“Immediately, Tom,” assented Mrs. Blake, delighted at the opportunity to serve her big husband. 189
“When shall we take Genevieve to see the cañon?” asked the girl. “I am sure she can ride up safely on old Buck.”
“We have only the two saddle horses today,” replied Blake. “If our measurement settles that ‘if’ one way, I shall start a line of levels up the mountain tomorrow morning, if the other way, any irrigation project is out of the question, and we shall go up to the cañon merely as a sightseeing party.”
“Ah!” sighed the girl. “‘If!’ ‘if’––I do so hope it turns out to be the last one!”
Blake looked at her with a quizzical smile. “Perhaps you would not, Miss Chuckie, if you could see all the results of a successful water system.”
“You mean, turning our range into farms for hundreds of irrigationists,” she replied. “I suppose I am selfish, but I am thinking of what it would mean to Daddy. Just consider how it will affect us. For years this land has been our own for miles and miles!”
“Well, we shall see,” said Blake, his eyes twinkling.
“Yes, indeed!” she exclaimed. “Lafe, if you’ll help me saddle up and help Mr. Blake rush up to do that measuring, I’ll––I’ll be ever so grateful!”
Though all the more resentful at Blake over having to leave her company, Ashton eagerly sprang forward to help the girl saddle the ponies. When they were ready, she filled his canteen for him and took a sip 190 from it “for luck.” Genevieve had packed an ample lunch in a gamebag, along with her husband’s linked steel-wire surveyor’s chain.
Ten minutes after Blake’s arrival, he handed the baby to its mother and swung into the saddle. Ashton had already mounted, fired by a kind glance from the girl’s forget-me-not eyes. In his zeal, he led the way at a gallop around the craggy hill and across the intervening valley to the escarpment of High Mesa. Had not Blake checked him, he would have forced the pace on up the mountain side.