A SOFT NOOK
INNES traveled, gleefully, in a caboose, from Hamlin Junction to
the Heading. She could not stay away a day longer! Never before
had Los Angeles been a discipline. Her surprise was still fresh
over the change in her friends, two girls who had been her comrades
during her unfinished college course. She had left, in the spirit of
self-sacrifice, to look after Tom. They had finished, but their two
years of wifehood had made a wider gap than her break. Their plans of
individual accomplishment all merged into new curtains for the guest
chamber, and surprise dishes for Tom and Harry! Why had it fretted
her, made her restless, homesick? Then she had discovered the reason;
history was going on down yonder. Going on, without her. She knew that
that was what was pulling her; that only!
The exodus of engineers had started riverward in July. Gerty went with
Tom, and she had made it distinctly clear that it was not necessary for
Innes to follow them. Ridiculous for two women to coddle a Tom Hardin!
Unless Innes had a special interest!
Her pride had kept her away. But Tom did not write; Gerty’s letters
were social and unsatisfactory; the newspaper reports inflamed her. The
day before she had wired Tom that she was coming. She had to be there
at the end!
There was no one to meet her. Tom was down on the levee work; the camp
was deserted. She found her way to the Hardin tents, helped by the
Chinese cook whom she found installed behind a clump of mesquits.
Gerty welcomed her stiffly. Assuming a conscientious hostess-ship, she
caught fire at her waning enthusiasms. The arrangement of the tent, of
the simple furniture, did not Innes find it sweet? That smaller tent to
the west of theirs had been added that morning. A Mexican was even then
carrying in a wash-stand and an iron bed. Outside, in a hand-cart, were
a couple of chairs, a basin and pitcher of gray enamel.
“If we had known you were coming, we would have been ready for you,”
suggested Gerty.
Innes’ gaze had been turning outward to the lines of canvas, making
a white glitter on the alkali floor of the encampment, trapezium in
shape. Stark in outline, vivid in color, she saw the desert again as a
savage; her terms, brutal, uncompromising. But were they taking her on
her terms, these intruders? They were making her over to their wishes,
as a man makes unto his liking the wife of his satisfied choice? She
was following a thought born of her late visit. Strange, the zeal
which would remake the sweetheart, thought peerless! Her mouth curved
with ironic tenderness. Gerty’s treble notes fell around her ears. She
was listening to her own musing, and watching the dripping arm of the
dredge as it dug a trap for the Colorado.
The prattle grew insistent, interrogative. She had to look at shelves,
at cupboards, at a clever ramada which was both pergola and porch.
Returning to the outer tent, she went back to the door, her Hardin
pulse leaping to the implication of that dredge-arm swinging low in the
river.
“Isn’t it all cozy?” Gerty’s eyes shone on her contrivances. “It all
means work. It has taken two whole months to get it to look like
this. Every piece of lumber had to be coaxed for, and you’d think the
carpenter was a ward boss, he’s that haughty.”
Gerty looked younger and prettier. Her flush accented her childish
features which were smiling down her annoyance over this uninvited
visit.
“I had the ramada put up after the shed; an afterthought. They gave me
a tent for a kitchen at first--as if I could cook in a tent! We eat in
the ramada. The flies ate us up, so I sent for screen wire, and had it
enclosed. It isn’t perfect, but it’s much better than it was. The flies
will get through that roof. It keeps one busy to remember to have fresh
brush piled over it. It dries so quickly in this sun. Isn’t it hot
here? Hotter than the towns ever were; don’t you think so?”
Innes said she had not been there long enough yet to tell!
“We have all the home comforts, haven’t we?” Innes’ gaze swept
the disguised tent with its home-made sketches and cushions and
_art-nouveau_ lamp-shades--even the green mandarin skirt had found a
place on the center-table made of rough pine. “Why shouldn’t we be
comfortable when we are to be here for months? I’m going to brave it
out--to the bitter end, even if I bake. It is my duty--” She would make
her intention perfectly clear! “There ought to be at least one cozy
place, one soft nook that suggests a woman’s presence. We have tea
here in the afternoon, sometimes. Mr. Rickard drops in.” The last was a
delicate stroke.
“Afternoon tea? At the Front? Is this modern warfare?” The girl draped
her irony with a smile.
“Warfare? What do you mean?” Gerty turned from the new chafing-dish and
percolator she had intended showing to Innes.
“I thought this was a battle.”
“All the more reason for having a pleasant corner to rest in,”
triumphed Mrs. Hardin. “And the comfort the men take in it, the Service
men especially! By the way, Innes, I met Mr. Estrada on the _Delta_
last evening and told him you were coming. I asked him to take you over
the encampment. He was perfectly willing to do it, although it’s an old
story to all of them, now. You’ve no idea how many newspaper men have
been down here. It’s been quite exciting.” She caught herself in time
to add: “Though it has been unendurably hot! This is a model camp, as
you will see. That’s why Mr. Rickard can get such work out of his men;
he has made them so comfortable.”
“You need not have gone to so much trouble--” Innes told herself that
she was perverse. Just peevishness to dislike plans being made for her!
Gerty’s polite sentences had a way of ruffling her. She ought not to
suspect deviousness.
Gerty was stealing a pleased survey in the mirror through the rough
door that opened into the division called her bedroom. The sunburned,
unconscious profile of Innes was close to her own. Pink and golden the
head by the dark one. She looked younger even than Innes! Good humor
returned to her.
“We are going to dine on the _Delta_ to-night.” She pinned up a
“scolding lock,” an ugly misnomer for her sunny clinging curls! The
mirror was requisitioned again. “That’s the name of the new dredge. It
was christened three weeks ago, in champagne brought from Yuma.”
“You christened it?” Innes, following a surmise, stumbled on a
grievance.
“No!” sharply. Then a minute later, “They’d asked Mrs. Silent, old
man Hamlin’s daughter. I suppose Mr. Rickard thought he had to. Mr.
Hamlin’s the pioneer here, he’s such a dreadful old man. Besides,
they’re always asking the men up to dinner. They can get a real _meal_
there,--Mrs. Silent has a stove, and they keep chickens.” She frowned
toward the chafing-dish and percolator; stern limitations theirs!
“You said _dine_ on the _Delta_. Do you mean they have meals there?”
“You should see it,” cooed Gerty. “It’s simply elegant. It’s a floating
hotel, has every convenience. Some of the young engineers have a sort
of club there, they have brought in their own cook from Los Angeles.
The camp cook, Ling, has his hands full. He does very well, but it must
be very rough. The _Delta_ has worked things up here.”
“Going to wear that?” They were standing now by the door of Gerty’s
dressing tent. Over the bed a white lingerie gown was spread.
“I live in them. It’s so hot,” shrugged Mrs. Hardin.
“However do you manage to get them washed?”
Mrs. Hardin did not think it necessary to relate her struggles, nor
her chagrin to find that no one thought important the delivery of her
weekly wash to Yuma. Only because she would resent possible comment
did she refrain from recounting her trials with Indian washerwomen. She
recalled some tattered experiments that she had made--
“I’ll look like your maid, Gerty!” Innes’ exclamation was rueful. “I
didn’t bring anything but khakis.”
“If that isn’t just like you, Innes Hardin!”
“Why, I thought of you as living in the most primitive way; as roughing
it! Oh, yes! I remember throwing in, the last minute, two piqués to
fill up space. But I never dreamed I’d need them.”
“Why, we have dances on the _Delta_, and Sunday evening concerts;
you’ll be surprised how gay we are. You knew the work at Laguna Dam is
being held up? The government men of the Reclamation Service are down
here all the time. But it’s time to be getting ready.”
“You’ll be ashamed of your sister. Tom’s going, of course?”
“There’s no ‘of course’ about Tom, he does just as he feels like.”
Later, Tom flatly refused to accompany them.
“I thought as much.” Gerty shrugged an airy irresponsibility. Innes
could detect no regret.
“Where will you get your dinner?” His sister was uncertain how far she
might venture into this domestic situation.
“Oh, anywhere,” brusked Tom.
“At the mess-table, the regular eating tent. He usually goes there when
there is a dinner at the _Delta_. He doesn’t dance, you know.”
They passed a cot outside the tent. “Who sleeps there?”
“Tom.” The eyes of the two women did not meet.
Innes made no comment.
“He finds the tent stuffy.” Gerty’s lips were prim with reserve. They
walked toward the river in silence. As they reached the encampment,
Gerty recovered her vivacity.
“That’s Mr. Rickard’s office, that ramada. Isn’t it quaint? And that’s
his tent; no, the other one. MacLean’s is next; we all call him Junior
now. The kitchen’s behind those mesquit trees. They gave the only shade
in the camp to the cook!” She made a grimace men would have found
adorable, lost quite on Innes Hardin.
“There’s Junior, now,” dimpled Gerty Hardin.
But his eyes were too full of Innes to see mature dimples. His
boyishness lacked tact. It was nearly three months since he had
seen her; a desert of days, those! The difference in the quality of
his greetings smote Gerty like a blow. Until her mirror told her
differently she would feel youthful. And she had never considered Tom’s
sister attractive, as a possible rival. Yet, after a handshake, she saw
that to MacLean, Jr., she did not exist.
A boat was anchored to a pile on the muddy stream. MacLean jumped in.
“I’ll hold it steady.”
Innes scrambled past his waiting hand, and steadied herself toward the
stern. “I’ll steer.”
Mrs. Hardin and her lace ruffles were placed carefully in the bow.
“Can you climb up that ladder?” MacLean asked Innes.
“Climb? I’m a cat! Didn’t you know it?”
A group of welcoming faces was bending over the rail as they drew up in
the shadow of the dredge. Innes was on the ladder before MacLean could
secure the boat. She had disappeared with the welcoming young engineers
who had much to show her, before Mrs. Hardin and her lace ruffles were
over the side.
Gerty was deeply piqued. Until now, the field had been hers, divided
distantly by the Silent kitchen. She might perhaps have to change her
opinion of Tom’s sister. Boys, she had to concede, the younger men,
might find her attractive, boyishly congenial; older men would fail to
see a charm!
The arrangement at table annoyed Gerty. The boss, MacLean explained
gaily, would not be there for dinner. He had been called down the
levee, taking Irish with him. He might come in later. Two men from the
Reclamation Service tried to entertain Mrs. Hardin.
“Did you get Jose Cordoza?” demanded Bodefeldt under cover of a rush of
voices, and then crimsoned because every one stopped to listen to him.
“He promised to bring his guitar, and to get a friend who has a
mandolin, if the strings are not broken!” laughed Crothers of the
railroad.
“Cordoza plays wonderfully!” cried Mrs. Hardin. “If I were eighty, I
could dance to his waltzes!”
“The deck’s ripping,” cried MacLean, his eyes still full of Innes
Hardin, “and in the moonlight it’s a pippin!”
“It isn’t a battle.” Innes looked around the gay rectangle. “It’s play!”
The thought followed her that evening. Outside, where the moonlight was
silvering the deck, and the quiet river lapped the sides of the dredge,
Jose’s strings, and his “_amigo’s_” throbbing from a dark corner,
made the illusion of peace convincing. This was no battle. Breck, of
the Reclamation Service, was dancing with her. The modern complexity
of the situation fell away from her; the purpose of the _Delta_, of
the gathering army of laborers, of the pile-drivers in the river, was
obscured. The concentrating struggle against the marauding Dragon of
the Colorado delta, that was the illusion. It was easy to believe
herself again at Mare Island, or Annapolis--the _Delta_ a cruiser, and
young Breck one of Uncle Sam’s sailors.
Later, Gerty passed her, two-stepping divinely. Before her partner
turned his head, Innes recognized the stiff back and straight poised
head and dancing step of Rickard. Every muscle in control; it was the
distinction of the man. She admitted he had distinction, grudgingly.
She could not think of him except comparatively; always antithetically,
balanced against her Tom. She wished Tom would not slouch so. Tom had
all the big virtues, none of his faults was petty. But he was being
nagged into unloveliness.
“I’m tired; let’s rest here.” She drew into the shadow of the great arm
of the dredge. They watched the dancers as they passed, MacLean playing
the woman in “Pete’s” arms, Gerty with Rickard, two other masculine
couples. The Hardins were the only women aboard.
It was because of Tom that Innes felt resentment when the uplifted
appealing chin, the lace ruffles fluttered by. Tom, lying outside an
unfriendly tent!
“Don’t they dance superbly?” Breck’s eyes were following the couple,
too.
“Come on, let’s dance.” She pretended not to hear him.
It was easy, in that uncertain light, to avoid Rickard’s glance of
recognition. Estrada, who had come aboard with the manager, sought her
out, and then Crothers, of the O. P. Again, she saw Rickard dancing
with the lingerie gown. There seemed to be no attempt to cover Gerty’s
preference; for Rickard, she was the only woman there! Because she was
Tom’s sister, she had a right to resent it, to refuse to meet his eye.
Small wonder Tom did not come to the _Delta_!
Going in with MacLean, Jr., to the mess room for a glass of water, she
met Rickard, on his way out. She managed to avoid shaking hands with
him. She wondered why she had consented to give him the next waltz.
“He’ll not find me,” she determined. Whatever had made her assent?
Easy in that womanless group to plead engagements. She led MacLean
into innocent but eager conspiracy. He followed her gladly to the
dark corner of the deck where Jose’s guitar was then syncopating an
accompaniment to his “_amigo’s_” voice.
“_A donde ira veloz y fatigada,
La golondrina que de aqui se va?_”
“How beautiful!” cried Innes. “But how sad.” She had picked up some
Spanish in the towns. “I have never heard that before.” She leaned over
and asked Jose if he would not write it out for her. Unblushingly, Jose
said he would; “Mañana.”
“Dollars to doughnuts, he can’t write even his own name!” whispered
Junior. “But I’ll see that you get it mañana!” he added. He would type
it for; anything she wanted, he would get for her!
To her surprise, Rickard penetrated her curtain of shadows.
“Our dance, Miss Hardin? Give us _Sobr’ Las Olas_, again, Jose.”
The hand that barely touched his arm was stiff with antagonism. He
stepped off at once to the music; they had no points of contact,
these two. No eager threads of talk to be picked up and turned into a
pattern. She told herself that he had to dance with her--politeness,
conventionality, demanded it. But, instantly, she forgot her
resentment, and forgot their awkward relation. It was his dancing, not
Gerty’s, then, that was “superb.” Anybody could find skill under the
leadership of that irresistible step. She was just an ordinary dancer,
yet she felt as though she had acquired grace and skill. And then the
motion claimed her. She thought of nothing; they moved as one to the
liquid falling heat. She passed Estrada, just arrived. His smile fell
past her. He stood watching them. The girl was not talking. He could
not make out the still fixity of her face.
The music dropped them suddenly, isolating them at the stern of the
deck. The silence was complete. It was a moment of unreality, the
rhythmic blood still in motion, the wistfulness of the moonlight
falling on peaceful waters. Rickard broke it to ask her what she
thought of the camp.
Her resentments were recalled. She blundered through her impression of
the lightness, the gaiety.
“So you think we ought to be solemn?” His tone teased her. The eyes
that always confused Gerty were on her. She again tried to be vocal.
“It does not suggest a battle-ground, I mean. The talk to-night at
table, the dancing, the fun! It does not seem like a battle camp--”
“You’ve been in a battle camp, Miss Hardin?”
She would not be flouted. “The atmosphere--it’s a camp vacation.”
“A work camp does not have to be solemn. You’ll find all the grimness
you want if you look beneath the surface.” She thought, later, of what
she might have said to him, but then she stood silent, feeling like a
silly child under his light mockery.
The guitars were tuning up. “Shall I take you back? I have this dance
with your sister.”
She thought of Tom--on his lonely cot outside his tent. She forgot that
she had been asked a question. He was dancing again with Gerty! If that
silly little woman had no scruples, no fine feeling, this man should
at least guard her. If he had been her lover, he should be careful; he
must see that people were talking of them. She had seen the glances
that evening! The business relation between the two men should suggest
tact, if not decency! It was outrageous.
Rickard stood waiting to be dismissed; puzzled. Through the uncertain
light, her anger came to him. She looked taller, older; there was a
flame of accusing passion in her eyes.
It was his minute of revelation. So that was what the camp thought!
The wife of Hardin--Hardin! Why, he’d been only polite to her--they
were old friends. What had he said to call down this sudden scorn?
“Dancing--again--” Had he been all kinds of an ass?
“My turn, Miss Innes!” demanded MacLean, Jr.
“Oh, yes,” she cried, relief in her tone.
Rickard did not claim his dance with Mrs. Hardin. He stood where the
girl had left him, thinking. A few minutes later, Gerty swept by in
the arms of Breck. Her light laughter, the laughter that had made the
Lawrence table endurable, came to him in his unseen corner. Later,
came Innes with Junior; the two, thinking themselves unseen, romping
through a two-step like two young children. He was never shown that
side of her. Gay as a young kitten, chatting merrily with MacLean!
Should her eyes discover him, she would be again the haughty young
woman!
He’d gone out of his way to be polite to the wife of Hardin. What did
he care what they thought? He’d finish his job, and get out.
The sound of oars came to him; the splashing of waves against the
dredge. He leaned over. A boat was tying by the ladder.
“Hi, below!” called Rickard.
“Come for Mr. Crothers,” the voice from the shadows answered. “He told
me to come for him at ten o’clock.”
“Hold on!” Rickard was clambering over the side. “I’m Rickard. I’ve got
to get back to camp. You can come again for Crothers.”
A minute later, he was being rowed back to camp.