A GAME OF CHECKERS
THE uneasy mood of the desert, the wind-blown sand, drove people
indoors the next morning. Rickard was served a substantial,
indifferently cooked breakfast in the dining-room of the Desert Hotel,
whose limitations were as conspicuous to the newcomer as they were
non-existent to the other men. They were finding it a soft contrast to
sand-blown tents, to life in the open.
Later, he wandered through the group of staring idlers in the office,
past the popular soda-stand and the few chair-tilters on the sidewalk,
going on, as if without purpose, to the railroad sheds, and then on,
down to the offices of the Desert Reclamation Company. He discovered
it to be the one engaging spot in the hastily thrown-together town.
There were oleanders, rose and white, blooming in the patch of purple
blossoming alfalfa that stood for a lawn. Morning-glories clambered
over the supports of the veranda, and on over the roof. Rickard’s
deductions led him to the Hardins.
What school of experience had so changed the awkward country fellow? He
had resented his rivalry, not that he was a rival, but that he was a
boor. His kisses still warm on her lips, and she had turned to welcome,
to coquet with Tom Hardin! The woman who was to be his wife must be
steadier than that! It had cooled his fever. Not for him the aspen who
could shake and bend her pretty boughs to each rough breeze that blew!
Men tossed into a desert, fighting to keep a foothold, do not garland
their offices with morning-glories! Was it the gracious quiet influence
of a wife, a Gerty Hardin? The festive building he was approaching was
as unexpected--as Captain Brandon! Rickard walked on, smiling.
He was fairly blown into the outer room, the door banging behind him.
Every one looked up at the noisy interruption. There were several
men in the long room. Among them two alert, clean-faced youths,
college-graduates, or students out on furlough, the kind of stuff in
his class at Lawrence. Three of the seasoned, road-coached type were
leaning their chairs against the cool thick walls. One was puffing at a
cigar. The other, a big shy giant, was drawing clouds of comfort from
a pipe. There was a telegraph operator at work in one end of the room,
her instrument rapidly clicking. In an opposite corner was a telephone
exchange. A girl with a metal band around her forehead was punching
connections between the valley towns. Rickard lost the feeling of
having gone into a remote and isolated region. The twin towns were on
the map.
One of the older men returned his nod. The young men returned their
hastily withdrawn attention to their game of checkers. The other smoker
was watching with cross-eyed absorption the rings his cigar was sending
into the air. Rickard might not have been there.
One of the checker players looked up.
“Anything I can do for you? Do you want to see any one in particular?”
“No,” it was admitted. “No one in particular. I was just looking round.”
“It’s the show place of Calexico. I’ll take you around. It is the only
place in town that is comfortable when it’s hot, or when the wind
blows, and that’s the program all summer. Take my place, Pete.”
Pete, the young giant, with the face of his infancy enlarged rather
than matured, slipped into the vacant chair. He had been the first to
discover the stranger, but he had evaded the responsibility. The game
immediately absorbed him.
“It’s nice here,” repeated the young fellow, leading the way. They were
followed by a few idle glances.
Rickard looked with approval at the tall slim figure which was assuming
the courtesy of the towns. The fine handsome face was almost too
girlish, the muscles of the mouth too sensitive yet for manly beauty,
but he liked the type. Lithe as a young desert-reared Indian, his
manner and carriage told of a careful home and rigid school discipline.
It was the type Rickard liked, he was thinking, because it was the type
he understood. He preferred the rapier to the bludgeon, the toughened
college man to the world-veneered man of the field. He revered the
progress of a Jefferson or a Hamilton; he would always distrust the
evolution of a contemporary Lincoln. It is easier, he maintained,
to skip classes, or grades in world discipline, than in a rigorous
college. This was the kind which in his own classes had attracted him.
He had missed them in his years on the road--in Mexico, Wyoming, North
Dakota, where rough material had been his to shape.
He was ushered into a large cool room. The furnishings he inventoried:
a few stiff chairs, a long table and a typewriter desk, closed for the
Sabbath.
“The stenographer’s room,” announced the lad superfluously.
“Whose stenographer?”
“General property, now. Every one has a right to use her time. She used
to be Hardin’s, the general manager’s. She is his still, in a way. But
Ogilvie keeps her busy most of the time.”
Rickard had not heard of Ogilvie. He made a mental register.
“When did Hardin go out?” He knew the date himself. He expected the
answer would trail wisps of other information. He had a very active
curiosity about Hardin. The man’s failures had been spectacular.
The young fellow was thinking aloud. “The dam went November
twenty-ninth. Hardin was given a decent interval to resign. Of course,
he was fired. It was an outrage--” He remembered that he was speaking
to a stranger, and broke off suddenly. Rickard did not question him. He
made another note. Why was it an outrage, or why did it appear so? In
perspective, from the Mexican barranca, where he had been at the time,
the failure of that dam had been another bar sinister against Hardin.
“I see that you are from the University of California?” he said,
following his courier to the door that opened on a long covered inner
porch. Another lawn of alfalfa rested the eyes weary of dust and sand.
A few willows and castor-beans of mushroom habit shut out the desert,
denied the lean naked presence just beyond the leafy screen. Rickard
nodded at the pin of gold and blue enamel.
“Out for a year,” glowed the lad. “Dad wanted me to get some real stuff
in my head. He said the Colorado would give me more lessons--more real
knowledge in a year than I’d get in six at college. I kicked up an
awful row--”
The older man smiled. “Of course. You didn’t want to leave your class.”
“You’re a college man, then.” Rickard uncovered his “frat” pin under
his vest lapel. “Father wasn’t. He couldn’t understand. It was tough.”
“You don’t want to go back now?”
The boy made a wry face. “He expects me to go back in August. Says
I must. Think I’d leave the desert if the Colorado goes on another
rampage? Miss the chance of a lifetime? I’ll make him see it. If I
don’t, I’ll buck, that’s all.”
“You did not tell me your name,” was suggested.
“MacLean, George MacLean,” said the young man rather consciously. It
was a good deal to live up to. He always felt the appraisement which
followed that admission. George MacLean, elder, was known among the
railroad circles to be a man of iron, one of the strongest of the heads
of the Overland Pacific system. He was not the sort of man a son could
speak lightly of disobeying.
“Of course, every one calls me Junior.”
“I guess you’ll go back if he wants you to,” smiled Rickard.
“Oh, but what a rotten trick it would be!” exclaimed the son of the
man of iron. “To throw me out of college--I was daffy to finish with
my class, and to get me here, to get me interested--and then after
I’ve lost my place to pull me back. Why, there are things happening
every day that are a liberal education. They are only just beginning to
understand what they are bucking up against. The Colorado’s an unknown
quantity, even old engineers are right up against it. There are new
problems coming up every day. The Indians call her a yellow dragon, but
she’s a tricky woman, she’s an eel; she’s giving us sums to break our
teeth on.”
The man smiled at the eager mongrel imagery.
“I’ll not go,” said MacLean.
“Fathers seem wise the year after where they seem blind the year
before!”
“I’ll not go!” the boy blustered. Rickard suspected that he was
bolstering up his courage.
“Who has the next room?”
“Used to be the general manager’s. Ogilvie uses it now.”
“And who did you say was Ogilvie?” They turned back into the room.
“You can go in. He’s not here. He is the new auditor, an expert
accountant from Los Angeles. Put in by the O. P. when it assumed
control last year. He used to come down once a month. After Hardin went
out, he came down to stay.”
“Whose say-so?”
“I don’t know. The accounts were rotten, that’s no office secret. The
world knows that. Hardin is blamed for it. It isn’t fair. Look at
Sather’s stone palace in Los Angeles. Look at Hardin’s tent, his shabby
clothes.”
“I’d like to meet Ogilvie,” observed the general manager.
“Oh, he’s not much to meet. A pale white-livered vegetarian, a
theosophist. You’ve seen ’em. Los Angeles is full of ’em. He was here
when Hardin was fired. You could see him see his opportunity. His chest
swelled up. He looked as if he had tasted meat for the first time. He
thought that he could woozle into the empty place! He went back to
Los Angeles, convinced them that the auditor should be here, protect
the company’s interests. It sounded mysterious, sleuth-like, as if he
had discovered something, so they let him bring the books down here.
He is supposed to be ferreting. But he’s ‘woozling.’ He used to be
in the outer office. Said the noise made his head ache, so he moved
in here. All the committee meetings are held here, and occasionally
the directors’ meetings. Water companies’, too. Ogilvie’s taking
notes--wants to be the next general manager, it sticks out all over
him.”
“What’s the derivation of woozle?” this with deep gravity.
“Wait till you see Ogilvie!” laughed his entertainer. Then as an
afterthought: “This is all public gossip. He’s fair game.”
The door opened behind them, and Rickard saw the man whose description
had been so deftly knocked off. He recognized the type seen so
frequently in Southern California towns, the pale damaged exile whose
chance of reprieve is conditioned by stern rules of diet and sobriety.
It was the temperament which must perforce translate a personal
necessity into a religious dogma.
“This gentleman’s just,--is just looking around,” stammered MacLean,
blundering, confused.
The vegetarian nodded, taking off his felt sombrero and putting it on a
chair with care.
The stranger observed that he had pleasant quarters.
Ogilvie said that they answered very well.
“Are there other offices than those I have seen?” Rickard demanded of
MacLean.
He shook his head. “Dormitories. We sleep here, a lot of us when we are
not on duty. At least, we don’t sleep inside, unless it blows us in. We
sleep out there.” He nodded in the direction of the lawn. “We dress and
‘gas’ in there.” His hand waved toward the rooms beyond.
By this time it was apparent that no one, save Hardin, knew of his
coming. He was ahead of Marshall’s letters. He did not like the flavor
of his entrance.
“What provision is being made for a new general manager?”
The question, aimed carelessly, hit the auditor.
“They are not talking of filling the position just yet,” he responded.
“There is no need, at present. The work is going along nicely, better I
might say, adjusted as it now is, than it did before.”
“I heard that they had sent a man from the Tucson office to represent
Mr. Marshall.”
“Did you hear his name?” stammered Ogilvie.
“Rickard.”
The auditor recovered himself. “I would have heard of it, were it true.
I am in close touch with the Los Angeles office.”
“It is true.”
“How do you know?” Ogilvie’s dismay was too sudden; the flabby facial
muscles betrayed him.
“I’m Rickard.” The new general manager took the swivel chair behind the
flat-top desk. “Sit down. I’d like to have a talk with you.”
“If you will excuse me,” Ogilvie’s bluff was as anemic as his crushed
appearance. “I--I am busy this morning. Might I--trouble you--for a
few minutes? My papers are in this desk.”
Rickard now knew his man to the shallow depths of his white-corpuscled
soul. “If I won’t be in your way, I’ll hang around here. I’ve the day
to kill.”
His sarcasm was lost in transit. Ogilvie said that Mr. Rickard would
not be in his way. He would move his papers into the next room
to-morrow.
The engineer moved to the French windows that opened on the alfalfa
lawn. A vigorous growth of willows marked the course of New River which
had cut so perilously near the towns. A letter, “b,” picked out in
quick river vegetation told the story of the flood. The old channel,
there it was; the curved arm of the “b,” one could tell that by the
tall willows, had been too tortuous, too slow for those sweeping
waters. The flow had divided, cutting the stem of the letter, carrying
the flood waters swifter down-grade. The flow had divided,--hm! divided
perhaps the danger, too! An idea in that! He would see that better from
the water-tower he’d spied at entering. Another flood, and a gamble
whether Mexicali or Calexico would get the worst of it. Unless one was
ready. A levee--west of the American town!
“Excuse me, sir--do you need me?” He turned back into the room. He
could see that MacLean was aching to get out of the room. Ogilvie
had visibly withered. A blight seemed to fall on him as his white
blue-veined fingers made a bluff among his papers.
“Thank you.” Rickard nodded at MacLean, who burst into the outer office.
“It’s the new general manager from Tucson--Rickard’s his name.” His
whisper ran around the walls of the room where other arrivals were
tilting their chairs. “The new general manager! Ogilvie woozled for
nothing. You should have seen his face!”
“Did any one know that he was coming?” Silent, the tanned giant, spoke.
“That’s Marshall all over,” said Wooster, bright-eyed and wiry,
removing his pipe. “He likes to move in a mysterious way his wonders to
perform. (Used to sing that when I was a kid!) No announcement. Simply:
‘Enter Rickard!’”
“More like this,” said Silent. “Exit Hardin. Enter Ogilvie. Enter
Rickard.”
“And exit Ogilvie,” cried MacLean.
“It’s a--damned shame,” burst out Wooster. No one asked him what he
meant. Every man in the room was thinking of Hardin whose shadow this
reclamation work was.
“What’s Rickard doing?” asked the infantile Hercules at the
checker-board. The force called him Pete, which was a short cut to
Frederick Augustus Bodefeldt.
“Taking Ogilvie’s measure,” this from MacLean.
“Then he’s doing something else by this time. That wouldn’t take him
five minutes unless he’s a gull,” snapped Wooster, who hated Ogilvie as
a rat does a snake.
The door opened and Rickard came in. Almost simultaneously the outer
door opened to admit Hardin. Who would introduce the new general
manager to the dismissed one? The thought flashed from MacLean
to Silent, to the telegraph operator. Bodefeldt doubled over the
checker-board, pretending not to see them. Confusion, embarrassment was
on every face. Nobody spoke. Hardin was coming closer.
“Hello, Hardin.”
“Hello, Rickard.”
It appeared friendly enough to the surprised office. Both men were glad
that it was over.
“Nice offices,” remarked Hardin, his legs outspread, his hands in his
pockets.
“Ogilvie is satisfied with them.” The men rather overdid the laugh.
“Finding the dust pretty tough?” inquired Hardin.
“I spent a month in San Francisco last summer!” was the rejoinder.
“This is a haven, though, from the street. Thought I’d loaf for
to-day.” Was Hardin game to do the right thing, introduce him as the
new chief to his subordinates? Nothing, it developed, was further
from his intention. Hardin, his legs outstretched, kept before his
face the bland impenetrable smile of the oriental. It was clearly not
Rickard’s move. The checker players fidgeted. Rickard’s silence was
interrogative. Hardin still smiled.
The outer door opened.
The newcomer, evidently a favorite, walked into a noisy welcome, the
“boys’” embarrassment overdoing it. He was of middle height, slender; a
Mexican with Castilian ancestry written in his high-bred features, his
grace and his straight dark hair.
“Good morning, Estrada,” said Hardin with the same meaningless smile.
“Good morning, gentlemen.” The Mexican’s greeting paused at Rickard.
“Mr. Estrada, Mr. Rickard.”
Every one in the office saw Hardin snub his other opportunity. He
had betrayed to every one his deep hurt, his raw wound. When he had
stepped down, under cover of a resignation, he had saved his face by
telling every one that a rupture with Maitland, one of the directors
of the reorganized company, had made it impossible for them to serve
together, and that Maitland’s wealth and importance to the company
demanded his own sacrifice. Two months before Rickard’s appearance,
Maitland had been discovered dead in his bath in a Los Angeles hotel.
Though no one had been witless enough to speak of their hope to Hardin,
he knew that all his force was daily expecting his reinstatement.
Rickard’s entrance was another stab to their chief.
“The son of the general?” The new manager held out his hand. “General
Estrada, friend of Mexican liberty, founder of steamship companies and
father of the Imperial Valley?”
“That makes me a brother of the valley,” Estrada’s smile was sensitive
and sweet.
“He did good work in his day,” added Rickard rather stupidly.
Estrada looked at Hardin, hesitated, then passed on to the checker
players, and stood behind MacLean.
“I saw your father in Los Angeles.”
MacLean’s eager face flushed. “Did you speak to him? Did you tell him
how hard it would be for me to go back?”
“I did what I could. But it was a busy time. There were several
meetings of the board. At the last two, he was present.”
“You mean?”
“He was chosen to fill the vacancy made by Maitland’s death.”
MacLean’s eyes wavered toward Hardin, whose nonchalance had not
faltered. Had he not heard, or did he know, already?
“I’d like to have a meeting, a conference, to-morrow morning.” Rickard
was speaking. “Mr. Hardin, will you set the hour at your convenience?”
Because it was so kindly done, Hardin showed his first resentment. “It
will not be possible for me to be there. I’m going to Los Angeles in
the morning.” He turned and left the office, Estrada following him.
“Oh, Mr. Hardin, you mustn’t take it that way,” he expostulated,
concern in each sensitive feature.
“I’ll take orders from him, but he gave me none,” growled Hardin. “It’s
not what you think. I’m not sore. But I don’t like him. He’s a fancy
dude. He’s not the man for this job.”
“Then you knew him before?” It was a surprise to Estrada.
“At college. He was my--er, instructor. Marshall found him in the class
room. A theory-slinger.”
Estrada’s thoughtful glance rested on the angry face. Was this genuine,
or did not Hardin know of the years Rickard had served on the road;
of the job in the heat-baked barrancas of Mexico where Marshall had
“found” him? But he would not try again to persuade Hardin to give up
his trip to Los Angeles. It might be better, after all, for the new
manager to take charge with his predecessor out of the way.
“MacLean’s coming down to-night,” he threw out, still watching Hardin’s
face. “With Babcock.”
“I won’t be missed.” Hardin’s mouth was bitter. “Estrada, if I had the
sense of a goat, I’d sell out, sell my stock to MacLean, and quit.
What’s in all this, for me? Does any one doubt my reason for staying?
It would be like leaving a sinking ship, like deserting the passengers
and crew one had brought on board. God! I’d like to go! But how can I?
I’ve got hold of the tail of the bear, and I can’t let go!”
“No one doubts you--” began Estrada. Hardin turned away, with an ugly
oath. The Mexican stood watching his stumbling anger. “Poor Hardin!”
In the office, Rickard was speaking to MacLean, whom he had drawn to
one side, out of ear-shot of the checker players.
“I want you to do something for me, not at all agreeable!” His tone
implied that the boy was not given the chance to beg off. “What time
does the train pull out in the morning?”
“Six-fifteen.”
“I’ll have a letter for you, at the hotel at six. Be on time. I want to
catch Hardin before he leaves for Los Angeles. If he’s really going.
I’ll give him to-day to think it over. But he can’t disregard an order
as he did my invitation. I didn’t want to rub it in before the men.”
MacLean stared; then said that he thought he was not likely to!
Rickard left the office in time to see Hardin shutting the outer gate
behind him. His exit released a chorus of indignant voices.
“An outrage!”
“A damned shame!” This from Wooster.
“Hardin’s luck!”
On the other side of the door, Rickard deliberated. The hotel and its
curious loungers, or his new office, where Ogilvie was making a great
show of occupation? He had not seen Estrada. He was making a sudden
dive for his hotel, when the gentle voice of the Mexican hailed him.
“Will you come to my car? It’s on the siding right here. We can have
a little lunch, and then look over some maps together. I have some
pictures of the river and the gate. They may be new to you.”
Rickard spent the afternoon in the car. The twin towns did not seem so
hostile. He thought he might like the Mexican.
Estrada was earning his father’s mantle. He was the superintendent of
the road which the Overland Pacific was building between the twin towns
and the Crossing; a director of the Desert Reclamation Company; and the
head of a small subsidiary company which had been created to protect
rights and keep harmonious relation with the sister country. Rickard
found him full of meat, and heard, for the first time consecutively,
the story of the rakish river. Particularly interesting to him was the
relation of Hardin to the company.
“He has the bad luck, that man!” exclaimed Estrada’s soft tuneful
voice. “Everything is in his hands, capital is promised, and he goes
to New York to have the papers drawn up. The day he gets there, the
_Maine_ is destroyed. Of course, capital is shy. He’s had the devil’s
own luck with men: Gifford, honest, but mulish; Sather, mulish and not
honest--oh, there’s a string of them. Once, he went to Hermosillo to
get an option on my father’s lands. They were already covered by an
option held by some men in Scotland. Another man would have waited for
the three months to pass. Not Hardin. He went to Scotland, thought he’d
interest those men with his maps and papers. He owned all the data,
then. He’d made the survey.”
Estrada repeated the story Brandon and Marshall had told, with little
discrepancy. A friendly refrain followed the narrative. “He has the bad
luck, that man!”
“And the Scotched option?” reminded Rickard, smiling at his own poor
joke.
“It was just that. A case of Hardin luck again. He stopped off in
London to interest some capital there; following up a lead developed on
the steamer. He was never a man to neglect a chance. Nothing came of
it, though, and when he reached Glasgow, he found his man had died two
days before. Or been killed, I’ve forgotten which. Three times Hardin’s
crossed the ocean trying to corner the opportunity he thought he had
found. It isn’t laziness, is his trouble. It’s just infernal luck.”
“Or over-astuteness, or procrastination,” criticized his listener to
himself. He knew now what it was that had so changed Hardin. A man can
not travel, even though he be hounding down a quick scent, without
meeting strong influences. He had been thrown with hard men, strong
men. It was an inevitable chiseling; not a miracle.
“I want to hear more of this some day. But this map. I don’t understand
what you told me of this by-pass, Mr. Estrada.”
Their heads were still bending over Estrada’s rough work-bench when the
Japanese cook announced that dinner was waiting in the adjoining car.
MacLean and Bodefeldt and several young engineers joined them.
It had been, outwardly, a wasted day. Rickard had lounged, socially
and physically. But before he turned in that night, he had learned the
names and dispositions of his force; and some of their prejudices.
Nothing, he summed up, could be guessed from the gentleness of the
Mexican’s manner; Wooster’s antagonism was open and snappish. Silent
was to be watched; and Hardin had already shown his hand.
The river, as he thought of it, appeared the least formidable of his
opponents. He was imaging it as a high-spirited horse, maddened by the
fumbling of its would-be captors. His task it was to lasso the proud
stallion, lead it in bridled to the sterile land. No wonder Hardin was
sore; his noose had slipped off one time too many! Hardin’s _luck_!