"But I know what I need. I need you."
There was a dogged tone in Elijah Berl's voice that was almost sullenly
insistent.
"I have given you all that I have to give, Elijah. You don't need me.
What you need is money, and that's what I haven't got."
"And I say again that I have thought of this for five years. Ever since
I left New England. I have not been alone, I have been guided. Step by
step I have gone over my ground up to this point. I have studied men as
carefully as I have my work. You are the man I have selected, and you
are the man I want."
Ralph Winston looked thoughtfully into the glowing eyes bent full upon
him. The impulse was strong within him to do as the man before him
wished--almost compelled--him to do; but because of this subtle power
which moved him so strongly, he hesitated. To what further lengths might
it not impel him when the first step had been taken? Clear-eyed,
clear-headed, never so cautious as when his desires called most loudly
to him, he hesitated to take the first step in the path which Elijah
Berl had so insistently opened before him. Therefore he spoke
deliberately, almost coldly.
"Don't misunderstand me, Elijah. I have faith in you and I have more
faith in your idea. For this very reason I hesitate to accept your
offer. You and I are so different. I--"
Elijah interrupted impatiently.
"I have thought of all that. I have prayed over it. 'Be ye not unequally
yoked together with unbelievers,' and as the voice from heaven came to
Paul, even so it came to me--'What God hath cleansed, that call not thou
common.'"
A smile flickered for a moment on the lips of the young engineer as he
turned to a pretty little woman who, with her light sewing in her hands,
was rocking gently on the wide verandah.
"What do you think about it, Amy?"
Amy Berl drew her needle the full length of the thread and held it
poised for a moment as she made reply.
"Elijah knows what is best, Ralph." Then, with a swift glance at her
husband, she again bent over her work.
"Of course he knows some things--"
"He knows every thing." Amy did not raise her eyes from her work this
time.
With a sigh of impatience, Elijah threw himself into a chair near his
wife. The needle dropped from the hand which she timidly rested upon
his, while her eyes sought his face. Absorbed in himself, not a quiver
responded to the touch of Amy's hand, not a glance answered the caress
of her eyes.
It was a pretty picture in a grandly beautiful setting. A wide verandah,
covered with climbing roses in full bloom, opened upon a scene almost
tropical in its beauty. Down the redwood steps the eyes wandered across
a luxuriant flower garden, still lower they rested upon a great square
of dark, shining green; below this, in sharp contrast, and surrounding
the shining green, tawny sand pricked in with tufts and clumps of dusty,
green sage, rolling hills in descending cadence, till, in the far
distance, a grayer, wimpling gray, the great Pacific marked the limits
of the desert.
To the left, the eyes leaped the rock-strewn bed of the Rio Sangre de
Cristo, climbed rock-ribbed, wooded slopes, up and up to the dizzy
snow-clad peaks of the San Bernardinos that rested purple and white
against the constant azure of a California sky. Within the limits of the
cottage, the flower garden, and the irrigated orange grove, the sun
seemed to hold its fierceness in awesome leash only to let loose its
fervid power upon the glowing sands and their tortured growths.
The characters were in harmony with their setting. The blue-eyed little
woman, delicate, with tawny hair, a sweet-scented mountain gentian ready
to shrink and fold upon itself at a shadow that could not harm, but
could only feebly threaten; the young engineer, with close-cropped hair,
a face chiselled with strong, undoubting strokes, a mouth half hidden by
a mustache that gave a glimpse of lips too thick to be merciless, too
thin to be sensuous. There was an air of alertness about the man, a
suggested tireless energy that renewed its strength on the food of humor
gathered even from the most monotonous commonplaces. Ralph Winston was
not a rare type of man, but he was a saving one. With him was an air of
inflexibility of purpose, softened with mercy; a rugged honesty that
made no compromise with evil-doers, an honesty that, with laughing eyes,
left the uncovered sinner ashamed and repentant, instead of defiant and
revengeful in his defeat.
A tyro, looking at the smooth-shaven, boyish face of Elijah Berl, would
fail to note the hardly defined lines that ran from mouth to eyes; lines
broad, undulating through the whole gamut of enthusiasm, but lines that
grew hard and merciless as they converged to eyes narrowed before
opposition and lightened with fanatical zeal.
Winston's footing with the Berls was intimate, though upon short
acquaintance. This was not strange in California. Twenty miles from the
Berl ranch was a booming town that had attracted Winston. Here was a
good opening for an engineer, with large and sure pay. Winston made
light of the town and its promoters, and among these he had no
intimates. On a hunting trip he had discovered the Berl ranch and had
found it worthy of the more intimate acquaintance to which he was
cordially invited. Little by little he had drawn from Elijah the story
of his life in California. It had been an isolated life, full of
hardship, but devoted to a single idea, that of reclaiming the vast
extent of country which now lay barren and unfruitful.
The young engineer's eyes grew deep and thoughtful. This offer of an
equal partnership meant even more to him than Elijah realized. Why not
accept it? It was what he had hoped for, had sought for--a life work in
which he could enlist his strength and his sense of honor. It was worth
while, grandly worth while. His heart beat high at the thought of it.
The building of a great storage dam in the mountains, the laying out of
canals that should lead the stored waters to the sun-parched deserts;
this was an engineer's work, and he was an engineer. In imagination he
could see, as Elijah saw, the bare brown hillsides clothed in verdure
and teeming with prosperity. Why did he hesitate? Was it lack of money?
That would come. Yet he hesitated. Why? Clearer than ever before came
the thought of Elijah, and Winston knew that his question was answered.
Elijah was his answer. Elijah himself was the obstacle in the way of his
acceptance. There was no doubt of the worth of Elijah's idea, no doubt
of his enthusiasm, no doubt of his patient, tireless energy. Of his
integrity? There was the doubtful point.
If he accepted Elijah's offer, he could foresee the struggle that would
follow. His own sense of right pitted against Elijah's fanatical zeal
that recognized no right except its own desires. When the fully expanded
idea of redeeming the desert hillsides should open before Elijah, before
the eyes of men, when wealth and power should beckon, just a little at
first, from the path of stern uncompromising honor, Elijah would not
restrain himself. Would he be able to control him? Winston's lips set
firmly. He knew that he would conquer in the end.
Elijah was pacing restlessly up and down the verandah, now and then
casting an impatient look upon the young engineer who sat motionless,
his eyes on the hillsides below them. At length he paused abruptly
before Winston.
"Well?" he exclaimed explosively, "you haven't given me an answer yet."
Winston's words were measured.
"No; I haven't. If you insist upon an answer today, it will be no."
"You want time to think it over?" Elijah's voice was sarcastic.
"That's just it. I do want time. I know that if I accept your offer, you
and I are going to come into collision. You have one way of looking at
things, I have another. Not once, but many times, you and I are going to
look at the same thing at the same time and in different ways. When
these times come, one of us will have to give way." Winston waved aside
Elijah's attempt to interrupt. "When these times come, I may be the one
to give up, but if I am, it will be because your way appeals to my
reason as being better than my own."
Winston's meaning was clear to Elijah. The "word" that he reverenced,
the voice to which he listened and which he followed, meant not the
weight of a feather to the man before him. Elijah moistened his nervous
lips with his tongue. He had been guided to seek Winston--Winston he
must have. Impatiently he put Winston's words aside.
"All this is not to the point."
"What is?" Winston asked curtly.
"This. Will you accept my offer?"
"An equal partnership with yourself?"
"Yes."
"I suppose you realize that if I accept, the management is no longer
yours alone, but yours and mine?"
"Yes."
"And that it is my right to put forth every effort to compel you to my
way of thinking?" Winston deliberately used the word compel, instead of
persuade.
"Yes, yes!"
"Then I will think it over, Elijah, and will give you my final answer
the next time you are in Ysleta."
"Suppose I come tomorrow?" Elijah's voice was assured.
"My answer will be ready."