The Desert Fiddler Part 4

Reedy pushed back the long black lock of hair from his forehead, shook his head lugubriously, and grew pessimistically oratorical. Things were very unsettled over the line: there was talk of increased Mexican duty on cotton, of a raise in water rates; the price of cotton was down; ranchers were coming out instead of going in; no sale at all for leases. He himself had not had an offer for a lease in two months.

They d.i.c.kered for an hour. Reedy watching with a gloating shrewdness the impractical fellow who had tried to farm with money. He knew Benson had lost money on the last crop, and besides had been thoroughly scared by the sly Madrigal.

"I'm tired of the whole thing." Benson spoke with annoyed vexation.

"I tell you what I'll do: I'll walk off the ranch and leave you the whole d.a.m.n thing for $20,000."

"I'll take it." Reedy knew when the limit was reached. "I'll pay you $2,000 now to bind the bargain; and the balance within ten days."

As Benson left the office with the check, Reedy began figuring feverishly. It was the biggest thing he had ever pulled off. The lease, even with cotton selling for only eight cents, was worth certainly $50,000, the equipment at least $10,000 more. And the five thousand acres was already planted and coming up! In the Imperial Valley the planting is by far the most expensive part of the cotton crop up to picking. It costs from seven to ten dollars an acre to get it planted; after that it is easy. There are so few weeds and so little gra.s.s that one man, with a little extra help once or twice during the summer, can tend from forty to eighty acres.

It was such an astounding bargain that Reedy's pink face grew a little pale, and he moistened his lips as he figured. He was trying to rea.s.sure himself that it would be dead easy to borrow the other $18,000. He did not have it. In truth, he had only two hundred left in the bank. He thought of Tom Barton and two of the banks from whom he had already borrowed. They did not seem promising. Then he thought of Jim Crill, and the pinkness came slowly back to his face. He smiled doggishly as he picked up the phone, called El Centro, and asked for Mrs. Evelyn Barnett.

Mrs. Evelyn Barnett sat on the porch shaded by a wistaria vine, her feet discreetly side by side on the floor, her hands primly folded in her lap; her head righteously erect, as one who could wear her widow's weeds without reproach, having been faithful to the very last ruffle of her handsome dress to the memory of her deceased.

She had insisted on taking Uncle Crill from the hotel, which was ruining his digestion, and making a home for him. She had leased an apartment bungalow, opening on a court, and with the aid of three servants had, at great personal sacrifice, managed to give Uncle Crill a "real home." True, Uncle was not in it very much, but it was there for him to come back to.

"Uncle," she had said, piously, showing him the homelike wonders that three servants had been able to achieve in the six rooms, "in the crudities of this horrid, uncouth country, we must keep up the refinements to which we were accustomed in the East." The old gentleman had grunted, remembering what sort of refinements they had been accustomed to, but made no outward protests at being thus frillily domesticated after ten years in the Texas oil fields.

And as Mrs. Barnett sat on the porch this morning, fully and carefully dressed, awaiting the result of that telephone message from Calexico, she watched with rank disapproval her neighbours to the right and left.

It was quite hot already and Mrs. Borden on the right had come out on the porch, dressed with amazing looseness of wrapper, showing a very liberal opening at the throat, and stood fanning herself with a newspaper. Mrs. Cramer on the left, having finished her sweeping, had come out on the porch also, and in garments that indicated no padding whatever dropped into a rocking chair, crossed her legs, made a dab at her loosely piled hair to see it did not topple down, and proceeded to read the morning newspaper. It was positively shocking, thought Mrs.

Barnett, how women could so far forget themselves. She never did.

Directly her primly erect head turned slightly, and her eyes which always seemed looking for something substantial--no dream stuff for her--widened with satisfaction and she put her hand up to her collar to see if the breastpin was in place.

It was Reedy Jenkins who got out of the machine which stopped at the entrance. He took off his hat when halfway to the porch--his black hair was smoothly brushed--his face opened with a flattering smile and he quickened his step. Mrs. Barnett permitted herself to rise, take two short steps forward, and to smile reservedly as she offered her hand.

Reedy Jenkins had not exaggerated when he said he had a way with the ladies. He did have. It was rather a broad way, but there are plenty of ladies who are not subtle.

"You have a lovely little place here." Reedy gave a short, approving glance round as he took the offered chair. "It's wonderful what a woman's touch can do to make a home. No place like home, if there is some dear woman there to preside."

Mrs. Barnett's mouth simpered at the implied flattery; but her eyes, always looking calculatingly for substantial results, were studying Reedy Jenkins. He certainly had handsome black hair, and he was well dressed--and the manner of a gentleman. He reminded her of an evangelist she had known back in Indiana. She had intended to marry that evangelist if his wife died in time; but she did not.

"It is very hard to do much here," Mrs. Barnett said, deprecatingly.

"There is so much dust, and the market is so poor, and servants are so untrained and so annoying. 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.

"No, I suppose not," Reedy sighed. "No doubt it pays in the long run.

I know I've been put in the way of making many thousands of dollars first and last by fellows I had been good to." Then Reedy looked at Mrs. Barnett steadily and with wide admiration in his large eyes--looked until she blushed very deeply.

"It may be a rough place to live," said Reedy, "but it certainly has been good for your colour. You are pink as a--a flower; you look positively swee----" He broke off abruptly. "I beg your pardon; I almost forgot myself."

Then Reedy changed the subject to the matter of business on which he had come.

"Yes," Mrs. Barnett said, giving him her hand as he rose to go, "I'll see Uncle to-night; and I'm sure Mr. Jenkins"--he still held her hand and increased the pressure--"he'll be most glad to do it."

CHAPTER VI

Three days after Bob had returned from Los Angeles and found that Reedy Jenkins had bought the Benson lease, he rode up from the Mexican side and jumped off in front of the hardware store. Dayton was talking to the old man with bushy eyebrows and a linen duster.

"Here's Rogeen now," said the implement dealer. "Mr. Crill was just inquiring about you, Bob."

The two men shook hands.

"How you comin'?" asked the old man, his blue eyes looking sharply into Rogeen's.

"I'm starting in on my own," replied Bob; "going to raise cotton over the line."

"Why?" The heavy brows worked frowningly.

"Got to win through." Bob's brows also contracted and he shook his head resolutely. "And I can't do it working by the month. Some men can, but I can't."

"See that?" The old gentleman pointed to a tractor with ten plows attached. "That's success. Those plows are good and the engine is good; but it's only when they are hooked up together they are worth twenty teams and ten men. That's the way to multiply results--hook good things together. Resolution and hard work aren't enough. Got to have brains. Got to use 'em. Organize your forces.

"Don't tell me," the old chap spoke with some heat, "that a man who uses his brains and by one day's work makes something that saves a million men ten days' work is only ent.i.tled to one day's pay. Not a bit of it. He's ent.i.tled to part of what he saves every one of those million men. That's the difference between a little success and a big success. The little one makes something for himself; the big one makes something for a thousand men--and takes part of it. Has a right to.

Those Chinamen across the line get sixty-five cents a day. If you can manage them so they earn a dollar and a half a day and give them a dollar and thirty cents of it and keep twenty cents, you are a public benefactor as well as a smart man. That is the way to do it; use your brains to increase other men's production and take a fair per cent. of it, and you'll be both rich and honest."

Bob's brown eyes were eagerly attentive. He liked this cryptic old man. This was real stuff he was talking; and it was getting at the bottom of Rogeen's own problem. All these years he had tried to produce value single-handed. But to win big, he must think, plan, organize so as to make money for many people, and therefore ent.i.tle himself to large returns.

"I'm going to try that very thing," he said. "I've just leased one hundred and sixty acres. Half already planted in cotton, and I'm going to plant the rest."

Bob was proud of his achievement. He had been really glad he failed to get the Red b.u.t.te Ranch. It was entirely too big to tackle without capital or experience. But he had found a rancher anxious to turn loose his lease for about half what he had spent improving it. Rogeen then convinced a cotton-gin man that he was a good risk; and offered to give him ten per cent. interest, half the cotton seed, and to gin the crop at his mill if he would advance money sufficient to buy the lease and raise the crop. The gin man had agreed to do it.

Crill jerked his head approvingly. "Good move. That's the way to go at it. Think first, then work like the devil at the close of a revival."

Crill paused, and then asked abruptly:

"Know a man named Jenkins?"

"Yes," replied Bob.

"Is he safe?"

Bob grinned. "About as safe as a rattlesnake in dog days."

As Jim Crill stalked up the outside stairway of Reedy Jenkins' office, the wind whipping the tail of the linen duster about his legs, he carried with him two very conflicting opinions of Reedy--Mrs. Barnett's and Bob Rogeen's. Maybe one of them was prejudiced--possibly both.

Well, he would see for himself.

Reedy jumped up, gave his head a cordial fling, and grabbed Jim Crill's hand as warmly as though he were chairman of the committee welcoming the candidate for vice-president to a tank-station stop. Reedy remembered very distinctly meeting Mr. Crill in Chicago five years ago.

In fact, Mr. Crill had for a long time been Mr. Jenkins' ideal of the real American business man--shrewd, quick to think, and fearless in action; willing to take a chance but seldom going wrong.

"Evy said you wanted to see me about borrowing some money," the old man dryly interrupted the flow of eloquence.

"Yes--why, yes." Reedy brought up suddenly before he had naturally reached his climax, floundered for a moment. "Why, yes, we have an investment that I thought would certainly interest you." Reedy had decided not only to get the old man to finance the Red b.u.t.te purchase but his whole project.