Lee made ready to go.  He gave Imogene a sardonic smile.

“May the music she hears to-night strengthen her soul for the morrow’s smash,” he said; and went out.

Where the trail from the cabins debouched upon the main mesa road he slowed the car to a stop and sat for a time in thought, with the engine humming softly and the freezing night air biting at his cheeks.  It seemed to make little difference where he went, or if he went at all.  Nothing worth while was at the end of any road.  His inclination, however, was working and at last he set out for the Graham ranch.

Since his Christmas visit he had made a number of calls there, a rather large number, indeed, considering everything.  He had schooled his face and words on those occasions to a passivity he was far from feeling, and had left Louise’s presence each time with a greater torment of mind.  Now this was the end—­of her as of everything so far as he was concerned.  To-morrow the project came down in wreckage.  Then he should go from Perro Creek, poorer in purse, poorer in spirit, poorer in faith, sore, and bitterly disillusionized.

Louise Graham observed a shadow upon his countenance as she invited him to a seat before the fireplace.  Her father was absent and she had been reading a book when Bryant’s knock came.  She had been wondering, too, if the engineer might not choose this night to call again.  How much these calls of his now meant to her she did not dare consider.

“What’s wrong, Lee?” she asked at once, anxiously.  “I see something has happened.”

He moved round on the divan that he might fully face her.

“Everything so far as my affairs go,” he replied.  “Work stops on the canal to-morrow.  That will result, of course, in the water right lapsing and in the ditch never being finished or used, except under the circumstance of my handing over my interest gratis to Gretzinger and the bondholders.  If I did that even, I don’t believe Gretzinger could finish it on time, for neither Carrigan nor the men would exert themselves for him as they have for me, and they would be sure of their pay in any case.  The trouble is, I’ve used up all the money and can borrow no more.  I’m through.  And I can’t bring myself to the point of surrendering my interest in the company to the bondholders merely to pull them out.  They’re trying to strangle me in order that they may profit; they could put up the cash needed easily enough if they would; but they count on my yielding.  I shall not do so.  And so the project fails.  Those New Yorkers will wait too long if ever they do put up the funds; and I can do nothing myself.  The uncompleted ditch will remain simply a scar on the mesa.”

“I never dreamed you were in this strait!”

“No, probably not.  One always hopes to the last that somehow—­by a credulous belief in one’s own letter of credit with Providence, I presume—­one will pull through.  So I delayed telling you of what was impending.”