She rode down to Dry Fork, crossed over the sandy channel, and started on at a gallop along the half-beaten road that wound away through the sagebrush towards the distant Split Peak. An hour found her nearing the piñon clad hills on the far side of Dry Mesa, with still no sign of Ashton.
By this time she had worked herself into a fever of excitement and dread. Her relief was correspondingly great when at last she saw him coming towards her around the bend of the nearest hill. But his horse was walking and he was bent over in the saddle as if injured or greatly fatigued. Puzzled and again apprehensive, she urged her pony to sprinting speed.
When he heard the approaching hoofs Ashton looked up as if startled. But he did not wave to her or raise his sombrero. As she came racing up she scrutinized his dejected figure for wounds or bruises. There was nothing to indicate that he had been either shot or thrown. His sullen look when she drew up beside him not unnaturally changed her anxiety to vexation.
“What made you so slow?” she queried. “You know how eager I am for the mail each time. You might as well have ridden your own hawss.”
“It––has come,” he muttered.
“What?” she demanded.
“The letter from him.”
“Him?” echoed the girl, trying hard to cover her confusion with a look of surprise.
His dejection deepened as he observed her heightened color and the light in her eyes. “Yes, from him,” he mumbled.
“Oh, you mean Mr. Blake, I suppose,” she replied. Lightly as she spoke, she could not suppress the quiver of eagerness in her voice. “If you will kindly give it to me now.”
He drew out a letter, not from among the other mail in his pouch, but from his pocket. Her look of surprise showed that she was struck with the oddness of this. She was too excited, however, to consider what might be its meaning. She tore open the letter and read it swiftly. Her sparkling eyes and glowing cheeks when she looked up served only to increase Ashton’s gloom.
“So the fellow is coming,” he groaned. “What else could I have expected?”
The girl held out the open letter to him. It was in typewriting, addressed from Chicago, and read:––
Dear Madam:
In reply to your letter of inquiry regarding an inspection to determine the feasibility of irrigating certain lands in your vicinity––my fee for personal inspection and opinion would be $50. per day and expenses, if I came as consulting engineer. However, I am about to make a trip to Colorado. If you can furnish good ranch fare for my wife, son, and self as guests, will look over your situation without charge. Wife wishes to rough-it, but must have milk and eggs. Will leave servants in car at Stockchute, where we shall expect a conveyance to meet us Thursday, the 25th inst., if terms agreeable.
Respectfully yours,
Thomas Blake.
Ashton crumpled the letter in his clenched hand as he had crumpled the letter from his father’s lawyers.
“He is coming! he really is coming!” he gasped. “Thursday––only three days! Genevieve too!”
“And his son!” cried Isobel, too excited to heed the dismay in her companion’s look and tone. “He and his family, too, as my guests!”
“Yes,” said Ashton bitterly. “And what of it when he floods you off your cattle range? By another year or two, the irrigation farmers will be settling all over this mesa, thick as flies.”
“Oh, no; it is probable that Mr. Blake will find there is no chance to water Dry Mesa,” she replied, in a tone strangely nonchalant considering her former expressions of apprehension. She drew the crumpled letter from his relaxing fingers, and smoothed it out for a second reading.
“‘Wife, son, and self,’” she quoted. “Son? How old is he?”
“I don’t know. They’ve been married nearly two years,” muttered Ashton.
“Then it’s a baby!––oh! oh! how lovely!” shrieked the girl. “And its mamma wants to rough it! She shall have every egg and chicken on the place––and gallons of cream! We shall take the skim milk.”
Still Ashton failed to enthuse. “To them that have, shall be given, and from him who has lost millions shall be taken all that’s left!” he gibed.
“No, we’ll still have the skim milk,” she bantered, refusing to notice his cynical bitterness.
“I’m a day laborer!” he went on, still more bitterly. “I’m afraid of losing even my skim milk––And two weeks ago I thought myself certain of three times the millions that he will get when her father dies!”
“No use crying over spilt milk, or spilt cream, either!” she replied.
The note of sympathetic concern under her raillery brought a glimmer of hopefulness into his moody eyes.
“If I did not think your father will drive me away!” he murmured.
“Why should he?” she asked.
“Because when Blake comes––” Ashton paused and shifted to a question. “Will you tell your father about their coming?”
“Of course. I did not tell him about writing, because it would only have increased his suspense. But now––Let’s hurry back!”
A cut of her quirt set her pony into a lope. Rocket needed no urging. He followed and maintained a position close behind the galloping pony without breaking out of his rangy trot. Occasionally Isobel flung back a gay remark over her shoulder. Ashton did not respond. He rode after her, silent and depressed, his eyes fixed longingly on her graceful form, ever fleeing forward before him as he advanced.
Once clear of the sagebrush, she drew rein for him to come up. They rode side by side across Dry Fork and over the divide. When they stopped at the corral she would have unsaddled her pony had he not begged leave to do her the service. As reward, she waited until he could accompany her to the house.
They found her father and Gowan resting in the cool porch after a particularly hard day’s ride. The puncher was strumming soft melodies on a guitar. Knowles was peering at his report of the Reclamation Service, held to windward of a belching cloud of pipe smoke. His daughter darted to him regardless of the offending incense.
“Oh, Daddy!” she cried. “What do you think! Mr. Blake is coming to visit us!”
“Blake?” repeated the cowman, staring blankly over his pipe.
“Yes, Mr. Blake, the engineer––the great Thomas Blake of the Zariba Dam.”
“By––James!” swore Gowan, dropping his guitar and springing up to confront Ashton with deadly menace in his cold eyes. “This is what comes of nursing scotched rattlers! This here tenderfoot skunk has been foreriding for that engineer! I warned you, Mr. Knowles! I told you he had sent for him to come out here and cut up our range with his damned irrigation schemes!”
“I send for Blake––I?” protested Ashton. He burst into a discordant laugh.
“Laugh, will you?” said Gowan, dropping his hand to his hip.
The girl flung herself before him. “Stop! stop, Kid! Are you locoed? He had nothing to do with it. I myself sent for Mr. Blake.”
“You!” cried Gowan.
The cowman slowly stood up, his eyes fixed on the girl in an incredulous stare. “Chuckie,” he half whispered, “you couldn’t ha’ done it. You’re––you’re dreaming, honey!”
“No. Listen, Daddy! It’s been growing on you so––your fear that we’ll lose our range. I thought if Mr. Blake came and told you it can’t be done––Don’t you see?”
“What if he finds it can?” huskily demanded Knowles.
“He can’t. I’m sure he can’t. If he builds a reservoir, where could he get enough water to fill it? The watershed above us is too small. He couldn’t impound more than three thousand acre feet of flood waters at the utmost.”
“How about the whole river going to waste, down in Deep Cañon?” queried her father.
“Heavens, Mr. Knowles! How would he ever get a drop of water out of that awful chasm?” exclaimed Ashton. “I looked down into it. The river is thousands of feet down. It must be way below the level of Dry Mesa.”
“I’m not so su
re about that,” replied the cowman. “Holes are mighty deceiving.”
“Well, what if it ain’t so deep as the mesa?” argued Gowan, for once half in accord with Ashton. “It shore is deep enough, ain’t it? Even allowing that this man Blake is the biggest engineer in the U.S., how’s he going to pump that water up over the rim of the cañon? The devil himself couldn’t do it.”
“If I am mistaken regarding the depth, that is, if the river really is higher than the mesa,” remarked Ashton, “there is the possibility that it might be tapped by a tunnel through the side of High Mesa. But even if it is possible, it still is quite out of the question. The cost would be prohibitive.”
“You see, Daddy!” exclaimed Isobel. “Lafe knows. He’s an engineer himself.”
“How’s that?” growled her father, frowning heavily at Ashton. “You never told me you’re an engineer.”
“I told Miss Chuckie the first day I met her,” explained Ashton. “Ever since then I’ve been so busy trying to be something else––”
“Shore you have!” jeered Gowan.
“But about Mr. Blake, Daddy?” interposed Isobel. “I’m certain he’ll find that no irrigation project is possible; and if he says so, you will be able to give up worrying about it.”
“So that’s your idea,” he replied. “Of course, honey, you meant well. But he’s a pretty big man, according to all the reports. What if he––” The cowman stopped, unable to state the calamity he dreaded.
“Yes, what if?” bravely declared his daughter. “Isn’t it best to know the worst, and have it over?”
“Well––I don’t know but what you’re right, honey.”
“It’s your say, Mr. Knowles,” put in Gowan. “If you want the tenderfeet on your range, all right. If you don’t, I’ll engage to head back any bunch of engineers agoing, and I don’t care whether they’re dogies or longhorns.”
“There is to be no surveying party,” explained Isobel. “Mr. Blake is coming to visit us with his wife and baby. Here is his letter.”
“Hey?” ejaculated Knowles. He read the letter with frowning deliberation, and passed it on to Gowan. “Well, he seems to be square enough. Guess we’ll have to send over for him, honey, long as you asked him to come.”
“Oh, you will, Daddy!” she cried. She gave him a delicious kiss and cuddled against his shoulder coaxingly. “You’ll let me go over in the buckboard for them, won’t you?”
“Kind of early in the season for you to begin hankering after city folks,” he sought to tease her.
“But think of the baby!” she exclaimed as excitedly as a little girl over the prospect of a doll. “A baby on our ranch! I simply must see it at the earliest possible moment! Besides, it will look better for our hospitality for me to meet Mrs. Blake at the train, since she––That’s something I meant to ask you, Lafe. What does Mr. Blake mean by saying they will leave the servants in the car?”
“I presume they are traveling in Mr. Leslie’s private car, and will have it sidetracked at Stockchute,” answered Ashton.
“Whee-ew!” ejaculated Knowles. “Private car! And we’re supposed to feed them!”
“It is just because of the change we will give them that they are coming out here,” surmised Isobel. “Look at the letter again. Mr. Blake expressly writes that his wife wishes to rough-it. Of course she cannot know what real roughing-it means. But if she is coming to us without a maid, we shall like her as much as––as Mr. Blake.”
* * *
CHAPTER XI
SELF-DEFENSE
Nothing more was said about the trip to town until late Wednesday evening. As Knowles slammed shut his book and the young men rose to withdraw to the bunkhouse, he asked Gowan casually: “Got those harness hawsses in the corral?”
“Brought ’em in this afternoon. Greased the buckboard and overhauled the harness. Everything’s in shape,” answered the puncher.
Knowles merely nodded. Yet in the morning, immediately after the usual early breakfast, Gowan went up to the corral and returned driving a lively pair of broncos to the old buckboard. Ashton happened to come around the house as Knowles stepped from the front door. The cowman was followed by his daughter, attired in a new riding habit and a fashionable hat with a veil.
“You’re just in time, Lafe,” said Knowles. “Saddle a couple of hawsses and follow Chuckie to town. I misdoubt that seat is cramped for three, and a baby to boot.”
“But I––it looks quite wide to me,” said Ashton, flushing and drawing back.
“You know the size of Blake and his lady––I don’t,” replied the cowman. “Just the same, I want you to go along with Chuckie. There’s not a puncher in this section would harm her, drunk or sober; but the fellows that come in and go out on the railroad are sometimes another sort.”
“Of course I––if necessary,” stammered Ashton. “Yet may I ask you to excuse me? In the event of trouble, Mr. Gowan, you know––”
“Great snakes!” called Gowan from the buckboard. “Needn’t ask me to go, twice!”
“Can’t spare you today,” said Knowles, his keen eyes fixed on Ashton in unconcealed amazement.
It was inconceivable. For the first time in his career as an employé, the tenderfoot was attempting to evade a duty,––a duty that comprised a fifty-mile ride in company with Miss Isobel Knowles!
The girl looked at Ashton with a perfect composure that betrayed no trace of her feelings.
“I’m sure there’s no reason whatever why Lafe should go, if he does not wish to,” she remarked. “Any of my hawsses will lead to the buckboard.”
“He’s going to town with you,” said Knowles, his jaw setting hard with stubborn determination.
“Why, of course, Mr. Knowles, if you really think it necessary,” reluctantly acquiesced Ashton. He put his hand into his pocket, shrugged, and asked in a hesitating manner: “May I request––I have only a small amount left from that five dollars. If you consider there are any wages owing me––Going to town, you know.”
“Lord!” said the cowman. “So that’s what you stuck on. ’Fraid of running out of change with a lady along. Here’s the balance of your first month’s wages, and more, if you want it.”
He drew out a fat wallet and began counting out banknotes.
“Oh, no, not so many,” said Ashton. “I wish only what you consider as owing to me now.”
“You’ll take an even hundred,” ordered Knowles, forcing the money on him. “A man doesn’t feel just right in town unless he’s well heeled. Only don’t show more than a ten at a time in the saloon.”
“You have chosen me to act as your daughter’s escort,” replied Ashton.
Quick to catch the inference of his remark, Isobel flashed him a look of approval, but called banteringly as she darted out to the buckboard: “Better move, if you expect to get near enough to escort me, this side of Stockchute.”
Gowan sprang down to hand her into the buckboard. She took the reins from him and spoke to the fidgetting broncos. They plunged forward and started off on a lope. Ashton perceived that she did not intend to wait for him. He caught Gowan’s look of mingled exultance and envy, and dashed for the corral. Rocket was outside, but at his call trotted to meet him, whinnying for his morning’s lump of sugar. Ashton flung on saddle and bridle, and slipped inside the corral to rope his own pony. Haste made him miss the two first throws. At last he noosed the pony, and slapped on the girl’s saddle and bridle.
As he raced off, pounding the pony with his rope to keep him alongside Rocket, Knowles waved to him from the house. He had saddled up in less than twice the time that Gowan could have done it,––which was a record for a tenderfoot. He waved back, but his look was heavy despite the excitement of the pursuit.
He expected to overtake Isobel in a few minutes. This he could have done had he been able to give Rocket free rein. But he had to hold back for the slower-gaited pony. Also, the girl had more of a start than he had at first realized, and she did her best to hold the handicap. Hitch
ed to the light buckboard, her young broncos could have run a good part of the way to Stockchute. She was far out on the flat before she at last tired of the wild bumping over ruts and sagebrush roots, and pulled her horses down to a walk.
“I could have kept ahead clear across to the hills,” she flung back at him as he galloped up.
“You shouldn’t have been so reckless!” he reproached. “Every moment I’ve been dreading to see you bounced out.”
“That’s the fun of it,” she declared, her cheeks aglow and eyes sparkling with delight.
“But the road is so rough!” he protested. “Wouldn’t it be easier for you to ride my pony? He’s like a rocking-chair.”
“No,” she refused. But she smiled, by no means ill pleased at his solicitude for her comfort. She halted the broncos, and said cordially: “Tie the saddle hawsses to the back rail, and pile in. We may as well be sociable.”
He hastened to accept the invitation. She moved over to the left side of the seat and relinquished the lines to him. With most young ladies this would have been a matter-of-course proceeding; from so accomplished a horsewoman it was a tactful compliment. He appreciated it at its full value, and his mood lightened. They rattled gayly along, on across the flats, up and down among the piñon clad hills, and through the sage and greasewood of the valleys.
He had thought the country a desolate wilderness; but now it seemed a Garden of Eden. Never had the girl’s loveliness been more intoxicating, never had her manner to him been more charming and gracious. He could not resist the infection of her high spirits. For the greater part of the trip he gave himself over to the delight of her merry eyes and dimpling, rosy cheeks, her adorable blushes and gay repartee.
All earthly journeys and joys have an ending. The buckboard creaked up over the round of the last and highest hill, and they came in sight of the little shack town down across the broad valley. Though five miles away, every house, every telegraph pole, even the thin lines of the railroad rails appeared through the dry clear air as distinct as a miniature painting. Miles beyond, on the far side of the valley, uprose the huge bulk of Split Peak, with its white-mantled shoulders and craggy twin peaks.
Out of the Depths Page 9
