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The Winning of Barbara Worth

H >> Harold B Wright >> The Winning of Barbara Worth




Her words recalled to his mind instantly their first meeting in
Rubio City, but Holmes was not astonished now. The invitation coming
from Barbara under the circumstances seemed the most natural thing
in the world.

The young woman went to her room to make ready while the engineer
brought the horses, and in a very few minutes they had crossed the
river and were following the old San Felipe trail toward the sand
hills.

Very few words passed between them until they reached the great
drift that had held so long its secret. Leaving the horses at
Barbara's request, they climbed the steep sides of the great sand
mound. From the top they could see on every hand the many miles of
The King's Basin country--from Lone Mountain at the end of the delta
dam to the snow-capped sentinels of San Antonio Pass; and from the
sky line of the Mesa and the low hills on the east to No Man's
Mountains and the bold wall of the Coast Range that shuts out the
beautiful country on the west.

The soft, many-colored veils and scarfs of the desert, with the gold
of the sand hills, the purple of the mountains, the gray and green
of the desert vegetation, with the ragged patches of dun plain, were
all there still as when Willard Holmes had first looked upon it, for
the work of Reclamation was still far from finished.

But there was more in Barbara's Desert now than pictures woven
magically in the air. There were beautiful scenes of farms with
houses and barns and fences and stacks, with cattle and horses in
the pastures, and fields of growing grain, the dark green of
alfalfa, with threads and lines and spots of water that, under the
flood of white light from the wide sky, shone in the distance like
gleaming silver. Barbara and the engineer could even distinguish the
little towns of Republic and Frontera, with Barba nearby; and even
as they looked they marked the tall column of smoke from a
locomotive on the S. & C. moving toward the crossing of the old San
Felipe trail, and on the King's Basin Central another, coming toward
the town on Dry River where once beside a dry water hole a woman lay
dead with an empty canteen by her side.

Willard Holmes drew a long breath.

"You like my Desert?" asked the young woman softly, coming closer to
his side--so close that he felt her presence as clearly as he felt
the presence of the spirit that lives in the desert itself.

"Like it!" he repeated, turning toward her. "It is my desert now;
mine as well as yours. Oh, Barbara! Barbara! I have learned the
language of your land. Must I leave it now? Won't you tell me to
stay?"

He held out his hands to her, but she drew back a little from his
eagerness. "Wait. I must know something first before I can answer."

He looked at her questioningly. "What must you know, Barbara?"

"Did you ever hear the story of what happened here in these very
sand hills? Do you know that I am not the daughter of Jefferson
Worth?"

"Yes," he answered gravely. "I know that Mr. Worth is not your own
father, but I did not know that this was the scene of the tragedy."

"And you understand that I am nameless; that no one knows my
parentage? That there may even be Mexican or Indian blood in my
veins? You understand--you realize all that?"

He started toward her almost roughly. "Yes, I understand all that,
but I care only that you are Barbara. I know only that I want you--
you, Barbara!"

"But your family--Mr. Greenfield--your friends back home--think what
it means to them. Can you afford-"

"Barbara," he cried. "Stop! Why are you saying these things? Listen
to me. Don't you _know_ that I love you? Don't you know that nothing
else matters? Your Desert has taught me many things, dear, but
nothing so great as this--that I want you and that nothing else
matters. I want you for my wife."

"But you said once that you would never _marry me_," persisted the
young woman. "What has changed you?"

"_I_ said that I would never marry you? I said that? That cannot be,
Barbara; you are mistaken."

She shook her head. "That is what you said. I heard you myself. You
told Mr. Greenfield at my house that morning he came to see you when
you were hurt. I--I--the door into the dining room was open and I
heard."

The light of quick understanding broke over the engineer's face.
"And you heard what Uncle Jim said to me? But Barbara, didn't you
hear the reason I gave him for saying that I would not marry you?"

"I--I couldn't hear anything after that," she said simply.

At her confession the man's strong face shone with triumph. "Listen,
dear, I told Uncle Jim I would never marry you because you loved
someone else and that there was no chance for me."

Barbara's brown eyes opened wide. "You thought that?"

"Yes. I thought you loved Abe Lee."

"Why--why I _do_ love Abe."

The man laughed. "Of course you do; but I thought you loved him as I
wanted you to love me; don't you understand?"

"Oh-h!" The exclamation was a confession, an explanation and an
expression of complete understanding. "But that"--she added as she
went to him--"that _could not be_."

And then--

But Barbara's words, rightly understood, mark the end of my story.

Rarely is it given in the story of life, to those who work greatly
or love greatly, to gather the fruit of their toil or passion. But
it is given those others, perhaps--those for whom it could not be--
to know a happiness greater, it may be, than the joy of possession.

THE END.

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