It was late the next afternoon when Dick drove slowly along the trail. The three men were flat on their backs under the absorber, patching leaks, when they heard the squeak of the wagon and the soft tread of horses' hoofs in the sand. They made no attempt to greet him.

The next morning, however, Roger plodded up to the ranch house to consult with Dick about the moving of the oil. Although it was close to eight o'clock, Dick was just finishing breakfast. He was cheerful and talkative.

"Don't try to use horses," he urged. "There's old Rabbit Tail lives ten miles over the range. He's got a bunch of little wild burros and he does packing for the miners when there is any. He'll pack that oil for you."

Roger brightened up, then shook his head. "I can't pay him. The Smithsonian folks aren't coming up to the scratch and I've got to finish this job without funds. I've about twenty-five dollars in hand and two hundred more in sight. I thought perhaps I could exchange work with you. Help you to re-seed and then to increase your irrigating capacity here."

"Gosh, that's hard luck!" exclaimed Dick. "Did you hear that, Charley, about Roger's money?"

Charley, who had been busy in the kitchen, came in now with a fresh cup of coffee for Roger in one hand and an extra chair in the other. Had Roger's mind been less concentrated on the problem in hand he might have noted the fine ease with which she swung the chair up to the table for him before either he or Dick could proffer help. Charley was so slender that one did not easily recognize the splendid strength she sometimes displayed.

"Yes, I heard," said Charley with a look of sympathy at the restless fire in Roger's deep gray eyes. "I guess we're all up against it and will have to cultivate patience. Perhaps Rabbit Tail will trust you, Roger."

"I call him Roger dear, and he likes it. Why don't you too, Charley?" interrupted Felicia, coming in from the porch where she had been building an adobe doll house.

The abstracted look left Roger's face for a moment. "Yes, why don't you, Charley?" he asked with a grin that made his face look bright.

Charley laughed. "If it will make you look human, like that," she exclaimed, "I will call you anything you wish, Roger dear!"

Roger's grin faded to an expression that was curiously tense. Dick, who had been giving only half attention to this exchange, now said: "Rabbit Tail won't trust you. He's had too many dealings with the whites, poor devil. We'll have to break a trail to the mine and use our team. Just let me get that alfalfa in again, Roger, and I'll help you out."

"I can pay you up in days' work as far as the use of your time and team go," said Roger. "What I'll always be in your debt for is the advice and backing you give me."

Dick grunted. "I'm glad my four years' hell down here is of value to some one. I'll let you know when I've finished re-seeding."

"I want to help on that," insisted Roger. "Our international debt is getting too one-sided."

"Well, I'll be mighty grateful to you," sighed Dick. "I'll take your help on the re-seeding, but I'll be still more appreciative if you'll take a look at my gasoline engine to-morrow morning. I've spun that fly wheel until my hope of salvation's gone. And I've got to wet that field down."

"I'll get at it now," said Roger.

With Felicia trailing at his heels, Roger made his way to the shed beside the spring. The engine and pump were both old. Roger tinkered for a half hour, Felicia standing by to hand him the wrench or the oil can on demand.

"Do you love me, Roger?" the child asked, as Roger tugged at a rusty oil cup screw.

"I certainly do. Do you love me?"

"Yes. Do you love Charley?"

"Well, I'm fond of Charley. I've known her a long time, you know."

"But you aren't fonder of her than you are of me?" insisted Felicia.

"Certainly not! You're my best sweetheart. Now the oil can, Felicia."

The little girl stared at Roger, with speculative eyes. "Charley says you're very interesting. What is an interesting man, Roger?"

"One who knows how to start a gas engine, chicken," exclaimed Charley, coming into the shed. "Mercy, Felicia, are you always as personal as this?"

"Felicia is nothing if not feminine." Roger tugged at the fly wheel and grinned at Charley who made a little grimace.

"Roger likes it!" exclaimed Felicia. "He belongs to me, Charley. He likes me bettern you, he says so."

"Well, it is like this, Charley—" began Roger elaborately.

Charley cut him off with a wave of her hand. "Nothing can explain away that blow, Roger." Then she went on, soberly. "Do you suppose the old lemon will pull us through our first crop?"

"I don't know, Charley. One never does about a gasoline engine. There's always more life in an old one though than one realizes. If this does fail you, however, I'll be in running shape in two months' time with my solar engine. Don't forget that."

"When do you expect to make your first actual test?" asked Charley.

"Well, the engine will be here almost any time now. If the Dean has done a good construction job, I ought to be able to make a tentative connection in six weeks' time."

"How do you mean a good job?" asked Charley.

"Well, this is the first full size fifty horse power engine that we've built. You see, I've had no money and we've worked from models, though I did build one ten horse power engine. That worries me a little, but I'm sure that any defects that appear will be easily remedied. Now then, this old mule ought to begin to kick!"

Roger turned the fly wheel again and an obstinate Put! Put! Put! came from the engine, then a long pause, during which the audience of three waited anxiously, then a steady Put! Put! Put! Put! Put! that promised to last as long as did the gasoline.

"If the old thing could just realize all that depends on its behaving itself!" exclaimed Charley. "Roger, let's throw in the pump, I really believe it's going to run!"

And run it did, during the entire day, with only three stops for repair. Roger worked until late afternoon with Dick and the next day Gustav took his place. The damage done by the dust storm to the absorber was now completely remedied and Roger and Ernest began work on a shallow concrete trough on which the condenser was to be erected. By the time this was completed, Dick's second sowing was finished and he announced himself ready for road building.

At first, Roger felt violently resentful at the thought of having to build a road. It seemed to him that after all his years of patient persistency, fate at the last was playing him a scurvy trick. She had brought his goal within sight, only to beset it with delays and difficulties whose very paltriness it seemed to him he could not endure. And a feverish little flame of impatience began to glow within him that was not to be extinguished for many months. However when, pick in hand, he actually began with the others to break the road, a sudden elation swept over him. After all, primitive as this work might be, it was empire building of the most fundamental sort. And, in spite of his anxieties and impatience, Roger did his share of the road building with right good will.

They began work in the range back of the ranch, taking advantage of draw and canyon whenever possible, even when this demanded a long detour. Sometimes, the canyon bottoms were astonishingly level. At other times boulders and crevices would block them until they had made free use of dynamite. They had all sorts of minor mishaps. Dick was not an expert either in road grading or blasting, although he was far ahead of the Sun Planters in his information about both.

In running the road up the side of Snake Peak he used too heavy a charge and brought down a land slide which it took them a day to clear. On a previous day he had blasted too close to the wagon and a bowlder had smashed the rear axle. He took extraordinarily narrow chances with the steepness of grade but in spite of the Sun Planters' prophecies they did not lose either horses or wagon down canyon or mountain side. Ernest, however, slipped on top of one of the finished sections and rolled two hundred feet before he could stop himself.

When, after two weeks' steady labor, Dick pronounced the road good enough, the others looked at him aghast. "You'll break your wagon and your horses' necks, to say nothing of losing the oil!" protested Ernest.

Dick only laughed. "This is a boulevard compared with some of the desert routes I've taken. With just a few drums of oil lashed on at a time, we'll make it."

And make it he did, though nearly another week was consumed in the doing, and four drums of the oil were lost in different draws and canyons. After the road was finished, the transporting of the oil was turned over to Ernest and Dick while Roger and Gustav began the erecting of the condenser. Ernest was now quite reconciled to the use of the oil for Hackett had received a telegram from the owner in San Francisco that the deal was more than satisfactory to him.

Roger and Gustav worked well together. The self-controlled German, evidently accustomed to hard grind and overwork in an office job, was not in the least ruffled by Roger's impatient ways. And he distinctly enjoyed the vim and imagination that were characteristic of Roger's work even when it involved the seemingly simple task of cutting and threading condenser pipe. For cutting and threading condenser pipe so that it shall be leak proof is not a simple job at all.

April came to the desert with a noon temperature of a hundred degrees in the shade. Imperceptibly the daily breeze stiffened to a noon gale. There were no sand storms however for six weeks and the second alfalfa crop caught toe hold and grew, an amazing patch of green on the thirsty yellow sand.

The ranch house engine misbehaved, regularly, but Roger developed what Charley called actual genius for tinkering and somehow the five acres were watered. When the morning stillness was broken by the first uneven Put! Put! of the engine, the Sun Planters would pause in their work and listen intently. If, after due patience, the Put! Put! developed into a steady throb, they resumed work. But if after a spasm or two, silence reigned again, Roger would pull his hat over his eyes and start for the ranch, and eventually that day, water would be given the parching fields. In the meantime, Dick began to prepare a second five-acre patch for late sowing.

Early in the month Roger received a check from the Dean for one hundred and sixty dollars. He resolved to put all but a few dollars of this into a supply of food and with Charley's help, he made a list that Gustav filled at Hackett's. There was provision for over three months in this list and Roger felt sure that this period of time would see the completion of the plant.

A curt letter had come to Roger from the Smithsonian Institution saying merely that his case was being investigated and that in due time a report and decision would reach him. With this, Roger was obliged to be content. He had little faith, however, that the Institution would go on with Austin's undertaking and he resolved to push ahead with all speed, taking advantage of what was left of the golden opportunity Austin had offered him.

Late in April, the engine reached Archer's Springs. Hackett, who was properly equipped for heavy freighting, as poor willing Dick was not, undertook to haul the engine to the camp. He was entirely willing, he told Roger, to wait for his pay.

"No great loss," he said, "if I don't get it. But I got confidence in you and though your idea do seem awful nutty, if anything comes of it, I ain't going to have it said I done something to set back our community here. We got a great state and a great county and I'm here to promote 'em both."

So the dismantled engine was landed, without too great difficulty, in the waiting engine house and as soon as the condenser was finished, the three men began to set up this child of Roger's heart and brain. But after the heavy work was done Roger would let no one attempt adjusting the parts but himself. He set Ernest and Gustav to digging the oil pit for the storing of the sun-heated oil and spent his days and part of his nights in the engine house.

As the weeks slipped into May, many were the surmises as to what had become of the Von Mindens. The madam's tent stood just as she had left it and the burros she had left behind ranged about the desert, near the Preble corral, coming home each night for the good feed Dick gave them.

Almost every day Felicia came to the plant. Her love for Roger and Roger's for her was an accepted thing now between the two households. Only Charley could draw the child away from the abstracted, hard-driven young engineer and Dick showed his innate generosity in that though he adored the little girl he did not harbor a grudge because Felicia so frankly declared her preference for Roger.

After the condenser was finished Felicia took a deep interest in helping Roger to find leaks in the system. Roger taught her to squirt oil from an oil can over the different points and to interpret bubbles rising from the resulting oil flow as leaks. It was the quaintest sight in the world to see the slender little figure in blue overalls, brown head running over with short curls, crawling like a little lizard over the greasy pipes while Roger followed with pipe wrench, cold chisel and peen hammer. After Roger began work on the engine, Felicia became a sort of plumber's assistant and a clever one, at that.

Sometimes Charley came late in the afternoon to take Felicia home. She would perch on the edge of the work bench and talk to Roger about the work in a voice and with an unself-conscious manner so like her small sister's that Roger, his restless mind on the problems of his work, often confused the two girls in his thoughts and answered or directed them indiscriminately. And Charley would chuckle as she watched him.

The day in May that the men began a test for oil leaks in the absorber dawned with a promise of ferocious heat. Felicia appeared as usual but admitted that she had come over Charley's protest.

"We'll have to leave off work at eleven, and not begin again until three as Dick suggested, if this heat keeps up," observed Ernest.

"Then we'll begin work at dawn," said Roger, with a sigh. "Every minute counts, old man."

About nine o'clock Charley came panting down the trail.

"Felicia must come home at once," she cried. "There's a big sand storm coming. Dick is getting the stock under cover as fast as he can."

The men dropped their tools hurriedly and looked up the valley. A great gray cloud was approaching so rapidly that as they gazed they caught the sound of its increasing roar. The sky, which had been sapphire of an unusual translucence that morning, turned all in a moment to a sullen red gray. There was a dry rattle of lizards and horned toads scuttling into the roots of grease wood and cactus.

"You mustn't try to go home, Charley," exclaimed Roger.

"But I must! Dick and his alfalfa! He can't be alone!"

But Dick was destined to spend the day in solitude. With a very Niagara of sound the sand storm struck the camp. Charley and Felicia ran for the living tent where the men shortly joined them. They closed the flaps and settled to a day of discomfort. The engine house would have been more comfortable than the tent but it was too cumbered with machinery now to be used as a sitting room. There was no work that could be done indoors. The heat was stifling, a hundred and six the thermometer over the washstand trunk reported. The tent rocked and bellied, bellied and flapped with reverberations like drum-beats. Felicia was frightened at first and hid her head in Charley's lap. Charley herself was white-lipped, less, Ernest thought, from fear of the storm than from that vague apprehension about Dick that never seemed to leave her.

For a time Roger sat scowling with impatience, then Felicia's fear moved him and calling the child to him he began to tell her of the old swimming pool. The others listened and laughed and when Felicia begged for more, Gustav told a charming tale of his own Bavarian childhood. And he and Ernest sang together some tender folk songs which Felicia insisted on learning. While Gustav and Ernest undertook this pleasant task Charley and Roger talked.

At Charley's request, Roger brought out his blue prints and explained the plant to her. He felt his impatience lifting as he talked. Explaining his work always seemed to increase his critical vision. New ideas came flooding, and he pulled out his note book, feeling that after all the day was not entirely wasted.

So, in spite of the bitter taste of alkali in their mouths and its sting in their eyes, in spite of the breathless burning heat, the morning passed cheerfully. They even managed to satisfy their hunger with canned beef and canned brown bread. They had washed down the last of the unsavory lunch with the tepid, nauseously alkaline water from the olla when a gust of wind of tremendous proportions tore open the door flap and filled the room with a blinding swirl of sand. At the same moment there was a fearful crash from without, followed by the sound of breaking glass. Leaving Charley to refasten the door flap, the three men bolted toward the absorber.

The sand cloud was so dense that they could distinguish little until in actual contact with the edge of the trough. Then the trouble was obvious. A part of the sheet iron roof had blown off the engine house, and lay in a great twisted heap on the absorber. Roger immediately crawled under the trough. The heavy metal had pierced the floor of the absorber and oil was pouring out in a thin but steady stream. He pawed his way out hurriedly.

"Go shut the oil off, Ernest," he shouted, "and get pails to catch that oil. Why the devil did some one leave the valve open? Gustav, give me a hand with this mess. Why didn't we have sense enough to fasten it securely? If we don't move it, it may blow the length of the trough."

Roger plunged hastily up among the panes of broken glass, Gustav following. After a moment of effort the guilty mass of sheet iron was shoved over onto the sand. Just at the last a particularly vicious blast of wind twisted it violently against Gustav's bare arm.

"Du lieber Gott!" he roared. "Be careful yet!"

"Now let's cover the engine," shouted Roger, giving no heed to Gustav's cry.

"Hell mit the engine! Look!" Gustav thrust his left hand in Roger's face. The sleeve was dripping blood. Roger seized Gustav's arm tightly above the elbow. "Come over to the tent, Gustav," he said.

Stumbling blindly through the sand drifts the two men reached the tent, where just as they crept inside the flap, Gustav fainted. Charley ran forward and before Roger could protest had helped lift Gustav to his cot.

"I don't think it's so bad. He never can stand the sight of blood," said Roger.

They stripped back the sleeve as Roger spoke. A gash several inches long in Gustav's upper arm had laid bare the bone. Felicia began to cry.

"I've got a first aid kit, somewhere," said Roger, running to dig wildly through the trunks, emerging in a moment with a black box, from which he produced a tourniquet. They applied this quickly.

"Now, is there some alcohol here?" asked Charley. "We will wash it off with that until we can boil some water. Felicia, you go put all the things back nicely in the boys' trunks, and don't pay any attention to us."

Felicia was quickly absorbed in this altogether fascinating task, while Charley's skillful fingers made a temporary bandage for Gustav's arm. He was conscious now and offered a sick protest against Charley's suggestion:

"Let's cut this shirt off him, Roger. It's saturated with blood. I'll sew it up for him later."

Gustav sat up and before he could do more, Roger and Charley had removed his shirt. To their surprise they found he was wearing two, the second shirt having a particularly huge pocket, full of papers that were blood saturated.

"Don't touch that, don't!" cried Gustav. Then catching sight of the blood stains, he fainted again.

"Who'd think old Gustav was such a perfect lady," chuckled Roger. "Here, let's get him cleaned up now before he comes to, again."

They pulled off the second shirt, and put on one of Roger's fresh ones. Then while Charley gave Gustav some water, Roger took the papers from the bloody pockets of the second shirt.

"I'll wipe these off before the blood sets," he said. Then his eye caught a memorandum in German "Low pressure engine—new detail. Moore." Roger quickly opened the paper. It was about six inches square and was a copy of a detail of one of Roger's patent drawings.

"I'll be damned!" muttered Roger, his face flushing darkly.

He ran through other sheets. There were more drawings and some carefully written notes on Roger's general scheme for heat utilization. He was reading these very deliberately when Ernest came in.

"Whew, what a country!" began Ernest, then he stopped with a gasp.

Gustav, who was sitting up again, groaned weakly.

"I vas a chicken-fool, eh, Miss Charley?"

Roger crossed to the bed with a stride. "Look here, Schmidt," he said, "the sooner you get your things together and get out of here, the better I'll like it."

Gustav stood up. His jaw dropped. Then his eye fell on the papers in Roger's hand.

"I told you not to take off the shirt from me!" he cried.

"What's the matter, Rog?" asked Ernest.

"Matter? Matter? Why, this fellow is a thief. He's been stealing my ideas. Go on now! Get out of here!"

Ernest took the blood-stained papers and glanced at them hurriedly.

"Hold on! Be cool, Roger! Give Gustav a chance to explain."

"Explain! Explain what? Just how he stole these? Tear those papers up, Ernest, and take this Dutchman out of my sight. Get him out, I tell you."

Ernest hesitated. In all the years he had known Roger he never had seen him in a passion like this. Felicia flew over to Charley who stood with wide troubled eyes on Roger's distorted face. The child was white and trembling.

"Ernest!" thundered Roger.

With a glance at Gustav, Ernest began to tear up the papers.

"Roger! Please! Bitte! I can explain," began Gustav.

"Don't speak to me. I've heard vague stories of how German manufacturers get their ideas. This, I know: in the morning, you'll start for Archer's Springs, you skunk!"

"Oh, Rog!" protested Ernest.

"How dare you protest, Ernest?" Roger turned on his friend furiously. "You know what that engine means to me. You know the difficulty of patent protection and now this dirty hound—"

"Here! That I von't take from any man," cried Gustav. "You vas acting like a fool, Roger."

Roger lunged forward with his right fist swinging. But before Ernest could interfere, Charley had caught the clenched fist with both her hands, and was clinging to it with all her fine strength.

"Oh, Roger!" she cried. "Oh, Roger! Roger!"

Roger dropped his arm and stared at her for a moment. Her eyes, so like Felicia's, so unlike them, returned his furious gaze, unflinching. Suddenly, he grew pale and without a word, turned on his heel and left the tent.

He made his way to the engine house. Ernest had covered the engine with a tent fly, but Roger did not even glance at the idol of his heart. He made his way back where the roof still offered some protection from the storm and sat down on an empty box. An hour, then another slipped by, the sand sifting heavily on Roger as he crouched motionless, his head in his hands.

At the end of the first hour, the storm had lessened perceptibly and by the time the second had passed, the westering sun was flashing through the dusty windows. Voices outside did not rouse Roger, but when Charley slipped in through the sagging door, he looked up. The girl returned his look soberly and sat down on a pile of adobe brick near him.

Roger looked at her curiously. No one, excepting his mother, had ever before checked one of his flights of fury, midway. Sometimes, as in the episode with young Hallock, he had been able to check himself, but this was not frequent.

"Why did you do that? Why did you interfere?" he asked abruptly.

"I couldn't stand by and see you make a mess of your life," replied Charley, "just as things seemed to be going well."

"Going well!" repeated Roger sardonically. "Why, I've been sitting here for hours, bringing myself to the realization of the fact that my life is a hopeless mess. I can't trust any one. I can't get help. I can't do it all alone. I'm going to quit this game and get a job."

"Roger," said Charley slowly, "do you want to know what's the matter with you, aside from your temper? You're completely work- and self-centered. You don't take human beings into your calculations at all. And you won't be a real success until you get to studying and liking people as well as you do machinery. If you'd given about a tenth of the thought to Gustav that you have, say, to stopping the leaks in the condenser, and then if you'd used the same patience with him to-day that you would to a big leak in the pipes, you'd be farther ahead on your job and a good deal bigger man. Roger, the more I see of you the more I'm convinced that your failure is a good deal less the result of other people's indifference than it is of your own temperamental peculiarities and weaknesses."

Roger's face flushed again. "What business have you got talking this way to me?" he blurted out, angrily.

"Every business in the world," returned Charley serenely. "I like you, and your work is very important. Anything I can do to help get it across, I'm going to do, regardless of your feelings. I have an idea that no one has really helped you since your mother died—that is, with your temper."

The anger died out of Roger's eyes. Once again he seemed to feel that faint and heavenly touch upon his forehead. It did not seem to him possible that what this girl said of him was true. And yet there was in the depths of her steady brown eyes a sort of ageless wisdom that made him feel awkward and immature. An ageless wisdom, with the sweetness and purity of the child Felicia's gaze. Lovely drooping lips that were Felicia's, and yet were, because of their sad patience, not Felicia's, but belonged to a woman who reminded him of his mother.

Roger continued to stare at Charley as if he never had seen her before. After a moment he said in a half-whisper, "By Jove, I believe you are a friend to me—with nerve enough to tell me the truth as you see it, which Ernest never had. And he's been my only friend. Perhaps you're right, perhaps part of the fault has been with myself. O Lord, Charley! I do need some one to tell me the truth, I certainly do."

Charley put out her hand to lay it on Roger's shoulder.

"Poor child!" she said, softly.

In a moment, Roger was a little boy again, back at his mother's side. "O God!" he whispered, and throwing himself forward on his knees, buried his head in Charley's lap. She laid her hand on his head with the touch that had been his mother's. "Poor lonely child," she said again. And for the first time in nearly ten years, Roger burst into tears.

Charley, smoothing his heavy black hair, said nothing more until Roger sheepishly raised his head and pulled out a very dirty handkerchief.

Then she said in a very matter-of-fact voice, "By the way, as soon as the storm let up a little, I had Ernest take Gustav up to the ranch. I can take care of him up there and I didn't want Dick to be alone any longer."

"Where's Felicia?" asked Roger.

"She's asleep in the tent, I must wake her up and take her home now. The storm is over."

"Leave her with me a little while," said Roger. "I'll bring her home."

"All right, come up for supper. Ernest and Dick will help me get it."

Roger nodded and Charley started along the drifted trail to the ranch while Roger went to the tent. Felicia slept on while he shaved and put the tent in order. Then he stooped over the cot and raised her.

"Suppertime, little sweetheart," he said.

Felicia woke with a start. "Don't be cross, Roger," she exclaimed after blinking at him for an instant.

"I couldn't be cross with you, Felicia," Roger lifted her in his arms and held her against his heart.

"Never, Roger?"

"Never, Felicia. You must never be afraid of me, even when I scold other people. Because I love you very much, Felicia."

The child threw her arms around Roger's neck and they both looked off to the ranch house, where the windows glowed red in the sunset. There was something infinitely soothing to Roger in Felicia's embrace and he held her until she wriggled impatiently and announced that she was hungry.

"We'll head for supper," he said, and putting her down he took her hand and they started through the sand for the ranch and Charley. Gustav was waiting for them at the edge of the corral.

"Felicia, you run on up to the house and tell Charley I'll be there in a minute," said Roger.