"Yes, by golly; the ditch you helped me survey, too."

"By golly, yes!" He had forgotten that.

The last dirt moved with a rush. Then, even as the teams were dragging the loads from the excavation, Carrigan pa.s.sed to a foreman the word that announced the end of work. It ran along the ca.n.a.l from mouth to mouth, at first in a call but finally in a shout that swelled to a roar of exultation. That roar rang over the snow and through the night like the cry of an army which has gained a walled city.

"Done!" said Bryant, to himself.

Back to the camps trooped the teams and men by the flare of the torches they carried in jubilation. Not a soul in all that company but felt the triumph beating in Lee's heart. Finished, built! Despite frost and snow they had driven the iron furrow through to the end, and on time. Toil-weary though they were, their spirits were light. They knew themselves fellow-workers in a redoubtable achievement.

Carrigan and Bryant were among the last to go. To the latter there was in the fact of completion a sense of unreality. As he took a final view of the ditch before setting out for camp, events raced through his mind--his coming, his first labours, the confused interplay of his life with those of the Menocals, McDonnell, Gretzinger, Carrigan, Imogene, Ruth, and Louise; the months of incessant toil; of brain-racking and body-wearing endeavour to force the ca.n.a.l forward; of unresting strife with frost and snow and earth, of being under a pitiless hammer. He could not easily realize that he was now free of all this.

"I have an empty feeling," he remarked to Carrigan.

"One always has a 'let-down' after a hard job," was Pat's sage rejoinder. "You'll feel restless for maybe a week now."

They went from the spot up the snowy road and turned in at Pat's shack for a smoke. Late as it was, neither felt the need of sleep as yet.

"Well, it's a comfort to know that we don't have to plug again at that ground in the morning," Lee remarked, with a sigh of satisfaction. He had his feet on the table, his body relaxed, and his pipe going.

"Yeah. The only disappointment I have," Pat said, "is not having lifted the bonds and stocks out of Gretzinger. If we hadn't been so pressed for time, we might have played him a little till he took the hook. I don't like his kind at all."

Bryant laughed.

"Why, he's the best friend I have," he exclaimed. "What do you think he did for me?"

"Well, what? Besides trying to shake you down?"

"Pat, he carried off and married my girl."

The contractor lowered his feet, placed his hands upon his knees, and gazed at Bryant, with brows down-drawn and under lip up-thrust.

"That good-for-nothing Ruth what's-her-name?" he demanded. In all the months of their a.s.sociation it was the first time he had ever spoken of her to Bryant.

"Ruth Gardner, yes."

Carrigan rose, gave Lee a long and solemn look, then went to a trunk in the corner of the room. This he unlocked and opened. From its interior he produced a black bottle.

"I don't take a drink very often," he announced, coming forward and setting the bottle on the table, "but this is one of the times. We'll take one to celebrate your luck."

CHAPTER x.x.xII

About the middle of the next afternoon Lee Bryant was riding southward from camp on the main mesa trail. The road was difficult and his horse d.i.c.k made slow time along the snowy path broken by wagons through the drifts, but the rider let the animal choose his own gait, as he had done that hot July day when coming up from the south to buy the Perro Creek ranch. On reaching the ford Lee pulled rein. How different now the creek from on that burning afternoon of his encounter with Ruth Gardner and Imogene Martin! Snow covered its bed; the sands where he had knelt, the little pool, the foot-prints, lay hidden from sight.

How much had happened since! And how different was his life! He had suffered much and learned much since that hour of meeting; and he should never henceforth view this spot without a little feeling of melancholy. The youth and two girls who drank there at the rill were no more: they had become other persons.

Presently he dismissed thoughts of this and set d.i.c.k wading across the ford. Yonder he now could see the three bare cottonwoods, with the low adobe house near by where he and Dave had lived and laboured at the surveys for the project. The bones of his dog Mike, too, rested there under the ground. This brought to mind the meeting with Louise upon the road--and it was Louise to whom at this moment he was going. He began to urge d.i.c.k to greater efforts. Once on a stretch of road, bare and wind-swept, he pushed him into a gallop. It seemed interminable, this snow-bound trail. But at last he crossed Sarita Creek (with but a single glance at the canon's mouth where the two cabins stood untenanted and abandoned among the naked trees) and then covered the long miles to Diamond Creek, and rode up the lane between the rows of cottonwoods to the house, where Louise, who had perceived his approach from a window, appeared at the door to greet him.

"We were terribly alarmed for your safety the night of the blizzard,"

she said, "but the mail-man finally made his trip to Bartolo and back, and said you were still there and not blown away. And he also stated that you were working night and day."

"Not any more," said Lee, swinging from the saddle.

"You have finished! I can read it on your face!" she cried, joyfully.

"Yes; we threw out the last clod at one o'clock this morning."

"I needn't tell you that I'm proud and happy; you know that, Lee. Even happier than when I learned you were able to continue, at the time you supposed you were unable. Put up your horse and come in. You're half frozen."

Bryant endeavoured to discover from her face what he wished to know, but did not succeed. So he asked:

"Have you had your mail lately?"

"Not for three days. The mail-man made one trip and then the next snow closed the road again to Kennard."

Lee went off to stable d.i.c.k. On his return he found Louise at the door still waiting, and she helped him to remove his overcoat and scarf when they pa.s.sed in to the fire. Then they pushed a divan forward and she bade him spread out his hands before the blaze.

"It wasn't so long ago that we agreed we mustn't see each other again, and here we are together," he stated, with a pretense of solemnity. He extended his hands to the heat and moved his fingers about to expel their numbness. "I don't know what your father would say if he knew all the circ.u.mstances."

"I--I don't know, either," Louise stammered, in dismay at the thought.

"How's Imogene?" he inquired.

"Improving slowly. All she needed was to get away from that horrid cabin and horrid--well, surroundings."

"And your father's here?"

"At one of the feed corrals, I think. He had all the cattle rounded up before the blizzard and held here and fed. A big task, with several thousand head."

"Then we're safe," said Lee.

Louise looked at him doubtfully. She knew not what to make of this talk and his portentous air, and felt a new apprehension rising in her mind.

"What is it? What has happened now, Lee?" she whispered.

But all at once he began to laugh. He caught her hand and holding it gazed, smiling, into her eyes. Then he drew from his pocket an envelope, which (still keeping prisoner the hand he had captured) he waved to and fro before her eyes.

"If I didn't know you well, I'd think you had lost your wits," she cried.

"I have--wits and heart both. With joy! Wait, I'll take the letter out so that you can read it. The only blessed thing I ever knew her to do!

I bless her for it, at any rate." He pulled the letter and the clipping from their cover and laid them in Louise's hand. "Read, read the tidings!"

The girl's fingers began to tremble as her eyes flitted along the lines. But she read no more than the first part of the letter. She turned to him with her eyes misty, her face radiant.

"I could weep for happiness--but I'm not going to." She made a little dab with her handkerchief at her lashes. "Oh, Lee, to think you're free! And that now we may love each other!"