forces that was working out for the race the reclamation
of the land. The tall, lean, desert-born surveyor,
trained in no school but the school of his work itself,
with the dreams of the Seer ruling him in his every
professional service; the heavy-fisted, quick-witted,
aggressive Irishman, born and trained to handle that
class of men that will recognize in their labor no
governing force higher than the physical; the dark-faced
frontiersman, whom the forces of nature, through the
hard years, had fashioned for his peculiar place in
this movement of the race as truly as wave and river
and wind and sun had made The King’s Basin Desert
itself; the self-hidden financier who, behind his gray
mask, wrought with the mighty force of his age—Capital;
and a little to one side, sitting on the ground, reclining
against one of the willow posts that upheld the arrow
weed shelter, dark Pablo, softly touching his guitar,
representing a people still far down on the ladder
of the world’s upward climb, but still sharing,
as all peoples would share, the work of all; and,
in the midst of the group, the center of her court—Barbara,
true representative of a true womanhood that holds
in itself the future of the race, even as the desert
held in its earth womb life for the strong ones whom
the slow years had fitted to realize it.
“Faith,” said Pat, when Pablo’s
guitar was silent for a little, “av only the
Seer was here the family wud be altogether complete.”
“Dear old Seer,” said Barbara softly.
“How he would love to be here; and how we would
love to have him!”
But under cover of the darkness a warm blush colored
the young woman’s cheeks, for when Pat spoke
she had not been thinking of the absence of her old
friend, but wishing for the presence of another engineer,
who also was working for the reclamation of her Desert
and who was himself in turn being wrought upon by
his work, learning as the girl had hoped he would
learn, the language of the land.
Jefferson Worth spoke in his exact way. “Even
if he is not here this is all the Seer’s work.”
And just then from a distance up the old wash came
the weird, unnatural cry of a coyote. It was
as though the spirit of the desert spoke in answer
to the banker’s words.
“Yell, ye sneaking thievin’ imp.
Yer time in this counthry is about up!” exclaimed
the Irishman with a growl of deep satisfaction.
And again out of the shadow the soft, plaintively
sweet music of Pablo’s guitar floated away on
the still darkness of the night.
WHAT THE STAKES REVEALED.
James Greenfield, returning to Kingston from his tour
of inspection, left at once for his own world—a
world of offices with mahogany furniture, of men with
white collars and pale faces, of banks and trust companies,
and Good Business.
The afternoon of the day he left, Willard Holmes rode
into the camp at Dry River Crossing. The engineer
explained that he was looking over the route of a
new main canal that was being surveyed by his men
and that, finding himself in the vicinity of Mr. Worth’s
headquarters, he had taken the opportunity to call.
