William H. Hamby

“ A fear that was never wholly absent made her move toward the door of her own shack. A revolver hung on a nail there.
And then out on the night stole the singing, quivering note of a violin. Instantly the fear was gone, the tension past, and the tears for the first time in all the struggle slipped down her cheeks. She knew now that for weeks she had been hoping he would come again.
When the violin cords ceased to sing, Imogene clapped her hands warmly, and the fiddler rose from beside a mesquite bush and came toward her. ”

“ Things would never grow straight if it did. And if one emotion persists too long the human mind becomes even worse twisted than a tree. For that reason, if we are normal, buoyance and depression, ecstasy and pain follow each other as regularly as ripples on a stream. It is good they do, but it is hard to believe it when we are down in the trough of the wave.
As Bob started away with the promise of Jim Crill to lend him the money for the Red Butte Ranch, his blood was pumping faster than the running engine of his car. ”

“ Bob was out in front of the hardware store dressed in a woollen shirt and overalls, and bareheaded, setting up a cotton planter, when an old gentleman in a linen duster, who had been pacing restlessly up and down the walk like a distant relative waiting for the funeral procession to start, stopped on the sidewalk to watch him work. Whether it was the young man's appearance, his whistling at his work or merely the way he used his hands that attracted the old gentleman was not certain. But after a moment he remarked in a crabbedly friendly tone:
"Young man, you know your business." ”

“ Richer than the valley of the Nile it has lain here beneath the sea level for thousands of years, dead under the breath of the desert, until a little trickle of water was turned in from the Colorado River, and then it swiftly put forth such luxuriant wealth of food and clothes and fruit and flowers that its story sounds like the demented dreams of a bankrupt land promoter. ”

“ The desert night had him—and when he rode away toward the Mexican line he had forgotten his gun and taken his fiddle.
He passed through Mexicali, the Mexican town, where the saloons were still open and the lights over the Red Owl, the great gambling hall, winked with glittering sleeplessness; and out upon the road by the irrigation canal, fringed with cottonwood and willows. ”

“ Bob rode the fields all day long, even when the thermometer crept up to 127 in the shade, and a skillet left in the sun would fry bacon and eggs perfectly done in seven minutes. Often he continued to ride until far into the night, watching the chopping of the weeds, watching the men in the fields, and most of all watching the watering. Yes, the crop was advancing with a promise almost staggering in its richness. It looked now as though some of these fields would go to a bale and a half an acre. ”

“ And what nice people lived out here. The Chinamen who worked in the field, quaint and friendly and faithful. Even the Mexicans with their less industrious and more tricky habits were warm hearted and courteous. That serenading Madrigal was very interesting—and handsome. He had fire in him; perhaps dangerous fire, but what a contrast to the vapid white-collared clerks or professors in the prim little eastern town she had known.
Of course Bob Rogeen did not like him. Imogene instinctively put up her hand and brushed the wind-blown hair from her forehead, and smiled. ”

“ She had been living so long on a few dollars at a time that the figures sounded startling.
"I've got a loan on your cotton," replied Bob with huge satisfaction. "And you can have it as soon as you and your father have signed the note."
"Good heavens!" The blood had left her face. "You are not joking, are you? Why, man alive, that means that we live! It will give us $1,400 above the debts."
Bob felt a choking in his throat. The pluckiness of the girl! And that he could bring her relief! "Yes, and I'm going to take you back to town, where you can pay off the debts and get your money." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nothing Bob Rogeen had overheard about Reedy Jenkins and his schemes had so intensified his anger as this treatment of the patient, defenceless Ah Sing.
"A Chinaman has the system," remarked Noah Ezekiel as they drove away. "He'll lease a ranch, then take in half a dozen partners and put a partner in charge of each section of the field. Raisin' cotton is all-fired particular work, especially with borrowed water—there are as many ways to ruin it as there are to spoil a pancake. And a partner isn't so apt to go to sleep at the ditch." ”

“ The simplest way in the world to make a road across a sandy desert, or to work one that has been used, is to take two telephone poles, fasten them the same distance apart as automobile wheels, hitch on an engine, and drag them lengthwise along the road. This not only grinds down the uneven bumps but packs the sand into a smooth, firm bed for the machine's wheels.
That was what they were doing here. Bob stayed back and watched. He did not want to overtake them. The road-breaking outfit crossed the canal directly and headed south by east off into the desert. ”

“ He had been struggling with his ambitions a long time and never could quite figure why he did not get on faster. He had thought a great deal the last few days about Jim Crill, the old man with bushy eyebrows—and oil wells. Two or three things the gruff old chap had said stuck in Bob's mind. He had begun to wonder if it was not just as easy for a fellow to make a bad investment of his brains and muscles as it was with his money. "That's it," he said almost aloud at a definite conclusion; "I haven't been making a good investment of myself. I wonder if I could sublease that Red Butte Ranch?" ”

“ It was that promise that turned the scales. No man of discernment could look at Rogeen and doubt either his pluck or his honesty.
Two days later forty Chinamen, more eager for jobs now than ever, were picking cotton at the Chandler and Rogeen ranches—twenty at each place.
Tom Barton went up the outside stairway thumping each iron step viciously. Six months of gloomy forebodings had terminated even more disastrously than he had feared. He found Reedy Jenkins rumpled and unshaven, laboriously figuring at his desk. ”

“ About the only two habits from his old life that clung to the ex-professor were his use of big words and soap.
Chandler sat down at the little board table, also out in the open. It was after sundown and the heat was beginning to abate. As Imogene poured coffee into the pint tin cup beside his plate she looked down at him with protective admiration.
"Dad, I'm proud of you. You've got a tan that would be the envy of an African explorer; and you are building up a muscle, too; you are almost as good a man in the field as a Chinese coolie—really better than a Mexican." ”

“ Well, I should say not!"
"The more you do for people the less they appreciate it," said Mrs. Barnett still in a bitter mood.
"Some people," corrected Reedy. "There are a few, a very few, who never forget a favour."
"Yes, that is true," assented the widow, and began to relent in her mind, seeing how kind was Mr. Jenkins.
"I'm very sorry," continued Reedy, frowning, "that your uncle has taken up this fellow. I've been looking up Rogeen's past—and he is no good, absolutely no good. Been a drifter all his life. Never had a hundred dollars of his own. ”

“ Bob turned to his faithful foreman, "I want you to stick until we put this thing through. I'll see you don't lose a dollar."
"Don't you worry about me sticking," said Noah Ezekiel. "I never quit a man as long as he owes me anything."
The loyalty of the hill billy touched Rogeen, but as is the way of men, he covered it up with a brusque tone.
"You get the sacks ready. I'm going in to town and raise the money somehow to pick this cotton. I'll pick it if I never get a dollar out of it—can't bear to see a crop like that go to waste." ”

“ Bob lifted his head and laughed. It was a queer world. He inquired about the trouble with the tractor.
"I sure hope you can fix it," said Noah Ezekiel. "Old Benson will swear bloody-murder if we don't get the cotton in before the tenth of April. He wants to unload the lease."
The sun was scarcely an hour high when the steady, energetic chuck, chuck of the tractor engine told Bob his work was done. He shut it off, and turned to Noah Ezekiel.
"There you are—as good as new. And it is worth ten men and forty mules. Not much like we used to farm back in the Ozarks, is it?" ”

“ Evelyn Barnett came around sharply.
"Bob Rogeen—that fellow who insulted you this morning."
"No? Not really?" Angry incredulity.
Reedy nodded. "As I told you, I've been looking up his past. And I got the story straight."
"The vile scoundrel!" Mrs. Barnett said, bitterly. "And to think Uncle would trust him with his money."
"We must stop it," said Reedy. "It isn't right that your uncle should be fleeced by this rascal."
"He shan't be!" declared Mrs. Barnett, gritting her teeth.
"There are too many really worthy investments," added Reedy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Bob Rogeen slept in the east wing of the squat adobe house. About midnight there was a vigorous and persistent shaking of the screen door.
"Yes?" he called, sleepily.
"They have just telephoned in from the Red Butte Ranch"—it was Dayton, his employer, at the door—"the engine on that tractor has balked. They want a man out there by daylight to fix it."
Bob put up his arms and stretched, and replied yawningly:
"Well, I guess I'm the fixer."
"I guess you are," agreed the implement dealer. "You know the way, don't you? Better ride the gray; and don't forget to take your gun." ”

“ Reedy Jenkins will fight you in every way he can invent. First he'll fight to get your money; and then he'll fight you just for hate."
"I have thought of that," Bob again got up, moved by the agitation of doubt. If it were his own money to be risked he would not hesitate a moment—but one hundred thousand dollars of another man's money and his own reputation!
"For these reasons," continued Imogene Chandler, "I advise you to go into it—and you'll win. ”

“ And," went on Bob, "this war is not going to smash the cotton market forever. It's going to smash most of us who have no money to hold on with. But next spring or next summer or a year after, sooner or later, prices will begin to climb. The war will decrease production more than it will consumption. The war demands will send the price of wool up, and when wool goes up it pulls cotton along with it. Cotton will go to twenty cents, maybe more." ”

“ A man can't carry out many schemes unless he can get hold of money. Jenkins had kept a close eye on Jim Crill, and had grown continually more uneasy lest the old chap become too favourably impressed with Rogeen. He had early sensed the old man's weak spot—one of them—Crill hated to be pestered. That was the vulnerable side at which Evelyn Barnett, the niece, could jab. And Reedy had planned all her attacks. This last move of Crill's—hiring Rogeen to lend money for him, had alarmed Reedy more than anything that had happened. For it would give Rogeen a big influence on the Mexican side. ”

“ You know, excepting one or two big concessions, no Americans own land on the Mexican side. The land is all farmed under leases and sub-leases. If a Chink or a Jap or a wandering American hayseed wants to open up a patch of the desert, he takes a five-year lease. As it costs him from ten to twenty dollars an acre to clear off the mesquite, level the sand hummocks, and get his ditches ready for water, he pays only one dollar rent the first year, two dollars the second, and so on. ”

“ Indignation was getting the better of her voice. "The low-lived—the contemptible—common person. And he insulted me with that—that creature."
"Well, of all the gall!" Reedy was quite as indignant as Mrs. Barnett, for very different if more substantial reasons. He had seen more and more that a fight with Rogeen was ahead, a fight to the finish; and the further he went the larger that fight looked. The easiest way to smash a man, Reedy had found, was to deprive him of money. ”

“ Ah Sing stood in front of his weed-and-pole shack waiting with that stoical anxiety which never betrays itself by hurry or nervousness. If the man of money came and saw fit to lend, "vellee well—if not, doee best I can."
"You go out and take a look at the field," Bob directed Noah, "see if there is any marsh grass or alfalfa roots, and look over his water ditches while I talk to the Chinaman." ”