swales of sand, and rolling ridges were crested with tints of fire. The Colorado flowed out of a red gap in the frowning walls and slid with ruddy gleam on toward the black canyon which still slept in somber shadow.
Lynn made the run up the grade to the main road in record time. Then he slowed for the turn down on the bench where Boulder City was in course of construction. It took vision to make of all the heaps of earth and piles of lumber, the bare skeletons of buildings rising like a denuded forest, the trucks roaring to and fro, the big steam shovels clanging, the action of workmen thick as a swarm of crawling bees, the acres of shacks and tents stretching far along the level—it took eyes to picture the shining and model city that was to become famous there.
A long street of stores terminated in the finished dormitories and the great dining house that took care of thousands of men. Lynn halted his hot car at the largest store.
After buying some food supplies and the list of clothes for Anne, he found upon applying for information that there were several hundred married men among the builders there, and they kept house in the little cabins that were being rapidly built for their accommodation. He was furnished with a list of names of those who would take a boarder. One of these was a pipe fitter named Brown, who lived with his wife in the camp at the gravel mills. Lynn drove back to the basin.
At ten o’clock he climbed the steel crane to relieve the engineer who had been put on his job. Lynn had graduated to this job by the hard apprenticeship he had served as a common laborer. And his job was to run one of the lofty carriages that swung the big tanks of graded sand and gravel from the huge piles to the freight cars which were loaded under the steel bridge. It was a job of concentration and precision. Lynn had to be alert all the time. The sand and gravel came in carloads from the pits of the river, were dumped from the high trestle into the mills, to come out cleaned, assorted, into the rounded glistening mounds, from which they were loaded again into freight cars and hauled down to the canyon, to the electric cement mill, most marvelous of Boulder Dam’s many magic machines.
Lynn took a nameless pride in the fact that he was a little cog in the vast system of wheels which must whirl ceaselessly for years, without ever a stop, until Boulder Dam was completed. How he had arrived at that stage he scarcely understood, unless the contrast from former toil and its accompanying pangs had developed it in him. That day, as the humming and roaring hours passed, he conceived the idea of having a hand at other and perilous jobs down in the canyon. The great diversion tunnels that were to carry the waters of the Colorado under the walls and around the dam, these haunted him, and the work had only begun. He wanted to ride one of the carriages that dropped a thousand feet down into the canyon, to perch like an eagle above it all and watch. He intended to be a driller, a dynamiter, a scaler, most perilous of all work on the dam, and lastly to rise to some competent and permanent job.
These plans coalesced and fixed in his mind that day, and he admitted that it was because Anne would be working at Boulder City and he wanted to be near her. It was just a kindness on his part, he thought, a desire to serve her and outwit those villains who trafficked in the souls and bodies of American girls.
That day turned out to be the most endless Lynn had ever spent there. But it wore to a close, and then he made for his car. Sunset burned in his eyes all the way to the construction camp.
At last he hauled up short before his dark cabin. He had not thought of it, but he should have expected it to be dark. The girl would hardly have risked turning on the lights in his absence. Lynn lifted out the big parcels of supplies and rapped on the door.
No response! He rapped again anxiously. Still there was no answer. She must be asleep. He tried the door and to his amazement it was unbarred. He went in, and called in a low voice. Then alarm seized Lynn. He flashed on the lights and in consternation saw the cabin was empty. No fire in the stove! His pajamas lay on the bed unfolded, as if hastily thrown there. Anne Vandergrift was gone.
“My God!” he thought. “Is it possible those thugs could work so quickly!”
Chapter 3
Bewildered, and suddenly sick with the conviction of catastrophe, Lynn absurdly searched the empty cabin with hopeful eyes. Then he flung aside the curtain that hung before the opening through the partition at the back. The little storeroom and woodshed were likewise empty.
“She’s gone!” he admitted, and spying the garments he had lent her and both his blankets and the one she had arrived in, he was further staggered. “Gone! Without a stitch on her! Good heaven, what’s to be made of this? . . . I’ll kill those crooks.”
Lynn sank in the old rocker and gazed blankly at the packages he had dropped to the floor. A cold sweat broke out all over him. He endeavored to still his agitation so that he could think what he must do. But it was futile. His grief and fury, and another emotion unfamiliar to him, would not be assuaged at the moment. He could not sit still. He got up to pace the floor. What had happened to Anne Vandergrift? Helpless before that one poignant query he could only reiterate it.
A rustle outside the open door brought Lynn upright. A white face appeared against the black background. It flashed across the threshold. Anne Vandergrift ran in with softly thudding feet. She closed the door and dropped the bar in place, then turned to come to him, her gray eyes unnaturally wide and bright.
“Anne! . . . You’re not gone? They didn’t get you?” Lynn burst out.
“No. But have I had a scare! Oh, I thought you’d never—never come,” she replied.
If the moment had not been so vital and compelling Lynn would have laughed at the girl’s ludicrous appearance. She looked lost in his fleece-lined coat, and she had donned a pair of his overalls and had tucked the bottoms in heavy woolen socks. She kicked off his loose slippers and then slipped out of the coat. Under it she had on his red blouse, which completely hid her femininity. But after a second glance at her flashing face and tumbling hair Lynn did not see anything else.
“I borrowed your clothes,” she said, her gravity breaking.
“So I see. You look—swell,” he rejoined haltingly and then flounced onto the chair as if weak in his relief.
“By George, but I’m glad you’re here safe.”
“You couldn’t be half as glad as I am.”
“I thought . . . Well, never mind. . . . How come, Anne—that I found you gone?”
“I slept almost all day,” she replied hurriedly. “When I got up I thought I’d better put on these. It was a good thing I did. I’d hardly got dressed when I saw a big car down by that long house across the road from the tents.”
“That’s the mess hall where we eat.”
“I saw men get out. There were five of them. Gangsters! Oh, I could recognize a gangster now in a burlap sack. They looked like wolves on the scent. Four of them went in. And the one who stayed by the car was Bellew.”
“Bellew!” ejaculated Lynn, leaping up.
“Yes. I knew him, even at that distance. I nearly dropped. All I could think of was to run and hide. I went out the back way—out into the brush—where I hid behind a rock. I was not able to see the car, but I could have seen it come down the road toward the cabin. It didn’t come. And after a while I lost some of my fright, but I stayed out there till I saw the light show from your window. I’d heard a car—a sputtering, rattling car which I thought was yours. But, believe me, I made sure it was you in here.”
“Anne,
