CHAPTER XXVI
Conniston instantly saw the need of haste, the urgent necessity ofacting speedily upon the advice tendered by Tommy Garton in his note.
"Arrest you!" Argyl had cried, indignantly. "Arrest you for being aman and doing your duty!"
"No, Argyl," he told her, a bit anxiously. "Their reasons for causingmy arrest now are simply that that man Swinnerton, not knowing when heis beaten, wants me out of the way for a few days. He is ready tospring another bit of his villainy, I suppose. But I do not think thatWallace is going to serve his warrant in a hurry."
They laid their plans swiftly, Mr. Crawford agreeing silently asConniston outlined the thing to be done. When the horses were readyConniston walked cautiously to Tommy Garten's window and peered in.And he was grinning contentedly when he returned to Mr. Crawford andhis daughter.
"Tommy is the serenest law-breaker you ever saw," he told them, as heswung to his horse after having helped Argyl to a place at herfather's side in the buckboard. "It's a cure for the blues to see himsitting there on his cot covering his tame sheriff with a youngcannon. There'll be a fine, I suppose, for interfering with an officerin the pursuit of his duty."
"I think," Mr. Crawford said, quietly, as he sent his horses racinginto the night, "that Oliver Swinnerton won't be looking for any moretrouble from now on."
Where the road forked, one branch running straight on toCrawfordsville, the other turning off toward Deep Creek, Mr. Crawfordtook Conniston's horse, and Conniston got into the buckboard. Mr.Crawford was to ride alone to Crawfordsville, see Colton Gray, of theP. C. & W., tell him that the Crawford Reclamation Company had madegood its part of the contract, invite him out to Dam Number One to seewhat was done, and to insist that the P. C. & W. keep to its part ofthe contract, beginning work immediately upon the railroad into theValley. Conniston and Argyl were to drive on to the dam, and to openthe gates controlling the current to be poured into the big flume.
The darkness had not yet gone, but was lifting, turning a dull gray,when Argyl and Conniston came to the dam. And now the engineer toldher of two things which until now he had mentioned to no one save themen whom he had been obliged to call in to do the work for him. FromDam Number One for thirty miles, reaching to Valley City, there weresmall groups of his men stationed a mile apart. Each group had piledhigh the dry limbs of trees, scrub brush, and green foliage broughtfrom the mountains. Each group was instructed to watch for the waterwhich was to be turned at last into the ditch and to set fire to itspile of brushwood when the precious stuff came abreast of them. Andso, by day or night, there was to be thirty miles of signal fires toproclaim with flame and smoke that the Great Work was no longer aman's dream, but an accomplished, vital thing.
The second thing he explained as Argyl walked with him to the damacross Deep Creek. He showed her the accomplished work, showed her thedeep, wide flume, and as they stood upon the dam itself pointed out anintricate set of levers controlling the great gates.
"Argyl," he told her, speaking quietly, but knowing that there was atremor in his voice which he could not drive from it--"Argyl, do youknow how much to-day means to me? Do you know that it is the mostgloriously wonderful day I have ever known? Do you know that I havefought hard for this day, and that the hardest fighting I had beforeme was the fight against Greek Conniston the snob? Do you know that atleast I have tried to make a man of myself, even as I have tried tobuild ditches and dams? You do know it, Argyl? You do know that ashard as I have worked for reclamation I have worked for regeneration!And I have not failed altogether."
His tone was suddenly firm, suddenly stern. He was a man weighinghimself and his work, and he was speaking with a voice which rang withsimple frankness and deep sincerity.
"There is the work to say that I have not failed utterly. There it is,ditch and dam, to say that I have done a part of the thing I have setmy hand to. I am not boasting of it, for what many men could have doneI should have been able to do. But I am proud of it. And, Argyl, whileI am not a man yet as I would be, not a man full grown as your fatheris, while I can never hope to be the man your father is, yet I havedone what I could to be less of a fop, less of a drone in the world.Do you understand me, Argyl?"
"Yes, Greek." She answered him softly, her face turned up to his, hereyes frankly filled with love and pride for what he had done, what hewas. "I understand."
"Then, Argyl Crawford, just so sure as I have done a little thing or abig thing in working the reclamation of this desert, just so certainlyhave you done a big thing or a little thing in making less barren thewaste places in my own soul. Don't you see what you have done, Argyl?It is not I who have done anything; it is you who have doneeverything. If I am in any way responsible for success to our work,then are you responsible for every bit of it. That dam, that ditch,everything, all of it belongs to you! The success belongs to you!"
"Greek"--she smiled at him through a sudden gathering of tears--"youmustn't say such things--"
"And so," he went on, quietly, "since the whole work has been yourwork, I want the completion of the work to be yours. Look here,Argyl."
He touched a long, slender lever reaching from the flume to the bankwhere they stood.
"When the sun comes up it is going to bring a new day for all of us,"he continued, slowly. "A new day which, for me, you have madepossible. And just as the sun comes up will you put your hand to thislever and press it down?"
She looked up at him quickly. "Oh," she cried, her hand clutching athis arm, her voice quivering, "you mean--"
He laughed happily. "I mean that when you press that lever it willthrow open the water-gates. I mean that it will be your hand whichturns the first mad current down into the flume. I mean that it willbe you, Argyl, who actually sends the first water to reclaimRattlesnake Valley. Are you glad, Argyl?"
If Argyl was glad, she did not say so. For a moment she stood with herface in her two hands, sobbing. And then, laughing softly, the tearsupon her cheeks catching fire from the first rays of the rising sun,she lifted her face to Greek Conniston's, and, drawing his face down,kissed him.
The new day had leaped out at them, whipping the last shreds of mistydarkness from the face of the earth. Down yonder, below them upon theslope of the hills, they saw the Lark and his hundred men preparingfor breakfast. Only in the bed of Deep Creek alone, below the damwhere a trickle of water ran thread-like, was there any shadow. Andsuddenly something moving within the breaking darkness there caughtConniston's eye.
It was a man running, running swiftly downstream, running as thoughpursued by no less terrible a thing than death, stumbling, rising,running again. Something in the man's carriage struck Conniston asfamiliar, while he could not make out who it was. Then the light grewstronger, rosier, and he cried out in surprise.
"Hapgood!" he exclaimed. "Roger Hapgood!"
And almost before the words had left his lips he cried out in a newtone, a tone of horror, and, seizing Argyl's hand in his, ran withher, crying for her to hurry, urging her to run with him, away fromthe dam. For his eyes had seen another thing in the creek-bed, asomething just at the base of the dam at its lowest side. It was alittle sputtering flame, such a flame as is made by a burning bit offuse.
Hapgood, still running, had climbed up the steep right bank, had runalmost into the men's camp, had turned suddenly and dashed back downthe bank, to run across the creek and climb the farther side.Conniston and Argyl as they fled from the threatened dam could see himas he clambered upward, could see the loose stones and dirt setsliding, rattling from under his hurrying feet and clawing hands.
Then came the thundering roar of the explosion. The great dam, thecitadel of all hopes of success, tottered like a stone wall smittenwith a thousand battering-rams, tottered and shook to its foundations.And then, as a dozen explosions merged into one, the whole thingleaped skyward, as though hurled aloft from some Titan's sling, and,leaping, burst asunder, flying in a thousand directions, raining rockand mortar far and wide along the slopes of the mountains. AndConni
ston, dragging Argyl after him, cried out brokenly. Upon the damhe had toiled for weeks, and now there was no one stone left of it!And the first day of October was but five days off.
"Look!" Argyl was clinging to him wildly, her arm trembling as itpointed. "Look! Oh, God!"
She did not point toward the dam. Her quivering finger found out amoving figure far below it in the creek-bed. It was Hapgood. Theexplosion which had demolished the work of weary weeks had shaken theground under his flying feet so that the loose soil no longer heldhim. He had cried out aloud, had fought and clawed, had even bit withblackened teeth into the steep bank. And it mocked him and slippedaway from him and hurled him, bruised and cut, to the bottom of thecanon.
Even as Conniston looked the freed waters which had chafed in thegreat dam leaped forward, a monster river of churning white water andwhirling debris, and like a live thing, wrathful, vengeful, wascharging downward through the steep ravine. Hapgood had heard. Theyhad seen his white face turned for an instant over his shoulder. Andthen his shriek rose high above the thunder of waters as he ran fromthe merciless thing which his own hands had unchained.
They saw his one hope; saw that he, too, had seen it. With the waterhurling itself almost upon him, he gained the bank ten feet fartherdownstream, where the sides were more gently sloping. They saw himclimb to a little shelf of rock a yard above the bottom of the creek.They saw his hands thrust out above his head, grasping at the root ofa stunted tree. One more second--
But the fates did not grant the one single second. The churning,frothing, angry maelstrom had caught at his legs, whipping them fromunder him. They heard his shriek again, throbbing with terror, vibrantwith a fear which was worse than despair. They saw his face, white andhorrible, as he glanced again for a moment at the thing behind him.And then the swirling water leaped up at him, snarling like somemighty beast, and clutched at his throat, at his hands, and flung himlike a thing of no weight far down into its own tumultuous bosom. Fora moment they saw his arms, then they saw his hands clutching at thefoam-flecked face of the water--and then even the hands disappeared.
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