Look here,
Argyl."
He touched a long, slender lever reaching from the flume to the bank
where they stood.
"When the sun comes up it is going to bring a new day for all of us,"
he continued, slowly. "A new day which, for me, you have made
possible. And just as the sun comes up will you put your hand to this
lever and press it down?"
She looked up at him quickly. "Oh," she cried, her hand clutching at
his arm, her voice quivering, "you mean--"
He laughed happily. "I mean that when you press that lever it will
throw open the water-gates. I mean that it will be your hand which
turns the first mad current down into the flume. I mean that it will
be you, Argyl, who actually sends the first water to reclaim
Rattlesnake Valley. Are you glad, Argyl?"
If Argyl was glad, she did not say so. For a moment she stood with her
face in her two hands, sobbing. And then, laughing softly, the tears
upon her cheeks catching fire from the first rays of the rising sun,
she lifted her face to Greek Conniston's, and, drawing his face down,
kissed him.
The new day had leaped out at them, whipping the last shreds of misty
darkness from the face of the earth. Down yonder, below them upon the
slope of the hills, they saw the Lark and his hundred men preparing
for breakfast. Only in the bed of Deep Creek alone, below the dam
where a trickle of water ran thread-like, was there any shadow.
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