The boliche had taken on a funereal appearance. Only a few of the old customers still came to toss off a drink before the Gallego’s counter. These were all men of assured solvency, don Antonio having abruptly cut off the credit of all his other customers; to back up this resolve he kept a revolver in his money drawer, and his handsome American rifle under his chair. When out of funds, his patrons amply justified all these precautions.
“You ought to go to Buenos Aires, don Manuel,” he kept saying hopefully to Robledo. “You’re the only man from these parts they’ll listen to up there.”
The engineer, however, was as disheartened and gloomy as his surroundings. The only thing that ever drew a smile from him was the changed aspect of his partner. Watson had suddenly developed a cheerfulness which seemed to indicate that the fate of his once beloved canals was nothing to him now. According to his frank confession, the only subject that interested him was cattle raising, and he spent all of his days at the Rojas ranch.
What was the momentary paralysis of the works at the dam to him! He was young, most of his life stretching ahead of him. Why not study cattle-farming in the meantime, especially as he had Flor de Rio Negro to teach him, as she rode by his side through her father’s fields from sunrise to sundown?
But an incident that occurred shortly after Elena’s flight had tinged everything with black melancholy for Robledo. Gonzalez had brought him a hat that one of his compatriots had found near the river, at a distance from the camp. The engineer had recognized it at once. It was Torre Bianca’s.
For some time he had felt certain that his friend was no longer alive. Often at night, when the financial difficulties in which the works were involved kept him awake, he reconstructed the events which one morning at dawn had made Elena’s husband leave the house of the friend with whom he had taken refuge.
There could be little doubt now. Torre Bianca’s body must be at the bottom of the river.
And so it proved. The owner of the boliche came to him again to tell him of the discovery made by some of the men who, being out of work, had gone fishing two leagues down the river. Near a reed-encircled island they expected to find some of the trout that often came down stream from Lake Nahuel-Huapi. And among the reeds they had noticed two long black objects swayed by the ripples—the legs of a drowned man.
Robledo had not the heart to examine the body, but his compatriot Gonzalez found evidence from the clothing that the drowned man was Torre Bianca.
After this, Robledo felt more inclined to yield to the Gallego’s insistent urgings that he go to Buenos Aires to make a plea for the continuance of the work on the dam. Recognizing the possibility of his being more useful to the despairing community in Buenos Aires than at La Presa, he started off for the capital and spent several months there, going from one government office to another, struggling with the entanglements of administrative red tape, and making a determined effort to provide resources in order to maintain his credit at the banks. But to his dismay he found that the business men who had up to that time given their support to his enterprise, were unwilling to put more money into the work, and little by little he became aware of the general distrust felt of everything connected with La Presa.