The crowd was packed loosely toward one end of the hall where James J. Lestrade and the judge were standing on chairs. The judge's face was scarlet with satisfaction, and Lestrade had his fingers hooked in his vest, beaming at everybody. After a while the noise quieted down and he spoke what appeared to be the last words of a speech.
"And so, as our good friend Judge Henry has said, we're on the road to prosperity at last. Let's set a formal meeting for tomorrow night at this same place and get every last homesteader to come. We'll draw up articles on the spot and then we'll start work. Why, folks, there's a fortune ahead for us all!"
Lin jumped through the door and up on a bench, shouting at the top of his voice to attract the crowd his way. "Wait a minute—wait a minutel Now, just before you folks all stampede toward this siren's call, I want to ask one question. Just one single question."
There was a quick switching of interest, a craning of heads. Even then he saw that nothing he might say would ever change their temper or subdue the leaping optimism in their hearts. They had fought so long with so little success; they had nourished the idea so tenaciously that some day water would come to them that now they were in but one state of mind. Judge Hemy was swinging his hands up and down, on the verge of apoplexy. Lestrade had turned to frowning disfavor. In the moment's lull Lin put his question.
"I want to ask you folks this: Where—is the—money—coming from—for this project?" He spaced the words and emphasized them with a thrust of his finger. A murmur, a kind of breathless rustle went from man to man, and he hurried on. "How much do you think it costs to build an irrigation system? If the United States Government has passed us by, what makes you figure a parcel of green homesteaders can turn the trick?"
And then he was overwhelmed by such a shouting and booing as he had never before heard. It poured upon his head in ever- increasing force. As it died down, men began to move swiftly upon his vantage point, and he heard one voice and another saying, "What's biting your nose?" "You're no farmer—you're a prospector!" And at last came the words he had feared would come. "Go on back to your cows! Cows! Yeah—what brand do you like best?"
He saw Gracie Henry's face in that unreasoning multitude. Never before had it been so white and drawn. And right beneath his feet Beauty Chatto stared at him with mouth agape, like a man who has found his well formed opinions suddenly betray him. The foremost rank of men bore down, and Lin felt the bench sway. He was picked up bodily, struck at and badly shaken. Whirled around and shoved and pulled, he went staggering through the door, and then, as darkness protected him, he heai'd Lestrade's voice calling out. The men went inside and left him alone.
He spent a moment pulling his clothes back into shape. Then, sadly and quietly, he got his horse and turned homeward. Gracie would wonder what had happened—but the judge must take care of that. As for himself, there was but one thing left to do.
Well, they know how I feel about it, anyway, he thought. And some day those words will bear fruit. God, I'd like to find the man who shouted 'cows' at me! But the eggs are busted now, and maybe some good will come of it.
He reached his house, fried himself a meal and packed his lead horse. Within an hour he was striking eastward toward the high mesa, taking care now and then to stop and put his ear to the ground. He wanted no one following. What he was about to do had to be done without observation.
CHAPTER IV
NIGHT RIDERS
He traveled all that night, pushing the horses along at a steady pace. Beyond daylight he stopped for an hour's rest, ate a can of tomatoes, and continued easterly. The base of the mesa drew nearer and the ground grew more and more barren, seamed with dry creek beds and littered with boulders. It was a country beyond the power of any homesteader to improve, fit only for the poisonous creatures that crawled and burrowed in its sandy soil, and almost too dismal and desolate for the occasional passer-by.
But it's good for something, Lin reminded himself. The day's not far off when certain folks'll be tramping across it, bent on business.
Dusk found him camped on the first steep pitches of the mesa. And, as he had done a hundred times before in the same spot, he ate a cold meal in the dark and rolled up in his blankets twenty yards from the duffel, with the rifle close by.
Nor did he light a blaze in the morning, but journeyed on up the slopes until at last he stood on the mesa's rim and looked across a valley curtained by heat fog to that far-off irregular patch of earth representing Powder. The town did not hold his interest so much as a small trail of dust in the more immethate foreground, which, after a half hour's patient watching, proved to be the wake of a wagon going north on the Snake River Road. Thus satisfied, Lin left the panorama behind him, dipping into the corrugated sand and clay surface of the mesa.
Beauty Chatto'll probably be ahead of me, he mused. He's got a fresh horse and he always travels fast. Besides, he knew I was coming in right away, and it's natural he'd want to push in first. I'd better watch the front more.
He pulled the rifle from its boot and laid it across the saddle, studying the hilly contours that rose before him. It was a region admirably fashioned for ambuscade: at no place was there more than three or four hundred yards' level interval between the sudden convolutions of land. Ballou, on reaching some such eminence, had only a partial view of the way ahead before plunging down into the succeeding hollow. Thus he proceeded.
Toward noon he changed his direction and began a zigzagging from right to left. One particularly bald and prominent dome was the mark by which he steered, although instead of going straight toward it he bore well off to the right and dismounted. Nearby, on a small knoll, he lay for twenty minutes or so, sharply scanning the adjoining ridges. Satisfied that he wasn't being watched, he made a complete circle of the dome and then struck directly down a gully. Presently horses and rider dropped out of sight; the gully shot downward at a sharp angle and a draught of air struck Ballou's face. Turning a shelf of rock, he found himself before a cave that was high enough and wide enough to admit both himself and his two animals. Riding into it, he came to a stop and got down.
A more secluded spot could not have been found in all the mesa. The location and shape of it concealed him from any eye, nor could it be discovered by chance wayfarers, unless through blind accident they might have followed the tortuous path around the dome and down the gully.
The ashes of many campfires littered the floor. A little farther back a table and chairs of lodgepole had been constructed, and still rearward were two bunks, built against the rock wall. It was quite evidently a rendezvous of some permanence, and to Lin at least it was a home hardly less important in the last several weeks than his own down in the sultry valley. Stripping the horses, he picketed them at the mouth of the cave, fed them and then built a small fire over which he cooked himself the first good meal in two days. The supply of provisions he stowed away in a kind of rock cupboard. After smoking a reflective cigarette, he turned in for a sound sleep, the rifle within arm's reach.
He awoke, fresh and bouyant, well before dawn. Going to the cave's entrance, he saw the stars gleaming, bright and cold, and heard the swishing of the wind as it passed directly over the gully. The horses moved patiently around their pickets. The nearer rubbed his muzzle against Lin's shirt and pulled at the rope.
"Boy," Lin said, running a hand along the animal's neck, "you get a rest today, which I reckon you won't mind at all When it comes to slogging along without complaint you'd make most any critter on two legs ashamed of himself. Get out of my pocket, you rascal, I haven't got an ounce of sugar. If I hadn't been rushed away from the valley so sudden like, I might've thought to bring some. But that's not our fault either. Anyhow, oats'll have to hold you for a spell. Now, let's get to business."
The affair at the