The Winning of Barbara Worth

by Harold Bell Wright

Steadily mile by mile, acre by acre, and at times almost foot by foot, the pioneers wrested their future farms and homes from the dreadful forces that had held them for ages. Steadily, with the inflowing stream of life from the world beyond the Basin's rim, the area of improved lands about Kingston extended and the work in the Company's town went on. By midsummer many acres of alfalfa, with Egyptian corn and other grains, showed broad fields of living green cut into the dull, dun plain of the Desert and laced with silver threads of water shining in the sun.

Save for occasional brief business trips to the city, Jefferson Worth did not leave Kingston. In the most trying of those grilling days of heat and dust, when a man's skin felt like cracking parchment and his eyes burned in their sockets and it seemed as though every particle of moisture in his body was sucked up by the dry, scorching air, Barbara's father gave no sign of discomfort. He accepted the most nerve-racking situation with the even-tempered calmness of one who had foreseen it and to whom it was but a trivial incident, inevitable to his far-reaching plans. When others—their tempers tried to the breaking point—cursed with dry, high-pitched, querulous curses the heat, the land, the sun, the dust, the Company and their fellow-sufferers, Jefferson Worth's cool, even tones and unruffled spirit helped them to a needed self-control and gave them a new and stronger grip on things. And many a baffled, discouraged and well-nigh beaten settler, ready to give up, found in the man whose gray, mask-like face seemed so incapable of expression, fresh inspiration and new courage; while the store continued its policy of helping the worthy, hard-pressed ranchers with necessary material assistance.

And so it was that while James Greenfield and his fellow-capitalists of The King's Basin Land and Irrigation Company were taking their much needed vacations and seeking relaxation and rest from business cares at their seaside and mountain retreats, the desert pioneers were coming more and more to Jefferson Worth for advice and counsel, for strength and courage and help to go on with the work. By fall the financier's position in the life of the new country seemed to be securely won. Perhaps only Jefferson Worth himself, alone behind his gray mask, knew the real value of his apparent victory.

The Company's thoughtful Manager went out—as the pioneers had come to say of those who left the Basin—for over a month, and for the rest of the summer spent only a part of his time in Kingston. But the Company's chief engineer refused to leave even for a week. To a pressing invitation from Greenfield to join him on his vacation, Holmes answered that he could not get away. All through the June rise of the river, while the settlers, ignorant of the danger that threatened them through the Good Business policy of the Company, were risking everything that Capital might gain its greater profits, the engineer lived in his camp at the intake. Day and night, as he watched the swelling yellow torrent that threw its weight against his work, he remembered the words of the desert-bred surveyor: "When the Gila and the Little Colorado go on the warpath and come down on top of a high Colorado flood, you'll catch hell." It had come in the past, Abe had declared, and it would come again.

But the flood waters of the Gila and the Little Colorado did not come down on top of the larger river that year and the promoter's estimate work stood. When the danger was past and the engineer was free again to make Kingston his headquarters, his acquaintance with Jefferson Worth grew into something like friendship. It became, indeed, an established custom for Mr. Worth, Abe Lee and the chief engineer of the Company to sit at the same table in the shack restaurant and, during their meals of canned stuff, to talk over the work that held them from the comforts and pleasures of civilization.

But little work toward extending the Company system could be undertaken during the hot summer months. It was difficult for Holmes to hold even enough men to maintain that which was already in operation. But Jefferson Worth did not fare so badly. Abe Lee was steadfast, of course, while Texas, Pat and Pablo would, as the Irishman said, "have fried thimsilves on the coals av hell" before they would quit their job. Were there not letters every week from Barbara with messages to the surveyor and his three helpers? Pablo said truly that "there was no Senorita in the Company." So through Abe's leadership, Texas Joe's diplomacy, Pat's wisdom and Pablo's influence with his countrymen, the Worth enterprises did not suffer for lack of laborers but went steadily ahead.

In Kingston the different buildings for the power plant and lighting system were nearly completed and several cottages were under construction on lots owned by Jefferson Worth, while men and teams were busy excavating and hauling materials for a large ice plant. In Frontera, a little town that "just happened" to grow from a supply camp in the southern end of the Basin, a hotel and a bank building were being erected, while between the two communities poles for a telephone system were being placed.

Thus far very few women had come into the desert. When the torrid summer was past, the first crops on the new ranches harvested and more comfortable homes prepared, they would come with the children to join the men-folks. Until then the new country would continue a man's country—the poorest possible kind of a country, the men themselves declared.

Therefore when, late in September, The King's Basin Messenger, with an extraordinary blare of trumpets, announced the birth of a child and that the first-born of the new country was a boy, the news was received with the greatest excitement. In Kingston, in Frontera, at grading camps and ranches, as the word was passed, there were wild and joyous celebrations. Such a crowd of male visitors closed in on the humble tent home to beg for a look at the little pink stranger that the matter-of-fact pioneer parents were heard to express the wish that they themselves had never been born. Had the baby been forced to carry through life all the names that were suggested he would undoubtedly have echoed the parents' wish at an early age.

Then came the terrible word to Kingston, brought by Texas Joe, that the baby was ill. Tex, returning to town from a trip to Frontera, had turned a mile aside to bring the latest news of the baby. It was early evening and the light yet lingered in the sky back of No Man's Mountains, when the citizens, relaxing after the heat of the day and the evening meal, looked up to see him coming, riding like a mad man, his horse white with foam.