple of quilts from the cot upon which he had slept last night, tied them behind his saddle, and was ready for the coming of Bat Truxton. Then Truxton on horseback joined him. Conniston mounted, acknowledged Truxton's short "Good mornin'," and rode with him away from the sleeping village and out toward the south.

"Tommy's told you somethin' about what we got ahead of us?" Truxton asked, when they had ridden half a mile in silence.

"Yes. We went over the whole thing together as well as we could in a day's time."

"That's good. If any man's got a head on him for this sort of thing, that man's Tommy Garton. He'd make it as plain as a man could on paper, without goin' over the ground. To-day we're tyin' into those seven sand-hills I mentioned last night. I've got two hundred men workin' there. So they won't get in each other's way I've divided 'em up in four gangs, fifty men to the gang. There's all kinds of men in that two hundred, Conniston, and about the biggest part of your day's work will be to sort of size your men up. I've divided 'em, not accordin' to efficiency, but partly accordin' to nationality an' mostly accordin' to cussedness. I'm givin' you the tame ones to begin on. I'll take care of the ornery jaspers until you get your hand in. But I can't spare more'n a day or two. Then it'll be up to you. You'll have to swing the whole bunch, if you can. An' if you can't it'll be up to you to quit! Oh, it ain't so all-fired hard, not if you've got the savvy. I've got a foreman over each section that knows what he's doin' an' will do pretty much everything if you can furnish the head work."

"Where is the trouble with them? What do you mean by the ornery ones? They're all here because they want to work, aren't they? If they get dissatisfied they quit, don't they?"

Truxton looked at him curiously. "You got a lot of things to learn, Conniston. Just you take a tip from me: You keep your eyes an' ears real wide open for the next few days an' your mouth shut as long as you can. Tommy explained to you about the opposition? About what Oliver Swinnerton is doin' an' tryin' to do?"

"Yes."

"Then you remember that; don't overlook it for a minute, wakin' or sleepin'. It'll explain a whole lot."

When they rode into the camp at Little Rome the two hundred men employed there were just beginning to stir. Conniston's eyes took in with no little interest the details of the camp. There was one long, low tent, the canvas sides rolled up so that he could see a big cooking-stove with two or three men working over it. This, plainly enough, was the kitchen. From each side of the door a long line of twelve-inch boards laid across saw-horses ran out across the level sand. Upon the parallel boards were tin plates stacked high in piles, tin cups, knives and forks, and scores of loaves of bread. There were in addition perhaps twenty tin buckets half filled with sugar.

Scattered here and there upon the sand, some not twenty feet from the tent, some a hundred yards, some few with a little straw under them, the most of them with their blankets thrown upon the sand or upon heaps of cut sage-brush, were Truxton's "muckers." They lay there like a bivouacking army, their bodies disposed loosely, some upon their backs, still sleeping heavily; many just sitting up, awakened by the clatter of the cook's big iron spoon against a tin pan.

Behind the tent, picketed in rows by short ropes, were the horses and mules. And lined up to the right of the tent were twenty big, long-bodied Studebaker wagons, each with four barrels of water. Two more wagons at the other side of the tent were piled high with boxes and bags of provisions.

Truxton and Conniston unsaddled swiftly, and after staking out their horses, Conniston throwing his roll of bedding down behind the tent, they walked around to the front. Already most of the men were up, rolling blankets or hurrying to the rude tables. Several of them had gone to the aid of the cooks, and now were hurrying up and down between the parallel boards, setting out immense black pots of coffee, great lumps of butter, big pans of mush, beans, stewed "jerky," and potatoes boiled in their jackets. The men who had rolled out of their beds fully dressed, save for shoes, formed in a long line near the tent door and moved swiftly along the tables, taking up knives, forks, plates, and cups as they went, helping themselves generously to each different dish as they came to it. Many stopped at the farther ends of the boards, standing and eating from them. Many more took their plates and cups of coffee away from the tables and squatted down to eat, placing their dishes upon the sand. There was remarkably little confusion, no time lost, as the two hundred men helped themselves to their breakfast. They did not appear to have seen Truxton; they glanced swiftly at Conniston and seemed to forget his presence in their hunger.