The Desert Fiddler Part 5

He began to explain his maps and figures as volubly as though he were selling the Encyclopedia Britannica, and again the old man cut in:

"How many acres you got leased?"

"Ten thousand--practically." Reedy paused to answer, his pencil touching the Dillenbeck Ca.n.a.l.

"What did you pay for them?"

"I got most of them for about a third to half what they cost the ranchers."

"Why did they sell so cheap?"

"Oh," Reedy waved, vaguely evasive, "you know how that is; fellows are like sheep--stampede into a country, and then one makes a break, and they stampede out. Now that Benson has sold, a lot more of them will get cold feet."

"Altogether how much money have you put in over there?"

"Forty-two thousand dollars," replied Reedy, consulting a memorandum.

"You understand," he continued to explain, "I'm not a cotton grower at all; I am an investor. I'm dealing in leases; and I merely took over the planted crop on the Benson leases because I got it so cheap there is bound to be money in it."

"What is it you want?" demanded Crill.

"Seventy thousand or so for the lease and the crop. I have 8,000 acres already planted, some of it coming up. I'll pay you 10 per cent. for the money, and half the cotton seed, and give you first mortgage on the crop. Those are the usual terms here."

The sharp blue eyes under the s.h.a.ggy brows had been investigating Reedy as they talked. He wanted to make loans, for he had a lot of idle money. "There are two sorts of men who pay their debts," the old man said to himself. "One who wants to owe more, and one who doesn't want to owe anything." Jenkins would want to borrow more, therefore he would pay his first loan. Even rascals are usually good pay when they are making money. And it looked like this fellow would make money on these leases. Anyway, Jim Crill moved a little annoyedly in his chair at the thought of his niece. It would be almost worth the risk to be rid of Evy's nagging him about it.

"Fix up the papers," he said, shortly, to Reedy's delight. He had expected to have to work much harder on the old man.

The next morning after the interview with Jim Crill Bob was at the hardware store a.s.sembling the implements he had bought, when a tall, shambling hill billy sauntered up.

"h.e.l.lo, Noah Ezekiel Foster," said Bob, without looking up.

"h.e.l.lo," responded the hill billy. "Reckon you know a hoss at long range."

"Reckon I do." Bob resumed his whistling.

"Don't also know somebody that wants a chauffeur for a tractor? Benson sold out my job."

"No." Bob straightened up and looked at the lank fellow appraisingly.

"But I know a fellow who wants a chauffeur for a team of mules."

Noah Ezekiel shook his head. "Me and mules have parted ways a long time ago. I prefer gasoline." Then in a moment: "Who is the fellow?"

Bob grinned and tapped himself. "I'm the man."

Noah Ezekiel shook his head again.

"You look too all-fired industrious; I'd rather work for a fellow that lives at Los Angeles."

Bob laughed. "Just as you like."

But Noah Ezekiel ventured one more question:

"You workin' for Reedy Jenkins?"

"Not much!" Bob put emphasis in that.

"Where is your ranch?"

"On the road a couple of miles north of Chandler's."

The hill billy's forehead wrinkled and his eyes looked off into empty s.p.a.ce.

"I reckon I'll change my mind. I'll take the job. How much am I gettin' a month?"

CHAPTER VII

Some men fail because they invest their money in bad business. More fail because they invest themselves in sorry human material. They trust their plans to people who cannot or will not carry them out.

Bob from his first day as an employer realized that to be able to plan and work himself was only half of success. One must be able to pick men who will carry out his plans, must invest his brains, his generosity, his fair treatment, and his affections in human beings who will return him loyalty for loyalty.

He had made no mistake in Noah Ezekiel Foster. Noah was a good cotton planter; moreover, he knew a good deal about Chinese. Bob had employed six Chinamen to help get the ground in shape and the cotton planted.

"Noah," Bob stopped beside the disk plow and its double team, "you understand mules."

"I ought to." Noah rubbed his lean jaw. "I've been kicked by 'em enough."

Bob smiled. Somehow Noah's look of drollery always put him in a good humour. He noticed it also tickled the Chinamen, who thought "Misty Zeekee" one of the greatest of Anglo-Saxons.

"You see," remarked Noah, picking up the lines again, "as my dad used to say, 'He that taketh hold of the handles of a plow and looketh back, verily, he shall be kicked by a mule.' I never calculate to be kicked in the back. But if that Chinaman over there"--he frowned at a Chinaboy who was fumbling over a cotton planter--"don't get a move on him, he'll be kicked wherever he happens to hit my foot first. Hi, there"--Noah threw up his head and yelled to the Chinaboy--"get a move on. Plantee cotton. Goee like h.e.l.lee." And the Chinaman did.

Bob laughed.

"Do you reckon you could let me have five dollars to-night?" Noah Ezekiel asked, looking down at his plow. "I want to go up to the Red Owl at Mexicali."

"Not going to gamble, are you?" Bob asked.

Noah Ezekiel shook his head. "No, I ain't goin' to gamble. Goin' to invest the five in my education. I want to learn how many ways there are for a fool and his money to part."

After supper, when Noah Ezekiel had ridden away to invest his five dollars in the educational processes of the Red Owl, Bob brought a stool out of the house and sat down to rest his tired muscles and watch the coming night a little while before he turned in. Bob and his foreman occupied the same shack--the term "house," as Noah Ezekiel said, being merely a flower of speech. Although there were several hundred thousand acres of very rich land under cultivation on the Mexican side, with two or three exceptions there was not a house on any of the ranches that two men could not have built in one day and still observe union hours. Four willow poles driven in the ground, a few crosspieces, a thatch of arrowweed, three strips of plank nailed round the bottom, some mosquito netting, and it was done. A Chinaman would take another day off and build a smoking adobe oven; but Bob and Noah had a second-hand oil stove on which a Chinese boy did their cooking.

Bob sat and looked out over the level field in the dusk. A quarter of a mile away the light glimmered in the hut of his Chinese help, and there came the good-natured jabber of their supper activities. 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 pa.s.sed 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. But his heart took a quicker turn; he fancied he saw something white in the yard--the girl was also feeling the spell of the desert night.