The Forbidden Trail, Honoré Willsie [digital e reader TXT] 📗
- Author: Honoré Willsie
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"Ernest!" thundered Roger.
With a glance at Gustav, Ernest began to tear up the papers.
"Roger! Please! Bitte! I can explain," began Gustav.
"Don't speak to me. I've heard vague stories of how German manufacturers get their ideas. This, I know: in the morning, you'll start for Archer's Springs, you skunk!"
"Oh, Rog!" protested Ernest.
"How dare you protest, Ernest?" Roger turned on his friend furiously. "You know what that engine means to me. You know the difficulty of patent protection and now this dirty hound—"
"Here! That I von't take from any man," cried Gustav. "You vas acting like a fool, Roger."
Roger lunged forward with his right fist swinging. But before Ernest could interfere, Charley had caught the clenched fist with both her hands, and was clinging to it with all her fine strength.
"Oh, Roger!" she cried. "Oh, Roger! Roger!"
Roger dropped his arm and stared at her for a moment. Her eyes, so like Felicia's, so unlike them, returned his furious gaze, unflinching. Suddenly, he grew pale and without a word, turned on his heel and left the tent.
He made his way to the engine house. Ernest had covered the engine with a tent fly, but Roger did not even glance at the idol of his heart. He made his way back where the roof still offered some protection from the storm and sat down on an empty box. An hour, then another slipped by, the sand sifting heavily on Roger as he crouched motionless, his head in his hands.
At the end of the first hour, the storm had lessened perceptibly and by the time the second had passed, the westering sun was flashing through the dusty windows. Voices outside did not rouse Roger, but when Charley slipped in through the sagging door, he looked up. The girl returned his look soberly and sat down on a pile of adobe brick near him.
Roger looked at her curiously. No one, excepting his mother, had ever before checked one of his flights of fury, midway. Sometimes, as in the episode with young Hallock, he had been able to check himself, but this was not frequent.
"Why did you do that? Why did you interfere?" he asked abruptly.
"I couldn't stand by and see you make a mess of your life," replied Charley, "just as things seemed to be going well."
"Going well!" repeated Roger sardonically. "Why, I've been sitting here for hours, bringing myself to the realization of the fact that my life is a hopeless mess. I can't trust any one. I can't get help. I can't do it all alone. I'm going to quit this game and get a job."
"Roger," said Charley slowly, "do you want to know what's the matter with you, aside from your temper? You're completely work- and self-centered. You don't take human beings into your calculations at all. And you won't be a real success until you get to studying and liking people as well as you do machinery. If you'd given about a tenth of the thought to Gustav that you have, say, to stopping the leaks in the condenser, and then if you'd used the same patience with him to-day that you would to a big leak in the pipes, you'd be farther ahead on your job and a good deal bigger man. Roger, the more I see of you the more I'm convinced that your failure is a good deal less the result of other people's indifference than it is of your own temperamental peculiarities and weaknesses."
Roger's face flushed again. "What business have you got talking this way to me?" he blurted out, angrily.
"Every business in the world," returned Charley serenely. "I like you, and your work is very important. Anything I can do to help get it across, I'm going to do, regardless of your feelings. I have an idea that no one has really helped you since your mother died—that is, with your temper."
The anger died out of Roger's eyes. Once again he seemed to feel that faint and heavenly touch upon his forehead. It did not seem to him possible that what this girl said of him was true. And yet there was in the depths of her steady brown eyes a sort of ageless wisdom that made him feel awkward and immature. An ageless wisdom, with the sweetness and purity of the child Felicia's gaze. Lovely drooping lips that were Felicia's, and yet were, because of their sad patience, not Felicia's, but belonged to a woman who reminded him of his mother.
Roger continued to stare at Charley as if he never had seen her before. After a moment he said in a half-whisper, "By Jove, I believe you are a friend to me—with nerve enough to tell me the truth as you see it, which Ernest never had. And he's been my only friend. Perhaps you're right, perhaps part of the fault has been with myself. O Lord, Charley! I do need some one to tell me the truth, I certainly do."
Charley put out her hand to lay it on Roger's shoulder.
"Poor child!" she said, softly.
In a moment, Roger was a little boy again, back at his mother's side. "O God!" he whispered, and throwing himself forward on his knees, buried his head in Charley's lap. She laid her hand on his head with the touch that had been his mother's. "Poor lonely child," she said again. And for the first time in nearly ten years, Roger burst into tears.
Charley, smoothing his heavy black hair, said nothing more until Roger sheepishly raised his head and pulled out a very dirty handkerchief.
Then she said in a very matter-of-fact voice, "By the way, as soon as the storm let up a little, I had Ernest take Gustav up to the ranch. I can take care of him up there and I didn't want Dick to be alone any longer."
"Where's Felicia?" asked Roger.
"She's asleep in the tent, I must wake her up and take her home now. The storm is over."
"Leave her with me a little while," said Roger. "I'll bring her home."
"All right, come up for supper. Ernest and Dick will help me get it."
Roger nodded and Charley started along the drifted trail to the ranch while Roger went to the tent. Felicia slept on while he shaved and put the tent in order. Then he stooped over the cot and raised her.
"Suppertime, little sweetheart," he said.
Felicia woke with a start. "Don't be cross, Roger," she exclaimed after blinking at him for an instant.
"I couldn't be cross with you, Felicia," Roger lifted her in his arms and held her against his heart.
"Never, Roger?"
"Never, Felicia. You must never be afraid of me, even when I scold other people. Because I love you very much, Felicia."
The child threw her arms around Roger's neck and they both looked off to the ranch house, where the windows glowed red in the sunset. There was something infinitely soothing to Roger in Felicia's embrace and he held her until she wriggled impatiently and announced that she was hungry.
"We'll head for supper," he said, and putting her down he took her hand and they started through the sand for the ranch and Charley. Gustav was waiting for them at the edge of the corral.
"Felicia, you run on up to the house and tell Charley I'll be there in a minute," said Roger.
"Don't scold Gustav," cried Felicia.
"I won't," replied Roger, grimly, and the child sped up the path to the porch.
"Roger! I did not mean nodings to hurt you! Vy, you ver like my own son. I vas having a plan to help you. Please, Roger, listen—Bitte sehr!"
Roger was a little pale and his lips were stiff but he had himself well in hand.
"Look here, Gustav, you know you sneaked on me, don't you?"
"Yes, but it vas to help you. I vas an inventor, Roger. I haf many ideas."
"Oh! That was it, was it?" He looked at Gustav's sweaty face, usually so placid, now distorted with pain and anxiety. "Well, all right, old man! I guess I was a bit hasty. But I want you to give me your word of honor to take no more notes and under no circumstances to give any one any information about my work."
Gustav's face cleared as if by magic. He shook Roger's proffered hand heartily. "I promise. Absolute, I promise. Thank you; thank you much, Roger."
"Right-o—come on now, let's go to supper," and the two swung up the trail, and into the adobe, where, after a glance at their faces, their waiting friends greeted them hilariously.
"The alfalfa has come through, Roger," shouted Dick. "I guess the worst is over for me, all right. I'll take an order right now for five tons of alfalfa from you, Charley."
"Better let Felicia order," replied Charley. "I understand that Mr. von Minden is going to find a burro for her, the exact twin of Peter."
"And he's going to learn to do everything Peter does," added Felicia, "and Ernest says I must name him Re-peater. Please let's have supper."
Gustav made a poor fist at eating. His arm gave him a great deal of pain and it was finally decided that Ernest should take the patient team and that night drive Gustav to the doctor. They made the start immediately after supper and did not return until the third day following. Gustav was one-armed for some time but managed to make himself indispensable, nevertheless.
As summer advanced, a new working schedule that precluded labor in the middle of the day was inaugurated. The more intense the heat grew, the more intense, it seemed to Roger, grew the weird beauty of the desert. The midnight stars seemed hardly to have blossomed before dawn turned the desert world to a delicate transparent yellow, deepening at the zenith to blue and on the desert floor to orange. As the sun rose, the yellow changed suddenly to scarlet and for a few moments earth and sky quivered in a lambent red fire. When the sun had shot clear of the mountains, details of landscape and contrasts of color were accented. Clear black of peaks, crimson of canyons, purple of rifts in the ranges, bright moss green of cactus dots on the yellow desert floor. And always to the west that far melting loveliness of blue and gold and black that was the River Range. And always the quivering, parching air that burned against the body like a furnace blast.
Ernest felt the heat more than Roger did and lost weight. But though he complained a great deal he stuck to his work manfully.
After Ernest and Gustav had returned from Archer's Springs and the ravages caused by the desert storm had been repaired, Roger started on a hunt into the ranges for more window glass. He dared spend his money for nothing but food.
He outfitted for a three day trip, carrying a blanket, the two-gallon canteen, beans, canned pears and a batch of baking powder biscuits. Dick gave him minute directions as to the location of different mines and of springs, and Roger started off confidently.
There was very little glass left in the Goodloe mines where Roger had located the oil. But Dick knew of mines some ten miles north along the backbone of the ranges and these Roger had as an objective when he left the camp in the yellow dawn.
He reached the Goodloe district by mid-morning. There was no trail to the north but he jogged along all the afternoon by compass and sun, keeping to the top of the ridge whenever possible. During all this time he saw no sign of human habitation. Indeed the only living beings he beheld that day were two buzzards circling meditatively
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