Good. They would find a quiet corner somewhere
and Holmes could tell his old Chief about The King’s
Basin work. Also The King’s Basin man could
tell the Seer about Barbara.
So they found a seat and Willard Holmes told how splendidly
the Seer’s dream was coming true, and in answer
to many questions talked of Barbara and her life in
the new country, of Jefferson Worth and his operations,
and of some of his own professional difficulties and
problems. And the Seer, as he led the younger
man on and studied the strong bronzed face that was
all aglow with enthusiasm over the work, smiled quietly
as he remembered the tenderfoot who had once threatened
to report his Chief to the Company.
Brave, great-hearted, generous Seer! There was
in all his questioning not a hint of any feeling against
the younger man who had been given the place that
should have been his. He fell to wondering if
after all the Company had now in Holmes the man they
thought they had, or the man they did have, indeed,
when they made him their chief engineer. If the
test were to come now—The Seer did not
know that Willard Holmes was even then undergoing that
test.
The two men dined together that evening and afterwards
over the cigars in the Seer’s room the old engineer
talked of the progress and future of the great Reclamation
work, of its value not only to our own nation but
to the over-crowded nations beyond the seas, and of
its place in the great forward march of the race.
Then gravely he spoke to the younger man of his own
efforts to bring the work to the attention of the
people, of disappointments and failures, year after
year, until at last the work in Barbara’s Desert
had been launched, and following that several other
projects until now at last reclamation had become
a great national enterprise. And Willard Holmes
knew that out of the millions that would be realized
from these reclaimed lands this man, who had seen
the vision, would receive nothing. The Seer had
not even a position with an irrigation company or
with a reclamation project.
As he listened to the man who had literally given
the best of his life to a great work, the Company
engineer felt as he sometimes felt when alone in the
heart of the desert itself he heard its call, the
call that was at once a challenge, a threat and a promise;
or as when he had felt the sweet power of Barbara’s
presence.
At his hotel Holmes found the president of The King’s
Basin Land and Irrigation Company anxiously awaiting
him: “Look here!” was Greenfield’s
greeting. “This thing is approaching a climax.”
He handed the engineer a telegram from Burk.
Willard Holmes glanced at the yellow slip of paper.
“Strike on the K. B. C. Looks serious.”
“Jefferson Worth left for San Felipe this afternoon,”
Greenfield said quickly. “There’s
another train in thirty minutes. We mustn’t
miss it!”
