s capability. Brayley could read
little and spell less; he was a clown and a boor in the matter of the
finer, exacting social traditions; but he could run a cattle-range,
and he read his men as other men read books. Conniston realized
suddenly, shocked with the realization, that in Brayley there was that
same sort of thing which he had come to respect in Argyl Crawford, the
same open frankness, the same straightforward honesty, the same deep,
wide generosity.

Argyl, too, entered into the confusion of his gladness and
disappointment at the coming change of sphere. He had planned to spend
many an evening with her; and now, just as he was finding the door to
her comradeship opened to him, he was to be whisked away from her.

But on the other hand Conniston's optimism saw ahead of him, in the
new field of work, the dim, shadowy, and at the same time alluring
outline of a new and rare opportunity. He had not forgotten the things
which Mr. Crawford had said of his big project. And in spite of his
own deprecatory answer to Mr. Crawford's straightforward question,
Greek Conniston had not forgotten all of the engineering he had
absorbed during four years in the university. There was work to be
done, there were men wanted, above all, men who could understand
something beyond the pick-and-shovel end of the thing, men who knew
the difference between a transit and a telescope.

And the work itself appealed to him strangely now that that labor was
not without independence, not without a stern sort of dignity even. To
take a stretch of dry, hot sand, innocent of vegetation, to wrest it
from the clutch of the desert as from the maw of a devastating giant,
to bring water mile upon mile from the mountain canons, to make the
sterile breast of the mother earth fertile, to drive back the horned
toad and the coyote, to make green things spring up and flourish, to
carve out homes, to cause trees and flowers and vines to give shade
and disseminate fragrance, even as time went on to wring moisture from
the lead-gray sky above--it was like being granted the might of a
magician to touch the desert with the tip of his wand, bringing life
gushing forth from death.

When night came Conniston trudged from the corrals to the bunk-house
and his evening meal devoutly thankful that the long day was gone. His
hand pained him constantly, and in the sharp twinges which shot
through it the lesser hurt of his cut cheek was forgotten. The greater
part of