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?, ,/ SYNOPSIS. k | CHAPTER I?K. C. Rickard, a : engineer of the Overland Pacific, i j i called to the office of President Mar j . shall in Tucson, Ariz. "Casey" is an , enigma to the office force; he wear i "dude" clothes, but he had resigned ' a chair of engineering in the East t -j ' go on the road as a fireman and hi ' ] promotion had been spectacular.1 While waiting for.Marshall Richard ' reads a report on the ravages of the ] Colorado, despite the efforts of Tho- , ma^Hardin of th e. Desert Reclama-j1 tion .company# This Hardin had been , - nn/iai> PiVIrnrH And had CL Diuutui/ uimvi ~ 1 t married Gerty Holmes, with whom . Rickai'd had fancied he .was in love. | CHAPTER II?Marshall tells Rick- 1 ard the Overland Pacific has got to 1 step, in tot save the * Imperial Valley ' * \and sends him to the break. Rickartl < declines because he does not want to ' stfpplant Hardin, but is won over.'. '.'Stop the River; damn the expense,": i Say's Marshall. CHAPTER III?Rickard journeys ; to Calexico, sees the irrigated desert ! and learns much about Hardin and. 1 his work. j' > CHAPTER IV?At the hotel he,' meets Mr. and Mrs. Hardin and Innes j Hardin, Hardin's half sister. Diaap-| ( pointed in her husband and an in- < rvj corrigible coquette, Mrs. Hardin sets ] her cap for her former lover and invites him to dinner. . , CHAPTER V?Rickard visits the company's offices and takes control. ' He finds the engineers loyal'to Har- 1 din and hostile to him. Estrada, a 1 Mexican, son of the "Father of the i Imperial Valley," tells him of the ] general situation. CHAPTER VI?Rickard attends a meeting of the directors and asserts . his .authority. Hardin rages. Estrada . tellk Rickard of his foreboding that liis work will fail. "I can't see it finished." ? 1 * CHAPTER VII?Innes is discovered in her garden. She tries to cheer up Hardin, who is furious against Rickard. (Continued From Tuesday) CHAPTER Vin. ' *1 suppose you think I like to take orders, to jump at the snap of the whip?" Be was deliberately beating up his anger Into a froth. ''Oh, sure, I do. # That's a Hardin, through and* through." . ? Again the angry blood flooded his wife's cheeks. He, too, was throwing j the boarding house at her. "You did it yourself/' Gerty with difficulty was withholding the angry tears. "I told you how It would be. You would do it." "Oh, hell!" cried Tom, pushing back j his plate. His sister looked drearily- out the wire-screened door. "Her view was a dusty street Hardin got up, scraping his chair over the board floor. . "And to keep }t from me," persisted , the wife. "To let me ask him to,din-' ner?" - - 1 "Does that dismal farce have to go , o!)?" demanded Hardin, turning back ] to the table. "^You'll .ha*s to have It j without me, then. Til not stay and make a fool of myself. Ask him to dinner. Me! Ill see myself." Tnnos vUhoH aha was In tho npifh- < boring tent. Tom was lashing himself { Into a coarse fury. I < her dismay, Gerty burst Into I < tears. It was killing her, the disgrace, she cried. She couldn't endure it. She couldn't stand it there; she had not | the courage to go to Los Angeles, < u where her friends would pity her. It j was crushing her. She was not a Hardin.; she was sensitive; she could not i Justify everything a Hardin did as ] right, no matter what the consequences. The pretty eyes obscured, she rushed, a \ streaming Nlobe, Jrom the room. . . \ The brother and sister avoided each I other's eyes. Innes rose and cleared the table of the dishes. She made a 1 loud noise with the running water in 1 the shed, racketing the pans to drown the insistence of Gerty's sobbing. She kept listening for Tom's step. She wanted to go with h*u when he 1 left; he must not reach the office in ] the blackness of that mood. She 1 wished he would not' betray his feel- 1 lngs; yet she knew it was not he who ' was to blame. , When she heard the screen door J slam, she flashed out the back way. "Going?" she called after him. "Walt for me." She dashed into her tent for her hat. She had to run to catch up with him. ' * CHAPTER IX ; i The Rival*. Prom the window of the adobe office building of the company, Hardin saW RJekard Jump from the rear platform . of the train bm It slowed into the eta- 1 ? tion. He noticed that the new manage! carried no bfg. - >?. v: . -"Wooder. what he'e_ dedded to do _ ?*%>*. i mK EDNAH > AIKEN <5> Twroooa& rt&wu. cowH#y about the headgate. He didnrt waste much time" out there." Hardin was fidgeting in his seat, his eyes on the annronrhinc ficrure. Riekard passed through the room,; nodding to his office force. The door of the inner office shut behind him. Hardin stared at the blank surface. He moved restlessly in his swivel chair. Did the fellow think a big thing like that could hang on while he unpacked tiis {runks and settled his bureau drawers? He picket! up a pencil-, jabbing at' the paper of his report. He covered the sheet with figures?three hundred ?six hundred. Six hundred feet. Whose fault that the intake had (videqed, doubling Jts width, trebling Its problem? Whose but-Marshall's, svho had sent down one of his office clerks to see what Hardin was doing? Wouldn't any man In his senses know that the way_Maitland would distinguish himself would" be by discrediting Hardin, "by throwing bouquets to Marshall; praising his plan? They all go at It the same sickening way.I.-Office clerks, bah! Sure. Maitland had advised against the completion of the gate. Said it would cost more In time and money than Hardin's estimates. "Thanks to Maitland it did," growled Hardin, scrawling figures over the page. "By the time Maitland finished monkeying with that toy dam of his the river had widened the break from three hundred to six hundred feet. For that, they throw mtJd at me. Oh*, it makes me sick." Hardin flung, his broken pencil out of the window. > Rlckard re-entered the room. The question leaped from Hardin. "The headgate?are you going on Hth ltr. v . ' , . j . ' Rickard looked curiously at the Elushed antagonistic face of the man "Are You Going On With ItT* tie had supplanted. The thought crossed his mind that perhaps Hardir bad taken to drinking. It' made his answer curt. "I don't know." "You don't know!" "I have no report to make, Mr. HarJin, until I see the gate." "And you went to the Crossing with3Ut going down to the headgate?" HarJln did not try to conceal his disgust. "I did not go to the Crossing." "Didn't go?!" Hardin's mouth was igape. Then he rudely swivefed his :hair. The door slammed behind Rlckird. Hadn't been to the Crossing? Then svhere in Hades did he go? He halted MacLean who was passing him. "Are you going to the Crossing tomorrow ?" Hardin knew he should be too proud to betray his eagerness, but the words ran away with him. "Not tomorrow. Mr. Rickard just told n.* I?e might not be able to get off until nest week." Harbin's anger sputtered. "Next week. "Why does he rush so? Why doesn't he go next year? The Colorado's so gentle, it'd wait for him, I'm sure. Next week! It's a put-up Job, that's what it is. Oh, I can see through a fence with a knothole as big as your head. He doesn't want to finish the hooHfyofrt T3a wonla fn rvtif nffi (rnlnf* UVMUJjUlt. JLAt TT Ul^lO W J/Ul, ?v??'0 until It's too late to go on with it; I know him. He'd risk the whole thing, and all the money the O. P. has chucked intOv it, just to start with a clean slate; to get the glory of stopping the river himself. It turns my stomach; itfs a plot." The lower lip shot out. MacLean's attention was deferential. He had always liked Hardin; all the fellow's did. But he was jumping oft wrong this time. He'd brought It all on himself. "He safd something about a levee for the towns. He's got to Investigate that before he goes to the front" .__"A levee?, Wall, wouldn't that jar you?" Hardin addressed the stenographer in the transparent shirtwaist. "Does he think we're going to have another flood this season? Thinks it's going to reach the hotel and wet his clothes? Take the starch out of his shirts?" He flung out of his chair, throwing the papers back into the drawer. He stamped out of the office, mad clear through. To this crisis they had sent down a dandy, a bookman who wanted to build a levee. Oh, hell! "They'll come crawling after me "to ihelp them after this fellow's buried himself under river mud, come calling to me as they did after Maitland failed. 'Please, Mr. Hardih, won't you come back and finish your gate!' I'll see them dead first. No, I'll be fool enough j to do it. I can't help myself. I'm a Hardin. I have to finish what I've begun." It was not because this was a pet pnfprnrisp tlip civnt xvnrlr nf Ills life. that he must eagerly eat humble pie, take the buffets, the falls, and eonje whining back when they whistled to him. He told himself it was because of his debt to the valley, to the ranchers. The colonists were about desperate. Who could blame them ? The last year's floods had worked havoc with their crops; this year had been a horror. The district they called No. G was a screaming irony of ruin. The last debauch of the river had made great gashes through the ranches, had scoured deep gorges which had undermined the canals on which the water supply for No. 6 depended. The suits were piling up against the D. R., damage suits, and they hold up his gate, while he gets the, curses of the valley. And Mr. Rickard thinks he'll build .a levee I Hp " ' ' v , / ..unrig himself on. the couch in thfc tent.' Gerty was laying a careful Hnth cimnpr A hrnv#?. dptprminpri smile was arranged on her-.jUEs- The nooh stojjn had passed. She hammed a gay little tune. If there was. anything Hardin hated it was humming. , , "You'll have your dude to dinner all right," her husband announced. "He's in town." ^ "Yes, I know," rejoined his jjpouse. "I had a letter from him yesterday! From Imperial." Tom sat up glaring. "He wrote to you from Imperial?" His wife misplaced the accent. She misunderstood Tom's scowl. It was the old story over again. Whenever those two men came together the old feeling of Jealousy must be revived again! It was unpleasant, of course, very unpleasant, to have men care like that, but it made life 'excit'njr. Xti%. had bfeen getting a little stale latelylike a book of obvious, even plot. Rlckard's entrance Into the story gave a new interest, a new twist. She hummed an air from a new opera that had set the world waltzing. Hardin's thoughts did not touch her at the hem. He was at the headgate, his gate. What the deuce had Rlckard gone to Imperial for? If he wasn't the darnedest aSs! Imperial! And the gate hung up! MFor God's sake stop that buzzing I" - The happy little noise was quenched. Innes, entering at that moment, heard the rough order. She looked imploringly at her slster-irT-law. "Supper's on the table," cried Gerty, the fixed, determined smile still on her lips. CHAPTER X. , A Desert Dinner. Innes Hardin was completing her simple toilet.. Not even to please Gerty would she -"dress up" for the dinner. It would have b^en easy for her sister-in-law to postpone it. How could she expect Tom to gfo through with It! She couldn't understand Gerty! An hour ago, hearing distinctly the whir and splash of egg-beating, she had run over to the neighboring tent. The clinking of the cake tins had suddenly silenced. ^"Excuse me, won't you?" Gerty's voice had come from the lean-to, the little kitchen shed. *Tm lying down." "Llelng, yes!" grimaced the Hardin mouth to Its reflection In the mirror. How many times that week had she been repulsed by a locked door, a> sudden curtain of silence or a "Run away for a while. I'm trying to catch a nap." Easy now to see why Gerty had wanted to "hold the reins" that week! She didn't need to pierce those canvas walls to' know that there had been feverish activity for this dinner. A. new gown would appear tonight, made secretly. An exquisite meal,1 and no one must comment on its elaboration. Twice Tom and she had been asked to take their lunch at the hotei. "Because of a headache!" A headache! lom's wife could not even shop. openly! Bundles had always the air of mysterjjdMiiffiS opened before, Tom or hersdB^^sne^fimst have yards of stuff laid away, kept for sudden emergencies. "She can't help It. It's her dlsposli.tfii i i_ i t I iiuu. one can l neip ueiug scucuvc, Look at your face, Innes Hardin!" What was it to her, the pettiness of a woman whom an accident of life had swept upon the beach beside her? Gerty was not her kind, not the sort she would pick out for a friend. She was an oriental, one of the harem women, whose business it Is In life to please one man, to keep Ms home soft, hlg comforts ready, keep him convinced, moreover, that It is the desire of his life to support her. Herself dissatisfied, often rebellious, staying by him for self-interest, not for love?ah, that was her impeachment, "Not lov? I" ? , t Soberly she covered her plain brassiere with a white waist of cotton ducking. A red leather belt and crimson tie she added self-consciously. "Where is my bloodstone pin?" ? Hadn't she spent an hour at least < matching that particular leather belt? ] But he was a man, in battle. The headgate held up; It was too bad. " Silent, Bodefeldt, Wooster, Grant, all . of them fighting mad because of the deadlock at the Heading. All up In arms, at last, against Marshall, because of this cruel cut to their hero, Hardin. Her eyes glowed like yellow lamps as she recalled their fervid partisanship. "Only one man who can save tile valley, and that's Tom Hardin." Wooster had said that; but they all believed it. The loyalty of the force made Rer ashamed of her soft woman fears. For there were times when she questioned her brother's ability. He had a large, loose way of handling things.v He was,too optimistic. But i those men, those engineers muft l*now. j It was probably' the man's way of j sweeping ahead; ignoring detail. The j j verdict of those field-tried men -told j I utrr uiui uit; uuier, uie uuciul, [huui I ning way, was the office method. Rick- r ] ard, fis a dinner neighbor, she had found interesting; but for great un-i dertakings a man who would- let a! Gerty Holmes jilt him, ruin his-life j for him! The whole story sprang at' last clear from the dropped innuendo*. j j She adjusted a barrette in her j smoothly brushed hair. Slowly she. | walked over to the neighboring tent, j Gerty frowned at the white duck, j ICili'iy T'FJJUiJlliK?Lih# whlt? Dude "You might at least have worn your blue 1" "You're elegaut enough for the two of as. Is nit that -sojaethin^ newfl (To be Continued Tuesday) NEWS PROM MRS. STONE. The news from Mrs. A. M. Stone is that she is recovering her health gradually. She is teaching near her home in Rural Retreat, Va., andi| walks to and from her school, a distance of a mile. This is pleasant news indeed, to her many friends in J Abbeville. < | ! i teWca. Tobacco Co. NEVER was such rig fisted smokejoy as y jimmy pipe packed with That's because P. A. You can't fool your ta 1 can get five aces out of Prince Albert, coming an earlier just to start stokii you know you've got th Prince Albert's quality but when you figure thj patented process that cu feel like getting a flock ol to express your happy da Upppy red bags, tidy red tit humidora?and?that classy, j sponge moistener top that he R J. Reynold* Tobacco HAD NARROW ESCAPE. News comes to us that Judge John S. Wilson, of Manning* had a narrow escape one day last week. The Judge had been holding court in Berkeley, FARM FOR Si 87 ACRES?12 mil( ' McCormick Coi of W. D. Morra' ' > ' . c .T 40 ACRES?About ville, no imp.rov 'V and timber. 79 3-4 ACRES?3 m one settlementa on place. Plenty .a running througl 227 .1-2 ACRES?1 ville. This is a sj erty. A lot of sa1 i 100 1-2 ACRES?1 ville. Good resit . in^s. Well ater< and timber.... P 189 1-4 ;ACRE$^-J . ville. rA splenc provements, abc torn lands. - I 541 ACRES?1-2 *r mile from Calh ^"^ far?i being ope: Lies well/ Is we] abundance of w ri Can Arrai ROBERT jilM| A_ ht-handed-two " ou puff out of a Prince Albert! has the quality! > : . iste apparatus any more rnan a family deck! So, when you d going, and get up half an 1 ig your pipe or rolling cigare e big prize on the end of your 1 alone puts it in a class of its c at P. A. is made by our exclu ts out bite and parch?well? dictionaries to find enough w ys sentiments! / is, handsome pound and half-pound tin practical pound crystal glass humidor with eps the tobacco in sach perfect condition, Company, Wimtcn-Sa!em, ? and at the adjournment of the court, he went on a fishing excursion with some of the lawyers. *In some way the boat in which he was riding was overturned. The judge was rescued with the greatest difficulty. LANDS ".N 1 3S from Abbeville,, in inty,*adjoining lands ' h. Vice, $30.00 per acre. six miles from Abbe- /" ements, all in wood \ * 4 : ? Price, $25 per acre. iles from Abbeville? X T -C - -twu nurst; ictnii upen w t wood, and stream 1 place, a I Price, $2,000.00.' 1 miles from Abbe- ' plendid piece of propw .timber on this place , *rice, $17.50 per. aire. . ' i- ' p ., * 2 miles from Abbeience and out build- r 3d and plenty Wood Wee, $30.00 per acre. ' : 1 fi ,0 miles from Abbe- ' . 7: lid farm but no im)tit 50 or 60 acres bot- r ik .'* /t*? e\ A r\ t t 'rice, $18.uu p<er acre. die from Hester, one . > oun Ffclls. 15 horse rated on the place. It watered and has an > pod akdNtimbe*^ ice, $40.00 per acre."^ sige Terms ' S. LINK rrirarMra ;JipAill