The Winning of Barbara Worth

by Harold Bell Wright

THE MASTER PASSION—"GOOD BUSINESS."

When Jefferson Worth left headquarters camp that morning, his purpose was to ride over a part of the territory lying southeast of the old San Felipe trail between the sand hills and the old beach-line. He had covered practically all of the land on the western side of the ancient sea-bed, from the delta dam at the southern end north to the lowest point in the Basin, and southward again on the eastern side as far as the old trail. There remained for him to see only this section in the southeast.

It was nearly noon when the banker, from a slight elevation that afforded him a view of the surrounding country, recognized the group of sand hills and, by the general course of Dry River, distinguished the spot where the San Felipe trail crosses the deep arroyo. Occupied with his thoughts, he had ridden farther from camp than he had realized. He should turn back. But the distant scene of the desert tragedy called him. He became possessed of a desire to visit once more the spot that was so closely associated with the child, who had so strangely come into his life and whom he loved as his own daughter.

An hour later he dismounted to stand beside the water hole where, with his companions, he had found the dead woman with the empty canteen by her side. The incidents of that hour were as vivid in the banker's memory as if it had all happened only the day before. He remembered how Texas Joe had lifted the canteen and, inverting it, had held out to them his finger moistened with the last drop of water in the cloth-covered vessel; and how he and his companions, standing by the dead body of the woman, had turned to each other in startled awe at the coyotes' ghostly call in the dusk. He heard again with thrilling clearness the baby's plaintive voice: "Mamma, mamma! Barba wants drink. Please bring drink, mamma. Barba's 'fraid!"

Going a short way up the wash, he stood with uncovered head on the very spot where he had knelt with out-stretched hands before the big-eyed, brown-haired baby girl, who, crouching under the high bank, shrank back from him in fear. He saw the frightened look in her eyes and heard the sweet voice cry: "Go 'way! Go 'way! Go 'way!" Then he saw the expression on the little face change as Pat and Tex and the boy tried to reassure her; saw her hold up her baby hands in full confidence to the big engineer; and felt again the pain and humiliation in his heart.

Why had the baby instinctively feared him? Why had she turned from him to the Seer? Why, he asked himself bitterly, had she always feared him? Why did she still shrink from him? For Barbara did shrink from him, unconsciously—unintentionally—but, to Jefferson Worth, none the less plainly now than when he knelt before her that night in the desert. And it hurt him now as it had hurt him then; hurt the more, perhaps, because Barbara did not know—because her attitude was instinctive.

Still living over again the incidents and emotions of that hour in the desert night, he walked back to the crossing and, leading his horse, climbed the little hill out of the wash to the spot where, with Texas and Pat, he had rendered the last possible service to the unknown woman, who had given her life for the life of the child—the child that was his but not his. Long ago he had marked the grave with a simple headstone bearing the only name possible—the one word: "Mother"—and the date of her death.

Then mounting again, he rode swiftly along the old trail toward the sand hills in the near distance. The great drifts, in the years that had passed, had been moved on by the wind until the wagon and all that remained of the half-buried outfit were now hidden somewhere deep in its heart. But the general form of the sand hill was still the same.

Dismounting, Mr. Worth tied his horse to a scraggly, half-buried mesquite and, taking his canteen from the saddle, climbed laboriously up the steep, sandy slope. He would look over the country from that point and then make straight for camp, for it was getting well on in the afternoon. From the top of the hill he could see the wide reaches of The King's Basin Desert sweeping away on every side. At his feet the bare sand hills themselves lay like huge, rolling, wind-piled drifts of tawny snow glistening in the sunlight with a blinding glare. Beyond these were the gray and green of salt-bush, mesquite and greasewood, with the dun earth showing here and there in ragged patches. Still farther away the detail of hill and hummock and bush and patch was lost in the immensity of the scene, while the dull tones of gray and green and brown were over-laid with the ever-changing tints of the distance, until, to the eyes, the nearer plain became an island surrounded on every side by a mighty, many-colored sea that broke only at the foot of the purple mountain wall.

The work of the expedition was nearly finished. The banker knew now from the results of the survey and from his own careful observations and estimates that the Seer's dream was not only possible from an engineering point of view, but from the careful capitalist's standpoint, would justify a large investment. Lying within the lines of the ancient beach and thus below the level of the great river, were hundreds of thousands of acres equal in richness of the soil to the famous delta lands of the Nile. The bringing of the water from the river and its distribution through a system of canals and ditches, while a work of great magnitude requiring the expenditure of large sums of money, was, as an engineering problem, comparatively simple.