CHAPTER XXVIIA WHITE WOMAN AND A BROWN
FOR a few weeks, Mrs. Hardin found the mess-tent diverting. Before theDeltahad expanded the capacity of the camp, her soft nook had been overtaxed, her hospitality strained. The men of the Reclamation Service, thrown into temporary inactivity, were eager to accept the opportunity created for another. Failing that other, her zeal had flagged. Events were moving quickly at the break; Rickard was absorbed. Mrs. Hardin told herself that it was the heat she wished to escape; not to her own ear did she whisper that she was following Rickard, nor that the percolator and chafing-dish, her shelves and toy kitchen were a wasted effort. As inevitably as a diamond finds a setting, so did Gerty Hardin. She would return to it later, gathering luster from its suggestion of womanliness. Sometime, the pretty play would be resumed. All this subconsciously, for she hung a veil between her processes. She kept on good terms with herself by ignoring self-confidences. She would have called morbidness the self-analysis of those who dig deep into their psychology for roots of motives, who question each trailing vine.
Rickard, the discovery unfolded slowly, took his meals irregularly. His breakfast was gulped down before the women appeared; his dinners where he found them.
“No wonder!” reflected Gerty Hardin. “Ling’s cooking is so bad.” Discontentedly, she pictured Rickard as finding solace in the Hamlin kitchen; reveling in Mrs. Silent’s chickens and eggs. The camp butter was shocking. She found Ling’s large quantities unpalatable.
There came a butterless epoch; a horrid gap. Ling did notmanageright. Butterless toast and broiled chicory! Small wonder the manager foraged for his meals. Somehow, the thought of Rickard living as did Hardin in times of stress, as the bird of the air, did not occur to the woman who thought of Rickard as different, a gentleman who required luxury. She had created a man from her own imaginings; she was evolving a woman to meet the approbation of her creation.
A dinner of pale oily beans, followed by a dessert of prunes swimming in a pallid sirup, gave her a morning of reflection. The Hamlin kitchen was giving her uneasiness. Her own abilities, unoccupied, were ironic. She worked out a mission as she lay across her bed that hot afternoon.
“To justify my being here.” A phrase of Innes recurred to her; it became now her own.
Her duty became so clear that she could no longer lie still. Immediately, she must retrieve her weeks of idleness; what must Rickard think of her? In spite of the scorching space that lay between her tent and the ramada, of the sun beating down like burning hail on the glittering sand, she must dress and seek out Rickard.
She buttoned herself thoughtfully into a frock of pale-colored muslin, cream slipping toward canary. White was too glaring on a red-hot day like this. Pink was too hot, blue too definite. Pity the lavender dress was still a fabric of dreams! A parasol of pastel green, and shelooked like a sprig of fragrant mignonette. The exertion of dressing brought the perspiration to her face. It had to be carefully dusted with powder. Strange, how she used to think the summers of the desert insupportable. After a torrid season of New York in her toy apartment, that humid sticky heat, that shut-oven of smells, this was to be borne. Already, the desert was improving; for she herself had not changed, of course.
It was the ice! She decided that any place could be endured once ice is procurable. Even bad butter is disguised when frozen into bricks. Her thoughts rounded the circle, brought her back to her grievances. Ling certainly needed help.
She found the open space of the trapezium swarming with strange dark faces. So silent their coming, she had not heard the arrival of the tribes. Over by Ling’s coveted mesquits gathered an increasing group of bucks with their pinto ponies which had carried them across a country of glaring distances. She isolated the Cocopahs, stately as bronze statues, their long hair streaming, or wound, mud-caked under brilliant head-cloths. Foregathering with them were men of other tribes; these must be the Yumas and Deguinos, the men needed on the river. Tom had told her that the long-haired tribes were famous for their water-craft. These were the men who were to work on the rafts, weave the great mattresses. A squad of short-haired Pimas with their squaws and babies and their gaudy bundles, gaped at the fair-haired woman as she passed. They were dazed and dizzy from their first long railroad ride. The central space was filling up with Pimas and Maricopas, Papagoes, too; she knew them collectively by their short hair. Thesewere the brush-cutters to replace the stampeding peons. This, then, meant the beginning of real activity. Tom would at last be satisfied. He would no longer sulk and rage alternately at the hold-up of the work.
It began to look dramatic to her. She picked her way through the stolid groups, the children and squaws staring at her finery, at the queer color of her hair. The value of the enterprise pricked at her consciousness. And she was going to help it; in her own way, but that was the womanly way! She wished that she had thought of it before.
Her bright darting glance discovered MacLean under one of Ling’s mesquits. He was poring over some of his own hieroglyphs in his stenographic pad. One of her bright detached smiles reached him. He followed her direction, his mouth puckering.
Before she reached the ramada, she saw that another woman was there. She caught an impassioned gesture. Her only surmise rested on Innes. The visitor, following Rickard’s eyes, turned. Gerty saw that she was dark; she looked the half-breed. The brown woman drew back as the white woman entered. Gerty smiled an airy reassurance. She herself would wait. She did not want to be hurried. She told Rickard that she had plenty of time.
“There is something you want to tell me?” Rickard’s patience was courteous but firm. He would hear her errand first. Gerty, remembering MacLean’s banishment to the mesquits, the imploring attitude of the stranger, determined that she would not be sent away.
“Will you excuse me, señora? It will be only a minute.”
She was to tell her errand, and briefly! Gerty swept past the intruder.
“Sit down, Mrs. Hardin?”
Resenting the inflection, she said she would stand. Her voice was a little hard, her eyes were veiled, as she told her mission. Her usual fluency dragged; she felt a lack of sympathy. She saw Rickard look twice toward the Mexican; she knew she was not holding his attention.
Biting her lip, she acknowledged that Ling was doing the best he could, at least the best he knew how, but of course, he had his limitations. He needed an assistant; his hands were over-full. She remembered the phrase in time to hurl it to its place; she wanted to justify her presence in camp. In short, she proposed a commissary department, herself in charge.
Rickard had a weak moment. Outside, the place was teeming with Indians to be enrolled and placed in camp. Forestier, the Indian Outing Agent, who had come in on the train with three of the tribes, was waiting in the neighboring tent. Rickard wanted some new work begun to-morrow; there were but a few hours left of this day. There were letters, despatches to be got off.
“I’d like to feel I was of some use,” urged Gerty again, this time prettily, taking him back into her friendship again. “My heart is bound up in this undertaking; if I’m allowed to stay, I’d like to help along. This is the only way I can, the woman’s way.” It was a proud humility. Did not Rickard think that the best way, the only way? She knew he would think so, indeed!
“Aren’t you taking a good deal on yourself, Mrs. Hardin?”
Then she forgave his hesitation quite, as it was of her he was thinking. “Not if ithelps.” Her voice was low and soft, as if this were a secret between them.
“It’s not so easy as you think.” He could see Forestier leave his tent, glance toward the ramada. Then he saw him join MacLean by the mesquits. This was no time to argue a petty question. It would do no harm to try. “Why, of course, anything you want, Mrs. Hardin.” And, remembering her former position, he added: “The camp’s yours as much as mine.”
A glad smile rewarded him. She went out, reluctantly. She knew the ways of those half-breeds! She could understand a little Spanish, so she made her step drag. The silence behind her was disquieting. The brown woman with the wreck of beauty in her tragic eyes was staring after her; she did not see Rickard’s gesture.
There was a new significance in MacLean’s absence from the ramada. What could that woman have to say that MacLean must not hear? She did not see the mewling babes, half naked, who gaped at her as she passed the squaws. The stolid groups parted for her, and she moved through, oblivious to their color and charm, to the historic import of it all. For the first time, the weak tenure on her old lover came to her. Not a sign had he yet given of their understanding, of the piquant situation. Themselves, old sweethearts, thrown together in this wilderness. What had she built her hopes on? A word here, a translated phrase, or magnified glance. She would not harbor the new worry. Why, it would be all right. She used Tom’s phrase, the one she hated, in solemn unconsciousness. Life had evidently planned that from the first. Fate insisted on repairing her mad mistake.
At her tent, letters were waiting to be written; letters to her grocer in Los Angeles, one to Coulter, in Calexico.She was going to begin her régime by serving good butter—iced butter. No more oily horror melting on a warm plate. She remembered a new brand of olives put up in tins; Rickard, she remembered, loved ripe olives. She would show them all what a woman with executive ability could do.