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"Ah, it costs too much. And it may not be for us, after all."

"That should not matter. And we are in it now for all we are worth. When a thing like this gets started it runs those who thought to run it. Don't go in yet; it is all quiet in there. You look as if you needed a walk. Take my arm ?" "No; people must walk wide apart in this dust."

"Take my hand, then."

"I need both hands for my skirts." "Fiddlededee your skirts! I never saw a small person so occupied with her clothes. You should wear buckskins, like a little squawsy, and then you could trot alongside and kick up all the dust you pleased."

"If I were a squaw I should trot behind." "Not if you were my squaw."

Dolly's chin went up, and she walked wider than ever; but she was no longer quite so melancholy; and presently she began quoting, in a tone of high derision:

"We twa ha'e paidlet i' the burn

And pu'd the gowans fine.

"How Margaret used to love to sing those words to us, who never heard the sound of a burn in all our lives! And she from a country that sang and shouted with water!"

"What does it matter where we do our paddling? It's whom we paddle with. I can fancy just as good paddling in this dust of the plains as in any burn that ever brawled; only I should paddle on horseback, with my squaw on a pony beside me. Come out where we have n't these lines of fence-posts in our faces. Hark! How still it is, after the cañon!" Night was falling, the clear sky of the desert darkening slowly without a cloud. Dew on the pungent sage dampened the dust and gave strength to the air they breathed. A bell-mare hoppled somewhere in the brush clanked flatly as she stepped. Coyotes raved in the far offing like a pack of demented dogs. Against the low, bright west loomed a cowboy shape, enlarging in a spurt of dust that unrolled and drifted to leeward. He veered and passed them afar, and the beat of his horse's hoofs throbbed, fainter and fainter, long after the dust hid him.

"Dolly," said Philip, "don't forget what we are here for: this is the land we are going to reclaim. Can you not fancy it-miles and miles, at sunset, shining with ditches, catching the sky in gleams; and the low houses and the crops, and the dark lines of trees reflected in the water-channels? You will like it when you see it, and I should n't be surprised if you called it home. And if there are no burns, there will be gentle, sober ditches. Our waters shall do their singing and shouting up in the

mountains; they come down here on business. Your burns are nothing but mad children. Ditches are tender, good mothers, taking thought where they go, not ripping and tearing through the land. Oh, you will like it, and one day you will own it for your country. You are a 'bunch-grass belle,' Dolly, however you may boast of your heather."

XIX.

By the following spring Job had so far recovered from his stroke as to be able to sit in the rude wheeled-chair contrived for him, in front of the cabin in the sunshine, and to watch Margaret digging in the garden, or watering the calves, or hanging out her wash on the lines Job had put up for her in the days of his usefulness. A neighbor had taken the management of the farm "on shares," but, with the chores and the housework and the care of the invalid, Margaret's hands were full. The doctor had said that Job might be with her in his present condition for years, or he might be smitten again without warning, and pass away in a few hours. His speech had not come back, beyond a few drear mutterings intelligible to no one but Margaret. When they were alone she talked to him as a child to her doll, or as a mother to her speechless but sentient infant.

One afternoon, close upon the finish of the cañon work, Dunsmuir sat and talked with Margaret in the door of the claim-cabin, and between them, bolstered in his chair, was that sad effigy of Job. Spring had changed everything since the day of the gray September dust-storm. The little house stood low, on the edge of a rich bottom grown up in wild grass. The willows and cottonwoods had leaves large enough to cast shadows. From the mesa, where Job's main lateral plowed along, the brown, seeded land fell away, like a matronly lap, toward the river. The wheat looked well, considering the unfavorable spring, which is ever the lot of new settlers; but the orchard, planted with trees the size of walking-sticks, was needing water badly. There had been a week of hot, drying winds, most untimely; snow was going fast on the mountains, and the river tumbled by the vivid meadow-grass in a yellow, seething flood.

Dunsmuir praised Margaret's management, and promised her a lot of stuff' for her garden another year. He had grown used to Job's nonentity, and talked across him, cheerfully, as if his chair had been vacant. But Margaret noted every subtle change in the face of her invalid, and whenever a wan, unrestful look of his sought hers, she had always some comforting expedient in reserve.

"I'm charged to tell you," said Dunsmuir,

"that we can never do without you in these preparations for the great day. Dolly is in a dozen quandaries, and has no one but men to advise with, and the cooking will all 'gang agley' without Margaret to superintend; so what's to be done? Cannot we fit up one of the wagons as an ambulance for Job, and move you both, stick an' stow, up to the house till this mummery is over? Job must see the headworks before the gates are shut. Eh, Job?" “Na, na; it's not to be thought on," Margaret interposed.

“Well, then, you must think of some trusty woman with a good skill at the cooking. It is far too much to put upon Jenny and a young mistress like Dolly."

Dunsmuir fell into Margaret's way of speaking, in talking with her since her trouble; it was the expression of his nearness. Every shade of misconception had passed from between them; there was even a greater ease and kindness in Dunsmuir's manner. He was more himself with them at the cabin than with any who knew him, even his daughter. And he was more outspoken with Margaret about his own affairs than he had been while she was one of his household; for now he was freed from her anxious feminine oversight, and from the pressure of one-sided obligations.

"I'll may be no ken the new ways o' the house," said Margaret, ignoring the possibility of another woman," with a' this cum'ersome work going forrit, and the look of everything changed. I hear ye have built a new stable." "Nothing of the sort; we have built a bridge from the house to the old stable, to save pulling and hauling across the gulch. There is nothing changed about the house, and the ways are the same ye have known going on for twenty years. Why, Job will be blithe to spare you for a day, with a neighbor body to wait upon him. It is not the work,-we can get hands enough, it is a head that is wanting. There'll be twenty people to luncheon at the house, and tables in the tents for the crowd. Dolly, the child, knows nothing how to provide for such a raff of folk, and my way is a man's way. She would know every detail beforehand, and she is thrifty, and grudges the waste that comes of loose providing."

"Gude save us! and is a' that to come out of the family?"

Dunsmuir chuckled over Margaret's prudential alarm. He teased her a while about the expenses of the forthcoming entertainment, and then confessed it was the company's affair.

"But we must do our part, if only for pride's sake."

"And do ye think, now, that it's worth while?" she shrewdly asked.

hy, if advertising be worth while-it is

an advertisement of the canal. The manager knows his business. The trouble is, he thinks he knows mine. The water is to be backed against the dam to make a show for the people, when the lake should be a month, at least, filling up. But the powers have ordained that we celebrate."

"And what will they have to their program?"

"It will be a Fourth of July, wanting the powder. The head-works are the 'grand stand' for the principal guests and the speaking. There will be plenty of bunting and brandy and soda; and the city band will be there; and Price Norrisson will address the meeting. And the ladies will cast their bouquets into the canalbed, as the water is turned in,—a marriage, you see, of the river and the ditch,—and my poor girl is to cast the first one —”

“Eh, sirs! an' will ye allow that, an' before a' that crowd o' strange folk?"

"Well, if the thing must be done, I know no other lady who could be bridesmaid to the ditch unless it's yourself, Margaret. You might do it to spare Dolly; though, as a fact, I think the poor child is pleased. She takes it all in good faith, as she should. It 's only here by ourselves that I dare to sit among the scorners. But the cream of the joke will be Norrisson's oration. He is to father the whole concern. He will give us the progress of Irrigation (with a capital I) in this region, with a history of our own canal, for the benefit of the press reporters. He will spread it from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and by the next steamer's mail to the other side; but there will be a searching of hearts in the audience, I am thinking. There are a few of us who could give him points to help him out with his tale. Here, God pity us! is a weary page of it." Dunsmuir laid his hand on Job's nerveless right arm. "Tons and tons of rock lie bedded in the river that this white, bloodless hand sent smoking down the glen-side. Ay, if we had the rock and the stone piled in one heap that Job has moved off the canal-line, it would build him a cairn fit for a chieftain's monument. Job's hand should have been the first to raise the head-gates; but now the force has gone out of it, and I must take hold beside Norrisson."

"Eh, sirs!” cried Margaret, again, all her partizan blood uprising. "And is that, do you think, as it should be, now?"

"It is as it is," said Dunsmuir. "I may let go, if I choose to sulk in public, but Norrisson's fist will remain; it has a healthy grip upon most things. Have you not learned that in this country the engineer is the hireling, not the counselor? It's money that builds here, not brains and education. Norrisson will be the great man of the day. And we that strove mightily shall eat and drink as friends. But you will come,

Margaret, and take a glass with me in silence to the memories we two are left to keep?"

"Na, na; I'll drink nae glasses," said Margaret, wiping away a quiet tear that started as he spoke. "Let them eat and drink as maun, to show their gude wull. There's nae need o' that amang friends. But I will come for a day before the day, and gi' ye what help I may." "And will you not come and look on at the feasting? You will never have seen so many people together since you came to the cañon." Na; a feast is no a feast to me wi'out my auld man is there."

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"You speak like yourself," said Dunsmuir. "Well, good-by to you both-honest friends as man ever had in this world. Do you think he follows me, Margaret ?" Dunsmuir laid his hand affectionately on Job's as he spoke, and looked long, with a sorrowful questioning, into the dumb-stricken countenance.

"He is there the same as ever," said Margaret.

"Yes; he is there," said Dunsmuir. "Nor more estranged from us than we, that can speak, from one another. There are bonds and bonds, Margaret, woman; and where is the soul clothed in flesh, and the desires of the flesh, that can call itself free? Job, I'm thinking, is nearer his freedom than any of us."

XX.

at the waters of Meribah," said Margaret, solemnly, "for that he smote, and sanctified him not before the people. And do ye mind what was the judgment? Yet shalt thou see the land before thee, but thou shalt not go thither into that land which I give to the children of Israel.'" "Ye are grand at the Scripture, Margaret, but I can cap your judgments with the promise that stands fair for all irrigators of the desert. He that watereth also himself shall be watered.' We make no pretense to be leaders, or lawgivers, or guides to the people in their wanderings."

“Ah, ye are daffin' when ye had far better be prayin'. It disna set wi' my way of thinkin', sic a day o' muckle eatin' an' drinkin', wantin' the thanks due to the giver of a' things. There's a mony mair warnin's than promises in the Scripture set over against that word water. The Lord Almighty makes it his boast that he holds them in his hand. Do ye mind how he answered Job out o' the whirlwind, speerin' whaur was he when the sea brak' forth an' the clouds were its swaddlin' band? He that presumes to know the ordinances of Heaven; that brak's the seal o' the auld, ancient, fearsome waters, to turn them from their given course-he 'll need to mind!"

"Well, can't you give us a better word than that for the last one?" Dunsmuir held out his hand. To his surprise, Margaret was speechless. She wiped her hand hastily on her apron,

"Look out for the water at the ranch to- and gave his a hard, warm squeeze, and then morrow evening, Margaret."

"Gude save us! will it be a' that while on the road?"

"It will, and longer if I had my way of it." "Are ye afeard the banks will not be strong enough to tak' the first flood o''t?" Margaret asked in an anxious whisper. She was already in her place beside the driver on the single seat of the buckboard, having characteristically refused to stay to dinner, or to have dinner earlier, after working like three women since nine o'clock on that toilsome day before the day. Dunsmuir smiled at the precautionary whisper, not to spread her fears.

"There is no first flood in a new canal, woman. It's plain ye were not raised in a canal country. The water creeps in like a baby taking its first steps. It must walk before it can run." "Fair fa' its steps, then," Margaret ejaculated. "But, sirs! it is a fearsome business." She turned her reddened, earnest countenance upon Dunsmuir as he stood smiling, with his foot on the fore wheel, hindering her departure. "What is there fearsome about it? It is an old, respectable business as any on the face of the earth. You may read of its works in your Bible."

"I have read how the Lord proved Moses

broke down completely, and began to weep.

It was partly the sight of the cañon, as she was leaving it, at the hour of its most solemn beauty, for the place was home to her. But Margaret had also a superstitious fear of success coming to one so long out of touch with fortune, to one who claimed so much in the name of his work.

Dolly was late for dinner that evening. “I have something to do to my dress," she whispered to her father aside. "Do you mind that it is a little frock of mama's?"

"Why should I mind? Poor child, with no mother's hands to make her fine!" Dunsmuir drew her to him, pressing her head close to his breast. "Dolly, if ever any one should come, asking questions of you-be slow, be slow to answer him! Remember, a woman's no may be changed to yes; but her yes should be forever. They say he gives twice who gives quickly; it is not so with all giving. A man does not prize a woman's readiness."

"Father!" Dolly exclaimed, looking hurt and frightened.

"I'm not saying that you have been — I'm saying nothing; but for God's sake, know your mind. Tell him no, whoever he may be; tell him no, and no, for as long as you can say it!"

DUNSMUIR and Philip sat down to dinner together in silence. At Dolly's empty place there lay a sumptuous bouquet of hothouse roses, with a gentleman's card attached. "From my father," Philip replied, to the other's questioning look.

"Ay," said Dunsmuir, grimly. "And are those the flowers she is to fling at the feet of the waters to-morrow? I should have given her a bunch of sage and sunflowers, or a handful of wild syringa from the rocks; but your father's gifts always have a trade value. There'll be as much as ten dollars' worth of roses in that bunch, I dare say?"

"Expense is nothing to us now," said Philip, forcing a smile. "The work is done."

66

Yes, the work is done; not as we meant, but as we could, which is the way of most men's working. The work as I planned it remains for some other man to do."

"I was not thinking of the work," said Philip; "the best thing about it to me is that it is finished. And now may I have your leave to speak to Dolly?"

"What is your hurry, man? The child has enough to think of with this silly celebration on her hands. Leave her in peace till the house is empty, and the ditch is full," he added, with his melancholy smile, in which Philip felt the touch of foreboding.

"If my speaking is going to be only another trouble to Dolly, for Heaven's sake, let me speak and have done with it!"

"Speak then; but remember,

"He that bends to himself a joy Doth the winged life destroy.

Be sure that what you grasp at is meant for you and for no other, else you will see your bonny rosebud wither in your hand."

Dunsmuir pushed back his chair, and began walking up and down the room excitedly, saying, in his deepest voice: "God knows I have nothing to wish for but my child's happiness, yet I cannot wish you success. You'll get it, I know that well enough; but why should a man win his wife so easily? It's not the way with other winnings. And what will her yes be worth a child who has seen no one but yourself?"

"I will take it and be thankful, if I can get it," Philip murmured. "The old way is good enough for me."

Dolly came in as radiant as Night in a gauzy dress of black that left her white throat bare above the round neck of the corsage. She was too conscious of her first toilet to help smiling, her color mounting high. Philip rose with a beating heart, and placed her chair; but her father looked at her strangely.

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"It is the one I spoke to you about. It was the only one that fitted me." "Black is for mourning'; you cannot wear black for the Marriage of the Ditch."

Dolly was greatly disappointed. A vision of herself, in one of her old home-made frocks, before all that staring crowd at the head-gates, before the town ladies and the magnates from a distance, preoccupied her miserably.

"There's no gainsaying a woman on a question of her clothes," said Dunsmuir. "Come, eat your dinner, and don't sit there so big-eyed! Look at the grand bouquet the manager sends to the Lady of the Big Ditch."

Dunsmuir ate nothing himself; he was jerky and artificial in his talk. The others made no attempt to talk at all.

"If you want me," said Dunsmuir, rising and looking at Philip, "you will find me at the dam. The lake is filling fast; I shall stay below till bedtime." Philip had risen and stood by his chair, and Dolly leaned forward, watching her father's face; she was startled at its paleness and fixity. "There is a strange fascination in that vesture of stone and mortar, to one who knows its history." He spoke to Philip. "Our tale of bricks is completed: it is time we gat us up out of the land of bondage. Now what 's the word for to-morrow?-let us see." He stopped by the door, in passing out, and tore a leaf from the calendar. In the waning light he stooped and read aloud:

666

God is not dumb that he should speak no more: If I have wanderings in the wilderness,

And find not Sinai, 't is my soul is poor.

"And find not Sinai,'" he repeated, smiling at Philip. "Did I not tell you, it is time we gat us up?"

"What does he mean by the land of bondage'?" whispered Dolly as the door closed. "His long waiting, perhaps," Philip answered, though he knew well what Dunsmuir meant.

The breeze from the river parted the light curtains on the tinkling rods; shattered gleams struck here and there about the darkening room. Moments remembered and words spoken between them revived with sudden intensity of meaning. He was free to speak now, but his heart was too full.

“Give me just a moment on the grass by the east windows?" he entreated, as if there were scarce hope of such a boon.

Their very nearness troubled the currents between them, and kept them apart. Outside, the waters were climbing silently behind the dam

faster for the heavy rains that had been falling on the mountains, augmented by the melt

ing snows. Every inch of that tremendous and to save; to the chief his watch by the watershed was casting in its drop; but below breaking dam. the hill, where the bar had been heard to roar on soft spring nights like this, all was ominously quiet. The lake was creeping up and up, leaning its swelling heart against the dam. A faint ripple, a stealthy sound, not to be detected without close listening, alone betrayed the gathering of those mighty incoming forces.

A new moon, as slender as a young girl's finger, beckoned in the west. Philip walked the grass impatiently; a hard excitement tightened his grasp upon his bated bliss.

"My love, my love," he whispered-" of the summer, of the autumn, of the winter; come, come and bless me, for the work is done, and the water, the water, is climbing fast!" All the while he was hideously conscious of the water. "Shut the gates and let her head up." This was the order which had come from the manager's office. The chief had been in a mood of desperate, savage acquiescence in any madness that might proceed from the office in town; and between the fighting captains the soldier has but his orders.

He stepped across the rose-bed, and called softly at Dolly's window, "Are you never coming?" And in that instant it was too late. There was a shout; he was wanted at the dam.

He glanced at the lake as he ran along the hill. In that last hour it had climbed a foot. It was awful: climbing, shimmering, darkling; and in its depths floated the inverted crescent, his moon of love sinking in the lake.

Dunsmuir was down by the toe of the dam, stooping far out on the edge of the sluggish remnant of water which crawled in the downstream channel. He called Philip, by name, as he had not spoken to him for months. His manner was direct, simple, responsible; he bore himself as a man in the presence of a great danger.

"For God's sake, look at that!"

Water is a very secret, subtle thing; it dissembles its sinister forces in trifling appearances which might amuse a child. The two men were staring at just a toss of bubbles discolored with mud boiling up and spreading fast from the toe of the dam. But these came from a spot just over the fault in the foundation. No more was said, but the order was given to open the scouring-gate. Philip had started up the bank toward the head-works when a second eruption followed, more copious, violent, and muddier than the first.

Dunsmuir called to him: "Stop; I will go. Saddle up, and get word down the line on this side, and send a man across. Go yourself across; it will be a close call this side of the notch. You must save Margaret and the old man."

There was no question to each man of his duty to the young man his orders-to ride

As Philip bounded up the hill he was thinking, between heart-beats, not of the work nor of his orders, nor even of that deathless call that now and then singles a modest youth from the ranks, and spends him, in one wild moment, for a deed that but for some one's blundering had not needed to be done; he was arguing the point with himself quite simply and with great clearness: he could not go without one kiss from Dolly. There would not be time to ask her or to tell her why. If the dam should break before he gained the notch, she would know then why he kissed her; if he made it alive, there would be time enough to explain.

Dunsmuir had not been able to relieve the pressure on the dam. Within its foundations disorganization had progressed so rapidly that all its functions had ceased. Dissolution, he knew, must be near. He had timed Philip from his start. He had lost a moment above, warning Dolly not to go off the hill (no; Philip had not counted that moment lost); he had lost other moments raising the camps; he had lost time at the ford. He had half a mile to the notch, and two to the ranch where the old man and his wife were sleeping, unconscious of all this wild work going on above.

There was one spot where the wagon-road on the other side crossed a low ledge projecting from the foot of the last bluff, which, with its opposite neighbor, formed the notch of the cañon. When sunset fell clear, and the color lingered, a horseman crossing that step could be seen from the dam, a speck against the low light in the west. Dunsmuir walked out to the middle; the scouring-gate was nearer the head-works. He stood just over the spot where the trouble was advancing, and stared into the distance. It was too dark; he could no longer make out the ledge. He looked at the shoulder of the bluff through which the Big Cut was to have conducted the water. Against that first obstruction the wave, when it leaped, would break, and, reeling backward, overwhelm the low shore opposite. A thousand times he had watched the shock, the dizzy recoil, the thundering outward swirl of the spring floods, now magnified and uplifted to a deluge. And all that peaceful shore, with the white road hugging the bluffs, would be "turned as wax to the fire," as "clay to the seal," when the waters uprose and stamped it out of sight.

There came a third eruption, with a fearful crunching sound of smothered upheaval. Enveloped in an enormous mass of muddy water, the piles and timbers that had plugged the foundations of the dam were forced upward; the wall of the scouring-gallery sank, and the gate fell in.

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