The Winning of Barbara Worth

by Harold Bell Wright

Barbara, when her father was gone, though she knew nothing of the danger that threatened him, was restless and ill at ease, beset by vague and nameless doubts and fears. The little desert town with its bustling activity, its clamorous, rushing disorder, its naked newness and glaring bareness, offended her. Nothing was completed. The streets, the buildings, the very people, seemed so unsettled, so temporary. She could not shake off the feeling that it would all vanish soon, as she had often seen the phantom cities of the desert plain melt and disappear.

The morning after her father left, as she rode El Capitan slowly along the little village streets that lay so dusty and flat and that ended so quickly in the open country, she caught herself wondering how long the dream would endure. The farms, too, with their new green fields and their primitive, pioneer shacks, tent houses and shelters and their acres of still unimproved land, all lying under the white blaze of the semi-tropical sun, were they more than a mirage weirdly painted in the air by the spirit of the dreadful land to lure foolish men to their ruin?

Near the crossing of a canal she saw a zanjero turning the water through a new delivery gate into a new ditch, and checking El Capitan, she watched the brown flood rolling down the channel prepared for it and heard the dry earth hiss and purr as it sucked up the moisture with the thirst of a thousand years. She wanted to cry out a protest. The effort was so pitifully foolish. This awful, awful land would never yield to the men who sought to subdue it with such feeble means. From the little stream of water, no deeper than would reach to El Capitan's knees and no wider than his stride, she looked away and around over the seemingly endless miles of barren waste.

The man at the delivery gate recorded the number of inches in his book and, with a greeting to the young woman, mounted his horse and rode away along the canal. Barbara, moving on, left the farms behind and rode into the barren waste. This at least was real. This in its very desolation, its dreadful silence, its still menace, was satisfying. But as on that morning when she first rode El Capitan into the desert from Kingston, she grew afraid. The dreadful spirit of the land so pressed upon her that she turned her horse and fled as one might fly from an approaching storm.

Another restless, unsatisfying day and a lonely evening dragged by. Texas and Pat she had not seen for a week. Even Abe had not been near her since her father left. To-morrow, she told herself, she would find them at their work and demand a reason for their neglect.

The next morning she set out on El Capitan to follow the line of her father's railroad until she should find her neglectful men-folk. As she rode along the right-of-way she watched the hundreds of Mexican and Indian laborers at their work on the grade and thought of the men who had built the South Central Canal. Those men too had labored for her father, but they worked also for themselves. The canal they built was to reclaim their own land and to make for them farms and homes. These poor fellows on the railroad, she reflected, had no share in that which they were doing. There was in their toil nothing but the day's wage. She could not feel, as she had felt in the South Central District, that she had a part with them in their work. Here and there she recognized a Mexican from Rubio City, and these returned her greeting pleasantly, for they remembered the young woman's kindness to the poor. But by far the greater number gave her only sullen glances. She was to them only the daughter of the man for whom they toiled and who had not paid.

Passing from gang to gang and camp to camp, watching the dark faces of the laborers, listening to their sullen undertone, the young woman felt the restless, threatening spirit of the little army as one may feel sometimes the heavily charged atmosphere before an electric storm. But she did not understand. She had never before ridden over the railroad work alone as she had so often done in the South Central District.

She grew a little frightened at last at the scowling looks and muttered remarks that followed her as she went, and she was wishing that she had not come when she saw just ahead Abe Lee and Pat. The surveyor was giving some instructions to the Irish boss and both were so intent that they did not see Barbara approaching. As the young woman drew quite near, a low-browed Mexican who, in watching her approach, either forgot the presence of his superiors or, in sheer ruffianly bravado, ignored them, uttered a coarse remark to his companions about his employer's daughter.

The young woman heard and turned pale as death. Pat heard and, turning quickly around, caught sight of Barbara and saw the ruffian who had spoken looking at her. With a roar the Irishman leaped forward, and with a blow of his huge, hairy fist dropped the Mexican a senseless heap in the dirt.

With cries of rage the fellow's countrymen ran toward the white man, drawing their knives as they came. Barbara sat leaning forward in her saddle breathless. Abe Lee was quietly rolling a cigarette. Pat stood motionless, his battle-scarred features set and his eyes shining like points of light.