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

put all but a few dollars of this into a supply of food and with Charley's help, he made a list that Gustav filled at Hackett's. There was provision for over three months in this list and Roger felt sure that this period of time would see the completion of the plant.

A curt letter had come to Roger from the Smithsonian Institution saying merely that his case was being investigated and that in due time a report and decision would reach him. With this, Roger was obliged to be content. He had little faith, however, that the Institution would go on with Austin's undertaking and he resolved to push ahead with all speed, taking advantage of what was left of the golden opportunity Austin had offered him.

Late in April, the engine reached Archer's Springs. Hackett, who was properly equipped for heavy freighting, as poor willing Dick was not, undertook to haul the engine to the camp. He was entirely willing, he told Roger, to wait for his pay.

"No great loss," he said, "if I don't get it. But I got confidence in you and though your idea do seem awful nutty, if anything comes of it, I ain't going to have it said I done something to set back our community here. We got a great state and a great county and I'm here to promote 'em both."

So the dismantled engine was landed, without too great difficulty, in the waiting engine house and as soon as the condenser was finished, the three men began to set up this child of Roger's heart and brain. But after the heavy work was done Roger would let no one attempt adjusting the parts but himself. He set Ernest and Gustav to digging the oil pit for the storing of the sun-heated oil and spent his days and part of his nights in the engine house.

As the weeks slipped into May, many were the surmises as to what had become of the Von Mindens. The madam's tent stood just as she had left it and the burros she had left behind ranged about the desert, near the Preble corral, coming home each night for the good feed Dick gave them.

Almost every day Felicia came to the plant. Her love for Roger and Roger's for her was an accepted thing now between the two households. Only Charley could draw the child away from the abstracted, hard-driven young engineer and Dick showed his innate generosity in that though he adored the little girl he did not harbor a grudge because Felicia so frankly declared her preference for Roger.

After the condenser was finished Felicia took a deep interest in helping Roger to find leaks in the system. Roger taught her to squirt oil from an oil can over the different points and to interpret bubbles rising from the resulting oil flow as leaks. It was the quaintest sight in the world to see the slender little figure in blue overalls, brown head running over with short curls, crawling like a little lizard over the greasy pipes while Roger followed with pipe wrench, cold chisel and peen hammer. After Roger began work on the engine, Felicia became a sort of plumber's assistant and a clever one, at that.

Sometimes Charley came late in the afternoon to take Felicia home. She would perch on the edge of the work bench and talk to Roger about the work in a voice and with an unself-conscious manner so like her small sister's that Roger, his restless mind on the problems of his work, often confused the two girls in his thoughts and answered or directed them indiscriminately. And Charley would chuckle as she watched him.

The day in May that the men began a test for oil leaks in the absorber dawned with a promise of ferocious heat. Felicia appeared as usual but admitted that she had come over Charley's protest.

"We'll have to leave off work at eleven, and not begin again until three as Dick suggested, if this heat keeps up," observed Ernest.

"Then we'll begin work at dawn," said Roger, with a sigh. "Every minute counts, old man."

About nine o'clock Charley came panting down the trail.

"Felicia must come home at once," she cried. "There's a big sand storm coming. Dick is getting the stock under cover as fast as he can."

The men dropped their tools hurriedly and looked up the valley. A great gray cloud was approaching so rapidly that as they gazed they caught the sound of its increasing roar. The sky, which had been sapphire of an unusual translucence that morning, turned all in a moment to a sullen red gray. There was a dry rattle of lizards and horned toads scuttling into the roots of grease wood and cactus.

"You mustn't try to go home, Charley," exclaimed Roger.

"But I must! Dick and his alfalfa! He can't be alone!"

But Dick was destined to spend the day in solitude. With a very Niagara of sound the sand storm struck the camp. Charley and Felicia ran for the living tent where the men shortly joined them. They closed the flaps and settled to a day of discomfort. The engine house would have been more comfortable than the tent but it was too cumbered with machinery now to be used as a sitting room. There was no work that could be done indoors. The heat was stifling, a hundred and six the thermometer over the washstand trunk reported. The tent rocked and bellied, bellied and flapped with reverberations like drum-beats. Felicia was frightened at first and hid her head in Charley's lap. Charley herself was white-lipped, less, Ernest thought, from fear of the storm than from that vague apprehension about Dick that never seemed to leave her.

For a time Roger sat scowling with impatience, then Felicia's fear moved him and calling the child to him he began to tell her of the old swimming pool. The others listened and laughed and when Felicia begged for more, Gustav told a charming tale of his own Bavarian childhood. And he and Ernest sang together some tender folk songs which Felicia insisted on learning. While Gustav and Ernest undertook this pleasant task Charley and Roger talked.

At Charley's request, Roger brought out his blue prints and explained the plant to her. He felt his impatience lifting as he talked. Explaining his work always seemed to increase his critical vision. New ideas came flooding, and he pulled out his note book, feeling that after all the day was not entirely wasted.

So, in spite of the bitter taste of alkali in their mouths and its sting in their eyes, in spite of the breathless burning heat, the morning passed cheerfully. They even managed to satisfy their hunger with canned beef and canned brown bread. They had washed down the last of the unsavory lunch with the tepid, nauseously alkaline water from the olla when a gust of wind of tremendous proportions tore open the door flap and filled the room with a blinding swirl of sand. At the same moment there was a fearful crash from without, followed by the sound of breaking glass. Leaving Charley to refasten the door flap, the three men bolted toward the absorber.

The sand cloud was so dense that they could distinguish little until in actual contact with the edge of the trough. Then the trouble was obvious. A part of the sheet iron roof had blown off the engine house, and lay in a great twisted heap on the absorber. Roger immediately crawled under the trough. The heavy metal had pierced the floor of the absorber and oil was pouring out in a thin but steady stream. He pawed his way out hurriedly.

"Go shut the oil off, Ernest," he shouted, "and get pails to catch that oil. Why the devil did some one leave the valve open? Gustav, give me a hand with this mess. Why didn't we have sense enough to fasten it securely? If we don't move it, it may blow the length of the trough."

Roger plunged hastily up among the panes of broken glass, Gustav following. After a moment of effort the guilty mass of sheet iron was shoved over onto the sand. Just at the last a particularly vicious blast of wind twisted it violently against Gustav's bare arm.

"Du lieber Gott!" he roared. "Be careful yet!"

"Now let's cover the engine," shouted Roger, giving no heed to Gustav's cry.

"Hell mit the engine! Look!" Gustav thrust his left hand in Roger's face. The sleeve was dripping blood. Roger seized Gustav's arm tightly above the elbow. "Come over to the tent, Gustav," he said.

Stumbling blindly through the sand drifts the two men reached the tent, where just as they crept inside the flap, Gustav fainted. Charley ran forward and before Roger could protest had helped lift Gustav to his cot.

"I don't think it's so bad. He never can stand the sight of blood," said Roger.

They stripped back the sleeve as Roger spoke. A gash several inches long in Gustav's upper arm had laid bare the bone. Felicia began to cry.

"I've got a first aid kit, somewhere," said Roger, running to dig wildly through the trunks, emerging in a moment with a black box, from which he produced a tourniquet. They applied this quickly.

"Now, is there some alcohol here?" asked Charley. "We will wash it off with that until we can boil some water. Felicia, you go put all the things back nicely in the boys' trunks, and don't pay any attention to us."

Felicia was quickly absorbed in this altogether fascinating task, while Charley's skillful fingers made a temporary bandage for Gustav's arm. He was conscious now and offered a sick protest against Charley's suggestion:

"Let's cut this shirt off him, Roger. It's saturated with blood. I'll sew it up for him later."

Gustav sat up and before he could do more, Roger and Charley had removed his shirt. To their surprise they found he was wearing two, the second shirt having a particularly huge pocket, full of papers that were blood saturated.

"Don't touch that, don't!" cried Gustav. Then catching sight of the blood stains, he fainted again.

"Who'd think old Gustav was such a perfect lady," chuckled Roger. "Here, let's get him cleaned up now before he comes to, again."

They pulled off the second shirt, and put on one of Roger's fresh ones. Then while Charley gave Gustav some water, Roger took the papers from the bloody pockets of the second shirt.

"I'll wipe these off before the blood sets," he said. Then his eye caught a memorandum in German "Low pressure engine—new detail. Moore." Roger quickly opened the paper. It was about six inches square and was a copy of a detail of one of Roger's patent drawings.

"I'll be damned!" muttered Roger, his face flushing darkly.

He ran through other sheets. There were more drawings and some carefully written notes on Roger's general scheme for heat utilization. He was reading these very deliberately when Ernest came in.

"Whew, what a country!" began Ernest, then he stopped with a gasp.

Gustav, who was sitting up again, groaned weakly.

"I vas a chicken-fool, eh, Miss Charley?"

Roger crossed to the bed with a stride. "Look here, Schmidt," he said, "the sooner you get your things together and get out of here, the better I'll like it."

Gustav stood up. His jaw dropped. Then his eye fell on the papers in Roger's hand.

"I told you not to take off the shirt from me!" he cried.

"What's the matter, Rog?" asked Ernest.

"Matter? Matter? Why, this fellow is a thief. He's been stealing my ideas. Go on now! Get out of here!"

Ernest took the blood-stained papers and glanced at them hurriedly.

"Hold on! Be cool, Roger! Give Gustav a chance to explain."

"Explain! Explain what? Just how he stole these? Tear those papers up, Ernest, and take this Dutchman out of my sight. Get him out, I tell you."

Ernest hesitated. In all the years he had known Roger he