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Updated: June 9, 2025
It was from New York. "Mr. WILLIAM CONNISTON, Jr., "Superintendent Crawford Reclamation, "Rattlesnake Valley. "Good boy! Congratulations. They tell me you win. "WM. CONNISTON, Sr." Conniston, the bit of yellow paper crumpled between his fingers, turned to Argyl. "In the only thing which counts to the uttermost do I win, Argyl dear?"
Conniston promised to do so, and returned to the office, more than a little disappointed at not having seen Argyl, wondering whither her long ride could have taken her. Until late that night he and Garton talked, planned, and prepared for the work of to-morrow. It was barely five the next morning when he again knocked at the cottage door. Again Mrs. Ridley answered his knock. "Am I too early?"
He knew that if Brayley beat him down now it would be because he was the better man. And he had told Argyl that he was going to lick Brayley. She had laughed. None the less, it was a promise to her, his first promise, and he was going to keep it.
When the horses were ready Conniston walked cautiously to Tommy Garten's window and peered in. And he was grinning contentedly when he returned to Mr. Crawford and his daughter. "Tommy is the serenest law-breaker you ever saw," he told them, as he swung to his horse after having helped Argyl to a place at her father's side in the buckboard.
He held her so that he could look into her face, and the cry upon his lips was frozen into a grief-stricken horror. Her hair unbound, hanging loose, tangled about her face, dull and soiled with the gray sand-dust, her lips dry, cracked, unnaturally big, her cheeks pinched and stamped at the corners of her mouth with the misery through which she had lived was this Argyl?
He saw scores of men at work with scrapers, picks, and shovels, and understood little enough of what they were doing. He rode with her into a town, a brand-new town, of twenty small, neat houses, as alike as rows of peas. In one of the houses he worked for Argyl, tacking down carpets in the empty rooms, moving furniture which he had uncrated in the yard.
"Defeat!" He laughed, and Argyl shivered at the strange tone in his laughter. "Defeat!" he cried a third time. "We have five days!" He was upon a boulder, standing where all men might see him, might hear him. And his voice as it rang out through the roar of the leaping water was sharp, clear, decisive, confident. "Here you, Lark! Rush fifty men with crowbars to the Jaws!
She said special she was in a hurry, an' you wasn't to waste time puttin' on your glad rags." Why did Argyl want him to-night? He put his fingers to his cheek where Brayley's fist had cut into the flesh. How could he go to her like this? He was on the verge of telling Lonesome Pete that he could not go, of framing some excuse, any excuse.
Jocelyn was sobbing. "They told me what has happened about the dam about Roger Hapgood!" She broke off, shuddering. "But," Argyl was saying, trying to soothe her, "that is not your fault, Jocelyn." "Oh!" cried Jocelyn, wildly. "You don't know. It was I, I who suggested the horrible thing to Roger Hapgood. It is I who am to blame for everything." "Hush, child!
To his way of thinking, evidently, there were but three people in the room the wonderfully masterful Mr. Crawford, the radiantly beautiful Argyl, the deeply appreciative Hapgood and certain negligible, necessary furniture. During the short meal Mr. Crawford spoke little, contenting himself with a few light remarks to Argyl and the others. Often he ate in silence, abstractedly.
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