The Wolf's Long Howl, Stanley Waterloo [best pdf ebook reader TXT] 📗

Miss Chester? Oh! only some nonsense I have been talking to your mother, a sort of theory of mine with which she has no patience, I can see. Good-by, ladies--no, don't waste time thanking me; I am glad if I have been of any use. Good-by."

He bowed them into the elevator, and slowly drifted back into the club library. "Of all fools I am the prize fool!" he murmured to himself. And he called Joseph, and with him set forth to the Barrett House to see Ned Chester.


THE RAIN-MAKER

John Gray, civil engineer, good looking and aged twenty-eight, was engaged in the service of the United States of America. He had, upon emerging from college, been fortunate enough to secure a place among the new graduates who are utilized in making what is called the "lake survey," that is, the work upon the great inland seas we designate as lakes, and had finally from that drifted into work for the Agricultural Department--a department which, though latest established, is bound, with its force for good upon this great producing continent, to rank eventually with any place in the cabinet of the President. In the Agricultural Department John Gray, being clever and a hard worker, had risen rapidly, and had finally been appointed assistant to the ranking official whose duty it was to visit certain arid regions of Arizona and there seek by scientific methods to produce a sudden rainfall over parched areas, and so make the desert blossom as the rose.

Mr. John Gray went with the expedition, and distinguished himself from the beginning. He could endure hard work; he was a good civil engineer and comprehended the theory upon which his superiors were working, and above all, he was an enthusiast in the thing they were undertaking, and had independent devices of his own, to be submitted at the proper time, for the attainment of certain mechanical ends which had puzzled the pundits at Washington. He had ideas as to how should be flown the new form of kite which should carry into the upper depths explosives to shatter and compress the atmosphere and produce the condensation which makes rain, just as concussions from below--as after the cannonading of a great battle--produce the same effect. He had fancies about a lot of things connected with the work of the rain-making expedition, and his fancies were practicalities. He proved invaluable to his superiors in office when came the experiments the reports of which at first declared that rain-making was a success, and later admitted something to the contrary.

There had been, as all the world knows, certain experiments of the government rain-makers followed by rains, and certain experiments after which the earth had remained as parched and the sky as brazen as before. The one successful experiment had, as it chanced, been conducted under Mr. Gray's personal and ardent supervision. He had overseen the flying of the kites, the impudent invasion of the upper depths when a button was touched, and then he had seen the white cumulus clouds gather and become nimbus, followed by a brief rainfall upon a hot and yellow land. He had felt as Moses may have felt when he smote the rock, as De Lesseps may have felt when he brought the seas together. He thought one of the man-helping problems of the ages almost solved.

So far John Gray, civil engineer in the service of the Government, had been lost in his avocation. He saw no flower beside his path; he dreamed of no woman he had known. But there came a change, for which he was not responsible. There was delay in the shipping of additional supplies needed for the expedition's work--as there usually is delay and bad management in whatever is intrusted to certain encrusted bureaus in Washington--and in the interval, with nothing to do, this civil engineer spent necessarily most of his time in the little town about the railroad station, and there fell in love. It was an odd location for such luxury or risk as the one denned; but the thing happened. John Gray fell in love, and fell far.

Arizona is said, by its present inhabitants, to have a climate which makes the faces of women wonderfully fair, given a face whose features are not distorted to start with. This assertion may be attributed rather to territorial pride than to conviction; but it doesn't matter. There was assuredly one pretty girl in Cougarville, and Gray had begun to feel a more than passing interest in her. He had even gone so far in his meditations as to conceive the idea of taking her East with him when he went back (he had laid up a little money), and though he had not yet suggested this to the young lady, he felt reasonably confident. She had been with him much and seemed very fond of him. Once he had kissed her at the door. Certainly he was fond of her.

The little town upon the railroad was not new, and Miss Fleming belonged to one of the old families of the place--that is, her father had come there at least twenty-five years ago. He had mined and dealt in timber and taken tie contracts, and was now considered as fairly ranking among the twenty-five or thirty "warm" men of the place. There were castes in Cougarville, and the society made up of these families was exclusive. Their parties in town were as select as their picnics in the foothills, and the foothill picnics were the occasions where Cougarville society really came out. It was a foothill picnic which brought an end to all relations between John Gray and Miss Molly Fleming. It came about in this way.

There had been a party in Cougarville, and Gray, finally abandoning himself to all the risk of falling in love and marrying this flower of the frontier, had committed himself deeply. He had declared himself. The girl was reserved, but beaming. He had to leave his apparently more than half-acquiescent inamorata to whom he was an escort. At 11 P.M. he left her temporarily in charge of one Muggles, the curled darling and easily most imposing clerk among all those employed in the big "emporium" of the frontier town. He felt safe. Such a character as Molly Fleming could never be attracted by such a person as that scented floor-walker, even if he did chance to have a small interest in the concern and reasonably good prospects. He left them with equanimity; he saw them together an hour later with just a shade of apprehension. They seemed to understand each other too well, and their eyes, as they looked each into the other's face, seemed a trifle too soulful and trusting. He asked Miss Fleming on the way home if she would go with him to the picnic to be held in the wooded foothills on the following day. She laughed in his face, and said she was going with Mr. Muggles. He saw it all. Civil engineering and devotion had been cast over for a general store interest, home relatives, Muggles, and devotion. He was jilted.

The reflections of John Gray that night, described by colors, may be referred to as simply green and red--green for jealousy, red for vengeance. He slept and had nightmares, and waked and made plans. It was an awful night for him. But as morning came and his head cleared, the instinct of jealousy lessened and that of vengeance increased. He arose in the morning a more or less dangerous human being.

The picnic had no attraction for John Gray. He attended to business about the headquarters of the expedition, and when noon came sat aside and brooded. He thought to himself, "They are up there together, and she has discarded me for this storekeeper, who knows nothing save how to make close little trades and make and save money." Then a new and broader range of thought came to him: "She is but following the instinct of her family. Blood will tell. Both her father and mother are below the grade which means the average of my own kind. She will in time show her blood, who ever may marry her. That is the law of nature." This encouraged him.

As his reasoning process became more smooth and true, he realized what an escape he had had, and then, as he reviewed the story of the past months, his desire for "evening up" things grew. It was low and mean, he knew, but that made no difference. He must get even.

He thought over the situation. There they were, the elite of Cougarville, up in a canyon of the foothills, beside a creek, where were trees and turf and picturesque rocks, and were having a good time. Muggles and Molly had no doubt withdrawn from the mass of picnickers, and were billing and cooing together. His veins burned at the thought. Oh, for some means of settling them! Then came an inspiration to him!

Gray's superior was away, but there had come to hand at last all the material necessary for a renewed experiment. He had the kites, the explosives, and the assistants. He had authority to act should his superior not return on time. His superior was not on time. Was it not more than his inclination but really his duty to try to make rain at once, and in the particular locality just suited in his judgment for securing an effect? As to the locality, there was no doubt. It was up the foothills a mile or two above, and just beside the valley in which were the picnickers. The men about the post were summoned, burros were loaded, and at 2 P.M. the whole rain-making force was far up the foothills unloading and preparing to fly gigantic kites and explode in the upper vaults of the atmosphere bombs and rockets and all sorts of things to make a rainstorm.

All went well. The wind was right, and the huge kites, bomb-laden, climbed into the sky like vultures. The electric wires were in order, and when at last the buttons were touched and the explosion came, it seemed as if the very vaults of heaven were riven. It was a great success. Gray, elated and hopeful, but not fully assured, stood and watched and waited.

He did not have to wait long. Not far to the north in the hard blue sky suddenly appeared a little dab of woolly white. Another showed in the east. They showed all about, and grew and grew in size until they became great, over-toppling, blending mountains, a new and mysterious world against the sky. Then came a darkening of the mass. The cumulus was changing to the nimbus. Then came a distant rumble, and, preceding another, a great blaze of lightning went across the zenith. To those in the region the world darkened. A mountain thunderstorm was on.

The darkness increased; the clouds hung lower and lower, the lightning flashed more frequently and fiercely, and finally the flood-gates of the clouds were opened and the rain fell with such denseness that the mass of drops made literal sheets. The little brooks were filled, and tumbled into the creek which ran down the canyon where were the picnickers. Bred in the region, the picnickers knew what such a flood meant, and with the first sound of thunder had clambered up the canyon side, where they sat unsheltered and awaiting events. The very first downpour wetted every young man and woman to the bone and filled thin boots with water. The worst of it was that they had not yet eaten. They had brought up with them two burros laden with supplies, and two mule teams, which had dragged them up into the wooded elysium beside the tumbling