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Out of the Depths: A Romance of Reclamation, a novel by Robert Ames Bennet |
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Chapter 16. Metal And Mettle |
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_ CHAPTER XVI. METAL AND METTLE At dawn Blake and Ashton drove up to the waterhole on Dry Fork with their camp equipment. There they left the outfit in the buckboard and proceeded with the line of levels on up the creek bed into the gorge from which it issued. For more than a mile they carried the levels over the bowlders of the gradually sloping bottom of that stupendous gash in the mountain side. So far the work was fairly easy. At last, however, they came to the place where the bed of the gulch suddenly tilted upward at a sharp angle and climbed the tremendous heights to the top of High Mesa in sheer ascents and cliff-like ledges. Blake established a bench-mark at the foot of the acclivity, and came forward beside Ashton to peer up the Titanic chute between the dizzy precipices. From where they stood to the head of the gulch was fully four thousand feet. "What do you think of it?" asked the engineer. "I think this is where your line ends," answered Ashton, and he rolled a cigarette. He had been anything but agreeable since their start from the ranch. "We of course can't go up with the level and rod," said Blake, smiling at the absurdity of the suggestion. "Still, we might possibly chain it to the top." Ashton shrugged. "I fail to see the need of risking my neck to climb this goat stairway." "Very well," agreed Blake, ignoring his companion's ill humor. "Kindly take back the level and get out the chain." Ashton started off without replying. Blake looked at the young man's back with a regretful, half-puzzled expression. But he quickly returned to the business in hand. He laid the level rod on a rock and inclined it at the same steep pitch as the uptilt of the gorge bottom. Over the lower end of this he held a plumb bob, and took the angle between the perpendicular line of the bob-string and the inclined line of the rod with a small protractor that he carried in his notebook. The angle measured over fifty degrees from the horizontal. Having thus determined the angle of inclination, the engineer picked a likely line of ascent and started to climb the gulch chute. He went up in rapid rushes, with the ease and surefootedness of a coolheaded, steel-muscled climber. He stopped frequently, not because of weariness or of lack of breath, but to test the structure and hardness of the rocks with a small magnifying glass and the butt of his pocket knife. At last, nearly a thousand feet up, his ascent was stopped by a sheer hundred-foot cliff. He had seen it beetling above him and knew beforehand that he could not hope to scale such a precipice; yet he clambered up to it, still examining the rock with minute care. As he walked across the waterworn shelf at the foot of the sheer cliff, his eye was caught by a wide seam of quartz in the side wall of the gulch. Going on over to the vein, he looked at it in several places through his magnifying glass. Everywhere little yellow specks showed in the semi-translucent quartz. He drew back across the gorge to examine the trend of the vein. It ran far outward and upward, and in no place was it narrower than where it disappeared under the bed of the gorge. His lips pursed in a prolonged, soundless whistle. But he did not linger. Immediately after he had estimated the visible length and dip of the seam, he began his descent. Arriving at the foot without accident, he picked up the level rod and swung away down the gulch. He saw nothing of Ashton until he had come all the distance down across the valley to the dike above the pool. His assistant was in the grove below, assiduously helping Miss Knowles to erect a tent that the girl had improvised from a tarpaulin. Genevieve and Thomas Herbert were interesting themselves in the contents of the kit-box. The two ladies had ridden up to the camp on horseback, Isobel carrying the baby. When Blake came striding down to them, the girl left Ashton and ran to meet him, her eyes beaming with affectionate welcome. "What has kept you so long?" she called. "Lafe says the gulch is absolutely unclimbable. I could have told you so, beforehand." "You are right. I tried it, but had to quit," replied Blake, engulfing her outstretched hand in his big palm. When he would have released her, she caught his fingers and held fast, so that they came down to his wife hand in hand. Oblivious of Ashton's frown, the girl dimpled at Mrs. Blake. "Here he is, Genevieve," she said. "We have him corralled for the rest of the morning." "Sorry," replied Blake, stooping to pick up his chuckling son. "We can't knock off now." "But if you cannot continue your levels?" asked his wife. "From what Lafayette told us, we thought you would not start in again until after lunch." "No more levels until tomorrow," said Blake. "But I must settle one of my big 'ifs' by night. To do it, Ashton and I will have to go up on High Mesa and measure a line. There's still two hours till noon. We'll borrow your saddle ponies, Miss Chuckie, and start at once, if Jenny will put us up a bite of lunch." "Immediately, Tom," assented Mrs. Blake, delighted at the opportunity to serve her big husband. "When shall we take Genevieve to see the canyon?" asked the girl. "I am sure she can ride up safely on old Buck." "We have only the two saddle horses today," replied Blake. "If our measurement settles that 'if' one way, I shall start a line of levels up the mountain tomorrow morning, if the other way, any irrigation project is out of the question, and we shall go up to the canyon merely as a sightseeing party." "Ah!" sighed the girl. "'If!' 'if'--I do so hope it turns out to be the last one!" Blake looked at her with a quizzical smile. "Perhaps you would not, Miss Chuckie, if you could see all the results of a successful water system." "You mean, turning our range into farms for hundreds of irrigationists," she replied. "I suppose I am selfish, but I am thinking of what it would mean to Daddy. Just consider how it will affect us. For years this land has been our own for miles and miles!" "Well, we shall see," said Blake, his eyes twinkling. "Yes, indeed!" she exclaimed. "Lafe, if you'll help me saddle up and help Mr. Blake rush up to do that measuring, I'll--I'll be ever so grateful!" Though all the more resentful at Blake over having to leave her company, Ashton eagerly sprang forward to help the girl saddle the ponies. When they were ready, she filled his canteen for him and took a sip from it "for luck." Genevieve had packed an ample lunch in a gamebag, along with her husband's linked steel-wire surveyor's chain. Ten minutes after Blake's arrival, he handed the baby to its mother and swung into the saddle. Ashton had already mounted, fired by a kind glance from the girl's forget-me-not eyes. In his zeal, he led the way at a gallop around the craggy hill and across the intervening valley to the escarpment of High Mesa. Had not Blake checked him, he would have forced the pace on up the mountain side. "Hold on," called the engineer. "We want to make haste slowly. That buckskin you're on isn't so young as he has been, and my pony has to lug around two hundred pounds. We'll get back sooner by being moderate. Besides you don't wish to knock up old Buck. He is about the only one of these jumpy cow ponies that is safe for Jenny." "That's so," admitted Ashton. "Suppose you set the pace." He stopped to let Blake pass him, and trailed behind up the mountain side. He had headed into a draw. The engineer at once turned and began zigzagging up the steep side of the ridge that thrust out into the valley between the draw and the gulch of Dry Fork. At the stiffest places he jumped off and led his pony. None too willingly, Ashton followed the example set by his companion. There were some places where he could not have avoided so doing--ledges that the old buckskin, despite his years of mountain service, could hardly scramble up under an empty saddle. Long before they reached the point of the ridge, Ashton was panting and sweating, and his handsome face was red from exertion and anger. But his indignation at being misguided up so difficult a line of ascent received a damper when he reached the lower end of the ridge crest. Blake, who had waited patiently for him to clamber up the last sharp slope, gave him a cheerful nod and pointed to the long but fairly easy incline of the ridge crest. "In mountain climbing, always take your stiffest ground first, when you can," he said. "We can jog along pretty fast now." They mounted and rode up the ridge, much of the time at a jog trot. Before long they came to the top of High Mesa, and galloped across to one of the ridges that lay parallel with Deep Canyon. Climbing the ridge, they found themselves looking over into a ravine that ran down to the right to join another ravine from the opposite direction, at the head of Dry Fork Gulch. Blake turned and rode to the left along the ridge, until he found a place where they could cross the ravine. The still air was reverberating with the muffled roar of Deep Canyon. From the ridge on the other side of the ravine, they could look down between the scattered pines to the gaping chasm of the stupendous canyon. But Blake rode to the right along the summit of the ridge until they came opposite the head of Dry Fork Gulch. Here he flung the reins over his pony's head, and dismounted. Ashton was about to do the same when he caught sight of a wolf slinking away like a gray shadow up the farther ravine. He reached for his rifle, and for the first time noticed that he had failed to bring it along. In his haste to start from camp he had left it in the tent. "Sacre!" he petulantly exclaimed. "There goes twenty-five dollars!" "How's that?" asked Blake. He looked and caught a glimpse of the wolf just as it vanished. "Why don't you shoot?" "Left my rifle in camp, curse the luck!" "Keep cool," advised Blake. "It's only twenty-five dollars, and you might have missed anyway." "Not with my automatic," snapped Ashton. "You needn't sneer about the money. You've seen times when you'd have been glad of a chance at half the amount." "That's true," gravely agreed the engineer. "What's more, I realize that it is far harder for you than it ever was for me. I want to tell you I admire the way you have stood your loss." "You do?" burst out the younger man. "I want to tell you I don't admire the way you ruined me--babbling to my father--when you promised to keep still! You sneak!" Blake looked into the other's furious face with no shade of change in his grave gaze. "I have never said a word to your father against you," he declared. "Then--then how, after all this time--?" stammered Ashton, even in his anger unable to disbelieve the engineer's quiet statement. He was disconcerted only for the moment. Again he flared hotly: "But if you didn't, old Leslie must have! It's all the same!" "No, it is not the same," corrected Blake. "As for my father-in-law, if he said anything about--the past, I feel sure it was not with intention to hurt your interests." "Hurt my interests! You know I am utterly ruined!" "On the contrary, I know you are not ruined. You have lost a large allowance, and a will has been made cutting you off from a great many millions that you expected to inherit. But you have landed square on your feet; you have a pretty good job, and you are stronger and healthier than you were." "If you break up Mr. Knowles' range with your irrigation schemes, I stand to lose my job. You know that." "If the project proves to be feasible, I shall offer you a position on the works," said Blake. "You needn't try to bribe me!" retorted Ashton. "I'm working for Mr. Knowles." "Well, he directed you to help me with this survey," replied the engineer, with imperturbable good nature. "The next move is to chain across to the canyon." He pulled his surveyor's chain from the bag and descended the ridge to an out-jutting rock above the head of the tremendous gorge in the mountain side. Ashton followed him down. Blake handed him the front end of the chain. "You lead," he said. "I'll line you, as I know where to strike the nearest point on the canyon." Ashton sullenly started up the ridge, and the measurement began. As Blake required only a rough approximation, they soon crossed the ridge and chained down through the trees to the edge of Deep Canyon. Ashton was astonished at the shortness of the distance. The canyon at this point ran towards the mesa escarpment as if it had originally intended to drive through into Dry Fork Gulch, but twisted sharp about and curved back across the plateau. Even Blake was surprised at the measurement. It was only a little over two thousand feet. "Noticed this place when out with Mr. Knowles and Gowan," he remarked, gazing down into the abyss with keen appreciation of its awful grandeur. "They told me it is the nearest that the canyon comes to the edge of the mesa, until it breaks out, thirty or forty miles down." "How--how about that 'if' you said this measurement would settle?" asked Ashton. "What's the time?" Ashton looked at his watch, frowning over the evasive reply. "It's two-ten." "I'll figure on the proposition while we eat lunch," said Blake. "I can answer you better regarding that 'if' when I have done some calculating. Luckily I climbed up to examine the rock in the gulch." He smiled quizzically at his companion. "You were right as to its being unclimbable; but I found out even more than I expected." Ashton silently took the bag from him and arranged the lunch and his canteen on a rock under a pine. The engineer figured and drew little diagrams in his fieldbook while he ate his sandwiches. Ashton had half drained the canteen on the way up the mountain. Before sitting down Blake had rinsed out his mouth and taken a few swallows of water. After eating, he started to take another drink, noticed his companion's hot dry face, and stopped after a single sip. "Guess you need it more than I do," he remarked, as he rose to his feet. "Time to start. I wish to go around and down the mountain on the other side of the gulch." "How about the--the 'if'?" inquired Ashton. "Killed," answered Blake. "There now is only one left. If that comes out the same way, Dry Mesa will have good cause to change its name." "You can tunnel through from the gulch to the canyon?" exclaimed Ashton. "Yes; and I shall do so--if Deep Canyon is not too deep." "I hope it is a thousand feet below Dry Mesa!" said Ashton. "In the circumstances," Blake replied to the fervent declaration, "I am glad to hear you say it." Ashton stared, but could detect no sarcasm in the other's smile of commendation. _ |
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