"If the old thing could just realize all that depends on its behaving itself!" exclaimed Charley. "Roger, let's throw in the pump, I really believe it's going to run!"
And run it did, during the entire day, with only three stops for repair. Roger worked until late afternoon with Dick and the next day Gustav took his place. The damage done by the dust storm to the absorber was now completely remedied and Roger and Ernest began work on a shallow concrete trough on which the condenser was to be erected. By the time this was completed, Dick's second sowing was finished and he announced himself ready for road building.
At first, Roger felt violently resentful at the thought of having to build a road. It seemed to him that after all his years of patient persistency, fate at the last was playing him a scurvy trick. She had brought his goal within sight, only to beset it with delays and difficulties whose very paltriness it seemed to him he could not endure. And a feverish little flame of impatience began to glow within him that was not to be extinguished for many months. However when, pick in hand, he actually began with the others to break the road, a sudden elation swept over him. After all, primitive as this work might be, it was empire building of the most fundamental sort. And, in spite of his anxieties and impatience, Roger did his share of the road building with right good will.
They began work in the range back of the ranch, taking advantage of draw and canyon whenever possible, even when this demanded a long detour. Sometimes, the canyon bottoms were astonishingly level. At other times boulders and crevices would block them until they had made free use of dynamite. They had all sorts of minor mishaps. Dick was not an expert either in road grading or blasting, although he was far ahead of the Sun Planters in his information about both.
In running the road up the side of Snake Peak he used too heavy a charge and brought down a land slide which it took them a day to clear. On a previous day he had blasted too close to the wagon and a bowlder had smashed the rear axle. He took extraordinarily narrow chances with the steepness of grade but in spite of the Sun Planters' prophecies they did not lose either horses or wagon down canyon or mountain side. Ernest, however, slipped on top of one of the finished sections and rolled two hundred feet before he could stop himself.
When, after two weeks' steady labor, Dick pronounced the road good enough, the others looked at him aghast. "You'll break your wagon and your horses' necks, to say nothing of losing the oil!" protested Ernest.
Dick only laughed. "This is a boulevard compared with some of the desert routes I've taken. With just a few drums of oil lashed on at a time, we'll make it."
And make it he did, though nearly another week was consumed in the doing, and four drums of the oil were lost in different draws and canyons. After the road was finished, the transporting of the oil was turned over to Ernest and Dick while Roger and Gustav began the erecting of the condenser. Ernest was now quite reconciled to the use of the oil for Hackett had received a telegram from the owner in San Francisco that the deal was more than satisfactory to him.
Roger and Gustav worked well together. The self-controlled German, evidently accustomed to hard grind and overwork in an office job, was not in the least ruffled by Roger's impatient ways. And he distinctly enjoyed the vim and imagination that were characteristic of Roger's work even when it involved the seemingly simple task of cutting and threading condenser pipe. For cutting and threading condenser pipe so that it shall be leak proof is not a simple job at all.
April came to the desert with a noon temperature of a hundred degrees in the shade. Imperceptibly the daily breeze stiffened to a noon gale. There were no sand storms however for six weeks and the second alfalfa crop caught toe hold and grew, an amazing patch of green on the thirsty yellow sand.