"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 antic.i.p.ated.

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 a.s.serted.

"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.

CHAPTER XXI

On Christmas morning the thought occurred to Lee that he had heard nothing more from Imogene of the plan for him to spend the day at the McDonnells', which she had mentioned the night of their talk. Rather strangely, too, he had not received from either of the girls even a note of holiday greeting; to Imogene he had had sent from Denver an edition of Ibsen's plays, and to Ruth a splendid set of furs, both in care of Mrs. McDonnell, who had promised they should be delivered when Santa Claus came down the chimney. Odd, the girls' silence.

He was at work on his accounts at the moment, but now he remained biting the end of his pen-holder and staring through the window. From somewhere in the sagebrush came the sound of shots: Dave potting tin cans with the .22 rifle that had been Lee's gift to him. In the room was only the snapping of the fire. Presently the telephone rang.

"Imo now," he exclaimed. "I'll be hanged if I go down and carry out the farce before the McDonnells."

But the person proved to be Louise Graham.

"I wondered--well, several things," she said, when he had answered.

"First, if you had gone away anywhere; next, in case you hadn't, whether you were working; and last, should the camp be resting to-day, if you wouldn't come to Christmas dinner with father and me."

"No work's going on."

"Then we'll be delighted to have you come--and Dave also, of course.

There's an especially fattened turkey ready to slide into the oven now. Father has just said, too, to tell you that there's going to be something else--Tom and Jerry. How does that sound?"

"Like a man and a boy coming down the road toward Diamond Creek," Lee answered, with a laugh. "Thank you for your thoughtfulness in remembering us."

"I'll judge how sincere you are by the amount of turkey you eat," she said. "Dinner will be about one o'clock."

"We shall be prompt."

Lee hung up the receiver, then glanced at his watch. It was ten. He reseated himself at his desk and endeavoured to fasten his thoughts upon the entries in the book before him, but at last he exclaimed, throwing down his pen: "d.a.m.ned if I can or will!" and jumped up, and went to tramping about the office, and when Dave's cat and kitten presented themselves to be stroked, unfeelingly thrust them aside with his boot as he tramped. And when Dave came in, about half-past eleven, the boy found him part way into a clean white shirt, with the cat and the kitten eying him resentfully, and received the order: "Get a move on you; we're going to the Grahams' for dinner. See that you scrub your face, too--and ears!" Which left Dave quite as indignant as the cat, for he always washed his ears.

They arrived at the Graham ranch house shortly after noon, where wreaths of holly, strings of evergreen, and red paper bells created a Christmas atmosphere. Coming from their cold ride into these cheerful rooms and to a warm welcome, the hearts of both man and boy glowed with unaccustomed feeling. And throughout the dinner that followed betimes--during which Mr. Graham's pleasantries and Louise's gay spirits and mirth evoked in Lee a blitheness to which he long had been a stranger and in Dave a state of joyous bliss--they luxuriated in halcyon well-being. After the meal Louise, at her father's suggestion, went to the piano and sang while the men were smoking their cigars.

And then followed an hour at cards, High Five, at which Mr. Graham and Dave won the most games; and then a maid, a Mexican girl, Rosita, brought in a bowl of nuts and raisins for the rancher and the boy who settled themselves for a match at checkers, and Lee and Louise strolled to a window seat at the other end of the long living room.

A delicate pink was in the girl's cheeks. Her eyes were tender under their long lashes; a smile still lingered on her lips. It was as if her countenance, her mind, her spirit, were suffused with the happiness and peace of the hour, of the day.

"My poor one-armed man, how is he?" she asked. "I intended to go see him, but the cold has been so steady that I gave it up. You said over the telephone several days ago that he was doing as well as could be expected."

"Quite out of danger now," Lee replied. "The doctor told him a lady a.s.sisted at the operation and now he's full of curiosity regarding you."

"I'll surprise him some day by just walking up to his cot and saying: 'Good morning, how's my patient?' The day I'm going to pick is the next one you move camp: I want to see how all those tents and shacks and everything rise up on their feet and travel."

"You shall," he stated, with a laugh. "I'll notify you of the date.

About New Year's Day the next migration will occur. You've had your turn at hospital work and now perhaps you wish to try your hand at transportation. I wager you'd make a good camp manager if you took hold of the job."

"Would you revive me a second time if I threatened to faint?" she queried, gayly. "You and Imogene Martin gave me just the right treatment that evening, for you kept my thoughts off the ordeal I'd been through. Next day I was myself, as I told you when you called up."

"I haven't seen you since that day," Lee remarked. "I was really worried that afternoon, you know." And an echo of the anxiety he had suffered sounded in his voice.

Her face showed that she noted it, and it softened.

"And you have so many anxieties, too," said she.

He stirred, then withdrew his gaze from her and directed it out a window. The emotion he had experienced that afternoon when she sat before his fire, when she sat there so frank and so simple-hearted, was rising in his breast again. The breath trembled a little upon his lips. But after a time he felt himself grow calmer.

"I have anxieties, yes," he said, "but so, I suppose, has every man and woman, of his or her own kind and degree. And they aren't the important thing, after all. What has happened in the past, not what may occur in the future, is what really matters. One can't change the past, what's done; especially by one's own act. And if the act was a serious mistake. That's fatal! I see now that failure to accomplish what one sets out to do, as for instance in the building of my ca.n.a.l, may not be ruinous to a man. A man may fail and be quite as able a man as ever, as those who succeed; for human beings can do only so much and no more. Nothing that he has done or not done would alter the result. And he need not take the failure greatly to heart. But voluntary and heedless acts of folly, precipitate and unconsidered leaps in the dark, these indeed are ruinous. Oh, yes, they do the business. They become b.a.l.l.s and chains. Leave him no choice or action.

If it were only so simple as the game of checkers your father and Dave are playing! When one game is over, they can start another. But there's only one game to life."

"But it is a long one, and changes," Louise said.

She glanced at him. He intended that his words should be taken, she perceived, in a general sense. But the mind always seeks the specific: hers instinctively seized on the particular thorn that had prompted his utterance. Of Ruth Gardner's extraordinary and inexplicable behaviour she had become informed, like everyone else; it at first amazed, then shocked, and finally outraged her sense of decency. It repelled her--but, then, her early attempts at friendship with the other had never advanced. The girl had always been absorbed in her own doings, immersed in pleasure or in plans for pleasure, concerned entirely with the friends she had, and, unlike Imogene, received Louise's calls and approaches at cordiality with an indifference that withered all feeling. With the pa.s.sing of time Louise had considered Lee's course in relation to the girl as a cause for wonder. The engineer was singularly patient, or incredibly obtuse, or marvellously in love. Whichever it was, her heart stirred with pity. He deserved better, he deserved the best. As for Ruth Gardner, she could now only think of her with a hot resentment that set her lips quivering; and she was moved at moments by a profound desire to express her sympathy to him and to give that warm encouragement his spirit on occasion must need. But she must refrain.

At his speech her conclusions, but not her feelings, underwent a sharp revision. The revelation startled her. He had not been obtuse. He no longer was marvellously in love with Ruth Gardner, nor in love with her at all. Relief followed surprise in her mind, the relief that comes at a fear unrealized, a disaster avoided. Disaster had been precisely what she had sensed if not thought, since a union of two persons whose natures were as utterly different, as essentially opposed, as Lee's and Ruth's would inevitably lead to disillusionment, antagonism, sorrow, havoc. That his eyes at last were open was a blessing.

"What are you thinking of?" he asked, all at once.

She found his eyes full upon her.

"Of what you had said," she responded. "And at this minute I'm speculating on whether anything--one's decisions, or acts, or sentiments--are ever quite conclusive or final. Or fatal, too, as you said. We might possibly except murder and suicide." She smiled as she mentioned this reservation.

Lee shifted his position with a trace of impatience.