"All right. I'll give you seventy-five dollars a week to take Bat Truxton's place for me—not for a few days, but until the first day of October. Will you do it?"
A hot flush spread over Conniston's face, and surged away, leaving it white.
"Do you think that I can do it?"
"I am not the one to think. You are. You know what the work is, what it means. Can you do it?"
And Conniston stared long out across the wide sweep of the desert, his lips set hard in white, bloodless lines, before he answered, briefly:
"Yes."
"It's a big job, Conniston, and, frankly, I wouldn't put it into your hands if I had a man I thought better qualified to carry it on. A big job! I wonder if you know how big? You will hold the whole fate of this country in the palm of your hand, to make or to mar. You will hold in the palm of your hand my whole life-work. For if you succeed I succeed. And if you fail, all hope of reclamation here dies, still-born, and I am a ruined man. Understand what you are to do? I cannot even stay here to help you. I will leave to-night for Denver. I can't send another man in my place. Would to God that I could! I must go myself; I must raise money—fifty thousand dollars at the very lowest figure. And when I come back I shall bring the money with me, and I shall bring at least five hundred more men. And you will have to oversee the work of seven hundred men then; you will have to drive this ditch night and day; you will have to complete two big dams. And you will have to do that before the first day of October. It is a big job, Conniston. Can you do it?"
Conniston wet his dry lips and hesitated.
"Mr. Crawford, it is a big job. I do not even know that the thing is possible. I believe that it is. I do not know, I cannot know, if I can do it. I believe that I can. If you have a better man, if in Denver or anywhere else you can find a better man, put him in Truxton's place. If you can't, if you want me to go ahead with the work, I'll do it."
"Then that is settled. Confer often with Tommy Garton. If you need advice while I am away, go to him. But remember that in all things it will be up to you to make the final decision. There can be no sharing of responsibility."