Boulder Dam. Zane Grey
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Let’s see now. I’m on the job from nine until five. I’ll have to come in early, start you a fire and get the list and beat it to camp. Maybe I can get an hour or two off. Then after work I’ll see you. . . . Good night, Anne Vandergrift.”
She murmured an inaudible reply, and he felt her eyes on him as he saw to the stove, and then as he backed toward the door he looked up to see her earnest, unutterably grateful face.
Lynn went out to get in the car, and wrapping the blanket round his legs he slid down to rest and think, if not to sleep. After a few minutes the light went out in the cabin. A dull rattle and roll of wheels, with an occasional roar, filled Lynn’s ears. The immediate problem concerning this girl did not seem to present any particular obstacle. He could place her in one of the boarding houses over at camp and take care of her till he had found work for her. Boulder Dam was known to try all the workers who applied. But what concerned Lynn was these damned racketeers. Since his advent at Las Vegas he had heard gossip about them. They were princes of crime. They had a system of extortion the laymen could not understand. If the little booze-peddling agents had money to burn what vast sums Ben Sneed must command! If he offered ten thousand dollars to Bellew for this singularly attractive and innocent girl he would pay ten times that amount. These men carried on their nefarious trades with no regard for the law whatsoever. For them there was no law. Their rivalries, jealousies, greeds, had them continually at each others’ throats.
Pondering over this serious phase of the situation Lynn fell asleep. Late in the night he awoke, cramped and cold, and shivered and dozed and waited until daylight. Then he went to the gravel camp cook house and had his breakfast, filled his pockets with fruit and made some sandwiches. After that he hunted up his boss and asked for a little time off. The camp rules were strict, but he succeeded in his mission and then hurried back to his cabin.
When he entered, Anne was sound asleep. Lynn carried a basin of water and his shaving things outside, where he proceeded to break his usual routine. He had never shaved very often and never until after work. He was aware of this departure, but did not question it. When he got through, the sun burst rosy and bright over the Arizona mountains. Lynn went indoors again, not tiptoeing this time. But the girl did not stir. He rolled up the eastern canvas blind which let in the sun upon Anne’s face. Lynn was compelled to halt and gaze at her. Something more than a natural admiration stirred in him. How young, fresh, helpless, sad and lovely she looked in that rosy morning light! Lynn had to give her a little shake to awaken her.
The big eyes fluttered open. Shadows of slumber succeeded to shadows of doubt and fear. Her gaze flashed from Lynn round the cabin and back again. “Oh! Where am I? Who . . .”
“Wake up, Anne, and remember,” he said cheerily. “I’m the lucky guy who found you in his car last night. . . . Listen, I’ll lay a fire for you to start when you want to make a cup of coffee. Here’s some fruit and sandwiches, all I could swipe. Bar the door after I go out. My luxurious bathroom is in that compartment through the window there. . . . Where’s your list? Ah, there it is! It doesn’t appear long for a young lady at the moment absolutely dependent upon a Boulder Dam laborer’s pajama.”
“I don’t need—very much,” she faltered, and the color in her face was not all a sunrise flush.
“Okay. I’m off. You were hard to wake up. Sleep all day.”
“Will you be gone so long?”
“I have to work, you know, mysterious stranger. And drive in for your things after hours. So long. And don’t worry. It’s all right.”
Lynn hurried out, somewhat amused and puzzled at his feelings. He had been in haste to leave the cabin, yet he wanted to stay. Tincan appeared cantankerous that morning and did not want to get going. She was always presenting Lynn with new and intricate mechanical problems to solve. At last the engine thawed out, sputtered and roared. Once beyond the great dunes of gravel Lynn stepped on the gas and put the old tin horse to its best paces.
The spring morning must have been unusually beautiful. Lynn found the sunrise glamour on basin and range like rose-colored glasses to delight the eye. The hard picture of the desert appeared softened. Sage and greasewood, and bare swales of sand, and rolling ridges were crested with tints of fire. The Colorado flowed out of a red gap in the frowning walls and slid with ruddy gleam on toward the black canyon which still slept in somber shadow.
Lynn made the run up the grade to the main road in record time. Then he slowed for the turn down on the bench where Boulder City was in course of construction. It took vision to make of all the heaps of earth and piles of lumber, the bare skeletons of buildings rising like a denuded forest, the trucks roaring to and fro, the big steam shovels clanging, the action of workmen thick as a swarm of crawling bees, the acres of shacks and tents stretching far along the level—it took eyes to picture the shining and model city that was to become famous there.
A long street of stores terminated in the finished dormitories and the great dining house that took care of thousands of men. Lynn halted his hot car at the largest store.
After buying some food supplies and the list of clothes for Anne, he found upon applying for information that there were several hundred married men among the builders there, and they kept house in the little cabins that were being rapidly built for their accommodation. He was furnished with a list of names of those who would take a boarder. One of these was a pipe fitter named Brown, who lived with his wife in the camp at the gravel mills. Lynn drove back to the basin.
At ten o’clock he climbed the steel crane to relieve the engineer who had been put on his job. Lynn had graduated to this job by the hard apprenticeship he had served as a common laborer. And his job was to run one of the lofty carriages that swung the big tanks of graded sand and gravel from the huge piles to the freight cars which were loaded under the steel bridge. It was a job of concentration and precision. Lynn had to be alert all the time. The sand and gravel came in carloads from the pits of the river, were dumped from the high trestle into the mills, to come out cleaned, assorted, into the rounded glistening mounds, from which they were loaded again into freight cars and hauled down to the canyon, to the electric cement mill, most marvelous of Boulder Dam’s many magic machines.
Lynn took a nameless pride in the fact that he was a little cog in the vast system of wheels which must whirl ceaselessly for years, without ever a stop, until Boulder Dam was completed. How he had arrived at that stage he scarcely understood, unless the contrast from former toil and its accompanying pangs had developed it in him. That day, as the humming and roaring hours passed, he conceived the idea of having a hand at other and perilous jobs down in the canyon. The great diversion tunnels that were to carry the waters of the Colorado under the walls and around the dam, these haunted him, and the work had only begun. He wanted to ride one of the carriages that dropped a thousand feet down into the canyon, to perch like an eagle above it all and watch. He intended to be a driller, a dynamiter, a scaler, most perilous of all work on the dam, and lastly to rise to some competent and permanent job.
These plans coalesced and fixed in his mind that day, and he admitted that it was because Anne would be working at Boulder City and he wanted to be near her. It was just a kindness on his part, he thought, a desire to serve her and outwit those villains who trafficked in the souls and bodies of American girls.
That day turned out to be the most endless Lynn had ever spent there. But it wore to a close, and then he made for his car. Sunset burned in his eyes all the way to the construction camp.
At last he hauled up short before his dark cabin. He had not thought of it, but he should have expected it to be dark. The girl would hardly have risked turning on the lights in his absence. Lynn lifted out the big parcels of supplies and rapped on the door.
No response! He rapped again anxiously. Still there was no answer. She must be asleep. He tried the door and to his amazement it was unbarred. He went in, and called in a low voice. Then alarm seized Lynn. He flashed on the lights and in consternation saw the cabin was empty. No fire in the stove! His pajamas lay on the bed unfolded, as if hastily thrown there. Anne Vandergrift was gone.
“My God!” he thought. “Is it possible those thugs could work so quickly!”