“You would not have run them if you had thought they would be useless,” she stated, perceiving the point with intuitive acuteness.
“I like to clean up my work as I go along,” he replied. “If you wish to know, I have thought of a possible way to get water enough for the whole mesa. It depends on two ‘ifs.’ I shall be certain as to one of them within the next two days. The other is the question of the depth of Deep Cañon. If I had a transit, I could determine that by a vertical angle,––triangulation. 181 As it is, I probably shall have to go down to the bottom.”
“Go down to the bottom of Deep Cañon?” cried the girl.
“Yes,” he answered in a matter-of-course tone. “A big ravine runs clear down to the bottom, up beyond where your father said you first met Ashton. I think it is possible to get down that gulch.––Suppose we hitch up? We’ll make the ranch just about supper-time.”
Ashton hastened to bring in the picketed horses. When they were harnessed Isobel fetched the sleeping baby and handed him to his mother; but she did not take the seat beside her.
“You drive, Lafe,” she ordered. “I’m going to ride behind with Mr. Blake. It’s such fun bouncing.”
All protested in vain against this odd whim. The girl plumped herself in on the rear end of the buckboard and dangled her slender feet with the gleefulness of a child.
“Mr. Blake will catch me if I go to jolt off,” she declared.
The engineer nodded with responsive gayety and seated himself beside her. As the buckboard rattled away over the rough sod, they made as merry over their jolts and bounces as a pair of school-children on a hayrack party.
Mrs. Blake sought to divert Ashton from his disappointment, 182 but he had ears only for the laughing, chatting couple behind him. The fact that Blake was a married man did not prevent the lover from giving way to jealous envy. Chancing to look around as he warned the hilarious pair of a gully, he saw the girl grasp Blake’s shoulder. Natural as was the act, his envy flared up in hot resentment. Except on their drive to Stockchute, she had always avoided even touching his hand with her finger tips; yet now she clung to the engineer with a grasp as familiar as that of an affectionate child. Nor did she release her clasp until they were some yards beyond the gully.