Chapter 17

Meanwhile Lee, under relentless pressure of work, saw less and less of Ruth. She had come a number of times at the beginning of the drive, sometimes with Gretzinger, sometimes with Imogene, to watch the feverish spectacle on the mesa; as had Louise Graham, her father, and at rare intervals Mr. McDonnell. Bryant, on his part, had gone evenings to Sarita Creek when he could spare an hour, and, for that matter, when he could not. But the meetings with her were infrequent, and always left him with a sense of inadequacy, of dissatisfaction, because partly Ruth and he seemed to have no common interests and partly that she now let her affection go for granted. Her talk was not of the subjects usually discussed by an engaged couple--of their coming marriage (though no date had been fixed) and a home and prospective joys together; it dealt wholly with amusements, dances, friends at Kennard. And though her own eyes glistened at the recital, Lee's lost their light and his speech was quenched. For his was the rôle of an outsider.

Certain friendships that she maintained, moreover, were exceedingly distasteful to him.

"Ruth, I've nothing against your going around so much with Gretzinger," he said one evening, "except that I don't like the fellow and believe he's crooked, and it may, under the circumstances, create gossip."

"Nonsense, Lee, don't be jealous. Gretzie never takes me anywhere except in a crowd. And don't say he's crooked, or I shall be angry."

"Well, let him pass," he went on. "It's Charlie Menocal I've more in mind. He talks openly against my project; he calls me a thief and a ruffian; he's an avowed enemy. Yet you run around with him as if that were of no importance, as if it made no difference. The scoundrel no doubt counts it a brilliant bit of smartness to carry about in his car the fiancée of the man he hates, and brags of it. It reflects on us both, Ruth. I ask you to consider my feelings at least that far."

She regarded him speculatively for a time. Then the touch of obstinacy hardened her chin and pushed up her under lip the barest trifle. But there was no resentment in her voice when she answered and, indeed, her tone was too casual.

"Oh, nobody pays any particular attention to what Charlie says," she remarked. "You surely don't really believe what you've just stated about his bragging? I don't. Of course, he hasn't brains like Mr. Gretzinger, but he's gentlemanly. And he's very kind. And so is Mr. Menocal, his father. I've eaten dinner with a party of young folks at their house twice. Your ideas of them are altogether wrong, for they've been at pains to tell me that a business difference like that with you shouldn't affect personal relations. I think the same. But that isn't all. You never take me anywhere, you won't go to the parties and shows and things. Am I to sit here every day and every night at Sarita Creek until your canal is built?" By now her words were not only casual but carried a trace of disdainfulness.

"No, Ruth," said he. "I want you to have a good time and derive every pleasure that you rightly can. My greatest regret is that I can't take you and share the fun. But it goes without saying that I can't. Only, Charlie Menocal----"

"Lee, what's got into you to-night? If it were not for Mr. Gretzinger's and Charlie's thoughtfulness, I'd have died of lonesomeness long before this. You know how I hate this life, this homestead business. You know I'm only waiting until you've finished and we can be married and go away where there is something worth while. Now be reasonable. You work too hard, so that every little speck looks like a mountain. And it's making you narrow, too, or will if you don't watch out. I have to kill time somehow till we can be married and so you ought not to find fault with my doing it. Run along over and talk to Imo in her cabin now, Lee; that's a good boy. I didn't get back home from town last night until after midnight, and I'm sleepy."

He did not go to Imo's cabin, but to camp instead. For the bitterness of his disappointment at his failure to move her made him desire the darkness and solitude of the ride home. With her, it seemed, he was in a worse predicament than he had been when faced with the problem of his ditch; for that he had found an answer, found something to take hold of. But she was not like the mesa, to be mastered by sheer will and incessant labour. Character is intangible, and he found himself balked. One cannot lay hands on the desires in a heart and pluck them out, or on the spirit and twist it straight.

His bitterness became acute when some time later Charlie Menocal came driving with Ruth along the rutted trail by the canal to where he stood inspecting a new drop.

"You wait, Charlie; I'll not be long," she said, as she alighted. "Come with me out of earshot, will you, Lee?"

They moved to a spot that satisfied her.

"I heard you were doing this and I asked Charlie to bring me here," she began. "I wanted to see for myself. And it's true. You're going ahead and make these things out of concrete. I'm indignant, I'm hurt. After you led me to rely----"

Bryant stopped her sharply.

"No, Ruth, not that. I'm sorry that you gained the impression I should use wood instead of concrete; and it never was in my mind to do so, to use wood. My decision was fully made when you raised the matter in the hotel parlour at Kennard, and I explained my reasons for the decision. I didn't tell you bluntly, perhaps. I waited, trusting that you would come round to my way of thinking and realize that I could only follow my own best judgment."

"I haven't changed my mind not one particle," she exclaimed, vehemently.

"But, Ruth----"

"I think you're throwing away good money, deliberately. That is, if you really ever make any money on your project. You may lose everything."

"I may not, also. But if I should, the father of the fellow sitting in the car yonder waiting for you would be responsible. As for these drops, Ruth, Gretzinger was wrong and I was right, and so they're being built of concrete. Now please forget all about it."

"And that you refused my request, I suppose."

"Yes."

"Well, I can't do that; it's too much to ask." An angry gleam shot from her eyes. "You might have thought more of me and less of yourself. You put your old canal first and me second." With which she swung about and marched off to the car, and it went away, rocking and lurching down the uneven trail.

Lee stood looking after it. Her last words brought up the memory of the occasion when she had playfully uttered the like, one night in August, with the added inquiry, "What if you had to choose between us?" Were things drifting to such an issue? Would she at last force upon him that hard choice? He flung up a hand in a gesture of despair. Some metamorphosis had occurred in her; she was not the simple and loving Ruth to whom he had offered himself that day they picked berries in the cañon. Or was it that only now her real self was revealed? Was it that she was capable of loving only selfishly? Did she love him at all?

The questions bit like acid into his heart. And a new one, that startled and dismayed his soul: Did he love her? Yes--the Ruth she yet was. But he could never love the woman she seemed on the way to become, breathing an exciting and unhealthy atmosphere, seeking purely personal gain, indifferent to worthy objects, selfish, hard, mercenary, worldly. No, that kind of Ruth would kill love.

He still stood there when Morgan, who had been on an errand to headquarters, came galloping back on his way to the dam.

"Accident down below," he said. "Man hurt in the mixer. Arm crushed."

Bryant jerked his head about to look at the drop two hundred yards farther down the ridge. He saw the workmen grouped together. The huge cylindrical machine was motionless.

"I'll see," he exclaimed, hurrying to his runabout.

He drove recklessly to where the injured man lay, helped lift him into the car, and bidding the foreman stand on the running board and support the unconscious labourer, set off for headquarters at such speed as was possible. Into the low shack used for hospital purposes the two carried their charge, and as the doctor was absent Bryant began a search to find him. He ran down the camp street shouting the doctor's name and along the ditch where the teams moved, until he encountered Carrigan.

"Doc ain't here. Who's hurt?" Pat asked. For a call for the doctor could mean but one thing.

Bryant described the nature of the accident and both men hastened back to the hospital. The door was now closed. Before it, stood the foreman of the concrete gang, who was narrating for the benefit of a group of cooks and freighters details of the mishap.

Bryant turned the knob, but the door was locked.

"He stationed me here to keep men out," the foreman said.

"Then he's in there."

"Yes, came a-running. Was loafing out there in the brush and having a smoke. Said he was going to operate at once, then locked the door."

"Not alone!" Lee exclaimed.

"No, he has help. One of the engineers from the office, who had come trotting over to see what was wrong, and a girl."

"A girl! What girl?"

The foreman shook his head.

"Don't know who she is. She came riding in from the south. When she saw us hustling round, she asked what had happened and jumped off her horse and inquired of the Doc whether she could be of any help. He looked at her, then said yes. She's in there now. One of the men is caring for her horse."

"A bay horse?"

"Yes. And a pretty girl, too. I'd almost lose an arm to have a good-looker like her hovering over me."

"All right, Jenks. You can go back now. Get another man for your crew from Morgan. I'll obtain this fellow's name and his address, if he has any, from the time-keeper, in case he passes in his checks."

The foreman started away. The group before the door disintegrated and presently disappeared. Pat glanced at the sun, lighted a cigar, and asked:

"Do we start a night shift?"

"Yes; whenever you can bring in the men."

"Then I'll wire for some right away. The thermometer was five below this morning, and only twenty-two above this noon. She's cold at last."

"Go to it, Pat. I'll stay here till Doc is through."

When Carrigan had left him, Bryant sat down on a discarded oil tin lying on the ground--one of the square ten-gallon cans common about camps. He gazed at the door of the hospital shack. He could hear faint sounds from within, a footfall on the board floor, an indistinct word or murmur. Behind him and farther down the street, in the big cook tents where the crews ate, was the rattle of pans and an occasional oath or burst of laughter. There the cooks were peeling potatoes and mixing great pans of biscuit dough and exchanging jests, while here in the shack a fight was going on for a life.

Bryant saw again that unshaven, heavy-faced workman, with the terribly mangled arm, whom he had brought hither. Poor devil! Some oversight, some carelessness, some mistake on the part of himself or another; and if not a dead man, then one-armed for the rest of his days. He, Bryant, could not consider these accidents with Pat Carrigan's philosophic calm--a calm acquired from decades of camp tragedies and disasters. They harrowed his spirit. Though they appeared inevitable where men delved or builded or flung forth great spans, they made the cost of constructive works seem too great. They took the glamor from projects and left them hard, grim, uninspiring tasks.

Lee felt a weariness like that of age. The strain under which he laboured, the sustained effort of driving this furrow through earth that was like iron, his unavailing endeavours to reclaim Ruth, afflictions such as this of the past hour, the uncertainty of everything--all sapped his energy and shook his faith. Yet before him there were weeks of the same, or worse. He had put his hand to the plow; he could not turn back.

All at once the door of the shack opened. Louise Graham came out, without hat, garbed in a great white surgical apron. Her knees seemed about to give way. Her eyes were half shut. Her face was without colour, drawn, dazed. With her from the interior came a reek of chloroform.

She had been the girl in there! Bryant had guessed it, feared it. He ran forward and put an arm about her shoulders and led her to the tin oil canister on which he urged her to be seated.

"No, I won't faint," she said, weakly. He knelt beside her and supported her form. "I just feel dizzy and a little sick," she went on. "Better in a moment." Lee observed her shudder. Presently she murmured, "Stuck it out, anyway. Dad says--dad says, 'Never be a quitter.' And I wasn't one."