CHAPTER IIA BIT OF ORATORY
MARSHALL threw his hat on a chair, the morning paper on his desk. He aimed his burned-out cigar at the nearest cuspidor, but it fell foul, the ashes scattering over Sam’s lately scoured linoleum. Instantly there was appearance of settled disorder. Marshall emptied his pockets of loose papers, spreading them out on his flat-top desk.
“Sit down!”
Rickard took the chair at the other side of the desk.
Marshall rang a bell. Instantly the shirt-sleeved clerk entered.
“I shall not see any one,” the chief announced. “I don’t want to be interrupted. Take these to Smythe.”
His eyes followed the shutting of the door, then turned square upon Rickard. “I need you. It’s a hell of a mess!”
The engineer wanted to know what kind of a “mess” it was.
“That river. It’s running away from them. It’s always going to run away from them. I’m going to send you down to stop it.”
“The Colorado!” exclaimed Rickard. It was no hose to be turned, simply, off from a garden bed!
“Of course you’ve been following it? It’s one of the biggest things that’s happened in this part of the world.Too big for the men who have been trying to swing it. You’ve followed it?”
“Yes.” Queer coincidence, reading that report just now! “I’ve not been there. But the engineering papers used to get to me in Mexico. I’ve read all the reports.”
His superior’s question was uncharacteristically superfluous. Who had not read with thrilled nerves of that wild river which men had been trying to put under work-harness? Who, even among the stay-at-homes, had not followed the newspaper stories of the failure to make a meek servant and water-carrier of the Colorado, that wild steed of mountain and desert? What engineer, no matter how remote, would not “follow” that spectacular struggle between men and Titans?
“Going to send me to Salton?” he inquired. The railroad had been kept jumping to keep its feet dry. His job to be by that inland sea which last year had been desert!
“No. Brainerd is there. He can manage the tracks. I am going to send you down to the break.”
Rickard did not answer. He felt the questioning eyes of his chief.
“Down to the break,” repeated Tod Marshall, his bright black eyes taking in every detail of the engineer’s get-up, resting, finally, on his sunburned face. “Have one?” He offered Rickard his choice of two small black cigars.
“Thanks, no,” said Rickard.
“Not smoking yet?”
“Not yet.” Rickard was amused at the solicitude. It was as though he had asked: “Your mother is dying?”
“When will the penance be over?” Marshall lighted his cigar, watching the blue blaze of the sulphur-tippedmatch, the slow igniting of the tobacco—obviously an exquisite sensuous rite.
“It isn’t a penance! It’s an experiment. I never had to do anything I really hated to do. I’ve never had to deny myself anything. Some fellows have to give up studying the profession they love, go to some hard digging or other, to support somebody. I’ve been lucky. I discovered I did not know the meaning of the word ‘sacrifice.’ I buckled down, and gave up the thing I liked best. That’s all that amounts to.”
His words had a solemn effect. Marshall had stopped smoking. Rickard discovered that his confidence had been tactless. Few men had had to sacrifice so much as the one now somberly facing him. His home, first, because a civil war had crushed it; his refuge, then, after years in attics, and struggle with post-bellum prejudices, just as success met him there; the fulness of life as men want it—those eyes knew what sacrifice meant!
“When are you going to quit?” Marshall’s face was still sober.
“When am I going to quit quitting?” laughed his subordinate. “I haven’t thought it out, sir. When it comes to me, the inclination, I suppose. I’ve lost the taste for tobacco.” The break—where those Hardins were—how in thunder was he going to get out of that, and save his skin? Marshall liked his own way—
Marshall had resumed his cigar. “We’ll consider it settled, then.” His minute of introspection was over. He had picked up his thread.
“Who’s in charge there?” Rickard was only gaining time. He thought he knew the name he would hear. Marshall’s first word surprised him.
“No one. Up to a few months ago, it was Hardin,Tom Hardin. He was general manager of the company. He was allowed to resign, to save his face, as the Chinese say. I may tell you that it was a case of firing. He’d made a terrible fluke down there.”
“I know,” murmured Rickard. It was growing more difficult, more distasteful. If Marshall wanted him to supplant Hardin! It had been incredible, that man’s folly! Reckless gambling, nothing else. Make a cut in the banks of a wild river, without putting in head-gates to control it; a child would guess better! It was a problem now, all right; the writer of the report he’d just read wasn’t the only one who was prophesying failure. Let the river cut back, and the government works at Laguna would be useless; a nice pickle Hardin had made.
Still to gain time, he suggested that Marshall tell him the situation. “I’ve followed only the engineering side of it. I don’t know the relationship of the two companies.”
“Where the railroad came in? The inside of that story? I’m responsible—I guaranteed to Faraday the closing of that break. There was a big district to save, a district that the railroad tapped—but I’ll tell you that later.” He was leisurely puffing blue, perfectly formed rings into the air, his eyes admiring them.
“Perhaps you’ve heard how Estrada, the general, took a party of men into the desert to sell a mine he owned. After the deal was made, he decided to let it slip. He’d found something bigger to do, more to his liking than the sale of a mine. Estrada was a big man, a great man. He had the idea Powell and others had, of turning the river, of saving the desert. He dreamed himself of doing it. If sickness hadn’t come to him, the Colorado would be meekly carrying water now, insteadof flooding a country. Pity Eduardo, the son, is not like him. He’s like his mother, you never know what they are dreaming about. Not at all alike, my wife and Estrada’s.”
Then it came to Rickard that he had heard somewhere that Marshall and General Estrada had married sisters, famous beauties of Guadalajara. He began to piece together the personal background of the story.
“It was a long time before Estrada could get it started, and it’s a long story. As soon as he began, he was knocked down. Other men took hold. You’ll hear it all in the valley. Hardin took a day to tell it to me! He sees himself as a martyr. Promoters got in; the thing swelled into a swindle, a spectacular swindle. They showed oranges on Broadway before a drop of water was brought in. Hardin has lots of grievances! He’d made the original survey. So when he sued for his back wages, he took the papers of the bankrupt company in settlement. He’s a grim sort of ineffectual bulldog. He’s clung with his teeth to the Estrada idea. And he’s not big enough for it. He uses the optimistic method—gives you only half of a case, half of the problem, gets started on a false premise. Well, he got up another company on that method, the Desert Reclamation Company, tried to whitewash the desert project; it was in bad odor then, and he managed to bring a few drops of water to the desert.”
“ItwasHardin who did that?”
“But he couldn’t deliver enough. The cut silted up. He cut again, the same story. He was in a pretty bad hole. He’d brought colonists in already, he’d used their money, the money they’d paid for land with water, to make the cuts. No wonder he was desperate.”
It recalled the man Rickard had disliked, the rough-shod, loud-voiced student of his first class in engineering. That was the man who had made the flamboyant carpets of the Holmes’ boarding-house impossible any longer to him. He had a sudden disconcerting vision of a large unfinished face peering through the honeysuckles at a man and a girl drawing apart in confusion from their first, and last, kiss. He wanted to tell Marshall he was wasting his time.
“Overwhelmed with lawsuits,” Marshall was saying. “Hardin had to deliver water to those colonists. It was then that he ran over into Mexico, so as to get a better gradient for his canal, and made his cut there. You know the rest. It ran away from him. It made the Salton Sea.”
“Did he ever give you any reason,” frowned Rickard reminiscently, “anyreasonablereason why he made that cut without any head-gate?”
“No money!” shrugged Marshall, getting out another cigar. “I told you he’s a raw dancer, always starts off too quick, begins on the wrong foot. Oh, yes, he has reasons, lots of them, that fellow, but as you say, they’re not reasonable. He never waits to get ready.”
Why was it that the face of the half-sister came to Rickard then, with that look of sensitive high-breeding and guarded reserve? And she, a Hardin! Sister to that loud-spilling mouth! Queer cards nature deals! And pretty cards Marshall was trying to deal out to him. Go down there, and finish Hardin’s job, show him up to be the fumbler he was, give him orders, give the husband of Gerty Holmes orders—!
“It was Hardin who came to me, but not until he’dtried everything else. They’d worked for months trying to dam the river with a few lace handkerchiefs, and perhaps a chiffon veil!” Marshall was twinkling over his own humor. “Hardin did put up a good talk. It was true, as he said; we’d had to move our tracks three, no, four times, at Salton. It was true that it ought to be one of the richest districts tapped by the O. P. But he clenched me by a clever bait—to put out a spur in Mexico which would keep any other railroad off by a fifty-mile parallel, and there the sand-hills make a railroad impossible.
“The government must eventually come to the rescue. Their works at Laguna hang on the control of the river down at the Heading. Once, he told me—I don’t know how much truth there was in it—the Service, Reclamation Service, did try to buy up their plant for a paltry sum. He wouldn’t sell. The short is, I recommended long-sighted assistance to Faraday. I promised to turn that river, save the district. We expected before the year was out to have the government take the responsibility off our hands.”
Rickard made an impatient shrug. A nice problem Marshall had taken unto himself. He wanted none of it. Hardin—the thing was impossible.
He met laggardly Marshall’s story. He heard him say: “Agreed with Faraday. The Desert Reclamation Company was as helpless as a swaddled infant. We made the condition that we reorganize the company. I was put in Hardin’s place as president of the corporation, and he was made general manager. Of course, we had to control the stock. We put up two hundred thousand dollars—Hardin had estimated it would cost us less thanhalf that! It’s cost us already a million. Things haven’t been going right. Faraday’s temper burst out, and Hardin, a while back was asked to resign.”
“And it is Hardin’s position that you want me to fill?” His voice sounded queer to himself, dry, mocking, as if any one should know what an absurd thing he was being asked to do. He felt Marshall’s sharp Indian eyes on him, as if detecting a pettiness. Well, he didn’t care how Marshall interpreted it. That place wasn’t for him.
“I want you in control down there.” Rickard knew he was being appraised, balanced all over again. It made no difference—
“I’m sorry,” he was beginning, when Marshall cut in.
“Good lord, you are not going to turn it down?”
He met Marshall’s incredulous stare. “It’s a job I’d jump at under most circumstances. But I can’t go, sir.”
Tod Marshall leaned back the full swing of his swivel chair, blankly astounded. His eyes told Rickard that he had been found wanting, he had white blood in his veins.
“It is good of you to think of me—pshaw, it is absurd to say these things. You know that I know it is an honor to be picked out by you for such a piece of work. I’d like to,—but I can’t.”
The president of railroads, who knew men, had been watching the play of feature. “Take your time,” he said. “Don’t answer too hastily. Take your time.”
He was playing the fool, or worse, before Marshall, whom he respected, whose partisanship meant so much. But he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t tell that story—he knew that Marshall would brush it aside as a child’s episode. He couldn’t make it clear to the man whosestare was balancing him why he could not oust Tom Hardin.
“Is it a personal reason?” Marshall’s gaze had returned to his ring-making.
Rickard admitted it was personal.
“Then I don’t accept it. I wouldn’t be your friend if I didn’t advise you to disregard the little thing, to take the big thing. Maybe, you are going to be married.” He did not wait for Rickard’s vigorous negative. “That can wait. The river won’t. Maybe it’s some quixotic idea, like your smoking; for God’s sake, Rickard, don’t be quixotic. It’s fine to be quixotic, magnificent, when you’re young. Oh, you are young to me. But when you’re no longer young? When you see the opportunity you did not take wasted, or made splendid, even, by some other man? Look at me! I could have foresworn the South, taken a different name after the war, said I was from England, or from New England. I could have made a decent living. What did I do? It seemed glorious to the youngster who had been fighting for his idea of justice to fight against such a handicap—a beaten southerner. And I did fight. I fought poverty, cold—I had a mother back there—I was hungry, often. Sick, and couldn’t go to a doctor who might have warned me, because I hadn’t a cent in my pocket. And so, when I was where I wanted to be, where I’d struggled up to be, had my hand on the life I loved, in the city I loved, with the woman I loved, I was knocked down, banished to this desert if I wanted to live a few more years! Where if I eat gruel, sleep a child’s night sleep, give up all the things a man of red blood likes to do, I may live! If you’d call it that! Just because I’d had no one to talkto me, as I’m talking to you, to tell me I was a young fool.”
Rickard was looking intently at a slit in the colored awning. He did not answer.
Marshall looked at the stiff figure facing him. “Your reason may be sounder than mine, less highfalutin. But look at it. Balance the other side. Drop yourself out of it. There’s a river running away down yonder, ruining the valley, ruining the homes of families men have carried in with them. I’ve asked you to save them. There’s a debt of honor to be paid. My promise. I have asked you to pay it. There’s history being written in that desert. I’ve asked you to write it. And you say ‘No—’”
“No! I say yes!” clipped Rickard. The Marshall oratory had swept him to his feet.
The dramatic moment was chilled by their Anglo-Saxon self-consciousness. An awkward silence hung. Then:
“When can you go?” Marshall’s voice dropped from the declamatory. He had already taken up a pencil and was vaguely scribbling over a writing pad.
“To-day, to-morrow, the first train out.” Rickard wondered if the scrawls had anything to do with him.
“Good!” Marshall’s tone was hearty, but it had the finality of “good-by.” He was tracing nebulous figures, letters. The word, “Oaxaca,” ran out of the blur. Instantly his mind was diverted.
He had made his appeal, won his point. An hour later, perhaps, he would be honest in denying the paternity of some of his flowery phrases were he to be confronted by the children of his brain. His word of honor—hehad used as his climax. He had never thought of his business talk with Faraday in that light before, and never would again. It was a tool, picked up for his need and thrown away.
Already, he was revolving a spur he was planning for Oaxaca, in Southern Mexico. An inspiration had come to him on his walk from The Rosales that morning. His pencil made some rapid calculations.
A few minutes later he glanced up at the clock, and saw Rickard standing, as at attention.
“Ah!” He allowed his absorption to betray him.
“I should be off,” discovered Rickard.
“Oh, no,” replied the president of several railroads, looking at the clock again.
“Any instructions?”
“Just stop that river!”
Rickard again had a humorous vision of himself, asked to take away a bursting hose from a garden bed. “How am I limited?” he persisted. He stooped for his straw hat.
Marshall, still intrigued by his figures, looked up patiently, inquiringly, nibbling the end of his pencil.
“The expense?” demanded the engineer. “How far can I go?”
“Damn the expense!” cried Tod Marshall. “Just go ahead.”
He had begun a swift pencil map of the province of Oaxaca before Rickard was out of the room.