"Gretzinger wasn't in my mind."

"You said 'too late'," she pursued. "Naturally I supposed your reference to be of them."

The gravity of his face deepened.

"I was thinking of myself," said he, turning his eyes upon her. "If we're not married soon, very soon, it will be too late. I mean that it would be a mockery. For me, at any rate. One may wish to go one way, and be swept another, especially when the mooring line is slack." His breast rose and fell at a quick, agitated breath. "But promise me that you'll not speak of this to Ruth."

"The very thing to bring her round, perhaps."

"More likely to fill her with despair."

This was something Imogene could not grasp. It was so inexplicable, so extravagant, so perverse, that her cheeks grew hot.

"I can't follow you at all," she cried, indignantly. "Ruth alarmed, jealous, in doubt--yes, I can credit her with any one of those feelings. But despair! She lays her plans too far ahead to be led into despair."

"Even if she knew I had ceased to love her? When she understood our marriage would be a hollow ceremony?"

"Would it be that if you succeed with your project?"

Bryant's eyes blazed suddenly.

"Great G.o.d, you talk as if she were to marry the ca.n.a.l!" he exclaimed.

He glowered for a time. "I see now what you mean. You believe she would marry me if I win out with the ditch. Being practical, she would accept money as a subst.i.tute for love. That reminds me: she herself once declared that if circ.u.mstances necessitated she could take a rich man for his riches." Bryant uttered a harsh laugh. "My Lord, I was frightened lest in a fit of anguish at losing my love she should go to the devil!" Again he yielded to an outburst of laughter that made Imogene shudder. "I fancied that at finding herself out of money, unable to work, disinclined to work, unloved, miserable, she would recklessly hurl herself into perdition. And I was going to save her from that, marry her at once, sacrifice myself! Like an egotistical fool! When all the while there was never the slightest danger or need, when all the while she held the string, not I. And love isn't a consideration whatever. And she will marry me when I've completed the project. And complete it I must, of course. Not a way out, not a single loop-hole. Oh, my Lord, my Lord, Imogene, did you ever know of anything so devilishly laughable!" And his bitter, sardonic merriment broke forth anew.

The girl was appalled. All she could do was to gasp, "Oh, Lee, Lee!

Don't laugh like that, don't think of it like that. You make it out worse than it is."

He stopped short. By his look he might have detested her.

"I state it as it is," he said. "Wherein is the actual situation better?"

"You could break your engagement; certainly she has given you sufficient cause."

"Yes, break with her, as might you. Why don't you?"

Imogene put out a hand in protest.

"You know why, Lee; I've told you," she said, earnestly.

"No more can I, for the same reason," was his reply. He turned and lifted his hat and gloves from the table. "I will have no act of mine cut her adrift and push her under. Much better to stand the gaff. I suppose one hardens to anything in time." His look wandered about the room. "And the diabolic part of it all is that this squeamish feeling of responsibility for another may achieve as much harm in the long run as its lack. Who knows?"

He glanced at her as if expecting an answer. Imogene remained silent; indeed, nothing need be said to so evident an enigma. For that matter, nothing more said at all. Bryant drew on his gloves and bade her good-night. At the door he remarked, quite in his accustomed manner:

"I'll send Dave over in the morning with more blankets and have him chop some wood. There's a drop in the temperature coming."

CHAPTER XX

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 pa.s.s 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 ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l ran northward for six miles to the main camp, curving in the great arc that const.i.tuted 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 ca.n.a.ls 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 ca.n.a.l."

"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 b.u.t.toned the coat collar about his throat.

"Questionable t.i.tle 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 impa.s.sive.

"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 h.e.l.l 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 unb.u.t.toned 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."