Chapter 20

The predicted cold weather came, bringing winter in earnest. The frost went deeper into the ground and construction grew slower, but the days continued fine and without gales, those fierce and implacable winds that sometimes rage over the frozen mesa hours at a time under a dull, saffron sun, sharp as knives, shrieking like demons, and driving man and beast to cover. They had not yet been unleashed.

Night work was begun, amid a flare of gasolene torches that gave a weird aspect to the plain. The yellow lights; the moving, shadowy forms of the workmen and horses; the cries and shouts--all made a scene gnome-like in character. Frost gleamed upon the earth in a silvery sheen under the torches' smoky flames. The headquarters building and the mess tents now glowed from dusk until dawn. Fires where workmen could warm their cheeks and hands were burning continually, fed from the great piles of wood brought from the mountains. And so by day and by night, without halt and despite cold, the restless life was maintained and the toil kept going and the hard furrow driven ahead.

With the approach of Christmas the advance of the project was marked. The dam was nearing completion, with its long, gently inclined, upstream face constructed of smooth cobbles--a slope up which any vast and sudden rush of cloudburst water would slide unchecked to the crest and harmlessly pass over. All of the drops, as well as the head-gate and flood weirs, were finished, standing as if hewn out of solid white stone. The miners had blasted out a channel through the reef of rock, and gone. From the dam the canal section all along the hillside and following the ridge, from drop to drop, and out to a point on the mesa a mile beyond, was excavated, a great clean ditch; while from Perro Creek the canal ran northward for six miles to the main camp, curving in the great arc that constituted its line. Three and a half miles, and complements, constructed at one end; six miles at the other. Between, five miles of unbroken mesa. Seven weeks remained for the small camp working down from the north and the great camp pushing from the south to dig through those miles and meet--seven weeks; but in the most bitter season of the year.

It seemed that it was with infinitely greater effort that the two sections of the canals were forced ahead each day. The surface of the ground was like stone, only by repeated attempts pierced by plows and torn apart; while the subsoil immediately froze if left unworked. The weaker labourers began to break: the scrawny Mexicans, the debilitated white men, the drifters and the dissatisfied; and they left the camps. These the labour agencies found it harder and harder to replace as the cold weather persisted, so that the force showed a considerable diminishment.

A few days before Christmas Gretzinger paid Bryant a visit. He had not been to camp for a week and therefore on this occasion examined the progress of work with care, studying the rate of excavation and calculating the result.

"You'll just about make it through, Bryant, if nothing happens to put a crimp in your advance," he stated when he was about to take his departure from the office, where he and Lee conferred.

"Yes," said Bryant.

"And if anything should happen, then good-bye canal."

"That doesn't necessarily follow," said Lee, calmly.

Gretzinger ignored this reply. He thrust an arm into his fur-lined overcoat and began to draw it on. That evening he was leaving Kennard for New York, and now was desirous of returning to town by noon, where he had a luncheon engagement with Ruth Gardner. He had casually mentioned to Bryant that the girls had gone the day before to the McDonnells for the holidays.

"My people were certainly handed a phony deal here," he remarked shortly, as he buttoned the coat collar about his throat. "Questionable title to the water! Extravagance and poor management! Rotten project all through! If I had lined this thing up, I should have learned what I actually had before a cent was expended. But of course if the thing goes smash, we in the East have to stand the loss; you're losing no cash, you have nothing in it but a shoestring. Well, I'm expecting you to put your back into the job and do no loafing and pull us out of the hole you've got us into."

Bryant's face remained impassive.

"I'll attend to my end," said he, "if the bondholders take care of theirs. They'll have to dig up more cash."

"What's that!"

"More money, I said."

"They'll see you in hell before they do."

"Then that's where they'll look for payment of their bonds. You're not fool enough, are you, to imagine a system can be built in winter and under high pressure for what it could be constructed in summer and not in haste? Strange the idea never occurred to you before--you, Gretzinger, irrigation expert, though you never saw an irrigation ditch till you came West. The sixty thousand dollars from bonds and twenty thousand more I've put with it will be gone sometime next month. Possibly I can stretch it out to the first of February. After that, the bondholders will have to come forward to save their investment."

Gretzinger unbuttoned his overcoat and sought his cigarette case. His scowl as he struck a match was lighted by vicious gleams from his eyes.

"Why didn't you stop work when you received notification from the state engineer of the Land and Water Board's action?" he demanded. "When you yet had the bulk of the money?"

"I preferred to continue."

"And now you're sinking it all."

"It costs money to move frozen dirt," said Bryant.

"Well, I tell you the bondholders won't put up another penny unless----" The Easterner paused, growing thoughtful. Some minutes passed before he resumed: "There's one condition on which they'll do it, and I'll guarantee their support."

"And the condition?"

"That you surrender your stock to them."

"For the twenty or twenty-five thousand dollars more that will be needed? My shares representing a hundred thousand? And I presume I should have to withdraw altogether."

"Naturally," Gretzinger responded. "I should then take charge."

Bryant's expression exhibited a certain amount of curiosity.

"Do you really think you could finish the ditch on time?" he inquired.

A slight sneer was the answer. Gretzinger was one not given to wasting time with men of Bryant's type.

"How about it? Am I to take back to New York with me your agreement to this?" he asked, curtly.

The other spread his feet apart and hooked his thumbs in his coat pockets and directed his full regard at the speaker.

"You think you have me in a hole, Gretzinger," he said. "You propose to take me by the throat and shake everything out of my pockets and then throw me aside. Well, I'm in a hole, no use denying that. But you haven't me by the throat and you're not going to loot me. If I go broke, it won't be through handing over what I have to you and your gang of pirates, just make up your mind to that."

"Then you intend to wreck this project. A court action will stop that, I fancy."

"The only court action you can demand is a receivership for the company, and not until my money-bag is empty at that," Lee rejoined, coolly. "And the time will expire and the company be a shell before it's granted, at the rate courts move."

The New Yorker considered. Finally he began to re-button his overcoat.

"I'll leave the offer open," said he. "I was uncertain before about returning, but I'll probably do so now. You'll find as the pinch comes that my proposition will look better--and we might pay you two or three thousand so you'll not go out strapped. Besides, if we took over and completed the project, it would save your face; you wouldn't be wholly discredited; you would be able to get a job somewhere afterward. Might as well make the most you can for yourself out of a bad mess. Think it over, Bryant." He set his cap on his head with a conclusive air.

Lee pointed at a chair by the table.

"Sit down for a moment; there's another matter." He crossed to his desk, put his hand in a drawer for something, and came back. "Look at that," he said, tossing a revolver cartridge on the table before Gretzinger.

The man picked it up and turned it over between thumb and finger, examining it with mingled surprise and curiosity.

"What about it?" he questioned.

"I understand you're interested in a certain young lady," Bryant stated, smoothly.

Gretzinger straightened on his seat, flashing his look up to the other's. A sudden tightening of his lips accompanied the action and he ceased to revolve the cartridge he held.

"I'll not discuss my personal affairs with you or----"

"When they touch mine, you will," was the answer.

"Are you jealous?" Gretzinger asked after a pause, with a trace of insolence. "Believe you are. I thought, along with your other shortcomings, you weren't capable of even that. Now that we're talking, I'll say that I've taken Ruth round and found her entertaining. What about it? And I've given her my opinion of the way you've run this work, because she asked for it. I told her that you had botched the business from the beginning. I told her you were unpractical, incompetent, small-gauged, and lightweight, and would make a failure of everything you touched. There you have it all. Well?"

Bryant's brows twitched for an instant.

"I guessed as much." He stood staring in silence at the table, but presently brought himself to attention. "Honour is something you don't understand. So I thought that bullet might focus your mind on possible consequences."

"What's all this rot!"

Lee leaned forward with his fists resting on the table and his eyes probing Gretzinger's.

"If any harm comes to Ruth through you, that bullet will pay it out," he said, harshly. "You've felt its weight. It's forty-four calibre, plenty heavy enough to do the business. I can smash a potato at thirty paces. One shot is all I shall ask. I won't do any hemming and hawing over the matter, or----"

Gretzinger sprang up.

"See here, Bryant!" he cried.

"Or advertising in the newspapers," the other went on, in a level tone. "I'll attend to your case, quickly and quietly. Here, or in New York, or wherever you are. That's all."

Gretzinger had gone a little pale. He was nervously drawing on his cap.

"Listen to me for a moment----"

"I said that's all. Get out." And Bryant's mien brooked no temporizing.

It was of Lee's nature not to brood on such matters. He had given the warning and must await the issue. Meanwhile, the burden of work and the needs of the project would afford sufficient occupation for his mind.

Christmas came. Bryant had ordered that labour cease for twenty-four hours, as the gruelling fight of weeks had worn down the spirit of the men. A holiday would rest them, while a big turkey dinner and unlimited cigars and pails of candy would put them in a good humour. At dark on the afternoon before the day shift at both camps ceased work, the horses were stabled, the torches left unlighted, the fires along the ditch allowed to die down, and the project was idle. A light skift of snow had fallen during the morning, whitening the earth, but the clouds had passed away, so that the still air and clear sky gave promise of a fine morrow.

Christmas Eve, however, did not lapse without a disturbing incident. About supper time Dave came running to Bryant and Pat Carrigan in Lee's shack. He had seen workmen going furtively into a tent in numbers that aroused his curiosity, and had crept unseen under the lee of the canvas shelter, where, lifting the flap, he beheld in the interior a keg on the ground and a Mexican, by light of a candle, serving labourers whisky in tin cups.

"Whisky in camp!" Lee roared. "Come with me, Pat." The two men, guided by Dave, strode down the street. Before the tent indicated they halted to listen. The shelter glowed dimly; formless shadows stirred on its canvas walls; and from within came low, guarded voices and once a muffled laugh.

Jerking the flaps apart Bryant entered, followed by the contractor. He forced an opening through the group of workmen by a savage sweep of his arms and came to the keg, where the Mexican at the moment was bending down and holding a cup under the spigot. When the man perceived the engineer, he leaped up. The fellow's short, squat figure and stony expression had for Bryant a vague familiarity--that face especially, brown, stolid, brutal, with a fixed, snake-like gaze.

But Lee had no time to speculate on the Mexican's identity. The liquor was the important thing. The man stood motionless, holding in his left hand the half-filled cup that gave off a pungent, sickening smell of whisky; his eyes were intent on the engineer. Behind Lee, Carrigan was already herding the others from the tent.

"Where did you get that stuff?" Bryant demanded. But as the Mexican only shook his head, he changed to Spanish. "Trying to start a big drunk here?"

"To-morrow is a fête day, señor," was the reply. "A friend made me a present; I share it with the others. Besides, in cold weather it keeps one warm."

"How long have you worked here?"

"Three days."

"There's a camp order: 'No liquor allowed in camp.' You can't say that you don't know it, for it's posted everywhere on placards in English and in Spanish."

He received no response. A faint shrug of the shoulders, perhaps. The Mexican's glistening, sinister eyes, on the other hand, continued as rigid as orbs of polished agate, and his face as expressionless.

"Well, we'll lock you up and see if we can learn who your 'friend' is that sent this barrel in," Lee stated.

There was a slight movement of the man's elbow.

"Watch him--his right hand!" Pat cried, sharply.

The hand had darted swiftly to the fellow's hip, but Bryant's fist was as quick. It shot up, catching the man's jaw and hoisting him off his feet. Next instant the engineer had disarmed the prostrate ruffian.

"The Kennard jail for you," said he, in English. "A bad _hombre_, eh! Up with you, quick."

But what followed neither the engineer nor the contractor anticipated. With a lightning-like roll of his body the man vanished under the side of the tent. When the others rushed out in search of him he had made good his escape; and a search through the dark camp would be useless. They therefore emptied the keg upon the ground, extinguished the lamp, and returned to Lee's office. Though the Mexican had got away, they nevertheless had put a foot on the malicious scheme.

All at once Dave, who was walking at Bryant's and Pat's heels up the street, exclaimed:

"I've got that greaser's number now! We saw him once at the depot in Kennard, Lee. He was watching you, remember?"

"I guess you're right; I recall him."

"Bet that old devil in Bartolo put him up to this." Dave asserted.

"Tut, tut, kid! Language like that on Christmas Eve! Charlie might--but not his father, I imagine."

Dave, however, was not altogether to be suppressed.

"Well, I don't put anything past either of them," he sniffed.