Out Of The Depths Part 17

"So the fellow is coming," he groaned. "What else could I have expected?"

The girl held out the open letter to him. It was in typewriting, addressed from Chicago, and read:--

Dear Madam:

In reply to your letter of inquiry regarding an inspection to determine the feasibility of irrigating certain lands in your vicinity--my fee for personal inspection and opinion would be $50. per day and expenses, if I came as consulting engineer.

However, I am about to make a trip to Colorado. If you can furnish good ranch fare for my wife, son, and self as guests, will look over your situation without charge. Wife wishes to rough-it, but must have milk and eggs. Will leave servants in car at Stockchute, where we shall expect a conveyance to meet us Thursday, the 25th inst., if terms agreeable.

Respectfully yours, THOMAS BLAKE.

Ashton crumpled the letter in his clenched hand as he had crumpled the letter from his father's lawyers.

"He is coming! he really is coming!" he gasped. "Thursday--only three days! Genevieve too!"

"And his son!" cried Isobel, too excited to heed the dismay in her companion's look and tone. "He and his family, too, as my guests!"

"Yes," said Ashton bitterly. "And what of it when he floods you off your cattle range? By another year or two, the irrigation farmers will be settling all over this mesa, thick as flies."

"Oh, no; it is probable that Mr. Blake will find there is no chance to water Dry Mesa," she replied, in a tone strangely nonchalant considering her former expressions of apprehension. She drew the crumpled letter from his relaxing fingers, and smoothed it out for a second reading.

"'Wife, son, and self,'" she quoted. "Son? How old is he?"

"I don't know. They've been married nearly two years," muttered Ashton.

"Then it's a baby!--oh! oh! how lovely!" shrieked the girl. "And its mamma wants to rough it! She shall have every egg and chicken on the place--and gallons of cream! We shall take the skim milk."

Still Ashton failed to enthuse. "To them that have, shall be given, and from him who has lost millions shall be taken all that's left!" he gibed.

"No, we'll still have the skim milk," she bantered, refusing to notice his cynical bitterness.

"I'm a day laborer!" he went on, still more bitterly. "I'm afraid of losing even my skim milk--And two weeks ago I thought myself certain of three times the millions that he will get when her father dies!"

"No use crying over spilt milk, or spilt cream, either!" she replied.

The note of sympathetic concern under her raillery brought a glimmer of hopefulness into his moody eyes.

"If I did not think your father will drive me away!" he murmured.

"Why should he?" she asked.

"Because when Blake comes--" Ashton paused and s.h.i.+fted to a question.

"Will you tell your father about their coming?"

"Of course. I did not tell him about writing, because it would only have increased his suspense. But now--Let's hurry back!"

A cut of her quirt set her pony into a lope. Rocket needed no urging.

He followed and maintained a position close behind the galloping pony without breaking out of his rangy trot. Occasionally Isobel flung back a gay remark over her shoulder. Ashton did not respond. He rode after her, silent and depressed, his eyes fixed longingly on her graceful form, ever fleeing forward before him as he advanced.

Once clear of the sagebrush, she drew rein for him to come up. They rode side by side across Dry Fork and over the divide. When they stopped at the corral she would have unsaddled her pony had he not begged leave to do her the service. As reward, she waited until he could accompany her to the house.

They found her father and Gowan resting in the cool porch after a particularly hard day's ride. The puncher was strumming soft melodies on a guitar. Knowles was peering at his report of the Reclamation Service, held to windward of a belching cloud of pipe smoke. His daughter darted to him regardless of the offending incense.

"Oh, Daddy!" she cried. "What do you think! Mr. Blake is coming to visit us!"

"Blake?" repeated the cowman, staring blankly over his pipe.

"Yes, Mr. Blake, the engineer--the great Thomas Blake of the Zariba Dam."

"By--James!" swore Gowan, dropping his guitar and springing up to confront Ashton with deadly menace in his cold eyes. "This is what comes of nursing scotched rattlers! This here tenderfoot skunk has been foreriding for that engineer! I warned you, Mr. Knowles! I told you he had sent for him to come out here and cut up our range with his d.a.m.ned irrigation schemes!"

"I send for Blake--I?" protested Ashton. He burst into a discordant laugh.

"Laugh, will you?" said Gowan, dropping his hand to his hip.

The girl flung herself before him. "Stop! stop, Kid! Are you locoed?

He had nothing to do with it. I myself sent for Mr. Blake."

"_You!_" cried Gowan.

The cowman slowly stood up, his eyes fixed on the girl in an incredulous stare. "Chuckie," he half whispered, "you couldn't ha'

done it. You're--you're dreaming, honey!"

"No. Listen, Daddy! It's been growing on you so--your fear that we'll lose our range. I thought if Mr. Blake came and told you it can't be done--Don't you see?"

"What if he finds it can?" huskily demanded Knowles.

"He can't. I'm sure he can't. If he builds a reservoir, where could he get enough water to fill it? The watershed above us is too small. He couldn't impound more than three thousand acre feet of flood waters at the utmost."

"How about the whole river going to waste, down in Deep Canon?"

queried her father.

"Heavens, Mr. Knowles! How would he ever get a drop of water out of that awful chasm?" exclaimed Ashton. "I looked down into it. The river is thousands of feet down. It must be way below the level of Dry Mesa."

"I'm not so sure about that," replied the cowman. "Holes are mighty deceiving."

"Well, what if it ain't so deep as the mesa?" argued Gowan, for once half in accord with Ashton. "It sh.o.r.e is deep enough, ain't it? Even allowing that this man Blake is the biggest engineer in the U.S., how's he going to pump that water up over the rim of the canon? The devil himself couldn't do it."

"If I am mistaken regarding the depth, that is, if the river really is higher than the mesa," remarked Ashton, "there is the possibility that it might be tapped by a tunnel through the side of High Mesa. But even if it is possible, it still is quite out of the question. The cost would be prohibitive."

"You see, Daddy!" exclaimed Isobel. "Lafe knows. He's an engineer himself."

"How's that?" growled her father, frowning heavily at Ashton. "You never told me you're an engineer."

"I told Miss Chuckie the first day I met her," explained Ashton. "Ever since then I've been so busy trying to be something else--"

"Sh.o.r.e you have!" jeered Gowan.

"But about Mr. Blake, Daddy?" interposed Isobel. "I'm certain he'll find that no irrigation project is possible; and if _he_ says so, you will be able to give up worrying about it."