Chapter XV · OUT OF THE SHADOW.

Nash slept little the remainder of the night, for the smashing of the water main and the total destruction of the newly built conduit worried him. Things had been running so smoothly for the past few months that this interruption came as a shock. He did not like to suspect any of his own men of the outrage, yet it seemed impossible that an outsider could elude the watchmen and perpetrate such an act.

Early the following morning he called together all his subforemen, warning them not to allow a stranger within the camp limits unless he showed the proper credentials.

“Without water,” he told them, “our construction work cannot go on. We must guard it as we would our lives. Use as many watchmen at night as you think best—better too many than not enough. Now, let’s see if we can’t nip this thing in the bud. I’m willing to pay a substantial reward for the capture of these culprits.”

The men responded eagerly, and Nash felt confident that they would do all in their power to prevent another such outrage.

Late that same afternoon, while at work in his office, Nash was interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Come in!” he shouted.

The door was opened, and the girl of the previous day’s adventure stood before him. She was dressed in a khaki riding habit, brown boots, and a wide-brimmed sombrero.

“Oh!” Nash said, smiling. “Pardon my shouting, won’t you? I thought it was one of the men. Come right in and sit down.”

She thanked him, drawing off her riding gloves, and sinking into the chair he had hurriedly placed for her. “You see, I’ve kept my promise. Your pony is outside. He’s a little beauty—sure-footed as a deer. And mine——”

“I found yours halfway to camp,” he answered. “It’s in the barn. I’ll give orders to have it brought around. Your saddle is here.” He pointed to the corner. “I thought it would be safer. Is it your own saddle?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He went over to the telephone. So those little maps really belonged to her, he said to himself. What use could she have for such technical drawings? And what was the meaning of his name and the note on one of the drawings?

“Hello!” The barn boss was on the wire. “Send over the horse I brought in last night, will you?” said Nash. “No, only the bridle. The saddle is here. Right away, please.”

He hung up the receiver and turned to his visitor.

“I believe you’re getting tanned,” he said, searching her face critically, thoughtfully.

She laughed. “Really? And in one day? Well, I have to begin some time, don’t I? And if I stay at the ranch for six months I suppose I’ll be as dark as an Indian.”

“Oh, then you’re going to be a permanent visitor?”

She nodded. “Shall I be a welcome one?” she ventured.

“At Camp Forty-seven, yes,” Nash answered.

“Oh, I’m carried away with this wonderful country!” she exclaimed, her eyes sparkling. “How much I’ve missed by living all these years in the East! And this aqueduct building is so interesting. You don’t realize how I enjoy watching the work. I should have been a man, I guess. I’d really love to get down with the laborers and mix cement.”

“Well,” Nash returned, in mock seriousness, “perhaps I can give you a job. It would be a novelty for our camp, at least.”

They laughed. Presently the girl’s horse was brought around to the door.

“Maybe you’d like to take a little inspection trip with me?” he suggested. “I generally make the rounds about this hour.”

She gladly assented.

Nash had the saddle adjusted.

“Do you know,” he said abruptly, just before helping her into the saddle, “you haven’t told me your name?”

“Miss Breen,” she told him. “I really should have introduced myself yesterday. I was too upset, I guess.”

They jogged along the main street of the camp, and then struck sharply up the winding trail, reaching the summit of the hill after a ten-minute climb. From this point of vantage a five-mile view of the conduit construction was visible.

“There!” he said, drawing rein and sweeping his hand up and down the valley. A little, amazed cry escaped her lips.

“Oh, it’s wonderful, isn’t it?”

“It is more than that, Miss Breen,” he replied. “I don’t know where there is a greater undertaking on the face of the earth than this one. Why, every time I ride here and look over that lengthening line of conduit, I feel like shouting to the very heavens. And to think that my city is doing it all!”

She turned curiously, moved by his tone. “You—you’re a Los Angeles man?”

“To the core!” he answered. “Do you blame me for being proud? How many cities would dare even to dream of such a marvelous waterway? Oh, out here in the West, Miss Breen, men are doing the impossible!” In a calmer voice, he added: “This will be the longest aqueduct in the world—two hundred and fifty miles. Think of it! It will carry ten times as much water as all the aqueducts of Rome combined.”

The girl did not answer, but her gaze was riveted upon the winding, glistening length of concrete far below.

“We’re bringing the snow waters of the great Sierra Nevada Mountains across the Mohave Desert,” he continued, “across the deep cañons, through many tunnels, and finally beneath the Sierra Madre range. And a city of three hundred thousand people voted a bond issue of twenty-five millions to accomplish this feat of daring.”

“It must be a great satisfaction to a man to know that his brain and his hands are helping this dream of a city to become a reality,” Miss Breen remarked, after a pause.

“Yes,” said Nash. “We forget it is work. Wasn’t it Kipling who said the highest pleasure that could come to a man was in the realization of a task well done?”

“‘Each for the joy of the working,’” the girl quoted softly. “I think that’s the verse.”

For a little time they were silent, wrapped in their own thoughts. The girl was idly fingering her pony’s mane; Nash was watching the white plumes of steam that arose from the big dredges, far in the distance. Then he swept his eyes to an opposite part of the valley.

“Over there,” he said quietly, but with a touch of pride, “I’m starting a ‘coyote.’”

The girl looked to where his finger pointed. She could barely make out a black hole a few yards below the summit of a hill.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“A coyote is the name we use for that little tunnel. You can barely make out the mouth of it from here. We’ve got to level off the top of that hill. To accomplish it, we send in a drift; then, at the end of it, we hollow out a big chamber. This is filled with dynamite—a half a hundred boxes probably. Wires are laid from it across the valley and to the top of another hill. At the proper time, an electric battery is attached to the wires, a button is pressed—and bang! The top of the hill goes up in the air.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, gripping her hands. “It must be a wonderful sight. May I watch it?”

“It won’t be ready for another week yet,” he answered. “But when we touch off the battery you’ll see the prettiest exhibition of fireworks this side of Manhattan Beach.”

In a little while they rode down the slope once more and along the busy line of operations. He explained everything to her, in the simplest terms; she appeared deeply interested, and asked a hundred questions, some of which puzzled Nash, not because of their difficulty, but rather because they were so unexpected. It seemed strange to him that a girl like Miss Breen, apparently in this part of the country for health and recreation, should manifest such a keen desire for technical knowledge.

She betrayed immediate interest in the humanlike electric shovels, and at the grinding, growling, dust-hidden cement mixers, and at the spiderlike derricks that picked up tons of steel with the ease of a man lifting a sheet of paper.

Finally he took her to where the first siphon was being erected.

“You see,” he explained patiently, “when we come to a valley, or to any depression, we’re compelled to use these immense steel mains. Through them the water is shot down one side and up the other. This one building is ten feet in diameter. In New York, if you remember, there is a siphon bored through solid granite, running beneath the Hudson River, and bringing water from the Catskill Aqueduct. With the exception of a small length of pressure pipe in use at Niagara Falls, our siphons are the largest and longest in the world.”

“I should think the force of the water would soon burst even the best of steel,” she announced suddenly.

“It would,” Nash replied, smiling at her remark. “Water will break steel like an eggshell, unless, of course, the steel is of a certain thickness and tensile strength.”

Miss Breen went over and looked at a huge section of steel pipe which was almost ready to be riveted in place.

“It doesn’t look very strong,” she said.

Nash laughed. “The aqueduct engineer spent many months figuring out the right thickness. Specifications to the thousandth of an inch are given.”

“And do you order the steel?” she asked.

He nodded. “That is one of the easy jobs,” he said. “’Most anybody can follow printed specifications.”

It was growing darker steadily. They had been so interested that the time had been forgotten; turning from their observations, they saw that the men had deserted the conduit work, and that all the big machines had stopped.

“How quiet it is!” Miss Breen said, as they walked back to where the ponies were hitched.

“I’ll ride with you as far as the high trail,” Nash volunteered, drawing out his watch, and surprised that the hands marked six o’clock. “Are you afraid to go on to the ranch alone?”

“Of course not. I haven’t been afraid since I left the East. Somehow, one forgets there is such a word out here.”

As he swung into his saddle, his coat flew up a little, and disclosed a weapon in his hip pocket.

“A revolver!” she exclaimed. “Why, what are you afraid of, Mr. Nash?”

“It isn’t that I’m afraid,” Nash told her gravely; “but in an argument, the man with a gun generally wins out.”

“I suppose, being a Californian, you’re a good shot?” Miss Breen said. “I suppose it comes natural, doesn’t it?”

Nash shook his head and smiled into her anxious face. “What makes you think that? All Easterners think the same. They want to believe that every man between here and the Colorado line carries a six-shooter or two. Nothing could be more absurd. The real gunman is found in the big cities. Why, I’ll wager there are more men in New York City to-day carrying guns than in the whole State of California.”

“Well,” she returned, “I always imagined because one was in the West that——” She stopped suddenly. “Look there! A snake!”

Nash jerked the gun from his pocket, aimed it swiftly, and tightened his finger upon the trigger. The hammer fell in obedience to the pressure on the trigger, but only a hollow click resulted.

“Jove!” he exclaimed, realizing the truth instantly. “I used this revolver last night, and forgot to load it again.”

“An unloaded gun isn’t of much use, is it?” Miss Breen said, laughing with him, and watching the snake crawl safely away.

“On the contrary,” Nash responded, “it is.”

She frowned. “But how? Why, the other man could——”

“Could, but wouldn’t,” Nash interrupted. “It’s the gun he’s afraid of, not the bullet. And being gun-shy is about the commonest of human traits. As a general rule, you’ll find it is the Eastern man who is most likely to pack around a gun. He considers it a necessary part of his Western equipment—the same as fringed gloves, chaps, knotted bandannas, and jingling spurs.”

She did not answer him immediately, and they rode on in the silence. The twilight still lasted; an awesome hush brooded over the purpling hills. The hard outlines of the slim pines and the gaunt ridges of rock softened in the tender light. The air, sweet with the fragrance of wild flowers, tempered by the banks of snow on the higher ranges, swept to the faces of the riders.

“What is that?” Miss Breen asked abruptly, pointing below, to where a black line wound along the foot of the cliff.

“That is part of our water main,” Nash responded, following the direction of her finger. “It is piped from camp to camp. A half mile on down the line is where——”

He stopped so unexpectedly that the girl bent forward in her saddle and peered into his face. Nash had caught sight of a dark form slipping along the pipe line. The outrage of the previous night was instantly recalled to his mind.

He dropped from his saddle. “You’d better remain right where you are, Miss Breen.”

Luckily they had stopped well within the shadow of a cliff. The man below them came on cautiously, unable to distinguish the two who waited on the trail.

Miss Breen had slipped from her saddle and had joined Nash. Both were crouching behind a jagged point of rock.

Nash’s eager, searching eyes had discovered something that fairly made his pulses race. The advancing man was carrying a long-handled hammer over his shoulder.

“What—what is it?” the girl stammered, awed by the silence.

“You’d better not stay here,” Nash told her again.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to capture this man,” he declared. “He may be armed. You had better get back of——”

The man was so near now that Nash could distinguish the wide-brimmed sombrero and the glistening silver ornaments on the band. At the moment his eyes gathered in these details, he was surprised by a quick, choking cry that fell from Miss Breen’s lips.

The advancing man must have heard, for he stopped, rigid as a statue. His face, protected by the big hat, was shrouded in shadow.

Although mystified at the girl’s action, Nash knew no time was to be wasted. He jerked out his gun, and stepped from the shadow.

“Hands up, you!” he exclaimed grimly.

The man reeled back. Nash spoke again sharply. The arms shot skyward, the heavy hammer crashing to the rocks behind him.

“Keep them there,” cautioned Nash. “Now, walk forward! Careful! No tricks, or I’ll——” He moved his revolver suggestively.

The man came forward slowly, step by step. Then, just as his features were beginning to grow distinct, Miss Breen lifted a shrill, frightened voice:

“Run, run! His gun isn’t loaded!”

In a flash, hardly before Nash could realize what had been said, the man dropped his arms, vaulted the line of pipe, and was instantly swallowed by the shadows.

TO BE CONTINUED.

BREATHING THROUGH THE NOSE.

It is all important, in order to preserve the system from shock and the danger of contamination by foreign substances, that before the air enters the lungs it should be made as nearly as possible of the same temperature as the blood, and should be deprived of all particles of dust, which might be a hindrance to the bodily functions.

The entire course of the tortuous nasal canal is lined with mucous membrane, and this membrane is of a highly vascular structure. That is to say, the whole tissue is flushed with blood by a perfect network of vessels, over which the air we breathe passes, and from which it borrows the requisite heat. The mucus which is secreted by the membranes is also advantageous in rendering the atmosphere suitably moist.

In the light of these considerations, the difference between air breathed in through the nose and that taken in by the mouth becomes at once apparent. In the first case it is gently drawn in through the winding canals, and is tempered and purified on the way, while the air which reaches the lungs by way of the mouth comes upon them all at once, and is identical in nature with the surrounding atmosphere, whether that be warm or cold, dry or moist, full of dust or free from it.

Of no less importance than the benefits accruing to the whole system from properly breathing through the nose are those which result to the nasal membranes themselves. In the process of imparting heat and moisture to the air as it passes over them, the tissues are prevented from accumulating an oversupply of mucus, and any excess by blood pressure in the parts is relieved by the contact of the cold air which is constantly breathed in. One investigator has even gone so far as to assert that many forms of colds may be greatly benefited by a correct breathing exercise taken every few hours.

However that may be, it is certain that the disadvantages of mouth breathing are too numerous and glaring to be lightly passed over.