Under Handicap Part 25

A little wandering breeze had sprung up, and went whispering out across the dim plains. It swirled away the smoke from Conniston's cigar; he saw it stir a strand of hair across Argyl's cheek. The glory of the desert was still the wonderful thing it had been, but it was less than the essential, vital glory of a girl. Suddenly a great desire was upon him to call out to her, to tell her that he loved her more than all of the rest of life, to make her listen to him, to make her love him. And with the rush of the desire came the thought, as though it were a whispered voice from the heart of the desert: "What are you that you should speak so to her. _What have you done to make you worthy of this woman?_ You, a laggard, as frivolous a thing until now as a weatherc.o.c.k, and by no means so useful a factor in the world, your regeneration merely begun; she the Incomparable Woman!"

It was Argyl who spoke first, and only after nearly an inch of white ash had formed at the end of Conniston's cigar.

"People who do not understand--they are aliens to whom the desert has never spoken!--ask why father gives the best part of a ripe manhood to a struggle with such a country. Does not an evening like this answer their question? No people in the world can so love their land as do the children of the desert. For when they have made it over they are still a part of it and it has become a part of them."

He told her all that he could of the work and Truxton and the men, going into detail as he found that she followed him, that Tommy Garton had not exaggerated when he had said that she knew every sand-hill and hollow. She listened to him silently, only now and then asking a pertinent question, her eyes upon his face as she leaned forward in her chair, her hands clasped about her knees. And when he had finished he found that his cigar had long since gone out and that she was smiling at him.

"It has got you, too!" she cried, softly. "You are as enthusiastic already as Tommy Garton is. I wonder if you realized it? And I wonder," her eyes again upon the fading colors in the west, the smile gone out of them, "what it would mean to you if, after all, our dream came to nothing, if it proved that we were more daring than wise, if we lost everything where we are staking everything?"

"I have been a small, unnecessary cog in a great machine for only a week," he told her, slowly. "And yet you will know that I am telling you the plain truth when I say that such a failure would bring to me the biggest disappointment I have ever felt. Failure," he cried, sharply, as though he had but grasped the full significance of the word after he himself had employed it--"there won't be failure at the end of it for us! There can't be. It means too much. I tell you that we are going to drive the thing to a successful conclusion. It's got to be!"

"Yes," she repeated, quietly, after him, "it has got to be. I don't doubt the outcome for one single second. Down in my heart I _know_.

And I know, too, how much there is yet to be done, how much you men have to contend with, how swiftly the time is slipping by us. Do you realize, Mr. Conniston, how little time we have ahead of us before the first of October?"

"Yes, I know. And there are four miles of main ca.n.a.l to dig, mile after mile of smaller cross ditches, to irrigate the land after we get the water here, and two dams to complete." He got to his feet, his cigar again forgotten, his eyes frowning down upon her. "Truxton is right. We've got to get more men--many more men. And we've got to get them in a hurry."

"Father, when he comes to-night, will know about the men we have been expecting from Denver. He has been all day in Crawfordsville. What do you think of Bat Truxton?"

"He is a good man who knows his business. He is a skilful, practical engineer, and he knows how to get every ounce of power out of the men under him. He is as much the man for the place as if he and the job had been created for each other."

She was now standing with him, watching his face eagerly.

"Have you noticed," she asked, quietly--through the gathering dusk he thought that he could see a faint shadow upon her face which was not a part of the thickening night--"any sort of change in the man since you went to work with him?"

Conniston hesitated, frowning, before he answered. "He has been irritable," he finally admitted, with slow reluctance. "But the reason is not far to seek and does not discredit him. He is heart and soul in this work, Miss Crawford. Like all of us--you, your father, Tommy Garton, me--I think that he feels his responsibility heavily, very heavily. And when day after day rushes by and finds the work far from being finished, and he has to have more men, and the men don't come--good heavens! isn't it enough to make a man restive?"

For a long time Argyl made no answer, but, rising, stood looking far out into the misty obscurity, as though she would look beyond to-day and deep into the future for an answer to many things. The short twilight pa.s.sed, the warm colors in the west faded, the breeze of a moment ago died down in faint and fainter whispers, the stars grew brighter, ever more thick-set, in the wide arch of the heavens.

"I hope that you are right," she said, slowly, at last. And then, with a queer little laugh which jarred upon Conniston strangely: "I am getting fanciful, I suppose, and faint-hearted! Never has our undertaking seemed so big to me; never have the obstacles loomed so high. I find myself waking up with a start night after night from some horrible dream that the water has failed in the mountains, or that Oliver Swinnerton has stolen all of our men, or that Bat Truxton has gone over to the opposition! Oh, I know that I am foolish. For, as you say, we _can't_ fail. Everything has got to come out right! And now,"

in the manner native and natural to her--frank, hearty, even eager--"I am going to tell you some good news. In the first place, I see that I have been doing nothing too long, and that always makes one morbid, I think. I am going to get back to work. Isn't that good news? It is to me, at least. And, secondly, I have made a discovery. You'd never guess."

Conniston shook his head. "What is it?"

"What," she asked him, laughingly, and yet with a serious note in her voice, "is the one thing which we should like to discover here? If a good old-style genie straight from between the covers of the _Arabian Nights_ were to drop down in front of you and say, 'Name the thing which thou wouldst have, and thou shalt have it!' what would that thing be?"

And Conniston, with his thoughts upon the Great Work, knowing that her thoughts were with his there, answered quickly:

"Water! But that is impossible!"

"My secret--yet," she answered him. "I had not meant to say anything about it so soon. Promise to say nothing about it until I give you leave, and I'll tell you a little--oh, a very little--about my secret."

Conniston promised, and she went on, speaking swiftly, earnestly:

"It was last week. I was riding out into the desert to the north of here--no matter how far--when I came upon it. It is a spring. Oh, not much of a spring to look at it. Just a few square feet of moist soil, here and there a sprig of drying gra.s.s, three or four brown willows.

But those things mean that there is water there. How it came there while all of the rest of the desert so far as we know it is bone-dry does not matter so much as _what can we do with it?_ I hardly dare hope," she finished, thoughtfully, "that my spring is going to prove a factor in our irrigation scheme. But I hope that it may help to supply us here with drinking-water, water for our horses. That in itself would mean a good deal, wouldn't it, Mr. Conniston?"

"There is no end to what it might mean--may mean. If your spring can be made to supply Valley City and the men working out yonder with water, to supply the horses and mules, it will mean that all the men and teams being used daily to haul from the Half Moon creek can be put to active work on the ditch. And--who knows?--if you can find water at all in the desert we may be able to use it to irrigate! G.o.d knows we want water on this land soon--and the mountains are still a long way off! But," and he tried to make out her features in the darkness, "how does it happen that this spring has never been found before?"

"The country all about it is what the desert is everywhere. No one would dream of water in it. Then there is a rude circle of low-lying sand-hills. Within their inclosure, consequently shut off from view unless one rides to the crest of the hills as I happened to do, is the spring."

He thought that she was going to add something further, perhaps more in the way of a description of the location of the spring, when he heard horses' hoofs and the rattle of dry wagon-wheels, and she broke off suddenly.

"It is father at last," she said, softly. "Remember, Mr. Conniston, I want to keep this a secret from father for a while--until I know what it is worth."

"I'll remember," he answered, rising with her and turning toward the two figures which had leaped down from the wagon and were hastening toward the cottage. The man slightly in front of his companion, coming first into the rays of the lamp streaming through the window, was Mr.

Crawford. And Conniston saw with a quick frown that the other man was Roger Hapgood.

"Argyl, my dear," said Mr. Crawford, as he kissed the girl who had gone to meet him, "I am sorry we are late. You'll be sorry, too, for I'm amazingly hungry. Anything left? Ah, Mr. Conniston, isn't it? Glad to see you." He took Conniston's hand in a strong grip. "Haven't seen you since you came to the Valley. I'm glad you're here. I want to talk with you about the work."

He went on into the house, Argyl with him. She had shaken hands with Roger Hapgood, and, with an invitation to him and Conniston to follow, went ahead with her father.

For a moment the two men faced each other in silence through the half-darkness. Then Hapgood turned upon his heel and went into the house. In a moment Conniston followed him, smiling.

He took a chair at the side of the room and lighted a fresh cigar while he watched the two men at table and Argyl bringing them their supper. He saw that Mr. Crawford's manner was what it always had been--bluff, frank, open, cheery. But he saw, too, or thought that he saw, little lines of worry upon the high forehead which had not been there a month ago.

Hapgood's face, seen now clearly, was as smug as ever, but there had been wrought in it a subtle change. In place of the fresh, pink complexion, the desert had given him a healthy coat of tan. But that, while Conniston was quick to note it, was not the change that startled him. There was an indefinable something in Hapgood's eyes, at the corners of his thin-lipped mouth, that had not been there before.

Conniston wondered if the hand of this Western country had touched the inner man as it had the outer, if the new life had found certain small seeds of strength in the heretofore futile Hapgood and were developing them?

Hapgood's manner, however, was unchanged, irreproachable. He placed salt and pepper, bread, b.u.t.ter, whatever it was that Mr. Crawford wanted, before him before the older man had realized that he wanted it. His att.i.tude toward Argyl was at all times deferential, eloquent of respectful admiration. Hapgood was nothing if not urbane. Toward Conniston, however, he did not once glance. To his way of thinking, evidently, there were but three people in the room--the wonderfully masterful Mr. Crawford, the radiantly beautiful Argyl, the deeply appreciative Hapgood--and certain negligible, necessary furniture.

During the short meal Mr. Crawford spoke little, contenting himself with a few light remarks to Argyl and the others. Often he ate in silence, abstractedly. Argyl had looked curiously at him and thereafter offered few words. Hapgood took his cue from the masterful Mr. Crawford. Conniston smoked and watched the three of them, his eyes finding oftenest Argyl and resting longest upon her. Finally, when he had finished and pushed away his plate, taking the cigar Argyl offered him, Mr. Crawford spoke shortly, emphatically.

"I got word to-day from the men we have been expecting from Denver.

They have gone to work by now."

"Under Bat Truxton?" demanded Conniston, quickly.

The older man cut off the end of his cigar, rolled the black perfecto between his lips, and lighted it before he replied.

"They have gone to work," he repeated, as though discussing a matter of no moment, "for Oliver Swinnerton. Shall we go into the front room? I want to ask you some questions about the work, Conniston. I did not have a chance to see Truxton this afternoon."

He rose and led the way into the other room. Conniston, casting a swift glance at Argyl's face, which had suddenly gone white, followed him. Argyl had stepped forward as though to go with them when Hapgood laid a detaining hand lightly, respectfully, upon her arm.

"May I speak with you a moment, Miss Argyl?" he whispered, but not so low that Conniston did not catch the words distinctly. "It will take just a moment, and--and it is very important."

Reluctantly she paused. Conniston went out and heard Hapgood shut the door after him. He shrugged his shoulders.

Mr. Crawford did not again refer to the bad news which he had brought, but instead seemed to have forgotten it. He asked Conniston question after question, seeking significant details, demanding to know how many feet the ditch had been driven upon each separate day of the week, what difficulties had been met, how the men did the parts allotted them, what Truxton counted upon accomplishing upon each day to come. And after ten minutes of sharp, quick questions he leaned forward and, with his eyes steady and searching upon Conniston's, demanded, abruptly:

"Is Truxton showing any signs of nervous irritability?"

"Yes." Conniston hesitated, wondering what was in the other man's thoughts. He began an explanation such as he had made Argyl, but Mr.

Crawford cut him short.

"That will do. Thank you. That is all that I wanted to know."

He got to his feet and strode back and forth in the little room, his brows bunched together. Conniston, seeing for the first time in this man whom he had held unendingly resourceful, indomitable, signs of a militating anxiety, felt a sudden chill at his heart. Were they, after all, playing a losing game? Was the combination of desert and Swinnerton and capital going to prove too much for them? Was John Crawford even now looking clearly into the future and seeing himself a beaten, broken man?