Morning came like a change in an interminable delirium. Light poured
in through the open window, and the smothering heat of the night gave
way to the burning heat of the day. Helen sat up on the tumbled bed,
pressing her palms against her forehead, and tried to think.
The realization of her own position did not rouse any emotion. Her
mind stated the situation baldly and she looked at it with impersonal
detachment. It seemed a curious fact that she should be in a hotel in
the oil fields, without money, with no way of getting food, with no
means of leaving the place, owing bills that she could not pay.
"Odd I'm not more excited," she said, and in the same instant forgot
about it.
The thought of Bert did not hurt her any more, either. She felt it as a
blow on a spot numbed by an anesthetic. But slowly, out of the chaos in
her brain, there emerged one thought. She must do something to help him.
She did not need to tell herself that he had not meant to break
the law; she knew that. She understood that he had meant to cover
the check, that he was in danger because of some accident or
miscalculation. In the saner daylight the succession of events that
had led to this monstrous catastrophe became clear to her. Bert's
over-wrought self-confidence when he brought her the gold, his
feverish insistence that this was a good territory for land sales, his
excitement when he rushed away, believing that he could sell a farm
to that shifty-eyed woman with the hat-box, should have told her the
situation.
Just because Bert had made that tiny mistake in judgment--A frenzy of
protest rose in Helen, beating itself against the inexorable fact. It
could not be true! It could not be true that so small an incident had
brought such calamity. It was a nightmare. She would not believe it.
"O Bert! It isn't true! It isn't--it isn't--O Bert!" She stopped that
in harsh self-contempt. It was true "Get up and face it, you coward,
you coward!"
She made herself rise, bathed her face and shoulders with cool water.
The mirror showed her dull eyes and a mass of frowsy hair stuck through
with hairpins. She took out the pins and began tugging at the snarls
with a comb. Everything had become unreal; the solid walls about her,
the voices coming up from the street below, impalpable things; she
herself was least real of all, a shadow moving among shadows. But she
must go on; she must do something.
Money. Bert needed money. It was the only thing that stood between him
and unthinkable horrors of suffering and disgrace. His father would not
help him. Her people could not. Somehow she must get money, a great
deal of money.
She did not think out the idea; it was suddenly there in her mind. It
was a chance, the only one. She stood at the window, looking out over
the low roofs of Coalinga to the sand hills covered with derricks.
There was money there. "Millions of dollars a year." She would take
Bert's vacant place, sell the farm he had failed to sell, save him.
Her normal self was as lifeless as if it were in a trance, but beneath
its dull weight a small clear brain worked as steadily as the ticking
of a clock. It knew Ripley Farmland Acres; it recalled scraps of talk
with the salesmen; it reminded her of photographs and blank forms and
price lists. She dressed quickly, twisting her hair into a tidy knot,
dashing talcum powder on her perspiring face and neck. From Bert's
suitcase she hurriedly gathered a bunch of Ripley Farmland Acres
literature and tucked it into a salesman's leather wallet. At the door
she turned back to get a pencil.
The hotel was an empty place to her. If the idlers looked at her
curiously over their waving fans when she went through the lobby she
did not know it. It was like opening the door of an oven to meet the
white glare of the street, but she walked briskly into it. She knew
where to find the livery-stable, and to the man who lounged from its
hay-scented dimness to meet her she said crisply:
"I want a horse and buggy right away, please."
She waited on the worn boards of the driveway while he brought out a
horse and backed it between the shafts. He remarked that it was a hot
day; he inquired casually if she was going far. To the oil fields,
she said. East or west? "East," she replied at a venture. "Oh, the
Limited?" Yes, the Limited, she agreed. When she had climbed into the
buggy and picked up the reins, it occurred to her to ask him what road
to take.
When she had passed Whiskey Row the road ran straight before her,
a black line of oiled sand drawn to a vanishing-point on the level
desert. The horse trotted on with patient perseverance, the parched
buggy rattled behind him, and she sat motionless with the reins in her
hands. Around her the air quivered in great waves above the hot yellow
sand; it rippled above the black road like the colorless vibrations on
the lid of a stove. Far ahead she saw a small dot, which she supposed
was the Limited. She would arouse herself when she reached it. Her
brain was as motionless as her body, waiting.
Centuries went past her. She reached the dot, and found a
watering-trough and an empty house. She unchecked the horse, who
plunged his nose eagerly into the water. His sides were rimed with
dried sweat, and with the drinking can she poured over him water, which
almost instantly evaporated. She was sorry for him.
When she was in the buggy again and he was once more trotting patiently
down the long road she found that she was looking at herself and him
from some far distance, and finding it fantastic that one little animal
should be sitting upright in a contrivance of wood and leather, while
another little animal drew it industriously across a minute portion
of the earth's surface. Her mind became motionless again, as though
suspended in the quivering intensity of heat.
Hours later she saw that the road was winding over hills of sand.
A few derricks were scattered upon them. She stopped at another
watering-trough, and in the house beside it a faded woman, keeping the
screen door hooked between them, told her that the Limited was four
miles farther on. It did not occur to her to ask anything more. Her
mind was set, like an alarm clock, for the Limited.
She drove into it at last. It was like a small part of a city, hacked
off and set freakishly in a hollow of the sand hills. A dozen huge
factory buildings faced a row of two-story bunkhouses. Loaded wagons
clattered down the street between them, and electric power wires
crisscrossed overhead. On the hillside was a group of small cottages,
their porches curtained with wilting vines. When she had tied the
horse in the shade she stood for a moment, feeling all her courage and
strength gathering within her. Then she went up the hill.
The screen doors of the cottages opened to her. She heard herself
talking pleasantly, knew that she was smiling, and saw answering
smiles. Tired women with lines in their sallow faces tipped the
earthern ollas to give her a cool drink, pushed forward chairs for her.
Brown-skinned children came shyly to her and touched her dress with
sticky little fingers, laughing when she patted their cheeks and asked
their names. Mothers showed her white little babies gasping in the
heat, and she smiled over them, saying how pretty they were. Beneath it
all she felt trapped and desperate.
It seemed to her that these women should have started at the sight of
her as at a death's-head. There was nothing but friendly interest in
their eyes, and their obliviousness gave her the comfort that darkness
gives to a tortured animal. The hours were going by, relentlessly
taking her one hope.
"Do you own any California land?"
"Yes." There would be a flicker of pride in tired eyes. "My husband
just bought forty acres last week, near Merced. We're going to pay for
it out of his wages, and have it to go to some day!"
"Isn't that fine! Oh yes, the land near Merced is very good land. Your
husband's probably done very well. Do you know any one else who's
looking for a ranch?" No one did.
She kept on doggedly. When she left each cottage desperation clutched
at her throat, and for an instant her breath stopped. But she was so
hopeless that she could do nothing but clench her teeth and go on.
At the next door she smiled again and her voice was pleasant. "Good
afternoon! Might I ask you for a drink of water? Oh, thank you! Yes,
isn't it hot? I'm selling farm land. Do you own a California ranch?"
It was when she approached the sixteenth cottage that the steps, the
wilted vine, the little porch went out in blackness before her eyes.
But she escaped the catastrophe, and almost at once saw them clearly
again and felt the gate-post under her tight fingers. The taste in her
mouth was blood. She had bitten her lips quite badly, but wiping her
mouth with her handkerchief she found that it did not show. She was
past caring for anything but finding some one who would buy land. All
her powers of thinking had narrowed to that and were concentrated upon
it like a strong light on a tiny spot.
In the twentieth cottage a woman said that she had heard that Mr.
MacAdams, who worked in the boiler factory, had been to Fresno to buy
land and had not bought it. Helen thanked her, and went to the boiler
factory.
It was a large building, set high above the ground. Circling it, she
saw a man in overalls and undershirt lounging in a wide doorway above
her. The roar and bang and whir of machinery behind him drowned her
voice, and he stared at her as at an apparition. When he leaped down
beside her and understood her demand to see Mr. MacAdams his expression
of perplexity changed to a broad grin. MacAdams was in a boiler, he
said, and still grinning, he climbed back to the door-step and drew her
up by one arm into a huge room shaking with noise. He led her through
crashing confusion and with his pipe-stem pointed out MacAdams.
MacAdams was crouching in a big cylinder of steel. In his hand he held
a jerking riveter, and the boiler vibrated with its racket. His ears
were stuffed with cotton, his eyes intent on his work. In mute show
Helen thanked the man beside her and, going down on her hands and
knees, crawled into the boiler. When she touched MacAdams's shoulder
the riveter stopped.
"I beg your pardon," she said. "I heard you were interested in buying a
ranch."
MacAdams's astonishment was profound. Mechanically he put a cold pipe
in his mouth and took it out again. She saw that his mind was passive
under the shock. Sitting back on her heels she opened the wallet and
took out the pictures. Her voice sounded thin in her ears.
"There's lots of good land in California. I wouldn't try to tell
you, Mr. MacAdams, that ours is the only land a man can make money by
buying. But what do you think of that alfalfa?"
She knew that it was alfalfa because the picture was so marked on the
back. While he looked at it she studied him, and her life was blank
except for his square Scotch face, the deliberate mind behind it, and
her intensity of purpose.
She saw that she must not talk too much. His mind worked slowly,
standing firmly at each point it reached. He must think he was making
his own decisions. She must guide them by questions, not statements. He
would be obstinate before definite statements. He was interested. He
handed back the picture and asked a question. She answered it from the
information in the advertising, and while she let him reach for another
picture she thought quickly that she must not let him catch her in a
lie. If he asked a question, the answer to which she did not know, she
must say so. She was ready when it came.
"I don't know about that," she answered. "We can find out on the land
if you want to go and look at it."
He was noncommittal. She let the point go. She felt that her life
itself hung on his decisions, and she could do nothing to hasten them.
Her hands were shaking, and she forced her body to relax. She unfolded
a map of Ripley Farmland Acres and pointed out the proposed railroad,
the highway, the irrigation canals. She made him ask why part of the
map was painted red, and then told him that those farms were sold.
He was impressed. She folded the map a second too soon, leaving his
interest unsatisfied.
He said he thought the proposition was worth looking into. She did not
reply because she feared her voice would not be steady. In the pause he
added that he would go over and look at it next Tuesday. She unfolded
the map again. Her fingers were cold and stiff paper rattled between
them, but the moment had come to test her success, and she would not
deceive herself with false hopes.
She told him that she wanted to reserve a certain farm for him to see.
She pointed it out at random. It was a very good piece, she said, the
best piece unsold. She feared it would be sold before Tuesday. It could
not be held unless he would pay a deposit on it. If he did not buy it
the deposit would be returned.
"You don't want to waste your time, Mr. MacAdams, and neither do I."
She felt the foundations of her self-control shaking, but she went on,
looking at him squarely. "If this piece suits you, you will buy it,
won't you?"
He would. If it suited him.
"Then please let me hold it until I can show it to you."
She waited while time ticked by slowly. Then he leaned sidewise,
putting his hand in his pocket. "How much will I have to put up?"
When she backed out of the boiler five minutes later she had a
twenty-dollar gold piece in her hand, and in her wallet was the yellow
slip of paper with his signature on the dotted line. She stumbled down
a lane between whirring machinery and dropped over a door-sill into
the hot dust of the road. Her grip on herself was being shaken loose
by unconquerable forces. She ran blindly to the buggy, and when she
had somehow got into it she heard herself laughing through sobs in her
throat. The horse trotted gladly toward Coalinga.
During the long drive across the desert she sat relaxed, too weary to
be troubled or pleased by anything. The sun sank slowly beyond cool
blue hills, and darkness crept down from them across the level miles
of sand. A crescent of twinkling lights appeared on the lower slopes,
where the western oil fields lay. Their lower rim was Coalinga, and
she thought of bed and sleep. Clutching the gold piece, she reminded
herself that she must eat. She must keep up her strength until she
had sold that piece of land. She was too tired to face that effort
now. The horse took her quickly past Whiskey Row and dashed to the
livery-stable. She climbed down stiffly.
"Charge it." Her voice was stiff, too. "Clark & Hayward, San
Francisco. I'm representing them. H. D. Kennedy--I'm at the hotel."
Her body lagged as she drove it to the telegraph-office. She had
written a telegram to Clark & Hayward before she realized that she
dared not face any inquiry until after Tuesday. It occurred to her then
that she had committed a crime. She was not certain what it was, but
she thought it was obtaining money under false pretenses. She destroyed
the telegram.
Later, when she laid the twenty-dollar gold piece on the check for her
supper, it seemed to her that she was embezzling. A discrepancy vaguely
irritated her. Could one obtain money under false pretenses and then
embezzle it, too? She was too tired to be deeply concerned, but as an
abstract question it annoyed her. The waitress looked at her sharply,
and she wondered if she had said something about it. In a haze she got
up the stairs and into bed.