A GLIMPSE OF FREEDOM
THE siding was deserted. The _Palmyra_ had run out to Tucson, carrying
Marshall and Claudia with her tender-hued, baby-smelling wools. Of that
little party, Tony made perhaps the larger gap, Tony with his diamond
blazing on his finger, his “holdouts,” left-overs from the Marshall
table, and his case of smuggled triple X whisky. The young fellows
encouraged his stories of old San Francisco, of Bliss and his yellow
tips, of wonderful dinners, of the Bush Street Theater when McCullough
and Barrett were there. Ah, those the only days! A forefinger would
flank Tony’s wicked eye.
Marshall had gone without apprehension. They did not expect now to have
setbacks, to have to extend the time set for the ultimate diversion.
The days were flowing like oil.
The encampment was filling up with visitors, newspaper men who came to
report the spectacular capture of the river. Gerty was finding some
opportunities for her chafing-dish and lingerie gowns, but the fish
felt small to her net. The attention she received assuaged little of
her pride. “At any rate, Rickard will see it.” On the _Delta_, for
the young engineers were relaxing again toward hospitality, she was a
belle. Every afternoon, she served tea to a small court.
Brandon came down, sent by the _Sun_, his old paper. Rickard had the
newcomer’s tent pitched next his own. He was anticipating snatches of
intimacy with this cosmopolitan, whose sweetness he felt sure was the
ripe result of some deep experience. His few hours in the Imperial tent
had discovered to him a rare brain. He was keen to see more of him.
The day after his arrival, Brandon sent a telegram to his wife. He told
Rickard about it afterward.
“I suppose I should have asked you first,” he admitted. “I may have
taken a liberty!”
“I think you couldn’t do that,” smiled Rickard. “This camp is yours,
señor!”
“Impulse does not often carry me away.” The trim-cut, dog-like face of
the irrigationist frowned. “I should have asked you. But seeing other
women here gave me the idea, I suppose. I telegraphed for Mrs. Brandon
to join me here.”
Deliberately Rickard controlled the muscles of his face. Every one else
knew what he thought about women in camp. He hoped that he would not be
quoted to Brandon.
“It is a little different, I think, from ordinary cases,” Brandon was
working up a justification. “Mrs. Brandon is a writer of fiction, of
some note. You have run across her books, her pen name--George Verne.”
Rickard’s face held back the surprise of it. A smile suffused his
mind. Brandon, the classicist, the _Sun’s_ pet man, a specialist
on irrigation, related by marriage to _The Cowboy’s Bride_! He
acknowledged that he knew her by name, had seen her books. He had been
in remote places, where English matter is scarce, and had often found
George Verne usurping the shelves.
“I should think she would find this an opportunity,” he agreed. He had
caught a hint of returning fires in the calm gray eyes.
The thin lips were pursed musingly. “But it is pretty hard for her to
leave New York. Her publishers keep her pretty busy.”
Rickard’s silence was not inactive. He was thinking of the diverted
lives; of Brandon living out his banishment in a western desert tent;
George Verne weaving her stories hundreds of miles away in a New York
apartment-house.
“The separation is hard on both of us.” The man was revealing his
renunciations in this instant of homesickness; his guards were down.
“When my trouble came, I had hoped that her work might make it
possible for her to come out with me, at least half her time, that
she might gather material. But they crowd her with orders; she works
right through the hot summers; I don’t remember when she has taken a
vacation. I run out once in a while to try to stop her, to make her
play a little. But my cough comes back; she has the habit of grind
by this time. I’m hoping this will appeal to her as a chance; it’s a
tremendous setting, this!”
He chatted about valley happenings for a few minutes before leaving.
“Anything I can do for you?” inquired Rickard.
“Thank you, no. I’m off now to the Crossing to see Marshall’s gate. And
I want to see Matt Hamlin. He was my host once, years ago.”
Rickard’s mail that morning included a letter from his chief at Tucson.
Marshall delivered a peremptory mandate from Faraday. The borrow-pits
and muck-ditches were to be constructed according to precedent. The
stream-side excavating was to be continued. Marshall added that this
order admitted no argument.
Rickard, fuming helplessly, read the letter to MacLean, Jr. “Everybody
sticking his precious fingers in the pie. Tying me up with orders.
What does Faraday know about it, I’d like to know?” MacLean observed a
Hardin inflection.
The mail had brought other exasperations. A classmate he had been
wiring for, an engineer specialist on hydraulics, was ill. There was
another letter from Marshall, with enclosures. More complaints from
Chicago. Rickard declared he could “smell” Washington.
Irish brought the news of the Parrish horror. The opened vein of
tragedy stained the day. The double tragedy, the three sharp deaths
sobered the camp, preparing for its coup.
“War!” summed up Rickard. “Our army marches over dead bodies.”
The day badly begun, piled up with vexations. By evening, Rickard’s
temper, slow to rouse, was on the rampage. His men got out of his way.
The river flotsam was piling up against the gate and making a kink in
the trestle. There was a nasty bend. Rickard spent his afternoon on
the by-pass, jumping from boats to rafts, directing the pile-drivers,
driving the stolid bucks. By sundown, he was wet to the skin, and mad,
he told MacLean, Jr., as a sick Arizona cat.
In this jaundiced juncture, MacLean, Jr., brought down his despatches
to the river.
“Anything important?” cried Casey from the raft. “Read them to me. I
can hear.”
MacLean read of the burning of a trainload of railroad ties in a nasty
wreck on the way to the break; just out of Galveston. To purge his
mood, Rickard swore.
“If that isn’t the darndest.” He had “luck” on his tongue. His mood
had been paralleling, disagreeably to his consciousness, Tom Hardin’s
manner. He withheld the word.
“Anything else pleasant?”
“A letter from the governor--from dad. Nothing important.” MacLean had
that instant decided to leave that letter on the desk where Rickard
might find it by himself.
“Fire away,” cried Rickard, stretching the cramp from his shoulders.
Uncomfortably, MacLean cleared his throat before he read that his
father begged a small favor of Rickard. “Godfrey, the celebrated
English tenor, is on my hands. His doctors have been advising outdoor
occupation. I am sending him to you, asking you to give him any job you
may have. He is willing to do anything. Put him at something to keep
him occupied.”
MacLean saw Rickard’s face turn red. “Suffering cats! A worn-out
opera-singer! What sort of an opera does he think we’re giving down
here? Why doesn’t he send me a fur coat, or a pair of girl twins? Give
the tenor a rôle! Anything else? Pile it all on.”
“That’s all.” MacLean was turning away. Then, as an afterthought, he
threw over his shoulder, “Oh, and one from Godfrey himself. He’s in
Los Angeles. He says he’ll be here to-morrow.” He did not wait for his
chief’s reply.
At the supper-table, Rickard, dry and in restored humor, alluded to the
invasion of high notes. “Pity the parts are all assigned! He might
have done the ‘Toreador,’ or ‘Canio.’ The only vacancy--” he could
safely gibe at his own complications, for the Hardins were dining on
the _Delta_ that evening, “is in the kitchen. I wonder how he would
like to be understudy to Ling!”
The next day when the incident had been forgotten, and while Rickard
was up at the Crossing on the concrete gate, Godfrey blew into camp.
He was like a boy out on a lark. His brown eyes were dancing over the
adventure.
“He’s certainly not sick,” thought MacLean, Jr. “Must be his throat.”
He was a little piqued over Rickard’s sarcasm. What in creation was his
father thinking about, anyway?
Godfrey asked to be turned loose. “I won’t be in any one’s way!” He
explored the Heading, covered the by-pass in a river boat, went a way
down the river, down the old channel through which considerable water
was now flowing, made the trip down the levee work, on horseback, and
came back bubbling.
“It’s the biggest thing I ever saw. But say, Junior, that’s what they
call you, isn’t it? I’m the only idle man here. Can’t you give me
something to do?”
MacLean was not sure but that the suggestion of Rickard’s had been a
jest. He felt abashed to repeat it. “I’ll do anything,” twinkled the
handsome tenor. “I’d like the boss to find me busy when he comes in.”
MacLean softened the offer. Perhaps until Mr. Godfrey learned the
ropes he could be of general use. They were short-handed the present
moment--there was another hesitation--in the kitchen! Ling, the Chinese
cook, was overcrowded--so many visitors--
“Great,” crowed Godfrey, slapping him on the shoulder. “I don’t want
to feel in the way. I want to earn my board. And it’s not bad to keep
on the right side of the cook. No one can beat me beating eggs.”
His spirits were infectious. “Not many eggs in this camp!” grinned
MacLean.
“Lead me to the cook!” declaimed the newcomer. “Chin chin Chinaman!”
he sang at a daring pitch. “Chin chin Chinaman, chop, chop, chop!” His
voice had the world-adored quality, the vibrant stirring thrill which
is never tremolo.
“He’ll do,” thought the youth. He foresaw concerts on the deck of the
_Delta_.
That evening, the dinner was helped on its way by the best paid singer
of England. In an apron, borrowed of Ling, he was “having the time
of his life.” Ling, pretending to scold, had been won immediately.
Rickard, hearing of the jolly advent, forgot his vexation, and
immediately on his return made his way to the mesquit enclosure--to
greet the friend of George MacLean.
It was a comic opera already to Godfrey. He had won over Ling by doing
all of the tedious jobs. Had peeled the potatoes, opened the cans of
tomatoes, washed the rice and scoured the pans. As Rickard, obscured by
the mesquit hedge, reached the enclosure, the newcomer was entering by
the riverside.
“Hi, there, you,” cried Ling. “Where you put my potato skins? Save
potato skins. Me plant skins by liver, laise plenty potatoes--bimeby.”
Godfrey laughed uproariously. He pounced on a red slab of bacon rind
and was making for the outside, Rickard vastly entertained.
“Hi, there,” yelled Ling. “Hi, stop. No thlow bacon away. Save bacon.
Me make hot cakes, grease pan.”
“Not on your life,” Godfrey swept the irate Ling and the entering
stranger in khaki a deep theatric bow. “Ling no get bacon. Me plant
bacon by river. Me raise hogs!”
Thus met Rickard and the tenor, who captured the camp that night
with his singing. After dinner, MacLean carried off his prize to the
_Delta_, where Godfrey earned his welcome. In a dark corner, Brandon
was feeling the edge of his disappointment. George Verne was blocking
out a new book, so she had wired. She was too busy to come. Gerty
Hardin forgot to flirt with the engineers; she had discovered a new
sensation. The wonderful voice twisted her heart-strings; it told her
that the heart that has truly loved never forgets, and she knew that
she could never have really loved, yet, because the youth in her veins
was whispering to her that she could still forget. Godfrey saw a mobile
plaintive face turned up to the gibbous moon; he swept it with thrills
and flushes. She was a wonderful audience; she was also his orchestra,
the woman with the plaintive eyes. He played on her expressions as
though she were a harp.
Later, he was presented to Mrs. Hardin. She told him that the camp
would no longer be dull; that she had tea every afternoon in her
ramada. She convicted him archly of British-hood. “She knew he must
have his tea!”
“You American women are the wonders of the world! Nothing daunts you.
In the desert, and you give afternoon teas. I’ll be there every day!”
He gave her open admiration; she looked young and wistful in her soft
flowing mulls, the moonlight helping her. She fell into a delicious
flurry of nerves and excitement. Later, she wandered with him from a
rude gaping world into a heaven of silvered decks and gleaming waters.
He told her of himself, of his loneliness; his music had dropped him to
self-pity.
Gerty Hardin heard her bars drop behind her. She snatched her first
glimpse of freedom.