The Winning of Barbara Worth

by Harold Bell Wright

From this office went forth to the advertising departments of the magazines and papers, skillfully prepared copy, which in turn was followed by pamphlets, circulars and letters innumerable. In one room a company of clerks and book-keepers and accountants pored over their tasks at desks and counters. In another a squad of stenographers filled the air with the sound of their type-writers. Through the doors of the different rooms passed an endless procession; men from the front with the marks of the desert sun on their faces—engineers, superintendents, bosses, messengers, agents—servants of the Company; laborers of every sort and nationality came in answer to the cry: "Men wanted!"; special salesmen from foundry, factory and shop drawn by prospective large sales of machinery, implements and supplies; land-hungry men from everywhere seeking information and opportunity for investment.

At Deep Well (which is no well at all) on the rim of the Basin, trainloads of supplies, implements, machinery, lumber and construction material, horses, mules and men were daily side-tracked and unloaded on the desert sands. Overland travelers gazed in startled wonder at the scene of stirring activity that burst so suddenly upon them in the midst of the barren land through which they had ridden for hours without sight of a human habitation or sign of man. The great mountain of goods, piled on the dun plain; the bands of horses and mules; the camp-fires; the blankets spread on the bare ground; the men moving here and there in seemingly hopeless confusion; all looked so ridiculously out of place and so pitifully helpless.

Every hour companies of men with teams and vehicles set out from the camp to be swallowed up in the silent distance. Night and day the huge mountain of goods was attacked by the freighters who, with their big wagons drawn by six, eight, twelve, or more, mules, appeared mysteriously out of the weird landscape as if they were spirits materialized by some mighty unknown genii of the desert. Their heavy wagons loaded, their water barrels filled, they turned again to the unseen realm from which they had been summoned. The sound of the loud voices of the drivers, the creaking of the wagons, the jingle of harness, the shot-like reports of long whips died quickly away; while, to the vision, the outfits passed slowly—fading, dissolving in their great clouds of dust, into the land of mystery.

In Rubio City Jefferson Worth continued on his machine-like way at the Pioneer Bank, apparently paying no heed to the movement that offered such opportunities for profitable investment. Barbara rarely spoke now of the work that had been so dear to her, nor did she ever ride to the foot of the hill on the Mesa to look over the Desert. The Seer was in the northern railroad work again, but Abe Lee, with Tex and Pat and Pablo Garcia, had gone with the beginning of the stream of life that was pouring into the new country.

True to the far-reaching plans of the Company, at the largest and most central of the supply camps, located in the very heart of The King's Basin, the townsite of Kingston was laid out, and even in the days when every drop of water was hauled from three to ten miles town lots were offered for sale and sold to eager speculators.

A year from the beginning of the work at the intake at the river, water was turned into the canals. With the coming of the water, Kingston changed, almost between suns, from a rude supply camp to an established town with post-office, stores, hotel, blacksmith shop, livery stables, all in buildings more or less substantial. Most substantial of all was the building owned and occupied by the offices of the Company.

With the coming of the water also, the stream of human life that flowed into the Basin was swollen by hundreds of settlers driven by the master passion—Good Business—to toil and traffic, to build the city, to subdue and cultivate the land and thus to realize the Seer's dream, while the engineer himself was banished from the work to which he had given his life. Every sunrise saw new tent-houses springing up on the claims of the settlers around the Company town and new buildings beginning in the center of it all—Kingston. Every sunset saw miles of new ditches ready to receive the water from the canal and acres of new land cleared and graded for irrigation.

Thus it was that afternoon when, from his office window, Mr. Burk, the General Manager of The King's Basin Land and Irrigation Company, watched a freighter with a twelve-mule load of goods stop his team directly across the street in front of the largest and most important general store in the Basin.

Deck Jordan, the merchant, came out and the Manager easily heard the driver's loud voice: "Jim'll be along in 'bout another hour, I reckon. We aim to get the rest in two more trips."

"Six twelve-mule loads in that shipment," thought the Company's manager; "and that fellow set up business with a two-horse load of stuff!"