Out of the Depths: A Romance of Reclamation

  CHAPTER XIX

  THE PLOTTERS

  When Blake came back with the baby, Isobel begged him for a fullaccount of how Ashton had been wounded. In relating the affair hesought to minimize the danger that he had incurred, and he omitted allmention of the bullet shot at him the previous evening. But hisaccount was frequently interrupted by exclamations from his wife andIsobel.

  At the end he dwelt strongly on the cowardly haste of the assassin'sflight; only to be met by a shrewdly anxious rejoinder from the girl:"He ran away after he attacked Lafe the other time. He will come backagain!"

  "Oh, Tom!" cried Genevieve--"if he does!"

  "We will get him, that is all there is to it," replied her husband."What do you say to that, Ashton?"

  "We will not have the chance," said Ashton. "I don't believe he hasnerve enough to try it the third time. But if he should--"

  "No, no! I hope he keeps running forever!" fervently wished Isobel."Don't you realize how close a miss that was, Lafe?--and the othertime, too?"

  "I like having one Miss close," he punned.

  The girl blushed, but failed to show any sign of resentment.

  Blake looked significantly at his wife. "Don't know but what I'vechanged my mind about a _siesta_," he remarked. "Here's Tommy gone tosleep just when I wanted to fight him. Do you think Miss Chuckie cankeep him and Ashton from running away if I go to bring in the level?"

  "You say you had started to run the line of levels across to themountain?" she asked.

  "Yes.... This little pleasantry has knocked us out of a day's work andyou out of your trip to the canyon."

  "But why couldn't I rod for you?" she suggested. "I noticed Lafayettethe other day. It seems easier than golfing."

  "It is."

  "Then I shall do it. A good walk is exactly what I need."

  "Genevieve!" hastily appealed Isobel. "Surely you'll not go off andleave me--us!"

  "Thomas is asleep, and Lafayette needs to be quiet," was the demurereply. "Come, Tom. We'll run the levels over to the foot of themountain, at least."

  With a reproachful glance at the smiling couple, the girl slipped overto put Thomas Herbert between herself and Ashton. Blake found anotherbag and can, which last he filled with water from the bucket.Genevieve put on the cowboy hat that she had borrowed at the ranch,and sprang up to join him.

  He paused for a question: "How about leaving the rifle?"

  Isobel put her hand to a fold in her skirt and drew out herlong-barreled automatic pistol. "I can do as well or better withthis," she answered.

  "What a wicked looking thing!" exclaimed Genevieve. "Surely, dear, youdo not shoot it?"

  "Shoot it!" put in Ashton. "Hasn't she told you about saving me from arattler?"

  "She did?"

  "Yes," he replied, and he told about the rattlesnake in thebunkhouse.

  "But I ought to have shot quicker," Isobel explained, when hefinished. "I missed the head, though I aimed at it."

  "The way we've left Thomas about on the ground!" exclaimed Genevieve."Are there any of the horrid things around here? Is that why you carrythe pistol?"

  "No, no, don't be afraid. We've killed them out here, long ago,because of the cattle. I carry my pistol on the chance of killingwolves. They're dreadfully harmful to the calves and colts, youknow."

  "Good for you," praised Blake, as he picked up the rifle. "Well, we'reoff."

  He started away, hand in hand with his wife. They were soon at the topof the dike slope and almost dancing along over the dry turf. It wasmonths since they had been alone together in the open, and they werestill deeper in love than at the time of their marriage--if that werepossible.

  They soon reached the place where the shooting had occurred. Here theypicked up the lunch bag, Ashton's canteen and his hat, now puncturedwith another bullet hole; and at once started to carry the line oflevels out across the valley. A few words of instruction made anefficient rodwoman of Genevieve, so that they soon reached the foot ofthe ridge up which her husband had led Ashton the previous day. Herehe established a bench-mark, and turned along the base of theescarpment to the mouth of Dry Fork Gully, where he checked the lineof levels that had been run up the bed of the creek.

  "Good work--less than three tenths difference, and all that I amconcerned about is an error in feet," he commented. "It's gettingalong towards noon. We'll go up the gulch, and eat our lunch in theshade. This place is almost as much of a sight as the canyon."

  Genevieve more than agreed with her husband's opinion when he led herup into the stupendous gorge and the walls of rock began to tower oneach side ever steeper and loftier.

  "Oh, I do not see how anything can be so grand, so awesome as this!"she cried, gazing up the precipices. "It makes me positively giddy tolook at such heights!"

  "Better stop off for a while," advised Blake. "We are almost to wherethe bottom tilts skyward. You can stargaze while we are eating lunch.It's rougher along here. We can get on faster this way."

  He picked her up in his arms as though she were a feather, and carriedher on up the gulch to the foot of the Titanic chute. Here, resting ona flat rock in the cool semi-twilight of the gorge bottom, they atetheir lunch and talked with as much zest as if they were still newacquaintances.

  "Those awful cliffs!" she murmured, lowering her gaze from thecolossal walls above her. "I cannot bear to look at them any longer.They overpower me!"

  "Wait till you look down into the canyon," replied her husband. "Insome ways it is more tremendous than the Grand Canyon of theColorado--the width is so much narrower in proportion to the depth."

  "What makes these frightful chasms?--earthquakes?"

  "Water," he replied.

  "Water? Not all these hundreds and thousands of feet cut down throughthe solid rock!"

  "Every foot," he insisted. "Think of water flowing along in thesame bed and always washing sand and gravel and even bowldersdownstream--grind, grind, grind, through the centuries and hundreds ofcenturies."

  "But there is no water here, Tom."

  "Not now, and no chance of any this time of year, else I wouldn'thave brought you in here. A sudden heavy June rain up above therewould pour down a torrent that would drown us before we could runthree hundred yards. Imagine a flood roaring down that bumpyshoot-the-chutes."

  "I can't! It's too terrifying. Is that the way it will be if you getthe water and dig the tunnel?"

  "No. At this end, the tunnel may terminate any place from down here toa thousand feet up, but in any event far below the top. I hope itproves to be well up. The greater the drop to the level of the mesa,the more turbines could be put in to generate electricity."

  "That sounds so inspiring! But, Dear--" Genevieve looked at herhusband with a shade of anxiety--"even if this project is feasible, doyou feel you should carry it through?"

  "You mean on account of Miss Chuckie and her father," he replied. "Ihave considered their side of the matter, and even at the first I sawhow--Listen, Sweetheart. No one knows better than you that I'm anengineer to the very marrow of my bones. My work in life is toconstruct,--to harness the forces of nature and compel them to servemankind; and to save waste--waste material, waste energy--and put itto use."

  "Don't I know, Tom!"

  "Well, then," he went on, "in the bottom of Deep Canyon is ariver--waste waters down there beyond the reach of this rich butwaterless land, down in the gloom, doing no good to anything oranybody, frittering away their energy on barren rocks. Why, it's asbad as the way Ashton, with all the good qualities we now see he hasin him--the way he dissipated his strength and his brains and hisfather's money."

  "Ah, Dear! wasn't it a splendid thing when he was thrown out of hisrut of wastefulness?"

  "Otherwise known as the primrose path, or the great white way," addedBlake. "It certainly was a throw out. I'm as pleased as I amastonished that he seems to have landed squarely on his feet."

  "What a marvelous change it has made in him!" exclaimed Genevieve."Sometimes I hardly can believe it really is Lafay
ette. He is soserious and manly."

  "Good thing he has changed," replied Blake. "If Miss Chuckie hadn'ttold us he had made a clean breast of that bridge, I should begin tofeel worried about--Do you know, Sweetheart, it's the strangest thingin the world the way I feel towards that girl. It's not because she isso lovely. Of course I enjoy her beauty, but that's not it. If Tommywere a girl and grown up--that's how I feel."

  "She is a very dear, sweet girl."

  "So are several of your friends--our friends," said Blake. "This isdifferent. The very first day we met her, there was something abouther voice and face--seemed as though I already knew her."

  "She knew you, through what she had read of you. She warned me, inthat frank, charming way of hers, that you were a hero to her and Imust not mind if she worshiped you openly."

  Blake laughed pleasedly. "Isn't she the greatest! And the way shechums with me! Wonder if that is what makes Ashton so sore at me? Theidiot! Can't he see the difference?"

  "Lovers always are blind," said Genevieve.

  "I'm not," he rejoined, his eyes, as he gazed down into hers, as blueand tender as Isobel's.

  The young wife blushed deliciously and rewarded him with a kiss.

  "But about Chuckie?" she returned to the previous question. "You weregoing to tell me--"

  "I am going to tell you something you will think is very fanciful--andit is! Do you know why I am so taken with that girl? It's becauseshe reminds me of my sisters--what they might have grown to be!...God!--" he bent over with his face in his shaking hands--"God! If onlythey had gone any other way than--the way they did!"

  "My poor dear boy!" soothed his wife, her hand on his downbent head."Let us trust that they are in a happier world, a world where sorrowand pain--"

  "If only I could believe that!" he groaned.

  Genevieve waited a few moments and with quiet tactfulness sought todivert him from his grief: "If Chuckie reminds you of them, Dear--"

  "She might be either--only Mary, the older one, had dark brown eyes.But Belle's were blue like Chuckie's."

  "What a pure blue her eyes are--the sweet true girl! Why can't youregard her as your sister, and--and give over further thought of thisirrigation project?"

  Blake looked up, completely diverted. "You little schemer! So that'swhat you've been working around to?"

  "But why not?" she insisted.

  "I'll tell you. It is because I am so fond of Chuckie that I amdetermined to get water on Dry Mesa, if it is possible."

  "But--"

  "To make use of those waste waters," he explained; "to turn this dustysemi-desert into a garden; and to benefit Chuckie by doubling thevalue of her father's property."

  "How could that be, when the farmers would divide up his range?"

  "He owns five sections, Chuckie told me. What are they worth now? Butwith water on them, even without a single tree planted, they wouldsell as orchard land for more than all his herd; and he would stillhave his cattle. He could sell them to the settlers for more than whathe now gets shipping them over the range."

  "I begin to see, Tom. I might have known it."

  "I'm telling you, of course. We're to keep it from them as a happysurprise, because it may not come off. There's still the questionwhether the water in the canyon--"

  "But if it is! How delightful it will be to help Mr. Knowles andChuckie, besides, as you say, turning this desert into a garden!"

  "That valley is a natural reservoir site to hold flood waters,"continued the engineer. "All that's needed is a dam built across thenarrow place above the waterhole, with the dike for foundation. Iwould build it of rock from the tunnel, run down on a gravity tram."

  "You've worked it all out?"

  "Not all, only the general scheme. If the tunnel comes through highenough up here, we shall be able to manufacture cheap electricity tosell. Just think of our settlers plowing by electricity, and theirwives cooking on electric stoves."

  "You humorous boy!"

  "No, I mean it. There's another thing--I wouldn't whisper it even toyou if you weren't my partner as well as my wife. I have reason tobelieve the creek bed above the dike is a rich placer. I've planned totake Knowles and Ashton in on that discovery--Gowan, too, if Knowlesasks it."

  "A placer?"

  "Yes, placer mine--gold washed down in the creek bed. But it's a smallthing compared with another discovery I've made. Up there--" Blakepointed up the steep ledges that he had climbed--"I found a bonanza."

  "Bonanza? What is that, pray?"

  "A mint, a John D. bank account, a--Guess?"

  "A gold mine! Oh, Tom, how romantic!"

  "Yes; it's free-milling quartz. We can mill it ourselves, and not haveto pay tribute to the Smelting Trust. That's romance--or at leastsounds like it. You will pay for all the development work, in returnfor one-third share. I shall take a third, as the discoverer, andChuckie gets the remaining third as grub-staker."

  "As what?"

  "She is staking us with grub--food and supplies. If she had not sentfor me to come and look over the situation, I should not have beenhere to stumble on this mine. So she gets a share."

  "I'm glad, glad, Tom! Isn't it nice to be able to do fine things forothers? I'm so glad for Chuckie's sake, because, if Lafayette keeps onas he is doing now, he may win his father's forgiveness."

  "What has that to do with Chuckie?"

  "You and I know what she is, Dear; yet if she had no money, his fathermight insist on regarding her as a mere farm girl. He is as--assnobbish as I was when we were flung ashore by the storm, there inMozambique."

  "I fail to see that it matters any to Chuckie what Ashton seniorthinks."

  "Of course you don't see. You're as blind as when I--" the ladyblushed--"as when I had to fling myself at you to make you see. Thedear girl is as deeply in love with Lafayette as he is with her."

  "No? She doesn't show it. How can you tell?"

  "You know that Mr. Gowan is desperately in love with her."

  "That stands to reason. He couldn't help but be. Can't say I likethe fellow. He may be all right, though. Must have some goodqualities--Chuckie seems to be very fond of him."

  "As fond as if he were a brother. No; Lafayette is to be the happyman--unless he backslides. We must help him."

  Blake nodded. "That's another thing that hangs on this project. If itproves to be feasible, I can give Ashton a chance to make good as anengineer. I used to think he must have bought his C.E. Now I see hehas the makings."

  "He can be brilliant when he chooses. If only he were not so--soscatter-brained."

  "What he needed was a jolt heavy enough to shake him together. Itseems as though his father gave it to him."

  "That shock, and being picked up by Chuckie," agreed Genevieve.

  "We'll help her keep him braced until the cement sets," said herhusband. "It's even worse to let brains go to waste than water."

  "Far worse! What is the good of all your engineering--of all themachinery, yes, and all the culture of civilization, if not to upliftmen and women? May the next generation work for the uplifting of allmankind, both materially and spiritually!"

  "We might make a try at it ourselves," said Blake. "As for the future,I know it will not be your fault if our member of the next generationfails to do his share of uplift work."

  The young mother placed her hand on her bosom, and sprang up. "Weshould be going back, Dear. Thomas will be wakening."