Under Handicap Part 32

Mr. Hapgood nodded gravely, sympathetically.

"Mr. Truxton has been so great a factor in the reclamation project--he has been the very heart and soul of the actual work done--that I wonder how Mr. Crawford's schemes will get along without him?"

"I hope they fail," cried Jocelyn, hotly. "Papa has given the best in him to help them, and look how they send him adrift when--when he makes one little slip!"

"Do you know why Crawford really let him go?" Hapgood, speaking in hushed tones, continued to eye her keenly. "Don't you know that Crawford was just waiting and looking for an excuse--any excuse?"

Jocelyn turned widening eyes upon him. "What do you mean?"

Hapgood gave the impression of a man hesitating over a serious matter.

And then, with a sudden burst of something remarkably like ingenuous ardor, he exclaimed:

"Why should I say anything? Perhaps I should keep my peace and let matters take their own course. I have a distinctive dislike to interfering in any way with the affairs of other people. And yet, Miss Jocelyn, I feel so strong an interest in you--you will forgive me if I have to speak plainly; you will pardon me when you know I mean no offense?--that I cannot keep my peace." A momentary struggle between his desire to befriend her and his dislike to say evil of others, and then with vehement intensity, "I will _not_ remain silent."

Whereupon he became immediately silent and remained so until the curiosity which he had fired urged him to go on.

"When Conniston left the Half Moon and went to work in the Valley under your father"--leaning forward, his low-toned voice again deeply confidential--"the whole plot was laid and perfected. He was to work there until he had learned all that Mr. Truxton could teach him, until the greater part of the work had been done, and then your father was to be discharged so that Conniston could take his place. Yes, and so that when the work was completed--the work which your own father had made possible--Conniston would reap the rewards of it, take all the honors."

He paused suddenly, and again his pale eyes, intent upon the girl's face, were keen with the shrewdness in them. Jocelyn sprang to her feet, her face flaming, her body tense.

"The--the wretches!" she gasped.

Roger Hapgood made no reply, content for the moment to rest upon his oars, watching the boat he had launched drift as it would.

"Why," asked Jocelyn, after a little, her face puzzled--"why do you tell me this, when you are one of Mr. Crawford's lawyers?"

He lifted his hand as though warding off a blow.

"Don't say that! Miss Jocelyn, did you think that I was the sort of man, so forgetful of his manhood, that I would remain in the service of such people when I had found them out? Did you dream that I could remain a part of a project a second after such a man as Conniston had been put at the head of it? Did you think," half sadly, half reproachfully, "that I could continue my affiliations with such men after the treatment which Mr. Truxton--_your father_--had received?

Miss Jocelyn, I went straight to Mr. Winston and handed him my resignation. Thank G.o.d that if I must give up my position I can at least keep my self-respect!"

It was very effectively done, and Jocelyn thrilled with it.

"I am so sorry!" she said, softly, her light touch sympathetic upon his arm. "So sorry that because of us--"

"Don't say it--please don't, Miss Jocelyn! I can never forget that it was I, no matter how innocently, who helped them in getting the excuse they were looking for. And don't you see, I shall feel in a way that my fortune is linked with yours, I shall feel that there are certain bonds between us, I shall feel that in a small, very small way I am being of some light service to your father and," very softly--"and to you."

"But what will you do? You have so few friends here. This is a new country to you--"

"For a moment I thought of returning immediately to the East. But I could not. Why? I won't tell you now; I dare not." He paused long enough to look the things which short acquaintance forbade him saying, and then, as though shaking himself mentally, went on, "What shall I do? I have already done it. Just so long as I thought blindly that the right was with us I worked for reclamation as a man does not often work. And now that the scales have dropped from my eyes, do I hesitate? I have gone to Mr. Swinnerton. I have offered him my services. And he has seen fit to accept them. And now I shall not have to sit idly by, my hands in my lap, waiting to see the Crawfords reap the rewards and a.s.sume the honors which belong--elsewhere!"

Jocelyn had read stories of heroes. Never before had she known what it was to find herself in the actual bodily presence of one of these creatures. And small wonder she thrilled again, not alone because of the fact that this great-hearted gentleman had sacrificed himself upon the altar of righteousness, but, further, that in the reasons for such self-immolation had entered thoughts of her. A real, perfectly delightful romance was being enacted, and _she_ was its heroine!

"You are very good," she murmured, quite as the heroine should. "And papa will appreciate it when I tell him. And," shyly, "if you care to know it, I think that your generous kindness is the finest thing I have ever known."

It was the psychological time for a love avowal. But Mr. Hapgood had not played out his other role. He rose hastily, looking at his watch.

"I stopped in for just a moment," he said, quickly. "I am on my way to the post-office. I expect some important mail to-night. By the way,"

stopping with a glove half drawn on, "if your father cares to accept a position again soon I think that I know of one which would suit him.

Mr. Swinnerton wants a competent engineer to aid him in a bit of work.

I took the liberty to mention Mr. Truxton to him. He was delighted at the bare mention of your father's name. But"--and again the old shrewd look crept into his eyes--"maybe Mr. Truxton does not care to work against the reclamation? Maybe he is willing to see the Crawfords and that Conniston fellow succeed in their scheme?"

"I am going right in to talk with papa," she told him, quickly. "I am going to tell him the real truth. And I think, Mr. Hapgood, that you can tell Mr. Swinnerton that papa will come out to see him to-morrow or the next day."

Mr. Hapgood took the hand which she held out to him, bestowed upon her a look which spoke of warm admiration tinged with half-melancholy longing, sighed, relinquished her hand with a gentle pressure, and ran down the steps.

"Good night, Jocelyn," he called, softly, from the little gate.

"Good night, Roger," she whispered.

CHAPTER XX

A certain old football phrase rang day and night in Conniston's brain, "_It is anybody's game!_" Anybody's game! For there was a chance for success in the Great Work, and he saw that chance clearly, and fought hard for it. If everything went smoothly now, if Mr. Crawford gave him five hundred more men, if there were no unforeseen obstacles set in his way, no smashing accidents, he would see the ditches in Rattlesnake Valley filled with water by the last day of September. He had figured on everything, he had sat late into many a night after the grind of a twelve or fifteen hour day, frowning over details, calculating to the cubic yard what he must do each and every day, going over his calculations with a care which missed no detail. And he knew that he could play this game safely and win--if they would only let him alone! And still he knew that it was anybody's game. Could Swinnerton block him in some way which he could not foresee, could Swinnerton make him lose a single day's work, could Swinnerton steal his five hundred men as he had stolen men in the past, it was Swinnerton's game.

Brayley was driving the work in the Valley now. Tommy Garton had his new legs from Chicago, and from the seat of a buckboard, sometimes from the ground where his crutches sank into the soft sand, he advised Brayley and watched the work. Conniston was in the mountains, and the Lark with fifty men was with him.

Once in Deep Creek, with the site of Dam Number One before him, Conniston studied long before he gave the order to the Lark to begin work. Here were the stakes of Truxton's survey, here were the foundations already laid, here was a nature-made dam-site. He had not needed the stakes to show him the spot. And still he hesitated.

Here, where plans had been made for the chief dam, Deep Creek belied its name. It ran clear and untroubled over a gentle slope, widening out until from edge to edge of the water it measured close upon forty feet. Still farther back upon either hand the sides of the canon stood in perpendicular walls thirty feet high. Above the site the walls widened gradually until they formed a pocket, flat-bottomed, half a mile wide. Still farther up the creek's course these natural walls grew steadily closer together until perhaps three-eighths of a mile deeper in the canon they drew so close together that there was scarcely more than the width of an ordinary room between them.

It was this point--the Lark had been here with Bat Truxton when the survey was made and called it the "Jaws"--that inspired Conniston's hesitation. Here was a second dam-site, and not until he had studied both long and carefully, with a keen eye to advantage and disadvantage, did he give the word to begin work.

If it were only a question of a site, with time not an element to success, he would have chosen as Truxton had done and without a second's doubt. Had he had only to consider the building of a dam across Deep Creek in the shortest possible time, he would have chosen the site at the Jaws. But the thing which he wanted now was the largest possible dam in the shortest possible time. There was a pocket above the Jaws, but it was shorter, narrower. And above it the creek-bed plunged downward, at times broken into perpendicular waterfalls, until, yonder at a sharp bend, the water as it now frothed through its narrow, rocky canon was on a level with the top of the Jaws. He needed to take out water in vast quant.i.ties, countless millions of gallons of it, to turn into the ditches thirty miles away across the dry desert.

"The one question," he told himself, as he stood upon a boulder whence he could overlook the two sites, "is, can I get the dam finished where Bat Truxton planned it--get it done in time?"

And in the end he told himself that if the five hundred men came he could have his dam completed in time; and that if the five hundred men did not come the whole task before him was hopeless. Then he waved his hand to the Lark, and the Lark shouted a command which set fifty idle men to work before the echoes of his voice had died away between the rocky walls of the canon.

The materials he should require--the lumber for the great flume which was to turn the water from the weir into the cut which was to be made across the spine of the ridge separating Deep Creek from the wider canon through which Indian Creek shot down upon the uplands of the Half Moon, the kegs of giant powder, the horses and implements--he had brought with him or had conveyed hither yesterday from Crawfordsville.

He knew that in a very few days now the main ca.n.a.l would be completed, stretching like a mammoth serpent over the five miles of rolling hills through which it twisted intricately to avoid rocky ridges and knolls to follow natural hollows; that when at last Dam Number One should be an actuality of stone and mortar, with the water rising high above the flood-gates through which he could send it hissing and boiling into the flume, the way was open to shake his victorious fist in the face of nature itself, to drive water across thirty miles of desert and into the heart of Rattlesnake Valley.

Upon one thing Conniston had set his heart before he had been twenty-four hours in Bat Truxton's shoes. He would forget the date which had been marked in red numerals since his first talk with Tommy Garton; he would not think once of the first day of October. He would have everything in readiness upon the twenty-fifth day of September.

He knew that the water would at first run slowly through the dry ca.n.a.ls, that the thirsty soil would drink up the first of the precious gallons, that he must allow himself those five days in order that he play safe. And now that he had seen the scope of the work to be done, now that he felt that he could manage without the auxiliary dam until after the first of October, that the two dams here on Deep Creek and Indian Creek would give him enough water to keep to the terms of the contract, he believed that he would have everything in readiness by the twenty-fifth of September.

For this he had hoped, at first half heartedly; for this he was now working. Besides the inducements he had offered his men he now promised them a wage of once and a half for overtime. That meant that from the first light of morning until dark, with often less than an hour off at noon, they worked day after day. They fought with the uneven bed of the stream, they fought with great boulders, until their arms ached in their sockets and their scanty clothing was drenched with sweat. Conniston, while he urged them on to do all that was in them, marveled that they did not break down under the strain.

Nor did he spare himself. Many a night during the swift weeks which followed he had no more than three or four hours' sleep.

Until the Lark yelled to his men to "knock" off at night, Conniston labored with them. Then, when they had rolled heavily into their blankets, he more than once had saddled his horse and ridden down along the foothills across the stretch of sand and to Valley City to advise with Garton, to learn how the work was going there, to plan and order for the days to follow. He grew gaunt and nervous and hollow-eyed. Heavier and heavier the load of his responsibility rested upon his shoulders. Nearer and nearer came the end of the time allotted to him, and always the things still to do loomed ahead of him like mountains of rock. He went for two weeks without shaving, and scarcely realized it. His hands grew to be like the hands of his men, torn and cut and blackened with dirt ground into the skin. His boots were in strips before he thought of another pair; his clothes were ragged. He thought only of the Great Work.

In the Present, which came to him with tight-clenched, iron fingers gripping the promise which he must rend from them with the strength of brain and brawn, there was only the Great Work. The Past extended back only to the day when Bat Truxton had fallen and he had been called to take the place of command; and since then there had been only the Great Work. And the Future, mocking him now, smiling upon him the next day, then hiding her face in her misty veil, held high above his head the success or the failure of the Great Work.

And as he grew haggard and tense-nerved and unkempt, little lines formed about the corners of his mouth which would have told William Conniston, Senior, that there had been wrought in his son a change which was not of the body, not of the mind alone, but even of the secret soul.