The Forbidden Trail Part 44

"You'll do nothing of the kind, Gustav," exclaimed Roger. "You're far from home and you may need all your borrowing power for yourself--not but what I appreciate your offer, old man!"

"I've got a little--my fare home and about a hundred beside," offered Elsa.

"Keep it, old girl," Roger's voice was husky. "By Jove, I may be poor in everything else, but I'm rich in friends. Ern, what do you think of my suggestion?"

"Well, I hate debt worse than anything in the world. But we're in this thing up to our necks and I'm willing to try anything that's honest. If Hackett knows the whole story--"

"He knows it now, I guess, but I'll give him all the details. I may as well go in to-day and get a yes or no at once."

"I'll go," said Ernest. "I'd like to and you'd better not lose a day."

Roger nodded in a relieved manner.

"Listen! There goes the Lemon!" exclaimed Elsa. "I do hope she goes to-day."

"Put! Put!" came over the desert. "Put! Put! Put!"

"I guess she's launched and I've got a clear day for work." Roger rose as he spoke. "d.i.c.k's having a struggle to get enough water for that second five acres of his. He insists that he's going ahead with the next five, though."

"Elsa, want to go into Archer's with me?" asked Ernest.

"Sorry, Ern, but I'm going to help Charley can pumpkins to-day. She planted some for luck up by the engine house where the pump leaks, you remember, and the crop is wonderful."

"Oh, well, if you prefer pumpkins to me and Archer's Springs, I've nothing to say," groaned Ernest.

"I'll go," offered Gustav. "I haf letters and other things."

Ernest accepted the offer with alacrity. He was beginning to recover some of his old spirits but he had not been himself since Charley's refusal. Roger had never known Ernest to take one of his affairs quite so hard before. He dreaded to be alone and was often moody: a rare state of mind for easy going Ernest.

The two men made a quick and successful trip to Archer's, for Hackett agreed to sell them food to the sum of two hundred dollars. He didn't see how a mortgage could be given but he was willing to take Roger's personal note for ninety days. This Roger gave with some misgivings but with a sigh of relief that the day of starvation had been put off once more. Then he gave his whole mind to his engine problem.

He was planning some changes in his engine that were fundamental and that were really the outcome of his early trip through the ranges in the search for window gla.s.s. He worked at his redesigning with a single minded pa.s.sion that set him apart from the others. All of them except Felicia found him tense and at times irritable.

As August came in, the beauty of the desert seemed to increase daily.

The heat, whilst it added to one's sense of the desert's cruelty, added at the same time to the unreality and to the mystery of silence and of distances that are so large a part of the desert's fascination.

The sand was alive with an uncanny, tiny life. Horned toads flopped unexpectedly across the trail. Lizards were everywhere, running over and under the tent floors and along the thatching of the condenser and the engine house. There were many rattlesnakes too, particularly dangerous at this time of year because, d.i.c.k said, they were shedding their skins and were blind, striking at any sound. There were Gila monsters now and again. There were many scorpions and centipedes, with once in a while a tarantula.

d.i.c.k and Charley laid down certain laws of the summer desert. No one was to go to bed without examining the bedding for tarantulas or centipedes.

No one was to dress without subjecting every article of apparel to the same scrutiny. No one was to go out at night without a "bug" for fear of the blind striking of a rattler. Every one must learn to kill a snake with a snake stick. And every one, even Felicia, must learn to treat snake bites.

Elsa, clear-headed and matter of fact, was very little annoyed by all this gliding venomous summer life. But little Felicia's horror of it was difficult to control. It seemed to Roger that the child's nerves had been uneven ever since the "cologne affair," as Ernest called it. But he could not be sure of this, for Charley insisted that the little girl's fears of all that uncanny fraternity of the sand was exactly what hers had been four years before.

August was slipping by, quietly enough when Gustav, returning one day from Archer's Springs, delivered to Roger a letter from Hampton of the Smithsonian saying that on the thirtieth day of August a representative of the Smithsonian would reach Archer's Springs on his way to Los Angeles; that he had but two days to spare but would be glad to give these days to the Moore experiment.

Roger was in despair. "Two days!" he groaned. "Why, it takes two days to come up and back. Better stay away."

"Don't be an idiot, Rog," exclaimed Ernest. "You get him here, and he'll stay for a day or so. How can he get away? The thing that bothers me is that darned engine of yours."

"It doesn't bother me," replied Roger, with a quick gleam in his gray eyes and a sudden smile. "I've got a week before he gets here and by Jove, the old kettle's got to be ready!" He gave a sudden long sigh and looked off toward the distant line of the river range. "I thought it was queer of the Smithsonian to treat me as it did. Ern, this puts new life in me."

If new life means redoubled effort, Roger had found it indeed. He gave himself as little sleep as possible during the week before the expected visit. All day and a larger part of the night he was at work in the engine house, till his eyes were bigger and his face gaunter than ever.

Felicia was his little shadow. Her taste for mechanics made her seem more like a small boy than ever. And although Roger's tense nerves grew tenser and his impatience with the others was shown oftener and oftener, to Felicia he showed only the gentleness for which she loved him.

Charley and Elsa were forming a real friendship. The isolation of the little desert community was almost complete. Since the death of Von Minden no one from the outer rim of the desert or of the world had been near either camp or ranch. Even the Indians who had been camping in the remote canyon where Felicia had visited them had found good hunting in some still more remote section and never had appeared in the camp. This isolation forced the friendship between the two young women to a quick growth. Charley was happier, d.i.c.k said, than he had seen her since her college days.

Two days before the visitor was due, Roger announced that one day's work would make him ready for a test, so that, and he did not believe that he was over-confident, when Gustav arrived with the Smithsonian investigator, the plant would be in full action. He made this announcement at breakfast. Ernest and Gustav cheered.

"I never thought you'd make it," said Gustav.

"I _had_ to make it," replied Roger. "I have the conviction that if this man, whoever he is, sees the plant working, the thing will be done, and that if he doesn't find the wheels going round, I'm going to miss the chance of my life."

"If the heat would just let up for a little while," sighed Ernest. "If he's a northerner, it may put him out of business."

"Pshaw! they'll send an experienced man, never fear!" Roger poured himself another cup of coffee. "h.e.l.lo! Here's a caller!"

It was Qui-tha, riding a half-starved pony whose mangy sides were working in the early morning sun like a pair of bellows.

He dismounted and grinned affably. "How! You give Qui-tha more strong medicine, maybe!"

"Look here, Qui-tha, I'll give you all the strong medicine you want, if you'll stay and help me for a week," cried Ernest.

Qui-tha shook his head. "No got time to work. Must go back to Injun camp take care of sick Injun. Qui-tha heap big medicine man, now."

"All right!" Ernest shrugged his shoulders. "No work, no strong medicine."

Qui-tha shrugged his shoulders and remounting, he started on up the trail to the ranch house. Elsa reported later in the day that d.i.c.k, having no peroxide, had promised to get some from Archer's Springs if Qui-tha would do a day's work for him. Qui-tha, she said, was giving the matter due consideration.

Late that evening, while Roger and Gustav were working at the little forge, Ernest came out of the living tent where he had been writing letters.

"Did you fellows hear a gun shot a little bit ago?" he asked. "You two are making such an infernal racket, I can't tell what it was."

Roger and Gustav both stopped work and listened. The desert was breathlessly silent.

"Are you sure?" asked Roger. "Did you think it might have been at the ranch?"

"I couldn't tell. It may have been nothing at all but you folks here.

But if I hear it again, I'm going up there."

It was fifteen or twenty minutes later that Elsa's voice came from the trail.

"Ernest! Roger! Gustav!"

The three men started on a run to meet her. A dark figure in the starlight, she staggered exhausted toward them.

"The Indian--had whiskey--he and d.i.c.k both drunk. The Indian shot d.i.c.k--in the leg and ran away."

"Did he hurt you girls?" cried Roger.