CHAPTER XX
THE FUTURE
A few days later a detachment of infantry arrived to relieve Captain Wendell and his men. The new troop was to stay permanently, as the troubles at the border were continuing and Mr. Whitney had found it impracticable to get laborers of any other nationality than Mexicans.
The bunch of Mexicans Jerry had sent off on the wild goose chase the night of the raid came straggling into camp during the early hours of the morning, to find that a tight ring of guards had been made around their section of the lower camp. When they attempted to get through they were put under arrest and during the day were loaded on a train and shipped to the border to be sent back into their native country. The captured bandits were delivered to General Pershing’s headquarters to await trial.
Bob and Jerry were happy. The companionship which they had formed during the days of the Labyrinth and which had been interrupted, now was cemented still further. Ted Hoyt had been allowed by his father to come back to the dam and the trio had great times together.
On Sundays Bob’s and Jerry’s usual plan was to go up to Thaddeus Holman’s ranch and spend the day with Link O’Day, who had taken a great fancy to Bob. Ted, of course, went home. But Bob realized that the reason O’Day was good to him was that he was Jerry’s friend. There was something more than comradeship between Jerry and the tall cattleman; it was more the relation of a younger and elder brother.
This had a good effect on Jerry. It was as if he had found what he had told Bob in the Labyrinth he most wanted—someone to belong to, a family. He was becoming less serious, less self-contained.
Link O’Day talked a lot about the Northwest and especially of the lumbering. He seemed to have a great love of forests. Jerry grew more and more interested.
“I’d like that,” he said one day as the trio were loafing away the afternoon in the shade of Holman’s bunkhouse, “and I think I’ll drift up that way and tackle it.”
“And leave the Service?” put in Bob. “I don’t see how you could. It’s the finest—”
“We know how you feel!” Link O’Day laughed. “According to you, Rockefeller hasn’t anything on the youngest cub of an engineer so long as the cub is one of the Reclamation Service’s outfit. Therefore your opinion isn’t worth anything in this case.”