He began to protest, saying that they would need to
eat at daybreak in order to get back to the work by
seven o’clock, but she silenced him with—“And
do you think that I cannot even get up at sun-rise?
You shall not lose a minute’s time and it will
do you good to start out with one of Ynez’s
good breakfasts.”
So the surveyor was forced to promise this also.
Then with a soft “Buenos noches, Senorita,”
he left her.
Later Texas Joe came to sleep in Mr. Worth’s
room. The night passed without incident, and
when the first trace of silver gray light shone above
the eastern mesa beyond the rim of the Basin Abe Lee
returned with Pat to find the meal ready and Barbara
waiting to pour the fragrant coffee. While the
sky was still aflame with the colors of the morning
and the desert lay under a curtain of fantastic figures
and grotesque patterns woven by the light, the three
men mounted their horses and set out for the field
of the day’s labors. And Barbara at the
gate watched them go until, in the distance, their
forms too were caught in the magic of the desert’s
loom and woven into the airy design.
Before noon Abe came back. The men had struck.
The surveyor had already sent a telegram to Mr. Worth
and in the afternoon they had his answer that he was
going to San Felipe. But there was no word of
hope in the message.
All that day the men from the railroad were gathering
in the little town, and in the early evening the laborers
from the power canal at Barba joined the throng on
the streets. This dark-faced, scowling crowd
of Mexicans and Indians was very different from the
company of pioneers that met in Kingston to receive
Jefferson Worth a few months before. On every
hand they were heard cursing the man who owed them
their wages and threatening to take revenge if they
were not soon paid.
That night Texas Joe again slept at the Worth cottage,
for Barbara stoutly refused to leave her home, and
Abe and Pat, with the little handful of white men
from the office force, stood guard at the power house,
the ice plant and the other buildings that were grouped
near the railroad on the edge of town.
WILLARD HOLMES ON TRIAL.
Scarcely had the train with Jefferson Worth aboard
passed beyond the yard limits of Republic when the
Manager of The King’s Basin Land and Irrigation
Company in Kingston was called to the telephone by
the cashier of the bank in the Company’s rival
town. Ten minutes later a Western Union message
in cipher went from Mr. Burk to James Greenfield in
the city.
The afternoon of the following day Willard Holmes,
at the Dry River Heading, was called to the telephone.
Mr. Burk was at the other end of the line. “There
is a telegram here from your Uncle Jim ordering you
to go to the city on the first train. If you can
make it, catch the four-twenty at Frontera. I’ll
pack your grip and give it to you when you go through.”
