Through the lighted streets of the harbor city the
buckskin and his rider finally made their way.
A policeman, looking suspiciously at the dust-begrimed,
sweat-caked, trembling horse that stood with legs
braced wide and drooping head, and at the haggard-faced
rider, directed the surveyor to the hotel a block
away, and then stood watching them as they moved slowly
toward the end of the ride.
WHAT THE COMPANY MAN TOLD THE MEXICANS.
While Barbara and her three friends at home were rejoicing
over the message from Jefferson Worth telling them
that he had secured the money needed to go on with
the work, Willard Holmes was alone in his room in
the San Felipe hotel.
Following the engineer’s interview with Mr.
Cartwright, he had passed through a stormy scene with
James Greenfield and the words of the president of
The King’s Basin Land and Irrigation Company
were ringing in his ears with painful monotony:
“Discharged—discharged—
discharged!”
For the first time in his life the engineer had heard
those words addressed to himself. He could not
rid himself of the feeling that he had come suddenly
to the end of his career.
All his life Willard Holmes had had back of him the
powerful influence of his foster uncle. Positions
and opportunities had come to him from the first without
effort on his part. Notwithstanding the fact
that his ability as an engineer was naturally of a
high order and that his training was of the best,
he had never been dependent wholly upon these things.
Other and stronger considerations had always given
him his place. For the first time in his life
he faced the world of his profession with nothing but
his naked ability as an engineer to speak for him,
while his abrupt dismissal from the Company compelled
him to realize with sudden force how over-shadowed
his work had always been by outside influences and
how dependent he had been upon them. He felt lost
and bewildered, knowing not which way to turn.
His future seemed a blank. He had been anxious
and eager to get back to his work in the Basin.
But he had not realized how much that work meant to
him—how his plans, his dreams, his whole
life work had become centered in the reclamation of
The King’s Basin Desert.
If his dismissal had come from anything connected
with his work, he told himself, it would be different.
He thought bitterly how he had struggled with insufficient
equipment and inadequate makeshifts of every kind
to hold the Company system together that the pioneers
might have the water, without which the work of reclamation
could not be done. He knew every stake and pile
and plank and crack and patch in the whole system.
He had learned the tricks of the river and was familiar
with the conditions peculiar to the desert country.
He knew the terrible danger of the flood season that
was only two months away. He had planned and
prepared to meet emergencies that would be sure to
arise.
