Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

[Illustration: Barbara. Often as Barbara sat looking over that great basin her heart cried out to know the secret it held.]

THE WINNING OF BARBARA WORTH

BY

HAROLD BELL WRIGHT

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

While this story is not in any way a history of this part of the Colorado Desert now known as the Imperial Valley, nor a biography of anyone connected with this splendid achievement, I must in honesty admit that this work which in the past ten years has transformed a vast, desolate waste into a beautiful land of homes, cities, and farms, has been my inspiration.

With much gratitude for their many helpful kindnesses, I acknowledge my indebtedness to H. T. Cory, F. C. Hermann, C. R. Rockwood, C. N. Perry, E. H. Gaines, Roy Kinkaid and the late George Sexsmith, engineers and surveyors identified with this reclamation work; to W. K. Bowker, Sidney McHarg, C. E. Paris, and many other business friends and neighboring ranchers among our pioneers; and to William Mulholland, Chief Engineer of the Los Angeles Aqueduct.

I am particularly indebted to C. K. Clarke, Assistant Manager and Chief Engineer of the California Development Company, and to Allen Kelly, whose knowledge, insight and observations as a journalist and as a student of Reclamation in the Far West have been invaluable to me.

To my friend, Mr. W. F. Holt, in appreciation of his life and of his work in the Imperial Valley, this story is inscribed. H. B. W.

Tecolote Rancho, April 25, 1911.

"Give fools their gold, and knaves their power;
Let fortune's bubbles rise and fall,
Who sows a field, or trains a flower,
Or plants a tree, is more than all."

CONTENTS

I. INTO THE INFINITE LONG AGO

II. JEFFERSON WORTH'S OFFERING

III. MISS BARBARA WORTH

IV. YOU'D BETTER MAKE IT NINETY

V. WHAT THE INDIAN TOLD THE SEER

VI. THE STANDARD OF THE WEST

VII. DON'T YOU LIKE MY DESERT, MR. HOLMES?

VIII. WHY WILLARD HOLMES STAYED

IX. THE MASTER PASSION—"GOOD BUSINESS"

X. BARBARA'S LOVE FOR THE SEER

XI. ABE LEE RESIGNS

XII. SIGNS OF CONFLICT

XIII. BARBARA'S CALL TO HER FRIENDS

XIV. MUCH CONFUSION AND HAPPY EXCITEMENT

XV. BARBARA COMES INTO HER OWN

XVI. JEFFERSON WORTH'S OPERATIONS

XVII. JAMES GREENFIELD SEEKS AN ADVANTAGE

XVIII. THE GAME PROGRESSES

XIX. GATHERED AT BARBARA'S COURT

XX. WHAT THE STAKES REVEALED

XXI. PABLO BRINGS NEWS TO BARBARA

XXII. GATHERING OF OMINOUS FORCES

XXIII. EXACTING ROYAL TRIBUTE

XXIV. JEFFERSON WORTH GOES FOR HELP

XXV. WILLARD HOLMES ON TRIAL

XXVI. HELD IN SUSPENSE

XXVII. ABE LEE'S RIDE TO SAVE JEFFERSON WORTH

XXVIII. WHAT THE COMPANY MAN TOLD THE MEXICANS

XXIX. TELL BARBARA I'M ALL RIGHT

XXX. MANANA! MANANA! TO-MORROW! TO-MORROW!

XXXI. BARBARA'S WAITIN' BREAKFAST FOR YOU

XXXII. BARBARA MINISTERS TO THE WOUNDED

XXXIII. WILLARD HOLMES RECEIVES HIS ANSWER

XXXIV. BATTLING WITH THE RIVER

XXXV. NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE

XXXVI. OUT OF THE HOLLOW OF GOD'S HAND

XXXVII. BACK TO THE OLD SAN FELIPE TRAIL

XXXVIII. THE HERITAGE OF BARBARA WORTH

ILLUSTRATIONS

Drawn by F. GRAHAM COOTES

OFTEN AS BARBARA SAT LOOKING OVER THAT GREAT BASIN HER HEART CRIED OUT TO KNOW THE SECRET IT HELD.

HE HAD LIFTED THE CANTEEN AND WAS HOLDING IT UPSIDE DOWN.

"BUT I DON'T RIDE, YOU KNOW."

MORE TO REGAIN HIS COMPOSURE THAN BECAUSE HE WAS THIRSTY, HELPED HIMSELF FROM THE EARTHEN WATER JAR.

"ADIOS. TELL BARBARA I'M ALL RIGHT."

WITHOUT A WORD—FOR NO WORD WAS NEEDED—THEIR HANDS MET IN A FIRM GRIP.

The Winning of Barbara Worth

CHAPTER I.

INTO THE INFINITE LONG AGO.

Jefferson Worth's outfit of four mules and a big wagon pulled out of San Felipe at daybreak, headed for Rubio City. From the swinging red tassels on the bridles of the leaders to the galvanized iron water bucket dangling from the tail of the reach back of the rear axle the outfit wore an unmistakable air of prosperity. The wagon was loaded only with a well-stocked "grub-box," the few necessary camp cooking utensils, blankets and canvas tarpaulin, with rolled barley and bales of hay for the team, and two water barrels—empty. Hanging by its canvas strap from the spring of the driver's seat was a large, cloth-covered canteen. Behind the driver there was another seat of the same wide, comfortable type, but the man who held the reins was apparently alone. Jefferson Worth was not with his outfit.

By sending the heavy wagon on ahead and following later with a faster team and a light buckboard, Mr. Worth could join his outfit in camp that night, saving thus at least another half day for business in San Felipe. Jefferson Worth, as he himself would have put it, "figured on the value of time." Indeed Jefferson Worth figured on the value of nearly everything.

Now San Felipe, you must know, is where the big ships come in and the air tingles with the electricity of commerce as men from all lands, driven by the master passion of human kind—Good Business—seek each his own.

But Rubio City, though born of that same master passion of the race, is where the thin edge of civilization is thinnest, on the Colorado River, miles beyond the Coast Range Mountains, on the farther side of that dreadful land where the thirsty atmosphere is charged with the awful silence of uncounted ages.

Between these two scenes of man's activity, so different and yet so like, and crossing thus the land of my story, there was only a rude trail—two hundred and more hard and lonely miles of it—the only mark of man in all that desolate waste and itself marked every mile by the graves of men and by the bleached bones of their cattle.

All that forenoon, on every side of the outfit, the beautiful life of the coast country throbbed and exulted. It called from the heaving ocean with its many gleaming sails and dark drifting steamer smoke under the wide sky; it sang from the harbor where the laden ships meet the long trains that come and go on their continental errands; it cried loudly from the busy streets of village and town and laughed out from field and orchard. But always the road led toward those mountains that lifted their oak-clad shoulders and pine-fringed ridges across the way as though in dark and solemn warning to any who should dare set their faces toward the dreadful land of want and death that lay on their other side.

In the afternoon every mile brought scenes more lonely until, in the foothills, that creeping bit of life on the hard old trail was forgotten by the busy world behind, even as it seemed to forget that there was anywhere any life other than its creeping self.

As the sweating mules pulled strongly up the heavy grades the man on the high seat of the wagon repaid the indifference of his surroundings with a like indifference. Unmoved by the forbidding grimness of the mountains, unthoughtful of their solemn warning, he took his place as much a part of the lonely scene as the hills themselves. Slouching easily in his seat he gave heed only to his team and to the road ahead. When he spoke to the mules his voice was a soft, good-natured drawl, as though he spoke from out a pleasing reverie, and though his words were often hard words they were carried to the animals on an under-current of fellowship and understanding. The long whip, with coiled lash, was in its socket at the end of the seat. The stops were frequent. Wise in the wisdom of the unfenced country and knowing the land ahead, this driver would conserve every ounce of his team's strength against a possible time of great need.

They were creeping across a flank of the hill when the off-leader sprang to the left so violently that nothing but the instinctive bracing of his trace-mate held them from going over the grade. The same instant the wheel team repeated the maneuver, but not so quickly, as the slouching figure on the seat sprang into action. A quick strong pull on the reins, a sharp yell: "You, Buck! Molly!" and a rattling volley of strong talk swung the four back into the narrow road before the front wheels were out of the track.

With a crash the heavy brake was set. The team stopped. As the driver half rose and turned to look back he slipped the reins to his left hand and his right dropped to his hip. With a motion too quick for the eye to follow the free arm straightened and the mountain echoed wildly to the loud report of a forty-five. By the side of the road in the rear of the wagon a rattlesnake uncoiled its length and writhed slowly in the dust.

Before the echoes of the shot had died away a mad, inarticulate roar came from the depths of the wagon box. The roar was followed by a thick stream of oaths in an unmistakably Irish voice. The driver, who was slipping a fresh cartridge into the cylinder, looked up to see a man grasping the back of the rear seat for support while rising unsteadily to his feet.

The Irishman, as he stood glaring fiercely at the man who had so rudely awakened him, was without hat or coat, and with bits of hay clinging to a soiled shirt that was unbuttoned at the hairy throat, presented a remarkable figure. His heavy body was fitted with legs like posts; his wide shoulders and deep chest, with arms to match his legs, were so huge as to appear almost grotesque; his round head, with its tumbled thatch of sandy hair, was set on a thick bull-neck; while all over the big bones of him the hard muscles lay in visible knots and bunches. The unsteady poise, the red, unshaven, sweating face, and the angry, blood-shot eyes, revealed the reason for his sleep under such uncomfortable circumstances. The silent driver gazed at his fearsome passenger with calm eyes that seemed to hold in their dark depths the mystery of many a still night under the still stars.

In a voice that rumbled up from his hairy chest—a husky, menacing growl—the Irishman demanded: "Fwhat the hell do ye mane, dishturbin' the peace wid yer clamor? For less than a sup av wather I'd go over to ye wid me two hands."

Calmly the other dropped his gun into its holster. Pointing to the canteen that hung over the side of the wagon fastened by its canvas strap to the seat spring, he drawled softly: "There's the water. Help yourself, stranger."

The gladiator, without a word, reached for the canteen and with huge, hairy paws lifted it to his lips. After a draught of prodigious length he heaved a long sigh and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he turned his fierce eyes again on the driver as if to inquire what manner of person he might be who had so unceremoniously challenged his threat.

The Irishman saw a man, tall and spare, but of a stringy, tough and supple leanness that gave him the look of being fashioned by the out-of-doors. He, too, was coatless but wore a vest unbuttoned over a loose, coarse shirt. A red bandana was knotted easily about his throat. With his wide, high-crowned hat, rough trousers tucked in long boots, laced-leather wrist guards and the loosely buckled cartridge belt with its long forty-five, his very dress expressed the easy freedom of the wild lands, while the dark, thin face, accented by jet black hair and a long, straight mustache, had the look of the wide, sun-burned plains.

With a grunt that might have expressed either approval or contempt, the Irishman turned and groping about in the wagon found a sorry wreck of a hat. Again he stooped and this time, from between the bales of hay, lifted a coat, fit companion to the hat. Carefully he felt through pocket after pocket. His search was rewarded by a short-stemmed clay pipe and the half of a match—nothing more. With an effort he explored the pockets of his trousers. Then again he searched the coat; muttering to himself broken sentences, not the less expressive because incomplete: "Where the divil—Now don't that bate—Well, I'll be—" With a temper not improved by his loss he threw down the garment in disgust and looked up angrily. The silent driver was holding toward him a sack of tobacco.

The Irishman, with another grunt, crawled under the empty seat and climbing heavily over the back of the seat in front, planted himself stolidly by the driver's side. Filling his pipe with care and deliberation he returned the sack to its owner and struck the half-match along one post-like leg. Shielding the tiny flame with his hands before applying the light he remarked thoughtfully: "Ye are a danged reckless fool to be so dishturbin' me honest slape by explodin' that cannon ye carry. 'Tis on me mind to discipline ye for sich outrageous conduct." The last word was followed by loud, smacking puffs, as he started the fire in the pipe-bowl under his nose.

While the Irishman was again uttering his threat, the driver, with a skillful twist, rolled a cigarette and, leaning forward just in the nick of time, he deliberately shared the half-match with his blustering companion. In that instant the blue eyes above the pipe looked straight into the black eyes above the cigarette, and a faint twinkle of approval met a serious glance of understanding.

Gathering up his reins and sorting them carefully, the driver spoke to his team: "You, Buck! Molly! Jack! Pete!" The mules heaved ahead. Again the silence of the world-old hills was shattered by the rattling rumble of the heavy-tired wagon and the ring and clatter of iron-shod hoofs.

Stolidly the Irishman pulled at the short-stemmed pipe, the wagon seat sagging heavily with his weight at every jolt of the wheels, while from under his tattered hat rim his fierce eyes looked out upon the wild landscape with occasional side glances at his silent, indifferent companion.

Again the team was halted for a rest on the heavy grade. Long and carefully the Irishman looked about him and then, turning suddenly upon the still silent driver, he gazed at him for a full minute before saying, with elaborate mock formality: "It may be, Sorr, that bein' ye are sich a hell av a conversationalist, ut wouldn't tax yer vocal powers beyand their shtrength av I should be so baould as to ax ye fwhat the divil place is this?"

The soft, slow drawl of the other answered: "Sure. That there is No
Man's Mountains ahead."

"No Man's, is ut; an' ut looks that same. Where did ye say ye was thryin' to go?"

"We're headed for Rubio City. This here is the old San Felipe trail."

"Uh-huh! So we're goin' to Rubio City, are we? For all I know that may as well be nowhere at all. Well, well, ut's news av intherest to me. We are goin' to Rubio City. Ut may be that ye would exshplain, Sorr, how I come to be here at all."

"Sure Mike! You come in this here wagon from San Felipe."

At the drawling answer the hot blood flamed in the face of the short-tempered Irishman and the veins in his thick neck stood out as if they would burst. "Me name's not Mike at all, but Patrick Mooney!" he roared. "I've two good eyes in me head that can see yer danged old wagon for meself, an' fwhat's more I've two good hands that can break ye in bits for the impedent dried herrin' that ye are, a-thinkin' ye can take me anywhere at all be abductin' me widout me consent. For a sup o' wather I'd go to ye—" He turned quickly to look behind him for the driver was calmly pointing toward the end of the seat. "Fwhat is ut? Fwhat's there?" he demanded.

"The water," drawled the dark-faced man. "I don't reckon you drunk it all the other time."

Again the big man lifted the canteen and drank long and deep. When he had wiped his mouth with the back of his hairy hand and had returned the canteen to its place, he faced his companion—his blue eyes twinkling with positive approval. Scratching his head meditatively, he said: "An' all because av me wantin' to enjoy the blessin's an' advantages av civilization agin afther three long months in that danged gradin' camp, as is the right av ivery healthy man wid his pay in his pocket."

The teamster laughed softly. "You was sure enjoyin' of it a-plenty."

The other looked at him with quickened interest. "Ye was there?" he asked.

"Some," was the laconic reply.

The Irishman scratched his head again with a puzzled air. "I disremimber entire. Was there some throuble maybe?"

The other grinned. "Things was movin' a few."

Patrick Mooney nodded his head. "Uh-huh: mostly they do under thim circumstances. Av course there'd be a policeman, or maybe two?"

"Five," said the man with the lines, gently.

"Five! Howly Mither! I did mesilf proud. An' did they have the wagon? Sure they wud—five policemen niver walked. Wan av thim might, av ut was handy-like, but five—niver! Tell me, man, who else was at the party? No—howld on a minut!" He interrupted himself, "Thim cops stimulate me mimory a bit. Was there not a bunch av sailor-men from wan av thim big ships?"

The driver nodded.

The other, pleased with the success of his mental effort, continued: "Uh-huh—an' I was havin' a peaceful dhrink wid thim all whin somewan made impedent remarks touchin' me appearance, or ancestors, I disremimber which. But where was you?"

"Well, you see," explained the driver in his slow way, "hit was like this. That there saloon were plumb full of sailor-men all exceptin' you an' me. I was a heap admirin' of the way you handled that big hombre what opened the meetin' and also his two pardners, who aimed to back his play. Hit was sure pretty work. The rest of the crowd sort o' bunched in one end of the room an' when you began addressin' the congregation, so to speak, on the habits, character, customs and breedin' of sailor-men in general an' the present company in particular, I see right there that you was a-bitin' off more 'n you could chaw. It wasn't no way reasonable that any human could handle that whole outfit with only just his bare hands, so I edged over your way, plumb edified by your remarks, and when the rush for the mourners' bench come I unlimbered an' headed the stampede pronto. Then I made my little proposition. I told 'em that, bein' the only individual on the premises not a sailor-man nor an Irishman, I felt it my duty to referee the obsequies, so to speak, and that odds of twenty to one, not to mention knives, was strictly agin my convictions. Moreover, bein' the sole an' only uninterested audience, I had rights. Then I offers to bet my pile, even money, that you could handle the whole bunch, takin' 'em two at a throw. I knowed it were some odds, but I noticed that them three what opened the meetin' was still under the influence. Also I undertook to see that specifications was faithfully fulfilled."

"Mither av Gawd, fwhat a sociable!" broke in the Irishman. "An' me too dhrunk to remimber rightly! Did they take yer bet? Ye sun-burned limb av the divil—did they take ut?"

"They sure did," drawled the driver. "I had my gun on them all the time."

"Hurroo! An' did I do ut? Tell me quick—did I do ut? Sure I could aisy av nothin' happened."

"You laid your first pair on top of the three, then the police called the game and the bets were off."

"They pinched the house?"

"They took you an' me."

"Sure! av course they would take us two. 'Tis thim San Felipe police knows their duty. But how could they do ut?"

"I forget details right here, bein' temporarily incapacitated by one o' them hittin' me with a club from behind. I woke up in a cell with you."

The Irishman rubbed the back of his head. "Come to think av ut, I have a bit av a bump on me own noodle that 'tis like helps to exshplain the cell. But fwhat in the divil's name brung us here in this Gawd-forsaken Nobody's Place? Pass me another pipeful an' tell me that av ye can."

The driver passed over the tobacco sack and, stopping his team for another rest, rolled a cigarette for himself. "That's easy," he said. "This here is Jefferson Worth's outfit. He wanted me to start home this morning, so he got me off. I don't know how he done it; mostly nobody knows how Jefferson Worth does things. There was a man with him who knowed you and, as I was some disinclined to leave you under the circumstances, Mr. Worth fixed it up for you, too, then we all jest throwed you in and fetched you along. Mr. Worth with the other man and his kid are comin' on in a buckboard. They'll catch up with us where we camp to-night. I don't mind sayin' that I plumb admired your spirit and action and—sizin' up that police bunch—I could see your talents would sure be wasted in that San Felipe country for some time to come. There'll be plenty of room in Rubio City for you, leastwise 'till you draw your pay again. If you don't like the accommodations you're gettin' I reckon you'd better make good your talk back there and we'll see whether you takes this outfit back to San Felipe or I takes her on to Rubio City."

The Irishman spat emphatically over the wheel. "An' 'tis a gintleman wid proper instincts ye are, though, as a rule, I howld ut impolite to carry a gun. But afther all, 'tis a matter av opinion an' I'm free to admit that there are occasions. Anyhow ye handle ut wid grace an' intilligence. An', fists er shticks, er knives, er guns, that's the thing that marks the man. 'Tis not Patrick Mooney that'll fault a gintleman for ways that he can't help owin' to his improper bringin' up. Av ye don't mind, will ye tell me fwhat they call ye? I'll not be so indelicate as to ax yer name. Fwhat they call ye will be enough."

The other laughed. "My name is Joe Brannin. They call me Texas
Joe—Tex, for short."

"Good bhoy, Tex! Ye look the divil av a lot like a red herrin', but that's not sich a bad fish, an' ye have the right flavor. How could ye help ut? Brannin an' Texas is handles to pull a man through hell wid. But tell me this—who is this man that says he knows me?"

Texas Joe shook his head and, picking out his lines, called to his team. When they were under way again he said: "I didn't hear his name but I judge from the talk that he is one o' them there civil engineers, an' that he's headin' for Rubio City to build the railroad that's goin' through to the coast. Mr. Worth told me that there would be another man and a kid to go back with us, but I know that Mr. Worth hadn't never seen them before himself."

Pat shifted his heavy bulk to face the driver and, removing his pipe from his mouth, asked with deliberation: "An' do ye mane to tell me that this place we're goin' to is on the new line av the Southwestern an' Continental?"

"Sure. They're buildin' into Rubio City from the East now."

The Irishman became excited. "An' this man that knows me—this engineer—is he a fine, big, up-standin' man wid brown eyes an' the look av a king?"

"I ain't never seen no kings," drawled Tex, "but the rest of it sure fits him."

"Well, fwhat do ye think av that? 'Tis the Seer himsilf, or I'm not the son av me own mither. I was hearin' in Frisco, where I went the last time I drawed me pay, that he was like to be on the S. an' C. extension. 'Twas that that took me to San Felipe, bein' wishful to get a job wid him again. Well, well, an' to think ut's the Seer himsilf!"

"What's that you call him?"

"The Seer. I disremimber his other name but he's got wan all shtraight an' proper. He's that kind. They call him the Seer because av his talk av the great things that will be doin' in this country av no rain at all whin ignorant savages like yersilf learn how to use the wather that's in the rivers for irrigation. I've heard him say mesilf that hundreds av thousands av acres av these big deserts will be turned into farms, an' all that be what he calls 'Reclamation.' 'Twas for that some danged yellow-legged surveyor give him the name, an' ut shtuck. But most av the engineers—the rale engineers do ye mind—is wid him, though they do be jokin' him the divil av a lot about what they calls his visions."

"He didn't look like he was locoed," said Texas Joe thoughtfully, "but he's sure some off on that there desert proposition as you'll see before we lands in Rubio."

"I dunno—I've seen some quare things in me time in the way av big jobs that nobody thought could be done at all. But lave ut go. 'Tis not the likes av me an' you that's qualified to give judgment on sich janiuses as the Seer, who, I heard tell, has the right to put more big-manin' letters afther his name than ye have teeth in yer head."

"All the same it ain't the brand on a horse that makes him travel. A man'll sure need somethin' more hefty than letters after his name when he goes up against the desert."

"Well, lave ut go at that. Wait 'til ye know him. But fwhat's this yer tellin' me about a kid? The Seer has no family at all but himsilf an' his job."

Texas grinned. "Maybe not, pard; but he's sure got together part of a family this trip."

"Is ut a gurl, or a bhoy?"

"Boy—'bout a ten-year-old, I'd say."

The Irishman shook his head doubtfully. "I dunno. 'Tis a quare thing for the Seer. Av it was me, or you, now—but the Seer! It's danged quare! But tell me, fwhat's this man, yer boss? 'Tis a good healthy pull he must have to be separatin' us from thim San Felipe police."

Texas Joe deliberated so long before answering this that Pat glanced at him uneasily several times. At last the driver drawled: "You're right there; Jefferson Worth sure has some pull."

Pat grunted. "But fwhat does he do?"

"Do?" Tex swung his team around a spur of the mountain where the trail leads along the side of a canyon to its head. Far below they heard the tumbling roar of a stream in its rocky course.

"Sure the man must do something?"

"As near as I can make out Jefferson Worth does everybody."

"Oh ho! So that's ut? I've no care for the cards mesilf, but av a man's a professional an'—"

"You're off there, pardner. Jefferson Worth ain't that kind. He's one o' these here financierin' sports, an' so far as anybody that I ever seen goes, he's got a dead cinch."

"Ye mane he's a banker?"

"Sure. The Pioneer in Rubio City. He started the game in the early days an' he's been a-rollin' it up ever since. Hit's plumb curious about this here financierin' business," continued Tex, in his slow, meditative way. "Looks to me mostly jest plain, common hold-up, only they do it with money 'stead of a gun. In the old days you used to get the drop on your man with your six, all regular, an' take what he happened to have in his clothes. Then the posse'd get after you an' mebbe string you up, which was all right, bein' part of the game. Now these fellows like Jefferson Worth, they get's your name on some writin's an' when you ain't lookin' they slips up an' gets away with all your worldly possessions, an' the sheriff he jest laughs an' says hits good business. This here Worth man is jest about the coolest, smoothest, hardest proposition in the game. He fair makes my back hair raise. The common run o' people ain't got no more show stackin' up agin Jefferson Worth than two-bits worth o' ice has in hell. Accordin' to my notion hit's this here same financierin' game that's a-ruinin' the West. The cattle range is about all gone now. If they keeps it up we won't be no better out here than some o' them places I've heard about back East."

"'Tis a danged ignorant savage ye are, like the rest av yer thribe, wid yer talk av ruinin' the West. Fwhat wud this counthry be without money? 'Tis thim same financiers that have brung ye the railroads, an' the cities, an' the schools, an' the churches, an' all the other blessin's an' joys of civilization that ye've got to take whither ye likes ut or not. Look at the Seer, now. Fwhat could a man like him—an engineer, mind ye—fwhat could the Seer do widout the men wid money to back him?"

The Irishman's words were answered by a cheerful "Whoa!" and a crash of the brakes as Texas Joe brought his team to a stand near the spring at the head of the canyon. "We camp here," he announced. "This is the last water we strike until we make it over the Pass to Mountain Springs on the desert side. Jefferson Worth will be along with the Seer and his kid most any time now."

A little before dusk the banker, with his two companions, arrived.

"Hello, Pat!" The man who leaped from the buckboard and strode toward the waiting Irishman was tall and broad, with the head and chin of a soldier, and the brown eyes of a dreamer. He was dressed in rough corduroys, blue flannel shirt, laced boots, and Stetson, and he greeted the burly Irishman as a fellow-laborer.

A joyful grin spread over the battered features of the gladiator as he grasped the Seer's outstretched hand. "Well, dang me but ut's glad I am to see ye, Sorr, in this divil's own land. I had me natural doubts, av course, whin I woke up in the wagon, but ut's all right. 'Tis proud I am to be abducted by ye, Sorr."

"Abducted!" The engineer's laugh awoke the echoes in the canyon. "It was a rescue, man!"

"Well, well, let ut go at that! But tell me, Sorr"—he lowered his voice to a confidential rumble—"fwhat's this I hear that ye have yer bhoy wid ye? Sure I niver knew that ye was a man av family." He looked toward the slender lad who, with the readiness of a grown man, was helping the driver of the buckboard to unhitch his team of four broncos. "'Tis a good lad he is, or I'm a Dutchman."

"You're right, Pat, Abe is a good boy," the Seer answered gravely. "I picked him up in a mining camp on the edge of the Mojave Desert when I was running a line of preliminary surveys through that country for the S. and C. last year. He was born in the camp and his mother died when he was a baby. God knows how he pulled through! You know what those mining places are. His father, Frank Lee, was killed in a drunken row while I was there, and Abe showed so much cool nerve and downright manliness that I offered him a place with my party. He has been with me ever since."

Pat's voice was husky as he said: "I ax yer pardon, Sorr, for me blunderin' impedence about yer bein' a man av family. I'm a danged old rough-neck, wid no education but me two fists, an' no manners at all."

The engineer's reply was prevented by the approach of Jefferson Worth who had been talking with Texas Joe. The banker's head came but little above the Seer's shoulders and in comparison with the Irishman's heavy bulk he appeared almost insignificant, while his plain business suit of gray seemed altogether out of place in the wild surroundings. His smooth-shaven face was an expressionless gray mask and his deep-set gray eyes turned from the Irishman to the engineer without a hint of emotion. The two men felt that somewhere behind that gray mask they were being carefully estimated—measured—valued—as possible factors in some far-reaching plan. He spoke to the Seer, and his voice was without a suggestion of color: "I see that your friend has recovered." It was as though he stated a fact that he had just verified.

Laughing at the memory of the Irishman's San Felipe experience, the engineer said: "Mr. Worth, permit me to introduce Mr. Patrick Mooney whom I have known for years as the best boss of a grading gang in the West. Pat, this is Mr. Jefferson Worth, president of the Pioneer Bank in Rubio City."

The Irishman clutched at his tattered hat-brim in embarrassed acknowledgment of the Seer's formality. Jefferson Worth, from behind his gray mask, said in his exact, colorless voice: "He looks as though he ought to handle men."

As the banker passed on toward the big wagon the Irishman drew close to the Seer and whispered hoarsely: "Now fwhat the hell kind av a man is that? 'Tis the truth, Sorr, that whin he looked at me out av that grave-yard face I could bare kape from crossin' mesilf!"

CHAPTER II.

JEFFERSON WORTH'S OFFERING.

When day broke over the topmost ridges of No Man's Mountains, Jefferson Worth's outfit was ready to move. The driver of the lighter rig with its four broncos set out for San Felipe. On the front seat of the big wagon Texas Joe picked up his reins, sorted them carefully, and glanced over his shoulder at his employer. "All set?"

"Go ahead."

"You, Buck! Molly!" The lead mules straightened their traces. "Jack! Pete!" As the brake was released with a clash and rattle of iron rods, the wheelers threw their weight into their collars and the wagon moved ahead.

Grim, tireless, world-old sentinels, No Man's Mountains stood guard between the fertile land on their seaward side and the desolate forgotten wastes of the East. They said to the country of green life, of progress and growth and civilization, that marched to their line on the West, "Halt!" and it stopped. To the land of lean want, of gray death, of gaunt hunger, and torturing thirst, that crept to their feet on the other side, "Stop!" and it came no farther. With no land to till, no mineral to dig, their very poverty was their protection. With an air of grim finality, they declared strongly that as they had always been they would always remain; and, at the beginning of my story, save for that one, slender, man-made trail, their hoary boast had remained unchallenged.

Steadily, but with frequent rests on the grades, Jefferson Worth's outfit climbed toward the summit and a little before noon gained the Pass. The loud, rattling rumble of the wagon as the tires bumped and ground over the stony, rock-floored way, with the sharp ring and clatter of the iron-shod hoofs of the team, echoed, echoed, and echoed again. Loudly, wildly, the rude sounds assaulted the stillness until the quiet seemed hopelessly shattered by the din. Softly, tamely, the sounds drifted away in the clear distance; through groves of live oak, thickets of greasewood, juniper, manzanita and sage; into canyon and wash; from bluff and ledge; along slope and spur and shoulder; over ridge and saddle and peak; fainting, dying—the impotent sounds of man's passing sank into the stillness and were lost. When the team halted for a brief rest it was in a moment as if the silence had never been broken. Grim, awful, the hills gave no signs of man's presence, gave that creeping bit of life no heed.

At Mountain Spring—a lonely little pool on the desert side of the huge wall—they stopped for dinner. When the meal was over, Texas Joe, with the assistance of Pat, filled the water barrels, while the boy busied himself with the canteen and the Seer and Jefferson Worth looked on.

"'Tis a dhry counthry ahead, I'm thinking'," remarked the Irishman inquiringly as he lifted another dripping bucket.

"Some," returned Tex. "There are three water holes between here and the river where there's water sometimes. Mostly, though, when you need it worst, there ain't none there, an' I reckon a dry water hole is about the most discouragin' proposition there is. They'll all be dry this trip. There wasn't nothin' but mud at Wolf Wells when we come through last week."

Again the barren rocks and the grim, forbidding hills echoed the loud sound of wheel and hoof. Down the steep flank of the mountain, with screaming, grinding brakes, they thundered and clattered into the narrow hall-way of Devil's Canyon with its sheer walls and shadowy gloom. The little stream that trickled down from the tiny spot of green at the spring tried bravely to follow but soon sank exhausted into the dry waste. A cool wind, like a draft through a tunnel, was in their faces. After perhaps two hours of this the way widened out, the sides of the canyon grew lower with now and then gaps and breaks. Then the walls gave way to low, rounded hills, through which the winding trail lay—a bed of sand and gravel—and here and there appeared clumps of greasewood and cacti of several varieties.

At length they passed out from between the last of the foot-hills and suddenly—as though a mighty curtain were lifted—they faced the desert. At their feet the Mesa lay in a blaze of white sunlight, and beyond and below the edge of the bench the vast King's Basin country.

At the edge of the Mesa Texas halted his team and the little party looked out and away over those awful reaches of desolate solitude. The Seer and Pat uttered involuntary exclamations. Jefferson Worth, Texas, and Abe were silent, but the boy's thin features were aglow with eager enthusiasm, and the face of the driver revealed an interest in the scene that years of familiarity could not entirely deaden, but the gray mask of the banker betrayed no emotion.

In that view, of such magnitude that miles meant nothing, there was not a sign of man save the one slender thread of road that was so soon lost in the distance. From horizon to horizon, so far that the eye ached in the effort to comprehend it, there was no cloud to cast a shadow, and the deep sky poured its resistless flood of light upon the vast dun plain with savage fury, as if to beat into helplessness any living creature that might chance to be caught thereon. And the desert, receiving that flood from the wide, hot sky, mysteriously wove with it soft scarfs of lilac, misty veils of purple and filmy curtains of rose and pearl and gold; strangely formed with it wide lakes of blue rimmed with phantom hills of red and violet—constantly changing, shifting, scene on scene, as dream pictures shift and change.

Only the strange, silent life that, through long years, the desert had taught to endure its hardships was there—the lizard, horned-toad, lean jack-rabbit, gaunt coyote, and their kind. Only the hard growth that the ages had evolved dotted the floor of the Basin in the near distance—the salt-bush and greasewood, with here and there clumps of mesquite.

And over it all—over the strange hard life, the weird, constantly shifting scenes, the wondrous, ever-changing colors—was the dominant, insistent, compelling spirit of the land; a brooding, dreadful silence; a waiting—waiting—waiting; a mystic call that was at once a threat and a promise; a still drawing of the line across which no man might go and live, save those master men who should win the right.

After a while the engineer, pointing, said: "The line of the Southwestern and Continental must follow the base of those hills away over there—is that right, Texas?"

"That'll be about it," the driver answered. "I hear you're goin' through San Antonio Pass, an' that's to the north. Rubio City lies about here—" he pointed a little south of east. "Our road runs through them sand hills that you can see shinin' like gold a-way over there. Dry River Crossin' is jest beyond. You can see Lone Mountain off here to the south. Hit'll sure be some warm down there. Look at them dust-devil's dancin'. An' over there, where you see that yellow mist like, is a big sand storm. We ain't likely to get a long one this time o' the year. But you can't tell what this old desert 'll do; she's sure some uncertain. La Palma de la Mano de Dios, the Injuns call it, and I always thought that—all things considerin'—the name fits mighty close. You can see hit's jest a great big basin."

"The Hollow of God's Hand." repeated the Seer in a low tone. He lifted his hat with an unconscious gesture of reverence.

The Irishman, as the engineer translated, crossed himself. "Howly
Mither, fwhat a name!"

Jefferson Worth spoke. "Drive on, Texas."

And so, with the yellow dust-devils dancing along their road and that
yellow cloud in the distance, they moved down the slope—down into The
King's Basin—into La Palma de la Mano de Dios, The Hollow of God's
Hand.

"Is that true, sir?" asked Abe of the Seer.

"Is what true, son?"

"What Texas said about the ocean."

"Yes it's true. The lowest point of this Basin is nearly three hundred feet below sea level. The railroad we are going to build follows right around the rim on the other side over there. This slope that we are going down now is the ancient beach." Then, while they pushed on into the silence and the heat of that dreadful land, the engineer told the boy and his companions how the ages had wrought with river and wave and sun and wind to make The King's Basin Desert.

Wolf Wells they found dry as Texas had anticipated. Phantom Lake also was dry. Occasionally they crossed dry, ancient water courses made by the river when the land was being formed; sometimes there were glassy, hard, bare alkali flats; again the trail led through jungle-like patches of desert growth or twisted and wound between high hummocks. Always there was the wide, hot sky, the glaring flood of light unbroken by shadow masses to relieve the eye and reflected hotly from the sandy floor of the old sea-bed.

That evening, when they made camp, a heavy mass of clouds hung over the top of No Man's Mountains and the long Coast Range that walled in the Basin. Texas Joe, watching these clouds, said nothing; but when Pat threw on the ground the water left in his cup after drinking, the plainsman opened upon him with language that startled them all.

The next day, noon found them in the first of the sand hills. There was no sign of vegetation here, for the huge mounds and ridges of white sand, piled like drifts of snow, were never quite still. Always they move eastward before the prevailing winds from the west. Through the greater part of the year they advance very slowly, but when the fierce gales sweep down from the mountains they roll forward so swiftly that any object in their path is quickly buried in their smothering depths.

In the middle of the afternoon Texas climbed to the top of a huge drift to look over the land. The others saw him stand a moment against the sky, gazing to the northwest, then he turned and slid down the steep side of the mound to the waiting wagon.

"She's comin'!" he remarked, laconically, "an' she's a big one. I reckon we may as well get as far as we can."

A few minutes later they saw the sky behind them filling as with a golden mist. The atmosphere, dry and hot, seemed charged with mysterious, terrible power. The very mules tossed their heads uneasily and tugged at the reins as if they felt themselves pursued by some fearful thing. Straight and hard, with terrific velocity, the wind was coming down through the mountain passes and sweeping across the wide miles of desert, gathering the sand as it came. Swiftly the golden mist extended over their heads, a thick, yellow fog, through which the sun shone dully with a weird, unnatural light. Then the stinging, blinding, choking blast was upon them with pitiless, savage fury. In a moment all signs of the trail were obliterated. Over the high edges of the drift the sand curled and streamed like blizzard snow. About the outfit it whirled and eddied, cutting the faces of the men and forcing them, with closed eyes, to gasp for breath.

Of their own accord the mules stopped and Texas shouted to Mr. Worth: "It ain't no use for us to try to go on, sir. There ain't no trail now, and we'd jest drift around."

As far from the lee of a drift as possible, all hands—under the desert man's direction—worked to rig a tarpaulin on the windward side of the wagon. Then, with the mules unhitched and securely tied to the vehicle, the men crouched under their rude shelter. The Irishman was choking, coughing, sputtering and cursing, the engineer laughed good-naturedly at their predicament, and Abe Lee grinned in sympathy, while Texas Joe accepted the situation grimly with the forbearance of long experience. But Jefferson Worth's face was the same expressionless gray mask. He gave no hint of impatience at the delay; no uneasiness at the situation; no annoyance at the discomfort. It was as though he had foreseen the situation and had prepared himself to meet it. "How long do you figure this will last, Tex?" he asked in his colorless voice.

"Not more than three days," returned the driver. "It may be over in three hours."

The morning of the second day they crawled from their blankets beneath the wagon to find the sky clear and the air free from dust. Eagerly they prepared to move. Against their shelter the sand had drifted nearly to the top of the wheels, and the wagon-box itself was more than half filled. The hair, eye-brows, beard and clothing of the men were thickly coated with powdery dust, while every sign of the trail was gone and the wheels sank heavily into the soft sand.

Three times Texas halted the laboring team and, climbing to the summit of a drift, determined his course by marks unknown to those who waited below. Again they stopped for the plainsman to take an observation, and this time the four in the wagon, watching the figure of the driver against the sky, saw him turn abruptly and come down to them with long plunging strides. Instinctively they knew that something unusual had come under his eye.

The Seer and Jefferson Worth spoke together. "What is it, Tex?"

"A stray horse about a mile ahead."

For the first time Texas Joe uncoiled the long lash of his whip and his call "You, Buck! Molly!" was punctuated by pistol-like cracks that sounded strangely in the death-like silence of the sandy waste.

As they came within sight of the strange horse the poor beast staggered wearily to meet the wagon—the broken strap of his halter swinging loosely from his low-hanging head.

"Look at the poor baste," said Pat. "'Tis near dead he is wid thirst." He leaped to the ground and started toward the water barrel in the rear of the wagon.

"Hold on, Pat," said the colorless voice of Jefferson Worth. And his words were followed by the report of Texas Joe's forty-five.

The Irishman turned to see the strange horse lying dead on the sand. "Fwhat the hell—" he demanded hotly, but Texas was eyeing him coolly, and something checked the anger of the Irishman.

"You don't seem to sabe," drawled the man of the desert, replacing the empty shell in his gun. "There ain't hardly enough water to carry us through now, an' we may have to pick up this other outfit."

No one spoke as Pat climbed heavily back to his seat.

For two miles the tracks of the strange horse were visible, then they were blotted out by the sand that had filled them. "He made that much since the blow," was Texas' slow comment. "How far we are from where he started is all guess."

As they pushed on, all eyes searched the country eagerly and before long they found the spot for which they looked. A light spring wagon with a piece of a halter strap tied to one of the wheels was more than half-buried by the sand in the lee of a high drift. There was a small water keg, empty, with its seams already beginning to open in the fierce heat of the sun, a "grub-box," some bedding and part of a bale of hay-nothing more.

Jefferson Worth, Pat and the boy attempted to dig in the steep side of the drift that rose above the half-buried outfit, but at their every movement tons of the dry sand came sliding down upon them. "It ain't no use, Mr. Worth," said Texas, as the banker straightened up, baffled in his effort. "You will never know what's buried in there until God Almighty uncovers it."

Then the man of the desert and plains read the story of the tragedy as though he had been an eye witness. "They was travelin' light an' counted on makin' good time. They must have counted, too, on, findin' water in the hole." He kicked the empty keg. "Their supply give out an' then that sand-storm caught 'em and the horses broke loose. Of course they would go to hunt their stock, not darin' to be left afoot and without water, an' hits a thousand to one they never got back to the outfit. We're takin' too many chances ourselves to lose much time and I don't reckon there's any use, but we'd better look around maybe."

He directed the little party to scatter and to keep on the high ground so that they would not lose sight of each other. Until well on in the afternoon they searched the vicinity, but with no reward, while the hot sun, the dry burning waste and the glaring sands of the desert warned them that every hour's delay might mean their own death. When they returned at last to the wagon, called in by Texas, no one spoke. As they went on their way each was busy with his own thoughts of the grim evidence of the desert's power.

Another hour passed. Suddenly Texas halted the mules and, with an exclamation, leaped to the ground. The others saw that he was bending over a dim track in the sand.

"My God! men," he shouted, "hit's a woman."

For a short way he followed the foot-prints, then, running back to the wagon and springing to his seat, swung his long whip and urged the team ahead.

"Hit's a woman," he repeated. "When the others went away and didn't come back she started ahead in the storm alone. She had got this far when the blow quit, leavin' her tracks to show. We may—" He urged his mules to greater effort.

The prints of the woman's shoe could be plainly seen now. "Look!" said Tex, pointing, "she's staggerin'—Now she's stopped! Whoa!" Throwing his weight on the lines he leaned over from his seat. "Look, men! Look there!" he cried, as he pointed. "She's carryin' a kid. See, there's where she set it down for a rest." It was all too clear. Beside the woman's track were the prints of two baby shoes.

The Seer, with a long breath, drew his hand across his sand-begrimed face. "Hurry, Tex. For God's sake, hurry!"

The Irishman was cursing fiercely in impotent rage, clenching and unclenching his huge, hairy fists. The boy cowered in his seat. But not a change came over the mask-like features of Jefferson Worth. Only the delicate, pointed fingers of his nervous hands caressed constantly his unshaven chin, fingered his clothing, or—gripped the edge of the wagon seat as he leaned forward in his place. Texas—grim, cool, alert, his lean figure instinct now with action and his dark eyes alight—swung his long whip and handled his reins with a master's skill, calling upon every atom of his team's strength, while reading those tracks in the sand as one would scan a printed page.

It was all written there—that story of mother love; where she staggered with fatigue; where she was forced to rest; where the baby walked a little way; and once or twice where the little one stumbled and fell as the sand proved too heavy for the little feet. And all the while the desert, dragging with dead weight at the wheels, seemed to fight against them. It was as though the dreadful land knew that only time was needed to complete its work. Then the hot sun dropped beyond the purple wall of mountain and the mystery of the long twilight began.

"Dry River Crossing is just ahead," said Tex, and soon the outfit pitched down the steep bank of a deep wash that had been made in some forgotten age by an overflow of the great river. Occasionally, after the infrequent rains of winter, some water was to be found here in a hole under the high bank a short way from the trail.

With a crash of brakes the team stopped at the bottom. The men, springing from the wagon and leaving the panting mules to stand with drooping heads, started to search the wash. But in a moment Texas shouted and the others quickly joined him. Near the dry water hole lay the body of a woman. By her side was a small canteen.

[Illustration: He had lifted the canteen and was holding it upside down.]

The engineer bent to examine the still form for some sign of life.

"It ain't no use, sir," said Texas. "She's gone." He had lifted the canteen and was holding it upside down. With his finger he touched the mouth of the vessel and held out his hand. The finger was wet. "You see," he said, "when her men-folks didn't come back she started with the kid an' what water she had. But she wouldn't drink none herself, an' the hard trip in the heat and sand carryin' the baby, an' findin' the water hole dry was too much for her. If only we had known an' come on, instead of huntin' back there where it wasn't no use, we'd a-been in time."

As the little party—speechless at the words of Texas—stood in the twilight, looking down upon the lifeless form, a chorus of wild, snarling, barking yowls, with long-drawn, shrill howls, broke on the still air. It was the coyotes' evening call. To the silent men the weird sound seemed the triumphant cry of the Desert itself and they started in horror.

Then from the dusky shadow of the high bank farther up the wash came another cry that broke the spell that was upon them and drew an answering shout from their lips as they ran forward.

"Mamma! Mamma! Barba wants drink. Please bring drink, mamma. Barba's 'fraid!"

Jefferson Worth reached her first. Close under the bank, where she had wandered after "mamma" lay down to sleep, and evidently just awakened from a tired nap by the coyotes' cry, sat a little girl of not more than four years. Her brown hair was all tumbled and tossed, and her big brown eyes were wide with wondering fear at the four strange men and the boy who stood over her.

"Mamma! Mamma!" she whimpered, "Barba wants mamma."

Jefferson Worth knelt before her, holding out his hands, and his voice, as he spoke to the baby, made his companions look at him in wonder, it was so full of tenderness.

The little girl fixed her big eyes questioningly upon the kneeling man. The others waited, breathless. Then suddenly, as if at something she saw in the gray face of the financier, the little one drew back with fear upon her baby features and in her baby voice. "Go 'way! Go 'way!" she cried. Then again, "Mamma! Barba wants mamma." Jefferson Worth turned sadly away, his head bowed as though with disappointment or shame.

The others, now, in turn tried to win her confidence. The plainsman and the Irishman she regarded gravely, as she had looked at the banker, but without fear. The boy won a little smile, but she still held back—hesitating—reluctant. Then with a pitiful little gesture of confidence and trust, she stretched forth her arms to the big brown-eyed engineer. "Barba wants drink," she said, and the Seer took her in his arms.

At the wagon it was Jefferson Worth who offered her a tin cup of water, but again she shrank from him, throwing her arms about the neck of the Seer. The engineer, taking the cup from the banker's hands, gave her a drink.

While Mr. Worth and the boy prepared a hasty meal, Texas fed his team and the Irishman, going back a short distance, made still another grave beside the road already marked by so many. The child—still in the engineer's arms—ate hungrily, and when the meal was over he took her to the wagon, while the others, with a lantern, returned to the still form by the dry water hole. At the banker's suggestion, a thorough examination of the woman's clothing was made for some clue to her identity, but no mark was found. With careful hands they reverently wrapped the body in a blanket and laid it away in its rude, sandy bed.

When the grave was filled and protected as best it could be, a short consultation was held. Mr. Worth wished to return to the half buried outfit to make another effort to learn the identity of the Desert's victim, but Texas refused. "'Tain't that I ain't willin' to do what's right," he said, "but you see how that sand acted. Why, Mr. Worth, you couldn't move that there drift in a year, an' you know it. I jest gave the mules the last water they'll get an' we're goin' to have all we can do to make it through as it is. If we wait to go back there ain't one chance in a hundred that we-all 'll ever see Rubio City again. It ain't sense to risk killin' the kid when we've got a chance to save her—jest on a slim chance o' findin' out who she is."

Returning to the outfit they very quietly—so as not to awaken the sleeping child—hitched the team to the wagon and took their places. As the mules started the baby stirred uneasily in the Seer's arms and murmured sleepily: "Mamma." But the low, soothing tones of the big man calmed her and she slept.

Hour after hour of the long night dragged by. They had left the sand hills behind three miles before they reached Dry River and now the wide, level reaches of the thinly covered plain, forbidding and ghostly under the stars, seemed to stretch away on every side into infinite space. Involuntarily all the members of the little party, except Texas Joe, strained their eyes looking into the blank, silent distance for lights, and, as they looked, they turned their heads constantly to listen for some sound of human life. But in all that vast expanse there was no light save the light of the stars; in all that silent waste there was no sound save the occasional call of the coyote, the plaintive, quivering note of the ground-owls, the muffled fall of the mules' feet in the soft earth, and the dull chuck, creak, and rumble of the wagon with the clink of trace chains and the squeak of straining harness leather. And always it was as though that dreadful land clung to them with heavy hands, matching its strength against the strength of these who braved its silent threat, seeking to hold them as it held so many others. The men spoke rarely and then in low tones. The baby in the Seer's arms slept. Only Texas, and perhaps his team, knew how they kept the dimly marked trail that led to life. Perhaps Texas himself did not know.

At daybreak they halted for a brief rest and for breakfast. The child ate with the others, but still clung to the engineer, and while asking often for "mamma," seemed to trust her big protector fully. From the shelter of his arms she even smiled at the efforts of Texas, Pat and the boy to amuse and keep her attention from her loss. From Jefferson Worth she still shrank in fear and the others wondered at the pain in that gray face as all his efforts to win a smile or a kind look from the baby were steadily repulsed.

It was Texas who, when they halted, poured the last of the water from the barrel into the canteen and carefully measured out to each a small portion. It was Texas now who gave the word to start again on their journey. And when the desert man placed the canteen with their meager supply of water in the corner of the wagon-box under his own feet the others understood and made no comment.

At noon, when each was given his carefully measured portion from the canteen, Jefferson Worth, before they could check him, wet his handkerchief with his share of the water and gave it to the Seer to wipe the dust from the hot little face of the child. The eyes of the big engineer filled and Texas, with an oath that was more reverent than profane, poured another measure and forced the banker to drink.

As the long, hot, thirsty hours of that afternoon dragged slowly past, the faces of the men grew worn and haggard. The two days and nights in the trying storm, the exertion of their search among the sand hills, the excitement of finding the woman's body and the discovery of the child, followed by the long sleepless night, and now the hard, hot, dreary hours of the struggle with the Desert that seemed to gather all its dreadful strength against them, were beginning to tell. Texas Joe, forced to give constant attention to his team and hardened by years of experience, showed the strain least, while Pat, unfitted for such a trial by his protracted spree in San Felipe, undoubtedly suffered most.

After dinner the Irishman sat motionless in his place with downcast face, lifting his head only at long intervals to gaze with fierce hot eyes upon the barren landscape, while muttering to himself in a growling undertone. Later he seemed to sink into a stupor and appeared to be scarcely conscious of his companions. Suddenly he roused himself and, bending forward with a quick motion, reached the canteen from under the driver's seat. In the act of unscrewing the cap he was halted by the calm-voice of Texas: "Put that back."

"Go to hell wid ye! I'm no sun-dried herrin'."

The cap came loose, but as he raised the canteen and lifted his face with open parched lips he looked straight into the muzzle of the big forty-five and back of the gun into the steady eyes of the plainsman. "I'm sorry, pard, but you can't do it."

For an instant the Irishman sat as if suddenly turned to stone. The water was within reach of his lips, but over the canteen certain death looked at him, for there was no mistaking the expression on the face of that man with the gun. Beside himself with thirst, forgetting everything but the water, and utterly reckless he growled: "Shoot an' be domned, ye murderin' savage!" and again started to lift the cloth-covered vessel.

At that instant the baby, catching sight of the canteen, called from the rear seat: "Barba wants drink. Barba thirsty, too."

As though Texas had pulled the trigger the Irishman dropped his hand. Slowly he looked from face to face of his companions—a dazed expression on his own countenance, as though he were awakening from a dream. The child, clinging to the Seer with one hand and pointing with the other, said again: "Barba thirsty; please give Barba drink."

A look of horror and shame went over the face of the Irishman, his form shook like a leaf and his trembling hands could scarcely hold the canteen. "My Gawd! bhoys," he cried, "fwhat's this I was doin'?" Then he burst suddenly upon Tex with: "Why the hell don't ye shoot, domn ye? A baste like me is fit for nothin' but to rot in this Gawd-forsaken land!"

The fierce rage of the man at his own act was pitiful. Texas dropped his gun into the holster and turned his face away. Jefferson Worth held out a cup. "Give the little one some water, Pat," he said, in his cold, exact way.

With shaking hands the Irishman poured a little into the cup and, screwing the cap back on the canteen, he returned it to its place. Then with a groan he bowed his face in his great, hairy hands.

Just before sun-down they climbed up the ancient beach line to the rim of the Basin and the Mesa on the east. Halting here for a brief rest and for supper, they looked back over the low, wide land through which they had come. All along the western sky and far to the southward, the wall-like mountains lifted their purple heights from the dun plain, a seemingly impassable barrier, shutting in the land of death; shutting out the life that came to their feet on the other side. To the north the hills that rim the Basin caught the slanting rays of the setting sun and glowed rose-color, and pink, and salmon, with deep purple shadows where canyons opened, all rising out of drifts of silvery light. To the northwest two distant, gleaming, snow-capped peaks of the Coast Range marked San Antonio Pass. To the west Lone Mountain showed dark blue against the purple of the hills beyond. Down in the desert basin, drifting above and woven through the ever-shifting masses of color, shimmering phantom lakes, and dull, dusky patches of green and brown, long streamers, bars and threads of dust shone like gleaming gold.

Texas Joe, when he had poured for each his portion of water, shook the canteen carefully, and a smile spread slowly over his sun-blackened features. "What's left belongs to the kid," he said. "But we'll make it. We'll jest about make it."

The Irishman lifted his cup toward the Desert, saying solemnly: "Here's to ye, domn ye! Ye ain't got us yet. May ye burn an' blishther an' scorch an' bake 'til yer danged heart shrivels up an' blows away."

Then he fell to amusing the child with loving fun-talk and queer antics, until she laughed aloud and permitted him to catch her up in his big hairy hands and to toss her high in the air. Texas and Abe, joining in the frolic, shared with Pat the little lady's favor, while the Seer looked smilingly on. But when Jefferson Worth approached, with an offering of pretty stones and shells which he had gathered on the old beach, she ran up to the engineer's arms. Still coaxing, the banker held out his offering. The others were silent, watching. Timidly at last, the child put forth her little hands and accepted the gift, shrinking back quickly with her treasures to the shelter of the big man's arms.

It was just after noon the next day when the men at the wagon yard on the edge of Rubio City looked up to see Jefferson Worth's outfit approaching. The dust-covered, nearly-exhausted team staggered weakly through the gate. On the driver's seat sat a haggard, begrimed figure holding the reins in his right hand; and in his lap, supported by his free arm, a little girl lay fast asleep. Then as one of the mules lay down, the men went forward on the run.

Texas stared at them dully for a moment. Then, as he dropped the reins, his parched, cracked lips parted in what was meant for a smile and he said, in a thick, choking whisper: "We made it, boys: we jest made it. Somebody take the kid."

Eager hands relieved him of his burden and he slid heavily to the ground to stand dizzily holding on to a wheel for support.

One of the men said sharply: "But where's Mr. Worth, Tex? What have you done with Jefferson Worth an' what you doin' with a kid?"

Texas Joe gazed at the questioner steadily as if summoning all his strength of will in an effort to think. "Hello, Jack! Why—damned if I know—he was with me a little while ago."

The engineer, the banker, the Irishman and the boy were lying unconscious on the bottom of the wagon.

CHAPTER III.

MISS BARBARA WORTH.

Mrs. Worth, sitting on the wide veranda of her home after a lonely supper, lifted her eyes frequently from the work in her lap to look down the street. Perhaps it was unusual for a banker's wife to be darning her husband's socks; it may be, even, that bankers do not usually wear socks that have been darned. But Mrs. Worth was not sensible that her task was at all strange.

A group of dust-covered cow-boys, coming into town for an evening's pleasure, jogged past with loud laughter and soft-clinking spurs and bridle-chains. "There's Jefferson Worth's place," said one. "D'ye reckon he'll make good corralin' all the money there is in the world?"

Now and then a carriage, filled with well-to-do citizens out for an evening ride, drove slowly by. The people in the carriages always saluted Mrs. Worth and she returned their salutations with a prim little bow. But no one stopped to chat or to offer her a seat. In this, also, there was nothing strange to the woman on the porch of the big, empty house. Sometimes the people in the carriages, entertaining visiting friends, pointed to Jefferson Worth's house, with proper explanations, as they also called attention to the Pioneer Bank—Jefferson Worth's bank.

When dusk came and she could no longer see, Mrs. Worth laid aside her work and sat with folded hands, her face turned down the street. Inside the house the lights were not yet on; there was no need for them and she liked to sit in the dark.

The Indian servant woman came softly to the door. "Does the Senora wish anything?"

"No, thank you, Ynez; come and sit down."

Noiselessly the woman seated herself on the top step.

"It has been warm to-day, Ynez."

"Si, Senora."

"It is nearly three weeks since Mr. Worth left with Texas Joe for San
Felipe, Ynez."

"Si, Senora."

"Do you know how far it is across the Desert to San Felipe?"

"Si. I think three—four day, maybe five, Senora."

"It will be very hot."

"Si, Senora. Las' year my sister's man—Jose—go for San Felipe. No much water. He no come back."

"Yes, I remember. What is it your people call The King's Basin Desert?
The Hollow of God's Hand, isn't it?"

"Si, Senora. La Palma de la Mano de Dios."

"I wish they would come."

"He come pretty quick, I think. Mebbe so he not start when he think. Mebbe so what you call 'beesness' not let him come," said the Indian woman, soothingly.

"But Mr. Worth expected to be back two days ago and he is always on time, you know, Ynez."

"Si, Senora. But mebbe so this one time different"

"I do wish they would—-Look, Ynez, look! There's some one stopping!"

A carriage was turning in toward the house.

"It is Senor Worth," said the Indian woman.

"Someone is with him, Ynez. They have a child."

As Jefferson Worth and the Seer came up the walk—the engineer carrying the little girl—Mrs. Worth rose unsteadily to her feet. "Run, quick, Ynez—quick! The lights!"

That night when the Seer, with everything possible done for his comfort, had retired, and the baby—bathed and fed—was sound asleep in a child's bed that Ynez had brought from an unused room in the banker's big house and placed in Mrs. Worth's own chamber, Jefferson Worth and his wife crept softly to the little girl's bedside. Silently they looked at the baby form under the snow-white coverlet and at the round, baby face, with the tumbled brown hair, on the pillow.

Mrs. Worth clasped her hands in eager longing as she whispered: "Oh,
Jeff, can we keep her? Can we?"

Jefferson Worth answered in his careful manner: "Did you look for marks on her clothing?"

"There was nothing—not a letter even. And all that she can tell of her name is Barba. I'm sure she means Barbara." As she answered, Mrs. Worth searched her husband's face anxiously. Then she exclaimed: "Oh you do want her; you do!" and added wistfully: "Of course we must try to find her folks, but do you think it very wrong, Jeff, to wish—to wish that we never do? I feel as though she were sent to take the place of our own little girl. We need her so, Jeff. I need her so—and you—you will need her, when—" There was a day coming that the banker and his wife did not talk about. Since the birth and death of their one child, Mrs. Worth had been a hopeless invalid.

Several weeks passed and every effort to find little Barbara's people was fruitless. Inquiry in Rubio City and San Felipe and through the newspapers on the Coast brought no returns. The land in those days was a land of strangers where people came and went with little notice and were lost quickly in the ever-restless tide. It was not at all strange that no one could identify an outfit of which it was possible to tell only of a woman and child and one bay horse. There were many outfits with a woman and child in the party and many that had among the two, four, six, or more animals one bay horse.

In the meantime, little Barbara, in her new home, was growing gradually away from all that had gone before her long ride in the big wagon with the men. Already she was beginning to talk of her "other mamma and papa." Mrs. Worth slipped into the other woman's place in the childish heart, even as little Barbara filled the empty mother-heart of the woman.

Toward Mr. Worth, though she no longer shrank from him in fear, the little girl maintained an attitude of questioning regard. With Texas or Pat or the boy Abe, who often went together to see her, she laughed and chattered like a good little comrade and play-fellow. But when the Seer came, as he did whenever his duties and his presence in town would permit, she flew to him with eager love, climbing on his knee or snuggling under his arm with entire confidence and understanding.

Public interest in Rubio City, keen at first, died out quickly. Rubio City, in those days of railroad building, had too many things of interest to retain any one thing long. Still, because it was Jefferson Worth, Rubio City could not altogether drop the matter. So it was one evening in the Gold Bar saloon, where Pat, coming into town for a quiet evening from the grading camp on the new road, and Texas Joe, who was just back from another trip across the Desert, were having a friendly glass in a quiet corner.

"Is there anythin' doin' in that San Felipe I don't know?" was Pat's natural question. "Things is that slow in this danged town I'm gettin' all dead on me insides."

Texas grinned in his slow way. "There'll be another pay day before long."

"Yes, an' 'tis ye that'll be 'round agin to kape me from proper enjoyment av the blissin's av civilization wid yer talk av the gold that's to be found in thim mountains that nobody but ye knows where they are. 'Tis a fool I am to be listenin' to yer crazy drames."

"Just keep your shirt on a little longer, pard," returned the other soothingly. "We've most enough for a grub-stake now. When we're a little mite better fixed we'll pull out of this sinful land o' temptation an' when we come back"—he drew a long breath—"we'll do the thing up proper."

Pat dropped his glass with a thump. "We will," he said. "We will that. An' it's to San Felipe we'll go. Tell me, did you see no wan there inquirin' afther me good health this last thrip?"

"I kept away from Sailor Mike's place, not wishin' to deprive you of your share o' the sport. But I met a big policeman who said: 'Tell that red-headed Irish bum that it'll be better for his health to stay away from San Felipe.'"

"He did, did he? He towld ye that? The big slob! He knows ut will be better for him. Fwhat did ye tell him?"

"I said you'd decided to locate here permanent."

Pat gasped for breath. "Ye towld him that! Ye did! Yer a danged sun-baked herrin' av a man wid no proper spirit at all. Fwhat the hell do ye mane to be so slanderin' me reputation an' two or three hundred miles av disert between me an' him? For a sup av wather I'd go to ye wid me two hands."

Texas Joe laughed outright. "Let's have another drink instead," he said.

In the silence occasioned by the re-filling of their glasses the two friends caught the name of Jefferson Worth. Instantly their attention was attracted to a well-dressed, smart-looking stranger, who stood at the bar talking loudly to a man known to Rubio City as a promoter of somewhat doubtful mining schemes. Pat and Texas listened with amused interest while the two in concert cursed Jefferson Worth with careful and exhaustive attention to details.

"Go to it, gentlemen!" put in the bar-keeper, as he returned to his place from the table in the corner. "We-all sure endorses your opinions. Have one on the house." He graciously helped them to more liquor.

"Brother Worth sure stands high with this here congregation," drawled
Texas Joe to his companion.

"Hst!" whispered Pat. "They're askin' afther the kid." The casual, amused interest of the two friends became intense.

"They sure tried everything to find her folks," the saloon man was saying, "but there ain't no thin' doin' so far. They say if nobody shows up with a claim Jefferson Worth is goin' to adopt her an' bring her up like his own."

This statement of Jefferson Worth's intentions called forth from the stranger an exhaustive opinion as to the banker's fitness to have the child and her probable chances for right training and happiness in the financier's hands. His remarks being cordially commended by the promoter and the man in the white apron, the speaker was encouraged to strengthen his position in reference to the future of this poor, helpless orphan and to point out freely the duties of Rubio City in the matter. He was interrupted by a light hand on his shoulder. Turning with a start that spilled the liquor in his glass, he looked into the lean face of Texas Joe. Behind the plainsman stood the heavy form of the Irishman, a look of pleased anticipation on his battle-scarred features. There was a sudden sympathetic hush in the room. Every face was turned toward the group.

"Excuse me, stranger," said Texas, in his softest tones; "but I sure am moved to testify in this here meetin'."

The man would have made some angry, blustering reply, but a warning look from the promoter and a slight cough from the bar-tender checked him.

Tex proceeded. "That you-all has rights to your opinion regardin' Mr. Jefferson Worth's character I ain't denyin', an' there's plenty in Rubio City that'll agree with you. Mebbe you has reasons for feelin' grieved. I don't sabe this here business game nohow. Mebbe you stacked the deck an' he caught you at it. You sure impresses me that a-way, for I've noticed that it ain't the sport who plays fair or loses fair that squeals loudest when the cards are agin him. But when you touches on said Jefferson Worth an' the future of that little kid, with free remarks on the duties of Rubio City regardin' the same, you're sure gettin' around where I live. Me an' this gent here"—he waved his hand toward Pat with elaborate formality, to the huge delight of his audience—"me an' this here gent is first uncles to that kid, an' any pop-eyed, lop-eared, greasy-fingered cross between a coyot' an' a jack-rabbit that comes a-pouncin' out o' the wilds o' civilization to jump our claim by makin' insinuations that we ain't competent to see that the aforementioned kid has proper bringin' up an' that Brother Worth ain't a proper daddy for her, had best come loaded for trouble. For trouble'll sure camp on his trail 'til he's reformed or been safely planted."

In the significant pause that followed no one moved. Texas stood easily, looking into the eyes of the stranger. Pat shot fierce, watchful glances around the room, from face to face.

"I trust you get's the force o' my remarks," concluded Texas suggestively.

The stranger moved uneasily and looked hurriedly about for signs of sympathy or assistance. Every face was a blank. Texas waited.

"I suppose I was hasty," said the stranger, sullenly. "I beg your pardon, gentlemen."

"Consider the meetin' dismissed, gentlemen," said Texas, easily. "Me an' my pardner trusts that the congregation will treasure our remarks in the future. Now, you bar-tender, everybody drinks on us to the health and happiness of our respected niece—Miss Barbara Worth."

On the street a few minutes later Pat growled his disappointment. "The divil take a man wid no bowels."

Ignoring his friend's complaint, Texas returned meditatively; "Do you think, Pat, that there might be anything in what that there gent said? In spite o' what we seen of him on that trip, Jefferson Worth is sure a cold proposition. Give it to me straight. What will he do for the little one?"

"An' it's just fwhat we see'd on that thrip that makes me think ut's a question av fwhat the little girl will do to him," answered Pat, thereby sustaining the reputation of his race.

CHAPTER IV.

YOU'D BETTER MAKE IT NINETY.

Fifteen years of a changing age left few marks on Rubio City. Luxurious overland trains, filled with tourists, now stopped at the depot where, under the pepper trees, sadly civilized Indians sold Kansas City and New Jersey-made curios—stopped and went on again along the rim of The King's Basin, through San Antonio Pass to the great cities on the western edge of the continent. But the town on the banks of the Colorado, in an almost rainless land, had little to build upon. Still on the street mingled the old-timers from desert, mountain and plain; from prospecting trip, mine or ranch; the adventurer, the promoter, the Indian, the Mexican, the frontier business man and the tourist.

But there were few of the citizens of Rubio City now who knew the story of the baby girl whom Jefferson Worth and his party had found in La Palma de la Mano de Dios. For, though Rubio City was changed but little since that day when Texas Joe brought the outfit with the child safely out of the Desert, the people came and went always as is the manner of their moving kind. The few "old-timers" who remained had long ceased to tell the story. No one thought of the young woman, who rode down the street that afternoon, save only as the daughter of Jefferson Worth.

As she passed, the people turned to follow her with their eyes—the "old-timers" with smiles of recognition and picturesque words of admiring comment; the townspeople with cheerful greetings—a wave of the hand or a nod when they caught her eye; the strangers from the East with curious interest and ready kodaks. Here, the visitors told themselves, was the real West.

"How interesting!" gasped a tailor-made woman tourist to her escort. "Look, George, she is wearing a divided skirt and riding a man's saddle! And look! quick! where's your camera? She has a revolver!"

That revolver, a dainty but effective pearl-handled weapon, was a gift to Barbara from her "uncles," Texas and Pat; and though ornamental was not for ornament. The girl often went alone, as she was going to-day, for a long ride out on the Mesa, and the country still harbored many wild and lawless characters.

But the tailored woman tourist did not need to urge George to look. There was something about the girl on the quick-stepping, spirited horse that challenged attention. The khaki-clad figure was so richly alive—there was such a wealth of vitality; such an abundance of young woman's strength; such a glow of red blood expressed in every curved line and revealed in every graceful movement—that the attraction was irresistible. To look at Barbara Worth was a pleasure; to be near her was a delight.

At the Pioneer Bank the girl cheeked her horse and, swinging lightly to the ground, threw the reins over the animal's head, thus tying him in western fashion. As she stood now on the sidewalk laughing and chatting with a group of friends, who had paused in passing to greet her, her beautiful figure lost none of the compelling charm that made her, on horseback, so good to look at. Every movement and gesture expressed perfect health. The firm flesh of her rounded cheeks and full throat was warmly browned and glowing with the abundance of red blood in her veins. Though framed in a mass of waving brown hair under a wide sombrero, her features were not pretty. The mouth was perhaps a bit too large, though it was a good mouth, and, as she laughed with her companions, revealed teeth that were faultless. But something looked out of her brown eyes and made itself felt in every poise and movement that forced one to forget to be critical. It was the wholesome, challenging lure of an unmarred womanhood.

"Oh, Barbara, how could you—how could you miss last Thursday afternoon at Miss Colson's? We had a perfectly lovely time!" cried a vivacious member of the little group.

"Yes indeed, young lady; explanations are in order," added another. "Miss Colson didn't like it a bit. She had an exquisite luncheon, and you know how people depend upon your appreciation of good things to eat!"

"Well, you see," answered Barbara, turning to pat her horse's neck as the animal, edging closer to her side, rubbed his soft muzzle coaxingly against her shoulder, "Pilot and I were out on the Mesa and he said he didn't want to come back. Pilot doesn't care at all for afternoon parties, do you old boy?"—with another pat—"so what could I do? I didn't like to hurt Miss Colson's feelings, of course, but I didn't like to hurt Pilot's feelings either; and the day was so perfect and Pilot was feeling so good and we were having such fun together! I guess it was a case of 'a bird in the hand,' or 'possession being nine points,' you know; or something like that. Only for pity's sake, girls, don't tell Miss Colson I said that."

They all laughed understandingly and the vivacious one said: "I guess it was possession all right. Could anything on earth induce you to give up your horse and your desert, Barbara?"

Inside the bank Jefferson Worth, with his customary careful, exact manner, was explaining to a small rancher that it was impossible to extend the loan secured by a mortgage on the farmer's property. Personally Mr. Worth would be glad to accommodate him. But the loan had already been extended three times and there were good reasons why the bank must call it in. The farmer must remember that a bank's duty to its stockholders and depositors was sacred. It was not a question of the farmer's honesty; it was altogether a question of Good Business.

The farmer was agitated and presented his case desperately. Mr. Worth knew the situation—the unforeseen circumstances that made it impossible for him to pay then. Only two months more were needed—until his new crop matured. He could not blame Mr. Worth, of course. He understood that it was business, but still—The farmer searched that cold, mask-like face for a ray of hope as a man might hold out his hands for pity to a machine. He was made to feel somehow that the banker was not a man with human blood, but a mechanical something, governed and run by a mighty irresistible power with which it had nothing to do save to obey as a locomotive obeys its steam.

Jefferson Worth began explaining again in exact, precise tones that the loan, wholly for business reasons, was impossible, when Barbara entered the bank. As the girl greeted the teller in front, her voice, full and rich, with the same unconscious power that looked out of her eyes and spoke in every movement of her body, came through the bronze grating at the window and carried down the room. Jefferson Worth paused. With the farmer he faced the open door of his apartment. Every man in the place looked up. The desk-weary clerks smilingly answered her greeting and turned back to their books with renewed energy. The cashier straightened up from his papers and—leaning back in his chair—exchanged a jest with her as she passed.

"Oh, excuse me, father, I thought you were alone. How do you do, Mr.
Wheeler? And how is Mrs. Wheeler and that dear little baby?"

The man's face lighted, his form straightened, his voice rang out heartily. "Fine, Miss Barbara, fine, thank you. All we need in the world now is for your father to give me time enough on that blamed note to make a crop."

Barbara Worth was just tall enough to look straight into her father's eyes. As she looked at him now the banker felt a little as he had felt that night in the Desert, when the baby, whose dead mother lay beside the dry water hole, shrank back from him in fear.

"Oh, I'm sure father will be glad to do that," the girl said eagerly. "Won't you father? You know how hard Mr. Wheeler works and what trouble he has had. And I want some money, too," she added; "that's what I came in for."

The farmer laughed loudly. Jefferson Worth smiled.

"But I don't want it for myself," Barbara went on quickly, smiling at them both. "I want it for that poor Mexican family down by the wagon yard—the Garcias. Pablo's leg was broken in the mines, you know, and there is no one to look after his mother and the children. Someone must care for them."

They were interrupted by a clerk who handed a paper to the banker.
"This is ready for your signature, sir."

Jefferson Worth's face was again a cold, gray mask. Methodically he affixed his name to the document. Then to the clerk: "You may give Miss Worth whatever money she wants."

The employe smiled as he answered: "Yes, sir," and withdrew.

Barbara turned to follow. "Good-by, Mr. Wheeler. Tell Mrs. Wheeler I'm going to ride out to see her soon. I haven't forgotten that good buttermilk you see."

"Good-by, Miss Barbara, good-by! I'll tell the wife. We're always glad to see you."

The farmer could not have said that Jefferson Worth's face changed or that his voice altered a shade in tone as they turned again to the business in hand. "I guess we can fix you out this time, Wheeler. Sixty days, you say? You'd better make it ninety so you will not be crowded in marketing your crop."

Quickly the black horse carrying Barbara passed through the streets to the outskirts of the city, where the adobe houses of the earlier days, with tents and shacks of every description, were scattered in careless disorder to the very edge of the barren Mesa. Beyond the wagon yard Barbara turned Pilot toward a whitewashed house that stood by itself on the extreme outskirts. Her approach was announced by the loud barking of a lean dog and the joyful shouts of three half-naked Mexican children; and as the horse stopped a woman appeared in the low doorway.

"Buenas dias, Senorita," she called; then, still in her native tongue:
"Manuel, take the lady's horse. You Juanita, drive that dog away. This
is not the manner to receive a lady. Come in, come in, Senorita. May
God bless you for a good friend to the poor. Come in."

Everything about the place, although showing unmistakable signs of poverty, was clean and orderly, while the manner of the woman, though quietly respectful and warmly grateful, showed a dignified self-respect. In one corner of the room, on a rude bed, lay a young man.

The girl returned the woman's greeting kindly in Spanish and, going to the bedside, spoke, still in the soft, musical tongue of the South, to the man. "How are you to-day, Pablo? Is the leg getting better all right?"

"Si, Senorita, thank you," he replied, his dark face beaming with gladness and gratitude and his eyes looking up at her with an expression of dumb devotion. "Yes, I think it gets better right along. But it is slow and it is hard to lie here doing nothing for the mother and the children. God knows what would become of us if it were not for your goodness. La Senorita is an angel of mercy. We can never repay."

The people were of the better class of industrious poor Mexicans. The father was dead, and Pablo, the eldest son, who was the little family's sole support, had been hurt in the mine some two weeks before. Barbara visited them every few days, caring for their wants as indeed she helped many of Rubio City's worthy poor. For this work Jefferson Worth gave her without question all the money that she asked and often expressed his interest in his own cold way, even telling her of certain cases that came to his notice from time to time. So the banker's daughter was hailed as an angel of mercy and greatly loved by the same class that feared and cursed her father.

For a little while the girl talked to Pablo and his mother cheerfully and encouragingly, with understanding asking after their needs. Then, placing a gold piece in the woman's hand and promising to come again, she bade them—"Adios."

For a short distance Barbara now followed the old San Felipe trail along which, as a baby, she had been brought by her friends to Jefferson Worth's home. But where the old road crosses the railroad tracks, and leads northwest into The King's Basin, the girl turned to the right toward the end of that range of low hills that rims the Desert.

As her horse traveled up the long gradual slope in the easy swinging lope of western saddle stock, the view grew wider and wider. The sun poured its flood of white light down upon the broad Mesa, and away in the distance the ever-widening King's Basin lay, a magic, constantly changing ocean of soft colors. Nearer ahead were the hills, brown and tawny, with blue shadows in the canyons shading to rose and lilac and purple as they stretched their long lengths away toward the lofty, snow-capped sentinels of the Pass. Free from the city with its many odors, the dry air was invigorating like wine and came to her rich with the smell of the sun-burned, wind-swept plains. The girl breathed deeply. Her cheeks glowed—her eyes shone. Even her horse, seeming to catch her spirit, arched his neck and, in sheer joy of living, pretended to be frightened now and then at something that was really nothing at all.

At the foot of the first low, rounded hill Barbara faced Pilot to the northwest and bade him stand still. Motionless now the girl sat in her saddle, looking away over La Palma de la Mano de Dios. It was to this point that Barbara so often came, and as she looked now over the miles and miles of that silent, dreadful land her face grew sad and wistful and in her eyes there was an expression that the Seer sometimes said made him think of the desert.

Gentle Mrs. Worth had lived just long enough to leave an indelible impression of her simple genuineness upon the life of the child, who had come to take in her heart the place left vacant by the death of her own baby girl. Since the loss of her second mother the girl had lived with no woman companion save the Indian woman Ynez, and it was the Seer rather than Jefferson Worth to whom she turned in fullest confidence and trust. The childish instinct that had led the baby to the big engineer's arms that night on the Desert had never wavered through the years when she was growing into womanhood, and the Seer, whose work after the completion of the S. and C. called him to many parts of the West, managed every few months a visit to the girl he loved as his own. To Mr. Worth who, as far as it was possible for him to be, was in all things a father to her, Barbara gave in return a daughter's love, but she had never been able to enter into the life of the banker as she entered into the life of the engineer. So it was the Seer who became, after Mrs. Worth, the dominant influence in forming the character of the motherless girl. His dreams of Reclamation, his plans and efforts to lead the world to recognize the value of that great work, with his failures and disappointments, she shared at an early age with peculiar sympathy, for she had not been kept in ignorance of the tragic part the desert had played in her own life. Particularly did The King's Basin Desert interest her. She felt that, in a way, it belonged to her; that she belonged to it. It was her Desert. Its desolation she shared; its waiting she understood; something of its mystery colored her life; something within her answered to its call. It was her Desert; she feared it; hated it; loved it.

Often as Barbara sat looking over that great basin her heart cried out to know the secret it held. Who was she? Who were her people? What was the name to which she had been born? What was the life from which the desert had taken her? But no answer to her cry had ever come from the awful "Hollow of God's Hand."

Before Barbara had left her home that afternoon a man, walking with long, easy stride, followed the San Felipe trail out from the city on to the Mesa. He was a tall man and of so angular and lean a figure that his body seemed made up mostly of bone somewhat loosely fastened together with sinews almost as hard as the frame-work. His face, thin and rugged, was burned to the color of saddle leather. He was dressed in corduroy trousers, belted and tucked in high-laced boots, a soft gray shirt and slouch hat, and over his square shoulders was the strap of a small canteen. His long legs carried him over the ground at an astonishing rate, so that before Barbara had left the Mexicans the pedestrian had gained the foot of the low hill at the mouth of the canyon.

With remarkable ease the man ascended the rough, steep side of the hill, where, selecting a convenient rock, he seated himself and gave his attention to the wonderful scene that, from his feet, stretched away miles and miles to the purple mountain wall on the west. So still was he and so intent in his study of the landscape, that a horned-toad, which had dodged under the edge of the rock at his approach, crept forth again, venturing quite to the edge of his boot heel; and a lizard, scaling the rock at his back, almost touched his shoulder.

When Barbara had left the San Felipe trail and was riding toward the hills, the man's eyes were attracted by the moving spot on the Mesa and he stirred to take from the pocket of his coat a field glass, while at his movement the horned-toad and the lizard scurried to cover. Adjusting his glass he easily made out the figure of the girl on horseback, who was coming in his direction. He turned again to his study of the landscape, but later, when the horse and rider had drawn nearer, lifted his glass for another look. This time he did not turn away.

Rapidly, as Barbara drew nearer and nearer, the details of her dress and equipment became more distinct until the man with the glass could even make out the fringe on her gauntlets, the contour of her face and the color of her hair. When she stopped and turned to look over the desert below he forgot the scene that had so interested him and continued to gaze at her, until, as the girl turned her face in his direction and apparently looked straight at him, he dropped the glass in embarrassed confusion, forgetting for the instant that at that distance, with his gray and yellow clothing so matching the ground and rock, he would not be noticed. With a low chuckle at his absurd situation he recovered himself and again lifting the glass turned it upon Barbara, who was now riding swiftly toward the mouth of a little canyon that opened behind the hill where he sat.

Suddenly with an exclamation the young man sprang to his feet. The running horse had stumbled and fallen. After a few struggling efforts to rise the animal lay still. The girl did not move. With long, leaping strides the man plunged down the rough, steep side of the hill.

When Barbara slowly opened her eyes she was lying in the shadow of the canyon wall some distance from the spot where her horse had stumbled. Still dazed with the shock of her fall she looked slowly around, striving to collect her scattered senses. She knew the place but could not remember how she came there. And where was her horse—Pilot? And how came that canteen on the ground by her side? At this she sat up and looked around just in time to see a tall, gaunt, roughly-dressed figure coming toward her from the direction of the canyon mouth.

Instantly the girl reached for her gun. The holster was empty.

The man, quite close now, seeing the suggestive gesture, halted; then, coming nearer, silently held out her own pearl-handled revolver.

Still confused and acting upon the impulse of the moment before, Barbara caught the weapon from the out-stretched hand and in a flash covered the silent stranger.

Very deliberately the fellow drew back a few paces and stretched both hands high above his head.

"Who are you?" asked the girl sharply.

"A white man," he answered whimsically, adding as if it were an afterthought, "and a gentleman."

"But why—-What—-How did I get here? Where did you come from?"

"I was up on the hill back there. I saw your horse fall and went to you the quickest way. You were unconscious and I carried you here out of the sun."

"I remember now," said Barbara. "We were running and Pilot fell. He must have stepped into a hole." She put up her free hand to her forehead and found it wet. Her eyes fell on the canteen and the color came back into her face with a rush. "But you haven't told me who you are," she said sternly to the man who still stood with hands uplifted.

"I'm a surveyor going south with a party on some preliminary work. We arrived in Rubio City this morning expecting to find the Chief, who wrote me from New York to meet him here with an outfit. He has not arrived and there was nothing to do so I walked out on the Mesa to have another look at this King's Basin country."

Barbara knew that the Seer had been called to New York by some capitalists who had become interested in the financial possibilities of the reclamation work. At the stranger's explanation of his presence she regarded him with excited interest. "Do you mean—Is it the Seer whom you expected to meet? Are you—with him?"

The young man smiled gravely. "I was sure that it was you," he answered. "You are the little girl whom we found in the desert."

"And you"—burst forth Barbara, eagerly—"you must be Abe Lee!"

The surveyor answered whimsically: "Don't you think I might take my hands down now? I'm unarmed you know and you could still shoot me if you thought I needed it."

In her excitement Barbara had forgotten that she still held her weapon pointed straight at him. She dropped the gun with a confused laugh. "I beg your pardon, A—Mr. Lee. I did not realize that I was holding up my"—she hesitated, then finished gravely—"my only brother."

A quick glad light flashed into the sharp blue eyes of the surveyor.
"You have not forgotten me then?"

"Forgotten! When father and the Seer and Texas and Pat and you are all the—the family I have in the world." Her lips quivered, but she went on bravely: "The Seer has told me so many things about you and I have thought about you so much. But I did not realize, though, that you were a big, grown-up man. The Seer always speaks of you as a boy and so I have always called you my brother Abe as I call Texas and Pat my uncles. But I think you might have come to see me sometimes. Why didn't you come straight to me this morning instead of tramping 'way out here alone?"

Abe Lee was silent. How could he explain the place in his life that was filled by the little girl whom he had known for the two years that the building of the railroad had kept him with the Seer in Rubio City? How could she understand the poverty and grinding hardship of his boyhood struggle when the only time he could snatch from his work he must spend on his books, while she was growing up in the banker's home? He was more alone in the world than Barbara. Save for the Seer he had no one. Texas and Pat he had met at intervals when they came together on some construction work, and always they had talked about her; while the engineer had often told him of Barbara's interest in her "brother"; and sometimes the Seer even shared with him her letters. But all this had only served to emphasize the distance that lay between them. It was not a distance of miles but of position—of circumstances. The nameless little waif of the desert had become the daughter of Jefferson Worth. The child of the mining camp was—Abe Lee. So when, at last, his work had brought him to Rubio City again he shrank from meeting her and had gone out on to the Mesa to look away over La Palma de la Mano de Dios—to be alone.

Barbara, seeing his embarrassment at her question, guessed a part of the reason and gently sought to relieve the situation. "I think we had better find my horse and start for home now," she said.

The thin, sun-tanned face of the surveyor was filled with sympathy as he replied: "I'm sorry, but your pony is down and out."

"Down and out! Pilot? Oh! you don't mean—You don't—-"

Abe explained simply. "His leg was broken and he couldn't get up. There was nothing that could possibly be done for him. He was suffering so that I——It was for that I borrowed your gun."

For a long time she sat very still, and the man, understanding that she wished to be alone, quietly went a little way up the canyon around the jutting edge of the rocky wall. Deliberately he seated himself on a boulder and taking from the pocket of his flannel shirt tobacco and papers, rolled a cigarette. A deep inhalation and the gray cloud rose slowly from his lips and nostrils. Stooping he carefully gathered a handful of sharp pebbles and—one by one—flipped them idly toward the opposite side of the canyon. Another generous puff of smoke and a second handful of pebbles followed the first. Then rising he dropped the cigarette and went back to her.

"I think we should be going now"—he hesitated—"sister."

She looked up with a smile of understanding. "Thank you—Abe. Can we go back over the hill there, do you think? I—I don't want to see him again."

Together they climbed the low hill at the mouth of the canyon from which he had seen the accident, the girl resolutely keeping her eyes fixed ahead so as not to see the dead horse on the plain below. When the top of the hill was between them and the canyon she made him stop and together they stood looking down and far away over the wide reaches of The King's Basin.

"Isn't it grand? Isn't it awful?" she said in a low, reverent tone. "It fairly hurts. It seems to be calling—calling; waiting—waiting for some one. Sometimes I think it must be for me. I fear it—hate it—love it so." Her voice vibrated with strong passion and the surveyor, looking up, saw her wide-eyed, intense expression and felt as did the Seer that somehow she was like the desert.

"Do you come out here often?" he asked curiously.

"Yes, often," she answered. "I could not get along without my Desert and this is the finest place to see it. The Seer always comes out here with me when he can. Do you think that land will ever be reclaimed?" She faced him with the question.

"Why, no one can say about that, you know," he answered slowly. "There has never been a survey."

"Well," she declared emphatically, "I know. It will be. Listen! Don't you hear it calling? I think it's for that it has been waiting all these ages."

The surveyor smiled as one would humor a child. "Perhaps you are right," he said.

"Now you are laughing at me," she returned quickly. "They all do; father and the Seer and Texas and Pat. But you shall see! I believe, though, that the Seer thinks that I am right, only he always says as you do that there has never been a survey; and sometimes I think that even father—away down in his heart—believes it too."

All the long walk to Barbara's home they talked of the Desert and the Seer's dreams of Reclamation; and Abe told her how at last those "stupid capitalists," as Barbara called them, had opened their eyes. The great James Greenfield himself had read an article of the Seer's on "Reclamation from the Investor's Point of View" and had written him. As a result of their correspondence the engineer had gone to New York; and now a company organized by Greenfield was sending him south to look over a big territory and to report on the possibilities of its development.

When they arrived at Barbara's home they found the Seer himself. The fifteen years had made no perceptible change in the general appearance of the engineer. His form was still strongly erect and vigorous, but his hair was a little gray, and to a close observer, his face in repose revealed a touch of sadness—that indescribable look of one who is beginning to feel less sure of himself, or rather who, from many disappointments, is beginning to question whether he will live to see his most cherished plans carried to completion—not because he has less faith in his visions, but because he has less hope that he will be able to make them clear to others.

When the evening meal was over the surveyor said good-by, for the expedition was to start in the morning and he had some work to do. When he was gone Barbara joined her father and the engineer on the porch. "Here they are," she said. "Haven't I kept them nicely for you?" She was holding toward the Seer a box of cigars.

"Indeed you have," returned the engineer in a pleased tone, helping himself to a cool, moist Havana. "You are a dear, good girl."

Jefferson Worth did not use tobacco, but it was an unwritten law of the household that the Seer, when he came, should always have his evening smoke on the porch and that Barbara should be the keeper of supplies. She liked to see her friend's strong face brought suddenly out of the dusk by the flare of the match and to watch the glow of the cigar end in the dark while they talked.

"And what do you think of your brother Abe, Barbara?" the big engineer asked when his cigar was going nicely. "Didn't he talk you nearly to death?"

The girl laughed. "I guess he didn't have a chance. I always do most of the talking, you know."

The Seer chuckled. "Abe told me once that most of the time he felt like an oyster and the rest of the time he was so mad at himself for being an oyster that he couldn't find words to do the subject justice."

"I think he is splendid!" retorted Barbara, enthusiastically.

"He is," returned the engineer earnestly. "I don't know of a man in the profession whom I would rely upon so wholly in work of a certain kind. You see Abe was born and raised in the wild, uncivilized parts of the country and he has a natural ability for his work that amounts almost to genius. With a knowledge of nature gained through his remarkable powers of observation and deduction, I doubt if Abe Lee to-day has an equal as what might be called a 'surveyor scout.' I believe he is made of iron. Hunger, cold, thirst, heat, wet, seem to make no impression on him. He can out-walk, out-work, outlast and out-guess any man I ever met. He has the instinct of a wild animal for finding his way and the coldest nerve I ever saw. His honesty and loyalty amount almost to fanaticism. But he is diffident and shy as a school girl and as sensitive as a bashful boy. I verily believe he knows more to-day about the great engineering projects in the West than nine-tenths of the school men but I've seen him sit for an hour absolutely dumb, half scared to death, listening to the cheap twaddle of some smart 'yellow-legs' with the ink not dry yet on their diplomas. Put him in the field in charge of a party of that same bunch, though, and he would be boss to the last stake on the line or the last bite of grub in the outfit if he had to kill half of them to do it. I guess you'll think I'm a bit enthusiastic about my right hand man," he finished, with a short, apologetic laugh, "and I am. It's because I know him."

He struck another match and Barbara saw his face for an instant. As the match went out she drew a long breath. "I'm glad you said that," she said softly. "I wanted you to. I'm sure he has earned it."

Then they talked of the Seer's new expedition that would start south at daybreak, and it seemed to Barbara that the very air was electric with the coming of a mighty age when the race would direct its strength to the turning of millions of acres of desolate, barren waste into productive farms and beautiful homes for the people.

At daybreak the girl was up to tell the Seer good-by. "I wish," she said wistfully, as she stood with him a moment at the gate, "I wish it was my Desert that you and Abe were going to survey."

The engineer smilingly answered: "Some day, perhaps, that, too, will come."

"I know it will," she said simply.

And as she stood before him in all the beautiful strength of her young womanhood, the Seer felt that sweet, mysterious power of her personality—felt it with a father's loving pride. "I believe you do know, Barbara," he said; "I believe you do."

CHAPTER V.

WHAT THE INDIAN TOLD THE SEER.

In the making of Barbara's Desert the canyon-carving, delta-building river did not count the centuries of its labor; the rock-hewing, beach-forming waves did not number the ages of their toil; the burning, constant sun and the drying, drifting winds were not careful for the years. Therefore is the time of the real beginning of what happened in this, the land of my story, unknown.

Somewhere in the eternity that lies back of all the yesterdays, the great river found the salt waves of the ocean fathoms deep in what is now The King's Basin and extending a hundred and seventy miles north of the shore that takes their wash to-day. Slowly, through the centuries of that age of all beginnings, the river, cutting canyons and valleys in the north and carrying southward its load of silt, built from the east across the gulf to Lone Mountain a mighty delta dam.

South of this new land the ocean still received the river; to the north the gulf became an inland sea. The upper edge of this new-born sea beat helpless against a line of low, barren hills beyond which lay many miles of a rainless land. Eastward lay yet more miles of desolate waste. And between this sea and the parent ocean on the west, extending southward past the delta dam, the mountains of the Coast Range shut out every moisture-laden cloud and turned back every life-bearing stream. Thus trapped and helpless, the bright waters, with all their life, fell under the constant, fierce, beating rays of the semi-tropical sun and shrank from the wearing sweep of the dry, tireless winds. Uncounted still, the centuries of that age also passed and the bottom of that sea lay bare, dry and lifeless under the burning sky, still beaten by the pitiless sun, still swept by the scorching winds. The place that had held the glad waters with their teeming life came to be an empty basin of blinding sand, of quivering heat, of dreadful death. Unheeding the ruin it had wrought, the river swept on its way.

And so—hemmed in by mountain wall, barren hills and rainless plains; forgotten by the ocean; deserted by the river, that thirsty land lay, the loneliest, most desolate bit of this great Western Continent.

But the river could not work this ruin without contributing to the desert the rich strength it had gathered from its tributary lands. Mingled with the sand of the ancient sea-bed was the silt from faraway mountain and hill and plain. That basin of Death was more than a dusty tomb of a life that had been; it was a sepulchre that held the vast treasure of a life that would be—would be when the ages should have made also the master men, who would dare say to the river: "Make restitution!"—men who could, with power, command the rich life within the tomb to come forth.

But master men are not the product of years—scarcely, indeed, of centuries. The people of my story have also their true beginnings in ages too remote to be reckoned. The master passions, the governing instincts, the leading desires and the driving fears that hew and carve and form and fashion the race are as reckless of the years as are wave and river and sun and wind. Therefore the forgotten land held its wealth until Time should make the giants that could take it.

In the centuries of those forgotten ages that went into the making of The King's Basin Desert, the families of men grew slowly into tribes, the tribes grew slowly into nations and the nations grew slowly into worlds. New worlds became old; and other new worlds were discovered, explored, developed and made old; war and famine and pestilence and prosperity hewed and formed, carved and built and fashioned, even as wave and river and sun and wind. The kingdoms of earth, air and water yielded up their wealth as men grew strong to take it; the elements bowed their necks to his yoke, to fetch and carry for him as he grew wise to order; the wilderness fled, the mountains lay bare their hearts, the waste places paid tribute as he grew brave to command.

Across the wide continent the tracks of its wild life were trodden out by the broad cattle trails, the paths of the herds were marked by the wheels of immigrant wagons and the roads of the slow-moving teams became swift highways of steel. In the East the great cities that received the hordes from every land were growing ever greater. On the far west coast the crowded multitude was building even as it was building in the East. In the Southwest savage race succeeded savage race, until at last the slow-footed padres overtook the swift-footed Indian and the rude civilization made possible by the priests in turn ran down the priest.

About the land of my story, forgotten under the dry sky, this ever-restless, ever-swelling tide of life swirled and eddied-swirled and eddied, but touched it not. On the west it swept even to the foot of the grim mountain wall. On the east one far-flung ripple reached even to the river—when Rubio City was born. But the Desert waited, silent and hot and fierce in its desolation, holding its treasures under the seal of death against the coming of the strong ones; waited until the man-making forces that wrought through those long ages should have done also their work; waited for this age—for your age and mine—for the age of the Seer and his companions—for the days of my story, the days of Barbara and her friends.

The Seer's expedition, returning from the south, made camp on the bank of the Rio Colorado twenty miles below Rubio City. It was the last night out. Supper was over and the men, with their pipes and cigarettes, settled themselves in various careless attitudes of repose after the long day. Their sun-burned faces, toughened figures and worn, desert-stained clothing testified to their weeks of toil in the open air under the dry sky of an almost rainless land. Some were old-timers—veterans of many a similar campaign. Two were new recruits on their first trip. All were strong, clean-cut, vigorous specimens of intelligent, healthy manhood, for in all the professions, not excepting the army and navy, there can be found no finer body of men than our civil engineers.

Easily they fell to talking of to-morrow night in Rubio City, of baths and barbers and good beds and clean clothes and dinners and the pleasures of civilization and prospective future jobs. Much good-natured chaff was passed with hearty give and take. Jokes that had become time-worn in the many days and nights that the party had been cut off from all other society were revived with fresh interest. Incidents and accidents of the trip were related and reviewed with zest, with here and there a comment on the work itself that was still fresh in their minds.

Abe Lee, sitting with his back against a wagon-wheel and his long legs stretched straight out in front, listened, enjoying it all in his own way, taking his share of the chaff with a slow smile, exhaling great clouds of cigarette smoke and only at rare intervals contributing a word or a short sentence to the talk. Abe was at home with these men out there in the desert night. Under the Chief he was their master—respected, admired and loved. But the old-timers knew that to-morrow, in town with these same men, dressed in conventional garb, on the street or in the hotel, the surveyor would be as bashful and awkward as a country boy. So they joked him about his numerous sweethearts in Rubio City and related many entirely fictitious love adventures and romantic experiences that he was said to have passed through in different parts of the country during the years they had known him. Not one of them but would have been astonished beyond words had he known of Abe's adventure the afternoon before they left Rubio City, and how, through every day of the hard, grilling labor with the expedition, the image of the girl he had watched through his field glass was before him.

When the fire of the wits was turned on another mark Abe slowly arose to his feet and slipped out of the circle. Going quietly to the cook-wagon where the Chinaman sat smoking in solitary grandeur, he asked: "Wing, where is the Chief? I saw him talking to you a little while ago."

"Me no sabe, Boss Abe. Chief, him go off that way." He pointed toward the river with his long bamboo pipe. "Wing sabe Chief feel velly bad, Boss Abe; damn."

The white man regarded the Chinaman silently for a moment, then:
"You're a good boy, Wing. Good night."

"Night, Boss Abe," came the plaintive answer, and the surveyor went on to where a group of Cocopah Indian laborers made their rude camp. These he greeted in Spanish and asked: "Has the Chief been with you since supper?"

"No, Senor. He by river there little time past," said one, pointing to a clump of cottonwood trees that rose above a fringe of willows.

"Buenos noches, hombres," said Abe.

"Buenos noches, Senor," came the chorus of soft voices in the dusk.

On the high bank under the cottonwoods the Seer sat with bowed head. He did not heed the broad yellow tide of silt-laden water that swept by him so silently; he did not see the myriad stars in the velvet sky, nor notice the golden moon climbing slowly up from the dark level of the land. The jovial voices and merry laughter of his men came to him from the camp, but he did not hear. To-morrow the expedition would be over, the party disbanded. He would make his report to the capitalists who had sent him forth. His report!—the Seer groaned. Few words would be needed to sum up the work of the last two months but it would not be easy to frame them. His ear caught the snap of a twig and a whiff of cigarette smoke floated to him. He turned his head quickly. "That you, Abe?"

The long figure of the surveyor settled on the bank by his side. For a little neither spoke, while the Seer, with slow care, filled and lighted his pipe.

"Well, lad," he said at last, "we have about reached the end of another failure."

"Will you go to New York, sir?"

"No, it will not be necessary. I can write in fifty words all there is to say."

"Perhaps they will send you out again," offered the surveyor.

"Their interest is not strong enough. They only tackled this because some other fellows were considering the proposition. That made them think there might be something in it. If I had the capital to make surveys and could go to them with data for some other project they might consider it, but—"

Abe rolled another cigarette and with the first cloud of smoke came the slow words: "Well, then, let's get the data."

Even at what seemed a hopeless suggestion the discouraged heart of the old engineer beat more quickly. He turned his face toward the younger man. "Where?"

Abe stretched forth a long arm toward the broad Colorado at their feet and toward the desert beyond. "The King's Basin. You've often told me about that country. If I sabe the lay of the land we're somewhere at the southern end of it, at the beginning of the high ground of the delta that shuts out the ocean. There's water enough here for five times that territory."

"Do you mean—" the Seer began quickly and stopped.

"I mean this: you already know the north and northeastern part of the Basin from the railroad. You have been through it from the west on the San Felipe trail. Send the outfit in to-morrow with the boys. Give them orders on the bank for their pay and let them go. You and I can scout around the delta end of that country over there for a week or two and if it looks good, with what you have already seen, you have enough to talk on. Then go on to New York and when you report on the southern project turn loose on 'em with this."

"Abe," said the engineer thoughtfully, "if anyone but you were to propose that I go before these capitalists to interest them in a project without ever having put an instrument on it I would knock him down. Such recklessness would ruin any civil engineer in the world, if—"

"If he guessed wrong," finished Abe dryly.

"If he guessed wrong," admitted the Seer reluctantly.

"If it looked good enough for you to risk an opinion you would have some strong talking points," ventured Abe. "There must be five hundred thousand acres in that old sea-bed. The Colorado carries water enough for five times that area. There's the railroad already built along one side; there's San Felipe and the whole Coast country within easy reach. It beats the other proposition a hundred to one, if it can be done at all."

The Seer rose and paced up and down in the bright moonlight. Presently he said: "If you accept the position with Hunt up north you should go on at once. That job would be the best thing you ever had. Don't you want to take it?"

"You know what I want, if you can use me."

"I could manage your present salary for this trip but beyond that you know how uncertain it all is. Hunt can't wait any longer."

"Look here," said Abe, angrily, "I understood when I made my proposition that our salaries would stop when we cut the outfit. Do you think I meant for you to take all the risk? I'm only a surveyor and you an educated engineer but this thing means as much to me as it does to you. Let me share the expense and I'm with you but not on any other terms. Hunt and his job can go hang. I don't see why you should assume that it's only my pay that I work for." It was a long speech for Abe.

The engineer put his big hand on the young man's shoulder. "Thank you,
Abe," he said. "That does me good. I've always known that it was there.
But it's a hard road, lad, a mighty hard road!" Then: "I wonder if we
have an Indian in the outfit who knows this country."

"Yes, sir," Abe answered promptly. "Jose knows it well. I've been pumping him for a month. I'll get him."

As the tall figure of the surveyor disappeared in the direction of the Oocopah camp the Seer smiled to himself. "Been pumping him for a month," he repeated. "That means that he saw almost before I did that the other proposition was no good. Humph!"

He faced toward the river and looked away into the night where The King's Basin lay—a weird dream-country under the light of the moon. And because it was impossible to think of Barbara's Desert without thinking of Barbara he smiled again, musing that there would be little sleep that night for the girl in Rubio City if she knew what he and Abe were considering. From across the river came the shrill, snarling, yelping coyote chorus and the engineer saw again the body of a dead woman at the dry water hole, an empty canteen, and a big-eyed, brown-haired baby stretching out her arms to him.

While the Seer was too careful an engineer to take quickly the suggestion of Abe, he had seen too many tests of the desert-bred surveyor's genius not to consider his proposition seriously. He was also too much of a dreamer not to be influenced by thoughts of Barbara and her association in his mind with this particular project. Could it be that the land which had so tragically given the child into his life was now to realize his dreams of Reclamation.

He was interrupted by the return of Abe, who was followed by an old, grizzly-haired Cocopah.

"Tell the Chief what you have told me, Jose," said the surveyor and, stepping aside, he rolled the inevitable cigarette with an air of taking himself wholly out of the matter under consideration.

"You sabe that country over there, Jose?" asked the Chief.

"Si, Senor," came the soft answer, and reaching out, the Indian gently turned the engineer so that the latter stood with his back squarely to the river. Taking the Seer's right hand and holding it outstretched with open palm upward in one of his own and tracing with the other dark-skinned finger, as one might trace on a relief map, he continued in Spanish, as he drew his finger carefully along the white man's thumb from the wrist: "Here are the mountains that shut out the country by the Big Sea where is San Felipe. I go there once, long time ago. My people live there." He indicated the space between the first and second joints of the thumb. Next he touched the base of the Seer's little finger. "Here is Rubio City." Then tracing the outer rim of the palm toward the wrist: "Here are the hills, and the railroad that the Senor made." His finger paused in the depression between the base of the thumb and the outer edge of the palm at the wrist. "The Senor's railroad goes through the Pass in the high mountains here." Next, from the outer edge of the hand he traced across the palm at the base of the fingers. "The river goes this way to the big water that comes in from the sea here." He indicated the open space between the extended thumb and the inner edge of the palm.

"We stand now here." He touched the base of the Seer's index finger. "It is The Hollow of God's Hand, Senor—La Palma de la Mano de Dios," he repeated reverently. He dropped the engineer's hand and stood quietly waiting to be questioned.

Again the Seer put forth his hand and pointing with his own finger to the inner edge of the palm between the base of the index finger and the thumb, he asked: "The land is high here?"

"Si, Senor, a little. Just like the hand. It is much low here." He touched the deepest part of the palm. "And a little high here where we stand. Sometimes when much water comes the river goes all over here." He indicated the extreme inner edge of the palm. "Most always this water go all this way"—toward the open space between the thumb and palm. "Sometimes a little goes here." He traced the lines that cross the palm towards the wrist.

"You can show us this country?"

"Si, Senor."

"How long will it take?"

"What you like. From here to Lone Mountain straight—maybe one day go, maybe two day go."

"There is water?"

[Illustration: MAP OF LA PALMA DE LA MANO DE DIOS (THE HOLLOW Of GOD'S
HAND) DRAWN BY ALLEN KELLY TECOLOTE RANCHO 1911]

"Si. Much water left from the river last time big water come."

The Chief looked at the silent Abe, then back to the old Indian. "All right, Jose; we go in the morning—you, Senor Lee and I. Be ready."

"Si, Senor. Buenos noches, Senores."

"Good night! Good night!" returned the two white men.

There was much conjecturing among the surprised surveyors next morning, when the Chief gave to each man his pay check and placed an old-timer in charge with instructions as to the disposition of the outfit when they should arrive in Rubio City.

Two loaded pack-mules and three saddle ponies were ready when the Seer had finished his business with the men. Good-bys were spoken all around and the Seer and Abe, with Jose in the lead, turned back toward the south.

"Looks like they had forgotten something," said one of the recruits as the group stood watching the little party jog steadily into the distance, apparently retracing the tracks the expedition had made the day before.

"Sonny," remarked the veteran left in charge, "what one of that pair forgets the other is dead sure to remember. All the signs say that they're makin' big medicine. All we have to do with it is to push for Rubio City pronto and cash our pay checks. Lord! but wouldn't I like to be in it," he added regretfully as he turned away.

With provisions for three weeks on the pack-animals and the assurance of Jose that there was feed and water in the overflow lands for the horses, the Seer and Abe proposed to cover most of the territory lying between the Rio Colorado and Lone Mountain. It was here that the great river, in the ages long past, had built the delta dam, thus cutting off the northern end of the gulf that was now The King's Basin Desert. It was their plan to follow this high land that separated the ocean from the Basin to the mountains, then to work back as far out in the Basin from water and feed as they could. They would then follow the river on the Basin side to Rubio City.

They had barely passed beyond sight of the main party when Jose turned directly toward the river. At that stage of water a long bar put out into the stream and from its point the current set strongly toward the opposite bank.

"Here we cross," said the Indian briefly.

Constructing a rude raft for their supplies and swimming the animals, they reached the other shore some distance below the point of launching with no accident, and that night camped well back from the river on the delta land.

Day after day they rode from sunrise until dark; studying the land, estimating distances and grades, observing the courses of the channels cut by the overflow and the marks of high water, noting the character of the soil and the vegetation; sometimes together, sometimes separated; with Jose to select their camping places and to help them with his Indian knowledge of the country.

And always at night, after the long hard day, when supper—cooked by their own hands—was over, with pipe and cigarettes they reviewed their observations and compared notes, summing up the results before rolling in their blankets to sleep under the stars.

Some day, perhaps, when the world is much older and very much wiser, Civilization will erect a proper monument to the memory of such men as these. But just now Civilization is too greedily quarreling over its newly acquired wealth to acknowledge its debt of honor to those who made this wealth possible.

But the Seer and his companion concerned themselves with no such thoughts as these. They thought only of the possibility of converting the thousands of acres of The King's Basin Desert into productive farms. For this they conceived to be their work.

They had worked across the Basin to Lone Mountain and back to the river to a point nearly opposite the clump of cotton woods where they had left the expedition. To-morrow night they would be in Rubio City.

"Abe," said the Seer, "our intake would go in right here. We could follow the old channel of Dry River with our canal about twenty miles out, put in a heading and lead off our mains and laterals."

For two or three hours they discussed plans and estimates, then the engineer shut his note-book with a snap. "If those New Yorkers don't listen to what I can tell them of this country now they're a whole lot slower than I take them to be."

"Then you think you will make a guess on the proposition," asked Abe slyly.

The Seer laughed like a boy. "I start for New York to-morrow night," he answered.

In the afternoon of the next day they struck the San Felipe trail a few miles from Rubio City. Perhaps it was the sight of that old road, with its memories for the Seer and his companion, that led the engineer to say: "It's curious, Abe, but I can't shake off the odd feeling that Barbara's life is somehow wrapped up in that country out there." As he spoke he turned in his saddle to look back toward the Basin. "She seems to belong to it somehow as, in a way, it belongs to her. There is a look in her eyes sometimes that makes me think of the desert and the desert always reminds me of her. I know one thing," he finished with a short laugh, "if I was to let out some of the fancies that have come to me in this connection it would ruin me forever so far as my profession goes."

Abe made no reply, possibly because he also had fancies—fancies that he could not tell even to the Seer.

It is astonishing what a great cloud of dust five animals can stir up on a desert trail. As the little outfit jogged slowly along, the great yellow mass rolled up into the air high above their heads and hung—a long, slow-drifting streamer—above the trail until it vanished in the distance.

Barbara, who was riding out from town on the Mesa, saw that cloud and stopped to study it intently for a few moments as if debating some question. Then touching her animal with the spur, she set off rapidly in the direction of the approaching horsemen; while the two men watched the dust that arose from the single horse's feet with the interest that travelers in lonely lands always feel in any life that chances to come their way.

"Abe, that's a woman," exclaimed the Seer after a time.

Abe said nothing. He had discovered that interesting fact some moments before.

The engineer rose in his stirrups. "Abe, I'll bet a month's salary it's
Barbara."

"I'm not gambling," returned the other, smiling at his companion's excitement. "I know it is."

The big engineer dropped into his saddle with a grunt of disgust. "Young man, you've got eyes like a buzzard," he said, twisting about to face his companion. "By all traditions I suppose I should say 'eagle,' but you certainly don't look much like that noble king of birds. You're carrying dirt enough to bury a horse."

The Seer took off his sombrero and began beating the dust from his own shoulders, while the surveyor looked on in silent amusement.

"She'll think by the dust you're a-raisin' that there's some kind of a scrap goin' on and that she'd better head the other way."

"Not much she wouldn't head the other way from a scrap. She would come on all the faster. I thought you knew Barbara better than that." He replaced his hat. "Why Abe, one time when she was—"

The surveyor interrupted his Chief by standing up in his stirrups in turn and swinging his hat in greeting, while the Seer, in waving his own sombrero and whooping like a wild man, forgot what he was about to relate.

The girl came on at a run and—guiding her horse between the two dust-covered men—held out a hand to each.

CHAPTER VI.

THE STANDARD OF THE WEST.

Three days after the Seer's letters to Abe and Barbara telling them that James Greenfield and his associates would finance an expedition to make the preliminary surveys in The King's Basin Desert, the west-bound overland dropped a passenger in Rubio City from New York.

The stranger was really a fine looking young man with the appearance of being exceptionally well-bred and well-kept. Indeed the most casual of observers would not have hesitated to pronounce him a thoroughbred and a good individual of the best type that the race has produced.

A company of men and women—traveling acquaintances evidently—followed him from the Pullman to bid him good-by and to look at the Indians, who with their wealth of curios spread before them, squatted in a long row beside the track—objects of never failing interest to travelers from the East.

"Ugh!" said a tall blonde, who displayed more bracelets, bangles, chains and charms—both natural and manufactured—than any blanketed squaw in the party of natives, "I suppose if we ever see you again you'll be the color of that thing there." She pointed to a smoky, copper-colored Papago in a green head-cloth and decorated shirt, who posed in a watchful attitude near his thrifty help-meet.

"How perfectly romantic!" gushed a billowy divorcee, clinging to the young fellow's athletic arm with little shivers of delight. "To think of you in this great, savage, wild land, among these strange people. Aren't you just a little bit frightened?"

"By George, I half wish I was going to stop with you. You'll get some great shooting, don't you know!" exclaimed one of the men, while the chorus joined in: "You'll die of loneliness!" "You'll find nothing fit to eat!" "And do take care of yourself!"

Then as the warning, "All aboard!" and the clang of the engine bell came down the platform, there were quick good-bys and a rush for the car. The colored porters tossed their steps aboard and followed. Smoothly the long, dust-covered coaches slid past. There was a waving of handkerchiefs and caps from the rear of the observation car, and the young man turned to look curiously about.

"Hotel?"

The stranger glanced doubtfully at the tough-looking citizen who reached for his suit case, and without replying stepped into the questionable looking hack standing nearby. The driver threw the suitcase into the vehicle after his passenger and climbing to his seat, yelled to the team.

There was no rush of brass-buttoned bell-boys to meet the guest at the door of the hotel, and the room was well-filled with a group strange to the eyes of the young man from New York. Bronzed-faced men in flannel shirts and belted trousers talked to men well-dressed in more conventional business clothes; others in their shirt sleeves sat smoking with companions in blue overalls; two or three wore guns loosely belted at their hips. Here and there was the pale-faced, white-collared, tied and tailored tourist. In the corner near the big window a group of women, some in white duck, some in khaki or corduroy, sat chatting and enjoying the scene. No one paid the least attention to the newcomer. The tough-looking driver of the hack dropped the suit case near the desk with a bang and turned to reply to a good-natured remark addressed to him by a jovial, well-dressed man standing near. Only the clerk regarded the stranger.

"Have you a room with bath?"

The clerk smiled. "Certainly, sir." Then to a young fellow talking over the cigar counter to a man in high-heeled boots and spurs: "Jack, show this gentleman to forty-five."

In the well-furnished room the guide threw open long French windows and pointed to a cot on the screened-porch outside. "Better sleep on the porch," he volunteered.

"Sleep on the porch?"

"Suit yourself," came the answer as the independent one turned away.

"Look here!" The employe of the house paused. "I want my trunk sent up immediately."

"Sure Mike! Let's have your checks. So-long!"

The stranger stood staring at the door, which the breezy young man, as he disappeared with a cheery whistle, had shut behind him with a vigorous bang.

In the dining room the man from New York found the same easy freedom in the manner of dress, the same lack of conventionalities and the same atmosphere of general good-fellowship; yet he could not say that there was any lack of real courtesy and certainly there was no rude and boisterous talk. It was, to say the least, unsettling to the exceptionally well-bred and well-kept stranger, accustomed to the hotels and restaurants in the East frequented by his class.

Early that evening the Easterner sallied forth, clearly bent on sight-seeing. He had dressed for the occasion. The gray traveling suit had been put aside for a tailor-made outfit of corduroy. The coat—worn without a vest over a fine negligee shirt of silk—was Norfolk; the trousers were riding trousers and above the tan shoes were pig-skin puttees. All this, with the light, soft hat, neat tie and the undeniably fine figure and handsome face, would have made him attractive on any stage. The tourists turned to look after him with expressions of admiring envy; the natives—white, red, black, yellow and brown—accepted him with no more than a passing glance as a part of the strange new life that the railroad was constantly bringing to Rubio City.

Calmly conscious of himself and openly interested, in a mildly condescending way, the young man strolled down one side of the main street to the end of the business section, then back on the other. Twice he made the round, then, seeking scenes of further interest, pushed open the swinging doors of Rubio City's most popular place of amusement—the Gold Bar saloon.

At a table in one corner two men—one tall, darkfaced, coatless, with unbuttoned vest, leather wrist-guards, and a heavy gun loosely buckled about his slim waist; the other thick-set, heavy, red-faced—were holding animated conversation over their glasses. That is to say: the thick, red-faced man was animated. Glaring at his companion he banged his huge, hairy fist on the table until the glasses jumped.

"Ye're a domned owld savage wid yer talk. Fwhat the hell is yer counthry good for as ut is? A thousan' square miles av ut wouldn't feed a jack-rabbit. 'Tis a blistherin', sizzlin', roastin', wilderness av sand an' cactus, fit for nothin' but thim side-winders, horn'-toads, heely-monsters an' all their poisonous relations, includin' yersilf."

The New Yorker, standing at the end of the bar nearest the table occupied by Barbara's "uncles," who had just arrived from the Gold Center mines, heard the words of Pat and turned toward the two friends with amused interest.

Texas Joe silently lifted his glass and with a look of undisguised admiration for his belligerent partner, waited for more. More came with another thump of the huge fist.

"'Tis civilization that ye need, an' 'tis civilization that we're bringin' to ye, an' 'tis civilization that ye've got to take whether ye like ut or not. Look at the Seer, now! Wan gintleman wid brains an' education like him is wort' more to this counthry than all the hell-roarin' savages like yersilf between the Coast an' Oklahoma, which is not so much better than it was. We've brung ye money; we've brung ye schools; we've brung ye railroads; an' we'll kape on bringin' ye the blissin's an' joys av civilization 'til ye mend yer ways an' live like Christians."

He paused. Texas was staring with child-like simplicity at the immaculate figure of the stranger in puttees. Pat turned to follow the gaze of his companion just as the plainsman drawled softly: "And you've brought us that." The Irishman's heavy jaw dropped. He gasped and gulped like an uncouth monster. Then—speechless—he drained his glass.

The stranger's face flushed but he did not move.

"Pardner," drawled Texas, "your remarks is sure edifyin' a heap an' some convincin'. But I'm still constrained to testify that the real cause an' reason for the declinin' glory of this yere great western country is poor shootin'. That same, in turn, bein' caused by the incomin' herds from the effete East bein' so numerous as to hinder gun-practice."

"Guns is ut?" interrupted the other with a roar. "A man—mind ye: a man—should be ashamed to go about all the time wid a cannon tied to his middle. 'Tis the mark av a child. Look at ye, now, wid all yer artillery an' me wid fingers that niver pushed a thrigger." He held out his great paws and studied them admiringly. "Why, ye herrin', wid thim two hands I could break ye, gun an' all, like I've—"

He was interrupted by a wild-eyed individual who rushed into the room from the street and, springing toward them, burst forth with: "Give me your gun, Texas, quick! I ain't got mine on and that damned Red Hoyt is a layin' for me at the corner!"

Texas Joe dropped his slim hand caressingly on the big forty-five at his side, leaned easily back in his chair and eyed the excited citizen in a manner calmly judicial. "Bill, you're comin' is some opportune. You're sure Johnny-on-the-spot."

"Le' me have yer gun, Tex. Jes' loan her to me! I'll be back in a minute."

"Oh, I ain't doubtin' that you'd be back all right, Bill. That's jest the p'int. When you blew in so promisc'us an' interrupted the meetin', me an' my friend here was jest resolvin' that there's too much bad shootin' bein' done in this here Rubio town. It's a spoilin' the fair name an' a ruinin' the reputation of this country. For which said reason us two undertakes to regulate an' reform some." He turned with elaborate politeness to Pat. "I voices yer sentiments correct, pard?"

The Irishman's fist struck the table and his eyes flashed. "To the thrim av a gnat's heel," he roared.

Texas bowed and continued: "Therefore, Bill, this here's our verdict. You camp right here peaceable while I go out an' fetch this Red Hoyt person what's been annoyin' you. We'll stand you up at fifteen steps, with nothing between to obstruct ceremonies, an' drop the hat. Me an' my friend referees the job an' undertakes to see that the remains is duly and properly planted with all regular honors. Sabe?"

The blood-thirsty one, growling something about attending to his own funeral and finding a gun somewhere else, went quietly and quickly out.

Before the pugnacious Pat could voice his disgust and disappointment at the disappearance of the trouble-hunting citizen, a low, contemptuous laugh from the well-built stranger at the bar drew the attention of the two friends. The young man was watching them with an amused smile.

Texas Joe and the Irishman regarded each other thoughtfully. "Pard," said Tex in a low, earnest tone, "do you reckon that there hilarity was in any ways directed toward this corner of the room?"

The stranger, receiving his change from the bartender, was moving leisurely toward the door when his way was barred by the heavy bulk of Pat. There was no misunderstanding the expression on the battle-scarred features of the Irish gladiator. Eyeing the athletic Easterner fiercely, he growled with deliberate meaning: "Ye same to be findin' plenty av amusement in the private affairs av me friend an' mesilf. D'ye think that we are a coople av hoochy-koochy girls to be makin' sphort for all the domned dudes that runs to look at us whin their mammas don't know they're out?"

The other regarded him with well-bred surprise. "Stand aside," he said curtly.

"Oh, ho! ye will lave widout properly apologizin' for yer outrageous conduc' will ye? 'Tis an ambulance that ye'll nade to take ye home whin I've taught ye manners, ye danged yellow-legged cock-a-doodle!"

He lifted his fists and the stranger, without giving back an inch or exhibiting the slightest suggestion of fear, but rather with the calm self-confidence of a trained athlete, squared himself for the encounter.

Eagerly the patrons of the place—miners, cowboys, ranchers, adventurers, Mexicans, Indians—had gathered around the two men, delighted with the prospect of what promised to be no tame exhibition. Already several bets had been placed and critical estimates and comments on the comparative merits of the two were being made freely when a hand fell on Pat's uplifted arm. Turning with an oath of rage at the interruption, the Irishman faced Abe Lee.

"Hello, Pat! Amusing yourself as usual?" To the angry protests from the crowd the tall surveyor gave not the slightest heed.

For a moment the Irishman, looking up into that thin, sun-tanned face, was speechless as though he faced some apparition. Then with a yell of delight he caught the lank form of the Seer's assistant in a bear-like hug. "For the love av Gawd is ut ye, ye owld sand-rat? Where the hell did ye drop from, an? fwhat are ye doin' in this dishreputable company? Look at Uncle Tex, there! The sentimental owld savage is fair slobberin' wid delight an' eagerness to git at ye. Come, come; we must have a dhrink."

As quickly as it had risen the storm had passed. The crowd, as if moved by a single impulse, separated and the room was filled with loud talk and laughter. Glancing around, Pat's eye met the still defiant look of the stranger who had not moved from his place but stood calmly watching the Irishman and Abe as if waiting the pleasure of the man who had challenged him.

The Irishman grinned in appreciation. "Howld on a minut," he said to Abe who was moving away with Texas Joe toward a vacant table. Then to the stranger: "I axe yer pardon, Sorr, for goin' off me head that way. 'Tis a habit I have, worse luck to me—bein' sensitive, do ye see, about me personal appearance an' some wishful for a bit av honest enjoyment. Av ye'll have a dhrink wid me an' my friends here I'll take ut kindly until we can find some betther cause for grievance."

The young man's tense figure relaxed. A smile broke over his face. "And I beg your pardon," he said heartily. "The fact is I was not laughing at you at all but at the way you two men called the bluff of that fellow who wanted the gun. I should have said so and apologized but I, too, was a little upset and thrown off my guard."

"Faith, ut looked to me that ye were thrown on your guard. 'Tis the science ye have or I'm a Dutchman." He eyed the athletic limbs, deep chest, broad shoulders and well-set head, with eyes that twinkled his approval. "Some day—But niver mind now! Come." He led the way to the table.

As they seated themselves Pat regarded the surveyor with pleased interest. "Well, well! 'tis a most unexpected worrld. Av 'twas the owld divil himsilf that clapped his hand on me arm I'd be no more surprised than I was to see the lad here. Tell us, me bhoy, fwhat 'tis that's brung ye here."

"Haven't you two been to see Barbara yet?" the surveyor demanded as though charging them with some neglected duty.

"We have not; an' by that ye will know that we've been in this town less than an hour by Tex's watch that Barbara give him an' that he lost down the shaft at Gold Center."

When the surveyor had explained his presence in Rubio City and Texas
and Pat had agreed to join the King's Basin party, the stranger said:
"I think it is quite time now that I introduce myself. You are Mr. Lee,
I believe."

Abe assented and with his two companions regarded him with interest.

Taking a letter from his pocket and handing it to the surveyor, the young man continued: "I am a civil engineer. I have instructions from the Chief to report to you. My name is Willard Holmes."

The next morning the young engineer from the East presented his card at the Pioneer Bank and asked for Mr. Worth. The man who received the correctly engraved bit of pasteboard merely nodded toward the other end of the long partition of polished wood, plate glass and bronze bars. "You'll find him back there, Mr. Holmes."

The New Yorker smiled at the provincialism but sought the banker without further ceremony.

Closing the door with one hand Jefferson Worth with the other indicated the chair at the end of his desk. "Sit down."

"You have a letter from Mr. Greenfield relative to my coming?" asked
Willard Holmes.

The banker lifted a typewritten sheet from his desk, glanced at it and turned back to his visitor. "Yes," he said.

The involuntary movement was the instinctive act of one who habitually verifies every statement. Then, as those expressionless blue eyes were fixed on the stranger's face, the engineer's sensation was as though from behind that gray mask something reached out to grasp his innermost thoughts and emotions. He felt strangely transparent and exposed as one, alone in his lighted chamber at night, might feel someone in the dark without, watching through the window. Presently the colorless, exact voice of Jefferson Worth asked: "This is your first visit West?"

"Yes sir. My work has been altogether in New York and the New England states."

"Five years with the New York Contracting and Construction Company?" said Jefferson Worth exactly, laying his hand again on the letter on his desk.

"Yes. For the past two years I have had charge of their more important operations." The engineer's tone was a shade impressive.

But there was not the faintest shadow of a hint in the face or manner of that man in the revolving chair to intimate that he was impressed. The visitor might as well have spoken to the steel door of the big safe in the other room. "You are well acquainted with Mr. Greenfield and his associates?"

"My father and Mr. Greenfield were boyhood friends and college classmates," the engineer explained. "Since the death of my father when I was a little chap, I have lived with Uncle Jim. He was my guardian until I became of age."

The young man did not think it necessary to add that the death of his father had left him penniless and that his father's friend, who had never married, had reared and educated the child of his old classmate as his own son. Neither did he explain that his rapid advancement in his profession was due largely to the powerful influence of the capitalist and those closely associated with him, together with the strength of the proud social position to which he was born, rather than to hard work and experience. Probably Willard Holmes himself did not realize how much these things had added to his own native ability and technical training. He had never known anything else but these things and he accepted them as unconsciously as his voice was colored with the accent of the cultured East.

"How do you size up this King's Basin proposition?" questioned the banker.

Again Willard Holmes smiled at the western man's words. "Sizing up" and "proposition" were pleasingly novel forms of expression to him. "Really," he answered, "I haven't gone into it very thoroughly as yet. Mr. Greenfield asked me to come out because he and his associates felt"—he paused; perhaps it would be just as well not to say what Mr. Greenfield and his associates felt—"that with my experience in connection with large corporations I could be of value to them in certain phases of the work," he finished. He wondered if the man, who listened with such an air of carefully considering every word and mentally reaching out for whatever lay back of the verbal expression, had grasped what he had been about to say.

Jefferson Worth waited and Holmes continued: "Mr. Greenfield and his friends are very anxious that you should come in with them on the organization of this company, Mr. Worth; that is, of course, providing the scheme proves to be practicable. They instructed me to urge you personally to consider their proposal favorably and to ask you, by all means, to represent them on this expedition if possible. They realize that a man of your recognized ability and standing in the financial world, particularly in the West, in close touch as you are with Capital and conditions in this part of the country and no doubt familiar with the Reclamation work, would be a valuable addition to their strength. In fact I may say they would depend largely upon your judgment as to whether the scheme was practicable from a business standpoint. On your side I am sure you recognize the advantage of allying yourself with such a group of capitalists, who are strong enough to finance any undertaking, no matter how great. Their interests are already enormous. As you know, they operate only on the largest scale and, if this survey justifies the report already made, they will make a big thing out of this for everyone interested."

The cold, exact voice of Jefferson Worth came as if from a machine incapable of inflection. "I have written Mr. Greenfield that I would look into the proposition for him. I will go out with the outfit. Have you seen Abe Lee?"

"I met him last night and we had a little talk over things. I confess I was a little surprised."

"Why?"

"Well—that he is in charge. I was instructed to report to him. I find that he has had no schooling whatever; that, in fact, he is nothing but a kind of a self-educated surveyor. I have no doubt that he is a good, practical fellow, but it seems to me somewhat reckless to put him in such a responsible position."

Jefferson Worth did not say that he himself had had no more schooling than the Seer's lieutenant. Perhaps that, also, was not necessary to explain. He did say: "We have only one standard in the West, Mr. Holmes."

"And that?"

"What can you do?" came the words as if spoken by cold iron.

CHAPTER VII.

DON'T YOU LIKE MY DESERT, MR. HOLMES?

After his noon-day meal, Willard Holmes, following the example of others, sought the shade of the arcade in front of the hotel. Helping himself to a chair and moving a little away from the general company, he sat enjoying his cigar, musing on the novelty of his surroundings and reviewing his impressions of the last few hours.

It was natural that he should make comparisons—that he should see men and things in the light of the only men and things he had ever known. Abe Lee he measured by the standing of his own school-trained engineering friends, demanding that the desert-born and desert-trained surveyor exhibit all the hall-marks of Boston. He might as consistently have demanded that the flood of sunlight that fell in such blinding glory upon the new world before him should shine as through the smoke-grimed city atmosphere of New York. One was no more impossible than the other. Jefferson Worth he compared with the college and university friends of his father—with Mr. Greenfield and the New York-bred business men of his class, demanding that the western pioneer banker show the same characteristics that distinguished the cultured capitalists whose great-great-grandfathers were pioneers. Rubio City he saw in the light of those eastern cities that were founded in the days when men knew not that there was any world west of the Alleghanies.

Turning his head now and then to look over the typical groups that sat in the shade of the arcade, dressed—or undressed—with all the easy freedom of a land too young as yet to have conventions, he recalled his favorite hotels in his home cities and smiled to think what would happen if some of these roughly clad individuals were to appear there among the guests. He did not know yet that some of these roughly clad individuals were as much at home in those same favorite hotels as was he himself. Likewise as he watched the passing citizens in the street he recalled the scene from the windows of his club at home—a famous club on a famous avenue.

That young woman, for instance, with her khaki divided skirt, wide sombrero, fringed gauntlets and the big western saddle coming there on a horse whose feet seemed scarcely to touch the ground as he plunged and pranced impatiently along, springing side-wise, with arched neck and pointed ears, at every object that could possibly be made into something frightful by his playful fancy! What a sensation she would create at home! By Jove! but she could ride, though. He watched with admiring eyes the strong, graceful figure that sat the high-strung, uncertain horse as easily and unconsciously as any one of his women friends at home would rest in a comfortable chair.

As the horsewoman drew nearer he fell to wondering what she was like. Could she talk, for instance, of anything but the homely details of her own rough life? He shrugged his shoulders as he fancied her crude attempts at conversation, her uncouth language and raw expressions. The girl turned her horse toward the hotel entrance. As she drew still nearer he saw that she was not pretty. Her mouth was too large, her face too strong, her skin too tanned by the sun and wind.

At the sidewalk the girl swung from the saddle lightly, and throwing the bridle reins over the horse's head with a movement that brought out the beautiful lines of her figure, she turned her back upon the pawing, restless animal with as little concern as though she had delivered him to a correctly uniformed groom. No she was not pretty; she was—magnificent. The adjective forced itself upon him.

All along the arcade people were smiling in greeting, the men lifting their hats. Two cowboys in high-heeled boots and "chaps" paused in passing. "That new hawss of yours is sure some hawss, Miss Barbara," said one admiringly, sombrero in hand.

The girl smiled and Holmes saw the flash of her perfect teeth. "Oh, he'll do, Bob, when I've worked him down a little."

She passed into the hotel, followed by the eyes of every man in sight including the engineer, who had noted with surprise the purity and richness of her voice.

The New York man had turned and was watching a company of Indians farther down the street when that voice close beside him said: "I beg your pardon. Is this Mr. Holmes?"

He turned quickly, rising to his feet.

She smiled at his astonished look. "The clerk pointed you out to me. I am Barbara Worth. You met father at the bank this morning. Texas Joe and Pat told me about your being here and I could scarcely wait to see you. I'm afraid you must have thought them a little rough last night but really it's only their fun. They're as good as gold."

As she stood now close to him—the red blood glowing under the soft brown of her cheeks—Willard Holmes felt her rich personality as distinctly as one senses the presence of the ocean, the atmosphere of the woods or the air of meadows and fields. But by all his conventional gods, this was the unconventional limit! that this girl, the daughter of a banker, should openly seek out a total stranger to introduce herself to him on the public street before a crowd of hotel loungers! And the way she spoke of those rough men in the saloon, one would think they were her intimate friends.

He managed to say: "Really, I am delighted, Miss Worth. May I escort you to the hotel parlor?"

She looked at him curiously. "Oh, no indeed! It is much nicer out here in the arcade, don't you think? But you may bring another chair." Dumbly he obeyed, feeling that every eye was on him and flushing with embarrassment for her.

"When Texas and Pat told me that you were one of the engineers going out with The King's Basin party I could scarcely wait to see you. It makes it all seem so real, you know—your coming all the way out here from New York. I have dreamed so much about the reclamation of The King's Basin Desert; and you see I consider all civil engineers my personal friends."

"Indeed," he said. It is always safely correct to say "indeed" as he said it, particularly when you have nothing else to say.

She regarded him doubtfully with an open, straight-forward look which was somewhat disconcerting. She was so unconscious of the strength of her splendid womanhood and he felt her presence so vividly.

"I suppose you must find everything out here very strange," she said slowly. "Father says this is your first visit to the West and of course it can't be like your part of the country."

"It is all very interesting," he murmured. This also was sane and safe.

"I know that Abe is very busy and father never leaves the bank except on business, so there is no one but me to look after you"—she smiled—"that is—no one of our King's Basin people."

Willard Holmes was of that type of corporation servant who recognizes no interests but the financial interests of the capital employing him. His services as a civil engineer belonged wholly to those who bought them for their own profit. Barbara's innocent words aroused him. What the deuce did she mean by "our King's Basin people"? Greenfield and his friends thought that they were The King's Basin people. In the interests of his employers he must look into this.

[Illustration: "But I don't ride, you know.">[

"It is very kind of you, I am sure," he said with a little more warmth.
"To tell the truth I was feeling a bit strange, you know."

"I'm sure you must be nearly dead with lonesomeness. Wouldn't you like to go for a ride? I would so like to show you my Desert."

"Her Desert!" he mentally observed. Indeed he must look into this. Fully alert now he answered heartily: "I should be delighted, I'm sure. You are more than kind. When could we go?"

"Right now," she said quickly. "Here comes Pablo Garcia. I'll send him for another horse." She called to the passing Mexican: "Here Pablo."

The young fellow came to her quickly and stood, sombrero in hand, his dark eyes shining with pride at the recognition. In Spanish she directed him to fetch a horse for the Senor.

"Si, Senorita." With a low bow the Mexican turned to obey.

The eastern man, not understanding the words, but awakening suddenly to the meaning of the action, broke forth with—"Here, wait a minute."

"Wait," repeated Barbara in Spanish. Pablo paused.

"You are sending him for a horse and saddle?" asked Holmes.

"Yes; it will take only a few minutes."

"But I don't ride, you know."

"You don't ride?" The girl looked at him in blank amazement. "I don't think I ever saw a man before who didn't ride."

He laughed indulgently. Something in her voice and manner touched his sense of humor. "I'm very sorry. I know I ought to," he said in mock humility.

"Oh, well; we can drive. I'll have Pablo bring a rig." She explained what she wanted to the Mexican in his native tongue, and this time he mounted her horse and rode away.

When the man returned a little later with a span of restless, half-wild broncos hitched to a light buggy, the girl stepped into the vehicle and took the reins as a matter of course. With a low chuckle of amusement the engineer took his place at her left. He was beginning really to enjoy the situation. Shying and plunging the team demanded all of Barbara's attention but she managed to steal a look at her silent companion now and then, as if expecting him to show signs of nervousness. Willard Holmes, on his part, was wrapped in silent admiration of her strength and skill.

"They'll cool down in a little while," the girl volunteered, as if to reassure her guest, after a particularly wild break on the part of the horses. But on the extreme edge of town, where the wagon road runs closest to the railroad track, a passing switch engine proved too much for the excited team. In a moment the frightened animals were running toward the Mesa at full speed. With all her strength Barbara struggled to regain control, but her arms were a woman's arms and the horses, quick to recognize their advantage, put back their ears and ran the faster in mad defiance.

The girl was not frightened; she was annoyed. "I—I'm afraid they are running away," she gasped at last.

To her surprise a hearty laugh was the only answer to her confession. She shot a quick glance over her left shoulder. Her companion was leaning back in his seat, his merry face expressing the keenest enjoyment.

Then the girl felt a big hard shoulder pressing against her; long powerful arms stretched over hers; and two masterful hands closed on the reins above her cramped fingers. She relinquished her hold and shrank back out of the way with a sigh of relief and—yes, a look of admiration as the horses, with a few wild leaps and ineffectual attempts to run again, settled down to a more rational gait.

"My!" she gasped, at the exhibition of the engineer's strength, "I believe you could pull their front feet off the ground."

Her companion was still smiling.

"Why didn't you tell me you could drive?" she demanded.

He chuckled maliciously, for he had understood her reason for taking the reins at the start and he had not been insensible of the meaning of her glances at the beginning of the ride. "You didn't ask me, and besides I enjoyed seeing you handle them."

"But you told me you couldn't ride," she said reproachfully.

"I can't," he returned. "That is I never did; not as you people in this country ride." Then he laughed again. "Confess now. Didn't you expect me to jump, back there?"

"I shall confess nothing," she retorted, sharply. "And hereafter I shall take nothing for granted."

On the high ground near the foot of the hill at the canyon's mouth she asked him to turn around and stop. Willard Holmes had been too much occupied with the team and the girl to notice the landscape; and now that wonderful view of the Mesa, The King's Basin and the mountains burst upon him without warning. No sane man could be insensible of the grandeur of that scene. The man, whose eyes had looked only upon eastern landscapes that bore in every square foot of their limited range the evidence of man's presence, was silent—awe-stricken before the mighty expanse of desert that lay as it was fashioned by the creative forces that formed the world. Turning at last from the glorious, ever-changing scenes, wrought in colors of gold and rose and lilac and purple and blue, to the girl whose eyes were fixed questioningly upon him, he said in a low voice: "Is it always like this?"

Barbara nodded. "Always like that, but always changing. It is never the same, but always the same. Like—like life itself. Do you understand?"

He turned again to the scene in silent wonder.

"Do you like my Desert?" she asked, after a little time had passed.

His mind caught at the expression. "Do you mean to say that that is The
King's Basin—that we are going there to work?"

"Why, of course." She laughed uneasily. "Don't you like it?"

"Like it?" he repeated. "But is there anyone living out there?"

She was amazed at his words. "Living there? Of course not. But you are going to make it so that thousands and thousands can live there—you and the others. Don't you understand?" Her voice expressed a shade of impatience.

"I'm afraid I did not realize," he answered slowly.

"That's just it!" she cried, thoroughly aroused now and speaking passionately. "That's just the trouble with you eastern men; you don't realize. For years the dear old Seer and a few others have been trying to make you see what a work there is to do out here, and you won't even look up from your little old truck patches to give them intelligent attention. You think this King's Basin is big? Why, the Seer says that if every foot of that land was under cultivation it wouldn't be a posy bed beside what there is to do in the West. I suppose you must have done some great things in your profession, Mr. Holmes, or those capitalists wouldn't have sent you out here; but you can't have done anything that will mean to the world what the reclamation of The King's Basin Desert will mean one hundred years from now, because this work is going to make the people realize, don't you see?"

The young engineer's face flushed under her words, and as he watched her strong face glowing with enthusiasm for the Seer's dream, he felt the sweet power of her personality sweep over him as he felt the breeze from off the desert. He was held as though by some magic spell—not by the lure of her splendid womanhood, but by that and something else—something that was like the country of which she spoke so passionately. And he remembered wondering if this girl could talk!

He relieved the tense strain of the situation by holding out the reins and saying, with a whimsical smile:

"Here, you can drive."

She caught his meaning and smiled in acknowledgment. "Thank you, but I don't want to drive. That's really the man's part, you know. I suppose," she added, "that you think me bold and mannish and coarse and everything else that a girl ought not to be, but I"—she turned away her face and her voice trembled—"but you can't understand, Mr. Holmes, what this desert means to me."

"Perhaps I don't understand," he said seriously. "But I am sure of this: somewhere back of every really great work that has ever been accomplished in any age there has been a woman like you."

Then they drove back to the hotel where she left him and drove to the barn herself. A few minutes later he saw her pass again, riding her own quick-stepping horse.

During the two weeks that followed before the Seer's return, while Abe Lee was busy getting ready for the work in Barbara's Desert, Willard Holmes and the girl were often together. The man from New York admitted somewhat proudly, Barbara thought—as if the very confession somehow established the superiority of the East—that he was shockingly ignorant of all things Western. But apparently overlooking the subtle assumption in the manner of his confession, she laughingly undertook his education. For one thing he must learn to ride.

"Really," he demurred, "I don't think I care for that particular amusement. I have never taken it up at home, you know, but of course if it is the thing to do, why—"

"Amusement!" she laughed. "Riding isn't an amusement; it's a necessity. The horse is our street car and railroad and steamboat. Where you think city blocks and squares we think miles; and where you think miles we think hundreds of miles. Two legs are not enough in this country, so we double the number and go on four. You'll find yourself wishing for eight before you get back from The King's Basin."

So, at her bidding, Texas Joe secured a horse for him and almost every afternoon the two were in their saddles. And every night over his evening cigar at the hotel the engineer found himself reviewing the incidents and conversations of the ride; forced to wonder at some new and unexpected revelation of the mind and character of this western girl who was so interested in the reclamation work and so unconscious of her womanly power. He came quickly to look forward to their hours together and to plan and carry out many conversational experiments. Invariably he had his reward.

One afternoon he tried skillfully to shape the conversation to the end that he might tell her—quite without ostentation—of the proud history and social position of his family and of his own rank in the upper eastern world.

She humored him patiently, helping him out with questions and artless, admiring exclamations and comments, until he was quite sure that she was properly impressed. Then she said, in a tone of honest sympathy: "But you mustn't let all this worry you, you know."

"Worry me?" he echoed in amazement.

She nodded seriously, but with a glint of mischief in her eyes. "Yes, I can understand that it must be hard for a man to do his work handicapped as you are but no one away out here will count it against you. Every man here has a chance no matter what his past has been. You see, we don't care what a man has been or what his fathers were; we accept him for what he is and value him for what he can do. So all you need to do is to forget and go straight ahead with your work and you'll easily live it down. Only, of course," she added gently, "I wouldn't advise you to tell everybody what you have told me. Some might not understand."

He retorted warmly: "Of course you cannot understand our point of view. Everything is so new and raw out here that you have no social standards."

"New and raw?" She laughed again. "Why, Mr. Holmes, you are the only new thing in this country. Do you see that man over there?"

They were riding south on the road that follows the river and she pointed to an Indian who sat idly in the shade of his pole and mud hut.

"What's the matter with him?" asked the engineer.

"Nothing. Only he, too, has ancestors. Ages and ages before your forefathers knew that this continent existed, that man's people lived in a city not far from here—a city with laws, customs, religions, social standards—yes, and civil engineers, for you can easily trace the lines of their canals, in which they brought water from the river and carried it through a tunnel in the mountains to irrigate their land, just as you modern engineers are planning to do. The Seer and I rode over there once and he told me about it. I'll show you, if you like. New! Why the West was ages old before the East was discovered! The Seer says that if Columbus had come first to the western coast New England to-day would still be an uninhabitable, howling wilderness."

"But I don't see what all this has to do with social standards," he said, nettled at her reply.

"Simply this. If a man's position in life is to be fixed by the age of his family or the number of years that they have occupied a certain section of the country, then that Indian is your superior. His ancestors lived here long before yours settled in New England."

"But we are proud of our ancestors because of what they were and what they accomplished. We have a right to be. Think of what the world owes them!"

"Oh, I must have misunderstood you. You seemed to place so much emphasis on their having come over in the Mayflower. They were grand—those brave old pioneers. I am proud of them too for what they were. And did they have social positions by which they fixed a man's place in life, I wonder?"

"Of course they could not have had a society with the wealth and culture that we have now. The country was all new—something like the West is to-day, I suppose."

She laughed aloud. "And you are proud of them! How fine! Isn't it splendid to think that in two or three hundred years, when the West has been civilized and the Desert reclaimed as your pioneer forefathers civilized and reclaimed the East, when wealth and culture have come, a man's social standing will be determined by his relation to us and people will be proud of what we are doing? After all, Mr. Holmes, the only difference between the East and the West seems to be that you have ancestors and that we are going to be ancestors. You look back to what has been; we look forward to what will be. You are proud and take rank because of what your forefathers did; we are proud and take rank because of what we are doing. And we are doing exactly what they did! Honestly now, which would you rather—worship an ancestor or be an ancestor worshipped?"

When they had laughed together over this he said: "I am beginning to understand, Miss Worth, that the ideal American, whom we are always hearing about but never meet, must be a Westerner; he couldn't possibly be of the East, could he?" His words were almost a sneer.

"The ideal American is neither Eastern nor Western in the way you mean,
Mr. Holmes. He is both."

"Indeed? You admit that we of the East could give him something, then?"

"You could give him all that your forefathers have given you."

"And what could the West give him?"

She looked at him steadily a moment before answering slowly: "I think you will have to find that out for yourself."

He was taken a little aback by her answer. It sounded as though she wished to end the conversation. But her talk had stirred him strongly, though he tried to hide this under cover of a cynical tone. He said triumphantly: "But you see, after all, you admit that one is not altogether hopeless because he happens to come of a good family!"

"Certainly I admit it!" she cried, "but don't you see what I mean? Ancestors are to be counted as a valuable asset, but not as working capital."

As she spoke she turned toward him again with that steady look, and the man felt the strange, mysterious power of her personality, the challenging lure of her young womanhood—that and more. What was it back of those steady eyes that called to him, inspired him, that almost frightened him; that made him feel as Barbara herself felt in the presence of the Desert.

There was no trace of cynicism in his voice now, nor any hint of a sneer on his face, as Willard Holmes straightened unconsciously in his saddle.

"By George!" he said, "it's good to hear you say those things. Nobody talks that way nowadays. I suppose our great-great-grandmothers did, though."

She colored with pleasure, but answered lightly: "That puts me a long ways behind the times, doesn't it?"

"Or a long way ahead," he offered.

In the meantime, while the education of Willard Holmes progressed, the party that was to make the first survey in Barbara's Desert was being formed and equipped under the direction of Abe Lee. Horses, mules, wagons, camp outfits and supplies, with Indian and Mexican laborers, teamsters of several nationalities and here and there a Chinese cook, were assembled. Toward the last from every part of the great West country came the surveyors and engineers—sunburned, khaki-clad men most of them, toughened by their out-of-doors life, overflowing with health and good spirits. They hailed one another joyously and greeted Abe with extravagant delight, overwhelming him with questions. For the word had gone out that the Seer, beloved by all the tribe, and his lieutenant, almost equally beloved, were making "big medicine" in The King's Basin Desert. Not a man of them would have exchanged his chance to go for a crown and scepter.

The eastern engineer met these hardened professional brothers cordially. He listened to their reminiscences of life and work in mountain, plain and desert with interest, discovering to his surprise that most of them were eastern born and bred, with technical training in the schools with which he was familiar. But their almost boyish enthusiasm over the work ahead, their admiration for the Chief and for Abe Lee he viewed with cold indifference.

With all his duties Abe found frequent opportunity to report to Barbara, for the girl's interest in every detail of the preparations was never failing. Her friends protested that they never saw her now at their little social affairs, for she was always off somewhere with some engineer, and that when they did chance to catch her alone she would talk of nothing but that horrid King's Basin country.

Every evening, early after supper, the surveyor would slip away from his companions at the hotel to spend an hour on the veranda at the banker's home talking in his straightforward way with Barbara and her father, of the work that was so dear to the heart of the girl. And because it was his work and in the nature of a report to one who, he felt, had in some subtle way authority to hear, Abe talked with a freedom that would have astonished many of his friends who thought they knew him best.

Three times while Abe was there Willard Holmes appeared, and each time, at the engineer's presence, the surveyor's painful diffidence became apparent and he soon—with some stammering excuse—left.

The last time this happened Barbara walked down to the gate with the painfully embarrassed surveyor. Everything was in readiness for the coming of the Chief, who would arrive the next day, and the following morning the expedition would start for the field.

"Buenos noches, hermano—Good night, brother," called Barbara, as the tall surveyor walked away down the street.

"Buenos noches," came the answer.

Willard Holmes heard and frowned. "You seem to be very fond of Spanish, Miss Worth," he said, when the girl came back to the porch. "I notice you use it so often with our long friend there."

Barbara laughed at his evident displeasure. "The language seems to belong so to this country. To me its colors are all soft and warm like the colors of the Desert. I never thought of it before, but I suppose I use it so often with Abe because he, too, seems to belong to this country."

The engineer looked at her curiously. "I don't think I quite see the connection. You mean that he has Spanish blood?"

"Not at all," said Barbara quickly. "But he is desert-born and desert-trained. He has the same patient stillness, the same natural bigness and the same unconquerable hardness."

"Oh, but you say the desert is not unconquerable; that it will be subdued. Your analogy is at fault."

"No, Mr. Holmes, it is you who do not understand. There is something about this country that will always remain as it is now. Abe Lee is like that. Whatever changes may come, he will always be Abe Lee of the Desert."

"Your views are really poetical and your character analyses very clever, Miss Worth, but after all men are men wherever you find them. Human nature is the same the world over."

"Oh, I'm sure that is so, Mr. Holmes. I know there must be many western men in the east, only they haven't found themselves yet."

He laughed heartily as he rose to go. "Will you ever bid me good night in your language of the desert?" he asked.

"Perhaps, when you have learned that language," she said with an answering smile.

"By George, I shall try to learn it," he answered.

"Oh, I wish you would," came the earnest answer. "I know you could."

And again the engineer felt strongly, back of her words, that unvoiced appeal. As he went down the street he knew that she did not refer to the Spanish tongue when she wished him to learn the language of her Desert.

Alone in her room that night Barbara's mind was too active for sleep and she sat for a long time by the open window, looking out into the vast silent world under the still stars.

Until she introduced herself to Willard Holmes, Barbara had never known eastern people. Tourists she had seen and, at rare intervals, met in a casual way. But they had always examined her with such frankly curious eyes that she had felt like some strange animal on exhibition and had repaid their interest with all the indifference she could command. Occasionally also she had been introduced to eastern business men, whom she chanced upon talking with her father in the bank, but they had turned quickly away to the matters of their world after the usual polite nothings demanded by the introduction. The home-land and life of Willard Holmes were as foreign to her as her land and life were strange to him.

So it happened in this instance also that in the education of the eastern engineer the teacher learned quite as much as the pupil.

The traits that stood out so prominently in the western men whom Barbara knew and so much admired were, in Willard Holmes, buried deeply under the habits and customs of the life and thought of the world to which he belonged—buried so deeply that the man himself scarcely realized that they were there and so was led to wonder at himself when his blood tingled with some strong presentation of this western girl's views.

But Barbara knew. Beneath the conventionalities of his class the girl felt the man a powerful character, with all the latent strength of his nation-building ancestors. She wanted him—as she put it to herself—to wake up. Would he? Would he learn the language of her Desert? She believed that he would, even as she believed in the reclamation of The King's Basin lands.

And she was glad—glad that the Seer and Abe and Tex and Pat and her father—the men who had brought her out of the Desert—were going now back into that land of death to save that land itself from itself. And—she whispered it softly under the stars—she was glad—glad that Willard Holmes had come to go with them—to learn the language of her land.

CHAPTER VIII.

WHY WILLARD HOLMES STAYED.

Slowly, day by day, the surveying party under the Seer pushed deeper and deeper into the awful desolation of The King's Basin Desert. They were the advance force of a mighty army ordered ahead by Good Business—the master passion of the race. Their duty was to learn the strength of the enemy, to measure its resources, to spy out its weaknesses and to gather data upon which a campaign would be planned.

Under the Seer the expedition was divided into several smaller parties, each of which was assigned to certain defined districts. Here and there, at seemingly careless intervals in the wide expanse, the white tents of the division camps shone through the many colored veils of the desert. Tall, thin columns of dust lifted into the sky from the water wagons that crawled ceaselessly from water hole to camp and from camp to water hole—hung in long clouds above the supply train laboring heavily across the dun plain to and from Rubio City—or rose in quick puffs and twisting spirals from the feet of some saddle horse bearing a messenger from the Chief to some distant lieutenant.

Every morning, from each of the camps, squads of khaki-clad men bearing transit and level, stake and pole and flag—the weapons of their warfare—put out in different directions into the vast silence that seemed to engulf them. Every evening the squads returned, desert-stained and weary, to their rest under the lonesome stars. Every morning the sun broke fiercely up from the long level of the eastward plain to pour its hot strength down upon these pigmy creatures, who dared to invade the territory over which he had, for so many ages, held undisputed dominion. Every evening the sun plunged fiercely down behind the purple wall of mountains that shut in the Basin on the west, as if to gather strength in some nether world for to-morrow's fight.

Always there was the same flood of white light from the deep, dry sky that was uncrossed by shred of cloud; always the same wide, tawny waste, harshly glaring near at hand—filled with awful mysteries under the many colored mists of the distance; until the eyes ached and the soul cried out in wonder at it all. Always there were the same deep nights, with the lonely stars so far away in the velvet purple darkness; the soft breathing of the desert; the pungent smell of greasewood and salt-bush; the weird, quavering call of the ground owl; or the wild coyote chorus, as if the long lost spirits of long ago savage races cried out a dreadful warning to these invaders.

And in all of this the land made itself felt against these men in the silent menace, the still waiting, the subtle call, the promise, the threat and the challenge of La Palma de la Mano de Dios.

To Barbara, who rode often in those days to the very rim of the Basin, there to search the wild, wide land with straining eyes for signs of her friends, the white glare of the camps was lost in the bewildering maze of color. The columns, clouds and spirals of dust—save perhaps from a near supply wagon coming in or passing out—could not be distinguished from the whirling dust-devils that danced always over the hot plains. The toiling pigmy dots of the little army were far beyond her vision's range. It was as though the fierce land had swallowed up horses, wagons and men. Only through the frequent letters brought by the freighters did she know that all was going well.

Perhaps the gray lizard that climbed to the top of a line stake wondered at the strange new growth that had sprung so suddenly from the familiar soil; or perhaps the horned-toad, scuttling to cover, marveled at the strange sounds as the stakes were driven and man called to man figures and directions. Perhaps the scaly side-winder, springing his warning rattle at the approaching step, questioned what new enemy this was; or the lone buzzard, wheeling high over head, watched the tiny moving figures with wondering hopefulness, and the coyote, that hushed for a little his wild music to follow up the wind this strange new scent, laughed at the Seer's dream.

These lines of stakes that every day stretched farther and farther into and across the waste seemed, in the wideness of the land, pitifully foolish. Looking back over the lines, the men who set them could scarcely distinguish the way they had come. But they knew that the stakes were there. They knew that some day that other, mightier company, the main army, would move along the way they had marked to meet the strength of the barren waste with the strength of the great river and take for the race the wealth of the land. The sound of human voices was flat and ineffectual in that age-old solitude, but the speakers knew that following their feeble voices would come the shouting, ringing, thundering chorus of the life that was to follow them into that silent land of death.

With the slow passing of the weeks came the trying out and testing of character inevitable to such a work. The concealing habits of civilization were dropped. Kindly, useful conventionalities were lost. Face to face with the unconquered forces of nature, nothing remained but the real strength or weakness of the individual himself. In some there were developed unguessed powers of endurance that bore the hard days without flinching; cheerful optimism that laughed at the appalling immensity of the task; strength of spirit that made a jest of galling discomforts; courage that smiled in the face of dangers. These were the strength of the party. Some there were who grew sullen, quarrelsome, and vicious in a kind of mad rebellion. These must be held in check, controlled and governed by the Seer with the assistance of Abe Lee and his helpers. Some became silent and moody, faint hearted and afraid. These were strengthened and guarded and given fresh courage. Some grew peevish and fretful, whining and complaining. These were disciplined wisely, forced gently into line. Some staggered and fell by the way. These were sent back and the ranks closed up. But the work—always the work went on.

To Willard Holmes the life was a slow torture, a revelation and an education. He found himself stripped of everything upon which he was accustomed to rely—family traditions, social position, influential friends, scholarship, experience in the world to which he was born—all these were nothing in The Hollow of God's Hand. Slowly he learned that the power of such wealth is limited to certain fields. New York was very far away. He felt that he had been hopelessly banished to a strange world. Many times he would have thrown it all up and turned back with other deserters, but there was red blood in his veins. Stubborn pride and the thought of the girl who had hoped that he would "learn the language of her country" enabled him to hold on.

Once he ventured to speak to the Chief in a hopeless voice of the evident impossibility of ever converting that terrible land into a habitable country, and the Seer, strong in the strength of his dream, had looked at him from the still depth of his brown eyes without a word—looked until the younger man had turned away, his cheeks flushed with shame and his spirit doing homage to the strength of the master spirit of the work. And the eastern engineer remembered with new understanding his talks with Barbara Worth.

When they pulled the dead coyote from the only water hole within two days' travel and Holmes nearly fainted at the sickening sight, it was Texas Joe who saved the day for him by remarking, with an air of philosophical musing, after a deep draught of the tepid, tainted water: "Hit ain't so bad as you might think, Mr. Holmes, onct your oilfactory nerves has become somewhat regulated to the aroma and your palate has been eddicated to the point of appreciatin' the deliciously foreign flavor. In the judgment of some connysoors, it has several points the lead of them imported fancy drinks you get in Frisco."

When a Mexican died horribly from the bite of a rattlesnake, and Holmes himself was barely saved from a like fate by the prompt action and ready knowledge of Abe Lee, it was the slow smile of the desert-bred surveyor that stiffened him to go on.

And when he was nearly beaten by a three days' sand-storm so searching that even the flap-jacks and bacon gritted in his teeth and his blood-shot eyes smarted in his head like coals of fire and his skin felt as though it had been sand-papered, when he would have sold his soul for a bath and actually began to get his things together in readiness for the next wagon out, it was Pat, who, with the devilish ingenuity of an Irish imp, mocked and jeered at him for a quitter, "fit to act only as lady's maid or to serve soft dhrinks in a corner drug-sthore," until his fainting heart took fire and, cursing his tormentor with all the oaths he could muster, he offered to whip, single-handed, the whole grinning camp and stayed.

Thus he was advanced to the second degree, when he began to sense the spirit of the untamed land and of the men who went to meet it with sheer joy of the conquest; when he began to glory in the very greatness of the task; and the long dormant spirit of his ancestors stirred within him as he caught glimpses of the vision that inspired the Seer or, perhaps it should be written, the vision that tempted his employers, James Greenfield and his fellow capitalists.

He was still far from ready for the final degree; but even that might come.

Through all those hard days Jefferson Worth moved with the same careful, precise, certain manner that distinguished him in his work at home. Even the desert sun that so tanned, blistered and blackened the faces of his companions could not mark the gray pallor of that mask-like face. No disturbing incident or unforeseen difficulty could wring from him an exclamation or change the measured tones of his colorless voice. He seemed to accept everything as though he had foreseen, carefully considered and dismissed it from his mind before it came to pass. Day after day he rode in every direction over the land within easy reach of the many camps; familiarizing himself with every detail of the work, observing soil, studying conditions, poring over maps and figures with the Seer, verifying estimates, listening to and taking part in the many councils of the leaders. But not once did anyone catch a hint of what was going on behind those expressionless blue eyes that seemed to see everything without effort and to be incapable of expressing the emotions of the soul within.

To the men he was the visible representative of that invisible power that willed their going forth. He was Capital—Money—Business incarnate. They set him apart as one not of their world. In his presence laughter was hushed, jests were unspoken. Silently they waited for him to speak first. When he conversed with them they answered thoughtfully in subdued tones, seeming to feel that their words were received by one who placed upon them undreamed-of values. Filled as these men were with the enthusiasm of their work, they were never unconscious of the knowledge that but for the power represented by Jefferson Worth their work would be impossible.

Small wonder, then, that there was consternation in the headquarters camp that night when Pat appeared, hat in hand, before the company of leaders in the Seer's office tent. "I beg yer pardon, Sorr."

"What is it, Pat?" asked the Seer, and all eyes were turned upon the burly Irishman, whose face and voice as well as his presence at that hour betrayed some unusual incident. "'Tis this, Sorr. Has anywan seen Mr. Worth this avenin'?"

Every head was shaken negatively.

"Was he not at supper wid you gintlemen?"

"Why no, he was not," returned the Seer. "But it is nothing unusual for him to be late. Have you asked the cook?"

"We have, Sorr. Ye see, whin ut come time to turn in an' he hadn't shown up an' Tex seen that his horse wasn't wid the bunch, we got a bit unaisy like. We axed the cook, an' we've been to his tent, an' we've axed the men."

"Perhaps he has put up at one of the other camps," suggested a surveyor.

"That's not like, Sorr, for he rode northeast this mornin'. Me an' Tex watched him go; an' there's divil a camp in that direction as we all know."

"He surely intended to return here or he would have told us," said the
Seer. "You know how careful he is. What do you think, Abe?"

Before Abe could answer a Mexican ran up, and Pat, turning, hauled him into the tent by the neck. "Fwhat the hell is ut, ye greaser?"

"Senor Texas send me quick," the little brown man panted, bowing low to the company, sombrero in hand. "Senor Worth's horse, he just come. In the saddle is no one. Senor Worth he is not come. I think he is gone."

Before the Mexican finished speaking there was a rush of feet and he was alone. With a shrug of his shoulders and a flash of his white teeth, he turned leisurely to follow, saying half aloud: "It is all in La Palma de la Mano de Dios, Senor Worth. Maybe so you come back, maybe this time not." He stood for a moment looking into the black vault of the night; then, with another shrug, retired to his blanket to sleep.

Abe Lee was first to reach the corral where Texas Joe, by the light of a lantern, was examining Mr. Worth's horse. No word was exchanged between them while the surveyor in turn looked carefully over the animal. The others, coming up, stood silent a little apart, waiting for the word of these two.

"What do you make of it, Abe?" asked the Seer when the long surveyor turned toward him.

Deliberately rolling a cigarette, Abe answered from a cloud of smoke: "He is left afoot too far out to walk in, likely. We'll go for him in the morning."

A startled exclamation came from Willard Holmes, but no one heeded as the surveyor turned to Texas Joe. "How do you figure it, Tex?"

"The same," came the laconic answer. "This here cayuse wasn't broke to stand. He must have been tied somewheres, 'cause the reins are busted." He pointed to the pieces of leather hanging from the bit. "The canteen is gone. Jefferson Worth is too old a hand on the desert to leave it on the horse. He likely tied the pony to a bush and went to climb a hill or something. Mr. Hawss breaks loose and pulls for home. It happened a good way out, 'cause the pony's pretty well tired, which he wouldn't a-been, travelin' light, if Mr. Worth hadn't ridden some distance before it happened. An' if he was nearer the pony would have been in earlier. He'll likely show us a smoke in the morning and even if he don't it'll be easy to trail him, 'cause there ain't no wind. Will I go, sir?" He looked at the Chief.

"Yes; you and Abe, don't you think?"

Abe assented and the men turned toward the tents while Texas led the tired horse away.

The New York engineer approached the Chief. "Do I understand, sir, that you propose to do nothing until morning?"

The Seer faced him. "There is nothing to do, Mr. Holmes," he said simply.

Willard Holmes was amazed at the man's apparent unconcern. "Nothing to do?" he exclaimed. "Why don't you arouse the men and send them in every direction to search? Why man, don't you realize the situation? Mr. Worth may be hurt. He may even be dying alone out there! I protest! It's monstrous! It's cowardly, inhuman, to do nothing!"

The company, attracted by the loud words, paused. Abe Lee, standing beside his Chief, rolled another cigarette while the engineer was speaking.

The Seer answered patiently: "But Mr. Holmes, we could accomplish nothing by such a search as you suggest. The territory is too large to cover with a hundred times the number of men we have in camp. At daylight, when they can follow his trail, Abe and Tex will ride to him as fast as their horses can go. Granting that the worst you suggest may be true, our plan is the only sane way." "But I protest, sir. You should make the attempt. I will not submit to idly doing nothing while a life is in danger—particularly that of a man like Mr. Worth. I shall go alone if no one will help me, and"—he straightened himself haughtily—"I shall report this to Mr. Greenfield and the men interested with him in this work."

At the last words one of those rare changes swept over the big engineer, and the witnesses saw a side of the Chief's nature that was seldom revealed. His eyes flashed and his face hardened as he burst forth in tones that startled his hearers: "Report me? You! Report and be damned, sir. I was old at this work when you were a sucking babe. These men were learning the desert when you were attending a fashionable dancing school. Why, you damned lily-fingered tenderfoot, you couldn't find your way five hundred yards in this country without a guide or a compass. Now, sir, I'm running this outfit and if you have any protests against my cowardly inhumanity I advise you to smother them in your manly breast, or, by hell! I'll ship you out on the first wagon to-morrow morning and let you report to Greenfield that you were fired because you didn't know your work yourself and hadn't intelligence enough to listen to those who did!"

The Chief paused for breath, and Willard Holmes, whose experience with large corporations was expected to make him peculiarly valuable to the capitalists who sent him out, turned away with what dignity he could command.

"Howly Mither!" came a hoarse whisper from Pat to Abe; "I made sure the poor bhoy wud shrivel up. Sich a witherin', blistherin' tongue lashin' wud scorch the hide av the owld divil himsilf." He looked admiringly after the Seer. "D'ye think, now, that the poor lad will be afther tacklin' the job alone, like he said? Sure, ut's nerve he has all right but he lacks judgment."

"Yes, he has the nerve all right," returned Abe slowly, "and we'd better keep an eye on him. Tell Tex."

Willard Holmes knew that he owed his Chief an apology and he promised himself to make it in the morning. But neither the explanation of the Seer nor the bitter humiliation that he had brought upon himself could turn his thoughts from Mr. Worth alone on the desert. To sleep was impossible. The banker might be——As he tossed in his blankets the engineer pictured to himself a hundred things that might have happened to Barbara's father.

It was some two hours later when Pat touched Abe Lee on the shoulder.

"All right, Pat," said the surveyor, fully awake and in possession of all his senses in an instant.

"There's a light bobbin' off into nowhere an' the lad's blankets are impty."

Fifteen minutes later a quiet voice within three feet of Willard Holmes asked: "Shall I go with you, sir?"

The eastern man jumped like a nervous woman. He had not heard the approach of the surveyor, who walked with the step of an Indian. "I couldn't sleep," he explained. "I thought I would follow the tracks a little way out at least. He may not be so far away as you think."

After Abe had taken time to make his cigarette he spoke meditatively.
"Mr. Worth rode a horse."

"I understand that," returned the man with the lantern tartly. "I saw him go this morning and I saw the horse to-night. This is the track."

From another cloud of smoke came the quiet, respectful answer: "But this is a mule's track, Mr. Holmes. It is Manuel Ramirez's mule. See, he has a broken shoe on the off fore-foot. I noticed it yesterday when I sent Manuel to hunt a water hole. Besides, Mr. Worth rode northeast; not in this direction."

CHAPTER IX.

THE MASTER PASSION—"GOOD BUSINESS."

When Jefferson Worth left headquarters camp that morning, his purpose was to ride over a part of the territory lying southeast of the old San Felipe trail between the sand hills and the old beach-line. He had covered practically all of the land on the western side of the ancient sea-bed, from the delta dam at the southern end north to the lowest point in the Basin, and southward again on the eastern side as far as the old trail. There remained for him to see only this section in the southeast.

It was nearly noon when the banker, from a slight elevation that afforded him a view of the surrounding country, recognized the group of sand hills and, by the general course of Dry River, distinguished the spot where the San Felipe trail crosses the deep arroyo. Occupied with his thoughts, he had ridden farther from camp than he had realized. He should turn back. But the distant scene of the desert tragedy called him. He became possessed of a desire to visit once more the spot that was so closely associated with the child, who had so strangely come into his life and whom he loved as his own daughter.

An hour later he dismounted to stand beside the water hole where, with his companions, he had found the dead woman with the empty canteen by her side. The incidents of that hour were as vivid in the banker's memory as if it had all happened only the day before. He remembered how Texas Joe had lifted the canteen and, inverting it, had held out to them his finger moistened with the last drop of water in the cloth-covered vessel; and how he and his companions, standing by the dead body of the woman, had turned to each other in startled awe at the coyotes' ghostly call in the dusk. He heard again with thrilling clearness the baby's plaintive voice: "Mamma, mamma! Barba wants drink. Please bring drink, mamma. Barba's 'fraid!"

Going a short way up the wash, he stood with uncovered head on the very spot where he had knelt with out-stretched hands before the big-eyed, brown-haired baby girl, who, crouching under the high bank, shrank back from him in fear. He saw the frightened look in her eyes and heard the sweet voice cry: "Go 'way! Go 'way! Go 'way!" Then he saw the expression on the little face change as Pat and Tex and the boy tried to reassure her; saw her hold up her baby hands in full confidence to the big engineer; and felt again the pain and humiliation in his heart.

Why had the baby instinctively feared him? Why had she turned from him to the Seer? Why, he asked himself bitterly, had she always feared him? Why did she still shrink from him? For Barbara did shrink from him, unconsciously—unintentionally—but, to Jefferson Worth, none the less plainly now than when he knelt before her that night in the desert. And it hurt him now as it had hurt him then; hurt the more, perhaps, because Barbara did not know—because her attitude was instinctive.

Still living over again the incidents and emotions of that hour in the desert night, he walked back to the crossing and, leading his horse, climbed the little hill out of the wash to the spot where, with Texas and Pat, he had rendered the last possible service to the unknown woman, who had given her life for the life of the child—the child that was his but not his. Long ago he had marked the grave with a simple headstone bearing the only name possible—the one word: "Mother"—and the date of her death.

Then mounting again, he rode swiftly along the old trail toward the sand hills in the near distance. The great drifts, in the years that had passed, had been moved on by the wind until the wagon and all that remained of the half-buried outfit were now hidden somewhere deep in its heart. But the general form of the sand hill was still the same.

Dismounting, Mr. Worth tied his horse to a scraggly, half-buried mesquite and, taking his canteen from the saddle, climbed laboriously up the steep, sandy slope. He would look over the country from that point and then make straight for camp, for it was getting well on in the afternoon. From the top of the hill he could see the wide reaches of The King's Basin Desert sweeping away on every side. At his feet the bare sand hills themselves lay like huge, rolling, wind-piled drifts of tawny snow glistening in the sunlight with a blinding glare. Beyond these were the gray and green of salt-bush, mesquite and greasewood, with the dun earth showing here and there in ragged patches. Still farther away the detail of hill and hummock and bush and patch was lost in the immensity of the scene, while the dull tones of gray and green and brown were over-laid with the ever-changing tints of the distance, until, to the eyes, the nearer plain became an island surrounded on every side by a mighty, many-colored sea that broke only at the foot of the purple mountain wall.

The work of the expedition was nearly finished. The banker knew now from the results of the survey and from his own careful observations and estimates that the Seer's dream was not only possible from an engineering point of view, but from the careful capitalist's standpoint, would justify a large investment. Lying within the lines of the ancient beach and thus below the level of the great river, were hundreds of thousands of acres equal in richness of the soil to the famous delta lands of the Nile. The bringing of the water from the river and its distribution through a system of canals and ditches, while a work of great magnitude requiring the expenditure of large sums of money, was, as an engineering problem, comparatively simple.

As Jefferson Worth gazed at the wonderful scene, a vision of the changes that were to come to that land passed before him. He saw first, following the nearly finished work of the engineers, an army of men beginning at the river and pushing out into the desert with their canals, bringing with them the life-giving water. Soon, with the coming of the water, would begin the coming of the settlers. Hummocks would be leveled, washes and arroyos filled, ditches would be made to the company canals, and in place of the thin growth of gray-green desert vegetation with the ragged patches of dun earth would come great fields of luxuriant alfalfa, billowing acres of grain, with miles upon miles of orchards, vineyards and groves. The fierce desert life would give way to the herds and flocks and the home life of the farmer. The railroad would stretch its steel strength into this new world; towns and cities would come to be where now was only solitude and desolation; and out from this world-old treasure house vast wealth would pour to enrich the peoples of the earth. The wealth of an empire lay in that land under the banker's eye, and Capital held the key.

But while the work of the engineers was simple, it would be a great work; and it was the magnitude of the enterprise and the consequent requirement of large sums of money that gave Capital its opportunity. Without water the desert was worthless. With water the productive possibilities of that great territory were enormous. Without Capital the water could not be had. Therefore Capital was master of the situation and, by controlling the water, could exact royal tribute from the wealth of the land.

Knowing James Greenfield and his business associates as he knew them, familiar with their operations as he was and knowing that they represented the power of almost unlimited capital, Jefferson Worth realized that they would plan to share in every dollar of wealth that The King's Basin lands could be made to produce. Already, his trained mind saw how easily, with the vast power in their hands, this could be brought about. And these men, recognizing his peculiar value in such an enterprise as this, wanted him to join them.

It was a triumphant moment in the life and business career of the western banker, the culmination of long, hard years of unceasing toil, of unfaltering devotion to business, of struggle and disappointments, of small victories and steady advance gained at the cost of sacrifice and hard fighting. This proposed alliance with the great eastern capitalists opened the door and invited him into the company of the real leaders of the financial world. As one of the powerful corporation that would literally hold the life of the future King's Basin in its hand, the multitudes of toilers who would come to reclaim the desert would be forced to toil not only for themselves but for him. A part of every dollar of the millions that would be taken from that treasury by the labor of the people would go to enrich him.

The financier's thoughts were interrupted by a sound. He turned to see his horse tugging at the bridle reins, snorting in fear. The man started quickly down the hill, but before he could cover half the distance that separated him from his mount the frightened animal broke the reins and, wheeling about, disappeared down the trail on a wild run. At the same instant a coyote trotted leisurely out from under the lee of the sand drift and, with a side glance over his shoulder at the banker, slipped around the point of the next low ridge.

The man knew that to catch his horse would be impossible. The animal would not stop until he reached his companions at the feed-rack in camp. He knew also that to attempt to find his way to headquarters such a distance and on foot, with night so near at hand, would be worse than folly. He would only exhaust his strength and make it harder for his friends to find him before his water, which could not last another day, should give out. Someone, he knew, would take his trail in the morning. The only thing he could do was to wait—to wait alone in the heart of this silent, age-old, waiting land.

Somewhere in those forgotten ages that went into the making of The King's Basin Desert, a company of free-born citizens of the land, moved by that master passion—Good Business, found their way to the banks of the Colorado. In time Good Business led them to build their pueblos and to cultivate their fields by irrigation with water from the river and erect their rude altars to their now long-forgotten gods. Driven by the same passion that drove the Indians, the emigrant wagons moved toward the new gold country, and some financial genius saw Good Business at the river-crossing near the site of the ancient city. At first it was no more than a ferry, but soon others with eyes for profit established a trading point where the overland voyagers could replenish their stock of supplies, sure to be low after the hundreds of miles across the wide plains. Then also, in obedience to Good Business, pleasures heard the call, saloons, gambling houses and dance halls appeared, and for profit the joys of civilization arrived in the savage land. Good Business sent the prospectors who found the mines, the capital that developed them and the laborers who dug the ore. Good Business sent the cattle barons and their cowboys, sent the speculators and the pioneer merchants. Good Business sent also, in the fulness of time, Jefferson Worth.

Of old New England Puritan stock, Worth had come through the hard life of a poor farm boy with two dominant elements in his character: an almost super-human instinct for Good Business, inherited no doubt, and an instinct, also inherited, for religion. The instinct for trade, from much cultivation, had waxed strong and stronger with the years. The religion that he had from his forefathers was become little more than a superstition. It was his genius for business that led him, in his young manhood, to leave the farm, and it was inevitable that from making money he should come to making money make more money. It was the other dominant element in his character that kept him scrupulously honest, scrupulously moral. Besides this, honesty and morality were also "good business."

Seeking always larger opportunities for the employment of his small, steadily-increasing financial strength, Mr. Worth established the Pioneer Bank. Later, as he had foreseen, the same master passion brought the great railroad with still larger opportunities for his money to make more money. And now the same master passion that had driven the Indian, the emigrant, the miner, the cowman, the banker and the railroad was driving the eastern capitalists to spend their moneyed strength in the reclamation of The King's Basin Desert. It was Good Business that led Greenfield and his friends to seek the co-operation of the western financier. It was Good Business that called to Jefferson Worth now as he saw the immense possibilities of the land.

As truly as the ages had made the barren desert with its hard, thirsty life, the ages had produced Jefferson Worth, a carefully perfected, money making machine, as silent, hard and lonely as the desert itself. With apparently no vices, no passions, no mistakes, no failures, his only relation to his fellow-men was a business relation. With his almost supernatural ability to foresee, to measure, to weigh and judge, with his cold, mask-like face and his manner of considering carefully every word and of placing a value upon every trivial incident, he was respected, feared, trusted, even admired—and that was all. No; not all. By those who were forced, through circumstances—business circumstances—to contribute to his prosperity and financial success, he was hated. Such is the unreasonableness of human kind.

Business, to this man as to many of his kind, was not the mean, sordid grasping and hoarding of money. It was his profession, but it was even more than a profession; it was the expression of his genius. Still more it was, through him, the expression of the age in which he lived, the expression of the master passion that in all ages had wrought in the making of the race. He looked upon a successful deal as a good surgeon looks upon a successful operation, as an architect upon the completion of a building or an artist upon his finished picture. But to a greater degree than to artist or surgeon, the success of his work was measured by the accumulation of dollars. Apart from his work he valued the money received from his operations no more than the surgeon his fee, the artist his price. The work itself was his passion. Because dollars were the tools of his craft he was careful of them. The more he succeeded, the more power he gained for greater success.

But extremely simple in his tastes, lacking, with his lack of education, knowledge of the more costly luxuries of life, with the habits of an ascetic, Jefferson Worth could not evidence his success; and success hidden and unknown loses its power to reward. It is not enough for the engineer to run his locomotive; he must have train loads of goods and passengers to carry to some objective point. It is not enough for the captain to have command of his ship; he must have a port. Self to Jefferson Worth meant little; his nature demanded so little. Nor could Mrs. Worth in this fill the need in her husband's life, for her nature was as simple as his own. But a child, whose life could be part of his life, filling out, supplementing and complementing his own nature; a child who, dependent upon him, should have all the training that he lacked, who should share his success and for whom he could plan to succeed—a child, an heir, would fill the blank in his empty career. For a brief time he had looked forward to a child of his own blood. Then the death of the baby and the ill health of his wife had left him hopeless. He continued his work because he knew no life apart from his work.

Then came the little girl so strangely the gift of the desert. The banker's mind, trained to act quickly, had grasped the possibilities of the situation instantly as he ran with his companions to answer the call of that childish voice. From the moment when he knelt with outstretched hands and pleading words before little Barbara, he had never ceased trying to win her. Mrs. Worth, knowing that she could not be with him many years, had said: "You need her, Jeff," and he did need her.

But Jefferson Worth knew that Barbara was not his. She shrank from him as instinctively and unconsciously as she had drawn back that night of her mother's death when he knelt before her in the desert. As she had turned to the Seer then, she turned from the banker now. And now, far more than then, his lonely heart hungered for her; for with the years his need of her had grown. Envied of foolish men as men so foolishly envy his class, the banker knew himself to be destitute, an object of their pity. The poorest Mexican in his adobe hut, with his half-naked, laughing children, was more wealthy than he.

Jefferson Worth, that afternoon on the very scene of the tragedy that had given Barbara to him, realized that in the land before him he faced the greatest opportunity of his business career. He realized also that he was as much alone in his life as he was alone in the silent, barren waste that surrounded him. Would La Palma de la Mano de Dios, which had given him the child that was not his child, give him wealth that still never could be his?

At last, from his place on the sand drift that held the secret of Barbara's life, he saw the sun as it appeared to rest for a moment on the western wall before plunging down into the world on the other side. Watching, he saw the purple of the hills deepen and deepen and the wondrous light on the wide sea of colors fade slowly out as the colors themselves paled and grew dim in the misty dusk of the coming night. Slowly the twilight sky grew dark, and into the velvet plain above came the heavenly flocks until their number was past counting save by Him who leadeth them in their fields. Against the last lingering light in the west that marked where the day had gone, the mountains lifted their vast bulk in solemn grandeur as if to bar forever the coming of another day. Closing about him on every hand, coming dreadfully nearer and nearer, the black walls of darkness shut him in. In the cool, mysterious breath of the desert, in the grotesque, fantastic, nearby shapes and monstrous forms of the sand dunes, in the mysterious phantom voices that whispered in the dark, Jefferson Worth felt the close approach of the spirit of the land; the calling of the age-old, waiting land—the silent menace, the voiceless threat, the whispered promise.

And there, alone—held close in The Hollow of God's Hand as the long hours of the night passed—the spirit of the man's Puritan fathers stirred within him. In the silent, naked heart of the Desert that, knowing no hand but the hand of its Creator, seemed to hold in its hushed mysteriousness the ages of a past eternity, he felt his life to be but a little thing. Beside the awful forces that made themselves felt in the spirit of Barbara's Desert, the might of Capital became small and trivial. Sensing the dreadful power that had wrought to make that land, he shrank within himself—he was afraid. He marveled that he had dared dream of forcing La Palma de la Mano de Dios to contribute to his gains. And so at last it was given him to know why Barbara instinctively shrank from him in fear.

With the coming of the day the banker went a little way back on the trail where the vegetation was not entirely covered by the drifting sand, and there gathered materials for a fire. Later, when he judged his friends would be in sight, he fired the pile and, watching the tall, thick column of smoke ascend, awaited the answer. In a little while it came, faint and far away, the report of Texas Joe's forty-five. Soon he heard the sound of voices calling loudly and, following his answer, the swift hoof-beats of galloping horses; and Tex and Abe, leading another horse appeared.

But the Jefferson Worth who rode back to camp with his friends, there to be greeted and congratulated by the party, was not the same Jefferson Worth who had left camp the morning before, though no one congratulated him because of that.

It was three weeks later when a portly, well-fed gentleman entered the
Pioneer Bank in Rubio City and asked of the teller: "Is Mr. Worth in?"

The man on the other side of the counter looked through his grated window at the speaker with unusual interest. And in the teller's voice there was a shade of unusual deference as he replied, "Yes, sir."

"Tell him that Mr. Greenfield is here."

At the magic of that name every man in the bank within sound of the speaker's voice lifted his head and turned toward the face at the window.

"Yes, sir. Come this way, sir."

A door in the partition opened and the visitor was admitted to the sacred precincts behind the gratings, the bars and the plate glass. As he moved down the room past counters and desks, every eye followed him and there was an electrical hush in the atmosphere like the hush that marks the massing of the forces in Nature before a conflict of the elements.

Jefferson Worth looked up as the imposing figure of the great financier appeared on the threshold of his room, and at the name of James Greenfield carefully pushed back the papers he had been considering and rose. The movement, slight as it was, was as though he cleared his decks for action. The clerk, withdrawing, carefully, closed the door.

The two men shook hands with much the air of two wrestlers meeting for a bout. For a moment neither spoke. Each knew that in the silence he was being measured, estimated, searched for his weakness and his strength, and each gave to the other this opportunity as his right. No time was wasted in idle preliminaries. These men knew the value of time. No formal words expressing pleasure at the meeting were spoken. They tacitly accepted the fact that pleasure had not called them together.

James Greenfield was a fair representative of his class. His full, well-colored face with carefully clipped gray mustache, bright blue eyes and gray hair, was the calmly alert, well-controlled, thoughtful face of power: not the face of one who does things, but of one who causes things to be done; not the face of one who is himself powerful, but of one who controls and directs power; such a face as you may see leaning from the cab of a great locomotive that pulls the overland limited, or looking down at you from the bridge of the ocean liner. It was courageous, but with a courage not personal—a courage born rather of an exact knowledge of the strength and duty of every bolt, rivet and lever of the machine under his hand. It was confident, not in its own strength, but in the strength that it ruled and directed.

Jefferson Worth motioned toward a chair at the end of his desk and seated himself. The man from the East found himself forced to make the opening.

"Mr. Worth," he said, "we find it very difficult to understand your attitude toward our company. We do not see why you decline our proposition. Your own report gives every reason in the world why you should accept and you suggest no reason at all for declining. Frankly, it looks strange to us and I have come out to have a little talk with you over the matter and to see if we could not persuade you to reconsider your decision, or at least to learn your reasons for refusing to go in with us. Your report and your answer to our proposition are so conflicting that we feel we have a right to some definite reason for your unexpected decision."

As he spoke, the president of The King's Basin Land and Irrigation Company tried in vain to see behind the mask-like face of the man in the revolving chair. His failure only excited his admiration and respect. Instinctively he recognized the genius before him, and his desire to add this strength to his forces increased.

"My report was satisfactory?" The words were absolutely colorless.

"Very. It was exactly what we wanted. With your opinion, confirming our engineer's statements, we felt safe to go ahead with the organization of the Company and have already set the wheels moving toward actual work. It is because you so unhesitatingly and so strongly commend the project as warranting our investment that we cannot understand your refusal to share the profits of our enterprise."

He paused for an answer, but was forced to continue. "Let me explain more fully than I could outline in my letter just what we propose doing. The King's Basin Land and Irrigation Company, Mr. Worth, will not confine its operations simply to furnishing water for the reclamation and development of these lands. That is no more than the beginning—the basis of our operations. With the settlement and improvement of the country will come many other openings for profitable investments—townsites, transportation lines, telephones, electric power, banking and all that, you understand. Our connections and resources make it possible for us to finance any industry or operation that promises attractive returns, while our position as the originators of the whole King's Basin movement and the owners of the irrigation system will give us tremendous advantage over any outside capital that may attempt to come in later, and will make competition practically impossible."

"I figured that was the way you would do it," was the unemotional reply.

More than ever James Greenfield wanted this man. He considered carefully a few minutes, with no help from Jefferson Worth, then tried again. "If you feel that our proposition to you is not liberal enough, Mr. Worth, I am prepared to double our offer."

If the financier from New York thought to startle this little western banker with a proposal that was more than princely he failed. His words seemed to have no effect. It was as though he talked to a marble figure of a man.

"I appreciate your proposition, but must decline it."

"May I ask your reason, sir?"

"I must decline to give any."

The other arose, the light of battle in his eyes, for to James Greenfield's mind there could be only one possible meaning in the answer. "That is, of course, your privilege, Mr. Worth," he said coldly. And then with the weight of conscious power he added: "But I'll tell you this, sir: if you think you can enter The King's Basin in opposition to our Company you're making the mistake of your life. We'll smash you, with your limited resources, so flat that you'll be glad for a chance to make the price of a meal. Good day, sir!"

"Good day."

Before the great capitalist was out of the building, Jefferson Worth was bending over the papers on his desk again as though declining to accept flattering offers from gigantic corporations was an hourly occurrence.

CHAPTER X.

BARBARA'S LOVE FOR THE SEER.

Jefferson Worth had not proceeded far with the work before him after James Greenfield left when he was again interrupted. This time it was the voice of Barbara in the other room.

The banker lifted his head quickly. Again he pushed his papers from him, but now the movement seemed to indicate weariness and uncertainty rather than readiness for action. His head dropped forward, his thin fingers nervously tapped the arms of his chair. When the girl's step sounded at the door he looked up the fraction of a second before she appeared.

"I don't want to disturb you, father, but they told me that that big, fine-looking man just going out was Mr. Greenfield. Is he—did he come all the way from New York to see you?"

"He came in here to see me," said Jefferson Worth exactly.

"And the work?"

"He says they have already started the wheels to moving."

"And you, daddy; you?"

Jefferson Worth arose and carefully closed the door. Then silently indicating the chair at the end of his desk he resumed his seat.

As Barbara looked into that mask-like face, the eager expectant light in her brown eyes died out and a look of questioning doubt came. She seemed to shrink back from him almost as she had turned away that first time in the desert.

If Jefferson Worth felt that look his face gave no sign; only those thin, nervous fingers were lifted to caress his chin.

"Are you—are you going to help, daddy? Will you join Mr. Greenfield's company?"

Still the man was silent, and the girl, watching, wondered what was going on behind that gray mask, what questions were being weighed and considered.

At last he spoke one cold word: "Why?"

Barbara flushed. "Because," she answered, carefully, "because it is such a great work. You could do so much more than simply make money."

"That is as you and the Seer see it."

"But, father; it is a great work, isn't it, to change the desert into a land of farms and homes for thousands and thousands of people?"

"Do you think that Greenfield and his crowd are going into this scheme because it is a great thing for the people?"

"But don't even capitalists sometimes undertake a great work just because it is great and because thousands upon thousands of people, through years and years to come, will be benefited even though the men themselves do not make so awfully much money?"

If Jefferson Worth felt her unconscious insinuation his face gave no sign. Carefully he listened with his manner of considering and weighing every word, while to Barbara his mind seemed to be reaching out on every side or running far into the future. When he answered his words were carefully exact. "Capitalists, as individuals might and do, spend millions in projects from which they, personally, expect no returns. But Capital doesn't do such things. Anything that Capital, as Capital, goes into must be purely a business proposition. If anything like sentiment entered into it that would be the end of the whole matter."

Barbara moved uneasily. "I don't think I quite understand why," she said.

There was a shade of color now in the banker's voice as he explained by asking: "How long do you think this bank could exist if we made loans to Tom, Dick and Harry because they needed help, or put money into this and that scheme simply because it was a beneficial thing? How long would it be before we went to smash?"

"But don't business men ever do anything except to make money? Doesn't
Capital, as you say, ever consider the people?"

"This bank is a very substantial benefit to the people. But it can only benefit them by doing business on strictly business principles. As an individual any officer or stock holder can do what he pleases for whatever reason moves him. He can burn his money if he wants to. But as officers and directors of this corporation we can't burn the capital of the institution."

"But Mr. Greenfield and these New York men, who have organized the company—are they not careful financiers?"

"Very."

"It seems to me that they must believe in the Seer and his work or they wouldn't furnish him the money, would they?"

"They believe in the Seer and his work from their standpoint. Their capital is invested for just one purpose—dividends."

Barbara sighed and moved impatiently. "You always make it so hard to believe in men, father. I can't think that all business men—all financiers, I mean,—are so cold and heartless."

Again if Jefferson Worth felt the unconscious implication in her words he gave no sign. The banker was not ignorant of the public sentiment toward himself and the men of his class in his profession. He had come to accept it with the indifference of his exact, machine-like habit.

Barbara continued: "I feel sure that Mr. Greenfield and the men with him are going to furnish the money for the Seer to do this work for more than just what they will make out of it. I know that Mr. Holmes does, and I had hoped that you"—her voice broke—"that you would—"

If only Jefferson Worth could have broken the habit of a lifetime. If he could have laid aside that gray mask and permitted the girl to look into his hidden life, perhaps—

His colorless voice broke the silence, coldly exact: "What do you figure Willard Holmes is in this thing for?"

Barbara's face lighted up proudly. "He is in the work for the same reason that the Seer and Abe are—because it is such a great work and means so much to the world. I know, because since he returned he has talked to me so much about it. When he first came out—just at first—he didn't understand what the work really was. But now he understands it as the Seer sees it."

"Did the Seer send him out here?"

"No, I believe Mr. Greenfield sent him."

"Why?"

"I suppose they wanted an eastern man, whom they knew better than they knew the Seer, to represent them? It would be very natural, wouldn't it?"

"Very natural," agreed Jefferson Worth.

"Have you given the Company your final answer, father?"

"Yes."

"And you—you won't have anything to do with the reclamation of my
Desert?"

"I declined to join the Company."

Blindly Barbara made her way out of the building. The place, with its air of business and suggestions of wealth, was unbearably hateful to her. At home she ordered her horse and started for the open country. But she did not ride toward the Desert. She felt that she could not bear the sight of The King's Basin that day.

In her father's attitude toward the Company Barbara saw only his seeming desire for selfish gain. He had told her so often that only one thing could justify an investment of capital. Evidently he did not think The King's Basin project would pay. She felt ashamed for him; he seemed so incapable of considering anything but profit. Nothing but profit, the sure promise of gain, could move him. He believed in the work; he had reported in favor of it to the Company. He knew that the Company was going ahead. He was willing enough that others should do the work, she thought bitterly. They might take the risk. It was even likely that he had some way planned by which, without risking anything himself, he would reap large returns through their efforts. She thought proudly of the Seer, who had given so many unpaid years to the Reclamation work; of Abe and his loyalty to the Seer; and of Willard Holmes, who was going to give himself to the work.

Utterly sick at heart the girl did not meet her father at their evening meal. She could not. Jefferson Worth ate alone and alone spent the evening on the porch. On the way to his room he paused a moment at her door. He knocked softly so as not to waken her if she was asleep. When there was no answer he stole quietly away. But Barbara was not asleep.

For three days Mr. Greenfield remained in Rubio City, "on the business of The King's Basin Land and Irrigation Company," the papers said in a long article setting forth the greatness of the work that was to be undertaken in the desert through the magnificent enterprise of these mighty eastern capitalists.

During that time Barbara had not seen either the Seer, Holmes or Abe Lee. She understood that they were engaged with Mr. Greenfield. She read the glowing articles in the paper, the afternoon of Mr. Greenfield's departure, with a thrill of pride. At last it had come—the day for which the Seer had hoped all these years. The dear old Seer! She was a little disappointed that the papers did not give his name more prominence. It seemed to be all Greenfield and the Company. But after all that did not matter. It was the Seer's work; the Seer had brought it about.

The front gate clicked and Barbara looked up from her paper to see her old friend coming up the walk. She saw at a glance that something was wrong. She thought he was ill. The big form of the engineer drooped with weakness, his head dropped forward, his eyes were fixed on the ground and he walked slowly, dragging his feet as with great weariness. With a startled cry she ran to meet him, and as he caught her hands in both his own she saw his face drawn and haggard and his brown eyes filled with hopeless pain. He did not speak.

Leading him to the shade of the porch she brought forward his favorite chair. He sank into it as if overcome with exhaustion, but attempted to smile his thanks.

"What is it? Are you ill? Let me call a doctor?"

"No, no, dear, I'm not sick. It's not that. I'm—I'm upset a bit, that's all. I'll be all right in a little while. Only it was rather unexpected." He turned his face away as though to hide something from her.

"What is it? Can't you tell me? What is the matter?" Barbara had never seen the Seer so hopeless.

"They have let me out."

She did not understand. "Let you out?"

He bowed his head slowly. "Yes; the Company, you know. They have appointed Mr. Holmes chief engineer in my place."

She cried out in indignant dismay. "But how could they? It is your work—all your work! You have given years to bring it before the world. They never would have known of The King's Basin at all but for you. How dare they? They have no right!"

The engineer smiled. "I was only an employe of Greenfield and the men who organized the Company, you know. In their eyes my relation to the work was the same as that of a Cocopah Indian laborer. Of course it was understood in a general way that I was to have some stock in the Company when it was organized, with the chief engineer's position at least, but there was nothing settled. Nothing could be settled until the actual completion of the survey, you know. I never dreamed of this. I can see now that it was planned from the first and that this is what Holmes came out here for. He is a great favorite of Greenfield's, and I suppose they wanted a man of their own kind to look after their interests. But it hurts, Barbara; it hurts."

For an hour he stayed with her and she helped him as such a woman always helps. But when she would have kept him for supper he said: "No, I must find Abe. I want to tell the boy and have it over. You can tell your father."

When Jefferson Worth learned from his indignant daughter of the Company's action he only said, in his precise way: "I figured that would be their first move." There was no feeling in his voice or manner. It was the simple verification of conclusions already reached and considered.

"Father!" cried Barbara. "Do you mean that you expected the Company to put that man Holmes in the Seer's place?"

"What reason was there to expect anything else?"

"But you never said anything all the time the Seer was—" She could not continue. It was maddening to think that while she had been dreaming and planning with the Seer, her father had foreseen that their dreams would come to nought.

"If I had you would not have believed me." The words were merely a calm, emotionless statement of fact. "I told you that the Company would act only from a business standpoint."

Suddenly a new phase of the situation flashed upon Barbara. Controlling her emotions and searching her father's face she asked: "Daddy, tell me please: was it because you saw this that you refused to join the Company?"

Jefferson Worth considered; then with marked caution answered: "That was part of the reason."

"I think I begin to understand a little. I'm glad—glad that you would have nothing to do with those men. It would have killed me if you had had any part in this now."

Presently the banker asked: "Have you seen Abe Lee?"

"No, why? Do you think—have they discharged him, too? He wouldn't stay anyway after their treatment of the Seer. I wouldn't want him to."

"They won't let him out if they can keep him. Holmes will need him," said Worth. They he added: "You'd better tell Abe to stay."

Barbara gasped. "What do you mean?"

"Tell him to stay," repeated Worth slowly.

CHAPTER XI.

ABE LEE RESIGNS.

In obedience to its master passion—Good Business—the race now began pouring its life into the barren wastes of The King's Basin Desert.

In the city by the sea at the end of the Southwestern and Continental there was a suite of offices with real gold letters on the ground-glass doors richly spelling "The King's Basin Land and Irrigation Company." Behind these doors there was real mahogany furniture, solid, substantial and rich; a high safe; many attractive maps; and a gentleman who—never having traveled west of Buffalo before—could answer with authority every conceivable question relating to the reclamation of the arid lands of the great West. When there were no more questions to ask he could still tell you many things of the wonderland of wealth that was being opened to the public by the Company, demonstrating thus beyond the possibility of a doubt how many times a dollar could be multiplied.

From this office went forth to the advertising departments of the magazines and papers, skillfully prepared copy, which in turn was followed by pamphlets, circulars and letters innumerable. In one room a company of clerks and book-keepers and accountants pored over their tasks at desks and counters. In another a squad of stenographers filled the air with the sound of their type-writers. Through the doors of the different rooms passed an endless procession; men from the front with the marks of the desert sun on their faces—engineers, superintendents, bosses, messengers, agents—servants of the Company; laborers of every sort and nationality came in answer to the cry: "Men wanted!"; special salesmen from foundry, factory and shop drawn by prospective large sales of machinery, implements and supplies; land-hungry men from everywhere seeking information and opportunity for investment.

At Deep Well (which is no well at all) on the rim of the Basin, trainloads of supplies, implements, machinery, lumber and construction material, horses, mules and men were daily side-tracked and unloaded on the desert sands. Overland travelers gazed in startled wonder at the scene of stirring activity that burst so suddenly upon them in the midst of the barren land through which they had ridden for hours without sight of a human habitation or sign of man. The great mountain of goods, piled on the dun plain; the bands of horses and mules; the camp-fires; the blankets spread on the bare ground; the men moving here and there in seemingly hopeless confusion; all looked so ridiculously out of place and so pitifully helpless.

Every hour companies of men with teams and vehicles set out from the camp to be swallowed up in the silent distance. Night and day the huge mountain of goods was attacked by the freighters who, with their big wagons drawn by six, eight, twelve, or more, mules, appeared mysteriously out of the weird landscape as if they were spirits materialized by some mighty unknown genii of the desert. Their heavy wagons loaded, their water barrels filled, they turned again to the unseen realm from which they had been summoned. The sound of the loud voices of the drivers, the creaking of the wagons, the jingle of harness, the shot-like reports of long whips died quickly away; while, to the vision, the outfits passed slowly—fading, dissolving in their great clouds of dust, into the land of mystery.

In Rubio City Jefferson Worth continued on his machine-like way at the Pioneer Bank, apparently paying no heed to the movement that offered such opportunities for profitable investment. Barbara rarely spoke now of the work that had been so dear to her, nor did she ever ride to the foot of the hill on the Mesa to look over the Desert. The Seer was in the northern railroad work again, but Abe Lee, with Tex and Pat and Pablo Garcia, had gone with the beginning of the stream of life that was pouring into the new country.

True to the far-reaching plans of the Company, at the largest and most central of the supply camps, located in the very heart of The King's Basin, the townsite of Kingston was laid out, and even in the days when every drop of water was hauled from three to ten miles town lots were offered for sale and sold to eager speculators.

A year from the beginning of the work at the intake at the river, water was turned into the canals. With the coming of the water, Kingston changed, almost between suns, from a rude supply camp to an established town with post-office, stores, hotel, blacksmith shop, livery stables, all in buildings more or less substantial. Most substantial of all was the building owned and occupied by the offices of the Company.

With the coming of the water also, the stream of human life that flowed into the Basin was swollen by hundreds of settlers driven by the master passion—Good Business—to toil and traffic, to build the city, to subdue and cultivate the land and thus to realize the Seer's dream, while the engineer himself was banished from the work to which he had given his life. Every sunrise saw new tent-houses springing up on the claims of the settlers around the Company town and new buildings beginning in the center of it all—Kingston. Every sunset saw miles of new ditches ready to receive the water from the canal and acres of new land cleared and graded for irrigation.

Thus it was that afternoon when, from his office window, Mr. Burk, the General Manager of The King's Basin Land and Irrigation Company, watched a freighter with a twelve-mule load of goods stop his team directly across the street in front of the largest and most important general store in the Basin.

Deck Jordan, the merchant, came out and the Manager easily heard the driver's loud voice: "Jim'll be along in 'bout another hour, I reckon. We aim to get the rest in two more trips."

"Six twelve-mule loads in that shipment," thought the Company's manager; "and that fellow set up business with a two-horse load of stuff!"

An empty wagon was driven up to the store and the General Manager recognized in the driver one of the Company's men from a grading camp six miles away; while another wagon—a Company wagon also—nearly filled with supplies moved away toward the open desert.

Deck's business was assuming quite respectable proportions thought Mr. Burk. And Deck's business was mostly with employes of the Company. Taking a cigar from a box on his desk, Mr. Burk scratched a match on the heel of his shoe and, leaning back in his office chair, continued thinking. The Manager of The King's Basin Land and Irrigation Company was paid to think. The Company hired Mr. Burk's peculiar talent even as they hired the physical strength of their laborers or the professional skill of their engineers.

As he meditated, the Manager still watched from the window the activities of the street. Soon from the open desert, beyond the last new building down the street, he saw a horseman approaching. At an easy swinging lope the rider came straight toward the Company's headquarters and, as he drew near, the Manager recognized the chief engineer. Greeting the man at the open window as he passed, Willard Holmes dismounted at the entrance of the building and, going first to the water tank, soon appeared in the doorway of the Manager's room. The engineer's clothes from boots to Stetson were covered with dust and his face was deeply bronzed by the months in the open air.

Turning from the window Mr. Burk held out the box of cigars.

"No thanks," said the Chief with a smile. "I'm hot as a lime kiln now.
Wait until after supper."

Throwing his hat and gloves on the floor, he dropped into a chair with a sigh of relief at the grateful coolness of the room after hours of riding in the dazzling light of the desert sun.

The other, returning the box to its place, tipped back in his chair and elevated his well-dressed feet to his desk and, with his cigar in one corner of his mouth and his head cocked suggestively to one side, looked his companion over with a critical smile. "I say, Holmes, how would you like to be in little old New York this evening?"

At the question and the manner of the speaker the engineer held up his hands with a motion of protest as he commanded, in tragic voice: "Get thee behind me, Satan!" Then, at the Manager's laugh, he added seriously: "New York is all right, Burk, but I guess I can manage to stick it out here a while longer."

Burk looked at the engineer with the same thoughtful expression that had marked his face when he watched the wagon-load of supplies before the store across the street. "I have noticed that you show symptoms of slowly developing an interest in your job," he murmured. "You were at the river yesterday."

"No; I was at Number Five Heading. Abe Lee will be in from the intake this afternoon. I was there day before yesterday."

"How is the little old Colorado behaving herself?"

"All right so far. Our work is all a guess though. There is not a scrap of data to go on, you know." There was a hint of anxiety in the chief engineer's answer.

"I suppose you find the talkative Abe cheerfully optimistic about the future of our structures as usual?"

Holmes did not smile at the jesting tone of the Manager. "Lee is certainly doing all he can to make things safe. He is a fiend for thoroughness, and between you and me, Burk, the Company ought to spend more money on that intake at least. A few more thousands would make it what it should be."

The man who was paid to think held out a hand protestingly. "My dear boy, how many times have we gone over that? The Company will spend just what they must spend to get this scheme going and not a cent more. Later, when the business justifies, they will improve the system. Don't get yourself sidetracked by the notion that this whole project is for the benefit of the dear people and that the Company is made up of benevolent old gentlemen, who have nothing to do with their wealth but promote philanthropic enterprises. You should know your Uncle Jim better. Dividends, my boy, dividends; that's what we're all here for, and you can't afford to forget it. By the way, did you have any dinner to-day?"

"I struck Camp Seven on the Alamitos at noon."

"Hum-m. Sour bread, sow-belly, frijoles? Or was it canned corn? I say, old man, do you remember some of the places where we used to dine at home—flowers and music, and table linen, and real dishes, and waiters with real food, and women—God bless 'em!—real women? What would you give to-night, Holmes, for something to eat that had never been preserved, embalmed, cured, dried or tinned? It's not a dream of fairyland, my boy; there are such places in the world and there are such things to eat. Come, what do you say? Where shall we dine tonight and what will you have?"

"You fiend!" growled Holmes. "You know I'd sell my soul this minute for one good red apple."

Lowering his feet to the floor and rising, the Manager of The King's Basin Land and Irrigation Company crossed the room stealthily and carefully closed the door. Then taking a bunch of keys from his pocket, with an air of great secrecy he unlocked a drawer in his desk, pulled it open and took out—an apple.

The Company's chief engineer fell on the Manager with an exclamation of amazement and delight.

"Really," said Burk as he watched the fruit disappear, "your child-like pleasure almost justifies my crime. I even feel repaid for my self-denial. There were only three in the basket."

"How did you do it?" asked Holmes between bites, gazing at the apple in his hand as though to devour the treat with his eyes also, thereby doubling the pleasure.

"It was one of our dearly beloved prospective settlers," the thoughtful Manager explained with an air of conscious merit. "He came in from somewhere yesterday to spy out the land and, being a prudent and thrifty farmer, he possesses, or is possessed by, a prudent and thrifty wife. Said wife fitted out said farmer for his journey into this far country with a market basket of provisions. Home-made provisions, Willard, my son; home made! A whole basket full! He had one feed left and was finishing it out there on the sidewalk when I returned from what we of this benighted land call dinner. How could I help looking. I watched him devour the leg of a chicken. I watched him eat real bread with jelly on it. Then I caught sight of three apples—three! Holmes, such wealth is criminal. I considered—I became an anarchist. He was a big husky and I dared not assault him, so I talked—Lord forgive me!—how I talked. I offered confidential advice, I conjured up visions of wealth untold. I laid him under a spell and gently led him and his basket into the office even as he finished the pie. I showed him maps; I gave him a cigar; I urged him to leave his basket and satchel here in my private office for safe-keeping while he looked around. Gladly he accepted my invitation. His confidence was pathetic. How could the poor, trusting farmer know that I was ready, if necessary, to murder him for his fortune? When he had gone I locked the door and I—I—I only took two, Holmes; I dared not take them all, for he was big and rough, as I say. But I could not believe that a man with such wealth could miss a part of it."

"But you said you ate two," said the engineer severely, taking another long, lingering bite.

"I did," returned the Manager, with awful solemnity. "When that trusting but husky farmer returned later for his possessions he thanked me many times for my kindness while I trembled with the consciousness of my guilt, assuring him that it was no trouble at all—no trouble at all. And then—just as I felt sure that he was going and was beginning to breathe easier—he stopped and fumbled around in his basket. My heart stood still. 'Hannah put some fine apples in my dinner,' he muttered. 'I thought maybe you might like some. Reckon I must a-et 'em after all. I thought there was—no, by jocks! here she is.' Holmes, as I live he handed me that other apple. It was positively uncanny. I was speechless. Not until he was gone did I realize that it was prophetic. In like manner shall the settlers, the farmers, save this land and us from destruction."

"It's Good Business," returned Holmes. "It exactly illustrates your methods of dealing with the confiding public."

"Humph!" grunted the other. "I observe that you do not hesitate to enjoy the fruits of my financiering."

A knock at the door prevented the engineer's reply.

"Come in!" called Burk.

The door opened and Abe Lee stood on the threshold. The two men greeted the surveyor cordially but with that subtle touch in their voices that hinted at consciousness of superior position and authority.

Abe addressed himself directly to his Chief, saying: "We finished at the intake last night, sir, and moved to Dry River Heading this morning as you directed."

"You left everything at the river in good shape, of course?"

The surveyor did not answer. The tobacco and paper that, in his long fingers, were assuming the form of a cigarette seemed to demand his undivided attention. Burk was thoughtfully watching the two men. At the critical moment he handed Abe a match. From the cloud of smoke Abe spoke again. "The outfit will be ready to begin work at the Heading to-morrow morning."

Before Holmes could speak the Manager said: "You evidently still think, Lee, that the work at the river is not satisfactory. Are you still predicting that our intake will go out with the next high water?"

"I don't know whether the next high water will do it or not. The Rio Colorado alone won't hurt us, but when the Gila and the Little Colorado go on the war-path and come down on top of a high Colorado flood you'll catch hell. It may be this season; it may be next. It depends on the snowfall in the upper countries and the weather in the spring, but it has come and it will come again."

"How do you know? There have been no records kept and no surveys. We have no data."

"There's data enough. The Colorado leaves her own record. I know the country; I know what the river has done and I know what the Indians have told me."

At the surveyor's words his Chief stirred impatiently and the Manager answered: "But we can't spend twenty or thirty thousand dollars on a mere guess at what may happen, Lee. When the country is fairly well settled and business justifies, we will put in a new intake. In the meantime those structures will have to do. The K. B. L. and I. is not in business for glory, you know." Abe spoke softly from a cloud of smoke. "And are you explaining this situation to the people who are coming here by the hundreds to settle? Do they understand the chances they are taking when they buy water rights and go ahead to develop their ranches?"

"Certainly not. If we talked risks no one would come in. The Company must protect its interests."

"Who protects the settlers' interests?"

The Manager stiffened. "I don't recognize your right to criticise the Company's policy, Lee. Mr. Holmes is our chief engineer and he assures me that our structures are as good as they can be made with the money at our disposal. We can only carry out the policies of the Company and we are responsible to them for the money we spend. You have no responsibility in the matter whatever."

"Oh, hell, Burk," drawled Abe, though his eyes contradicted flatly his soft tone. "There's no occasion for you to climb so high up that ladder. You've been a corporation mouthpiece so long you have no more soul than the Company." He turned to his Chief. "I left Andy in charge at camp. He understands that I will not be back. I dropped my resignation in your box in the office as I came in. Adios."

Leaving the office, Abe walked slowly down the street through the heart of the Company's little town. On every hand he saw the work that was being wrought in the Desert. There were business blocks and houses in every stage of building from the new-laid foundation to the moving-in of the tenants. The air rang with sound of hammer and saw. Teams and wagons from the ranches lined the street. The very faces of the people he met glowed with enthusiasm, while determination and purpose were expressed in their very movements as they hurried by.

A mile west of town the surveyor stopped on the bridge that spanned the main canal. He paused to look around. He saw the country already dotted with the white tent-houses of the settlers, and even as he looked three new wagons, loaded with supplies and implements, passed, bound for the claims of the owners. Under his feet the water from the distant river ran strongly. To the west was a grading camp on the line of a Company ditch; to the south was another. Far to the north and east, along the rim of the Basin, he knew the railroad was bringing other pioneers by the hundreds. He drew a deep breath and, taking off his sombrero, drank in the scene. How he loved it all! It was the Seer's dream, but the Seer could have no part in it. It was Barbara's Desert, but Barbara was shut out—exiled. It was his work, but he was powerless to do it. The Seer had told him to stay for his work's sake. He smiled grimly, remembering the Manager's words. Barbara had told him to stay, but the girl knew nothing of conditions—how could she know? Jefferson Worth had told him to stay. Why? Barbara, in her letters, never spoke of the work. The Seer seldom wrote; Jefferson Worth, never. Every month the situation had grown more unbearable. Burk might insist that he had no responsibility and Holmes might argue that they could only do their best with what funds the Company would supply. Abe was not of their school. Well, he was out of it now for good. He was not the kind of a man the Company wanted.

Returning to town he had supper at the little shack restaurant and, going to the tent house owned by himself and two brother-surveyors that they might have a place to sleep when in town, he gathered his few possessions together in readiness for departure in the morning.

When the brief task was finished and he had written a note to his two friends, who were away, he went out again on the main street, because there was nothing else to do. It was evening now and the usual crowd was gathered in front of the post-office to watch the arrival of the stage, the one event of never-failing interest to these hardy pioneers. In the throng there were teamsters, laborers, ranchers, mechanics, real-estate agents, speculators, surveyors—gathered from camp and field and town. Some were expecting letters from the home folks in the world outside; a few were looking for friends among the passengers. Many were there, as was Abe, because it was the point of interest. All were roughly clad, marked by the semi-tropical desert wind and sun.

It was among such men as these that Abe Lee's life had been spent. Such scenes as these were home scenes to him. In a peculiar way, through the Seer and Barbara, the work that these men were doing was dear to him. He felt that he was being cast out of his own place. As he passed through the throng Abe heard always the same topic of conversation: the work—the work—the work. News to these men meant more miles of canal finished, new ditches dug, more land leveled and graded, new settlers located. The surveyor thought of the future of these people, given wholly into the hands of the Company; of the men in the East, who knew nothing of their hardships but who would force them to pay royal tribute out of the fruits of their toil; of how, even then, they were increasing the value of the Company property.

"Here she comes!" cried someone, and all eyes were turned to see the stage swinging down the street. Abe drew back a little—to the thin edge of the crowd; he was expecting neither letters nor friends. The six broncos were brought to a stand in the midst of the crowd, the mail bag was tossed to the post-master and the passengers began climbing down from their seats.

As the last man rose from his place he stood for a moment in a stooped position, gripping with each hand one of the standards that supported the canvas top of the vehicle. Looking out thus over the crowd he seemed to be gathering data for an estimate of the population before he felt cautiously with his foot for the step.

Abe Lee started forward with an exclamation.

It was Jefferson Worth!

CHAPTER XII.

SIGNS OF CONFLICT.

Not a line of Jefferson Worth's countenance changed as the tall surveyor, pushing his way through the crowd about the new arrivals, greeted him. But Abe Lee felt the man from behind his gray mask reaching out to grasp his innermost thoughts and emotions.

"Where is the hotel?"

Abe explained that the rough board shelter that bore that name was full to the door. People were even sleeping on the floor. "But there is room in our tent, Mr. Worth," he finished and led the way out of the crowd.

To the surveyor's eager questions the banker answered that Barbara was visiting friends in the Coast city.

When they had reached the tent and Abe had found and lighted a lantern, Mr. Worth said—and his manner was as though he were continuing a conversation that had been interrupted only for a moment—"well, I see you stayed."

At his words the surveyor, who was filling a tin wash-basin with fresh water that his guest might wash away the dust of his journey, felt the hot blood in his cheeks. Before answering he pulled an old cracker-box from under a cot in one corner of the canvas room and, rummaging therein, brought to light a clean towel. When he had placed this evidence of civilization beside the basin on the box that did duty as a wash-stand, he answered: "I quit the Company this afternoon."

"Why?"

"Because I won't do the kind of work the Company wants." The surveyor spoke hotly now. The man busy with the basin of water made no comment, and Abe continued: "Mr. Worth, they are putting in the cheapest possible kind of wooden structures all through the system, even at points where the safety of the whole project depends on the control of the water. The intake itself is nothing but the flimsiest sort of a makeshift. One good flood, such as we have every few years, and there wouldn't be a damned stick of it left in twelve hours. You remember what the grade is from the river at the point of the intake this way into the Basin and you know how water cuts this soil. If that gate goes out the whole river will come through; and these settlers, who are tumbling over each other to put into this country every cent they have in the world, will lose everything."

"The Company takes its chances with the settlers, doesn't it?"

"The Company takes mighty small chances compared to the risk the settlers are carrying. As a matter of fact, Mr. Worth, it is the people who are building this system; not the Company at all. To prove up on these desert claims the government compels them to have the water. They can't use the water without paying the Company for the right. After they have bought the water rights then they must pay for every acre-foot they use. All Greenfield and his bunch did was to put up enough to start the thing going and the people are doing the rest. The Company knows the risk and stakes a comparatively small amount of capital. The settlers know nothing of the real conditions and stake everything they have in the world. If the Company would tell the people the situation it would be square, but you know what would happen if they did that. No one would come in. As it is, the Company, by risking the smallest amount possible, leads the people to risk everything they have and yet the Greenfield crowd stands to win big on the whole stake."

Mr. Worth was drying his slim fingers with careful precision. "I figured that was the way it would be done. That's the way all these big enterprises are launched. The first work is always done on a promoter's estimate. Later, when the business justifies, the system will be strengthened and improved."

"Which means," retorted the surveyor, "that when the Company has taken enough money from the settlers, whom they have induced to stake everything they have on the gamble by letting them think it is a sure thing, they will use a part of it to give the people what they think they are getting now."

The banker laid the towel carefully aside and disposed of the water in the wash-basin by the primitive method of throwing it from the tent door. Then he spoke again: "The people themselves could never start a work like this, and if there wasn't a chance to make a big thing Capital wouldn't. It's the size of the profit compared with the amount invested that draws Capital into this kind of a thing. If the Company had to take all the chance in this project they would simply stay out and the work would never be done. This feature of unequal risk is the very thing, and the only thing, that could attract the money to start this proposition going; and that's what people like you and the Seer and Barbara can't see. Holmes and Burk can't help themselves. It's Greenfield and the Company, and they are just as honest as other men. They are simply promoting this scheme in the only way possible to start it and the people will share the results."

"Holmes and Burk are all right, except that they're owned body and soul by the Company," said Abe quickly. "But Greenfield and the men who engineered this thing look to me like a bunch of green-goods men who live on the confidence of the people."

"The people will gain their farms just the same," returned the financier. "They wouldn't have anything without the Company."

The surveyor shrugged his shoulders. "Well, you may be right, Mr.
Worth; but I've had all I can stand of it."

Again Jefferson Worth looked full into the younger man's eyes and Abe felt that Something behind the mask reaching out to seize the thoughts and motives that lay back of his words: "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know. Punch steers or get a job in a mine somewhere, I reckon. I'm going somewhere out of this. I've had enough of promoter's estimates."

"Suppose you stay and work for me."

Abe Lee sprang to his feet. "Work for you? Here? I thought you had refused to go into this deal?"

"I declined to join Greenfield's Company," said the banker exactly.

"Do you mean, Mr. Worth, that you are going to operate in the Basin independently, knowing the Company's strength and the whole situation as you do?"

"I have decided to take a chance with the rest," was the unemotional answer. "I sold out of the bank and cleaned up everything in Rubio City last week."

"But what are you going into here?"

"I can use you if you want to stay," came the cautious answer.

"Stay? Of course I'll stay!"

It was characteristic of these men that nothing was said of salary on either side. Extinguishing the lantern, Abe led the way out into the night. The darkness was intense and unrelieved save by the thin broken line of twinkling lights from the windows of the buildings, which gave them the direction of the main street, and the few dull glowing tent houses, whose tenants were at home. Overhead the desert stars shone with a brilliance that put to shame the feeble efforts of the earth-men, while about the little pioneer town the desert night drew close with its circling wall of mystery.

Did Jefferson Worth think, as he stumbled along by the surveyor's side, of that other night in The Hollow of God's Hand, when he had faced, alone, the spirit of the land?

"This town needs an electric lighting system," he said in his colorless voice.

When Jefferson Worth had finished supper in the shack restaurant he proposed cautiously that they look around a little. The street was lined with teams and saddle horses, their forms shadowy and indistinct in the dark places of vacant lots or where buildings were under construction, but standing forth with startling clearness where the light from a store streamed forth. The sidewalk was filled with men from the ranches and grading camps, who had come to town after sunset for their mail or supplies so that no hour of the day should be lost to the work that had called them into the desert; and these ever-shifting figures passed to and fro through the bands of light and darkness, gathered in groups in front of the stores and dissolved again, to form other groups or to lose themselves in the general throng. Every moment a wagon-load of men, a party of horsemen, or a single rider would appear suddenly and mysteriously out of the night, while others, leaving the throng to depart in like manner, would be swallowed up as mysteriously by the blackness. In the center of the picture and the very heart of the activity was the general store opposite the office of The King's Basin Land and Irrigation Company.

Deck Jordan had opened his store in the days when Kingston was still a supply camp. No one knew much about Deck or how he had guessed that the camp would become the chief town in the new country. He was a pleasing, capable, but close-mouthed man, who knew what to buy, paid his bills promptly and—with one exception—conducted his business on a cash basis.

The exception to the cash rule was in favor of the Company's employes. It was on Deck's initiative that an arrangement was made with Mr. Burk by which the Company men received credit at the store, the amount of their bills being deducted from their wages each month by the Company paymaster. It was this plan that, by giving Deck practically all of the trade from the hundreds of Company employes, had increased his business so rapidly. To the thoughtful Manager, also, the plan seemed good. He foresaw how, with the Company thus controlling the bulk of the merchant's business, he could, when the proper time came, "persuade" Deck to enter into a still "closer" arrangement—thus carrying out the Good Business policy of the Company. That very afternoon Mr. Burk had decided the time had come and had so written Mr. Greenfield.

Leisurely Jefferson Worth and his companion worked their way through the crowd and into the store where Deck and his helpers were toiling to supply the various needs of a small army of customers. From the open doors and from the big implement shed in the rear of the building, a steady stream of provisions, clothing, dry goods, hardware, blankets, harness and tools flowed forth.

In the midst of the confusion Deck himself was holding an animated conversation with a would-be purchaser. "I'd be mighty glad to accommodate you, Sam, if I could, but you know we're running this store on a cash basis and I can't break my rules. If I begin with you I'll have to do it for everybody and I can't."

"You don't make these Company men pay cash. Anybody—Injuns, greasers or anything else—gets what he wants and no questions asked if he works for the Company."

"But that's different, you see," explained Deck. "We have an arrangement with the Company by which they hold out from each man's pay the amount of my bills against him."

"I understand that, but you'll find out that it's the rancher's trade that'll keep you going. We'll be here long after these ditchers an' mule skinners have left the country and we'll have money to spend. You'll find, too, that when things do begin to come our way we'll stand by the store that'll stand by us now when we've got everything goin' out an' nothin' comin' in."