The astute Mr. Sleeman's prediction to Farwell--namely, that the
attitude of the ranchers would affect land sales--proved correct.
Naturally, owing to a perfect advertising machinery, a number of sales
were made to people at distant points, who bought for speculation
merely. But these, though well enough in their way, were not entirely
satisfactory. The company needed actual settlers--men who would go upon
the lands and improve them--to furnish object lessons from the ground
itself to personally conducted, prospective buyers, who in turn should
do the same, and ultimately provide the Prairie Southern branch of
Western Airline with a paying traffic in freight and humanity.
But prospective buyers proved annoyingly inquisitive. After looking at
the company's holdings, they naturally wished to see for themselves
what the country was good for; and the obvious way to find out was to
visit the established ranches.
Sleeman could not prevent it--nor appear to wish to prevent it. In
fact, he had to acquiesce cheerfully and take them himself. That was
better than letting them go alone. But the very air seemed to carry
rumours. In vain he assured them that there was no fear of trouble,
that in any event the company would protect them; in vain he showed
them the big canal and beautiful system of ditches, and pointed with
much enthusiasm to the armour-belted, double-riveted clause in the sale
contracts, guaranteeing to the lucky buyer the delivery of so many
miner's inches or cubic feet of water every day in the year.
"It's like this," said one prospective buyer: "They ain't enough water
for the whole country, and you're certainly aimin' to cinch some of the
men that's here already so tight they can't breathe. If I buy water
they're gettin' now, they're mighty apt to be sore on me. Dunno's I
blame them, either. I like to stand well with my neighbours. Your
land's all right, but I can't see where we deal."
And the attitude of this individual was fairly representative.
Landlookers came, saw; but, instead of remaining to conquer the soil,
the majority of them went elsewhere.
This was hard on Sleeman. He was a good salesman, and he had a good
proposition; but he was handicapped by conditions not of his creating
and beyond his control. And he knew quite well that, while a
corporation may not give an employee any credit whatever for
satisfactory results, it invariably saddles him with the discredit of
unsatisfactory ones.
He foresaw that sooner or later--and very probably sooner--he would be
asked to explain why he was not making sales. And he came to the
conclusion that, as something was sure to start, he might as well start
it himself.
His cogitations crystallized in the form of a letter to his chief, the
head of the land department, wherein he told the bald and shining truth
without even a mental reservation. And he intimated tactfully that if
the department had another man whom they considered better fitted to
deal with the unfortunate local conditions, he, Sleeman, would be
charmed to assist him, or to go elsewhere in their service, if that
seemed best to their aggregate wisdom. He worded his part of this
letter very carefully, for he had seen as good men as himself
incontinently fired merely because they could not deny themselves the
luxury of a petulant phrase.
His letter bore fruit; for Carrol, the mighty head of the land
department, came down to see things for himself.
Carrol, however, suffered from a species of myopia not uncommon among
gentlemen who have for a long time represented large interests. He had
so come to look upon Western Airline as an irresistible force, that the
concept of an immovable body was quite beyond him. He had nothing but
contempt for any person or set of persons--corporations with equal
capital always excepted--rash enough to oppose any of its plans.
"Now, see here," he said at a conference with Sleeman and Farwell. "We
can't afford to have our sales blocked this way. Our ditches will carry
water now, and the dam itself is nearly completed. Open up the ditches
and take all the water you can. Then we'll see whether there is
anything in these yarns."
"But if we take water before we need it, we simply stiffen their hand,"
Sleeman objected. "We give them legitimate grounds to kick."
"They'll kick, anyway," said Carrol. "We need water to grow grass--if
anybody should ask you. The sooner we take it the sooner we shall be
able to acquire these ranches. Once the men see what they're up against
they'll ask us to buy, which we'll do on our own terms. That's the
programme. What do you think, Farwell?"
"You're the doctor," Farwell replied.
"You don't anticipate any trouble?"
"Not a bit," said Farwell contemptuously. "They'll howl, of course. Let
'em. In a month they'll eat out of your hand."
"Quite so," said Carrol; "that's how I look at it."
"There's one man, though," said Farwell, "whom I'd like to see get a
fair price. That's McCrae, who owns Talapus Ranch. It's the biggest and
best in the country."
"Will he sell now?"
"He might."
"What has he got, and what does he want for it?"
Farwell told him.
"What is it worth, Sleeman?" And at his agent's appraisal, Carrol
looked shocked and grieved. "Why, good Lord! Farwell," he said, "he
wants almost what his ranch is worth."
"Funny that he should, isn't it?" sneered Farwell, who stood in no awe
of Carrol. "Well, and that's what I want him to get."
"Can't do it," said Carrol decisively. "No money in it. Show me how I
could make a profit."
"Cut it up into little chunks and sell it to those marks back East,"
Farwell replied. "I don't have to tell you your business. Make another
Sentinel of it if you like."
The reference was to the town site of Sentinel, a half section of
prairie which had been bought for three thousand dollars and sold as
town lots on paper at a couple of hundred thousand to confiding,
distant investors. It was still prairie, and apt to remain so. Carrol
had engineered the deal, and he would have blushed if he had not
forgotten how. As it was, he smiled sourly.
"I wish I could. Is this McCrae a friend of yours?"
"Put it that way," Farwell replied, frowning at the quizzical
expression of Sleeman's eye. "He doesn't want to sell, but I want him
to have the chance of refusing real money. He may take it, or he may
not. Anyway, I make it as a personal request."
Carrol eyed him for a moment. He knew Farwell's reputation for
uncompromising hostility to any one who thwarted his plans,
accidentally or otherwise. Also Farwell was a good man. He was bound to
rise. Some day, he, Carrol, might require his help and he kept a sharp
eye on possibilities of that nature. So he said:
"It isn't business, but to oblige _you_, Farwell--all right, I'll take
the chance that he won't accept. But it's sudden death, mind. No
dickering. He accepts, or he doesn't. If not, he'll get just dry-belt
prices with the rest when they surrender."
And so a few days afterward Farwell, armed with a check representing
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars of lawful money, procured
because he considered it likely to have a good moral effect, sought
Talapus Ranch and Donald McCrae. And McCrae, as he feared, turned the
offer down.
Farwell had calculated on producing the check at the proper
psychological moment, in practically stampeding him. The trouble was
that the psychological moment failed to arrive. McCrae showed no
symptoms of vacillation. The issue was never in doubt.
"I told you before," he said, "I don't want to sell, and I won't sell."
"It's a hundred and fifty thousand cold cash--your own value," urged
Farwell. "At 6 per cent. it's nine thousand a year from now to eternity
for you and your wife and children. If you refuse, the best you can
hope for is dry-land prices. It's your only salvation, I tell you."
"My word is passed," said McCrae. "Even if it wasn't, I wouldn't be
harried off the little bit of earth that's mine. It's good of you to
take this trouble--I judge you had trouble--but it's not a bit of use."
"Look here," said Farwell. "Will you talk it over with your
family--your wife and daughter particularly? It's due to them."
"I will not," McCrae refused, with patriarchal scorn. "_I_ am the
family. I speak for all."
"The old mule!" thought Farwell. Aloud he said: "I want to tell you
that in a few days you'll lose half your water. The rest will go when
the dam is finished. This is final--the last offer, your last chance.
I've done every blessed thing I could for you. Right now is when you
make or break yourself and your wife and children."
"That's my affair," said McCrae. "I tell you no, and no." He plucked
the oblong paper from Farwell's unresisting fingers. "A lot of money,
aren't you?" he apostrophized it. "More than I've ever seen before, or
will see again, like enough." Suddenly he tore the check in half, and
again and again, cast the fragments in the air, and blew through them.
"And there goes your check, Mr. Farwell!"
"And there goes your ranch with it," Farwell commented bitterly. "One
is worth just about as much as the other now."
"I'm not so sure about that," said McCrae.
"I'm sure enough for both of us," Farwell responded.
With a perfunctory good-bye, he swung into the saddle, leaving McCrae,
a sombre figure, leaning against the slip bars of the corral. He had
anticipated this outcome; but, nevertheless, he was disappointed,
vaguely apprehensive. In vain he told himself that it was nothing to
him. The sense of failure persisted. Once he half turned in his saddle,
looking backward, and he caught, or fancied he caught, the flutter of
white against the shade of the veranda of the distant ranch house. That
must be Sheila McCrae.
For the first time he realized that his concern was for her alone, that
he did not care a hoot for the rest of the family. All this bother he
had been to, all his efforts with old McCrae, his practical holdup of
Carrol, even--he owned it to himself frankly--his failure to push the
construction work as fast as he might had been for her and because of
her. And what was the answer?
"Surely," said Farwell, straightening himself in the saddle, "surely to
blazes I'm not getting fond of the girl!"
As became a decent, respectable, contented bachelor, he shied from the
idea. It was absolutely ridiculous, unheard-of. The girl was all right,
sensible, good-looking. She suited him as well as any woman he had ever
met; but that, after all, was not saying much. He liked her--he made
that concession candidly--but as for anything more--nothing to it!
But the idea, once born, refused to be disposed of thus summarily; it
persisted. He found himself recalling trivial things, all pertaining to
Sheila--tricks of manner, of speech, intonations, movements of the
hands, body, and lips--these avalanched themselves upon him, swamping
connected, reasonable thought.
"What cursed nonsense!" said Farwell angrily to himself. "I don't care
a hang about her, of course. I'm dead sure she doesn't care for me.
Anyway, I don't want to get married--yet. I'm not in shape to marry.
Why, what the devil would _I_ do with a wife? Where'd I put her?"
A wife! Huh! Instantly he was a prey to misgivings. He recalled
shudderingly brother engineers whose wives dragged about with them,
living on the edge of construction camps under canvas in summer, in
rough-boarded, tar-papered shacks in the winter; or perhaps in
half-furnished cottages in some nearby jerk-water town.
He had pitied the men, fought shy of the women. Most of them had put
the best face upon their lives, rejoicing in the occasional streaks of
fat, eating the lean uncomplainingly. They led a migratory existence,
moved arbitrarily, like pawns, at the will of eminent and elderly
gentlemen a thousand or so miles away, whom they did not know and who
did not know them. Continually, as their temporary habitations began to
take on the semblance of homes, they were transferred, from mountains
to plains, from the far north to the tropics. Their few household goods
bore the scars of many movings--by rail, by steamer, by freight wagon,
and even by pack train.
And there were those whose responsibilities forced them to abandon life
at the front. These set up establishments in the new, cheap residential
districts of cities. There the wives kept camp; thither, at long
intervals, the husbands took journeys ranging from hundreds of miles to
thousands. True, there were those who had attained eminence. These
lived properly in well-appointed houses in eligible localities; and
their subordinates kept the work in hand during their frequent
home-goings. But the ruck--the rank and file--had to take such marital
happiness as came their way on the quick-lunch system.
Now Farwell was a bachelor, rooted and confirmed. He had always shunned
married men's quarters. When his day's work was done, he foregathered
with other lone males, talking shop half the night in a blue haze of
tobacco around a red-hot stove or stretched in comfortable undress in
front of a tent. This was his life as he had lived it for years; as he
had hoped to live it until he attained fame and became a consulting
engineer, a man who passed on the work of other men.
His theory of his own capacity for domesticity, though sincere, was
strictly academic. He had no more idea of putting it into practice than
he had of proving in his own person, before his proper time, the
doctrine of eternal life.
Now, into the familiar sum of existence, which he knew from divisor to
quotient, was suddenly shot a new factor--a woman. He experienced a new
sensation, vague, unaccountable, restless, like the first uneasy throbs
that precede a toothache. He lit a cigar; but, though he drew in the
smoke hungrily, it did not satisfy. He felt a vacancy, a want, a
longing.
He became aware of a dust cloud approaching. Ahead of it loped a big,
clean-limbed buckskin. In the straight, wiry figure in the saddle he
recognized Casey Dunne. Dunne pulled up and nodded.
"Fine day, Mr. Farwell."
"Yes," said Farwell briefly.
"Work coming on all right?"
"Yes."
"That's good," Dunne commented, with every appearance of lively
satisfaction. "Been to Talapus? See anything of Miss McCrae there?"
"She's at home, I believe," said Farwell stiffly.
"Thanks. Come around and see me some time. Morning." He lifted the
buckskin into a lope again.
Farwell looking after him, experienced a second new
sensation--jealousy.