THE RIVALS
FROM the window of the adobe office building of the company, Hardin saw
Rickard jump from the rear platform of the train as it slowed into the
station. He noticed that the new manager carried no bag.
“Wonder what he’s decided to do about the head-gate. He didn’t waste
much time out there.” Hardin was fidgeting in his seat, his eyes on the
approaching figure. His desk was cluttered with untouched papers; there
was a report to be made; Hardin had several times made a great show of
getting out his books, sharpening his pencils, but he was as restless
as a girl when a lover’s declaration lingers. Marshall had held up the
gate--what did Marshall know about it, he’d like to know, sitting at
his office desk in Tucson? They were losing valuable time. He wondered
what Rickard would report to his chief; he vowed to himself that he
would not show his eagerness by inquiring. “Ask him, please him by
truckling? I’d see the gate rot first.”
Rickard passed through the room, nodding to his office force. The
door of the inner office shut behind him. Hardin stared at the blank
surface. He moved restlessly in his swivel chair. Did the fellow think
a big thing like that could hang on while he unpacked his trunks
and settled his bureau drawers? He picked up a pencil, jabbing at
the paper of his report. He covered the sheet with figures--three
hundred--six hundred. Six hundred feet. Whose fault that the intake
had widened, doubling its width, trebling its problem? Whose but
Marshall’s, who had sent down one of his office clerks to see what
Hardin was doing? Wouldn’t any man in his senses know that the way
Maitland would distinguish himself would be by discrediting Hardin, by
throwing bouquets to Marshall; praising _his_ plan? They all go at it
the same sickening way! Office clerks, bah! Sure, Maitland had advised
against the completion of the gate. Said it would cost more in time and
money than Hardin’s estimates. “Thanks to Maitland it did,” growled
Hardin, scrawling figures over the page. “By the time Maitland finished
monkeying with that toy dam of his the river had widened the break from
three hundred to six hundred feet. For that, they throw mud at me. Oh,
it makes me sick.” Hardin flung his broken pencil out of the window.
Rickard reentered the room. The question leaped from Hardin.
“The head-gate--are you going on with it?”
Rickard looked curiously at the flushed antagonistic face of the man he
had supplanted. The thought crossed his mind that perhaps Hardin had
taken to drinking. It made his answer curt.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know!”
“I have no report to make, Mr. Hardin, until I see the gate.”
“And you went to the Crossing without going down to the head-gate?”
Hardin did not try to conceal his disgust.
“I did not go to the Crossing.”
“Didn’t go--!” Hardin’s mouth was agape. Then he rudely swiveled his
chair. The door slammed behind Rickard.
Hadn’t been to the Crossing? Then where in Hades did he go? “Truckling
to MacLean! Those office clerks! I know them. Jumping for favors from
the man higher up.” He ticked off on his fingers the days the new
manager had already squandered. Saturday, he threw in perversely the
day of Rickard’s arrival, Saturday, Sunday, he loafed all day Sunday,
Monday--and this was Wednesday. What could a man find in the valley
to do if he didn’t rush straight to the gate? The gate upon which the
whole valley hung? Gerty’s dinner occurred to him. “He never intended
to come,” he reflected with satisfaction. “He’ll have to be starting
for the Heading to-morrow. Already, it’s a farce, five days!”
He halted MacLean who was passing him, a stenographic pad under his
arm, a battered copy of _Thorns and Orange Blossoms_ in his hand. He
was cramming night and day, requisitioning the good-natured to read
aloud at a snail’s pace. He had found the novel under Bodefeldt’s
bureau and had held up Pete to give him a page of dictation from the
classic.
“Are you going to the Crossing to-morrow?” Hardin knew he should be too
proud to betray his eagerness, but the words ran away with him.
“Not to-morrow. Mr. Rickard just told me he might not be able to get
off until next week.”
Hardin’s anger sputtered. “Next week. Why does he rush so? Why doesn’t
he go next year? The Colorado’s so gentle, it’d wait for him, I’m sure.
Next week! It’s a put-up job, that’s what it is. Oh, I can see through
a fence with a knot-hole as big as your head. He doesn’t want to
finish the head-gate. He wants to put off going until it’s too late to
go on with it; I know him. He’d risk the whole thing, and all the money
the O. P. has chucked into it, just to start with a clean slate; to get
the glory of stopping the river himself. It turns my stomach; it’s a
plot.” The lower lip shot out.
MacLean’s attention was deferential. He had always liked Hardin; all
the fellows did. But he was jumping off wrong this time. He’d brought
it all on himself.
“One would think he’d been brought up in a convent, he finds the valley
so distracting. Time to go to dinners. Sickening!”
MacLean did not understand the allusion.
“He said,” MacLean hesitated, wondering if the statement had been a
confidence. But Bodefeldt had been there. “He said something about a
levee for the towns. He’s got to investigate that before he goes to the
front.”
“A levee? Well, wouldn’t that jar you?” Hardin addressed the
stenographer in the transparent shirt-waist. “Does he think we’re going
to have another flood this season? Thinks it’s going to reach the hotel
and wet his clothes? Take the starch out of his shirts?” He flung out
of his chair, throwing the papers back into a drawer.
He stamped out of the office, mad clear through. To this crisis they
had sent down a dandy, a bookman who wanted to build a levee. Oh, hell!
He laughed out his bitterness aloud, and did not care that Coulter, who
kept the store, and two gaily dressed squaws turned to look after him.
For it was a crisis, and the O. P. was making it so. They should have
learned their lesson by this time. Trust _Maitland_? And now, Rickard!
“They’ll come crawling after me to help them after this fellow’s buried
himself under river mud, come calling to me as they did after Maitland
failed. ‘Please, Mr. Hardin, won’t you come back and finish your gate!’
I’ll see them dead first. No, I’ll be fool enough to do it. I can’t
help myself. I’m a Hardin. I have to finish what I’ve begun.”
It was not because this was a pet enterprise, the great work of his
life, that he must eagerly eat humble pie, take the buffets, the falls,
and come whining back when they whistled to him. He told himself that
it was because of his debt to the valley, to the ranchers. He saw
himself sacrificing everything to a great obligation. “Who was the
Bible fellow who led his people across the desert? I must polish up my
Bible,” he resolved. He remembered that he had not opened one since his
mother’s death, and that was so long past that the thought brought no
physical thrill.
The colonists were about desperate. Who could blame them? The last
year’s floods had worked havoc with their crops; this year had been a
horror. The district they called Number Six was a screaming irony of
ruin. The last debauch of the river had made great gashes through the
ranches, had scoured deep gorges which had undermined the canals on
which the water supply for Number Six depended. The suits were piling
up against the D. R., damage suits, and they hold up his gate, while
he gets the curses of the valley. And Mr. Rickard thinks he’ll build a
levee!
Hardin was in the mood to fancy slights. He was convinced that Petrie
went back into the bank to avoid him. Two ranchers, Hollister and
Wilson, from the Palo Verde, busy with their teams, did not return his
halloo. The ranchers hated him. “That’s what you get for crucifying
yourself.”
He flung himself on the couch in the tent. Gerty was laying a careful
cloth for supper. A brave determined smile was arranged on her lips.
The noon storm had passed. She hummed a gay little tune. If there was
anything Hardin hated, it was humming.
“You’ll have your dude to dinner all right,” her husband announced.
“He’s in town.”
“Yes, I know,” rejoined his spouse. “I had a letter from him yesterday.
From Imperial.”
Tom sat up glaring. “He wrote to you from _Imperial_?”
His wife misplaced the accent. She misunderstood Tom’s scowl. It was
the old story over again. Whenever those two men came together, the
old feeling of jealousy must be revived again! It was unpleasant, of
course, very unpleasant to have men care like that, but it made life
exciting. Life had been getting a little stale lately; like a book
of obvious even plot. Rickard’s entrance into the story gave a new
interest, a new twist. She hummed an air from a new opera that had set
the world waltzing.
Hardin’s thoughts did not touch her at the hem. He was at the
head-gate, his gate. What the deuce had Rickard gone to Imperial for?
If he wasn’t the darndest ass! Imperial! And the gate hung up!
“For God’s sake stop that buzzing!”
The happy little noise was quenched. Innes, entering at that moment,
heard the rough order. She looked imploringly at her sister-in-law.
“Supper’s on the table,” cried Gerty, the fixed determined smile still
on her lips.