It was a little after sundown when Bob rode up to the Chandler ranch.
The girl was out under the cottonwood trees by the irrigation canal
gathering up dry sticks for stove wood. He hitched his horse and went
to her.
"Good evening," he said.
"Where is your fiddle?" There was a faint twist of amusement at the
corner of her mouth.
"How did you know?"
"Guessed it," she replied, with a little lift of the eyebrows; and then
stooped to pick up the armful of dry sticks she had gathered.
"Let me have them." He stepped forward to take the wood.
"Why should you?" she said, without offering to relinquish them. "I
prefer to carry my own sticks--then I don't have to build fires for
other people." He laughed, and followed her up the path toward the
shack.
"Let us sit down here." She led the way to a homemade bench in the
open. "Daddy has had a hard day and has gone to bed, and I don't want
to disturb him. He's very tired and has been upset over this lease
business."
That was an opening, but before he could take advantage of it she
abruptly changed the conversation:
"But you haven't told me why you didn't bring your fiddle this time.
I'd love to hear it on a night like this." Dusk was coming swiftly and
the stars had begun to glimmer.
"Oh, I don't carry it round as a business," he answered. "Fact is,
until the other night I had not played it but twice in eight years."
"Why?" She turned to him with curious interest.
"It hasn't usually brought me good luck."
"What happened the other two times?"
[Illustration: Jenkins and Lolita awed by Percy's fiddling.]
He looked off at the very bright star in the west and smiled with
whimsical ruefulness. "I love music--that is, what I call music. When
I was in the Ozarks I fiddled a lot, but discovered it did not bring me
what I wanted, so I went to work. I got a job in a bank at Oakville;
was to begin work Monday. I was powerful proud of that job, and had
got a new suit of clothes and went to town Saturday. That night there
was a dance, and they asked me to play for it." He stopped to chuckle,
but still a little regretfully. "My playing certainly made a hit.
Sunday morning a preacher lambasted the dance, and called me the
special messenger of the devil. My job was with a pillar of his
church. I didn't go to work Monday morning. It's a queer world; that
preacher was the father of Noah Ezekiel Foster, who is now working for
Benson."
She was looking out at the west, smiling; the desert wind pushed the
hair back from her forehead. "And the other time you played?"
"That was up at Blindon, Colorado." He showed some reluctance to go
ahead.
"Yes?"
"An old doctor and his daughter came to the camp to invest. I
overheard them in the next room at the boarding house, and knew a gang
of sharks was selling them a fake mine. I tried to attract their
attention through the partition by playing a fool popular song--'If you
tell him yes; you are sure to cry, by and by.'"
"Did you make them understand?" She had locked her hands round her
knees and leaned interestedly toward him.
"Yes--and also the gang. The camp made up money to pay the undertaker
to bury me next day. I still have the receipt."
"You have had a lot of experience," she said with a touch of envy.
"More than the wisdom I have gathered justifies, I fear," he replied.
"Experiences are interesting," she observed. "I haven't had many, but
I'm beginning. Daddy was professor of Sanskrit in a little one-horse
denominational college back in the hog-feeding belt of the Middle West.
Heavens!" she spoke with sudden fierceness, "can you imagine anything
more useless than teaching Sanskrit? His salary was two hundred
dollars a year less than the janitor's. I hated being poor; and I
hated worse the dry rot of that little faculty circle. The deadly
seriousness of their piffling, pedantic talk about fine-spun scholastic
points that were not interesting nor useful a thousand years ago, and
much less now that they are absolutely dead. I hated being prim and
pretentious. I could not stand it any longer, and made Daddy resign
and go somewhere to plant something. We came out here and I thought I
saw a fortune in cotton.
"Daddy's worked like a galley slave getting this field in; he's done
the work of two men. With one Chinaman's help part of the time he's
got in a hundred and sixty acres of cotton. We've put through two hot
summers here; and spent every dollar we got for our household goods and
his life insurance. And now"--she was frowning in the dark--"we are
warned to get out."
"Who warned you?" Bob asked quickly.
"A Mexican named Madrigal. He has been right friendly to us; and
warned us last week that the Mexican Government is going to raise the
duty on cotton so high this fall that it will take all the profit. He
advises us to sell our lease for anything we can get."
"Have you had an offer?"
"Yes," she shrugged in the dusk and spoke with bitter weariness, "a
sort of an offer. Mr. Jenkins offered us $500. Daddy wanted to take
it, but I objected. I guess, though, it is better than nothing."
Bob stood up, his muscles fairly knotted. He understood in a flash why
the Mexican Jew was going to Jenkins' office. They were stampeding the
small ranchers out of the country, and virtually stealing their leases.
The stars ran together in an angry blur. He felt a swelling of the
throat. It was lucky he was miles away from Reedy Jenkins.
"Don't take it!" he said with vehemence.
Reedy Jenkins had just opened his office next morning and sat down at
the desk to read his mail when Bob Rogeen walked in. Reedy looked up
from a letter and asked greedily:
"Did you get it?"
"No." There was something ominous in Rogeen's tone.
"Couldn't you persuade them to sell?" Jenkins was openly vexed.
"I persuaded them not to." Bob's hands opened and shut as though they
would like to get hold of something. "I don't care for this job. I'm
done."
"What's the idea?" There was a little sneer in Jenkins' tone.
"Decided you would go back to the old job selling pots and pans?"
"No," and Bob's brown eyes, almost black now, looked straight into
Reedy's flushed, insolent face, "I'm going across the line to _raise
cotton_."
Reedy's wide mouth opened in a contemptuous sneer.
"It's rather hot over there for rabbits."
"Yes," Bob's lips closed warningly, "and it may become oppressive for
wolves."
Their eyes met defiantly for a moment, and each knew the other
understood--and it meant a fight.