Desert Conquest, A. M. Chisholm [best reads .TXT] 📗

effective. It would serve three purposes: It would fill the company's ditches; it would practically empty the ranchers'; and it would render the rebuilding of the permanent dam easier. Farwell was quite satisfied with himself.

Meanwhile, he found time to ride over to Talapus occasionally. His footing there was anomalous, and he felt it. On the one hand he wished the McCraes well and had done all he could for them; on the other he was ruthlessly carrying out a project which would ruin them. Under these circumstances he looked for no more than tolerance. He now owned frankly to himself that he was in love with Sheila. He had made little progress with his wooing, nor did he expect to make more just then. His blunt assertiveness covered a natural shyness where women were concerned, and he had about as much idea of the fine points of the game as a logger has of cabinet-making. Still, he was drawn to her by a desire which he was unable to resist. He had a profound belief in himself and in his capacity for material success; he considered himself an eligible match for any girl, and he relied on Sheila's good sense to realize what he had taken pains to make plain—that while his loyalty to his employers forced him to carry out their instructions, his sympathies were with her and her family. Of this he had given indubitable proof. He had no intention of dropping out of sight, of discontinuing his visits, so long as they were tolerated, of leaving the field clear to another, perhaps to Dunne. With her he bore a white flag always, insisting that between them there was friendly truce.

He was of the opinion that the McCraes, father and son, had no hand in the dynamiting; though he conceded that they could make an excellent guess at the perpetrators. But Farwell thought he could do that himself; he fixed the responsibility on Casey Dunne.

The McCraes did not mention the dam, but Farwell had no hesitation in broaching the subject. He predicted speedy and exemplary punishment for the guilty.

Donald McCrae listened gravely, his face expressionless. Sandy wore a faint, ironic smile which irritated Farwell.

"You don't think so?" asked the engineer pointedly.

"You're doing the talking—I'm not," said Sandy.

Farwell reddened angrily. There was more in the tone than in the words. It implied that talk was Farwell's long suit. Farwell disliked Sandy extremely, but with a self-control which he rarely exercised, forbore to retort. Hot-tempered as he was, he realized that he could not declare his belief in the guilt of any person without some evidence. His smouldering eye measured Sandy, taking him in from head to foot, and rested on the smoky golden tan of a pair of new moccasins which he wore.

Now, Sandy had acquired the moccasin habit in childhood and retained it. It was rarely that he wore boots around the ranch. Farwell, looking at the new moccasins, which were handsomely embroidered with silk thread, noted the straight inner line of the foot, from toe to heel. It was like the foot of an aborigine; undeformed, undeflected from nature's lines by fashionable footgear. By suggestion the moccasin track at the dam occurred to him. He recalled its straight inner line. McCrae's moccasined foot would make just such a track. Was it possible that he, at least, was one of the dynamiters?

Not only possible, Farwell decided, after a moment's reflection, but probable. The elder man he exonerated mentally. The son, young, hostile, possessing unlimited nerve, was just the man for such an enterprise. And if he were concerned in it, and the fact were ascertained what a devil of a mess it would make!

For a moment he was tempted to test his suspicion by some pointed allusion, but thought better of it. And shortly after the two men withdrew, leaving him with Sheila.

"This is a nasty business," said Farwell, after a long pause, reverting to the former topic. "I wouldn't like it—no matter what turns up—to make any difference between us."

"There isn't much difference to make," she reminded him.

"No, I suppose not," he admitted, slightly disconcerted. "We're merely acquaintances. Only"—he hesitated—"only I thought—perhaps—we might be friends."

Which was going very strong—for Farwell. He said it awkwardly, stiffly, because he was quite unaccustomed to such phrase. Sheila smiled to herself in the growing darkness.

"Well, friends if you like. But then we are of different camps—hostile camps."

"But I'm not hostile," said Farwell. "That's nonsense. Business is business, but outside of that it cuts no ice with me."

"Doesn't it?"

"Not with me," he declared stoutly. "Not a bit. You didn't blow up the dam. Even if you had——"

"Even if I had——"

"I wouldn't care," Farwell blurted. "Thank the Lord I'm not narrow-minded."

Sheila laughed. Her estimate of Farwell did not credit him with wideness of outlook. But her reply was prevented by the thud-thud of rapid hoofs. A horse and rider loomed through the dark.

"Hello, Sheila!" the rider called.

"Why, Casey, this is luck!" she exclaimed. Farwell scowled at the evident pleasure in her voice. "Light down. Better put your horse in the stable."

"That you, McCrae?" said Dunne, peering at the glow of Farwell's cigar. "I want to see you about——"

"It's Mr. Farwell," Sheila interjected quickly.

A pause. Casey's voice, smooth, polite, broke it.

"I didn't recognize you, Mr. Farwell. How are you?" He dismounted, dropped his reins, and came upon the veranda. "Lovely night, isn't it? Well, and how is everything going with you?"

"I'm fairly busy," Farwell replied grimly, "thanks to the actions of some persons who imagine themselves unknown."

Casey Dunne lit a cigar and held the match in his hand till the flame touched his fingers. He spoke through the ensuing greater darkness:

"I heard that your dam wasn't holding very well."

"Not very well," Farwell agreed, struggling with his temper. "Perhaps you heard that it was dynamited?"

"I think I've heard most of the rumours," Dunne responded calmly.

"I have no doubt of that," Farwell observed with meaning.

"Great country for rumours," Casey went on. "Somebody always knows your inmost thoughts. Your intentions are known by others before you know them yourself. You are no exception, Mr. Farwell. The mind readers are busy with you. No action you might take would surprise them. They are quite ready for anything."

"I may surprise these wise people yet," said Farwell. "I suppose they counted on depriving our lands of water by destroying our dam?"

"That's certainly an original way of putting it," said Casey. "Well?"

"Well, they didn't foresee that, though our permanent work is wrecked, and will take time to rebuild, we would put in a temporary wing of logs, brush, and sand which would give us a partial supply."

"No, they didn't foresee that, likely," Casey admitted. "This wing dam of yours is quite an idea. By the way, I'm not getting enough water now, myself. Couldn't you get along with less than you are taking?"

"No," Farwell returned shortly.

"These wise people thought you could or would," said Casey, and, turning to Sheila, asked for her father. A few minutes afterward he strode off in search of him.

Farwell endeavoured to pick up the broken thread of conversation with Sheila. But this proved difficult. She was preoccupied; and he himself found Dunne's concluding words sticking in his memory. Did they hide a sinister meaning? He disliked Dunne heartily, and he was jealous of him besides, without having any definite cause; but he no longer underrated him.

On his way to camp he turned the problem over and over in his mind, but could make nothing of it, unless the words foreshadowed an attempt on the temporary dam. But there seemed to be little chance for the success of such an undertaking. Big acetylenes flared all night by the makeshift structure, and two men with shotguns watched by it. The whole camp was under almost martial law.

Farwell walked down to the river before he retired, to find the watchman very wide awake and a torrent booming through the stone-faced canal intake, to be distributed through a network of ditches upon the company's lands miles away. Farwell, satisfied, instructed the watchmen to keep a bright lookout, and turned in.

Once in the night he awoke with the impression that he had heard thunder, but as the stars were shining he put it down to a dream and went to sleep again. In the morning one of the watchmen reported a distant sound resembling a blast, but he had no idea where it was. Farwell attached no importance to it.

But in the middle of the morning his ditch foreman, Bergin, rode in angry and profane. And his report caused similar manifestations in Farwell.

The main canal and larger ditches had been blown up in half a dozen places, usually where they wound around sidehills, and the released water had wrought hideous damage to the banks, causing landslides, washing thousands of tons of soil away, making it necessary to alter the ditch line altogether or put in fluming where the damage had occurred.

Nor was this all. Some three miles from the camp the main canal crossed a deep coulée. To get the water across, a trestle had been erected and a flume laid on it. The fluming was the largest size, patent-metal stuff, half round, joined with rods, riveted and clinched. To carry the volume of water there were three rows of this laid side by side, cemented into the main canal at the ends. It had been a beautiful and expensive job; and it reproduced finely in advertising matter. It was now a wreck.

Farwell rode out with Bergin to the scene of devastation. Now trestle and fluming lay in bent, rent, and riven ruin at the bottom of the coulée. The canal vomited its contents indecently down the nearest bank. A muddy river flowed down the coulée's bed. And the peculiarly bitter part of the whole affair was that the water, following the course of the coulée, ran back into the river again, whence it was available for use by the ranchers. It was as if the river had never been dammed. What water was diverted by the temporary dam got back to the river by way of the canal and coulée, somewhat muddied, but equally wet, and just as good as ever for irrigation purposes.

Bergin cursed afresh, but Farwell's anger was too bitter and deep for mere profanity. He sat in his saddle scowling at the wreck.

Once more it had been put over on him. He thought he had taken every possible precaution. Of course, ditches might be cut at any time; short of a constant patrol there was no way of preventing that. But this coulée was a thing which any man with eyes in his head and a brain back of them might have seen and thought of. And he had allowed this costly bit of fluming to lie open to destruction when it was the very key to the situation, so far as the ranchers were concerned!

His instructions had been to take the water to bring them to a properly humble frame of mind. It was part of his job to protect his employers' property; that was what he was there for. He had taken ordinary precautions, too, so far as the dam was concerned. But he had entirely overlooked the fact, as obvious as that water runs downhill, that if his canal were cut at the coulée its contents must flow back into the river. Everything was now set back. With this second outrage land sales would stop altogether. It was a sickening jolt. He thought of the questions he would have to answer. He would be asked why he hadn't done this. It would be no answer to point out that he had done that. People were always so cursed wise after the event!

And then he remembered Casey Dunne's words. Dunne had said that he was not getting enough water, had asked for more, had practically given him warning. Now every rancher's ditches were running full, and all he had to show for his work was