CHAPTER IX
The astute Mr. Sleeman's prediction to Farwell--namely, that theattitude of the ranchers would affect land sales--proved correct.Naturally, owing to a perfect advertising machinery, a number of saleswere made to people at distant points, who bought for speculationmerely. But these, though well enough in their way, were not entirelysatisfactory. The company needed actual settlers--men who would go uponthe lands and improve them--to furnish object lessons from the grounditself to personally conducted, prospective buyers, who in turn shoulddo the same, and ultimately provide the Prairie Southern branch ofWestern Airline with a paying traffic in freight and humanity.
But prospective buyers proved annoyingly inquisitive. After looking atthe company's holdings, they naturally wished to see for themselveswhat the country was good for; and the obvious way to find out was tovisit the established ranches.
Sleeman could not prevent it--nor appear to wish to prevent it. Infact, he had to acquiesce cheerfully and take them himself. That wasbetter than letting them go alone. But the very air seemed to carryrumours. In vain he assured them that there was no fear of trouble,that in any event the company would protect them; in vain he showedthem the big canal and beautiful system of ditches, and pointed withmuch enthusiasm to the armour-belted, double-riveted clause in the salecontracts, guaranteeing to the lucky buyer the delivery of so manyminer's inches or cubic feet of water every day in the year.
"It's like this," said one prospective buyer: "They ain't enough waterfor the whole country, and you're certainly aimin' to cinch some of themen that's here already so tight they can't breathe. If I buy waterthey're gettin' now, they're mighty apt to be sore on me. Dunno's Iblame them, either. I like to stand well with my neighbours. Yourland's all right, but I can't see where we deal."
And the attitude of this individual was fairly representative.Landlookers came, saw; but, instead of remaining to conquer the soil,the majority of them went elsewhere.
This was hard on Sleeman. He was a good salesman, and he had a goodproposition; but he was handicapped by conditions not of his creatingand beyond his control. And he knew quite well that, while acorporation may not give an employee any credit whatever forsatisfactory results, it invariably saddles him with the discredit ofunsatisfactory ones.
He foresaw that sooner or later--and very probably sooner--he would beasked to explain why he was not making sales. And he came to theconclusion that, as something was sure to start, he might as well startit himself.
His cogitations crystallized in the form of a letter to his chief, thehead of the land department, wherein he told the bald and shining truthwithout even a mental reservation. And he intimated tactfully that ifthe department had another man whom they considered better fitted todeal with the unfortunate local conditions, he, Sleeman, would becharmed to assist him, or to go elsewhere in their service, if thatseemed best to their aggregate wisdom. He worded his part of thisletter very carefully, for he had seen as good men as himselfincontinently fired merely because they could not deny themselves theluxury of a petulant phrase.
His letter bore fruit; for Carrol, the mighty head of the landdepartment, came down to see things for himself.
Carrol, however, suffered from a species of myopia not uncommon amonggentlemen who have for a long time represented large interests. He hadso come to look upon Western Airline as an irresistible force, that theconcept of an immovable body was quite beyond him. He had nothing butcontempt for any person or set of persons--corporations with equalcapital always excepted--rash enough to oppose any of its plans.
"Now, see here," he said at a conference with Sleeman and Farwell. "Wecan't afford to have our sales blocked this way. Our ditches will carrywater now, and the dam itself is nearly completed. Open up the ditchesand take all the water you can. Then we'll see whether there isanything in these yarns."
"But if we take water before we need it, we simply stiffen their hand,"Sleeman objected. "We give them legitimate grounds to kick."
"They'll kick, anyway," said Carrol. "We need water to grow grass--ifanybody should ask you. The sooner we take it the sooner we shall beable to acquire these ranches. Once the men see what they're up againstthey'll ask us to buy, which we'll do on our own terms. That's theprogramme. What do you think, Farwell?"
"You're the doctor," Farwell replied.
"You don't anticipate any trouble?"
"Not a bit," said Farwell contemptuously. "They'll howl, of course. Let'em. In a month they'll eat out of your hand."
"Quite so," said Carrol; "that's how I look at it."
"There's one man, though," said Farwell, "whom I'd like to see get afair price. That's McCrae, who owns Talapus Ranch. It's the biggest andbest in the country."
"Will he sell now?"
"He might."
"What has he got, and what does he want for it?"
Farwell told him.
"What is it worth, Sleeman?" And at his agent's appraisal, Carrollooked shocked and grieved. "Why, good Lord! Farwell," he said, "hewants almost what his ranch is worth."
"Funny that he should, isn't it?" sneered Farwell, who stood in no aweof Carrol. "Well, and that's what I want him to get."
"Can't do it," said Carrol decisively. "No money in it. Show me how Icould make a profit."
"Cut it up into little chunks and sell it to those marks back East,"Farwell replied. "I don't have to tell you your business. Make anotherSentinel of it if you like."
The reference was to the town site of Sentinel, a half section ofprairie which had been bought for three thousand dollars and sold astown lots on paper at a couple of hundred thousand to confiding,distant investors. It was still prairie, and apt to remain so. Carrolhad engineered the deal, and he would have blushed if he had notforgotten how. As it was, he smiled sourly.
"I wish I could. Is this McCrae a friend of yours?"
"Put it that way," Farwell replied, frowning at the quizzicalexpression of Sleeman's eye. "He doesn't want to sell, but I want himto have the chance of refusing real money. He may take it, or he maynot. Anyway, I make it as a personal request."
Carrol eyed him for a moment. He knew Farwell's reputation foruncompromising hostility to any one who thwarted his plans,accidentally or otherwise. Also Farwell was a good man. He was bound torise. Some day, he, Carrol, might require his help and he kept a sharpeye on possibilities of that nature. So he said:
"It isn't business, but to oblige _you_, Farwell--all right, I'll takethe chance that he won't accept. But it's sudden death, mind. Nodickering. He accepts, or he doesn't. If not, he'll get just dry-beltprices with the rest when they surrender."
And so a few days afterward Farwell, armed with a check representingone hundred and fifty thousand dollars of lawful money, procuredbecause he considered it likely to have a good moral effect, soughtTalapus Ranch and Donald McCrae. And McCrae, as he feared, turned theoffer down.
Farwell had calculated on producing the check at the properpsychological moment, in practically stampeding him. The trouble wasthat the psychological moment failed to arrive. McCrae showed nosymptoms of vacillation. The issue was never in doubt.
"I told you before," he said, "I don't want to sell, and I won't sell."
"It's a hundred and fifty thousand cold cash--your own value," urgedFarwell. "At 6 per cent. it's nine thousand a year from now to eternityfor you and your wife and children. If you refuse, the best you canhope for is dry-land prices. It's your only salvation, I tell you."
"My word is passed," said McCrae. "Even if it wasn't, I wouldn't beharried off the little bit of earth that's mine. It's good of you totake this trouble--I judge you had trouble--but it's not a bit of use."
"Look here," said Farwell. "Will you talk it over with yourfamily--your wife and daughter particularly? It's due to them."
"I will not," McCrae refused, with patriarchal scorn. "_I_ am thefamily. I speak for all."
"The old mule!" thought Farwell. Aloud he said: "I want to tell youthat in a few days you'll lose half your water. The
rest will go whenthe dam is finished. This is final--the last offer, your last chance.I've done every blessed thing I could for you. Right now is when youmake or break yourself and your wife and children."
"That's my affair," said McCrae. "I tell you no, and no." He pluckedthe oblong paper from Farwell's unresisting fingers. "A lot of money,aren't you?" he apostrophized it. "More than I've ever seen before, orwill see again, like enough." Suddenly he tore the check in half, andagain and again, cast the fragments in the air, and blew through them."And there goes your check, Mr. Farwell!"
"And there goes your ranch with it," Farwell commented bitterly. "Oneis worth just about as much as the other now."
"I'm not so sure about that," said McCrae.
"I'm sure enough for both of us," Farwell responded.
With a perfunctory good-bye, he swung into the saddle, leaving McCrae,a sombre figure, leaning against the slip bars of the corral. He hadanticipated this outcome; but, nevertheless, he was disappointed,vaguely apprehensive. In vain he told himself that it was nothing tohim. The sense of failure persisted. Once he half turned in his saddle,looking backward, and he caught, or fancied he caught, the flutter ofwhite against the shade of the veranda of the distant ranch house. Thatmust be Sheila McCrae.
For the first time he realized that his concern was for her alone, thathe did not care a hoot for the rest of the family. All this bother hehad been to, all his efforts with old McCrae, his practical holdup ofCarrol, even--he owned it to himself frankly--his failure to push theconstruction work as fast as he might had been for her and because ofher. And what was the answer?
"Surely," said Farwell, straightening himself in the saddle, "surely toblazes I'm not getting fond of the girl!"
As became a decent, respectable, contented bachelor, he shied from theidea. It was absolutely ridiculous, unheard-of. The girl was all right,sensible, good-looking. She suited him as well as any woman he had evermet; but that, after all, was not saying much. He liked her--he madethat concession candidly--but as for anything more--nothing to it!
But the idea, once born, refused to be disposed of thus summarily; itpersisted. He found himself recalling trivial things, all pertaining toSheila--tricks of manner, of speech, intonations, movements of thehands, body, and lips--these avalanched themselves upon him, swampingconnected, reasonable thought.
"What cursed nonsense!" said Farwell angrily to himself. "I don't carea hang about her, of course. I'm dead sure she doesn't care for me.Anyway, I don't want to get married--yet. I'm not in shape to marry.Why, what the devil would _I_ do with a wife? Where'd I put her?"
A wife! Huh! Instantly he was a prey to misgivings. He recalledshudderingly brother engineers whose wives dragged about with them,living on the edge of construction camps under canvas in summer, inrough-boarded, tar-papered shacks in the winter; or perhaps inhalf-furnished cottages in some nearby jerk-water town.
He had pitied the men, fought shy of the women. Most of them had putthe best face upon their lives, rejoicing in the occasional streaks offat, eating the lean uncomplainingly. They led a migratory existence,moved arbitrarily, like pawns, at the will of eminent and elderlygentlemen a thousand or so miles away, whom they did not know and whodid not know them. Continually, as their temporary habitations began totake on the semblance of homes, they were transferred, from mountainsto plains, from the far north to the tropics. Their few household goodsbore the scars of many movings--by rail, by steamer, by freight wagon,and even by pack train.
And there were those whose responsibilities forced them to abandon lifeat the front. These set up establishments in the new, cheap residentialdistricts of cities. There the wives kept camp; thither, at longintervals, the husbands took journeys ranging from hundreds of miles tothousands. True, there were those who had attained eminence. Theselived properly in well-appointed houses in eligible localities; andtheir subordinates kept the work in hand during their frequenthome-goings. But the ruck--the rank and file--had to take such maritalhappiness as came their way on the quick-lunch system.
Now Farwell was a bachelor, rooted and confirmed. He had always shunnedmarried men's quarters. When his day's work was done, he foregatheredwith other lone males, talking shop half the night in a blue haze oftobacco around a red-hot stove or stretched in comfortable undress infront of a tent. This was his life as he had lived it for years; as hehad hoped to live it until he attained fame and became a consultingengineer, a man who passed on the work of other men.
His theory of his own capacity for domesticity, though sincere, wasstrictly academic. He had no more idea of putting it into practice thanhe had of proving in his own person, before his proper time, thedoctrine of eternal life.
Now, into the familiar sum of existence, which he knew from divisor toquotient, was suddenly shot a new factor--a woman. He experienced a newsensation, vague, unaccountable, restless, like the first uneasy throbsthat precede a toothache. He lit a cigar; but, though he drew in thesmoke hungrily, it did not satisfy. He felt a vacancy, a want, alonging.
He became aware of a dust cloud approaching. Ahead of it loped a big,clean-limbed buckskin. In the straight, wiry figure in the saddle herecognized Casey Dunne. Dunne pulled up and nodded.
"Fine day, Mr. Farwell."
"Yes," said Farwell briefly.
"Work coming on all right?"
"Yes."
"That's good," Dunne commented, with every appearance of livelysatisfaction. "Been to Talapus? See anything of Miss McCrae there?"
"She's at home, I believe," said Farwell stiffly.
"Thanks. Come around and see me some time. Morning." He lifted thebuckskin into a lope again.
Farwell looking after him, experienced a second newsensation--jealousy.
Desert Conquest; or, Precious Waters Page 9
