Ironheart

In later years the man who had called himself Tug Jones looked back on the days and nights that followed as a period of unmitigated dejection and horror. The craving for the drug was with him continually. If he had had a supply on hand, he would have yielded a hundred times to the temptation to use it. But he had burned the bridges behind him. There was no way to get the stuff without going in person to a town of some size.

This meant not only a definite surrender of the will, but a promise of relief that could not be fulfilled inside of twenty-four hours at the earliest. Just now this stretch of time was a period of torment as endless as a year.

Somehow he stuck it out, though he spent much of his time in an inferno of feverish desire. He tried to kill the appetite with work. Merrick, moving to and fro with a keen eye on the men, observed that the foreman was sloughing his work and letting it fall on Jones. At the end of the week, Merrick discharged him and raised the former tramp to his place as foreman. Jones accepted the promotion without thanks. He knew he had earned it, but he did not care whether he received it or not.

He grew worn and haggard. Dark shadows emphasized the hollows of the tortured eyes. So irritable was his temper that at a word it flashed to explosion. By disposition he was not one to pass on to subordinates the acerbity that was a residue of the storm that was shaking him. A sense of justice had always been strong in him. Fifty times a day he clamped his teeth to keep back the biting phrase. In general he succeeded, but malingerers found him a hard taskmaster.

They appealed to Merrick and got small comfort from him. The new cement foreman was getting the work done both rapidly and well. That was all the chief engineer asked of him. The details could be arranged by Jones as he pleased.

The nights were the worst. During the day he had the work to occupy his mind, but when darkness fell over the hills its shadows crept over his soul. He could not sleep. Sometimes he borrowed technical books from Merrick and tried to bury himself in study. More often he tramped till physical exhaustion drove him back to his cot to stare up sleeplessly at the canvas roof of his tent.

Suffering wears itself out at last. There came a time when the edge of the craving grew less keen, when its attack was less frequent. In the pure, untempered air of the hills the cement gang foreman came to sounder health. His appetite increased with his physical stamina. One day it struck him with a little shock of surprise that he had not had one of his racking headaches for two weeks. He began to sleep better, though there were still nights when he had to tramp the hills in self-defense.

Inevitably during those days the foreman found himself studying the project upon which Merrick had staked his reputation. As an engineer he took off his hat to the efficiency with which his chief got results. Merrick was a driver, but he was more than that. He had the fighting spirit that lifts from defeat to victory. Good engineers had said it was not feasible to water the Flat Tops by means of ditches carrying water from the drainage area above. Justin Merrick had not accepted their verdict. He had made his own surveys and meant to demonstrate that they were wrong.

He knew that a certain group of cattlemen, under the leadership of old Jake Prowers, were watching him sullenly. They believed, from the surveys made by Government engineers, that the grade made it impossible to bring water from the dam through Elk Creek Cañon to the mesa below. Yet Merrick knew, too, that they were uneasy. It was on the cards that the Reclamation Service experts might be wrong in their surveys. If Prowers discovered that they were, Justin felt sure he would move to ruthless and dynamic action.

The big dam was practically finished. Merrick kept a night guard over it and the tools. Sometimes, after supper, he strolled down to look it over and think out under the quiet stars the problems of supplies or canal construction. It was on such a night visit that he came face to face with the new concrete work foreman.

The superintendent of construction had been watching Tug Jones. He had found out that the man was one who would accept responsibility and could be trusted to get efficient results without supervision. Twice he had taken him from the work he had in charge and given him engineering difficulties to solve. Each time the man from Massachusetts Tech had eliminated the tangle in the clearest and simplest way.

Merrick was not given to asking advice of his subordinates, no matter how capable they might be. To-night he simply made an announcement of a detail in his plans that involved the foreman.

“About time we began work on Elk Creek Cañon, Jones,” he said. “I’m going to put you in charge and run the ditch line through right away. We may have trouble there. That fellow Prowers had one of his men, a rider named Don Black, file a homestead claim right in the cañon. It won’t stick. He knows that, but he wants some ground to fight us. Look out for him.”

“Yes,” agreed the foreman.

The habit of mind of the Massachusetts Tech man was to be thorough. He studied the surveys very closely and went over the ground carefully from the dam site to the cañon entrance. The conclusion was forced upon him that Merrick had made a mistake. The grade through the hills to Elk Creek Cañon would not do. He could put his finger on the very spot that made it impossible.

It was hard for him to believe that Merrick had made a blunder so vital to the success of the enterprise. He checked up his figures a second time and made a re-survey of that part of the line. There was no possible doubt about it. Since water will not run uphill by gravity, it could not flow from the dam to the upper entrance of the cañon.

He reported to his chief what he had discovered.

Merrick took this facer with no least hint of dismay. So far as his strong, square-cut visage gave any expression, it was one of impatience.

“Suppose you leave that to me, Jones,” he said curtly. “I know what I’m doing. What I’m asking of you is to determine the best path for the ditch along the side of the cañon. That’s all.”

“But if you can’t get the water to the cañon—”

“That’s my business. You’re not responsible for that.”

There remained nothing more to be said. Jones carried away with him the knowledge that his chief had flatly declined to give weight to his findings. He could either resign or he could do as he was told.

The younger man was puzzled. Was it possible that Merrick, after all, was a pig-headed four-flusher? That he could be a pretentious incompetent fed up with a sense of infallibility?

To see him on the work was a refutal of this view. He was an egoist through and through. To look at the salient jaw, into the cool, flinty eyes, was to recognize the man’s self-sufficiency. He was dominant and masterful. But it was hard to believe that his shrewd, direct, untiring energy masked any incapacity. He did not seem to have the quality of mind that is content to fool itself.

Tug knew that his chief had a much wider experience in engineering than he. This project must have been studied by him from every angle, all difficulties considered, all technical problems solved. Yet the fact stood in the way like a Rock of Gibraltar that water flows downhill and not up.

He shrugged his shoulders and stepped out from under. Merrick had told him with cool finality that it was none of his business. That was true. He had done his full duty when he reported the matter to the chief. He turned his attention to running the ditch line through the gorge.

To save time he moved his outfit to Elk Creek. A chuck wagon, mule teams, scrapers, and necessary supplies followed the little group of surveyors. Within a week the sound of blasting echoed from wall to wall of the ravine.

Two men rode up the defile to the engineer’s camp one sunny morning. Jones, in flannel shirt, corduroys, and high laced boots, directed operations as the workmen set out on the day’s work.

One of the visitors to the camp was a long, black-bearded, fierce-eyed man in blue overalls. The other was a mild little fellow in years well past middle age.

The dark man introduced himself rudely. “What the blue blazes you doing here? This is my homestead. You trying to jump my claim?”

The engineer met this brusque attack suavely. During the past weeks, as he had slowly fought his way back toward self-respect, the defiance and the bitter irony had disappeared from his manner. He was recovering the poise that characterizes the really able man of affairs when he is subjected to annoyance and worry.

“You are Mr. Donald Black?” he asked.

“I’m him. An’ I’m here to say that no man—I don’t care if he is backed by a big corporation—can jump my property an’ get away with it.”

“I don’t think we have any intention of prejudicing your rights, Mr. Black,” the engineer answered. “Of course, I’m only an employee. Mr. Merrick is the man you ought to see. You’ll find him up at the dam.”

“I’m servin’ notice on you right here an’ now to get off my land. I’m givin’ you till night to get yore whole outfit outa here. I ain’t a-going to see anybody. Understand? You’ve got me in one word short an’ sweet—git.”

The dried-up little man beside Black let out a cracked cackle of laughter. “Seems like that should ought to be plain enough,” he murmured.

Tug looked at the wrinkled cattleman. He guessed that this was Jake Prowers, of whose sinister reputation rumors had reached him. But it was to Black he spoke.

“Don’t you think, perhaps, you had better see a lawyer? There’s always a legal way to straighten out difficulties that—”

“Lawyer!” exploded Black with an oath. “Listen, fellow! I don’t aim for to see no lawyer. You’d like fine to tie this up in the courts while you went right on building yore end gates an’ runnin’ yore ditches on my land. No, sir. Cattle was here first, an’ we don’t aim to let you chase us off. See?”

“I expect the law will have to decide that, Mr. Black. But that’s merely an opinion of mine. I’m here to run a ditch through this cañon—an employee hired at so much a week. Unless I get orders to stop work, the ditch will be dug.” Jones spoke evenly, without raising his voice, but there was a ring of finality in his tone.

“You crow damn loud,” Black retorted angrily. “Think I don’ know who you are—a good-for-nothin’ tramp liable to go to the pen for burnin’ up wheat an’ bush-whackin’ Clint Reed? You’re all swelled up, ain’t you? Forget it, fellow. I’m givin’ you orders to clear out. If you don’t, some of you’re liable to be sorry. This here is a man’s country.”

Tug looked straight at the rawboned, dark man. “Meaning?” he asked pointedly.

Prowers answered. He knew that enough had been said. More would be surplusage and might carry the danger of a come-back in case men should be killed.

“You’d be sorry to beat a pore man outa his claim, wouldn’t you?” he said, tee-heeing with virulent laughter. “Come on, Don. Might as well be pushin’ on our reins.”

Over his shoulder the homesteader flung a last word that might be taken as a threat, a warning, or a prophecy. “Till to-night, Mr. Hobo.”