Under Handicap Part 23

"You do a good deal of watchin' to-day," he ended. "Ben an' the Lark--that's what they call that little cuss bossin' the second gang--listen to him whistle an' you'll know why--know well what to do.

Right now an' right here the work's dead easy, Conniston. Only don't go an' let 'em drive you in a hole where you have to admit you don't know. You've _got_ to know."

The work here was in reality so simple that men like Ben and the Lark grasped it quickly. Conniston had little trouble in seeing readily what was to be done. The details Truxton furnished him.

When noon came they ate with the men. And at one o'clock Truxton called Ben and the Lark aside and told them shortly that Conniston was the new engineer and that they were to take orders from him. Whereupon Conniston took upon himself the responsibility of "bossing" a hundred men, the biggest responsibility which he had ever taken upon his care-free shoulders.

He had seen the slow, measuring glances which both of his two foremen had bestowed upon him when Truxton told them; knew that they accepted him as their overseer because they took orders from Truxton, but saw in their faces that they reserved judgment of him personally until such time as they could see how much or how little he knew. He was not greatly in fear of the outcome. The work was running so smoothly, there were so few possible difficulties to come up now, that it seemed to him that all he had to do was to stand and watch.

And at first he did little but watch and, as Truxton had suggested, try to study his men. He saw that both the Lark and Ben said very few words, that when they did speak they barked out short, explosive commands surcharged with profanity, that when they interfered there was a good reason for it, that their commands were obeyed without hesitation and without question. Not once in two hours did either of them so much as look toward him. And the long processions of men and horses came and went, scooped and dumped their big sc.r.a.per-loads, and swung back into the ditch, each man of them moving like a machine.

It was after three o'clock when he noticed something which he would have seen before had he been used to the work and the men. He saw the long string of sc.r.a.pers come to a halt for perhaps two minutes; saw that the cause of the halt was a big Northlander who had stopped just as he came upon the bank and was working over at race-chain which seemed to be causing trouble. In a moment he started up again, the other sc.r.a.pers began to move, and Conniston dismissed the matter as of no consequence. This was the gang over which Ben was foreman. He glanced quickly at the big Englishman and saw that his eyes were upon the Northlander. Again, not twenty minutes later, came a second brief stoppage, again the Swede was working over a trace-chain--and now Ben had swung about and was striding toward Conniston.

"Hi say there," he said, as he came to Conniston's side. "Bat says Hi'm to take horders off you. Do you want me to 'andle those Johnnies?

Hor do you figure on a-stepping in? Hi?"

"What do you mean?" demanded Conniston, a bit puzzled. "I haven't interfered with you, have I?"

"No. Hi just want to know, you know. Hi 'andle 'em my wi, hor Hi quit, you know."

"You are to do just as you have always done," Conniston told him, shortly. "If you can handle them, all right. Go to it. If you need any help--What's the matter?"

"Hi don't awsk any 'elp," muttered Ben. "Just one man--"

"You mean that Swede with the big white mare in the lead?" interrupted Conniston, quickly.

Ben looked at him swiftly. Grunting an answer which Conniston did not catch, he turned and went back along the edge of the ditch.

The Swede was again coming up the bank. At the top he did as he had done more than once before: turned out in a wide circle, letting two men pa.s.s him. The Englishman strode swiftly toward him.

"Hi, there, you big Swede!" he yelled, his words accompanied by a volley of insulting epithets born in the slums of London. "Wot you trying to do? Want the 'ole works to pawss you w'ile you rest? You blooming spoonbill, get inter that! Step lively, man!"

The Northlander's heavy, slow-moving feet stopped entirely as he turned a stolid face toward the foreman.

"I bane to like I tam plase," he muttered, slowly. "Yo bane go h.e.l.l."

The big Englishman sprang back, swept up a broken pick-handle half buried in the sand, and leaped forward. As he leaped he swung the bit of heavy, hard wood above his head. The Swede dropped his reins and threw up his arms to guard himself, but the pick-handle, wielded in a great, sinewy right hand, beat down his arms and struck him a crashing blow across his forehead. Conniston heard the thud of it where he stood. The Swede's arms flew out and he went down like a steer in a slaughter-house.

"You b.l.o.o.d.y spoonbill!" cried the Englishman, standing over the prostrate body. "Wot are you laying down for? Get hup, hor Hi'll beat the b.l.o.o.d.y 'ead hoff your b.l.o.o.d.y shoulders! Get hup!"

Slowly, weakly, reeling as he got upon his knees, the Swede rose to his feet. A great, smoldering, cold-blooded wrath shone in his blue eyes, mingled with a surly fear. He made no motion toward the man who stood three feet from him threatening him. Nor did he stir toward his fallen reins. Instead he turned half about toward the camp.

"I bane quit," he muttered, thickly. "I bane get my time."

"Quit!" yelled Ben--"quit, will you!"

The Swede muttered something which Conniston did not catch. Ben took one short, quick step forward, swinging his pick-handle high above his head. For a moment the Swede paused, hesitating. And then, again muttering, he stooped, picked up his reins, and swung his team back into the cut.

The other men had all stopped to watch. Now Ben swung about upon them, his voice lifted in a string of c.o.c.kney oaths, commanding them not to stand still all day, but to get to work. At almost his first word the teams began to move again, the men laughing, calling to one another, jeering at the defeated Swede, or merely shrugging their shoulders.

And Greek Conniston, his face still white from what he had just witnessed, began to see, although still dimly, what it was he had taken into his two hands to do.

He glanced down at his hands. The middle finger of the right one, with which he had struck Brayley's heavy cheek-bone, was swollen to twice its natural size, stiff and sore. The nails were broken and blackened.

There were a dozen scratches and little cuts. The palms were hard and calloused, with bits of loose skin along the base of the fingers where blisters had formed and broken and healed over.

He lifted his head, and his speculative eyes ran back along the ditch.

The work was again running smoothly, quietly, save for the clanking of the sc.r.a.pers and the men's voices calling to their horses and mules, each man intent upon his own duty, the face of the desert as peaceful as the hot, clear arch of the sky above.

CHAPTER XIV

Three days pa.s.sed, four, a week, and still no word came of the men for whom the "Old Man" had wired to Denver. Conniston had nearly forgotten them. His day was from daylight until dark, often until long after dark. Upon more than one evening, after the men had had their suppers and crawled into their blankets, he and Truxton had sat in the tent at the cook's rude table, a lantern between them, figuring and planning upon the next day.

He began to notice a vague change in the older engineer as the days went by. At first he was hardly conscious of it, at a loss to catalogue it. But before the middle of the week he realized that each evening found Truxton more irritable, more p.r.o.ne to explode into quick rage over some trifle. The man's eyes began to show the restless fever within him, and some sort of an unsleeping, nervous anxiety.

Throughout the days the men stood clear of him. His flaming wrath burst out at a blundering mistake or at a man's failure to follow to the last letter some short-spoken instructions. It was only one night when Conniston made careless mention of Oliver Swinnerton, and Truxton flew into a towering, cursing rage, that he began to believe that he saw the real reason for Truxton's growing ill temper.

"The thievin', mangy, pot-bellied porcupine!" Truxton had shouted, banging his fist down upon the cook's table so hard that the lantern jumped two inches in the air. "I'll just naturally rid the earth of him one of these days. Those men ought to have arrived from Denver three days ago. How am I ever goin' to get anything done, an' no men to work for me? With Colton Gray gone an' the rest of the P. C. & W.

thieves playin' into that scoundrel Swinnerton's hands, where do we get off? We send for a hundred men, an' it saves Swinnerton the trouble an' expense of a wire. By now every man jack of them is makin'

fences an' buildin' houses for him, or I'm the worst-fooled man in the country." And he swung off into a string of curses which would not have been unworthy of Ben the Englishman.

One afternoon when they had run the ditch through the Seven Knolls and were cutting rapidly through a level stretch with a double line of smaller hills a mile ahead of the foremost team, Truxton came striding along the ditch to where Conniston was standing.

"Think you can handle all four gangs without me for the rest of the afternoon?" he asked, as he came to Conniston's side.

"Yes," answered Conniston. "I can handle them."

Truxton laughed softly.

"You're comin' ahead, youngster. Wouldn't have wanted the job a week ago, would you? I believe you could handle 'em, too. But I'll do it this trip. I want you to go to the office for me. See Tommy and run over these figures with him. I told you last night that I was sure of 'em. To-day I'm gettin' balled up. Tell him that I'm puttin' a gang on that double line of hills first thing in the mornin'. Run over the thing with him and verify our figures. If there's anything left of the afternoon when you get through you can take it off an' see the sights in Valley City. Find out how they're fixed for water an' grub an'

wood. Tommy's got all that dope at the tip of his tongue. An' be back here the first thing in the mornin'."

He went back to his work, and Conniston hurried away, decidedly glad for the change of work. Just to grip his horse between his knees, to swing out alone across the rolling fields, to drink deep of the untroubled stillness of the wide places, to be an independent, swiftly moving figure with nothing to break the silent harmony of the still, hot sky above and the still, hot sands beneath--a harmony which the soul leaped out to meet--brought a quiet, peaceful content. The day was serene and perfect, like yesterday and to-morrow in this land of dreary barrenness and of infinite possibility; the faint blue of the cloudless sky met the gray monotone of the earth between two mounds in front of him; and as his horse's hoofs fell noiselessly, as though upon padded felt, his sensation was that of drifting across the wide sweep of a gently swelling ocean toward a landlocked sea of pale turquoise.

It was shortly after four o'clock when he rode into Valley City. He pa.s.sed the one-room school-house, with its distinctive little belfry and flag-pole, and a glance in at the open windows told him that the children had been dismissed. At the corner of the building he came suddenly upon a saddled horse biting and stamping at the flies which defied swishing tail and savage teeth. Half smiling, he stopped. He had recognized the horse as a Half Moon animal, one he had ridden several times, and thought that he could guess who was inside paying his respects to the schoolmistress. Even as he paused Jocelyn Truxton came out, opening her white parasol. And in all the holiday regalia of s.h.a.ggy black chaps, bright-blue neck-handkerchief, and new Stetson hat, Lonesome Pete followed her.

Pete, as he emerged from behind the parasol, saw Conniston and called a hearty "h.e.l.lo, Con!" to him. And Conniston turned his horse and rode back to the front steps.

"Miss Jocelyn says as how she ain't been interdooced," Lonesome Pete was saying, his hat turning nervously in his hands, his face flushing as he met Conniston's eyes. "Shake han's with Mr. Conniston, Miss Jocelyn."

Miss Jocelyn lifted her dropped eyelids with a quick flutter, favored Conniston with a flashing smile, banished her smile to replace it with a pouting of pursed lips, and said, archly:

"I have half a mind _not_ to shake hands with Mr. Conniston! If he had wanted to meet me he would have come with Billy Jordan the other night."

But, none the less, she finished by putting out a small, gloved hand, and Conniston, leaning from the saddle, took it in his.

"I was sorry, Miss Truxton," he said, lightly. "Didn't Jordan tell you? Garton and I had a lot to do that night, and worked late. It was very kind of you to say that I might come."

"If you had wanted to come _very_ much--" she said, shaking her head saucily. "_You_ would have found time to come, wouldn't you, Pete?"