Thurston of Orchard Valley Part 17

"I'll be brief," began Leslie. "The fact is that we want a capable man accustomed to the planning and construction of irrigation works, and two of our directors rather fancy you. The right man would have full control of practical operations, and I have a tolerably free hand in respect to financial conditions. The main thing we wish to discover is, are you willing to consider an offer of the position?"

It was on the surface a simple business proposition, but Thurston's nostrils dilated and his brows contracted, for he guessed what lay behind it.

"I've heard Savine is a liberal man," continued Leslie, who mistook Thurston's hesitation. "Still, considering your valuable experience in the Orchard Valley, I have power to outbid him. You certainly will not lose financially by throwing in your lot with us."

Then Thurston's anger mastered him, and he flung prudence to the winds.

"Your employers have chosen a worthy messenger," he declared, so fiercely that Leslie recoiled. "Did you suppose that I would sell my benefactor, for that is what it amounts to? Confusion to you and the rogues behind you! There's another score between us, and I feel greatly tempted to----"

He looked ready to yield to the unmentioned temptation. Leslie, glancing around anxiously, backed away from him, but restrained himself with an effort. Thurston stood panting with rage. There was a sound of approaching footsteps, and the secretary slipped away, leaving the irate engineer face to face with an amused elderly gentleman and Helen Savine. Geoffrey did not know how much or how little they had seen.

Helen beckoned to him.

"My father has looked tired during the last hour," she said aside. "I have been warned that excitement may prove dangerous, but hardly care to remind him of it. Would you, as a favor to me, persuade him to return home with you?"

There was no doubt of Thurston's devotion, for Helen had eyes to see, and she sighed a little, but contentedly, when he hurried away.

Nevertheless, she was still perplexed, for she had seen Mrs. Leslie looking at him pleadingly, and now Mr. Leslie shrank away from him.

Mrs. Leslie was certainly attractive, and yet Helen thought that she knew Thurston's character.

Geoffrey found Savine, who appeared to have suddenly collapsed as if the fire of brilliancy had burned itself out. With more tact than he usually possessed, Thurston persuaded the older man to take his leave.

As they all stood on the broad wooden steps Helen stretched out her hand to Thurston.

"Thank you, Geoffrey," she said softly. "Believe me, I am grateful."

Standing bareheaded beside a pillar, Thurston looked after them as they drove away. It was the first time Helen had called him "Geoffrey," and he fancied that he had seen even more than kindness in her eyes.

"And it is her father whom they tempted me to betray! d.a.m.n them!" he growled. "The only honest man among them included me among those who lean upon Savine! Savine will need a stay himself presently, and one, at least, will not fail him. Ah, again!--what the devil are you wanting?"

The last words were spoken clearly, but Leslie, to whom they were addressed, smiled malevolently.

"It would pay you to be civil," he threatened. "I have no particular reason to love you, and might prove a troublesome enemy. However, because my financial interests, which are bound up with my employers', come first, I warn you that you are foolish to hold on to an a.s.sociate, who has strong men against him, a speculator whose best days are over.

I'll give you time to cool down and think over my suggestion."

"You and I can have no dealings," declared Geoffrey. "What's done cannot be undone--but keep clear of me. As sure as there's a justice, which will bring you to book, even without my help, we'll crush you, if you get in Savine's way, or mine."

"I think this is hardly becoming to either of us, and the next time the Company wants your views it can send another envoy," a.s.serted Leslie.

"In the expressive Western idiom, it would save trouble if you keep on thinking in just that way," Geoffrey rejoined.

The two men parted, Leslie to go back to where Millicent was holding a group of men interested by her forced gayety and Geoffrey to walk slowly out into the moonlight where he could think of Helen and wonder how confidently he might hope to win her love.

CHAPTER XIV

THE WORK OF AN ENEMY

It was a bitter morning when a weary man, sprinkled white with powdery snow, came limping into Thurston's camp, which was then pitched in the canon. A pitiless wind swept down from the range side across the thras.h.i.+ng pines, and filled the deep rift with its shrill moaning which sounded above the diapason of the shrunken river. A haze of frost-dried snow infinitesimally fine, which stung the unprotected skin like the p.r.i.c.k of hot needles, whirled before the wind and then thinned, leaving bare the higher shoulders of the hills, though a rush of dingy vapor hid the ice-ribbed peaks above. The canon was a scene of appalling desolation, but few of the long-booted men who hurried among the boulders had leisure to contemplate it. The men were working for Geoffrey Thurston, who did not encourage idleness.

So the stranger came almost unnoticed into the center of the camp where Thurston saw him, and asked sharply, "Where do you come from, and what do you want?"

"I'm a frame-carpenter," answered the new arrival. "Got fired from the Hastings saw-mill when work slacked down. Couldn't find anybody who wanted me at Vancouver, so I struck out for the mountains and mines.

Found worse luck up here; spent all my money and wore my clothes out, but the boss of the Orchard Mill, who took me for a few days, said I might tell you he recommended me. I'm about played out with getting here, and I'm mighty hungry."

Geoffrey looked the man over, and decided there was truth in the latter part of his story. "Take this spanner and wade across to the reef yonder," he said. "You can begin by giving aid to those men who are bolting the beams down."

The stranger glanced dubiously at the rush of icy water, thick with jagged cakes of frozen snow, then at his dilapidated foot gear, and hesitated. "I'm not great at swimming. It looks deep," he objected.

"You can walk, I suppose," Geoffrey answered. "If you do, it won't drown you."

The man prepared to obey. He had reached the edge of the water when Geoffrey called him. "I see you're willing, and I'll take you for a few weeks any way," he said. "In the meantime a rest wouldn't do you much harm, and the cook might find you something to keep you from starving until supper, if you asked him civilly."

"Thanks!" the man answered, with a curious expression in his face. "I am a bit used up, and I guess I'll see the cook."

Work proceeded until the winter's dusk fell, when a bountiful supper was served. The stranger, who did full justice to the meal, showed himself a capable hand when work was resumed under the flaring light of several huge lamps. That night two of his new comrades sat in the cook-shed discussing the stranger. One was James Gillow, whom Geoffrey had first employed at Helen's suggestion, and now replaced the man he formerly a.s.sisted. He was apparently without ambition, and chiefly remarkable for an antipathy to physical effort. Although he had a good education, he found that cooking suited him. He sat upon an overturned bucket discoursing whimsically, while Mattawa Tom, who acted as Thurston's foreman, peeled potatoes for him. The cook-shanty was warm and snug, and Gillow made those to whom he granted the right of entry work for the privilege.

"Strikes me as queer," said the big axeman, with a grin, when the cook halted to refill his pipe. "Strikes me as queer, it does, that some of you fellows who know so much kin do so little. Knowledge ain't worth a cent unless you've got the rustle. Now there's the boss. You talk the same talk, an' he can't well know more than you seem to do, but look where he is, while you stop right down at the bottom running a cook-shanty. Guess you were born tired, English Jim."

"I dare say you're right," answered Gillow. "Other folks in the Old Country have said the same thing, though they didn't put it so neatly.

The fact is, some men, like Thurston, are born to wear themselves out trying to manage things, while I was intended for philosophic contemplation. He's occasionally hard to get on with, but since I came here, I'm willing to acknowledge that men of his species are useful, and I have struck harder masters in this great Dominion."

Mattawa Tom laughed hoa.r.s.ely as he responded: "I should say! You found him hard the day you ran black lines all over his drawings and nearly burnt his shanty up, trying to prove he didn't know his business, when you was brim-full of Red Pine whiskey."

"It was poison," said Gillow, with unruffled good humor. "Several bottles of genuine whiskey would not confuse me, but I have sworn off since the day you mention, partly to oblige Thurston, who seemed to desire it, and because I can't get any decent liquor. But what do you think of our latest acquisition?"

"He kin work, which is more than you could, before the boss taught you," was the dry answer. "But there's something odd about him. You saw the outfit he came in with? Couldn't have swapped it with a Siwash Indian--well, the man has better clothes than you or I on underneath, and if he was so blame hard up, what did he offer Jake five dollars for his old gum boots for?"

"Afraid of wetting his feet. Most sensible person, considering the weather," remarked Gillow, indifferently.

"'Fraid of wetting his feet! This is just where horse sense beats knowledge. That fellow is scared of nothing around this camp. Hasn't it struck you the boss is going to put through a big contract in a way that's not been tried before, and that there are some folks who would put up a good many dollars to see him let down nicely?"

"Well?" Gillow questioned with a show of interest, and the foreman nodded sagaciously as he answered:

"Whoever busts the boss up will have to get both feet on the neck of Mattawa Tom first, and that's not going to be easy. I'll keep my eyes right on to that fellow."

Tom went out, and Gillow, awakening at midnight, saw that his blankets were still empty. The same thing happened several times, and it was well for Thurston that he had the true leader's gift of inspiring his followers with loyalty, for one night a week later the foreman, who had kept his own counsel, shook Gillow out of his slumber. The sleepy man, who groped for a boot to fling at the disturber of his peace, abandoned the benevolent intention when he saw his comrade's face under the hanging lamp.

"Don't ask no fool questions, but get your things on and come with me,"

Tom commanded.

Five minutes later Gillow, s.h.i.+vering and reluctant, turned out into the frost. It was a bitter night, and his breath froze upon his mustache.

The snow and froth of the river glimmered spectrally, and when they had left the camp some distance behind, there was light enough to see a black figure crawl up a ladder leading to a wire rope stretched tight in mid-air above the torrent. A trolley hung beneath it by means of which men and material were hauled across the chasm.

"Get down here!" whispered Tom. "We'll watch him. If we should fall over any more of these blame rocks he'd see us certain."

Gillow was glad to obey, for, though there was faint moonlight, he had already cut one knee cruelly. It was bitterly cold beneath the boulder where he crouched in the snow, and when the black object, which worked its way along the bending cable, had disappeared in the gloom of overhanging rocks on the opposite sh.o.r.e, there was nothing to see but the tossing spray of the river. The stream was still a formidable torrent, though now that the feeding snows were frozen fast, it was shrunken far below its summer level. A good many minutes had pa.s.sed with painful slowness when Gillow, who regretted that he had left the snug cook-shed, said: