TIME THE UMPIRE
A BLAZING sun rode the heavens. The river was low; its yellow waters
bore the look of oriental duplicity. Men and horses were being driven
to take advantage of the continued low water. Each day was now showing
its progress. The two ends of the trestle were creeping across the
stream from their brush aprons, as though sentient, feeling their way;
watching the foe; ready to spring the trap when the river was off guard.
“Things are humming,” wrote MacLean, Jr., to his father, who was
inspecting the survey below Culiacan for the new line on the west
coast. The focus was indeed visible. A few weeks of work, at the
present rate, and the gap would be closed, Hardin’s big gate in it; the
by-pass ready; the trap set for the Colorado. The tensity of a last
spurt was in the air.
It was inspiring activity, this pitting of man’s cumulative skill
against an elemental force. No Caucasian mind which did not tingle,
feel the privileged thrill of it. To the stolid native, as he plodded
on his raft all day under a blazing sky, or lifted his machete against
the thorny mesquit or more insidious arrow-weed, this day of well-paid
toil was his millennium, the fulfilment of the prophecy. His gods had
so spoken. Food for his stomach, liquor for his stupefaction; the
white man’s money laid in a brown hand each Sunday morning was what
the great gods forespoke. The completion of the work, the white man’s
victory, would be an end of the fat time. A dull sense of this deepened
the natural stolidity of their labor. Hasten? Why should they, and
shorten their day of opportunity? Saturday night, feasting, dancing;
then a day of rest, of stupor. To-day is theirs. The gods are speaking.
Between the two camps oscillated Coronel, silently squatting near the
whites, jabbering his primitive Esperanto to the tribes. His friendship
with the white chiefs, his age and natural leadership gave him a unique
position in both camps. Forestier consulted him; Rickard referred to
him. He was too lordly to work; long ago, he had thrown his fate with
the Cocopahs whose name was a synonym for majestic idleness.
“But he’s worth a dozen workers,” Hamlin had once told Rickard. “Get
Coronel on your side. He’s got influence; they do as he says.” Behind
that grizzled mask, Rickard surmised a pride of authorship in the
reclamation project. Coronel had known Powell; he had crossed the
desert with Estrada; that his proudest boast. Assiduously, Rickard
cultivated the old Indian who crouched days through by the bank of the
river.
The engineers felt the whip of excitement. Silent, up at the Crossing,
at work on the great concrete head-gate, which would ultimately control
the water supply of the valley, was prodding his men to finish before
the winter storms were on. His loyalty to the Hardin gate did not admit
a contingency there, but it was the thought which lurked in every man’s
mind. Never a man left his camp in the morning who did not look toward
that span crawling across the treacherous stream, measure that widened
by-pass. Would the gate stand? Would pilings driven through brush mats
into a bed of silt, a bottomless pit, hold against that river, should
it turn and lash its great tail? The Hardin men halloed for the gate,
but looked each morning to see if it were still there. The Reclamation
Service men and the engineers of the railroad were openly skeptical;
Sisyphus outdone at his own game! Estrada and Rickard looked furtively
at the gate, with doubt at each other. Uneasiness electrified the air.
Hardin, himself, was repressed, an eager live wire. His days he spent
on the river; his nights, long hours of them, open-eyed, on his back,
watching the slow-wheeling, star-pricked dome of desert sky. His was
the suspense of the man on trial; this was his trial; Gerty, Rickard,
the valley, his judge and jury. Gradually, the peace of the atom lost
in infinity would absorb him; toward morning he would sleep. But the
first touch of dawn would bring him back to the situation; the sun not
so tender as the stars! Dishonored,--he had to make good, to make good
to the men who loved him, to prove to Gerty who scorned failure-- By
the eternal, he must prove to Gerty! She must give him respect from
those scornful eyes of hers. If ever he had worked, in his life, he
must work for his life now! The gate grew to be a symbol with him of
restored honor, an obsession of desire. It must be all right!
Rickard was all over the place, up at the Crossing with Silent at the
concrete gate, Marshall’s gate; down the levee inspecting the bank
with untiring vigilance; watching the mat-makers on the rafts weave
their cross-threads of willow branches and steel cable; directing,
reporting. “Watching every piece of rock that’s dumped in the river,”
complained Wooster. “Believe he marks them at night!”
They were preparing for the final rush. In a week or two, the work
would be continuous, night-shifts to begin when the rock-pouring
commenced. Large lamps were being suspended across the channel,
acetylene whose candle-power was that of an arc light. Soon there would
be no night at the break. When the time for the quick coup would come,
the dam must be closed without break or slip. One mat was down, dropped
on the floor that had already swallowed two such gigantic mouthfuls;
covered with rock; pinned down to the slippery bottom with piles.
Another mat was ready to drop; rock was waiting to be poured over it;
the deepest place in the channel was reduced from fifteen to seven
feet. Each day the overpour, anxiously measured, increased. A third
steam-shovel had been added; the railroad sent in several work-trains
fully equipped for service; attracted by the excitement, the hoboes
were commencing to come in, from New Orleans where the sewer system
was finished and throwing men out of work; from Los Angeles, released
by the completion of the San Pedro breakwater; from San Francisco they
were turning, the excitement over. No fat pickings there!
It was a battle of big numbers, a duel of great force where time was
the umpire. Any minute hot weather might fall on those snowy peaks
up yonder, and the released waters, rushing down, would tear out the
defenses as a wave breaks over a child’s fort made of sand. This was a
race, and all knew it. A regular train despatch system was in force
that the inrushing cars might drop their burden of rock and gravel and
be off after more. The Dragon was being fed rude meals, its appetite
whetted by the glut of pouring rock.
Tod Marshall came down from Tucson in his car. The coming of the
_Palmyra_ and Claudia rippled the social waters at the Front for days
ahead. Gerty Hardin, to whom had been rudely flung days of leisure,
though she still hated Rickard, wondered if she were not glad that
her hours were to be her own when the grand Mrs. Marshall came. For
Marshall was a great man, the man of the Southwest; his wife, whom she
had not yet met, must be a personage. Gerty’s position as a helper
of Ling’s might have been misunderstood. Yet too proud to tell her
astonished family that she wanted to desert the mess-tent, she shook
herself from her injury, and “did up” all her lingerie gowns. Mrs.
Marshall was not going to patronize her, even if her husband had
snubbed Tom. It was hot, ironing in her tent, the doors closed. It
would have hurt her to acknowledge the importance of the impending
visit.
Everything carried a sting those indoor hours. She was aflame with hot
vanity. Twice, she had openly encouraged him; twice, he had flouted
her. That was his kind! Men who prefer Mexicans--! She would never
forgive him, never!
She followed devious channels to involve Tom’s responsibility. There
was a cabal against the wife of Hardin. Working like a servant! she
called it necessity. Everything, every one punished her for that one
act of folly. Life had caught her. She saw no way, as she ironed
her mull ruffles, no way out of her cage. Her spirit beat wild wings
against her bars. If she could see a way out!
She really was not free to establish an honest independent life.
Horticulturists speak of the habit of a plant. Psychologists take the
long road and find a Mediterranean word; temperament. Gerty was a vine;
its habit to cling for support. Her tendrils had been rudely torn,
thrown back at herself; world-winds were waiting their chance at her--a
vine is not a pretty thing when it trails in the dust-- Sometimes she
would shiver over her ironing-board when she thought of the dust. She
knew her habit, which she, too, called temperament. Nothing to do but
to stay with Tom!
Maddening, too, that Rickard would not see that he had hurt her. His
bow was just as friendly as before. Friendly! Was that all it had ever
been? At the mess-table, she caught his eyes turning toward, resting
on, Innes Hardin. The girl herself did not seem to notice--artful,
subterranean, such stalking! That was why she had come running back to
the Heading! That the reason of her anger when she had hinted of the
Maldonado. She learned to hate Innes. Before the girl’s return, she
had had a chance; she knew she had had a chance. He had been caught by
youth, ah, that the truth that seared! Youth! Youth that need not fear
the morning light, the swift passing months! _She_ had no time to lose.
Her heart felt old.
The mess-meals grew intolerable to her. She would watch for the
shock of those conscious glances that she felt every one must see.
She, Gerty Hardin, cast aside for a hoyden in khakis! The girl’s
play at unconsciousness infuriated her. Deep! Ah, she knew now her
game! Riding fifteen miles down the levee to pay a pretended visit
to a laborer’s wife, Mrs. Parrish! As if she were interested in Mrs.
Parrish! Jolting in a box-car to see the concrete head-gate with
MacLean; walking with Estrada, meeting Rickard, of course, everywhere;
her yellow khakis in every corner of the camp. A promiscuous coquette,
she changed the word to “careful”; playing her cards slowly; waiting
for victory to make a hero of Rickard; pretending to take issue with
Tom--ha, she knew her, at last!
Her first call at the _Palmyra_ discovered the mistress in a wash gown
of obscure cut and color, with a white apron a serving maid might wear.
Knitting her pale-colored wools, Mrs. Marshall had little to give out
but monosyllables. Gerty was forced to carry the conversation. Mrs.
Marshall did not appear to see her visitor’s correctness, the harmony
of color, the good lines. Time thrown away, that laundering!
That avenue dull, time again hung heavily. The gay evenings on the
_Delta_ were abandoned; the men coming back from the river too tired,
too warm to dance. She began to discover it was hideously hot. Perhaps,
she might go out, after all--
She decided to tell her family that it was too warm to continue the
commissary activity; Rickard was enough of a gentleman to let her cover
her hurt; she could safely assume that! Yet it stung her to think what
Innes might be thinking, what, perhaps, he had told her! Every one
must be wondering, speculating! In her life, Gerty had felt keenly but
twice; each time Rickard it was who had hurt her. That mocking superior
eye of his! Bitterly she hated him.
“Tom,” she said one night. He turned with a swift thrill of
expectation, for her voice sounded kind; like the Gerty of old. “I have
always heard that Mr. Marshall has terribly strict ideas--for every one
but himself, I mean!”
“That’s a good one.” It was the first laugh in weeks of moodiness.
Hardin was thinking of the poker games.
“I’m serious. I think he ought to hear of that Mexican woman.”
“Have you heard anything else?”
There was no new thread in her fabric of suspicions. To Hardin, it
brought a memory of time past to be sitting thus familiarly together,
Gerty in her negligee, her hair disarranged, looking up into his face.
He did not suspect he was a pawn in her scheme of retribution.
“It ought not to be allowed.” The blue eyes were purpling with anger.
“Mr. Marshall ought to be told. It is demoralizing in a camp like
this. I thought you said the governor of Lower California had sent a
commandant here.”
“To suppress liquor-selling and gambling.” Hardin did not say that the
request had come from Rickard.
“And persons without visible means of support,” quoted his wife with
triumph.
“That does not apply to the Mexican,” frowned Hardin. He did not want
to be dragged into this.
“You ought to tell Mr. Marshall,” persisted Gerty.
“I tell Marshall anything against his pet clerk?” The Hardin lip shot
out. “He’d throw me out of the company.”
The pretty scene was spoiled. To his dismay, she burst into a storm
of tears, tears of self-pity. Her life lay in tatters at her feet,
the pretty fabric rent, torn between the rude handling of those two
men. She could not have reasoned out her injury, made it convincing,
built out of dreams as it was, heartless, scheming dreams. Because she
could not tell it, her sobbing was the more violent, her complaints
incoherent. Tom gathered enough fragments to piece the old story.
“Ashamed of him. He had dragged her down into his humiliation.” His
sweet moment had passed.
He spent a few futile moments trying to comfort her.
“Don’t come near me.” It burst from her; a cry of revulsion. He
stared at her, the woman meeting his eyes in flushed defiance. The
hatred which he saw, her bitterness, corroded his pride, scorched his
self-love. Nothing would kill his love for her; he knew that in that
blackest of moments. His affection for her was part of his life. It
went cringing to her feet, puppy-like, but he called it back, whipped
it to its place. That was all over now. No woman could dread him twice
like that. He shivered at what he had seen. The man breathed deep as
he got up and looked about him. It was over. He would not elaborate
his awakening with words. He would never forget that look of dread, of
hate. He left her tent.
That night, the cot under the stars had no tenant. Hardin had it out
with himself down the levee. Strange that this bitter man could have
the same hopeful blood in him which had whipped his pulse at Lawrence!
He was still a young man, and God! How tired he was! He was in a net of
bitter circumstance. What was he to do, where to go? He was too old,
too tired and sore to begin over again, and the bitter irony of it! He
only wanted what he had lost, the love of the woman who hated him, the
respect of the valley into which his life had been sucked. God! He was
tired.
He saw the dry forsaken channel of the Colorado; grim symbol of his
life! Where was the youthful hope, the conviction that everything
would come his way? The potential richness of the soil upturned by
yesterday’s shovel on the dike found him cold. That night, there was
no future to his bitterness. Hunting for the fault, he found the real
Hardin, not the man he had been spending his days with, the man he had
expected to be, but the man the world saw passing. Perhaps life holds
no more tragic instant than when we stand over the grave of what we
thought we were, throw the sod over the ashes, facing the lonely yoking
with the man that is. Hardin shivered unto himself; and grew old.
That valley might fulfil Estrada’s vision and his labor; might yield
the harvest of happy homes; but his was not there. He had been the
sacrifice.