The Forbidden Trail Part 34

"Felicia is nothing if not feminine." Roger tugged at the fly wheel and grinned at Charley who made a little grimace.

"Roger likes it!" exclaimed Felicia. "He belongs to me, Charley. He likes me bettern you, he says so."

"Well, it is like this, Charley--" began Roger elaborately.

Charley cut him off with a wave of her hand. "Nothing can explain away that blow, Roger." Then she went on, soberly. "Do you suppose the old lemon will pull us through our first crop?"

"I don't know, Charley. One never does about a gasoline engine. There's always more life in an old one though than one realizes. If this does fail you, however, I'll be in running shape in two months' time with my solar engine. Don't forget that."

"When do you expect to make your first actual test?" asked Charley.

"Well, the engine will be here almost any time now. If the Dean has done a good construction job, I ought to be able to make a tentative connection in six weeks' time."

"How do you mean a good job?" asked Charley.

"Well, this is the first full size fifty horse power engine that we've built. You see, I've had no money and we've worked from models, though I did build one ten horse power engine. That worries me a little, but I'm sure that any defects that appear will be easily remedied. Now then, this old mule ought to begin to kick!"

Roger turned the fly wheel again and an obstinate Put! Put! Put! came from the engine, then a long pause, during which the audience of three waited anxiously, then a steady Put! Put! Put! Put! Put! that promised to last as long as did the gasoline.

"If the old thing could just realize all that depends on its behaving itself!" exclaimed Charley. "Roger, let's throw in the pump, I really believe it's going to run!"

And run it did, during the entire day, with only three stops for repair.

Roger worked until late afternoon with d.i.c.k and the next day Gustav took his place. The damage done by the dust storm to the absorber was now completely remedied and Roger and Ernest began work on a shallow concrete trough on which the condenser was to be erected. By the time this was completed, d.i.c.k's second sowing was finished and he announced himself ready for road building.

At first, Roger felt violently resentful at the thought of having to build a road. It seemed to him that after all his years of patient persistency, fate at the last was playing him a scurvy trick. She had brought his goal within sight, only to beset it with delays and difficulties whose very paltriness it seemed to him he could not endure.

And a feverish little flame of impatience began to glow within him that was not to be extinguished for many months. However when, pick in hand, he actually began with the others to break the road, a sudden elation swept over him. After all, primitive as this work might be, it was empire building of the most fundamental sort. And, in spite of his anxieties and impatience, Roger did his share of the road building with right good will.

They began work in the range back of the ranch, taking advantage of draw and canyon whenever possible, even when this demanded a long detour. Sometimes, the canyon bottoms were astonishingly level. At other times boulders and crevices would block them until they had made free use of dynamite. They had all sorts of minor mishaps. d.i.c.k was not an expert either in road grading or blasting, although he was far ahead of the Sun Planters in his information about both.

In running the road up the side of Snake Peak he used too heavy a charge and brought down a land slide which it took them a day to clear. On a previous day he had blasted too close to the wagon and a bowlder had smashed the rear axle. He took extraordinarily narrow chances with the steepness of grade but in spite of the Sun Planters' prophecies they did not lose either horses or wagon down canyon or mountain side. Ernest, however, slipped on top of one of the finished sections and rolled two hundred feet before he could stop himself.

When, after two weeks' steady labor, d.i.c.k p.r.o.nounced the road good enough, the others looked at him aghast. "You'll break your wagon and your horses' necks, to say nothing of losing the oil!" protested Ernest.

d.i.c.k only laughed. "This is a boulevard compared with some of the desert routes I've taken. With just a few drums of oil lashed on at a time, we'll make it."

And make it he did, though nearly another week was consumed in the doing, and four drums of the oil were lost in different draws and canyons. After the road was finished, the transporting of the oil was turned over to Ernest and d.i.c.k while Roger and Gustav began the erecting of the condenser. Ernest was now quite reconciled to the use of the oil for Hackett had received a telegram from the owner in San Francisco that the deal was more than satisfactory to him.

Roger and Gustav worked well together. The self-controlled German, evidently accustomed to hard grind and overwork in an office job, was not in the least ruffled by Roger's impatient ways. And he distinctly enjoyed the vim and imagination that were characteristic of Roger's work even when it involved the seemingly simple task of cutting and threading condenser pipe. For cutting and threading condenser pipe so that it shall be leak proof is not a simple job at all.

April came to the desert with a noon temperature of a hundred degrees in the shade. Imperceptibly the daily breeze stiffened to a noon gale.

There were no sand storms however for six weeks and the second alfalfa crop caught toe hold and grew, an amazing patch of green on the thirsty yellow sand.

The ranch house engine misbehaved, regularly, but Roger developed what Charley called actual genius for tinkering and somehow the five acres were watered. When the morning stillness was broken by the first uneven Put! Put! of the engine, the Sun Planters would pause in their work and listen intently. If, after due patience, the Put! Put! developed into a steady throb, they resumed work. But if after a spasm or two, silence reigned again, Roger would pull his hat over his eyes and start for the ranch, and eventually that day, water would be given the parching fields. In the meantime, d.i.c.k began to prepare a second five-acre patch for late sowing.

Early in the month Roger received a check from the Dean for one hundred and sixty dollars. He resolved to put all but a few dollars of this into a supply of food and with Charley's help, he made a list that Gustav filled at Hackett's. There was provision for over three months in this list and Roger felt sure that this period of time would see the completion of the plant.

A curt letter had come to Roger from the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution saying merely that his case was being investigated and that in due time a report and decision would reach him. With this, Roger was obliged to be content. He had little faith, however, that the Inst.i.tution would go on with Austin's undertaking and he resolved to push ahead with all speed, taking advantage of what was left of the golden opportunity Austin had offered him.

Late in April, the engine reached Archer's Springs. Hackett, who was properly equipped for heavy freighting, as poor willing d.i.c.k was not, undertook to haul the engine to the camp. He was entirely willing, he told Roger, to wait for his pay.

"No great loss," he said, "if I don't get it. But I got confidence in you and though your idea do seem awful nutty, if anything comes of it, I ain't going to have it said I done something to set back our community here. We got a great state and a great county and I'm here to promote 'em both."

So the dismantled engine was landed, without too great difficulty, in the waiting engine house and as soon as the condenser was finished, the three men began to set up this child of Roger's heart and brain. But after the heavy work was done Roger would let no one attempt adjusting the parts but himself. He set Ernest and Gustav to digging the oil pit for the storing of the sun-heated oil and spent his days and part of his nights in the engine house.

As the weeks slipped into May, many were the surmises as to what had become of the Von Mindens. The madam's tent stood just as she had left it and the burros she had left behind ranged about the desert, near the Preble corral, coming home each night for the good feed d.i.c.k gave them.

Almost every day Felicia came to the plant. Her love for Roger and Roger's for her was an accepted thing now between the two households.

Only Charley could draw the child away from the abstracted, hard-driven young engineer and d.i.c.k showed his innate generosity in that though he adored the little girl he did not harbor a grudge because Felicia so frankly declared her preference for Roger.

After the condenser was finished Felicia took a deep interest in helping Roger to find leaks in the system. Roger taught her to squirt oil from an oil can over the different points and to interpret bubbles rising from the resulting oil flow as leaks. It was the quaintest sight in the world to see the slender little figure in blue overalls, brown head running over with short curls, crawling like a little lizard over the greasy pipes while Roger followed with pipe wrench, cold chisel and peen hammer. After Roger began work on the engine, Felicia became a sort of plumber's a.s.sistant and a clever one, at that.

Sometimes Charley came late in the afternoon to take Felicia home. She would perch on the edge of the work bench and talk to Roger about the work in a voice and with an unself-conscious manner so like her small sister's that Roger, his restless mind on the problems of his work, often confused the two girls in his thoughts and answered or directed them indiscriminately. And Charley would chuckle as she watched him.

The day in May that the men began a test for oil leaks in the absorber dawned with a promise of ferocious heat. Felicia appeared as usual but admitted that she had come over Charley's protest.

"We'll have to leave off work at eleven, and not begin again until three as d.i.c.k suggested, if this heat keeps up," observed Ernest.

"Then we'll begin work at dawn," said Roger, with a sigh. "Every minute counts, old man."

About nine o'clock Charley came panting down the trail.

"Felicia must come home at once," she cried. "There's a big sand storm coming. d.i.c.k is getting the stock under cover as fast as he can."

The men dropped their tools hurriedly and looked up the valley. A great gray cloud was approaching so rapidly that as they gazed they caught the sound of its increasing roar. The sky, which had been sapphire of an unusual translucence that morning, turned all in a moment to a sullen red gray. There was a dry rattle of lizards and horned toads scuttling into the roots of grease wood and cactus.

"You mustn't try to go home, Charley," exclaimed Roger.

"But I must! d.i.c.k and his alfalfa! He _can't_ be alone!"

But d.i.c.k was destined to spend the day in solitude. With a very Niagara of sound the sand storm struck the camp. Charley and Felicia ran for the living tent where the men shortly joined them. They closed the flaps and settled to a day of discomfort. The engine house would have been more comfortable than the tent but it was too c.u.mbered with machinery now to be used as a sitting room. There was no work that could be done indoors. The heat was stifling, a hundred and six the thermometer over the washstand trunk reported. The tent rocked and bellied, bellied and flapped with reverberations like drum-beats. Felicia was frightened at first and hid her head in Charley's lap. Charley herself was white-lipped, less, Ernest thought, from fear of the storm than from that vague apprehension about d.i.c.k that never seemed to leave her.

For a time Roger sat scowling with impatience, then Felicia's fear moved him and calling the child to him he began to tell her of the old swimming pool. The others listened and laughed and when Felicia begged for more, Gustav told a charming tale of his own Bavarian childhood. And he and Ernest sang together some tender folk songs which Felicia insisted on learning. While Gustav and Ernest undertook this pleasant task Charley and Roger talked.

At Charley's request, Roger brought out his blue prints and explained the plant to her. He felt his impatience lifting as he talked.

Explaining his work always seemed to increase his critical vision. New ideas came flooding, and he pulled out his note book, feeling that after all the day was not entirely wasted.

So, in spite of the bitter taste of alkali in their mouths and its sting in their eyes, in spite of the breathless burning heat, the morning pa.s.sed cheerfully. They even managed to satisfy their hunger with canned beef and canned brown bread. They had washed down the last of the unsavory lunch with the tepid, nauseously alkaline water from the olla when a gust of wind of tremendous proportions tore open the door flap and filled the room with a blinding swirl of sand. At the same moment there was a fearful crash from without, followed by the sound of breaking gla.s.s. Leaving Charley to refasten the door flap, the three men bolted toward the absorber.

The sand cloud was so dense that they could distinguish little until in actual contact with the edge of the trough. Then the trouble was obvious. A part of the sheet iron roof had blown off the engine house, and lay in a great twisted heap on the absorber. Roger immediately crawled under the trough. The heavy metal had pierced the floor of the absorber and oil was pouring out in a thin but steady stream. He pawed his way out hurriedly.

"Go shut the oil off, Ernest," he shouted, "and get pails to catch that oil. Why the devil did some one leave the valve open? Gustav, give me a hand with this mess. Why didn't we have sense enough to fasten it securely? If we don't move it, it may blow the length of the trough."

Roger plunged hastily up among the panes of broken gla.s.s, Gustav following. After a moment of effort the guilty ma.s.s of sheet iron was shoved over onto the sand. Just at the last a particularly vicious blast of wind twisted it violently against Gustav's bare arm.

"Du lieber Gott!" he roared. "Be careful yet!"

"Now let's cover the engine," shouted Roger, giving no heed to Gustav's cry.