“Great Scott! I'll take care of him! But go, there's a blessed girl. You will save the ditch.”
Nancy went, covering the desert miles as a bird flies; she exulted in this chance for reparation. But long after Finlayson's forces had arrived and gone to work, she came lagging wearily homeward, all of a color, herself and the pony, with the yellow road. She had refused a fresh horse at the ditch-camp, and, sparing the whip, reached home not until after dark.
Her father's excitement in his hours of loneliness had waxed to a pitch of childish frenzy. He wept, he cursed, he counted his losses, and when his daughter said, to comfort him, “Why, father, surely they must pay for this!” he threw himself about in his bed and gave way to lamentations in which the secret of his wildness came out. He had done the thing himself; and he dared not risk suspicion, and the investigation that would follow a heavy claim for damages.
Nancy could not believe him. “Father, do be quiet; you didn't do any such thing,” she insisted. “How could you, when I know you haven't stirred out of this bed since night before last? Hush, now; you are dreaming; you are out of your head.”
“I guess I know what I done. I ain't crazy, and I ain't a fool. I made this hole first, before he caught me at the upper one. I made this one to keep him busy on his way up, so's the upper one could get a good start. The upper one wouldn't 'a' hurt us. It's jest like my cussed luck! I knew it was a-comin', but I didn't think I'd get it like this. It's all his fault, the great lazy loafer, sleepin' at the bottom of his beat, 'stead o' comin' up as he'd ought to have done last evening. He wasted the whole night,—and calls himself a watchman!”
“Well, I'm glad of it,” Nancy cried excitedly. “I'm just glad we are washed out, and I hope this will end it!” and she burst into tears, and ran out of the room.
She sat by herself, weeping and storming, in the dark little shed-room.
“Nancy!” she heard her father calling, “Nancy, child!... Where's that gal taken herself off to?... Are you a-settin' up your back on account of that ditch? If you are, you ain't no child of mine.... I'm dum sorry I let on a word to her about it. How do I know but she's off with it now, to that watchman feller. I'll be put in the papers—an old man informed on by his darter, and he on his last sick bed!... Nancy, I say, where be you a-hidin' yourself?”
Nancy returned to her forlorn charge, and after a while the old man fell asleep. She put out the lamp, for she could see to move about the room by the light of the sage-brush bonfires that flared along the ditch, lighting the men and teams, all Finlayson's force, at work upon the broken banks.
The sight was wild and alluring; she went out to watch the strange army of shadows shifting and intermingling against a wall of flame.