Reedy Jenkins had just opened his office next morning and sat down at the desk to read his mail when Bob Rogeen walked in. Reedy looked up from a letter and asked greedily:
"Did you get it?"
"No." There was something ominous in Rogeen's tone.
"Couldn't you persuade them to sell?" Jenkins was openly vexed.
"I persuaded them not to." Bob's hands opened and shut as though they would like to get hold of something. "I don't care for this job. I'm done."
"What's the idea?" There was a little sneer in Jenkins' tone. "Decided you would go back to the old job selling pots and pans?"
"No," and Bob's brown eyes, almost black now, looked straight into Reedy's flushed, insolent face, "I'm going across the line toraise cotton."
Reedy's wide mouth opened in a contemptuous sneer.
"It's rather hot over there for rabbits."
"Yes," Bob's lips closed warningly, "and it may become oppressive for wolves."
Their eyes met defiantly for a moment, and each knew the other understood—and it meant a fight.
Bob had never known a resolution before. He thought he had, but he knew now that all the rest compared to what he felt as he left Reedy Jenkins' office were as dead cornstalks to iron rods.
One night nearly nine years ago, when returning through the hills with his fiddle under his arm, he had stopped at the door of his cabin and looked up at the stars. The boisterous fun of an hour ago had all faded out, leaving him dissatisfied and lonesome. He was shabbily dressed, not a dollar in his pocket—not a thing in the world his own but that fiddle—and he knew he was no genius with that. He was not getting on in the world; he was not making anything of himself. It was then that the first big resolution came to him: He would quit this fooling and go to work; he would win in this game of life. Since then in the main he had stuck to that resolution. He had not knowingly passed any opportunity by; certainly he had dodged nothing because it was hard. He had won a little here, and lost there, always hoping, always tackling the new job with new pluck. Yet these efforts had been simple; somebody had offered him a job and he tried to make good at it—and usually had. But to win now, and win big as he was determined to do, he must have a job of his own; and he would have to create that job, organize it, equip it.
"What I'll make it with—or just how—I don't know. But by all the gods of the desert I'm going to win right here—in spite of the thermometer, the devil, and Reedy Jenkins."
To raise cotton one must have a lease, tools, teams, provisions—all of which costs money; and he had just $167.35. But if that girl and her Sanskrit father could get in a cotton crop, he could. It was not too late. Cotton might be planted in the Imperial Valley even up to the last of May. He would get a field already prepared if he could; if not, then he would prepare it.
And a man with a good lease and a good reputation could usually borrow some money on which to raise a crop. Bob's mind again came back to the Red Butte Ranch. It was so big that it almost swamped his imagination, but if he was going to do big things he must think big. If he could possibly sublease that ranch from Benson. But it would take $100,000 to finance a five-thousand-acre cotton crop. Then he thought of Jim Crill, the old man of the Texas oil fields who was looking for investments.
It was daring enough to seem almost fantastic, but Bob quickened his step and turned toward the depot. He could yet catch the morning train for Los Angeles.
But he passed Benson on the way. The same morning Bob called at the Los Angeles office Benson went to Reedy Jenkins in Calexico.
The Red Butte lease had three years to run. Benson began by offering the lease and all the equipment for $40,000. He had spent more than $90,000 on it.
Reedy pushed back the long black lock of hair from his forehead, shook his head lugubriously, and grew pessimistically oratorical. Things were very unsettled over the line: there was talk of increased Mexican duty on cotton, of a raise in water rates; the price of cotton was down; ranchers were coming out instead of going in; no sale at all for leases. He himself had not had an offer for a lease in two months.
They dickered for an hour. Reedy watching with a gloating shrewdness the impractical fellow who had tried to farm with money. He knew Benson had lost money on the last crop, and besides had been thoroughly scared by the sly Madrigal.
"I'm tired of the whole thing." Benson spoke with annoyed vexation. "I tell you what I'll do: I'll walk off the ranch and leave you the whole damn thing for $20,000."
"I'll take it." Reedy knew when the limit was reached. "I'll pay you $2,000 now to bind the bargain; and the balance within ten days."
As Benson left the office with the check, Reedy began figuring feverishly. It was the biggest thing he had ever pulled off. The lease, even with cotton selling for only eight cents, was worth certainly $50,000, the equipment at least $10,000 more. And the five thousand acres was already planted and coming up! In the Imperial Valley the planting is by far the most expensive part of the cotton crop up to picking. It costs from seven to ten dollars an acre to get it planted; after that it is easy. There are so few weeds and so little grass that one man, with a little extra help once or twice during the summer, can tend from forty to eighty acres.
It was such an astounding bargain that Reedy's pink face grew a little pale, and he moistened his lips as he figured. He was trying to reassure himself that it would be dead easy to borrow the other $18,000. He did not have it. In truth, he had only two hundred left in the bank. He thought of Tom Barton and two of the banks from whom he had already borrowed. They did not seem promising. Then he thought of Jim Crill, and the pinkness came slowly back to his face. He smiled doggishly as he picked up the phone, called El Centro, and asked for Mrs. Evelyn Barnett.
Mrs. Evelyn Barnett sat on the porch shaded by a wistaria vine, her feet discreetly side by side on the floor, her hands primly folded in her lap; her head righteously erect, as one who could wear her widow's weeds without reproach, having been faithful to the very last ruffle of her handsome dress to the memory of her deceased.
She had insisted on taking Uncle Crill from the hotel, which was ruining his digestion, and making a home for him. She had leased an apartment bungalow, opening on a court, and with the aid of three servants had, at great personal sacrifice, managed to give Uncle Crill a "real home." True, Uncle was not in it very much, but it was there for him to come back to.
"Uncle," she had said, piously, showing him the homelike wonders that three servants had been able to achieve in the six rooms, "in the crudities of this horrid, uncouth country, we must keep up the refinements to which we were accustomed in the East." The old gentleman had grunted, remembering what sort of refinements they had been accustomed to, but made no outward protests at being thus frillily domesticated after ten years in the Texas oil fields.
And as Mrs. Barnett sat on the porch this morning, fully and carefully dressed, awaiting the result of that telephone message from Calexico, she watched with rank disapproval her neighbours to the right and left. It was quite hot already and Mrs. Borden on the right had come out on the porch, dressed with amazing looseness of wrapper, showing a very liberal opening at the throat, and stood fanning herself with a newspaper. Mrs. Cramer on the left, having finished her sweeping, had come out on the porch also, and in garments that indicated no padding whatever dropped into a rocking chair, crossed her legs, made a dab at her loosely piled hair to see it did not topple down, and proceeded to read the morning newspaper. It was positively shocking, thought Mrs. Barnett, how women could so far forget themselves. She never did.
Directly her primly erect head turned slightly, and her eyes which always seemed looking for something substantial—no dream stuff for her—widened with satisfaction and she put her hand up to her collar to see if the breastpin was in place.
It was Reedy Jenkins who got out of the machine which stopped at the entrance. He took off his hat when halfway to the porch—his black hair was smoothly brushed—his face opened with a flattering smile and he quickened his step. Mrs. Barnett permitted herself to rise, take two short steps forward, and to smile reservedly as she offered her hand.
Reedy Jenkins had not exaggerated when he said he had a way with the ladies. He did have. It was rather a broad way, but there are plenty of ladies who are not subtle.
"You have a lovely little place here." Reedy gave a short, approving glance round as he took the offered chair. "It's wonderful what a woman's touch can do to make a home. No place like home, if there is some dear woman there to preside."
Mrs. Barnett's mouth simpered at the implied flattery; but her eyes, always looking calculatingly for substantial results, were studying Reedy Jenkins. He certainly had handsome black hair, and he was well dressed—and the manner of a gentleman. He reminded her of an evangelist she had known back in Indiana. She had intended to marry that evangelist if his wife died in time; but she did not.
"It is very hard to do much here," Mrs. Barnett said, deprecatingly. "There is so much dust, and the market is so poor, and servants are so untrained and so annoying. But of course I do what little I can to make dear Uncle a good home. It was a great sacrifice for me to come, but when duty calls one must not think of self."
"No, I suppose not." Reedy sighed and shook his head until the long black lock dangled across the corner of his forehead—he did look like that evangelist. "But I wish sometime that we could forget the other fellow and think of ourselves. I'd have been a millionaire by now if I hadn't been so chicken-hearted about giving the other fellow the best of it."
"We never lose by being generous," said Mrs. Barnett with conviction.
"No, I suppose not," Reedy sighed. "No doubt it pays in the long run. I know I've been put in the way of making many thousands of dollars first and last by fellows I had been good to." Then Reedy looked at Mrs. Barnett steadily and with wide admiration in his large eyes—looked until she blushed very deeply.
"It may be a rough place to live," said Reedy, "but it certainly has been good for your colour. You are pink as a—a flower; you look positively swee——" He broke off abruptly. "I beg your pardon; I almost forgot myself."
Then Reedy changed the subject to the matter of business on which he had come.
"Yes," Mrs. Barnett said, giving him her hand as he rose to go, "I'll see Uncle to-night; and I'm sure Mr. Jenkins"—he still held her hand and increased the pressure—"he'll be most glad to do it."
Three days after Bob had returned from Los Angeles and found that Reedy Jenkins had bought the Benson lease, he rode up from the Mexican side and jumped off in front of the hardware store. Dayton was talking to the old man with bushy eyebrows and a linen duster.
"Here's Rogeen now," said the implement dealer. "Mr. Crill was just inquiring about you, Bob."
The two men shook hands.
"How you comin'?" asked the old man, his blue eyes looking sharply into Rogeen's.
"I'm starting in on my own," replied Bob; "going to raise cotton over the line."
"Why?" The heavy brows worked frowningly.
"Got to win through." Bob's brows also contracted and he shook his head resolutely. "And I can't do it working by the month. Some men can, but I can't."
"See that?" The old gentleman pointed to a tractor with ten plows attached. "That's success. Those plows are good and the engine is good; but it's only when they are hooked up together they are worth twenty teams and ten men. That's the way to multiply results—hook good things together. Resolution and hard work aren't enough. Got to have brains. Got to use 'em. Organize your forces.
"Don't tell me," the old chap spoke with some heat, "that a man who uses his brains and by one day's work makes something that saves a million men ten days' work is only entitled to one day's pay. Not a bit of it. He's entitled to part of what he saves every one of those million men. That's the difference between a little success and a big success. The little one makes something for himself; the big one makes something for a thousand men—and takes part of it. Has a right to. Those Chinamen across the line get sixty-five cents a day. If you can manage them so they earn a dollar and a half a day and give them a dollar and thirty cents of it and keep twenty cents, you are a public benefactor as well as a smart man. That is the way to do it; use your brains to increase other men's production and take a fair per cent. of it, and you'll be both rich and honest."
Bob's brown eyes were eagerly attentive. He liked this cryptic old man. This was real stuff he was talking; and it was getting at the bottom of Rogeen's own problem. All these years he had tried to produce value single-handed. But to win big, he must think, plan, organize so as to make money for many people, and therefore entitle himself to large returns.
"I'm going to try that very thing," he said. "I've just leased one hundred and sixty acres. Half already planted in cotton, and I'm going to plant the rest."
Bob was proud of his achievement. He had been really glad he failed to get the Red Butte Ranch. It was entirely too big to tackle without capital or experience. But he had found a rancher anxious to turn loose his lease for about half what he had spent improving it. Rogeen then convinced a cotton-gin man that he was a good risk; and offered to give him ten per cent. interest, half the cotton seed, and to gin the crop at his mill if he would advance money sufficient to buy the lease and raise the crop. The gin man had agreed to do it.
Crill jerked his head approvingly. "Good move. That's the way to go at it. Think first, then work like the devil at the close of a revival."
Crill paused, and then asked abruptly:
"Know a man named Jenkins?"
"Yes," replied Bob.
"Is he safe?"
Bob grinned. "About as safe as a rattlesnake in dog days."
As Jim Crill stalked up the outside stairway of Reedy Jenkins' office, the wind whipping the tail of the linen duster about his legs, he carried with him two very conflicting opinions of Reedy—Mrs. Barnett's and Bob Rogeen's. Maybe one of them was prejudiced—possibly both. Well, he would see for himself.
Reedy jumped up, gave his head a cordial fling, and grabbed Jim Crill's hand as warmly as though he were chairman of the committee welcoming the candidate for vice-president to a tank-station stop. Reedy remembered very distinctly meeting Mr. Crill in Chicago five years ago. In fact, Mr. Crill had for a long time been Mr. Jenkins' ideal of the real American business man—shrewd, quick to think, and fearless in action; willing to take a chance but seldom going wrong.
"Evy said you wanted to see me about borrowing some money," the old man dryly interrupted the flow of eloquence.
"Yes—why, yes." Reedy brought up suddenly before he had naturally reached his climax, floundered for a moment. "Why, yes, we have an investment that I thought would certainly interest you." Reedy had decided not only to get the old man to finance the Red Butte purchase but his whole project.
He began to explain his maps and figures as volubly as though he were selling the Encyclopedia Britannica, and again the old man cut in:
"How many acres you got leased?"
"Ten thousand—practically." Reedy paused to answer, his pencil touching the Dillenbeck Canal.
"What did you pay for them?"
"I got most of them for about a third to half what they cost the ranchers."
"Why did they sell so cheap?"
"Oh," Reedy waved, vaguely evasive, "you know how that is; fellows are like sheep—stampede into a country, and then one makes a break, and they stampede out. Now that Benson has sold, a lot more of them will get cold feet."
"Altogether how much money have you put in over there?"
"Forty-two thousand dollars," replied Reedy, consulting a memorandum. "You understand," he continued to explain, "I'm not a cotton grower at all; I am an investor. I'm dealing in leases; and I merely took over the planted crop on the Benson leases because I got it so cheap there is bound to be money in it."
"What is it you want?" demanded Crill.
"Seventy thousand or so for the lease and the crop. I have 8,000 acres already planted, some of it coming up. I'll pay you 10 per cent. for the money, and half the cotton seed, and give you first mortgage on the crop. Those are the usual terms here."
The sharp blue eyes under the shaggy brows had been investigating Reedy as they talked. He wanted to make loans, for he had a lot of idle money. "There are two sorts of men who pay their debts," the old man said to himself. "One who wants to owe more, and one who doesn't want to owe anything." Jenkins would want to borrow more, therefore he would pay his first loan. Even rascals are usually good pay when they are making money. And it looked like this fellow would make money on these leases. Anyway, Jim Crill moved a little annoyedly in his chair at the thought of his niece. It would be almost worth the risk to be rid of Evy's nagging him about it.
"Fix up the papers," he said, shortly, to Reedy's delight. He had expected to have to work much harder on the old man.
The next morning after the interview with Jim Crill Bob was at the hardware store assembling the implements he had bought, when a tall, shambling hill billy sauntered up.
"Hello, Noah Ezekiel Foster," said Bob, without looking up.
"Hello," responded the hill billy. "Reckon you know a hoss at long range."
"Reckon I do." Bob resumed his whistling.
"Don't also know somebody that wants a chauffeur for a tractor? Benson sold out my job."
"No." Bob straightened up and looked at the lank fellow appraisingly. "But I know a fellow who wants a chauffeur for a team of mules."
Noah Ezekiel shook his head. "Me and mules have parted ways a long time ago. I prefer gasoline." Then in a moment: "Who is the fellow?"
Bob grinned and tapped himself. "I'm the man."
Noah Ezekiel shook his head again.
"You look too all-fired industrious; I'd rather work for a fellow that lives at Los Angeles."
Bob laughed. "Just as you like."
But Noah Ezekiel ventured one more question:
"You workin' for Reedy Jenkins?"
"Not much!" Bob put emphasis in that.
"Where is your ranch?"
"On the road a couple of miles north of Chandler's."
The hill billy's forehead wrinkled and his eyes looked off into empty space.
"I reckon I'll change my mind. I'll take the job. How much am I gettin' a month?"
Some men fail because they invest their money in bad business. More fail because they invest themselves in sorry human material. They trust their plans to people who cannot or will not carry them out.
Bob from his first day as an employer realized that to be able to plan and work himself was only half of success. One must be able to pick men who will carry out his plans, must invest his brains, his generosity, his fair treatment, and his affections in human beings who will return him loyalty for loyalty.
He had made no mistake in Noah Ezekiel Foster. Noah was a good cotton planter; moreover, he knew a good deal about Chinese. Bob had employed six Chinamen to help get the ground in shape and the cotton planted.
"Noah," Bob stopped beside the disk plow and its double team, "you understand mules."
"I ought to." Noah rubbed his lean jaw. "I've been kicked by 'em enough."
Bob smiled. Somehow Noah's look of drollery always put him in a good humour. He noticed it also tickled the Chinamen, who thought "Misty Zeekee" one of the greatest of Anglo-Saxons.
"You see," remarked Noah, picking up the lines again, "as my dad used to say, 'He that taketh hold of the handles of a plow and looketh back, verily, he shall be kicked by a mule.' I never calculate to be kicked in the back. But if that Chinaman over there"—he frowned at a Chinaboy who was fumbling over a cotton planter—"don't get a move on him, he'll be kicked wherever he happens to hit my foot first. Hi, there"—Noah threw up his head and yelled to the Chinaboy—"get a move on. Plantee cotton. Goee like hellee." And the Chinaman did.
Bob laughed.
"Do you reckon you could let me have five dollars to-night?" Noah Ezekiel asked, looking down at his plow. "I want to go up to the Red Owl at Mexicali."
"Not going to gamble, are you?" Bob asked.
Noah Ezekiel shook his head. "No, I ain't goin' to gamble. Goin' to invest the five in my education. I want to learn how many ways there are for a fool and his money to part."
After supper, when Noah Ezekiel had ridden away to invest his five dollars in the educational processes of the Red Owl, Bob brought a stool out of the house and sat down to rest his tired muscles and watch the coming night a little while before he turned in. Bob and his foreman occupied the same shack—the term "house," as Noah Ezekiel said, being merely a flower of speech. Although there were several hundred thousand acres of very rich land under cultivation on the Mexican side, with two or three exceptions there was not a house on any of the ranches that two men could not have built in one day and still observe union hours. Four willow poles driven in the ground, a few crosspieces, a thatch of arrowweed, three strips of plank nailed round the bottom, some mosquito netting, and it was done. A Chinaman would take another day off and build a smoking adobe oven; but Bob and Noah had a second-hand oil stove on which a Chinese boy did their cooking.
Bob sat and looked out over the level field in the dusk. A quarter of a mile away the light glimmered in the hut of his Chinese help, and there came the good-natured jabber of their supper activities. He felt the expansive thrill of the planter, the employer—the man who organizes an enterprise and makes it go.
The heat of the day was already gone, and pleasant coolness was on the night wind that brought the smell of desert sage from beyond the watered fields. Bob stirred from the chair and got up. His tiredness was gone. The desert night had him. He went into the shack and took from an old scarred trunk his fiddle, and started down the road that passed his ranch to the south. He had not yet called on the Chandlers.
The little house was dark. Rogeen wondered if the Chandlers were asleep. But his heart took a quicker turn; he fancied he saw something white in the yard—the girl was also feeling the spell of the desert night.
Then suddenly, but softly, a guitar thrummed, and a voice with the half-wailing cadence of the Spanish took up the melody.
Bob stood still, the blood crowding his veins until his face was hot and his whole body prickled. This was Madrigal, the Mexican Jew.
The song ended. Faintly came the clapping of hands, and the ripple of a girl's laughter. Bob turned angrily and walked swiftly back up the road, walked clear past his own ranch without noticing, and finally turned aside by a clump of cottonwood trees along the levee of the main irrigation canal. The water, a little river here, ran swiftly, muddily, black under the desert stars. Bob lifted his fiddle and flung it into the middle of the stream.
The heat of his anger was gone. He felt instantly cold, and infinitely lonesome. There upon the muddy water floated away the thousand songs of the hills—the melody, the ecstasy, the colour and light of his early youth.
With sudden repentance he turned and dashed down the bank after the hurrying current. The fall is rapid here, and the fiddle was already far down the stream. He ran stumblingly, desperately, along the uneven bank, dodging willows and arrowweed, stopping now and again to peer up and down the stream.
It was nowhere in sight. A sort of frenzy seized him. He had a queer fancy that in that moment of anger he had thrown away his soul—all of him that was not bread and dollars. He must get it back—he must! Another dash, and again he stopped on the bank. Something darker than the current bobbed upon the muddy water. Without a moment's hesitancy he plunged into the stream and waded waist deep into the middle of the current.
Yes, it was his violin. Back on the bank, dripping wet, he hugged it to him like a little girl with a doll that was lost and is found.
The next morning at breakfast Noah Ezekiel remarked:
"I wonder where that skunk got the money."
"What skunk and what money?" Bob was pouring sirup on a pancake, a product of much patience both on his part and the Chinese cook's.
"Jenkins." Noah answered both questions in one word. "Not long ago he had to borrow a dime for a doughnut. Last night he was at the Red Owl gambling with both fists. And I heard he's bought altogether ten thousand acres in leases. 'Verily,' as dad used to say, 'the sinner flourisheth like a thorn tree.'"
"Do you know if he has bought Chandler's?" Bob asked, casually, not meeting Noah's eye.
"No, but I reckon he will. He seems out for a clean-up."
"If you see the Chandlers," suggested Rogeen, "advise them not to sell."
Noah Ezekiel reached for the towel to wipe his mouth, and shook his head.
"I ain't strong on giving advice. I believe in doin' as you'd be done by, and most all the advice I ever got was as hard to take as castor oil. Advice is like givin' a dog ipecac—it may break him of suckin' eggs, but it sure is hard on the dog."
Bob laughed and got up and started to work.
The first Saturday in June Rogeen and Noah quit at noon, for the rush was over.
"I reckon," Noah insinuated, suavely, "if you are feelin' right good I might strike you for another five to-night."
"Certainly," said Bob. "But look here, Noah, you ought not to gamble away your wages."
Noah Ezekiel pulled a long face.
"You sound like my dad. And I ain't fully persuaded you are enough of a saint to preach."
"You are incorrigible, Zeke," Bob laughed. "And I think I'll go with you to-night to the Red Owl."
Noah shook his head. "I wouldn't advise it. Gamblin' ain't to be recommended to employers. It's liable to put wages in japordy."
"I am not going to gamble," said Bob. "I am looking for a man—a couple of them, in fact."
Reedy Jenkins had returned to his office about two o'clock after making a complete circuit of his leases. The crop looked fine—so everybody told him. He knew little about cotton, but Ah Sing was a wonderful farmer—he knew how to handle the Chinese labourer.
Then he looked at his watch and frowned. He wished that blankety-blank Mexican would be more prompt in keeping his appointments. He wanted to get away. He was to drive to El Centro for a visit with Mrs. Barnett and then to-night he would return for a little recreation across the line.
It was nearly four when Madrigal finally appeared, wearing an expensive white summer suit and a jaunty straw hat. "He is a handsome devil," thought Reedy, eying him with disfavour because of his lateness. The Mexican took off his straw hat attached to a buttonhole by a silk cord, and pushed up his black pompadoured hair.
"Have you got the Chandler ranch yet?" Jenkins came directly to the point.
"Not yet, señor." Madrigal's bold, dark eyes smiled with supreme confidence. "Not yet—but soon."
The Mexican stood up and returned his hat to his head. He put up his hands as though strumming a guitar, turned up his eyes languishingly, and hummed a flirting air.
"If this, señor," he said, breaking off, "does not win the señorita, we will try—what you call hem—direct action. You shall have your ranch, never fear."
"And that damned Rogeen—what of him?"
The Mexican smiled sinisterly. "He get news tonight that make heem lose much sleep.
"Now may I trouble Señor Jenkins for fifty dollar?"
Reedy grumbled, but paid. The Mexican lifted his hand, pressed it to his heart, and bowed with mocking gallantry.
"Until to-night, señor."
Lolita tries her wiles on Percy.Lolita tries her wiles on Percy.
Lolita tries her wiles on Percy.Lolita tries her wiles on Percy.
Reedy Jenkins and Mrs. Barnett sat in a cool, shadowed corner of the porch. Reedy took a plump yellow cigar from his vest pocket, and with a deferential bow:
"Will you permit me?"
"Certainly, Mr. Jenkins." Mrs. Barnett spoke in a liberal-minded tone. "I do not object at all to the fragrance of a good cigar—especially out of doors."
"It is a vile habit," said Jenkins, deprecatingly, as he began to puff. "But after a fellow has worked hard on some big deal, and is all strung up, it seems to offer a sort of relaxation. Of course, I think a man ought to smoke in reason. We are coarse brutes at the best—and need all the refining influences we can get."
"I think it is bad for the throat," said Evelyn Barnett. "That is what I tell Uncle Crill. He smokes entirely too much."
Uncle Crill was absent. He usually was. The old chap was willing for Evy to save his digestion within reason—but not his soul.
"My dear friend," Reedy made a rather impetuous gesture with his right hand toward the demure widow, "it was splendid of you to persuade your uncle to lend me that money for the big deal. It was the sort of thing that one never forgets. We have plenty of friends willing to help us spend our money, but only a few, a very few loyal ones, willing to help us make it.
"Depend upon it, my dear young lady, I'll not forget that favour—never. And as I promised before I shall give you personally one fourth of the profits."
Mrs. Barnett gave her head a little depreciating twist and smoothed the dress over her right knee.
"That will be very generous of you, Mr. Jenkins. But of course one does not do things for one's friends for money. Not but I can use it—to do good with," she hastened.
"My poor husband would have left me a comfortable fortune in my own right if it had not been for the meddlesomeness of some one who had no business to interfere.
"Mr. Barnett was a mine owner—and a most excellent business man. He had large interests in Colorado. One mine he was going to sell. An old gentleman and his daughter were just ready to buy it. The papers were all drawn, and they were to pay over their money that evening. But some horrid young man, a wandering fiddler or something, got to meddling and persuaded them not to trade.
"It was an awful loss to poor Tom. He was to have had $60,000 out of the sale—and he never got one cent out of that mine, not a cent."
"What did they do to that fellow that broke up the trade?" asked Reedy, puffing interestedly at his cigar.
"Oh, Mr. Barnett said they taught him a lesson that would keep him from spoiling any more trades." Mrs. Barnett laughed. And then accusingly: "Isn't it queer how mean some people are. Now just that little interference from that meddlesome stranger kept me from having a small fortune." A deep sigh. "And one can do so much good with money. Just think if I had that money how many poor people around here I could help. I hear there are families living across the line in little shacks—one or two rooms with dirt floors—and no bathroom. Isn't it awful? And women, too!"
Reedy twisted his chair about so he looked squarely at the widow. The sun had gone down, and the quick twilight was graying the row of palm trees that broke the skyline to the south. Jenkins was in a hurry to get away, but his visit was not quite rounded out.
"You must be very lonely," he said with a deep, sad voice—"since your husband died. Loneliness—ah loneliness! is the great ache of the human heart."
"Y-e-s. Oh, yes," Mrs. Barnett did not sound utterly desolate. "But of course, Mr. Barnett being away so much——" There was a significant pause. "He was an excellent man—a good business man, but you know. Well, some people are more congenial than others. We never had a cross word in our lives. But—well—our tastes were different, you know."
Reedy smoked and nodded in appreciative silence. The dusk came fast. Mrs. Barnett rustled her starched skirts and sighed.
"You know, Mr. Jenkins," she began on a totally different subject, "it has been such a pleasure to me to meet someone out here in this God-forsaken country with fine feelings—one who loves the higher things of life."
"Thank you, Mrs. Barnett." Reedy bowed in all seriousness.
A moment later when he took his leave he held her hand a thought longer than necessary, and pressed it as though in a sympathetic impulse for her loneliness—or his—or maybe just because.
It was dark as Reedy threw the clutch into high and put his foot on the accelerator. He was out of town too quick to be in danger of arrest for speeding. He was late. The three others who were to seek recreation for the evening with him would be waiting.
And biting the end of his cigar he said fervently:
"Thank God for Jim Crill—and his niece."
Reedy's three friends were waiting—but dinner was ready. They had ordered a special dinner at the Pepper Tree Hotel, served out in a little pergola in the back yard.
They were all hearty eaters, but not epicures; and anyway they did not take time to taste much. From where they sat they could look out between the latticed sides of the pergola across the Mexican line, and see above and beyond the squat darker buildings a high arch of winking electric lights.
That was the Red Owl.
And while they talked jerkily and broadly of cotton and real estate—and women, their thoughts were over there with those winking lights.
Just across the line there was the old West again—the West of the early Cripple Creek days, of Carson City and Globe. Still wide open, still raw, still unashamed.
Over there underneath these lights, in that great barnlike structure, were scores of tables across which fortunes flowed every night. There men met in the primitive hunt for money—quick money, and won—and lost, and lost, and lost.
There, too, the tinkle of a piano out of tune, the blare of a five-piece orchestra, and the raucous singing of girls who had lost their voices as significantly as other things. And beyond that, along shadowy corridors, were other girls standing or sitting in doorways—lightly dressed.
"Well, are you fellows through?" Reedy had pushed back his chair. "Let's go."
It was perhaps an hour later that Bob Rogeen went down the main street of the Mexican town, also headed for the Owl. Off this main street only a few lights served to reveal rather than dissipate the night. But under the dimness Mexicali was alive—a moving, seething, passionate sort of aliveness. The sidewalks were full, the saloons were busy. In and out of the meat shops or the small groceries occasionally a woman came and went. But the crowd was nearly all men—Mexicans, Chinamen, American ranchers and tourists, Germans, Negroes from Jamaica, Filipinos, Hindus with turbans. All were gathered in this valley of intense heat—this ancient bed of the sea now lower than the sea—not because of gold mines or oil gushers, but for the wealth that grew from the soil: the fortunes in lettuce, in melons, in alfalfa, and in cotton.
"Odd," thought Bob, "that the slowest and most conservative of all industries should find a spot of the earth so rich that it started a stampede almost like the rush to the Klondike, of men who sought sudden riches in tilling the soil."
Across the way from a corner saloon came the twang of a mandolin; and half a dozen Mexican labourers began singing a Spanish folk song. In a shop at his right a Jap girl sold soda water; in another open door an old Chinaman mended shoes; and from another came the click of billiard balls. But most of the crowd was moving toward the Owl.
As Bob stepped inside the wide doors of the gambling hall the scene amazed him. There were forty tables running—roulette, blackjack, craps, stud poker—and round them men crowded three to five deep. Down the full length of one side of the room ran a bar nearly a hundred and fifty feet long, and in the rear end of the great barnlike structure thirty or forty girls, most of them American, sang and danced and smoked and drank with whosoever would buy.
Bob stood to one side of the surging crowd that milled round the gaming tables, and watched. There was no soft-fingered, velvet-footed glamour about this place. No thick carpets, rich hangings, or exotic perfumes. Most of the men were direct from the fields with the soil of the day's work upon their rough overalls—and often on their faces and grimy hands. The men who ran the games were in their shirt sleeves, alert, sweatingly busy; some of them grim, a few predatory, but more of them easily good-natured. The whole thing was swift, direct, businesslike. Men were trying to win money from the house; and the house was winning money from them. This was raw gambling, raw drinking, raw vice. It was the old Bret Harte days multiplied by ten.
And yet there was a fascination about it. Bob felt it. It is idiotic to deny that gambling, which is the lure of quick money reduced to minutes and seconds, has not a fascination for nearly all men. As Bob stood leaning with his back against the bar—there was no other place to lean, not one place in that big hall to sit down—the scene filled him with the tragedy of futile trust in luck.
All these men knew that a day's work, a bale of cotton, a crate of melons, a cultivator—positive, useful things—brought money, positive, useful returns. And yet they staked that certainty on a vague belief in luck—and always, and always lost the certainty in grabbing for the shadow.
Most of these men were day labourers, clerks, small-salaried men. It cost a thousand dollars a day to run this house, and it made another thousand dollars in profits. Two thousand dollars—a thousand days' hard work squandered every night by the poor devils who hoped to get something easy. And some of them squandered not merely one day's work but a month's or six months' hard, sweaty toil flipped away with one throw of the dice or one spin of the ball.
While Bob's eyes watched the ever-shifting crowd that moved from table to table he saw Rodriguez, the man for whom he was searching. He was with Reedy Jenkins and three others coming from that end of the building devoted to alleged musical comedy. Besides the natty Madrigal, the sad-looking Rodriguez and Reedy, there were a Mexican and an American Bob did not know. All of them except Rodriguez wore expensive silk shirts and panama hats, and had had several drinks and were headed for more. Reedy, pink and expansive, chuckling and oratorical, was evidently the host. He was almost full enough and hilarious enough to do something ridiculous if the occasion offered.
After two more rounds of drinks the party started for the gaming tables. The crowd was too thick for them to push their way in as a body, so they scattered. Reedy bought ten dollars' worth of chips at a roulette table, played them in stacks of twenty, and lost in three minutes. As he turned away he caught sight of Bob Rogeen and came across to him.
"Hello, Cotton-eyed Joe," he said with drunken jocularity, "let's have a drink."
"Thanks," replied Bob, "my wildest dissipation is iced rain water."
Bob just then caught sight of Noah Ezekiel and moved away from Reedy Jenkins. He felt it safer—especially for Reedy, to stay out of reach of him.
Noah Ezekiel's lank form was leaning against a roulette table, a stack of yellow chips in front of him.
"Hello," said the hill billy as Bob edged his way up to his side.
"How is it going?" asked Bob.
"Fine," answered Noah, carefully laying five chips in the shape of a star. "I got a system and I'm going to clean 'em up."
Bob smiled and watched. The wheel spun around. The ball slowed and dropped on 24. Noah's magical star spread around 7. The dealer reached over and wiped in his five chips.
"You see," Noah explained, taking it for granted Bob knew nothing of the games, "this is ruelay. You play your money on one number and then rue it." The hill billy chuckled at his pun. "There are 36 numbers on the table," he pointed a long forefinger, "and there are 36 numbers on the wheel. You put your money or chip—the chips are five cents apiece—on one number, and if the ball stops at that number on the wheel, you win 35 times what you played."
"But if it doesn't stop on your number?" said Bob.
"Then you are out of luck." Noah Ezekiel had again begun to place his chips.
"Of course," he explained, "you play this thing dozens of ways; one to two on the red or black, or you can play one to three on the first, second or third twelve. Or you can play on the line between two numbers, and if either number wins you get 17 chips."
Noah won this time. The number in the centre of his star came up and he got 67 chips.
"Better quit now, hadn't you?" suggested Bob.
"Nope—just beginning to rake 'em in," replied Noah.
"Wish you would," said Bob, "and show me the rest of the games."
Noah reluctantly cashed in. He had begun with a dollar and got back $4.60.
"You see," said Noah, clinking the silver in his hands as they moved away, "this is lots easier than work. The only reason I work for you is out of the kindness of my heart. I made that $4.60 in twenty minutes."
"Here is craps." They had stopped at a table that looked like a gutted piano, with sides a foot above the bottom.
"You take the dice"—Noah happened to be in line and got them as the last man lost—"and put down say a half dollar." He laid one on the line. "You throw the two dice. If seven comes up—— Ah, there!" he chuckled. "I done it." The face of the dice showed [3 and 4]. "You see I win." The dealer had thrown down a half dollar on top of Noah's. "Now, come, seven." Noah flung them again.
Sure enough seven came up again. A dollar was pitched out to him. He left the two dollars lying. This time he threw eleven and won again. Four dollars! Noah was in great glee.
"Let's go," urged Bob.
"One more throw," Noah brought up a 6 this time.
"Now," he explained, "I've got to throw until another 6 comes. If I get a seven before I do a six, they win." His next throw was a seven, and the dealer raked in the four dollars.
"Oh, well," sighed Noah, "only fifty cents of that was mine, anyway. And the poor gamblers have to live.
"This," he explained, stopping at a table waist high around which a circle of men stood with money and cards in front of them, "is Black Jack.
"You put down the amount of money you want to bet. The banker deals everybody two cards, including himself. But both your cards are face down, while his second card is face up.
"The game is to see who can get closest to 21. You look at your cards. All face cards count for ten; ace counts for either 1 or 11 as you prefer.
"If your cards don't add enough, you can get as many more as you ask for. But if you ask for a card and it makes you run over 21, you lose and push your money over. Say you get a king and a 9—that is 19, and you stand on that, and push your cards under your money.
"When all the rest have all the cards they want, the dealer turns his over. Say he has a 10 and a 8. He draws. If he gets a card that puts him over 21, he goes broke and pays everybody. But if he gets say 18—then he pays all those who are nearer 21 than he; but all who have less than 18 lose."
While Noah had been explaining, he had been playing, and lost a dollar on each of two hands.
They moved on to a chuck-a-luck game.
"This, you see," said Noah, "is a sort of bird cage with three overgrown dice. You put your money on any one of these six numbers. He whirls the cage and shakes up the fat dice. They fall—and if one of the three numbers which come up is yours, you win. Otherwise—ouch!" Noah had played a dollar on the 5; and a 1, 2 and a 6 came up.
As they moved away Noah was shaking his head disconsolately.
"Money is like a shadow that soon flees away—and you have to hoe cotton in the morning."
"Don't you know," said Bob, earnestly, "that everyone of these games give the house from 6 to 30 per cent., and that you are sure to lose in the end?"
"Yeah," said Noah, wearily. "You're sure to die in the end, too; but that don't keep you from goin' on tryin' every day to make a livin' and have a little fun. It's all a game, and the old man with the mowin' blade has the last call."
"But," persisted Bob, "when you earn a thing and get what you earn, it is really yours, and has a value and gives a pleasure that you can't get out of money that comes any other way."
"Don't you believe it," Noah shook his head lugubriously. "The easier money comes the more I enjoy it. Only it don't never come. It goes. This here gamblin' business reminds me of an old dominecker hen we used to have. That hen produced an awful lot of cackle but mighty few eggs. It is what my dad would have called the shadow without the substance. But your blamed old tractor gives me a durned lot more substance than I yearn for."
They were still pushing among the jostling crowd. There were more than a thousand men in the hall—and a few women. Soiled Mexicans passed through the jostle with trays on their heads selling sandwiches and bananas. Fragments of meat and bread and banana peelings were scattered upon the sawdust floor. It was a grimy scene. And yet Bob still acknowledged the tremendous pull of it—the raw, quick action of the stuff that life and death are made of.
Noah nudged Bob and nodded significantly toward the bar, where Reedy with his three friends and two or three Mexicans, including Madrigal, were drinking.
"He's cookin' up something agin you," said Noah in a low tone. "Better go over and talk to him. He's gettin' full enough to spill some of it."
Bob took the suggestion and sauntered over toward the bar. As he approached, Reedy turned around and nodded blinkingly at him.
"Say," Reedy leaned his elbows on the bar and spoke in a propitiatory tone, "I'sh sorry you went off in such a huff. Right good fello', I understand. If you'd asked me, I'd saved you lot of trouble and money on that lease." Reedy stopped to hiccough. "Even now, take your lease off your hands at half what it cost."
"So?" Bob smiled sarcastically.
"Well, hell," Reedy was nettled at the lack of appreciation of his generosity, "that's a good deal better than nothing."
"My lease is not on the market," Bob replied, dryly.
"Now look here!" Reedy half closed his plump eyes and nodded knowingly. "'Course you are goin' to sell—I got to have four more ranches to fill out my farm—and when I want 'em I get 'em, see? As Davy Crockett said to the coon, 'Better come on down before I shoot, and save powder.'"
"Shoot," said Bob, contemptuously.
"Now look here," Reedy lurched still closer to Bob, and put his plump fingers down on the bar as though holding something under his hand; "I got unlimited capital back of me—million dollars—two million—all I want. That's on 'Merican side—on this side—I got pull. See? Fifty ways I can squelch you—just like that." He squeezed his plump, soft hand together as though crushing a soft-shelled egg.
"You are drunk," Bob said, disgustedly, "and talking through a sieve." He moved away from him and sauntered round the hall. At one of the tables he came upon Rodriguez, the man he was looking for.
He looked more Spanish than Mexican, had a moustache but did not curl it, a thin face and soft brown eyes, and the pensive look of a poet who is also a philosopher.
"Well?" Bob questioned in an undertone as they drifted outside of the gambling hall and stood in the shadows beyond the light of the open doors. "Did you learn anything?"
Rodriguez nodded. "They have two, three plans to make you get out. Señor Madrigal is—what you call hem?—detec—detectave in Mexico. Ver' bad man. He work for Señor Jenkins on the side."
Bob left his Mexican friend. He stood in the shadow of the great gambling hall for a moment, pulled in opposite directions by two desires. He remembered a red spot on Reedy Jenkins' cheek just under his left eye that he wanted to hit awfully bad. He could go back and smash him one that would knock him clear across the bar. On the other hand, he wanted to get on his horse and ride out into the silence and darkness of the desert and think. After all, smashing that red spot on Reedy's cheek would not save his ranch. He turned quickly down the street to where his horse was hitched.