In Exile and Other Stories Part 20

Nancy went, covering the desert miles as a bird flies; she exulted in this chance for reparation. But long after Finlayson's forces had arrived and gone to work, she came lagging wearily homeward, all of a color, herself and the pony, with the yellow road. She had refused a fresh horse at the ditch-camp, and, sparing the whip, reached home not until after dark.

Her father's excitement in his hours of loneliness had waxed to a pitch of childish frenzy. He wept, he cursed, he counted his losses, and when his daughter said, to comfort him, "Why, father, surely they must pay for this!" he threw himself about in his bed and gave way to lamentations in which the secret of his wildness came out. He had done the thing himself; and he dared not risk suspicion, and the investigation that would follow a heavy claim for damages.

Nancy could not believe him. "Father, do be quiet; you didn't do any such thing," she insisted. "How could you, when I know you haven't stirred out of this bed since night before last? Hush, now; you are dreaming; you are out of your head."

"I guess I know what I done. I ain't crazy, and I ain't a fool. I made this hole first, before he caught me at the upper one. I made this one to keep him busy on his way up, so's the upper one could get a good start. The upper one wouldn't 'a' hurt us. It's jest like my cussed luck! I knew it was a-comin', but I didn't think I'd get it like this. It's all his fault, the great lazy loafer, sleepin' at the bottom of his beat, 'stead o' comin'

up as he'd ought to have done last evening. He wasted the whole night,--and calls himself a watchman!"

"Well, I'm glad of it," Nancy cried excitedly. "I'm just _glad_ we are washed out, and I hope this will end it!" and she burst into tears, and ran out of the room.

She sat by herself, weeping and storming, in the dark little shed-room.

"Nancy!" she heard her father calling, "Nancy, child!... Where's that gal taken herself off to?... Are you a-settin' up your back on account of that ditch? If you are, you ain't no child of mine.... I'm dum sorry I let on a word to her about it. How do I know but she's off with it now, to that watchman feller. I'll be put in the papers--an old man informed on by his darter, and he on his last sick bed!... Nancy, I say, where be you a-hidin'

yourself?"

Nancy returned to her forlorn charge, and after a while the old man fell asleep. She put out the lamp, for she could see to move about the room by the light of the sage-brush bonfires that flared along the ditch, lighting the men and teams, all Finlayson's force, at work upon the broken banks.

The sight was wild and alluring; she went out to watch the strange army of shadows shifting and intermingling against a wall of flame.

There was a distressful s.p.a.ce to cross, of sand and slippery mud and drowned vegetation, including the remains of her garden; the look of everything was changed. Only the ditch-bank against the reddened sky supplied the usual landmark. Its crest was black with shovelers, and up and down in lurid light climbed the sc.r.a.per-teams; climbed and dumped, and dropped over the bank to climb again, like figures in a stage procession.

There was a bedlam roar and crackle of pitchy fires, rattle of harness, clank of sc.r.a.per-pans, shouts of men to the cattle, oaths and words of command; and this would go forward unceasingly till the banks held water.

And what was the use of contending?

Nancy felt bitterly the insignificance of such small scattered folk as her father, pitiful even in their spite. Their vengeance was like the malice of field-mice or rabbits, which the farmers fenced out of their fields into the desert where they belonged. What could such as they do either to help or hinder this invincible march of capital into the country where they, with untold hardships, had located the first claims? And some of them were ready enough, for a little temporary relief, to part with their birthright to these clever sons of Jacob.

"Out we go, to find some other wilderness for them to take away from us! We are only mossbacks," said the daughter of Esau.

As she spoke, half aloud to herself, a man rushed past her down the bank, flattened himself on his hands, laid his face to the water, and drank and paused to pant, and drank again, while she could have counted a score. Then he lifted his head, sighed, and stretched himself back with a groan of complete exhaustion.

The firelight touched his face, and showed her Travis: haggard, hollow-eyed, soaked with ditch-water, and matted with mud, looking as if he had been dragged bodily through the ditch-bank, like thread through a piece of cloth.

Nancy did not try to avoid him.

"Oh, is it you?" he marveled, softly smiling up at her. "What a splendid ride you made! Did n.o.body thank you? Finlayson said he couldn't find you when he was leaving camp."

Nancy answered not a word; she was trembling so that she feared to betray herself by speaking.

"I was coming to say good-by, when I had washed my face," he continued. "I got my time to-night."

"Your time?"

"My time-check. They are going to put another man in my place. So you needn't hate me any longer on account of the ditch; you can transfer all that to the next fellow."

"Isn't that just like them? They never can do anything fair!"

"Like who? Do you suppose I'm going to kick about it? The only wonder is they kept me on so long."

Every word of Travis's was a knife in Nancy's conscience, to say nothing of her pride. She hugged her arms in her shawl, and rocked herself to and fro. Travis crawled up the bank a little way further, and stretched himself humbly beside her. The dark shadows under his aching eyes started a pang of pity in the girl's heart, sore beset as she was with troubles of her own.

"I'm glad it's duskish," he remarked, "so you can't see the sweet state I'm in. I'm all over top-soil. You might rent me to a Chinaman for twenty-five dollars an acre; and I don't need any irrigating either."

An irresponsible laugh from Nancy was followed by a sob. Then she gathered herself to speak.

"See here, do you want to stay on this ditch?"

"Of course I do. I wanted to stay till I had straightened out my own record, and shown what the ditch can do. But no management under heaven could stand such work as this."

"Then stay, if you want to. You have only to say the word. You said you'd inform if there was a next time, and there is. Father did it. He made this break, too; he made them both the same night, and didn't dare to tell of this one. Now, go and clear yourself and get back your beat."

"Are you sure of this you are telling me?"

"Well, I guess so. It isn't the sort of thing I'd be likely to make up. And I say you can tell if you want to. I make you a present of the information.

If father isn't willing to take the consequences, I am; and they half belong to me. I won't have anybody sheltering us, or losing by us. We have got no quarrel with you."

"That is brave of you. I wish it was something more than brave," sighed Travis. "But I want it all myself. I can't spare this information to the company. You didn't do it for them, did you?"

"When I go telling on my father to save a ditch, I guess it will be after now," said Nancy. "If that rich company, with all its men and watchmen and teams and money, can't protect itself from one poor old man"--

"Never mind the company," said Travis. "What's mine is mine. This word you gave to me, it doesn't belong to my employers. You have saved me to myself; now I shall not go kicking myself for sleeping that night on my beat. It's not so bad--oh, not half so bad--for me!"

"Then go tell them, and get the credit for it. Don't you mean to?"

She could not see him smile. "When I tell, you will hear of it."

"But you talked about your record."

"I shall have to go to work and make a new record. Ah, if you would be as kind as you are brave! Was it all just for pride you told me this? Don't you care, not the least bit, about my part--that I am down and out of everything?"

"It's your own fault, then. I have told you how you can clear yourself and stay."

"And lose my chance with you! I was thinking of coming back, some day, to tell you--what you must know already. Nancy, you do know!"

"You forget," shivered Nancy; "I am the daughter of the man you called"--

"Is that fair--to bring that up now?"

"You mustn't deceive yourself. There are some things that can't be forgotten."

"How did _I_ know what I was saying? A man isn't always responsible."

"I heard you," said Nancy. "There are things we say when we are raging mad at a person, and there are things we say when we think them the dirt under our feet. You kept him down with your dirt-shovel, and you called him--what I can't ever forget."

"And is this the only hitch between us?"

"I should think it was enough. Who despises my father despises me."

"But I do not despise him," Travis did not scruple to a.s.sert. "The quarrel was not mine; and I'm not a ditch-man any longer. I will apologize to your father."