Boulder Dam E-Book

Zane Grey

• Herausgeber: Reading Essentials
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Zane Grey is at his best in this story of the building of the Boulder Dam (later renamed the Hoover Dam). It shows an excellent depiction of early day Las Vegas and the people who built the dam. Of course there is also the damsel in distress and the hero who gives up all to start his life anew. 

Leseprobe

Boulder Dam

by Zane Grey

First published in 1963

This edition published by Reading Essentials

Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany

[email protected]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Boulder Dam

by

Zane Grey

Prologue

That first upthrust of the slope of the western hemisphere formed a vast inland sea which gave birth to a rapacious and terrible river. Throughout the ages in its work of draining that immense area of water it cut wide and deep into the bowels of the earth.

Then after millions of years came the second upthrust. It added velocity and grinding power to this sinister and irresistible stream, and the inland sea shrank to a salty lake in the midst of a desolate wasteland. But the river flowed on in lessened volume, grim in its task, still mighty and insatiate, fed by the rains and snows from the mountain heights. It was a river of silt. It had teeth of sand. In the thousands of centuries that nature bent to this slow and inscrutable travail it gouged a dark canyon down to the black archaic rock, and there on the very floor of the earth crust, harder than iron and as enduring as the firmament, the great river thundered and ground in vain. It must wait for another cataclysm of the elements.

In time strange living creatures appeared out of the north and wandered into the branch canyons of the great chasm. They were little men, dark–visaged and slant–eyed, and they perished almost without leaving trace of their struggle. The cliff dwellers followed, building tiny houses of stone and cement that withstood the weathering processes of time long after a stronger race out of the south drove them over the precipices. And this race gave way to the Indians.

The Spaniards found savage redskinned tribes all over this arid region. And they guided Coronado and his armored followers to the brink of the abyss from the depths of which floated up the sullen roar of a mighty river.

Coronado was the first white man to gaze down into that awful red rent in the earth. The solid ground appeared divided, and there was no way across to the other side of the world. The scene was of such sublimity that the Spanish explorers stood spellbound. Nothing had ever been known of such a terrible place. Coronado could not at first accept the evidence of his own eyes.

A ragged rim of yellow limestone ran north and south. Grotesque cedar trees, with gnarled and bleached tops, reached out with clutching hands of dead men. Down sheered the precipitous cliffs, to merge into a zone of red, where strange plateaus and slopes, and mountains of naked rock, led the fearful gaze down into the purple and obscure depths of chaos. It was a ghastly exposure of the naked ribs and bowels of the rock–bound earth. But it had an appalling beauty. A million facets of red and orange and brown caught the sunlight in brilliance too strong for the gaze of man. The unknown depths were mantled in dim mystic purple. The far slopes sheered up with vast and tremendous sweep to a golden band crowded by a wandering fringe of black. Coronado named the abyss Grande Cañon del Rio Colorado.

White men as daring as the armor–clad Spaniards in due time explored the bottom of that canyon. Powell, with his intrepid band, ran the mysterious river in boats, a voyage that entailed terrible risk and hardship and loss of life. The red river of silt was a succession of dangerous rapids for two hundred and seventeen miles. Powell named them, and the intersecting gorges, and the superb peaks and domes as well as the differing reaches of the canyon.

In our modern day men even more daring than Coronado and Powell stood upon the black rim of the lower canyon and conceived an idea as strange and wild as any vague dawning thought of the cliff dwellers, or of the dreaming redskinned savage, an idea born of the progress of the world, as heroic and colossal as the inventive genius of engineers could conjure, as staggering and vain as the hopes of the builders of the pyramids, an idea that mounted irresistibly despite the mockery of an unconquerable nature—and it was to dam this ravaging river, to block and conserve its floods, to harness its incalculable power, to make it a tool of man.

Chapter 1

It was early in the evening of a spring night in Las Vegas, Nevada, 1932. The town roared with thousands of workers in from Boulder Dam to buck the tiger and have themselves a good time.

No Western town during the gold rush or the later frontier days could have held a candle to this modern wide–open city, which owed its mushroom growth and boom business to the great government project of damming the Colorado River.

Throngs of men paraded up and down the pavements under the glare of brilliant neon lights that turned night into day along the wide main street. The scene resembled Broadway on New Year’s Eve, except for the horns and hilarity. This Boulder Dam crowd was noisy enough, but grim and hoarse, with the stride of men not easily brushed aside from the intent visible in gleaming eyes and on bronzed faces. A steady stream passed to and fro, congested and blocked every little way before the swinging doors of the gambling palaces.

Lynn Weston, young Californian, stood outside the Monte Palace, indulging in his peculiar penchant for watching the passers–by. This habit had grown in Lynn during his frequent visits in from Boulder Dam. He belonged to this heterogeneous throng, and for the endless year of his toil at the dam he had been actuated by their common weakness for excitement and oblivion, yet in his way he was a lone wolf. The ignominy of the catastrophe that had forced him into the ranks of these raw workers weighed upon him less and less as time went on, and unaccustomed hard labor had begun its mysterious alchemy of change in him. Disappointment at unrealized opportunity for his ambition and bitterness at the misfortune of not completing his engineering course at college both had somewhat lost their sting. College man, famous football player, scion of an old California family whom the depression had reduced to unfamiliar and insupportable straits, and lastly a jilted lover who had welcomed his dismissal but who chafed under the shame of it, Lynn Weston looked on the passing throngs with slowly clarifying eyes, an awakening mind, and a strange sense that the something evermore about to happen to him was due. This mood never troubled him through the strenuous hours of rough labor, nor when he looked upon red liquor and the bright face of the gamblers’ lure.

With a shrug of his broad shoulders Lynn went into the Palace. The glaring hall was full of a blue haze of smoke, the sound of men’s voices, the clink of silver coins and the rattle of roulette wheels. Men stood ten deep around the gambling games. As Lynn elbowed his way back toward the rear his keen sight met the same weathered visages of his fellow workers and the same pale–faced, hard–eyed, thin–lipped parasites he was used to seeing there. In the rear of this long hall he knew where and how to get the bottle that had become a habit and which he despised for the very thing he found in it. Here in the rear lounged men for whom Lynn had no name but whom he always wanted to beat down and throw into the dirt. They were the dregs of humanity, outcasts, criminals, hopheads, men of a type he had taken care not to meet in the dark.

At length Lynn found a vacant chair at one of the poker tables, but the players there were too slick for him, and after dropping ten dollars he quit. He lost at monte too, and the big roulette wheel reduced his month’s wages to a five–dollar bill. Lynn was gambler enough to grow cooler as luck held aloof. But he had another stiff drink.

At the faro table the fickle goddess of fortune smiled upon him. Lynn knew this dealer and that the game was crooked, but with the perversity of a gambler who was winning he kept backing his luck. And it stayed with him until he was far ahead. This was the time to quit. But Lynn was reluctant to turn his back upon a game that owed him much and which he wanted to beat, as much perhaps to get even with the crooked house as to square accounts. So he took another whirl at the game. This time Lynn’s sharp trained eye caught the dealer in a flagrant bit of cheating. Quick as a flash he snatched at the dexterous white hand and with a wrench turned up the cupped palm. The dealer let out a half–stifled cry of pain and anger.

“Caught with the goods, Hevron!” Lynn rasped out piercingly, and he held the trapped hand for players and spectators to see. “There, plain as your hawk nose! This is the second time. If I hadn’t beat your rotten game I’d take a sock at your ugly mug…. Here, cash these.”

With lowered face clouded and ashen, Hevron made the exchange with white hands less dexterous than nervous.

“Young fellow, you’re drunk. Better hold your tongue,” he declared threateningly.

“No, I’m not drunk,” returned Lynn. “You pulled a crooked trick. Some of these men saw it. You’re crooked. This joint is the crookedest in Las Vegas. Everybody knows it. I was a sucker to come in here. But I’m even now, and I never will come back.”

“You’ll never get in my game. Beat it now or I’ll have you thrown out.”

“Is that so?” Lynn queried coolly, and he flashed out a brown hand that fastened in the dealer’s shirt. With one powerful pull Lynn dragged Hevron over the table into the scattering crowd. Then he swung at him. Hevron collided with a bystander, spun around and fell, striking his head hard upon the brass footrail of the bar. He collapsed there, with blood running from a gash over his ear.

“Say, Big Boy, look out how you slam people around,” cut out a crisp voice to silence the noise.

Lynn looked up from Hevron into the cold face of Ben Sneed, lately come into notorious prominence as the boss bootlegger of the Boulder Dam project.

“How do, Sneed,” replied Lynn. “Sorry he jostled you. But I wasn’t looking at the backfield.”

“What’d you sock him for?”

“Cheating. Then he threatened to throw me out. The other players will confirm my stand…. What’s it to you?” Lynn replied curtly.

“Excuse me, Weston. It’s none of my mix. I was beefing because he nearly upset me.”

Lynn broke through the circle of spectators and hurried down the hall to go out the back door. He crossed the open plot of ground to the police station and entered. Logan, the night sheriff, a burly Texan with strong brown face and shrewd eyes, sat talking to several men. Lynn was relieved to find Logan, with whom he had some acquaintance.

“Howdy, Weston. What’s it all aboot?” drawled the sheriff.

“I just socked Bat Hevron,” Lynn returned hurriedly. “Caught him cheating, Sheriff—the second time. I was ahead of the game—and if he hadn’t got sore nothing would have happened. But he was ugly—said I was drunk and threatened to throw me out.”

“Wal, thet’s too bad,” Logan replied slowly, stroking his square chin. “I reckon you had it on him.”

“Yes. I’m sure I can prove it…. The punch I gave him wouldn’t have hurt much, but he fell and cut his head. For all I know he might have fractured his skull. He was out, all right.”

“What you want me to do, son? Lock you up?”

“I should say not. I just wanted you to have my story first.”

“Weston, you go back to Boulder and stay there till this blows over,” advised Logan. “Shore, I wouldn’t pinch you—not on Hevron’s say–so, or the house either. But thet’s a bad outfit, son. As a matter of fact the Monte is the crookedest joint in Las Vegas. Most of the gambling halls here give you an honest run for your money. But there are big shots behind the Monte. We couldn’t shut them up if we wanted to. There’s been some tough fights. I’ve been beat up bad a dozen times.”

“How come, Sam?” asked one of his companions. “That’s funny, from you.”

“I don’t reckon it’s funny. You see, my town bosses won’t let me use a gun. I had hell not long ago for shootin’ a hombre’s laig off. I had to. He pulled a knife on me. But the fact is every time we have to make an arrest an’ get into a jam we have to use our fists. How’s thet for as wild a burg as Tombstone or Ely or Tonopah ever was?”

“If I don’t miss my guess you’ll not live long here,” the other rejoined tersely.

“Sheriff,” spoke up Lynn, “when I let Hevron have it he upset Ben Sneed. And Sneed called me pretty sharp. Could he have any interest in the Monte joint?”

“He could, shore, but I reckon not. Sneed is the squarest bootlegger that we’ve had heah. Fact is he’s a good chap. I like him. Says he buys an’ sells booze. Thet’s all. Runs a swell night club oot at his ranch. But no gamblin’…. I’ll tell you, Weston, you’ve made an enemy in Hevron. He came heah from Chicago. He’s a bad egg. An’ his dealin’ faro is just a blind. He could hire one of thet lousy ootfit at his hangoot to slit yore throat for a dime an’ get back some change. You beat it back to Boulder City an’ stay there.”

“Thanks, Sheriff. I’ll do that little thing,” Lynn replied soberly, and went out. Cutting across the block he reached a side street and went on to the corner. There he halted a moment. It was nothing for Weston to slug a man. He had done it often, but he feared that he might have done it once too often. Sheriff Logan had been outspoken, and concerned, which was enough to give Lynn a case of the jitters. Just what had Logan meant by Hevron dealing faro as a blind, and who were the men that would slit a throat for a dime and give back some change? All kinds of rackets had grown up like weeds since the great influx of workers to the Dam. Bootlegging was carried on open and aboveboard. But Lynn had heard rumors of rackets that cast bootlegging in the shade. There was a tough gang from Oklahoma that hung out in the hills above the Pass some twenty miles from Las Vegas and just out of the Boulder Dam Reservation. This gang was suspected of holding up laborers on their way to town. A number of men had been found dead along the roadside, apparently having been struck by a speeding car when they were going back to camp drunk. There was a Montana outfit of wild cowboys somewhere in the district. Least known of all was a bunch of Chicago gangsters who worked at the dam and operated in Las Vegas. Rumor had it their women were with them.

Lynn thought about those elements, now that he had allowed his temper to get the better of him. And he made up his mind to keep a keen eye about him and pass up the bright lights for a while.

On his way down the main street, when he got beyond the crowd and near the side street where he had parked his car he felt he was being followed by two men. Crossing the street he went back uptown. No doubt some of the thugs at the Monte had seen him win the several hundred dollars and were bent on relieving him of it. Lynn did not relish the idea of being bumped off for some ill–earned money. Before he got to the center of town he made sure he was being followed. This caused a slow fire to burn out the cold constriction in his veins. He ought to have a gun, but he did not dare risk going into a store. Instead he ducked into the crowded Blue Eagle and got out the back way before his shadowers had time to enter at the front. Then he ran up the alley to the next side street. By the time Lynn had gotten back to the main thoroughfare he was sore. This running from a couple of footpads did not strike him pleasantly at all. He had had just enough whisky to be easily roused.

Whereupon he strolled along under the flaring lights, keeping to the outside of the stream of noisy men. His cap afforded poor concealment for his eyes, so he went into a store and bought a sombrero. Resuming his walk he went on down to the Monte. Here Lynn stood back in the shadow of a projecting corner of wall.

He had been there scarcely a moment when three hard–looking customers hurriedly came out of the Monte, followed by Ben Sneed, his keen face dark as a thundercloud.

“If Ben Bellew gets that girl I’ll scramble you saps all over the place,” Sneed hissed into their ears.

“Aw, Ben, you shouldn’t have left thet dame,” returned one, with the fear of death in his hoarse voice.

“Hell! She was naked, wasn’t she? I had to buy her some clothes. And I locked her in, didn’t I?”

“Bellew must have trailed her.”

“Scram! Get the car, you…”

The quartet passed on out of hearing. Lynn, his ears ringing, leaned there shot through with curiosity and speculation. He was always seeing or hearing something to stir his feelings. In this instance he had to fight a strong impulse to follow Sneed. There was deviltry afoot every dark hour of this raw Las Vegas night. But he had his own risk to think of. Lynn watched vigilantly for the men he had caught dogging his footsteps, and he was not at all sure that he could recognize them.

After a goodly wait, during which his anger and alarm eased, he hurried down the street. At every cross street he turned to look back. When he was four blocks down he decided he had given them the slip, and he reached the outskirts of town without renewed alarm.

Lynn turned off at the last side street to find his car. There were no lights near, which was the reason he had chosen this dark place to park. Cars had a habit of disappearing around Las Vegas. He walked clear out into the desert without locating the antiquated automobile that he called his own. Turning back he concluded he had missed the street. Perhaps in the darkness he had gotten turned around. He went clear to the electric light which marked the corner where he had turned off. As his brain was a little befogged he could not be sure of direction.

As he nearly reached the corner a big car whirled up and stopped with a roar. Three men leaped out. One ran across under the light to disappear up the side street. The other two halted to peer in Lynn’s direction.

“She went this way.”

“I saw her run under the light. She had a blanket round her.”

“Not down that street,” came a sharp voice from the car. “She went across here. Hurry!”

Lynn had halted under a tree. He knew he could be seen if they looked in his direction, and he did not want to be caught in a suspicious position, so he walked boldly out.

“Wait! Someone comin’,” whispered the nearest of the two men.

“Halt! Who’re you?”

Lynn found himself confronted by two men whose faces he could not see distinctly under their wide–brimmed hats. His quick eye detected the menacing right hand of one thrust into his coat pocket, which protruded ominously. There was a gun there in the grip of a man with murder in his heart.

“What’s this—a holdup?” asked Lynn.

“Oke, you guessed right,” came the rough reply, and the man poked the concealed gun against Lynn’s abdomen. “Look him over, Gip.”

The second ruffian leaned close to scrutinize Lynn’s features.

“Never seen him before,” he said.

“Talk!” ordered the other, punching Lynn with the gun.

“Well, I’m a little—nervous to talk—if I knew anything to say,” replied Lynn. And the fact was that he could scarcely restrain from hitting out with all his might. On the instant, then, the man in the car leaned out, bareheaded, his face in the light. Lynn recognized Ben Sneed.

“Did you see a girl runnin’ along here?”

“No,” replied Lynn.

“We’re losing time,” called Sneed from the car. “Jump in. We’ll follow Ring.”

In another moment Lynn found himself watching the red tail–lights of the car vanishing in the direction the man called Ring had taken.

“Well, what do you know about this?” he muttered. “If I ever meet that bozo again I’ll know him, and will I sock him? I’m telling you…. Whew! A gun shoved in your belly doesn’t feel so hot.”

Lynn watched for the car to come back. He heard it for a moment longer. Then the hum ceased. He wondered if Sneed had caught the girl in the blanket.

“A naked girl running away in a blanket!” he muttered, perplexed and wondering. “By gum! That’s the white–slave stuff! But Sneed didn’t strike me as low–down as that.”

He waited there for a little while, watching and conjecturing. Several cars passed, traveling in both directions. At length Lynn decided he had better find his own car if he didn’t want to walk half the night to get home to his cabin. A search down the side street in the direction Sneed had taken failed to locate the car. He began to fear it had been stolen. The loss of the ramshackle vehicle would not concern him, but he wanted to get home. Then he retraced his steps down the street he had first searched, but on the opposite side, and found his car against a background of brush that had made it difficult to distinguish in the dark. Hopping in, he was soon on the move and turned on the road toward Boulder Dam.

Lynn had not noticed the cold until he got going, but with the desert wind whipping in at both sides of his car he became chilled through. He had a comfortable warm sensation, however, where the bulging pocket full of silver dollars sagged heavily against him.

Excitement lingered with him, despite his relief. It had been rather a momentous evening, and no doubt that augmented his thrilling sense of the desert. The bare windiness stretched vague under the stars to the black mountains on the horizon. The dry sweet tang of sage and greasewood stung his cold nose. Far ahead two bright eyes of a car pierced the darkness, and still farther on twinkled a couple of pinpoints. Five miles or more out the red–gold lights of Ben Sneed’s ranch burned against the white–walled hacienda with its dark arches. Lynn had dropped in at the resort several times, but not to stay long. Sneed did not run games of chance.

“I’m curious about that guy,” he mused, as he passed the notorious night club. “Wonder if he got the girl with the blanket? Some life round this Boulder Dam diggings!”

The tremendousness of that engineering project and the magnificence of its setting in the Black Canyon of the Colorado had struck Lynn with staggering force at his very first sight and conception of them. They had changed the direction of his life; they had set him at a man’s job; they had been responsible for the gradual development of his character; they had at length replaced the bitterness of failure and drifting to some vague dream of finding himself on the ladder to success.

It was the desert then that had taken intangible and subtle hold of Lynn Weston. Looking backward he could realize how by imperceptible degrees he had learned to love the lonely and desolate wasteland of rock that the torture of hard labor had blinded him to at first. There seemed to be something permanent for him out here in this Nevada. He conceived the idea right there—why not let this large sum of money he had won be a nucleus to a stake which he could add to during the years Boulder Dam would be in building? Then he could buy a ranch, or start a gold mine, or develop some business on the big inland lake which the dam would flood back into the canyon and basin and which in time would become a sportsman’s paradise. And suddenly he recalled what he had long forgotten—the scorn with which Helen Pritchard had ended their engagement and the more grievous fact of his family evidently having shared her conviction of his hopelessness. But she was wrong, thought Lynn, strangely finding himself free of the old pain; and his family might yet be embarrassingly forced to change their minds, if they did not actually receive help from him.

How this old desert brought home to a man the things that counted—endurance and strength and guts to make life possible and worth living!

Lynn slowed down at the government inspection post, where record was kept of all workers going and coming. He had a cheery word for the guard who passed him.

“Back early, Weston,” was the grinning reply. “Sober an’ broke, I’ll bet.”

“Wrong both ways, Dan…. How many cars ahead of me the last hour?”

“Two, I reckon. A truck, an’ a Ford full of micks.”

“So long. I won’t be seeing you for a spell.”

A few miles farther on Lynn clattered up a grade to the pass. That was a gateway to the rough brakes of the canyon country. Back from the road from benches and in coves between the hills gleamed the lights of the camps of the riffraff drawn from all over the United States. It was not a safe place to pass late at night. But Lynn drove slowly because he did not want to hit some murdered workman or outcast whose body might be tumbled from behind rock or brush out upon the road. Where the pass opened wide beyond the black hills he sped by Rankin’s Palace, a huge rambling structure gaudy with its many different–colored lights. Music came on the cold wind. If law had any jurisdiction over Rankin’s resort it had never been called upon. Money could buy anything there. But the laborers had learned to give it a wide berth. Visitors, tourists, adventurers, gamblers, rich men’s sons and society women out for a kick furnished Rankin with his pickings.

Beyond this no man’s land Lynn entered the government reserve and approached the broad plateau where a model town, Boulder City, was in the course of construction.

Lynn turned off the smooth asphalt thoroughfare into a gravel road that headed down into the huge desert basin back of Boulder Dam. Here he entered the canyon country. The road was lighted, but the lamps appeared only to accentuate the lonely desert. For miles downgrade there were no buildings, no works of any land, until he crossed the railroad track which had been built twelve miles down into the basin. This railroad forked below the crossing, the right–hand branch running down to the river and along the shore into the canyon to be dammed; and the left branch turned off into the basin toward the gravel pits from which millions of tons of sand and gravel were to be transported to the site of the dam.

Sand and gravel were Lynn’s job, but he did not think of them then. As always, and especially at night, he felt the call of that wonderful country. The hills along which he drove would soon be submerged under the largest body of water ever artificially made by labor of man, but Lynn did not think of that, either. He caught glimpses of the Colorado, gleaming palely under the bright stars and mirroring the great walls. Lynn did not trust that swirling, sullen, muddy river. He had worked along it for a year now. He had seen it once in flood. He questioned the effrontery of man’s egotism. The Rio Colorado had a voice, a low sullen murmur of unrestraint. In Lynn’s secret opinion only the elemental forces that had given birth to this strange river could ever change its course or dam it permanently.

On the Arizona side the black walls stood up ragged and bold, and beyond them, touching the stars, lifted the stark and ghastly mountains. The basin on Lynn’s left opened out into dim and obscure space, bounded by the distant Nevada hills. Across it the cold wind whipped, carrying alkali dust and grains of sand to sting Lynn’s face. He used to gaze out upon that lonely vague gloom as if it were his future. But that thought had gone, he didn’t remember when, and when he looked now it was to feel something vital and compelling to which he could give no name.

The night gravel train went puffing and rattling by, carrying its thousands of tons down to the mixing mill above the site of the dam. A bend in the road brought Lynn into a zone of electric lights that shone upon the gravel mounds, like gray foothills under the huge iron structures. At the moment a swinging car from high on the bridge tumbled its load with a thunderous roar. Out of the darkness and peace of the desert Lynn had come upon the inferno of man’s creation—yellow light and glare, roar of machinery, ceaseless action of men at work. No moment of cessation of continuous labor on the building of Boulder Dam! The big dormitory appeared to shine with a hundred window eyes, and the camp beyond further attested to the fact that there was no darkness or rest here.

Lynn drove by the camp to his rude cabin. He had preferred this shack of boards to a tent, in which he had sweltered and frozen by turns.

“Once again, old Tincan!” he said, as he brought his car to a jolting halt. Then as he got out he heard a moan. “Hello! Have I got them?” Listening a moment he was amazed and transfixed by a low sound, like a sobbing intake of breath. It came from the back of his car, and it galvanized him into action.

He peered over the door. There was something on the floor—an indistinct shape, mostly dark, but lighter toward him.

“For the love of Mike!” Lynn whispered incredulously. And he thrust a swift hand over the door. It came into contact with curly soft hair on a small round head. An unaccountable thrill checked him for an instant. He bent over, trying to see, feeling farther. His forceful hand encountered a fold of woolen blanket that fell back to let him touch the outline of a woman’s body.

Chapter 2

With a start Lynn hastily withdrew his hand. His first whirling thought was that thugs had used his car as a means to get rid of a murdered victim. Then his straining eyes distinguished the dark little head and the white shoulder. He sustained a strong shock. And on the instant when he sought to find his wits another gasping intake of breath routed his fearful consternation.

“Alive, by God!” he cried under his breath, and he ripped open the door.

Lynn put his arms under the girl, and lifting her out he carried her toward his cabin, bending a searching glance all around. The flare of electric lights did not extend that far. He could not be seen in the gloom. The girl felt like a lightweight in his arms. Holding her in one arm, he opened the door, went in and laid her on his bed. His next swift move was to bar the door, after which he let down the canvas curtains to his two windows. After that he reached up to turn on the electric light.

The girl was recovering consciousness, if she had lost it. Then her eyes opened, wide gray gulfs of terror.

“Don’t let them—get me,” she begged almost inaudibly.

“I’ll say they won’t, young lady,” Lynn burst out in relief as well as haste to reassure her. “I found you in my car—just now. Drove out all the way from town.”

“Where am—I?” she asked.

“You’re in my shack at the gravel pits above the dam—thirty miles from town. I work here. My name’s Lynn Weston. I’m from California…. You’re safe, girl.”

“Oh, thank heaven!” she cried weakly and appeared about to faint.

“Don’t—don’t pass out. Tell me quick—are you injured?” And he leaned over to shake her gently.

“No, I’m not hurt.”

“Did they—Bellew or Sneed—any of that rotten gang—harm you?”

“Oh, you know—!”

“I overheard enough to—to give me a hunch. Quite by accident I happened to hear Sneed and his men as they came out of the Monte. They spoke of Bellew. Then down the street where I was looking for my Ford. Ran into Sneed again—his car—three men jumped out. They had seen you run by under the light. They held me up—with a gun—the thugs! Asked if I’d seen a girl. You must have hidden in my car then.”

“Oh! I’ve gotten away,” she exclaimed, staring up at him. Her white hands shook as she held the blanket close.

“You sure have. But tell me—did they? … How’d you happen to be—this way? Surely you don’t belong to Bellew or Sneed?”

“Bellew’s a white slaver.”

“Oh! So that’s it? Now we’re … Say, girl, did he—they harm you?”

“No. I’m all right—only scared—and frozen stiff.”

“What a sap I am!” Lynn said, and sprang into action. He kindled a wood fire in his little stove and put water on to heat. Then he got out a pair of pajamas and spread them upon his rude rocker to get warm. He found his slippers, also, and a fleece–lined coat. “There! Soon as the fire’s hot you get into these—and put the blanket over your knees. I’ll go outside. Then I’ll come back say in ten minutes and make you a cup of coffee.”

With that Lynn stalked outdoors to pace up and down before his cabin. It was not likely that anyone would come along at this hour, but he kept strict lookout, while he marveled and pondered over the adventure that had befallen him. Who was this girl, and how had she gotten into such a predicament? She appeared to be about nineteen years old and she was strikingly beautiful. He could not forget her large gray eyes stained dark in fright.

He walked up and down beside the car. What would he do now that he had accidentally saved the girl? He did not know. But it dawned vaguely upon him that the something he had felt coming must have had its inception in this adventure. The whole year he had toiled there, from almost the very day he had turned away in bitter contempt from Helen Pritchard there on the rim of Black Canyon where he had sustained the crucial shock of his life, had been one of inscrutable pangs and dawnings, of a grim stubborn resolve, of fleeting dreamful glimpses of the reward of a newer different life. Could this girl have been dropped out of the clouds to react in some way upon him? Every hour of toil, every bit of suffering, everything that had happened during this eventful year, looked back upon, seemed to have been intended to test him in some inexplicable way. Lynn had to ridicule the fact that inside his cabin was a young girl whom fate had thrown in his way and had given him the good fortune to serve, perhaps to save, her.

“I’m a queer sap,” he thought, gazing across the dark void toward the bold mountains. “Finding out I never knew myself. Sentimental—and full of mush in this modern day! Maybe I’d be well to trail along with this unknown self. It’s a cinch the other side was a flop.”

Presently he went back into the cabin, barring the door behind him. His guest sat in the old rocker before the roaring stove, dressed as he had expected to find her. But Lynn was wholly unprepared for the prettiest girl he had ever seen.

“Well, how you making out?” he asked gayly.

“I’m warm and comfortable—thank you,” she replied gratefully. “And that awful something—here—is leaving me.”

“A hot cup of coffee will help it go,” Lynn said cheerfully and proceeded to lift the steaming pot off the stove. “I don’t batch it here. But I’ve a few camp utensils I found in this shack, and I amuse myself making coffee occasionally…. But perhaps you’d prefer a drink?”

“No, thanks.”

“That’s lucky. Now that I think of it, I haven’t anything to offer you…. Here’s your coffee. It’s hot, so be careful. And here’s sugar…. I guess I’ll drink a cup myself. It sure was cold driving out tonight.”

Presently Lynn drew a box up to the stove and seating himself upon it sipped his coffee and watched the red fire through the little barred door. What he wished most at the moment was to look at this girl so strangely thrust upon him and next to that to question her. Nevertheless he refrained from either.

“I’ll go outside presently and let you have my bed,” he said. “I can find a place to sleep. I’ll be right close, in the woodshed in case you want me. Then in the morning we’ll talk over what’s best to do.”

“You’re very good,” she murmured. “What can I do? No clothes—no money!”

“We’ll get the clothes,” Lynn said quickly. “Just you write out what you need—what things, size, you know, and I’ll get someone to go to the store.”

“I’ll pay you back if I can only find a job,” she replied gratefully. “Only I’ll always be afraid to hunt for a job again. Because that is how I fell into this terrible fix.”

“Miss, you needn’t tell me if you’d rather not. Only I—”

“Oh, I must tell you,” she interposed earnestly. “You’re kind—and nice …I can trust you. I’m alone—no friends—no relations—no home. You might be the friend I need so dreadfully.”

“I will be,” rejoined Lynn. “As I told you, Lynn Weston is my name. Did you ever hear of it?”

“No. But your face is familiar. I’ve seen it somewhere. Are you in the movies?”

“Good Lord, no. I was just a football player—soon forgotten.”

Apparently the girl had gotten over the worst of her fright by this time for she began, eagerly. “My name is Anne Vandergrift. I’m nearly twenty. I was born in Salem, Illinois. My mother died when I was little. A few years ago my father followed her. But before he died he arranged for a friend of his, Henry Smith, who had gone to Los Angeles, to give me work. I came West. Mr. Smith sent me to business school for six months and then employed me. I lived with his family and was happy. Then came the Depression. It ruined Mr. Smith. He committed suicide. His family had to get out and fare for themselves. So did I. Jobs were easy to get. But I couldn’t keep them—I—I couldn’t—”

“Why not?” Lynn interposed deliberately and turned to look at her. That done he had neither inclination nor power to avert his fascinated gaze.

“Because the men who offered me jobs or tried me out wanted me to—to go out with them. I just couldn’t see it their way. So I kept tramping the streets. I lived on my savings, and they dwindled until I was broke. My landlady kept my few belongings and turned me out…. That day on Main Street I found an employment agency with a sign in the window, GIRLS WANTED. I went in. A woman told me she had jobs for waitresses in Las Vegas. That the town was booming with the building of Boulder Dam. I said I’d be glad to take any wages and go at once. Then she questioned me sharply, asked about relatives or friends in Los Angeles. When I explained I had none she said she would send me to Las Vegas that day by bus. She’d pay my fare and have someone meet me in Las Vegas. I had only an hour to get ready. I was ready, right then, and so I told her.”

“Well, Anne,” Lynn spoke up dryly as she paused for breath. “Strikes me you were pretty much of a tenderfoot to fall for that line so easily.”

“I was…. That woman went with me, put me on a bus. There were several other girls, two that I didn’t care to talk to. And one who couldn’t speak English. Other passengers got on at San Bernardino and Barstow. But I didn’t get acquainted with them. It was after dark when the bus got to Las Vegas. A man with a thin dark face and sharp dark eyes met me as if he knew me and took me to a house and gave me a room upstairs. He said he’d send my supper up to me—that Las Vegas was a wild town and I mustn’t go out. I was too tired and excited even to eat much.”

“Anne, you don’t look like a dumbbell,” Lynn burst out almost heatedly at the girl’s evident innocence. “Why, any kid would have been suspicious of that situation.”

“I thought it was strange, but I had no choice,” she went on mournfully. “I slept like a log. And I was awakened by a hard–faced woman who brought my breakfast. She told me to hurry and eat and said she’d be up again right away to talk about work. I ate my breakfast in bed and was just about to get up and dress when the woman came in again. She locked the door and gathered up my clothes. Then she went out and locked the door. I was horrified. But still I didn’t quite understand. When I began to look around I discovered the only window was a skylight in the ceiling. The walls were thick—the door heavy. Then I realized I was a captive. I wrapped a blanket round me. It seemed a long time before I heard any noise. Then I heard voices outside the door. It was a young man that entered—a well–dressed, smooth–faced chap, good–looking except for his eyes. They were hot, like molten metal. He carried a thin shiny whip in his hand. He talked sweet—I forget his words—tried to get fresh, and when I flung him off he cut me across the leg with the whip…. Look here.”

Whereupon the girl, now pale and earnest in her story, dropped the slipper off her right foot and let the blanket fall from her knees. She pulled up the pajamas Lynn had lent her and showed a shapely leg with a cruel red welt marring its white beauty.

Lynn bit his tongue to keep back a wrathful curse and could only stare in amazement and anger.

“That cut hurt so terribly I fell right down on the floor,” resumed the girl, once more lifting the blanket over her knees. “He would have struck me again, surely, when another man entered. He was older and had a face like a hawk. His right hand was in his pocket, and he stuck it out at the younger fellow. ‘Beat it!’ he said. As the first man ran out a third man came in. He was not young and somehow he was different. He looked only at my face. ‘It’s the girl I want, Bellew,’ he said. ‘She’s the one I saw brought off the bus….’ Bellew said, ‘Cost you ten grand, Ben Sneed,’ ‘Listen, hophead,’ replied Sneed, and his voice cut like a blade, ‘I’ll pay the ten grand, but right now—and take her away as soon as I can.’

“I remember every word they spoke. And I saw how Bellew stood with that pocket of his pointed toward Sneed. He had a gun in it, because I’d seen that in the movies…. ‘Bellew, I’ll talk turkey with you,’ Sneed said, cold as ice. ‘You lock this girl in here. You can go with me while I dig up that ten grand.’ ‘Ben you’re not the big shot in this burg,’ snarled Bellew. ‘You’re only a booze peddler. This is my racket.’ ‘Yes,’ said Sneed, ‘this racket is yours, all right, along with other dirty rackets, one of which is hijacking my trucks. I’m wise to you. And one more blow like that will be curtains for you and all of your gang. It’s not my way to talk turkey with men like you. That’s on account of this girl…. Come on, now, scram.’