THE WHITE OLEANDER
MRS. Hardin’s descent on the office that afternoon was successful, but
not satisfactory. She had found the manager brief to curtness. She was
given no excuse to linger. She traced Rickard’s manner to the presence
of MacLean, and snatched at her cue. She, too, could be businesslike
and brief. Her errand was of business; her manner should recommend her!
Rickard had seen her making straight toward the ramada. It was not the
first time; her efforts to line her nest had involved them all and
often. But to-day, he was in a bad humor.
“For the lord’s sake,” he groaned to MacLean as she approached. “More
shelves! I wonder if she thinks the carpenters have nothing to do but
rig up her kitchen for her?”
MacLean’s grin covered relief. He had never heard Rickard express
himself on the subject before. Could he believe, he speculated, that
her frequent appeals for assistance were serious? “The dead-set
Hardin’s wife was making at Casey,” was the choice gossip and
speculation of the young engineers on the _Delta_.
MacLean had a bet up on the outcome. He grinned more securely.
“I am not going to spare any more carpenters,” growled Rickard. It
was an inauspicious day for Mrs. Hardin’s visit. Things had gone
wrong. Vexations were piling up. A tilt with Hardin that morning, a
telegram from Marshall; he was feeling sore. Porter’s men had marched
out, carrying their dead. Desperately they needed labor. Wooster had
just reported, venomously, it appeared to Rickard’s spleen, increasing
drunkenness among the Indians.
Gerty’s ruffles swept in. Her dress, the blue mull with the lace
medallions, accented the hue of her eyes, and looked deliciously cool
that glaring desert day. Her parasol, of pongee, was lined with the
same baby hue. Her dainty fairness and childish affability should have
made an oasis in that strenuous day, but Rickard’s disintegration of
temper was too complete. He rose stiffly to meet her, and his manner
demanded her errand.
She told it to him, plaintively. It was getting so hot! Her kitchen was
a veritable Turkish bath these days. At noon, it was terrific. Her eyes
were appealing, infantile.
“It’s not shelves.” MacLean’s grin sobered.
Would it be too much to ask, would Mr. Rickard mind in the least, he
must be perfectly frank and tell her if they would be in the way at
all, but while this hot spell lasted, could they, the three of them,
eat in the mess-tent with the men?
“Surely!” Rickard met it heartily. She would find it rough, but if she
could stand it, yes, he thought it a good idea. His eagerness suggested
relief to one listener. The Hardins’ meals had been a severe drain on
that office. The new arrangement offered a cessation of petty problems.
Her point so easily gained, she knew she must go. She acknowledged
interrupting business, but there was one thing more. Would Mr. Rickard
tell her how to trace a lost bundle? If she were at home, of course,
she would not have to ask any one, but here, so far away from express
offices! A package had been sent to her from Chicago, it must be months
ago. It reached the towns shortly after she left. She had written
casually there to forward it; it had not yet come. She really did not
know how to begin.
“Make a note of that, MacLean,” Rickard volunteered. He was still
standing. “He’ll send a tracer out after it, Mrs. Hardin.”
And then there was nothing for her to do but go. Her retreat was
graceful, without haste, dignified. There was a womanly suggestion of
business decorum. She smiled a farewell at MacLean, who was watching
the approach of Innes Hardin and Estrada. The neglected smile passed on
to Rickard, accented. He did not see the aborted entrance of Hardin’s
sister and the young Mexican. He was itching to be at his work.
He let out a growl when Mrs. Hardin was out of ear-shot.
“What in thunder did she want all those shelves for? And cupboards
and a cooling closet? Every week since she came, she had to have a
carpenter, and I couldn’t refuse; you know what they’d think, that I
was trying to show my power. Shucks! What in Halifax do women come to
a place like this for? There’s Hardin--brings in two women to cook for
him, and now, please may they all eat with the men?”
His secretary subdued a chuckle. He was visualizing a procession of
boxes of choice Havanas--from Bodefeldt, Hamlin and the rest of the
gang. He need not buy a smoke for a year.
“Must think this is a summer resort!”
Rickard threw himself back in his chair. “Take this letter, MacLean.
To Marshall.” Then his worry diverted him. “Who in thunder is selling
liquor to my Indians?”
“Just that way?” quizzed MacLean.
“Hold on; that letter can wait. You get the horses up, MacLean, and
we’ll ride down to Maldonado’s. He’ll have to get busy, and clear up
this thing, or I’ll know why. I’ll threaten to report him for laziness.
It’s his place to stop this liquor business, not mine.”
A few hours later, they were approaching the adobe walls of Maldonado.
They found the gate locked. A woman, whose beauty had faded into a
tragic whisper, a ghastly twilight of suggestion, came to their knock,
and unbarred the gate for the white strangers. She left them by the
white oleander whose trunk was like that of a tree. MacLean sniffed
like a young terrier. “What’s the matter with the place?”
Mystery hung over the enclosure like a pall. Their voices fell
inevitably to a whisper. Once, it had been a garden; now, only the
oleander defied the desert. Dry ditches told the story of decadence.
Once, the river had wandered by, a stone’s throw away. Maldonado had
turned some of its flow into his adobe court. But the river channel was
dry, and a dead vine clung to the house walls; fell, shrinking in the
breeze, from the roof.
The woman came out to say that Maldonado would follow in “_un
momento_.” To Rickard she looked like the dried vine quivering from the
wind. She asked the señors would they sit? The house was not fit; she
was cleaning.
Maldonado, his face creased from his nap, came out, but not in “_un
momento_.” He had been busy--“some wretched fellows!” Rickard knew
the man was lying. He had been asleep. The woman had interrupted his
siesta. His eyes were almost lost; he blinked; he said it was the sun.
The day was so hot. _Dios mio_, why did she stand there and not take
pity on the señors, dying of thirst as they must be. A glass of water.
It was his shame that he might not offer them wine--but he was a poor
man--with wife and children. His eyes shifted from Rickard to MacLean.
The woman quivered away from the group. She disappeared in the house.
“Glasses,” called Maldonado after her.
Her “_Si_” sounded like a hiss.
Rickard told his errand. Maldonado sputtered and swore. By the mother
of Mary the Virgin, that thing would be stopped. It would be looked
into, the rascal would be caught. He pulled back his cotton coat,
mussed with sleep as was his face. He showed to the señors, with pride,
his badge. He was a rurale; he was there to uphold the law. If the
señors would but follow him, they would see that he did not sleep at
his post. He had caught some of those drunken Indians on the road. He
had brought them here.
They followed him around the house, through the wrecked garden.
Maldonado shrugged at the stumps as they passed, ruins that had once
been roses. MacLean felt his mouth pucker with repulsion as he watched
the figure in striped cotton, the eyes lost in their sleepy folds of
flesh, the cruel evil mouth. He was drawing from the pocket of his
cotton pantaloons a bunch of iron keys, tied with a dirty string. They
were approaching a shed, a cattle shed, it appeared to the guests.
Maldonado unlocked a gate of bars.
“Would the señors look in there?”
On a bed of old straw, three inert figures sprawled; theirs complete
oblivion.
Maldonado, kicked one of the figures with his feet. “Drunken swine.”
He locked the door with majesty. He had proved his services, his
ruraleship.
“But where do they get it?” demanded Rickard, turning back into the
sunshine.
“Certainly,” the man evaded, “there is an ‘oasis’ somewhere. Perhaps,
the señor remembers, I told him before, back in the sand-hills,
‘somewhere.’”
“Why don’t you find it?”
Maldonado was going to find it, surely! The señor must have patience.
His hands were so full. He remembered the bunch of iron keys that he
dropped in his pocket. Every action of the man was surreptitious,
Rickard was noting. Maldonado would stand watching! “I’m doing my duty,
señor.”
“If you are so busy, Señor Maldonado,” suggested Rickard, “I can help
you. I’ll send down a few men to help search. How many would you like?”
He expected a minute’s hesitation, but there was none. Oh, it was not
necessary. Later, maybe, he would call on señor but it chanced that
next week, or the next, a squad of rurales was to be there for that
very purpose sent for by Maldonado. Oh, he was awake to his duty! The
señor would be satisfied. There would be no more drunken Indians.
“Slick,” thought Rickard.
The woman was waiting by the oleander with glasses. She filled them
from an olla hanging in the shade of the tree. It was cold as if iced.
Rickard saw her shrink every time she had to pass Maldonado. Obviously,
the fellow was a brute. She was aware of his displeasure. She winced at
a word from him.
Both men were glad to go. Rickard left a piece of silver in the woman’s
hand. He hoped Maldonado had not observed him.
They were riding away when a cry broke the stillness of the air. “Hark,
what was that?” MacLean turned a shocked face toward Rickard. “A woman?”
It was anguished, strangled almost at birth. The men waited, but there
was silence in the patio.
“He got that money all right,” speculated Rickard.
“Struck her!”
“Or kicked her. That fellow is a brute.”
“Aren’t you going back?”
“Going back? What would we get for our pains? Make it all the worse for
the woman. You noticed he called her his _wife_? The rurales are not
supposed to marry. It’s their unwritten law. But if she is, do you know
what that means? She’s his goods, his chattel; his horse, his ox, his
anything. You’re not in the states. We can’t do anything.”
There is perhaps no more absorbing topic than “wife” to the man who has
not yet acquired one. Rickard and MacLean let an unrecorded silence
fall between them. The word had sent them both traveling down secret
trails. MacLean was thinking of the girl he intended to marry, when he
was grown, of a girl with yellow eyes; Rickard of a mistake he had once
nearly made. His wife, if ever he had one, must be steadier than that;
she must not carry her sex like a gay flag to the breeze. His instinct
of flight, distaste had justified itself at camp. She was a light
little woman. He was beginning to feel a little sorry for Hardin!
“I’ll race you into camp, MacLean!”
Their horses, released, sprang toward the Heading.