The Forbidden Trail, Honoré Willsie [digital e reader TXT] 📗

It was late the next afternoon when Dick drove slowly along the trail. The three men were flat on their backs under the absorber, patching leaks, when they heard the squeak of the wagon and the soft tread of horses' hoofs in the sand. They made no attempt to greet him.

The next morning, however, Roger plodded up to the ranch house to consult with Dick about the moving of the oil. Although it was close to eight o'clock, Dick was just finishing breakfast. He was cheerful and talkative.

"Don't try to use horses," he urged. "There's old Rabbit Tail lives ten miles over the range. He's got a bunch of little wild burros and he does packing for the miners when there is any. He'll pack that oil for you."

Roger brightened up, then shook his head. "I can't pay him. The Smithsonian folks aren't coming up to the scratch and I've got to finish this job without funds. I've about twenty-five dollars in hand and two hundred more in sight. I thought perhaps I could exchange work with you. Help you to re-seed and then to increase your irrigating capacity here."

"Gosh, that's hard luck!" exclaimed Dick. "Did you hear that, Charley, about Roger's money?"

Charley, who had been busy in the kitchen, came in now with a fresh cup of coffee for Roger in one hand and an extra chair in the other. Had Roger's mind been less concentrated on the problem in hand he might have noted the fine ease with which she swung the chair up to the table for him before either he or Dick could proffer help. Charley was so slender that one did not easily recognize the splendid strength she sometimes displayed.

"Yes, I heard," said Charley with a look of sympathy at the restless fire in Roger's deep gray eyes. "I guess we're all up against it and will have to cultivate patience. Perhaps Rabbit Tail will trust you, Roger."

"I call him Roger dear, and he likes it. Why don't you too, Charley?" interrupted Felicia, coming in from the porch where she had been building an adobe doll house.

The abstracted look left Roger's face for a moment. "Yes, why don't you, Charley?" he asked with a grin that made his face look bright.

Charley laughed. "If it will make you look human, like that," she exclaimed, "I will call you anything you wish, Roger dear!"

Roger's grin faded to an expression that was curiously tense. Dick, who had been giving only half attention to this exchange, now said: "Rabbit Tail won't trust you. He's had too many dealings with the whites, poor devil. We'll have to break a trail to the mine and use our team. Just let me get that alfalfa in again, Roger, and I'll help you out."

"I can pay you up in days' work as far as the use of your time and team go," said Roger. "What I'll always be in your debt for is the advice and backing you give me."

Dick grunted. "I'm glad my four years' hell down here is of value to some one. I'll let you know when I've finished re-seeding."

"I want to help on that," insisted Roger. "Our international debt is getting too one-sided."

"Well, I'll be mighty grateful to you," sighed Dick. "I'll take your help on the re-seeding, but I'll be still more appreciative if you'll take a look at my gasoline engine to-morrow morning. I've spun that fly wheel until my hope of salvation's gone. And I've got to wet that field down."

"I'll get at it now," said Roger.

With Felicia trailing at his heels, Roger made his way to the shed beside the spring. The engine and pump were both old. Roger tinkered for a half hour, Felicia standing by to hand him the wrench or the oil can on demand.

"Do you love me, Roger?" the child asked, as Roger tugged at a rusty oil cup screw.

"I certainly do. Do you love me?"

"Yes. Do you love Charley?"

"Well, I'm fond of Charley. I've known her a long time, you know."

"But you aren't fonder of her than you are of me?" insisted Felicia.

"Certainly not! You're my best sweetheart. Now the oil can, Felicia."

The little girl stared at Roger, with speculative eyes. "Charley says you're very interesting. What is an interesting man, Roger?"

"One who knows how to start a gas engine, chicken," exclaimed Charley, coming into the shed. "Mercy, Felicia, are you always as personal as this?"

"Felicia is nothing if not feminine." Roger tugged at the fly wheel and grinned at Charley who made a little grimace.

"Roger likes it!" exclaimed Felicia. "He belongs to me, Charley. He likes me bettern you, he says so."

"Well, it is like this, Charley—" began Roger elaborately.

Charley cut him off with a wave of her hand. "Nothing can explain away that blow, Roger." Then she went on, soberly. "Do you suppose the old lemon will pull us through our first crop?"

"I don't know, Charley. One never does about a gasoline engine. There's always more life in an old one though than one realizes. If this does fail you, however, I'll be in running shape in two months' time with my solar engine. Don't forget that."

"When do you expect to make your first actual test?" asked Charley.

"Well, the engine will be here almost any time now. If the Dean has done a good construction job, I ought to be able to make a tentative connection in six weeks' time."

"How do you mean a good job?" asked Charley.

"Well, this is the first full size fifty horse power engine that we've built. You see, I've had no money and we've worked from models, though I did build one ten horse power engine. That worries me a little, but I'm sure that any defects that appear will be easily remedied. Now then, this old mule ought to begin to kick!"

Roger turned the fly wheel again and an obstinate Put! Put! Put! came from the engine, then a long pause, during which the audience of three waited anxiously, then a steady Put! Put! Put! Put! Put! that promised to last as long as did the gasoline.

"If the old thing could just realize all that depends on its behaving itself!" exclaimed Charley. "Roger, let's throw in the pump, I really believe it's going to run!"

And run it did, during the entire day, with only three stops for repair. Roger worked until late afternoon with Dick and the next day Gustav took his place. The damage done by the dust storm to the absorber was now completely remedied and Roger and Ernest began work on a shallow concrete trough on which the condenser was to be erected. By the time this was completed, Dick's second sowing was finished and he announced himself ready for road building.

At first, Roger felt violently resentful at the thought of having to build a road. It seemed to him that after all his years of patient persistency, fate at the last was playing him a scurvy trick. She had brought his goal within sight, only to beset it with delays and difficulties whose very paltriness it seemed to him he could not endure. And a feverish little flame of impatience began to glow within him that was not to be extinguished for many months. However when, pick in hand, he actually began with the others to break the road, a sudden elation swept over him. After all, primitive as this work might be, it was empire building of the most fundamental sort. And, in spite of his anxieties and impatience, Roger did his share of the road building with right good will.

They began work in the range back of the ranch, taking advantage of draw and canyon whenever possible, even when this demanded a long detour. Sometimes, the canyon bottoms were astonishingly level. At other times boulders and crevices would block them until they had made free use of dynamite. They had all sorts of minor mishaps. Dick was not an expert either in road grading or blasting, although he was far ahead of the Sun Planters in his information about both.

In running the road up the side of Snake Peak he used too heavy a charge and brought down a land slide which it took them a day to clear. On a previous day he had blasted too close to the wagon and a bowlder had smashed the rear axle. He took extraordinarily narrow chances with the steepness of grade but in spite of the Sun Planters' prophecies they did not lose either horses or wagon down canyon or mountain side. Ernest, however, slipped on top of one of the finished sections and rolled two hundred feet before he could stop himself.

When, after two weeks' steady labor, Dick pronounced the road good enough, the others looked at him aghast. "You'll break your wagon and your horses' necks, to say nothing of losing the oil!" protested Ernest.

Dick only laughed. "This is a boulevard compared with some of the desert routes I've taken. With just a few drums of oil lashed on at a time, we'll make it."

And make it he did, though nearly another week was consumed in the doing, and four drums of the oil were lost in different draws and canyons. After the road was finished, the transporting of the oil was turned over to Ernest and Dick while Roger and Gustav began the erecting of the condenser. Ernest was now quite reconciled to the use of the oil for Hackett had received a telegram from the owner in San Francisco that the deal was more than satisfactory to him.

Roger and Gustav worked well together. The self-controlled German, evidently accustomed to hard grind and overwork in an office job, was not in the least ruffled by Roger's impatient ways. And he distinctly enjoyed the vim and imagination that were characteristic of Roger's work even when it involved the seemingly simple task of cutting and threading condenser pipe. For cutting and threading condenser pipe so that it shall be leak proof is not a simple job at all.

April came to the desert with a noon temperature of a hundred degrees in the shade. Imperceptibly the daily breeze stiffened to a noon gale. There were no sand storms however for six weeks and the second alfalfa crop caught toe hold and grew, an amazing patch of green on the thirsty yellow sand.

The ranch house engine misbehaved, regularly, but Roger developed what Charley called actual genius for tinkering and somehow the five acres were watered. When the morning stillness was broken by the first uneven Put! Put! of the engine, the Sun Planters would pause in their work and listen intently. If, after due patience, the Put! Put! developed into a steady throb, they resumed work. But if after a spasm or two, silence reigned again, Roger would pull his hat over his eyes and start for the ranch, and eventually that day, water would be given the parching fields. In the meantime, Dick began to prepare a second five-acre patch for late sowing.

Early in the month Roger received a check from the Dean for one hundred and sixty dollars. He resolved to