CHAPTER XXVITHE WHITE OLEANDER
MRS. Hardin’s descent on the office that afternoon was successful, but not satisfactory. She had found the manager brief to curtness. She was given no excuse to linger. She traced Rickard’s manner to the presence of MacLean, and snatched at her cue. She, too, could be businesslike and brief. Her errand was of business; her manner should recommend her!
Rickard had seen her making straight toward the ramada. It was not the first time; her efforts to line her nest had involved them all and often. But to-day, he was in a bad humor.
“For the lord’s sake,” he groaned to MacLean as she approached. “More shelves! I wonder if she thinks the carpenters have nothing to do but rig up her kitchen for her?”
MacLean’s grin covered relief. He had never heard Rickard express himself on the subject before. Could he believe, he speculated, that her frequent appeals for assistance were serious? “The dead-set Hardin’s wife was making at Casey,” was the choice gossip and speculation of the young engineers on theDelta.
MacLean had a bet up on the outcome. He grinned more securely.
“I am not going to spare any more carpenters,” growledRickard. It was an inauspicious day for Mrs. Hardin’s visit. Things had gone wrong. Vexations were piling up. A tilt with Hardin that morning, a telegram from Marshall; he was feeling sore. Porter’s men had marched out, carrying their dead. Desperately they needed labor. Wooster had just reported, venomously, it appeared to Rickard’s spleen, increasing drunkenness among the Indians.
Gerty’s ruffles swept in. Her dress, the blue mull with the lace medallions, accented the hue of her eyes, and looked deliciously cool that glaring desert day. Her parasol, of pongee, was lined with the same baby hue. Her dainty fairness and childish affability should have made an oasis in that strenuous day, but Rickard’s disintegration of temper was too complete. He rose stiffly to meet her, and his manner demanded her errand.
She told it to him, plaintively. It was getting so hot! Her kitchen was a veritable Turkish bath these days. At noon, it was terrific. Her eyes were appealing, infantile.
“It’s not shelves.” MacLean’s grin sobered.
Would it be too much to ask, would Mr. Rickard mind in the least, he must be perfectly frank and tell her if they would be in the way at all, but while this hot spell lasted, could they, the three of them, eat in the mess-tent with the men?
“Surely!” Rickard met it heartily. She would find it rough, but if she could stand it, yes, he thought it a good idea. His eagerness suggested relief to one listener. The Hardins’ meals had been a severe drain on that office. The new arrangement offered a cessation of petty problems.
Her point so easily gained, she knew she must go. Sheacknowledged interrupting business, but there was one thing more. Would Mr. Rickard tell her how to trace a lost bundle? If she were at home, of course, she would not have to ask any one, but here, so far away from express offices! A package had been sent to her from Chicago, it must be months ago. It reached the towns shortly after she left. She had written casually there to forward it; it had not yet come. She really did not know how to begin.
“Make a note of that, MacLean,” Rickard volunteered. He was still standing. “He’ll send a tracer out after it, Mrs. Hardin.”
And then there was nothing for her to do but go. Her retreat was graceful, without haste, dignified. There was a womanly suggestion of business decorum. She smiled a farewell at MacLean, who was watching the approach of Innes Hardin and Estrada. The neglected smile passed on to Rickard, accented. He did not see the aborted entrance of Hardin’s sister and the young Mexican. He was itching to be at his work.
He let out a growl when Mrs. Hardin was out of ear-shot.
“What in thunder did she want all those shelves for? And cupboards and a cooling closet? Every week since she came, she had to have a carpenter, and I couldn’t refuse; you know what they’d think, that I was trying to show my power. Shucks! What in Halifax do women come to a place like this for? There’s Hardin—brings in two women to cook for him, and now, please may they all eat with the men?”
His secretary subdued a chuckle. He was visualizing a procession of boxes of choice Havanas—from Bodefeldt,Hamlin and the rest of the gang. He need not buy a smoke for a year.
“Must think this is a summer resort!”
Rickard threw himself back in his chair. “Take this letter, MacLean. To Marshall.” Then his worry diverted him. “Who in thunder is selling liquor to my Indians?”
“Just that way?” quizzed MacLean.
“Hold on; that letter can wait. You get the horses up, MacLean, and we’ll ride down to Maldonado’s. He’ll have to get busy, and clear up this thing, or I’ll know why. I’ll threaten to report him for laziness. It’s his place to stop this liquor business, not mine.”
A few hours later, they were approaching the adobe walls of Maldonado. They found the gate locked. A woman, whose beauty had faded into a tragic whisper, a ghastly twilight of suggestion, came to their knock, and unbarred the gate for the white strangers. She left them by the white oleander whose trunk was like that of a tree. MacLean sniffed like a young terrier. “What’s the matter with the place?”
Mystery hung over the enclosure like a pall. Their voices fell inevitably to a whisper. Once, it had been a garden; now, only the oleander defied the desert. Dry ditches told the story of decadence. Once, the river had wandered by, a stone’s throw away. Maldonado had turned some of its flow into his adobe court. But the river channel was dry, and a dead vine clung to the house walls; fell, shrinking in the breeze, from the roof.
The woman came out to say that Maldonado would follow in “un momento.” To Rickard she looked like the dried vine quivering from the wind. She asked theseñors would they sit? The house was not fit; she was cleaning.
Maldonado, his face creased from his nap, came out, but not in “un momento.” He had been busy—“some wretched fellows!” Rickard knew the man was lying. He had been asleep. The woman had interrupted his siesta. His eyes were almost lost; he blinked; he said it was the sun. The day was so hot.Dios mio, why did she stand there and not take pity on the señors, dying of thirst as they must be. A glass of water. It was his shame that he might not offer them wine—but he was a poor man—with wife and children. His eyes shifted from Rickard to MacLean.
The woman quivered away from the group. She disappeared in the house.
“Glasses,” called Maldonado after her.
Her “Si” sounded like a hiss.
Rickard told his errand. Maldonado sputtered and swore. By the mother of Mary the Virgin, that thing would be stopped. It would be looked into, the rascal would be caught. He pulled back his cotton coat, mussed with sleep as was his face. He showed to the señors, with pride, his badge. He was a rurale; he was there to uphold the law. If the señors would but follow him, they would see that he did not sleep at his post. He had caught some of those drunken Indians on the road. He had brought them here.
They followed him around the house, through the wrecked garden. Maldonado shrugged at the stumps as they passed, ruins that had once been roses. MacLean felt his mouth pucker with repulsion as he watched the figure in striped cotton, the eyes lost in their sleepy folds of flesh, the cruel evil mouth. He was drawing fromthe pocket of his cotton pantaloons a bunch of iron keys, tied with a dirty string. They were approaching a shed, a cattle shed, it appeared to the guests. Maldonado unlocked a gate of bars.
“Would the señors look in there?”
On a bed of old straw, three inert figures sprawled; theirs complete oblivion.
Maldonado, kicked one of the figures with his feet. “Drunken swine.” He locked the door with majesty. He had proved his services, his ruraleship.
“But where do they get it?” demanded Rickard, turning back into the sunshine.
“Certainly,” the man evaded, “there is an ‘oasis’ somewhere. Perhaps, the señor remembers, I told him before, back in the sand-hills, ‘somewhere.’”
“Why don’t you find it?”
Maldonado was going to find it, surely! The señor must have patience. His hands were so full. He remembered the bunch of iron keys that he dropped in his pocket. Every action of the man was surreptitious, Rickard was noting. Maldonado would stand watching! “I’m doing my duty, señor.”
“If you are so busy, Señor Maldonado,” suggested Rickard, “I can help you. I’ll send down a few men to help search. How many would you like?”
He expected a minute’s hesitation, but there was none. Oh, it was not necessary. Later, maybe, he would call on señor but it chanced that next week, or the next, a squad of rurales was to be there for that very purpose sent for by Maldonado. Oh, he was awake to his duty! The señor would be satisfied. There would be no more drunken Indians.
“Slick,” thought Rickard.
The woman was waiting by the oleander with glasses. She filled them from an olla hanging in the shade of the tree. It was cold as if iced.
Rickard saw her shrink every time she had to pass Maldonado. Obviously, the fellow was a brute. She was aware of his displeasure. She winced at a word from him.
Both men were glad to go. Rickard left a piece of silver in the woman’s hand. He hoped Maldonado had not observed him.
They were riding away when a cry broke the stillness of the air. “Hark, what was that?” MacLean turned a shocked face toward Rickard. “A woman?”
It was anguished, strangled almost at birth. The men waited, but there was silence in the patio.
“He got that money all right,” speculated Rickard.
“Struck her!”
“Or kicked her. That fellow is a brute.”
“Aren’t you going back?”
“Going back? What would we get for our pains? Make it all the worse for the woman. You noticed he called her hiswife? The rurales are not supposed to marry. It’s their unwritten law. But if she is, do you know what that means? She’s his goods, his chattel; his horse, his ox, his anything. You’re not in the states. We can’t do anything.”
There is perhaps no more absorbing topic than “wife” to the man who has not yet acquired one. Rickard and MacLean let an unrecorded silence fall between them. The word had sent them both traveling down secret trails. MacLean was thinking of the girl he intended to marry, when he was grown, of a girl with yellow eyes; Rickard of a mistake he had once nearly made. His wife,if ever he had one, must be steadier than that; she must not carry her sex like a gay flag to the breeze. His instinct of flight, distaste had justified itself at camp. She was a light little woman. He was beginning to feel a little sorry for Hardin!
“I’ll race you into camp, MacLean!”
Their horses, released, sprang toward the Heading.