So they found a seat and Willard Holmes told how splendidly the Seer's dream was coming true, and in answer to many questions talked of Barbara and her life in the new country, of Jefferson Worth and his operations, and of some of his own professional difficulties and problems. And the Seer, as he led the younger man on and studied the strong bronzed face that was all aglow with enthusiasm over the work, smiled quietly as he remembered the tenderfoot who had once threatened to report his Chief to the Company.
Brave, great-hearted, generous Seer! There was in all his questioning not a hint of any feeling against the younger man who had been given the place that should have been his. He fell to wondering if after all the Company had now in Holmes the man they thought they had, or the man they did have, indeed, when they made him their chief engineer. If the test were to come now—The Seer did not know that Willard Holmes was even then undergoing that test.
The two men dined together that evening and afterwards over the cigars in the Seer's room the old engineer talked of the progress and future of the great Reclamation work, of its value not only to our own nation but to the over-crowded nations beyond the seas, and of its place in the great forward march of the race. Then gravely he spoke to the younger man of his own efforts to bring the work to the attention of the people, of disappointments and failures, year after year, until at last the work in Barbara's Desert had been launched, and following that several other projects until now at last reclamation had become a great national enterprise. And Willard Holmes knew that out of the millions that would be realized from these reclaimed lands this man, who had seen the vision, would receive nothing. The Seer had not even a position with an irrigation company or with a reclamation project.
As he listened to the man who had literally given the best of his life to a great work, the Company engineer felt as he sometimes felt when alone in the heart of the desert itself he heard its call, the call that was at once a challenge, a threat and a promise; or as when he had felt the sweet power of Barbara's presence.
At his hotel Holmes found the president of The King's Basin Land and
Irrigation Company anxiously awaiting him: "Look here!" was
Greenfield's greeting. "This thing is approaching a climax."
He handed the engineer a telegram from Burk. Willard Holmes glanced at the yellow slip of paper.
"Strike on the K. B. C. Looks serious."
"Jefferson Worth left for San Felipe this afternoon," Greenfield said quickly. "There's another train in thirty minutes. We mustn't miss it!"