Out of the Depths: A Romance of Reclamation

“She is a very dear, sweet girl.”

“So are several of your friends–our friends,” said Blake. “This is different. The very first day we met her, there was something about her voice and face–seemed as though I already knew her.”

“She knew you, through what she had read of you. She warned me, in that frank, charming way of hers, that you were a hero to her and I must not mind if she worshiped you openly.”

Blake laughed pleasedly. “Isn’t she the greatest! And the way she chums with me! Wonder if that is what makes Ashton so sore at me? The idiot! Can’t he see the difference?”

“Lovers always are blind,” said Genevieve.

“I’m not,” he rejoined, his eyes, as he gazed down into hers, as blue and tender as Isobel’s.

The young wife blushed deliciously and rewarded him with a kiss.

“But about Chuckie?” she returned to the previous question. “You were going to tell me–”

“I am going to tell you something you will think is very fanciful–and it is! Do you know why I am so taken with that girl? It’s because she reminds me of my sisters–what they might have grown to be!.. God!–” he bent over with his face in his shaking hands–“God! If only they had gone any other way than–the way they did!”

“My poor dear boy!” soothed his wife, her hand on his downbent head. “Let us trust that they are in a happier world, a world where sorrow and pain–”

“If only I could believe that!” he groaned.

Genevieve waited a few moments and with quiet tactfulness sought to divert him from his grief: “If Chuckie reminds you of them, Dear–”

“She might be either–only Mary, the older one, had dark brown eyes. But Belle’s were blue like Chuckie’s.”

“What a pure blue her eyes are–the sweet true girl! Why can’t you regard her as your sister, and–and give over further thought of this irrigation project?”

Blake looked up, completely diverted. “You little schemer! So that’s what you’ve been working around to?”

“But why not?” she insisted.

“I’ll tell you. It is because I am so fond of Chuckie that I am determined to get water on Dry Mesa, if it is possible.”

“But–”

“To make use of those waste waters,” he explained; “to turn this dusty semi-desert into a garden; and to benefit Chuckie by doubling the value of her father’s property.”

“How could that be, when the farmers would divide up his range?”

“He owns five sections, Chuckie told me. What are they worth now? But with water on them, even without a single tree planted, they would sell as orchard land for more than all his herd; and he would still have his cattle. He could sell them to the settlers for more than what he now gets shipping them over the range.”

“I begin to see, Tom. I might have known it.”

“I’m telling you, of course. We’re to keep it from them as a happy surprise, because it may not come off. There’s still the question whether the water in the cañon–”

“But if it is! How delightful it will be to help Mr. Knowles and Chuckie, besides, as you say, turning this desert into a garden!”

“That valley is a natural reservoir site to hold flood waters,” continued the engineer. “All that’s needed is a dam built across the narrow place above the waterhole, with the dike for foundation. I would build it of rock from the tunnel, run down on a gravity tram.”

“You’ve worked it all out?”

“Not all, only the general scheme. If the tunnel comes through high enough up here, we shall be able to manufacture cheap electricity to sell. Just think of our settlers plowing by electricity, and their wives cooking on electric stoves.”

“You humorous boy!”

“No, I mean it. There’s another thing–I wouldn’t whisper it even to you if you weren’t my partner as well as my wife. I have reason to believe the creek bed above the dike is a rich placer. I’ve planned to take Knowles and Ashton in on that discovery–Gowan, too, if Knowles asks it.”

“A placer?”

“Yes, placer mine–gold washed down in the creek bed. But it’s a small thing compared with another discovery I’ve made. Up there–” Blake pointed up the steep ledges that he had climbed–“I found a bonanza.”

“Bonanza? What is that, pray?”

“A mint, a John D. bank account, a–Guess?”

“A gold mine! Oh, Tom, how romantic!”

“Yes; it’s free-milling quartz. We can mill it ourselves, and not have to pay tribute to the Smelting Trust. That’s romance–or at least sounds like it. You will pay for all the development work, in return for one-third share. I shall take a third, as the discoverer, and Chuckie gets the remaining third as grub-staker.”

“As what?”

“She is staking us with grub–food and supplies. If she had not sent for me to come and look over the situation, I should not have been here to stumble on this mine. So she gets a share.”

“I’m glad, glad, Tom! Isn’t it nice to be able to do fine things for others? I’m so glad for Chuckie’s sake, because, if Lafayette keeps on as he is doing now, he may win his father’s forgiveness.”

“What has that to do with Chuckie?”

“You and I know what she is, Dear; yet if she had no money, his father might insist on regarding her as a mere farm girl. He is as–as snobbish as I was when we were flung ashore by the storm, there in Mozambique.”

“I fail to see that it matters any to Chuckie what Ashton senior thinks.”

“Of course you don’t see. You’re as blind as when I–” the lady blushed–“as when I had to fling myself at you to make you see. The dear girl is as deeply in love with Lafayette as he is with her.”

“No? She doesn’t show it. How can you tell?”

“You know that Mr. Gowan is desperately in love with her.”

“That stands to reason. He couldn’t help but be. Can’t say I like the fellow. He may be all right, though. Must have some good qualities–Chuckie seems to be very fond of him.”

“As fond as if he were a brother. No; Lafayette is to be the happy man–unless he backslides. We must help him.”

Blake nodded. “That’s another thing that hangs on this project. If it proves to be feasible, I can give Ashton a chance to make good as an engineer. I used to think he must have bought his C.E. Now I see he has the makings.”

“He can be brilliant when he chooses. If only he were not so–so scatter-brained.”

“What he needed was a jolt heavy enough to shake him together. It seems as though his father gave it to him.”

“That shock, and being picked up by Chuckie,” agreed Genevieve.

“We’ll help her keep him braced until the cement sets,” said her husband. “It’s even worse to let brains go to waste than water.”

“Far worse! What is the good of all your engineering–of all the machinery, yes, and all the culture of civilization, if not to uplift men and women? May the next generation work for the uplifting of all mankind, both materially and spiritually!”

“We might make a try at it ourselves,” said Blake. “As for the future, I know it will not be your fault if our member of the next generation fails to do his share of uplift work.”

The young mother placed her hand on her bosom, and sprang up. “We should be going back, Dear. Thomas will be wakening.”

CHAPTER XX

INDIAN SHOES

They returned along the shadowy bottom of the great gorge to the glaring sunshine of the open creek bed, where they had left the rod and level. Blake placed both upon one of his broad shoulders, and gave his wife the unencumbered arm to assist her somewhat hurried pace.

As they approached the dike her hasty steps quickened to a run. She darted ahead down to the camp. Thomas Herbert Vincent was vociferating for his dinner. Blake followed at a walk. He was only a father.

When he came down to the trees he found Isobel and Ashton alone. The girl’s manner was constrained and her color higher than usual. Ashton, comfortably outstretched on a blanket with her saddle for pillow, frowned petulantly at the intruder. But Isobel sprang up and came to meet Blake, unable to conceal her relief.

“I was so glad to see Genevieve,” she said. “You came back just in time.”

“How’s that?” asked Blake, his eyes twinkling.

She blushed, but quickly recovered from her confusion to dimple and cast a teasing glance at Ashton. “Baby woke up,” she answered. “You may not know it, but babies cry when they fail to get what they want.”

“He’s getting what he wants–I’m not!” complained Ashton.

“I–I must see if Genevieve needs anything,” murmured the girl, and she fled to the tent.

“I need you!” Ashton called after her without avail.

“How’re you feeling?” inquired Blake.

Ashton’s frown deepened to a scowl.

“Didn’t mean how you feel towards me,” added Blake. “I can guess that. My reference was to your head.”

“I’m all right,” snapped Ashton. “Needn’t worry. I’m still weak and dizzy, but I shall be quite able to do my work tomorrow.”

“That’s fine,” said the engineer, with insistent good humor. “However, if you feel at all shaky in the morning, I can perhaps get Gowan, or maybe Miss Chuckie would like to–”

“No!” broke in Ashton. “She shall not! I will do it, I tell you.”

“Very well,” said Blake. He put down the level and rod, but retained the rifle. “Tell the ladies I shall be back before long. I am going to look for something I forgot this morning.”

Without waiting for the other’s reply, he returned up the dike slope and around the bend of the hill to where Ashton had been shot. That for which he was looking was not here, for he at once turned and started up the hill. He climbed direct to the place where the assassin had lain in wait.

The bare ledge told Blake nothing, but from a crevice nearby he picked out two long thirty-eight caliber rifle shells. He put them into his pocket and went over to scan the mesa from the top of his lookout crag. He could see no sign of the fugitive murderer. Down below the mesa side of the hill, however, he saw a man riding up the bank of Dry Fork, and recognized him as Knowles.

Trained to alert observation by years of life on the range, the cowman had already perceived Blake. He wheeled aside and rode towards the hill when the engineer waved his hat and began to descend. The two met at the foot of the rugged slope.

“Howdy, Mr. Blake,” greeted the cowman, “I thought I’d just ride up to see how things are coming along.”

“Not so fast as they might, Mr. Knowles. We have stopped for repairs.”

“Haven’t broken your level?”

“No. Ashton is laid up for the day with a scalp wound. We were shot at this morning from up there–other side of the crest.”

“Shot at, and Lafe hit?”

“Not seriously, though it could not well have been a closer shave. He says he will be all right by tomorrow,” said Blake, and he gave the bald details of the occurrence in a few words.

Knowles listened without comment, his leathery face stolid, but his eyes glinting. When Blake had finished, he remarked shortly: “Must be the same man. Let’s see those shells.”

Blake handed over the two empty cartridge shells.

“Thirty-eight,” confirmed Knowles. “Same as were fired at Lafe before. Kid and Chuckie showed me how a thirty-eight fitted the hole in Lafe’s silver flask. About where did the snake crawl down the hill?”

“Not far from here. He could not have gone any considerable distance along the top or side. He was down and riding away when I reached the crags, and I had not lost much time coming up the other side.”

“It’ll take an Indian to make out his tracks on this dry ground,” remarked the cowman. “We’ll try a look, though, at his hawss’s hoof prints. Just keep behind, if you don’t mind.”

He threw the reins over the head of his horse, and dismounted, to walk slowly along the more level ground at the foot of the slope. Blake followed, as he had requested, but scrutinizing the ground with a gaze no less keenly observant than that of his companion.

“Mighty queer,” said Knowles, after they had carried their examination over a hundred yards. “Either he came down more slanting or else–”

“What do you make of this?” Blake interrupted, bending over a blurred round print in the dust between two grass tufts.

“Sho!” exclaimed the cowman as he peered at the mark. “That’s why, of course.”

“Indian shoes,” said Blake.

“You’ve seen a thing or two. You’re no tenderfoot,” remarked Knowles.

“I have myself shrunk rawhide shoes on horses’ hoofs when short of iron shoes,” Blake explained. “This would make a hard trail to run down without hounds.”

The cowman straightened and looked at his companion, his weather-beaten face set in quiet resolve.

“I know what’s better than hounds,” he said. “This is one badman who has played his game once too often. I’m going to run him down if it takes all year and all the men in the county. There’s a couple of Ute bucks being held in the jail at Stockchute, to be tried for hunting deer. I’m going to get the loan of them. The sheriff will turn out with a posse, and we’ll trail that snake, if it takes us clear over into Utah.”

“We’ll have a fair chance to get him with Ute trackers,” agreed Blake.

Knowles shook his head. “Unless you’re particular to come along, Mr. Blake, I’d like you and Lafe to keep on with this survey. I’ve been worrying over the chance of losing my range, till it’s got on my nerves.”

“Certainly, Mr. Knowles. I shall go ahead in the morning, if Ashton is able to rod. It will be best, I suppose, for my wife and Miss Chuckie to remain close at the ranch until you make sure where this trail leads.”

“No; he’s a snake, but the Indian shoes prove he’s Western–He won’t strike at the ladies. Another thing, I’m going to give you Kid for guard.”

“He may prefer to join the posse.”

“Of course he’ll prefer that. You can count on Kid Gowan when it comes to a man hunt. He’ll stay, though, all right. I don’t want Mrs. Blake to think she has to stop indoors. With Kid on the lookout around your camp, the ladies can feel free to come and go any time between sunup and sundown, and you and Lafe can do what you want. There won’t be any more shooting, unless it’s by Kid.”

“Very well,” said Blake. “I’m not anxious to play hide and seek with a man who shoots and runs. When can we expect the rope and spikes?”

“That’s another thing,” replied Knowles. “Kid can be packing them and your camp outfit up to the cañon while you and Lafe are running your line of levels. He ought to be home by now. He was gone when the men turned out this morning. Soon as I get back I’ll send him up to camp with you. He can bring along Rocket, to be ready for a chase, providing we can find the brute. Queer about that hawss. Wanted to ride him this morning. Found he’d got out and gone off the way he used to before Lafe gentled him.”

While talking, the two men had returned to the cowman’s horse and started around the hill to the camp. They found Isobel and Genevieve and the baby all engaged in entertaining Ashton. Knowles briefly congratulated the wounded man, and led his pony down to the pool for a drink. Blake had seated himself beside his wife. She handed the baby to him, and remarking that she also wished to drink, she followed Knowles.

The cowman smiled at her reassuringly. “You’re not afraid of any more shooting, ma’am, are you?” he asked. “I’ve told your husband that Kid is to come up to keep guard. He will stay right along, unless that scoundrel is trailed down sooner.”

“Then I shall have no fear, Mr. Knowles.”

“You needn’t, and you and Chuckie can come and go just the same as ever. I don’t want your visit spoiled. It’s a great treat to all of us to have you with us.”

“And to my husband and myself to be your guests! I have quite fallen in love with your daughter, Mr. Knowles. If you’ll permit me to say it, you are very fortunate to have so lovely and lovable a girl.”

“Don’t I know it, ma’am!”

“So beautiful–and her character as beautiful as her face. How you must prize her!”

“Prize her!” repeated Knowles, his usual stolid face aglow with pride and tenderness. “Why, ma’am, I couldn’t hold her more in liking if she was my own flesh and blood!”

Genevieve suddenly bent down to hide the intense emotion that had struck the color from her face. Yet after a moment’s pause, she spoke in a composed, almost casual tone: “Then Chuckie is not your own daughter?”

“Not in the way you mean. Hasn’t she told you? I adopted her.”

“I see,” remarked Genevieve, with a show of polite interest. “But of course, taking her when a young infant, she has always thought of you as her own father.”

“No–what I can’t get over is that she feels that way, and I feel the same to her, though I never saw or heard of her till she was going on fourteen.”

“Ah!” Genevieve could no longer suppress her agitation. “Then she is–I’m sure that she must be–You said she came from the East, from Chicago?”

“No, ma’am! I didn’t say where she came from,” curtly replied the cowman.

The shock of his brusqueness restored the lady to her usual quiet composure. Looking up into his face, she found it as blank and impenetrable as a cement wall.

“You must pardon me,” she murmured. “I myself am a Chicago girl, so you must see how natural it is for me to hope that so sweet and beautiful a girl as Chuckie came from my city.”

“Chuckie is my daughter,” stated Knowles in a flat tone.

“If you will kindly permit me to explain. My husband–”

“Chuckie is my daughter, legally adopted,” repeated the cowman. “You can see what she is like. If that is not enough, ma’am, I can’t prevent you from declining our hospitality, though we’d be mighty sorry to have you and your husband leave.”

The tears started into Genevieve’s hazel eyes. “Mr. Knowles! how could you think for a moment that I–that we–”

“Excuse me, ma’am!” he hastened to apologize. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. You see, I’m kind of prejudiced along some lines. I’ve been bred up to the Western idea that it isn’t just etiquette to ask about people’s antecedents. Real Western, I mean. Our city folks are nearly as bad as you Easterners over family trees. As if a child isn’t as much descended from its mother’s maternal grandmother as from its father’s paternal grandfather!”

Genevieve smiled at this adroit diversion of the subject by the seemingly simple Westerner, and replied: “My father’s and mother’s parents were farm people. My husband worked his way up out of the Chicago slums.”

“He did?” The cowman could not conceal his astonishment. He looked curiously into the lady’s high-bred face. “Well, now, that sure is something to be right proud of–not that I’d have exactly expected you to think so. If you’ll excuse me, ma’am, I’m more surprised at the way you feel about it than that he was able to do such a big thing.”

“No one is responsible for what he is born. But we are at least partly entitled to the credit or discredit of what we become,” she observed.

“That’s good American doctrine, ma’am–Western American!” approved Knowles.

“It should apply to women as well as men,” she stated.

“It ought,” he dryly replied, and he jerked up the head of his pawing horse. “Here, you! I guess it’s high time we were starting in, ma’am. Kid may think he’s to lay over at the ranch until morning. We want to get him out here before dusk. I don’t reckon there’s any show of that snake coming back tonight, but it’s as well to be on the safe side.”

He walked up the slope towards the others, unbuckling his cartridge belt as he went.

“Sling on your saddle, honey,” he called to his daughter.

The girl sprang up from beside Ashton and ran to fetch her own and Genevieve’s picketed ponies. Her father held out his belt and revolver to the engineer.

“Here’s my Colt’s, Mr. Blake,” he said. “I have another at home. You won’t need it, but I may as well leave it. We’re going to lope in now, so as to hustle Kid out to you before night. Just swap me that yearling for my gun. It wouldn’t seem natural not to be toting something that can make a noise.”

“Thomas never cries unless he needs attention,” Genevieve sought to defend her infant.

“Yes, ma’am. It’s a good thing he knows that much already. You have to make yourself heard to get what you want in the world generally, as well as in hostleries and eating-houses.”

Blake buckled on the cartridge belt, with its holstered revolver, and went to help saddle the ponies. Ashton watched him and Isobel narrowly. He was far from pleased with the familiarity of their talk and manner towards one another. Twice the girl put her hand on Blake’s arm.

In marked contrast to this affectionate intimacy, Isobel was distrait and hurried when she came to take leave of the wounded man. He had risen to his feet, and she could not ignore his proffered hand. But she avoided his gaze and quickly withdrew her fingers from his warm clasp to hurry off.

CHAPTER XXI

MADONNA DOLOROSA

Blake was cooking supper when, shortly before sunset, Gowan drove up to the waterhole, with a pony in lead behind the heavy wagon. Leaving the wagon with the rope and other articles of his load on the far side of the creek bed, he watered and picketed the horses, and came across to the tent with his rifle and a roll of blankets.

“Howdy, Mr. Blake. Got here in time for supper, I see,” he remarked as he unburdened himself. “Met Mr. Knowles and the ladies down near the ranch. They told me about the shooting.” He faced about to stare at Ashton’s bandaged head. “They told me you came mighty near getting yours. You shore are a lucky tenderfoot.”

Ashton shrugged superciliously. “The worst of it is the additional hole in my hat. I see you have a new one. Is that the latest style on the range?”

“Stetson, brand A-1.,” replied the puncher. “How does it strike you, Mr. Blake?–and my new shirt? Having a dude puncher on our range kind of stirred up my emulosity. They don’t have real cowboy attire like his at an ordinary shorthorn cow town like Stockchute–but I did the best I could.”

Blake made no response to this heavy badinage. He set the supper on the chuck-box, and laconically said: “Come and get it.”

“Might have known you’ve been on round-up,” remarked Gowan, with an insistent sociability oddly at variance with his usual taciturn reserve. “According to Miss Chuckie, you’re some rider, and according to Mr. Knowles, you can shoot. I wouldn’t mind hearing from you direct about that shooting this morning.”

Blake recounted the affair still more briefly than he had told it to Knowles.

“That shore was a mighty close shave,” commented the puncher. “But you haven’t said what the fellow looked like.”

“He wore ordinary range clothes,” replied Blake. “I couldn’t see him behind the rocks, and caught only a glimpse of him as he went around the ridge. His horse was much the same build and color as Rocket.”

The puncher stared at Ashton with his cold unblinking eyes. “You shore picked out a Jim Dandy guide, Mr. Tenderfoot. According to this, it looks mighty like he’s gone and turned hawss thief. Mr. Knowles says your Rocket hawss has vamoosed. If he’s moving to Utah under your ex-guide, it’ll take some lively posse to head him. What d’you say, Mr. Blake?”

“I think the man is apt soon to come to the end of his rope–after dropping through a trap door,” said the engineer.

Gowan looked at him between narrowed eyelids, and paused with upraised coffee cup to reply: “A man that has shown the nerve this one has won’t let anyone get close enough to rope him.”

“It will be either that or a bullet, before long,” predicted Blake. “The badman is getting to be rather out of date.”

“Maybe a bullet,” admitted Gowan. “Never any rope, though, for his kind.–Guess I’ll turn in. It’s something of a drive over to Stockchute and back with the wagon, and I got up early. You and Ashton might go on watch until midnight, and turn me out for the rest of the night.”

“Very well,” agreed Blake.

The puncher stretched out on his blankets under a tree, a few yards from the tent. Ashton took the dishes down to sand-scour them at the pool, while Blake saw that everything damageable was disposed safe from the knife-like fangs of the coyotes.

“How about keeping watch?” asked Ashton, when he returned with the cleansed dishes. “Shall I take first or second?”

“Neither,” answered Blake. “You will need all the sleep and rest you can get. Tomorrow may be a hard day. Turn in at once.”

“If you insist,” acquiesced Ashton. “I still am rather weak and dizzy.” He went to the tent and disappeared.

Blake took the lantern and strolled across to the wagon, to look at the numerous articles brought by Gowan. He set the lantern over in the wagon bed on top of what seemed to be a heap of empty oat sacks, while he overhauled the load. It included three coils of rope of a hundred feet each, a keg of railroad spikes, two dozen picket-pins, two heavy hammers, a pick and shovel, and a crowbar.