CHAPTER XV.
BARBARA COMES INTO HER OWN.
Jefferson Worth and his daughter had just finished their firstbreakfast in the new home when their Indian servant woman entered theroom.
"What is it, Ynez?" asked Barbara, seeing that the woman wished tospeak.
Ynez's black eyes were shining and her voice was eager as she answered:"There is someone without waiting for La Senorita."
"Someone waiting outside for me, Ynez?"
"Who is it?" asked Mr. Worth.
"It is Pablo Garcia, Senor, and he say please ask La Senorita to come.If La Senorita will go only to the door she can see."
With an expression of excited interest Barbara, followed by her father,went out on the porch. In front of the house stood Pablo holding abeautiful saddle horse fully equipped and ready for a rider. TheMexican's dark face shone with the pride and triumph of the momenttoward which he had looked forward for months. The horse, too, as ifsensing the importance of the occasion, pawed the earth with his daintyhoofs, arched his neck and tossed his head--proudly impatient.
Uttering low exclamations and little cries of delight the girl left theporch and ran forward, greeting Pablo and moving about the horse,admiring the animal from every point of view. "What a beauty! He isperfect, Pablo; perfect! Where did you find him? Is he yours? What'shis name?" Her questions came tumbling from her lips in such eagerbursts that Pablo answered only the last.
"He is yours, Senorita. His name El Capitan."
"Mine?" Barbara turned to her father, who explained, Abe having toldhim the night before of the purchase.
When her father finished, the delighted girl announced that she "simplycouldn't wait" but must go for a ride immediately. Running into thehouse she returned a few minutes later in her riding dress and,mounting with--"I'll be back for dinner, daddy," and "Adios,Pablo!"--rode away toward the open country, while the Mexican and thebanker watched her out of sight.
By the time they had passed the last of the tent houses in the townBarbara and El Capitan were friends. There is no doubt whatever that aworthy horse appreciates a worthy rider and the girl, accustomed toriding since childhood, certainly appreciated her mount.
"Oh, you beauty!" she cried, leaning forward in the saddle to pat theshining neck. "Oh, you beauty!"
As though to return the compliment and express his pleasure at findingsuch an agreeable companion, El Capitan turned his delicate pointedears forward, arched his neck, and, stepping as on a velvet carpet,sprang lightly to the other side of the road in sheer overflow of goodspirits and confidence in his rider, while the girl, at his play,laughed aloud.
But Barbara had eyes and thoughts for more than her horse that morning.It was her first day in "her Desert" and there was much for her to see.Through her father she had kept in close touch with every phase of thework of reclaiming The King's Basin and had often begged him to takeher with him into the new country. Now at last her wish was realized.She was where she could see with her own eyes the Seer's dream--theSeer's and her own--coming true.
On either hand as she rode, stretching away until all fixed lines andobjects were lost in the shifting mirage and many-colored lights of thedesert, the dun plain with its thin growth of thirsty vegetation wasbroken by the green cultivated fields, newly leveled acres, buildingsand stacks of the ranches, with canals, ditches and ponds filled withwater that reflected the colors of the morning. Everywhere, in what hadbeen a land of death, life was stirring. In one field beside the road aherd of soft-eyed cattle, knee-deep in rich alfalfa, lifted their headsto greet her. In another a band of horses and colts scampered alongwith her as far as their fence would permit, as if good-naturedlyseeking her further acquaintance. Everywhere men with their teams wereat work in the fields newly won from the desert. At one house a womanwas hanging her weekly wash on the line, while a group of childrenplayed in the yard. As the girl passed the woman waved her hand and thechildren shouted a greeting. And a little farther on a meadow-lark,perched on a fence-post, filled the world with liquid music.
The wine-like atmosphere, the glorious light, the odor of the fieldsand the strength and beauty of the life new-born in the desert, withthe spirit and freedom of the animal she rode, all appealed with almostpainful intensity to the girl who was herself so richly alive. She felther close kinship with it all and answered to it all out of thefullness of her own young woman's strength. She wanted to cry aloudwith the joy and gladness of the victory over barrenness anddesolation. It was her Desert that was yielding itself to the strongones; for them it had waited--waited through the ages, and at last theyhad come.
Busy with her thoughts, Barbara rode on until she had passed out of thesettled district of which Kingston was the center and found herself inthe desert. Save for the lightly marked trail she was following and thethin line of her father's telephone poles that led southward toFrontera, she saw no sign of a human being. Checking her horse andturning, she looked back. A tiny spot of thin color--the red of brick,the yellow of new lumber and the white of tents--marked Kingston. Theranches about the desert town were scattered spots of green scarcelyseen at that distance. All the rest, from the distant snow-cappedsentinels of the Pass in the north to Lone Mountain in the south andfrom the purple mountain wall on the west to the sky-line of the Mesaon the east, was the same dun plain as she had always known it.
Barbara caught her breath. Seen near at hand the work accomplished hadseemed so great, so brave; seen from even so short a distance as shehad come, it looked so pitifully small, so helpless. The desert was sohuge, so masterful, so dominating in its silent grandeur, in its awfulloneliness. All her life Barbara had seen the desert from her home inRubio City. Many, many times she had ridden into it and back a day'sride. But never had she felt the dreadful spirit of the land as shefelt it now, alone in the still, lonely heart of it. She was afraidwith an unreasoning fear.
El Capitan, too, seemed to share her uneasiness. Tossing his head,tugging at the bridle reins and pawing the ground and startingnervously, he turned this way and that, signifying his desire to beaway. But just as Barbara, on the point of yielding to his impatienceand her own feeling of fear, lifted the reins to turn toward Kingstonagain, he threw up his head with a loud neigh and with ears pointedlooked away toward the south, standing rigid and motionless as a horseof stone. A cloud of dust rising from the trail told her that someonewas approaching. Instantly the girl's feeling of fear vanished. Shelaughed aloud.
"Company is coming, Capitan," she said. "Shall we wait until we see whoit is? We can easily run away if we don't like his looks."
As she finished speaking, the light wind that was just strong enough tocarry the dust with the coming rider shifted for a moment and revealedthe horseman clearly. Barbara, not wishing to appear as though waiting,started ahead toward Kingston, while the stranger, evidently catchingsight of a horse and rider on the road ahead and desiring company,quickened his pace.
Barbara glanced over her shoulder. "Shall we run, Capitan? No, we'llnot run yet. But be ready." Again she glanced quickly back. "It's noone we know, Capitan. Be ready."
Nearer and nearer came the stranger.
When she heard the sound of his horse's feet on the sand Barbara turnedagain, this time openly. Then she laughed. "I don't think we'll runthis time, Capitan."
A moment later the horseman had overtaken her.
"Good morning, Mr. Holmes. How do you do?"
"Miss Worth!"
Had the engineer checked his horse so suddenly a few months before hewould undoubtedly have gone over the animal's head. El Capitan alsostopped, while the man and the girl sat looking at each other, Barbarasmiling at the man's surprise.
"Is it really you?" asked Holmes at last, "or is it some new trick ofthis confounded desert?" He rubbed his eyes. "I never saw a mirage likethis before and I don't think the heat has affected my brain." He movedhis horse closer. "Could you shake hands?"
Barbara held out her hand. "I assure you that I am very substantial,"she laughed, "and I am here t
o stay, too."
"That's great! By George! it's good to see you," cried Holmes soheartily that the girl turned away her face and caused her horse tomove ahead.
The engineer's horse, with a word from his rider, kept his place by ElCapitan's side.
"It's very nice of you to say that but I didn't see you anywhere aroundlast night when the stage arrived. Abe and Pat and Texas were there andthis morning even Pablo came the first thing after breakfast."
Willard Holmes could not altogether hide his pleasure at her hintedrebuke. So she had thought of him--had looked for him--had missed him."Indeed, you must forgive me. I did not know you were coming," he saidand explained how his work took him away from Kingston much of the time.
"Of course, under those circumstances, I must forgive you," agreedBarbara, then added seriously: "I think I could forgive anyone whobelonged to this desert work, anything, except one."
"And that?" He was watching her face. "What is it that you could notforgive?"
She returned his look steadily. "Don't you know?"
He drew a little back and she wondered at something in his voice andmanner as he answered: "Yes, I know. You could never forgive one forbeing untrue to his work--for putting anything before the work itself."
"Yes," she returned, "that is it. I could never forgive one who didthat."
"But how would you know? How could you judge?" he asked almost roughly."Perhaps the very one whom you would call false to the work would, inreality, be doing the best thing for the work. I have noticed that,after all, those who have the loftiest ideals and the highest visionsof man's duty to man and all that are seldom the ones who accomplishmuch of the actual work of the world. Look here, honestly now: how manyof the people who are reclaiming this desert--I mean all ofus--laborers, business men, ranchers, everybody who has come in here todo this work--how many of them do you think see a single thing beyondthe dollars they have hoped to make on the venture? Whether it's thehigh wage paid by the Company, the big profits of the business man orthe heavier crop of the rancher, it amounts to the same. And yet youwould insist that they must not be governed by this desire for gain. Sofar as I can see, it is this same desire for gain that has driven meninto doing every really great thing that has ever been done. Lookcarefully into every great enterprise that is of value to the world andyou will find at the beginning of it someone reaching for a dollar orits equivalent. Your father, for instance--"
Barbara threw out her hand protestingly. "Please don't, Mr. Holmes. Iknow that what you say is every bit true. Father and I have gone overit so many times. And yet I know, I know that what I feel is true also.Oh, dear! what a muddle it is, isn't it? It seems so wrong to spendone's life working for nothing but money. And yet all the really goodwork in the world is done by those who don't work to do good at all butfor what they get out of it. I suppose now that you stayed in theDesert all this past summer and worked so hard without any vacation atall just for your salary."
"How did you know that I took no vacation?"
"Father told me. You seem to have made quite an impression on myfather. He has told me a great deal about you. But I want to know--didyou stay in the desert for money?"
Holmes wondered if she knew the danger that threatened the settlersbecause of the unsubstantial character of the Company's structures."Perhaps," he said, "it was to save my professional reputation. Thatwould amount to the same thing, wouldn't it?"
Barbara laughed. "I don't think that your taking a vacation would havelost you your reputation. That won't do, Mr. Chief Engineer." For somereason Barbara seemed highly pleased at the turn the conversation hadtaken.
The man thought of those anxious days and nights at the intake, whenthe safety of the success of the whole King's Basin project hung on thewhim of an uncertain river, but he did not explain to Barbara nor didhe tell her that a vacation would have made no difference in his salary.
"I'll tell you why you stayed with the work in the Desert this summer,Mr. Holmes," she said, and in her voice was a note of pleased triumph.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because you are learning the language of the country."
For an instant he was puzzled. Then he remembered the evening he hadsaid good-by. "Si, Senorita. I suppose one could not help learning alittle in La Palma de la Mano de Dios, could he?"
"Not if he had ancestors," came the answer.
Holmes flushed. "What a snob I must have seemed to you that day," hesaid in deep disgust at the recollection of his first attempt toimpress the western girl with the importance of his place in life.
"I don't think snob is just the word," she answered. "I didn't mindthat ancestor business and all that one bit. In fact I think I ratherenjoyed it. You were such a tenderfoot! But there was something else Idid mind. Did you know that there was a time when I hated you with mywhole heart?"
"Miss Worth!"
"It's so. I even promised myself that I would never speak to youagain--never! Then I came after awhile to understand how foolish it wasof me to blame you and father told me so much of your work here thissummer that I became heartily ashamed of myself. I'm telling you nowbecause, you see, I have come here to stay and to be, in a way, a tinylittle part in this great work you are doing, and I feel that I oughtto tell you so that we can start square again."
"But, Miss Worth, what in the world are you talking about?"
"I know it was foolish of me for you were not at all to blame. But Icouldn't help it. It is all over though and we are square now--or willbe when you have said that you forgive me."
"But I don't know what you mean. What on earth did I do?"
She looked straight at him. "Can't you even guess?"
"I haven't the ghost of an idea."
"Well, I'm glad you haven't," she declared, "even if it does make meappear so foolish. It was because the Seer was discharged and you wereput in his place."
"But I--"
"Oh, I know all about it," she interrupted. "You didn't do it. You werenot to blame. The Company did it because it was Good Business. I toldyou it was all over now. But please, I don't think we'd better talkabout it only just for you to say that you forgive me. I had to tellyou for that, you see."
Then the once carefully proper Willard Holmes did a thing that wouldhave astonished his most intimate eastern friends beyond expression.Reining his horse close to El Capitan he held out his hand to Barbara.
"Shake, pard! You're the squarest girl I ever knew."
It was no flimsy, two-fingered ceremony, but a whole-hearted,whole-handed grip that made the man's blood move more quickly.Unconsciously, as he felt the warm strength in the touch of the girl'shand, he leaned toward her with quick eagerness. And Barbara, who waslooking straight into his face with the open frankness of one man toanother, started and drew back a little, turning her head aside.
For some distance they rode in silence, then she began questioning himabout his life in the desert and all the rest of the way home made himtalk of the work so dear to her heart. As he talked and the girlwatched his strong bronzed face and listened to his words, she foundsomething in his voice and manner that was not there that day when sheintroduced him to "her Desert." There was a self-reliance, anenthusiasm, a purpose that was good to hear.
At the door of her new home when he, pleading his work, would not stayfor lunch but promised to call in the evening, she bade him "Adios" inthe soft tongue of the Southland and when he had wheeled his horse andwas riding away, Barbara turned on the porch to look after him.Watching the khaki clad figure that was so easily at home in the saddleand that, with the loping horse, seemed so much a part of the country,the girl wondered at the change that was being wrought by the wild landupon the man from the eastern city.
"Indeed," she thought, "he is learning the language of the desert!" Andshe, too, was glad.
When Holmes arrived at the Company headquarters the General Managershifted his cigar to the corner of his mouth and cocked his head to oneside, looking him over critically.
"Buenas d
ias, Senor," cried the engineer gaily, throwing his sombrero,quirt and gloves on the floor and helping himself from the box ofcigars on the desk. Holmes was still thinking in the language ofBarbara's land.
"Humph!" grunted the slender man at the desk, "I said 'hello' to youwhen you passed the office, also I bowed my best New York bow, but youwere too engaged to see. Were you practicing your greaser lingo on her?I suppose she talks it like a native."
"She talks a language you would not understand, my friend," said Holmescoolly, lighting a cigar.
"Probably not," agreed the other. "Who am I that I should understandthe words of a being of such exalted rank? The whole fool town is crazyover her already. I've heard nothing but Miss Worth, Miss Worth, allmorning. You would think the hotel was a ladies' sewing circle. Everyman on the street is wearing his Sunday clothes and walks with his headtwisted over his shoulder for fear he will miss a glimpse of her.Horace P. Blanton is the man of the hour. He came in with her lastnight and is arranging a public reception, talking like the businessmanager of a Greek goddess. And now here you go riding down the streetwith her, so interested that you can't even see me. Permit me tocongratulate you. You certainly have lost no time."
Holmes scowled. "That fellow Blanton is an officious ass," he growled,"and you"--he checked himself.
"Go on; go on!" cried the delighted Burk. "Don't spare me. In the nameof the goddess, smite!"
The engineer laughed in spite of himself, though he spoke sharply. "Cutit out, Burk. I met Miss Worth in Rubio City when I landed fresh fromNew York. She's a mighty charming girl, whom you'll be as glad asanybody to know. She was riding over in the West District this morningand I overtook her on my way in. Of course we came on together. Haveyou heard from Uncle Jim?"
The Manager dropped his bantering tone instantly and taking an openletter from his desk, scanned it thoughtfully as he answered: "He'll behere Saturday. He's not at all pleased, Holmes, with my report on theWorth operations. Our friend Jeff's getting altogether too strong agrip on things. It beats all the way he hops into a game and draws allthe high cards before you know he is on the other side of the table."
The thoughtful Manager of The King's Basin Land and Irrigation Companywas evidently worried. Holmes made no reply.
With his eyes still on the letter in his hand Burk asked: "How are yougetting on with the survey of the South Central District?"
"Black finished yesterday. I brought in the data."
"What do you think of it?"
"It's no good, Burk. The land is a rough jumble of small hummocks,covered with a heavy growth of greasewood and mesquite, and practicallyall of it lies so high that we could never get the water on it at all."
Burk considered. "Do you know whether Abe Lee ever went over thatdistrict?"
Holmes stiffened. "No, he never worked in that part of the Basin atall, but what the deuce has Lee to do with it? Black is a graduateengineer and as good a man as ever looked over a transit. If you can'ttrust the men I send out, why"--
"Wow, wow!" cried Burk, "keep your shirt on, old man! I'm not makinginsinuations against your pet surveyor. I merely asked for information.Now if you please, turn your South Central data over to your officeforce and tell them to get it in shape by Saturday without fail. It'san order, my son. Selah!"