Ednah Aiken

“ Often, and now, looking down on that chocolate-colored land, it would come to him that his was the yearning, the wistfulness of the painter. Those purple mountains flushing to rosy points against a clear blue sky, that rushing water, what did it rouse in him? A sense of militancy, as with Rickard and Hardin, MacLean, all of them? It pricked instead, an irritation, a feeling of incompleteness. He wanted something; could a man be homesick for what he never had? ”

“ The morning was gone when Innes turned from the Dowker tent. She was despondently comparing life to a vise, “that is, woman’s life!” How much easier to be a man, to fight the big fight, than the eternal wrestle with dirt and disorder! No, a woman’s life is a river, she changed her comparison whimsically, a shallow stream ending in a—sink! Small wonder that the sad asylums were full of women, women from the farms. Tom’s work would help that, the Hardins, the Estradas; she had heard Captain Brandon tell of the deliverance promised by the gospel of irrigation! ”

“ Surely, had he any spirit, his disappointment would have flared into bitter enmity against the man who had stolen what he was coveting. For Innes Hardin was a queen! He had never seen any one like her. Queer, he could not make himself hate Rickard. Something must be wrong with himself, to be able to sit there in the old familiar way, without bitterness in his heart.
“They think they are free men; free to go and come. And we own them, body and soul. They might as well be slaves for all they can do.”
MacLean frowned. ”

“ The way to Fassett’s, through the ravaged country, was scarred by other floods. There was a half-mile of levee to be covered; a ticklish thing by day to carry a machine over the narrow mound, scraping bottom all the time. By night—with dynamite in the bumping tonneau it was a gamble—and the wind blowing like this. But he wouldn’t let Hardin take it, he would show Hardin what he meant by “safe”!
By the pale flicker of the single lantern he got out the long gray car, nosed like a hound, filled the tank with oil, the canteens with water from a filter in the adjoining shop. ”

“ When he was her own, they might face their differences, then kiss them away! Daring, then witchery! For she wanted to charm her husband; that, the proudest conquest of all. The wonder it was that all women could not see it that way. To win over again, to conquer against commonplaceness, against satiety—to bewitch one’s own!
Godfrey was returning to Australia’s clapping hands. The desert, Gerty Hardin, were forgotten in the ardor of his singing. To pour out song like that, to make a world listen, be the voice that summons memory! ”

“ Later, he wandered through the group of staring idlers in the office, past the popular soda-stand and the few chair-tilters on the sidewalk, going on, as if without purpose, to the railroad sheds, and then on, down to the offices of the Desert Reclamation Company. He discovered it to be the one engaging spot in the hastily thrown-together town. There were oleanders, rose and white, blooming in the patch of purple blossoming alfalfa that stood for a lawn. Morning-glories clambered over the supports of the veranda, and on over the roof. Rickard’s deductions led him to the Hardins. ”

“ Always life blocked her. His doubt gave her doubts of him. Would he be faithful, a silver-voiced Godfrey; absent, other, younger women hanging on his voice? It did not hurt to keep a man guessing. She had told him to ask her that after the courts had set him free. She could not have him sure of her. Men tire when they are sure; Rickard had been too sure of her.
An exclamation from him recalled her. She found that he was no longer staring at her; his eyes were fixed on the trembling structure over which a “battle-ship,” laden with rock, was creeping. ”

“ In spite of his resolution to be miserable, MacLean laughed. The hobo’s weak ever-turning ankles made him the butt of the hobo camp. A bottle of arnica in his coat pocket, the insidious smell of the stuff which clung to his clothes, had drawn the inevitable sobriquet.
“He didn’t come in to-day. Poor devil! He’s trying to stick it out, and not draw his wages. You run a chance of being put off in the heart of the desert when you ride out on a brake-beam from Yuma. You’ve got to have a little ‘dough’ in your pocket to wheedle a man with a team, or a soft-hearted brakeman. Else it’s death. ”

“ Poor Smythe! as inextricably entangled in the meshes of red tape as was the hapless Lady of Shalott in the web of her own snarled loom. It was said in Arizona—he himself had met the statement in Tucson—that any man who had ever worked for Tod Marshall would rather be warmed by the reflection of his greatness than be given posts of personal distinction.
Rickard found his office the only attractive place in the desert city. Shining and airy, even in the hottest days, its gaily screened windows were far enough above the street to give a charitable perspective. ”

“ Parrish was hurt.
The tidy farm of the Busbys looked wind-blown and dispirited. The young orange trees had torn from their stakes; they curved away from the castigating wind. The alfalfa fields had withstood the blight, and the young willows which fringed the ditch, doubling to the breeze, sprang back like elastic when it passed.
Mrs. Busby came out on the porch to meet her. Innes was tying her horse. “How is she?” she demanded.
“Asleep, I think. Tie him fast. This wind makes the beasts restless. Come right in.”
Not even a desert storm would be allowed to meddle with that interior. ”

“ But he was a man, in battle. The head-gate held up; it was too bad. Silent, Bodefeldt, Wooster, Grant, all of them fighting mad because of the deadlock at the Heading. All up in arms, at last, against Marshall, because of this cruel cut to their hero, Hardin. Her eyes glowed like yellow lamps, as she recalled their fervid partisanship.
“Only one man who can save the valley, and that’s Tom Hardin.” Wooster had said that; but they all believed it. The loyalty of the force made her ashamed of her soft woman fears. ”

“ The breeze, which was now entering the car windows, had blown over clover-leafed fields. Its message was sweet and fresh. Rickard could see the canals leading off like silver threads to the homes and farms of the future; “the socialists’ dream come true!” Willows of two or three years’ growth outlined the banks. Here and there a tent, or a ramada, set up a brave defiance against the hard conditions of the land it was invading. Rickard leaned out of the window, and looked back, up the valley which was dominated by the range now wrapping around itself gauzy iridescent draperies. ”

“ Rickard passed and repassed her, running, or again walking slowly, talking eagerly to Marshall. And had not seen her! Not during those hours would he think of her, not until the idea failed, or was triumphant, would he turn to look for her. Knowing, the thought unfolded slowly, knowing he would find her there!
The real work of the world is man-work; no matter [388] how she or other women might yearn, theirs not the endurance. All they can do is negative; not to get on the track! Neither with pretty ruffles, nor tender fears! ”

“ It came home to Innes for the hundredth time, the surprise of such a meal in that desert. A few years ago, and what had a meal been? She threw the credit of the little lunch to sulky Tom Hardin lying on the portière-covered couch, his ugly lower lip outthrust against an unsmiling vision. It was Tom, Tom and his brave men, the sturdy engineers, the dauntless surveyors, the Indians who had dug the canals, those were the ones who had spread that pretty table, not the buxom little woman darting about in pink gingham. ”

“ Stumbling along the levee of his buried hopes, by the peaceful chained river of his dedication, it came to him, the Ultimate, the end of it all. Until then death had been kept in its decent background. The one incontrovertible fact of the universe stared him now in the face. Heretofore, his struggle had been set to the tune of life; now, the rest of the way, he was facing death. For what is death but the failure to live? That was where he, Hardin, had failed. He touched at a thought of brotherhood, the realization dim. Death had come to Eduardo swiftly ”

“ 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! ”

“ Each time a belching engine pulled across that hazardous track, it flung a credit to the man-side. Each time the waters, slowly rising, hurled their weight against the creaking trestles where the rock was thin, a point was gained by the militant river. Its roar sounded like the last cry of a wounded animal to Innes’ ear; the Dragon was a reality that night as it spent its rage against the shackles of puny men. ”

“ Rickard knew he could find shells at that desert station should he look for them. He picked up his bag that the porter had thrown on the ground and faced the rung-down curtain.
Its painted scene was a yellow station-house broiling under a desert sun; a large water-tank beyond, and in the distance the inevitable cardboard mountains, like property scene-shifts, flat and thin in their unreal hues of burnished pink and purple. A dusty accommodation train was backing and switching, picking up the empty [21] refrigerator cars to carry into the valley for the early melon growers. ”

“ Hardin, himself, was repressed, an eager live wire. His days he spent on the river; his nights, long hours of them, open-eyed, on his back, watching the slow-wheeling, star-pricked dome of desert sky. His was the suspense of the man on trial; this was his trial; Gerty, Rickard, the valley, his judge and jury. Gradually, the peace of the atom lost in infinity would absorb him; toward morning he would sleep. But the first touch of dawn would bring him back to the situation; the sun not so tender as the stars! ”

“ She thought of nothing; they moved as one to the liquid falling heat. She passed Estrada, just arrived. His smile fell past her. He stood watching them. The girl was not talking. He could not make out the still fixity of her face.
The music dropped them suddenly, isolating them at the stern of the deck. The silence was complete. It was a moment of unreality, the rhythmic blood still in motion, the wistfulness of the moonlight falling on peaceful waters. Rickard broke it to ask her what she thought of the camp. ”

“ The eyes that were looking at the levee were no longer seeing another man’s folly; they were visualizing his head-gate, the gate that meant safety to the valley, the gate he was not allowed to complete. He was living over again, step by step, the chain of events that led to this exasperating deadlock; himself, incapacitated, helpless, seeing the thing which should be done, powerless to do it. The men who might win, petty enough to let the wish to put him in the wrong override the big opportunity to save the valley! ”

“ Coronel was there, the general, and Bliss—dead soon after; Hardin, Silent. Out of a clear morning, following the storm, flashed the mirage which came to Estrada as prophecy,—the city vision which summoned him to fulfil the Fremont-Powell dream. “That barren land, and a rich river flowing over yonder!” His father’s vibrant voice returned to his memory; how often had he heard him cry: “The young men pressing in from the congested cities to get their living out of that unworked soil; a clean living, Eduardo!” ”

“ Day by day, the piles of willow branches grew higher, the brush-cutters working ahead of the mattress workers in the stream. In the dense undergrowth, the stolid Indians, Pimas and Maricopas and Papagoes, struggled with the fierce thorn of the mesquit and the over-powering smell of the arrow-weed. As tough as the hickory handles they wielded, they fought a clearing through dense thickets, in the intense tropic heat.
It was a glittering day. A copper sun rode the sky; the desert sand burned through the shoe leather. ”

“ Wondering if men could endure what they like to call their supreme blessing, life, if we were not able to sleep away half of it. We die half of our life, eagerly, that we may live the other half. Strange, that!”
Hardin thought that he was too full of pain, of intolerance to listen, but the calm voice reached his fleeing thoughts. The final sleep, release? Sharply, he looked at Brandon’s straight clean profile, ascetic in its intellectual purity, sweet as a woman’s. What had his life been? Brandon kept on with his quiet reflection, but Hardin was wandering afield. ”

“ Between him and the eastern range spread miles of sweet-smelling alfalfa. Young willow growth checker-boarded the country, marking the canal system. All that in a few years; the miracle of irrigation. He had seen virgin desert, as this had been when his father had crossed with Bliss and Hardin; six years before, when he had first seen it, it was still desert, such as he was flinging a track across, of creosote-bush, and tough mesquit roots, and here and there, the arrow-weed. ”

“ He thought then that she knew, that Innes had told her. The Lawrence episode held no sting to him. Once, it had enchanted him that he had carried off the boarding-house belle, whom even that bookman had found desirable—bookman! A superior dude! He had always had those grand airs. As if it were not more to a man’s credit to struggle for his education, even if he were older than his class, or his teacher, than to accept it off silver plates, handed by lackeys? Rickard had always acted as if it had been something to be ashamed of. ”

“ An economic waste, half of the world spending more than the other half can earn! To the woman who has been spared the problem, comes the problem of choice. Has any one, born a woman, the daring to say—“I will not choose. I will take both! I will be man and woman, too!” Suppose she were not at home when he stumbled back to her! As soon leave that corner of the bank!
Her muscles grew stiff. Once in a while, the watching women stirred, or shifted their positions, but they did not get up. They would stay where their man, Marshall, or Silent, Rickard, Hardin, could find them. ”

“ In spite of his resistance, the quiet came creeping into Hardin’s soul. His muscles were relaxing; he was slipping toward sleep.
“I’ve wondered, too,” Brandon took a slower tempo, “if we could not see men better by searching for their apex. Perhaps you’ve never looked at life that way?”
The ugly lip flared. Hardin couldn’t see what Brandon was driving at. He’d never had time to sit still and look at life! He’d just lived! Just worked along!
“What are we doing? Climbing up a mountain. Whatever we call this journey of ours, ambition, labor; life. We climb up; we creep down. ”

“ And a long time ago, a lifetime ago, Rickard had told her that she always should wear blue, because of her eyes.
Innes from the next room could hear Gerty teasing Tom to wear his Tuxedo.
“Isn’t one dude enough for you?” growled her surly lord. Innes recognized the mood, and shrank from the ordeal ahead. It was the mood of the Hardin in the rough, the son of his frontier mother, the fruit of old Jasper Gingg, whose smithy had been the rendezvous for the wildest roughs, the fiercest cattlemen in Missouri. ”