The river

THE coming of the Indians gave the impetus the work had lacked. Under Jenks, of the railroad company, a large force was put on the river; these, the weavers of the brush mattresses that were to line the river-bed. On the banks were the brush-cutters; tons of willows were to be cut to weave into the forty miles of woven wire cable waiting for the cross-strands. 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. Down-stream, the Brobdingnagian arm of the dredge fell into the mud of the by-pass, dropping its slimy burden on the far bank. Twenty-four hours of sun, and the mud bank would resemble a pile of rocks that wind and sun again would disintegrate into a silt. Down the long stretch of levee, the “skinners” drove their mules and scrapers; two pile-drivers were setting in the treacherous stream the piles which were to anchor the steel-cabled mattresses to the river-bed. It was a well-organized, active scene. Rickard, in his office, dictating letters and telegrams to MacLean, Jr., felt his first satisfaction. Things were beginning to show the result of months of planning. Cars were rushing in from north and east; every quarry between Los Angeles and Tucson requisitioned for their undertaking.

A shadow fell on the pine desk. Ling, in blue ticking shirt and white butcher apron, waited for the “boss” to look up. He stood wiping the perspiration from his head, hairless except for the long silk-tapered queue.

“Well, Ling?”

“I go tamale.” His voice was soft as silk. “I no stay.”

It was a thunderclap. There was no one to replace Ling, who was drawing down the salary of a private secretary.

“You sick?” demanded Rickard. Lose Ling? It would be more demoralizing to the camp than to lose an engineer.

“Ling no sick.”

“Maybe you want more money?”

“Plenty get money.” The yellow lean fingers spread wide apart. “Money all lite. Bossee all lite. No likee woman. Woman she stay, Ling go.”

“Mrs. Hardin!” Rickard woke up.

“She all time makee trouble. She talkee butter—butter, butter. All time. She clazy. She think woman vellee fine cook. She show Ling cookee plunes. Teachee Ling cookee plunes! I no stay that woman.” Unutterable finality in the leathern face. Rickard and MacLean, Jr., exchanged glances which deepened from concern into perplexity. They could not afford to lose Ling. And offend Mrs. Hardin, the camp already Hardinesque?

Rickard grew placating. “Now, see here, Ling, you no understand. Mrs. Hardin a nice lady; nice home, she like things first-class. You understand things first-class?”

Sourly, Ling vouchsafed that he, too, understood things first-class. “She say bad plunes. Too much water. She bossee me all time. Mr. Lickard likee lady, keep lady, no keep Ling.”

Rickard looked at his watch. He wanted to be off. He had been promising himself an afternoon for three weeks, since the day the tribes came in. He must start things moving at Maldonado’s. Coronel, who had come in from Yuma yesterday, had told him of an Indian who would do the trick for him, who could withstand liquor, and pretend to reel with it. Already, he had lost some of his Indians. They might wander back; the chances were good that they had been “sent up.” He needed every Indian. But more he needed Ling. He spent another half-hour in wheedling. They met at the starting place. “Ling go tamale.”

“Oh, lord,” groaned the manager, capitulating. “All right, Ling. I’ll speak to Mrs. Hardin to-morrow.”

Even that would not do. The two men made out that Mrs. Hardin was to invade his quarters that evening and teach the outraged Chinese how to cook prunes. That insult had caused the rebellion. “She come, I go.” It was a statement, not a threat. Rickard succumbed.

“All right, Ling. I’ll stop it.” With the dignity of an oriental prince, Ling pattered out of the tent. Rickard was puckering his lips at his secretary. “I’d rather take castor oil.”

“Take time!” laughed MacLean, Jr.

“I can’t do that,” Rickard’s reply was rueful. “I can’t take chances with Ling. More Hardin trouble, or my name’s not Casey. We’ll quit for to-day, Junior. If I’m to head her off, I’ll have to be moving some.”

A half-hour later, MacLean saw his chief leave his tent. He was in fresh linens; and MacLean noticed that he had a pin in his tie.

“I wouldn’t swap places with him this minute! She’ll be as mad as a wet hen!”

Heartily, Rickard, too, was disliking his errand. But there was no shirking it. Ling must be appeased. “And, already, they have enough reason to dislike me. And here comes this to make matters worse!

“It’s not their fault, it’s Hardin who’s inflaming them with his wrongs. Lord, what does the man want? Here was his precious scheme going to pot for lack of funds, and bad management, and he goes whining to Marshall for help, and now he’s sore because he got what he asked. He wants to be the high-muck-a-muck; he pretends it’s the valley salvation. If it were that, he’d be whistling, instead of kicking.”

Mrs. Hardin, from her bed by her screen window, saw him coming. She slipped into a semi-negligee of alternate rows of lace and swiss constructed for such possible emergencies. She did not make the mistake of smoothing her hair; her instinct told her that the fluffy disorder bore out the use of the negligee. She was sewing, in her ramada, when Rickard’s knock sounded on the screen door.

Despite his protests, she started water boiling in her chafing-dish. He had not time for tea, he declared, but she insisted on making this call of a social nature. She opened a box of sugar wafers, her zeal that of a child with a toy kitchen; she was playing doll’s house.

Rickard made several openings for his errand, but her wits sped like a gopher from his labored digging. He suggested that she was working too hard.

“Oh, I love it,” she declared. “It justifies my being here. I know you must think women a nuisance here at camp, Mr. Rickard. I like to do my little best. And Ling needed help. We get along pretty well. He is crude, of course. What could you expect? I’ve taken the liberty of sending out for some extra things. And that reminds me, has my bundle been heard from? Isn’t that the most mysterious thing? It left Chicago, why, it must be months ago.”

Rickard said that the missing bundle had been last heard from in Tepic; by some stupid mistake, it had got into the hands of the Mexican officials, “who were playing ball with it!”

“The mistake came in having it sent here; this is Mexico; everything gets balled up the instant it crosses the line. If you’d had it sent to Yuma now—but you were speaking of orders, camp orders—”

“I’m not going to trouble you with that,” cried Gerty, filling up his cup with an aromatic blend of tea she had sent for to Los Angeles. So far, it had been wasted on the men of the Service, boys, most of them. She felt more at home with Rickard than ever before. The quizzical, amused glance of appraisement was gone, replaced by an earnestness she misread. She met his mood with womanly dignity; she tutored her coquetries, withheld her archness. She remembered a day when her flirtations had deflected her whole life; she no longer said “ruined.” One battle lost? “Time to fight another!” She placed a wafer or two on his protesting plate.

He brought up Ling’s contrariness, and he found they were discussing the Indians. There were a hundred questions she wanted to ask about them. Was it true the popular impression that they caked their heads with mud to—clean their hair? It was true? How dreadful! She liked to believe that it was some religious custom, a penance of some kind.

Rickard saw another opening. He related his plan of having the camp on the Arizona side of the river to save duties on food stuffs; they ate, the Indians, in Arizona, and slept in old Mexico: “It saves the O. P. a nice little sum every month. It’s not an easy thing to manage a commissary, as you know—”

The new hole was dug, but the gopher was out of sight. She spoke of a new book the critics were praising.

He found he would have to discard diplomacy, blurt out his message; use bludgeons for this scampering agility.

He put down his cup; no, he would not have any more. “Thank you just the same. It is really delicious. I feel like a truant, sipping tea here. I’m forgetting my errand.” He stood. She had never seen him hampered by embarrassment before. Her smile was gently encouraging, womanly sweet. She really admired him, more than any one she had ever known. His reserve called to her always, to reach his ideals, ideals she could only guess at. Her mind grasped at the concrete; she believed him impatient of external coarseness. She was always conscious of her dress, her surroundings, her table when he was present.

“My mission is a little awkward, Mrs. Hardin. I hope you will take it all right, that you will not be offended.”

“Offended?” Her face showed alarm.

“It’s about Ling. He’s a queer fellow, they all are, you know.” He was blundering like a schoolboy under the growing shadow in Gerty’s blue eyes. “They resent authority, that is, from women. He is a tyrant, Ling is.”

“I think you are right, Mr. Rickard. He is an unruly servant. But you could replace him easily.”

“Oh, but we couldn’t. It’s no easy matter to get a cook while it’s hot like this; and a camp cook, who can cook quantities, and yet make them palatable—”

Then what was it he was trying to say? The blue eyes met his at last squarely, a glint of warning in them he would not see.

“I have to give in to him, we all do; have to humor him. We’ve spoiled him, I guess.”

“Yes?” Ah, she would not help him. Let him flounder!

“He wants to be let alone; he doesn’t appreciate your kind help, Mrs. Hardin.”

“Oh!” Her eyes were hot with tears; angry tears. She would not for the wealth of that desert let him see her cry. This was so different from what she had expected. This was what he had come to say. She could not speak, nor would not. She sat in her spoiled doll’s house, all her pleasure in her toy dishes, her pretty finery, ruined. She would no longer meet his eyes; mocking, forever, let them be! She had been so proud of her managing, and here he listens to the complaints of a Chinese cook! Complaints against her, against Gerty Holmes, the girl he had once loved! He could not care if he could humiliate her so. She stared at her hands lying limp over the hand-whipped negligee. The azure hue of the silk slip beneath had lost its charm to her. It was the most vivid moment of her life. Not even when Rickard had left her, with his kisses still warm on her lips, had she felt so outraged. He was treating her as though she were a servant—discharging her—because she was the wife of Hardin. Her eyes grew black with anger; she hated them both; between them, their jealousy, their rivalry, what had they made of her life? She suddenly realized that she was old. If she were young, he would not flout her like this. She remembered the woman she had seen in his ramada; she had heard that the Mexican was in camp, employed by Rickard. Her thoughts were like swarming hornets.

“He’s an ungrateful beast, Mrs. Hardin, if he doesn’t appreciate your labors. I’d let him struggle alone. As I say, we’ve spoiled him.”

“He has been complaining?” It was all she could say with control.

“He’s a tyrant. I told him I would not let you waste your kindness one instant longer—”

Oh, she understood! A bitter pleasure to see him so confused. Rickard, before whose superior appraisement she had so often wilted! She would not help him out, never! She rose when he paused. He thanked her for meeting him half-way, and her smile was inscrutable.

“So I’m discharged?”

He misunderstood her dignity, as before he had misconstrued her flirtations.

Gerty drooped under the sudden coming of age. She knew she must be old.

“Or he would not treat me so! he would not treat me so!”

“You can’t be discharged, if you’ve never been employed, can you? Thank you once again, and for your tea. It was delicious. I wish Ling would give us tea like that.”

Boorish, all of it, and blundering! Why wouldn’t he go? When he had hurt her so! had hurt her so!

Her hand met his, but not her eyes. If he did not go quickly, something would happen; he would see her crying. The angels that guard blunderers got Rickard out of the tent without a suspicion of threatening tears. She threw off her negligee and the pale blue slip; the tears must wait for that. Then she flung herself on her bed, and shook it with the grief of wounded vanity.

MacLean looked up as Rickard reentered the office.

“It went all right,” nodded his chief, cheerful now that was out of the way. “She didn’t mind. Tired of it already, I guess.”

MacLean looked at him thoughtfully. Funny for as keen a man as Rickard to be a dolt about women. No woman would forgive that; Gerty’s kind of women. Mind! Mind being turned down? He’d find out later what she thought about it. That was his blind side. And she’d been throwing herself at him ever since she came to the Heading. Everybody had seen it—hold on, everybody did not include Rickard, himself. MacLean, Jr., softly whistled.

That evening, the chief had a visitor. The wife of Maldonado, some of the fear pressed out of her eyes, brought in his laundered khakis, socks, darned and matched; all the missing buttons replaced.

“I haven’t worn a matched sock,” he told her, “for months. That’s great, señora.”

He wanted to get to bed, but she lingered. She wanted to talk to him about her troubles; he had cautioned her against talking about them in camp, so she overflowed to him whenever she found a chance; about Maldonado, the children; Lupe. It was getting wearying; but he could not shove the poor thing out. She wanted him to say again that Maldonado could not harm her. He reminded her of the solution; she could leave him.

“And go to hell! Oh, no, never would I do that. It would be a mortal sin.”

Rickard stretched. He had to be up early in the morning.

“The señor has been very kind,” the woman’s gratitude resembled a faithful dog’s.

“Oh, it was nothing.” His lids were drooping. At five the next morning!

“The señor, he is lonely?”

“Lonely!” He laughed in her puzzled face. Great Scott, he was dying for sleep! He did not catch her drift.

“The señor, he is so kind, and he is lonely. He has no one to sew for him, to mend his clothes, to keep his tent. I am so grateful to the señor.”

Had she misunderstood his suggestions about a divorce? Rickard sat up.

“You are doing very well for me. Thank you. And now, good night, señora. I’m up early in the morning.”

There was something on her mind. She walked toward the entrance of the tent-house, but turned back.

“I have a sister, señor, who would be good to you, mend your clothes, when I am gone. The señor will be lonely, then, is it not so? She is grown now, almost fifteen. She is muy sympatica, can sew, and can cook—”

“Oh, lord—” cried Rickard.

Her refrain was insistent. “The señor is lonely; you need a mujer.”

“No es posiblé,” his answer was rough to her savage, childish kindliness.

The señor was so kind, he would be kind to her sister—

“Por Dios, no!” cried Rickard.

Señora Maldonado gave a sharp intake of breath, an aborted scream. Rickard, too, saw a man’s figure outside the screen door. The Mexican woman pressed a frightened hand to her heart. Of course, it was the vengeful Maldonado—he would kill her—

“If I am intruding,” it was the voice of Hardin.

“Come right in,” welcomed Rickard. “Get along, señora.” The Maldonado slipped out into the night, her hand still against her heart.

Hardin, a roll of maps under his arm, entered with a rough sneer on his face. A dramatic scene, that, he had interrupted! And Rickard who did not like to have women in camp. White women!

Rickard, still sleepy, asked him to sit down.

“Thank you, no. I wanted to speak to you about those concrete aprons. They tell me you’ve given an order not to have them.”

“The order’s from Tucson.” Rickard yawned covertly.

“A child’s order!” exploded Hardin. “Why doesn’t Marshall come and see for himself? Brush jetties! It will never stand!”

“He is coming.” Rickard wrinkled the sleep out of his eyes. “He will be here next week.”

“It’s a crime!” Hardin unfolded his map, spreading it over the table. A bottle of ink was upset in his eagerness. Rickard was thoroughly awake by the time he had mopped the purple black flood with towels and blotting-paper. Hardin recovered his map, but slightly damaged. Two of Rickard’s books were ruined.

“See here,” cried Hardin, still excited. “Calculate that distance. If this is a farce, Marshall ought to say so.” He pulled a chair up to the ink-stained table. “Brush aprons! He’s wasting our time, and the company’s money.”

Rickard resigned himself to a long argument. It was three o’clock when Hardin let him turn in.

When he was getting ready for bed, he remembered the melodramatic scene Hardin had entered upon. He stared comprehendingly at the screen door—seeing, with understanding, Hardin’s coarse sneer—the Maldonado, breathing fast, her hand over her heart. “Of course, he’ll think—good lord, these people will make me into an old woman! I don’t care what the whole caboodle of them think!”

Five minutes after blowing out his candle, he was deeply sleeping.