The Iron Furrow Part 16

"No."

"Well, they're stockholders as well."

"Minority stockholders, that's all," Lee stated, coolly. "You've said this is a matter of cold business. Very well; I'm the majority stockholder and have the control. I consider it cold business to build the drops of concrete as planned. I consider it cold business and good business to provide the farmers with a safe system. And I shall do that."

Again came Ruth's call, urging Gretzinger to hurry. He answered and spoke a last word to Bryant, with a suddenly altered mien.

"You're an obstinate devil, Lee," he exclaimed, cheerfully. "I'll have to think up some new arguments to get you over, I find. Now I must run along, or the ladies will be up in arms--and not my arms, either."

Bryant helped him to b.u.t.ton the curtains on the hood of the car, found an instant when he could press Ruth's hand un.o.bserved and murmur a word in her ear, and stated that if the rain did not last he would run down (he had picked up a second-hand Ford in Kennard) to Sarita Creek after supper.

"I don't see half enough of you," Ruth said, giving him a pat on the cheek with the gloved finger that now wore a diamond solitaire. To Mr.

Gretzinger she continued, "If you get us home without a wetting, you may stay and eat with us; but if you don't, why, you can go straight on to town."

Off the car sped down the trail toward Bartolo where it would gain the well-travelled mesa road, a hand thrust through the curtains waving back at Bryant.

The engineer did not go to Sarita Creek that night, for the rain settled into a steady drizzle that lasted until well toward morning.

After supper he went, however, to the adobe dwelling of the Mexican who once had warned him from his field. The man's seven-year-old boy had fallen from a horse the day previous and fractured a leg; half fearfully, half recklessly, the parent had come running to camp for medical aid; and Lee had despatched the camp doctor, a young fellow recently graduated, to treat the injury. Bryant was admitted into the house. The youngster, he learned, was resting comfortably and had been visited by the doctor that afternoon. Lee was even conducted to the bedside, where the boy's leg thick with splints and wrappings was exhibited for his benefit.

"The doctor, he said I was to speak to you about his pay," the Mexican stated after a time, when he and Bryant had talked awhile in Spanish.

Bryant waved the words aside.

"There's no charge, nothing," said he. "I was delighted to send the doctor. I hope your son improves rapidly. The physician will continue to pay you calls until the boy no longer requires them. Those are very pretty geraniums you have in the window, senora. Are they fragrant?"

Lee crossed the room and bent his face above them.

The man's wife rubbed her hands together under her ap.r.o.n with much pleasure. Thus politely for him to notice and praise her flowers! In her heart, as in the heart of her husband, there formerly had been resentment at this white ca.n.a.l-builder for cutting their field with a big ditch, an occurrence which the county judge somehow had stupidly permitted. But now she did not know what to feel. Yesterday he had sent them a doctor for nothing, and this evening was smelling her flowers admiringly. He could not be exactly a monster. Removing one hand from beneath her ap.r.o.n, she inserted a finger-nail in her black hair and scratched her scalp, considering the subject. Winter was coming, too. Food would be needed--and besides, she long had desired one of those loud phonographs at Menocal's store, and also needed a new stove. She perceived that her husband was staring at Bryant's back with a thoughtful air. Undoubtedly he was thinking the same thing as she.

"You yet want men and teams for your work, senor?" she inquired.

"All I can get."

"If a man falls sick while at work, would he have the services of the doctor?"

"Yes, without charge. There will be work on the dam most of the winter, where the building is only a matter of stone and brush. I can use all who want employment. Then in the spring there will be the digging of the ditch on the mesa."

"Five dollars for a man and his team, is it not so?" the Mexican inquired.

"Yes."

"What if a man's wife or children fall sick?" the woman asked.

Bryant hid a smile at this shrewd bargaining. Yet he was perceiving an opportunity. There were no Mexicans at work on the project; one and all they had held off. Likewise they refused to sell him grain and hay, which necessitated the hauling of feed from a distance. But now this accident to the boy might prove a heaven-sent chance to break Menocal's monopoly of influence.

"In case of sickness in the man's family, the doctor shall attend free," he stated.

The woman took thought afresh.

"And if the man's horses are taken sick?"

"Nay, he's not a horse doctor," said Lee, smiling. And even the woman smiled.

"But there's another matter. I fear it prevents," the man remarked.

"It is a note for fifty dollars that the bank holds against me. If I work, Menocal will make trouble about that. I think we had best talk no more of employment."

"Suppose I advance the amount in case he does, letting you work out the debt. I could keep, say, two dollars out of each day's five until you owed nothing."

"That would be agreeable to me, senor. But what if he then refuses to sell me goods from his store?"

"You can buy at the commissary," Lee said. "Why should you lose five dollars a day because of Menocal's bad feeling for me? You remain idle--but does he pay you, or feed you? And the wages I offer you, and the doctor's services, and the other accommodations, I also offer to other Mexicans who will work. You may tell them so. Remember, there will be teaming on the ditch until it freezes up, then work on the dam throughout the winter, then sc.r.a.per work on the mesa in the spring.

Five dollars a day coming in the door! You can buy meat and flour and clothes and tobacco and candy for the children and a new wagon and pictures of the Madonna, yes, all. But now I must go."

"But Menocal would be very angry," said the man, with a shake of his head.

Bryant bade them good-night and departed. He went up the muddy road through the wet darkness to the camp. Domination of the native mind by Menocal appeared too strong for him to break.

But to his surprise next morning the Mexican came driving his team into the camp. Lee sent him to Pat Carrigan, who gave him a sc.r.a.per and set him to work on the ditch. Toward noon the engineer encountered him moving dirt from the deepening excavation; the sight had an amusing feature. The man, Pedro Saurez, laboured in his own field building the ca.n.a.l at about the spot where he had warned Bryant away when surveying.

When Saurez beheld Lee, he grinned and removed the cigarette from his lips.

"It will be a fine ditch, this," was his remark.

CHAPTER XIII

Work on the ca.n.a.l section near the river advanced without incident until, one morning early in November, the plows unexpectedly uncovered a forty-foot-wide body of granite just beneath the surface. This particular difficulty was not serious, and was the contractor's; but Pat Carrigan was no more pleased than any other contractor would have been at finding rock, even a small amount, when he had figured his excavation costs on a dirt basis.

"That wipes out a piece of my profits," he remarked to Bryant, after a first profane explosion. "I'll send out for some dynamite and shoot it. If it wasn't for d.a.m.ned troubles like this, I'd been a retired man and fat and rich long ago. Don't grin, you heartless blackguard!

You'll have miseries of your own before we're done."

Pat Carrigan was a true prophet. A blow of fatal nature, indeed, was preparing at the moment and fell within a week. From the state engineer Lee received a letter advising him that an application for use of the water appropriated to Perro Creek ranch had been made by a man of the name of Rodriguez, of Rosita, under an old statute long forgotten. This law was mandatory upon the Land and Water Board. It required the latter to cancel rights and to reappropriate water elsewhere to the amount in excess of what a ca.n.a.l actually carried, or what a ca.n.a.l had failed to carry for five successive years if it were not shown within ninety days after a filing for reappropriation that the said ca.n.a.l had been enlarged to a capacity to carry the original appropriation, and proof given of the owner's intention to employ said appropriation.

Menocal once more! He had been very quiet all this while; he apparently had made no effort to dissuade the Mexicans who, following Saurez's lead, had come in increasing number to work on the ca.n.a.l or the dam; the man had almost pa.s.sed from the engineer's mind. But he had not been idle. He had had shrewd legal talent seeking a deadly weapon for him among the musty statutes, with which he could deal the irrigation project a _coup de grace_. And as the import of the letter penetrated Bryant's brain, his heart seemed to turn to ice. Ninety days--finish dam and ca.n.a.l in ninety days! As well fix a limit of ninety hours!

Finally he rushed off to Pat Carrigan superintending sc.r.a.per work and dragged him aside.

"For G.o.d's sake, read that, Pat!" he cried. "Read what the Land and Water Board are going to do. They're going to cut the heart right out of us! Kill the project! All for a law n.o.body ever heard of! Read it!"

Pat knit his brows and slowly extracted the meaning from the state engineer's formal, involved announcement. That something serious had occurred he guessed before Bryant had opened his lips. He had never seen the engineer so wrought up, so white, so agitated.

"Let me get this right," the old contractor said, at length. "They're going to cancel your water right."

"Yes."

"But not at once. You've ninety days to----"