The Rules of the Game

by White, Stewart Edward

  "Of course, a full-page costs money," replied Baker. "But this is the place to get it." He pushed back his chair. "Well, what do you think of our fair young city?" he grinned.

  "It's got me going," admitted Bob.

  "Took me some time to find out where to get off at," said Baker. "When I found it out, I didn't dare tell anybody. They mob you here and string you up by your pigtail, if you try to hint that this isn't the one best bet on terrestrial habitations. They like their little place, and they believe in it a whole lot, and they're dead right about it! They'd stand right up on their hind legs and paw the atmosphere if anybody were to tell them what they really are, but it's a fact. Same joyous slambang, same line of sharps hanging on the outskirts, same row, racket, and joy in life, same struggle; yes, and by golly! the same big hopes and big enterprises and big optimism and big energies! Wouldn't you like to be helping them do it?"

  "What's the answer?" asked Bob, amused.

  "Well, for all its big buildings and its electric lights, and trolleys, and police and size, it's nothing more nor less than a frontier town."

  "A frontier town!" echoed Bob.

  "You think it over," said Baker.

  * * *

  IV

  But if Bob imagined for one moment that he had acquired even a notion of California in his experiences and observations down the San Joaquin and in Los Angeles, the next few stages of his Sentimental Journey very soon undeceived him. Baker's business interests soon took him away. Bob, armed with letters of introduction from his friend, visited in turn such places as Santa Barbara, Riverside, San Diego, Redlands and Pasadena. He could not but be struck by the absolute differences that existed, not only in the physical aspects but in the spirit and aims of the peoples. If these communities had been separated by thousands of miles of distance they could not have been more unlike.

  At one place he found the semi-tropical luxuriance of flowers and trees and fruits, the soft, warm sunshine, the tepid, langourous, musical nights, the mellow haze of romance over mountain and velvet hill and soft sea, the low-shaded cottages, the leisurely attractive people one associates with the story-book conception of California. The place was charming in its surroundings and in its graces of life, but it was a cheerful, happy, out-at-the-heels, raggedy little town, whose bright gardens adorned its abyssmal streets, whose beautiful mountains palliated the naiveté of its natural and atrocious roads. Bob mingled with its people with the pardonable amusement of a man fresh from the doing of big things. There seemed to be such long, grave and futile discussions over the undertaking of that which a more energetic community would do as a matter of course in the day's work. The liveryman from whom Bob hired his saddle horse proved to be a person of a leisurely and sardonic humour.

  "Their chief asset here is tourists," said he. "That's the leading industry. They can't see it, and they don't want to. They have just one road through the county. It's a bum one. You'd think it was a dozen, to hear them talk about the immense undertaking of making it halfway decent. Any other place would do these things they've been talking about for ten years just on the side, as part of the get-ready. Lucky they didn't have to do anything in the way of getting those mountains set proper, or there'd be a hole there yet."

  "Why don't you go East?" asked Bob.

  "I did once. Didn't like it."

  "What's the matter?"

  "Well, I'll tell you. Back East when you don't do nothing, you feel kind of guilty. Out here when you don't do nothing, you don't give a damn!"

  Nevertheless, Bob was very sorry when he had to leave this quiet and beautiful little town, with its happy, careless, charming people.

  Thence he went directly to a town built in a half-circle of the mountains. The sunshine here was warm and grateful, but when its rays were withdrawn a stinging chill crept down from the snow. No sitting out on the verandah after dinner, but often a most grateful fire in the Club's fireplace. The mornings were crisp and enlivening. And again by the middle of the day the soft California warmth laid the land under its spell.

  This was a place of orange-growers, young fellows from the East. Its University Club was large and prosperous. Its streets were wide. Flowers lined the curbs. There were few fences. The houses were in good taste. Even the telephone poles were painted green so as to be unobtrusive. Bob thought it one of the most attractive places he had ever seen, as indeed it should be, for it was built practically to order by people of intelligence.

  Thence he drove through miles and miles of orange groves, so large that the numerous workmen go about their work on bicycles. Even here in the country, the roadsides were planted with palms and other ornamental trees, and gay with flowers. Abruptly he came upon a squalid village of the old regime, with ugly frame houses, littered streets, sagging sidewalks foul with puddles, old tin cans, rubbish; populous with children and women in back-yard dressing sacks—a distressing reminder of the worst from the older-established countries. And again, at the end of the week, he most unexpectedly found himself seated on a country-club verandah, having a very good time, indeed, with some charming specimens of the idle rich. He talked polo, golf, tennis and horses; he dined at several most elaborate "cottages"; he rode forth on glossy, bang-tailed horses, perfectly appointed; he drove in marvellously conceived traps in company with most engaging damsels. When, finally, he reached Los Angeles again he carried with him, as standing for California, not even the heterogeneous but fairly coherent idea one usually gains of a single commonwealth, but an impression of many climes and many peoples.

  "Yes," said Baker, "and if you'd gone North to where I live, you'd have struck a different layout entirely."

  * * *

  V

  There remained in Bob's initial Southern California experience one more episode that brought him an acquaintance, apparently casual, but which later was to influence him.

  Of an afternoon he walked up Main Street idly and alone. The exhibit of a real estate office attracted him. Over the door, in place of a sign, hung a huge stretched canvas depicting not too rudely a wide country-side dotted with model farms of astounding prosperity. The window was filled with pumpkins, apples, oranges, sheaves of wheat, bottles full of soft fruits preserved in alcohol, and the like. As background was an oil painting in which the Lucky Lands occupied a spacious pervading foreground, while in clever perspectives the Coast Range, the foothills, and the other cities of the San Fernando Valley supplied a modest setting. This was usual enough.

  At the door stood a very alert man with glasses. He scrutinized closely every passerby. Occasionally he hailed one or the other, conversed earnestly a brief instant, and passed them inside. Gradually it dawned on Bob that this man was acting in the capacity of "barker"—that with quite admirable perspicacity and accuracy, he was engaged in selecting from the countless throngs the few possible purchasers for Lucky Lands. Curious to see what attraction was offered to induce this unanimity of acquiescence to the barker's invitation, the young man approached.

  "What's going on?" he asked.

  The barker appraised him with one sweeping glance.

  "Stereopticon lecture inside," he snapped, and turned his back.

  Bob made his way into a dimly lighted hall. At one end was a slightly elevated platform above which the white screen was suspended. More agricultural products supplied the decorations. The body of the hall was filled with folding chairs, about half of which were occupied. Perhaps a dozen attendants tiptoed here and there. A successful attempt was everywhere made to endow with high importance all the proceedings and appurtenances of the Lucky Land Co.

  Bob slipped into a chair. Immediately a small pasteboard ticket and a fountain pen were thrust into his hand.

  "Sign your name and address on this," the man whispered.

  Bob held it up, the better to see what it was.

  "All these tickets are placed in a hat," explained the man, "and one is drawn. The lucky ticket gets a free ride to Lucky on one of our weekly homeseekers' excursions. Others pay one fare
for round trip."

  "I see," said Bob, signing, "and in return you get the names and addresses af every one here."

  He glanced up at his interlocutor with a quizzical expression that changed at once to one of puzzlement. Where had he seen the man before? He was, perhaps, fifty-five years old, tall and slender, slightly stooped, slightly awry. His lean gray face was deeply lined, his close-clipped moustache and hair were gray, and his eyes twinkled behind his glasses with a cold gray light. Something about these glasses struck faintly a chord of memory in Bob's experience, but he could not catch its modulations. The man, on his side, stared at Bob a trifle uncertainly. Then he held the card up to the dim light.

  "You are interested in Lucky Lands—Mr. John Smith, of Reno?" he asked, stooping low to be heard.

  "Sure!" grinned Bob.

  The man said nothing more, but glided away, and in a moment the flare of light on the screen announced that the lecture was to begin.

  The lecturer, was a glib, self-possessed youth, filled to the brim with statistics, with which he literally overwhelmed his auditors. His remarks were accompanied by a rapid-fire snapping of fingers to the time of which the operator changed his slides. A bewildering succession of coloured views flashed on the screen. They showed Lucky in all its glories—the blacksmith shop, the main street, the new hotel, the grocery, Brown's walnut ranch, the ditch, the Southern Pacific Depot, the Methodist Church and a hundred others. So quickly did they succeed each other that no one had time to reduce to the terms of experience the scenes depicted on these slides—for with the glamour of exaggerated colour, of unaccustomed presentation, and of skillful posing the most commonplace village street seems wonderful and attractive for the moment. The lecturer concluded by an alarming statement as to the rapidity with which this desirable ranching property was being snapped up. He urged early decisions as the only safe course; and, as usual with all real estate men, called attention to the contrast between the Riverside of twenty years ago and the Riverside of to-day.

  The daylight was then admitted.

  "Now, gentlemen," concluded the lecturer, still in his brisk, time-saving style, "the weekly excursion to Lucky will take place to-morrow. One fare both ways to homeseekers. Free carriages to the Lands. Grand free open-air lunch under the spreading sycamores and by the babbling brook. Train leaves at seven-thirty."

  In full sight of all he threw the packet of tickets into a hat and drew one.

  "Mr. John Smith, of Reno," he read. "Who is Mr. Smith?"

  "Here," said Bob.

  "Would you like to go to Lucky to-morrow?"

  "Sure," said Bob.

  One of the attendants immediately handed Bob a railroad ticket. The lecturer had already disappeared.

  To his surprise Bob found the street door locked.

  "This way," urged one of the salesmen. "You go out this way."

  He and the rest of the audience were passed out another door in the rear, where they were forced to go through the main offices of the Company. Here were stationed the gray man and all his younger assistants. Bob paused by the door. He could not but admire the acumen of the barker in selecting his men. The audience was made up of just the type of those who come to California with agricultural desires and a few hundred dollars—slow plodders from Eastern farms, Italians with savings and ambitions, half invalids—all the element that crowds the tourist sleepers day in and day out, the people who are filling the odd corners of the greater valleys. As these debouched into the glare of the outer offices, they hesitated, making up their slow minds which way to turn. In that instant or so the gray man, like a captain, assigned his salesmen. The latter were of all sorts—fat and joking, thin and very serious-minded, intense, enthusiastic, cold and haughty. The gray man sized up his prospective customers and to each assigned a salesman to suit. Bob had no means of guessing how accurate these estimates might be, but they were evidently made intelligently, with some system compounded of theory or experience. After a moment Bob became conscious that he himself was being sharply scrutinized by the gray man, and in return watched covertly. He saw the gray man shake his head slightly. Bob passed out the door unaccosted by any of the salesmen.

  At half-past seven the following morning he boarded the local train. In one car he found a score of "prospects" already seated, accompanied by half their number of the young men of the real estate office. The utmost jocularity and humour prevailed, except in one corner where a very earnest young man drove home the points of his argument with an impressive forefinger. Bob dropped unobtrusively into a seat, and prepared to enjoy his never-failing interest in the California landscape with its changing wonderful mountains; its alternations of sage brush and wide cultivation; its vineyards as far as the eye could distinguish the vines; its grainfields seeming to fill the whole cup of the valleys; its orchards wide as forests; and its desert stretches, bigger than them all, awaiting but the vivifying touch of water to burst into productiveness. He heard one of the salesmen expressing this.

  "'Water is King,'" he was saying, quoting thus the catchword of this particular concern. He was talking in a half-joking way, asking one or the other how many inches of rainfall could be expected per annum back where they came from.

  "Don't know, do you?" he answered himself. "Nobody pays any great and particular amount of attention to that—you get water enough, except in exceptional years. Out here it's different. Every one knows to the hundredth of an inch just how much rain has fallen, and how much ought to have fallen. It's vital. Water is King."

  He gathered close the attention of his auditors.

  "We have the water in California," he went on; "but it isn't always in the right place nor does it come at the right time. You can't grow crops in the high mountains where most of the precipitation occurs. But you can bring that water down to the plains. That's your answer: irrigation."

  He looked from one to the other. Several nodded.

  "But a man can't irrigate by himself. He can't build reservoirs, ditches all alone. That's where a concern like the Lucky Company makes good. We've brought the water to where you can use it. Under the influence of cultivation that apparently worthless land can produce—" he went on at great length detailing statistics of production. Even to Bob, who had no vital nor practical interest, it was all most novel and convincing.

  So absorbed did he become that he was somewhat startled when a man sat down beside him. He looked, up to meet the steel gray eyes and glittering glasses of the chief. Again there swept over him a sense of familiarity, the feeling that somewhere, at some time, he had met this man before. It passed almost as quickly as it came, but left him puzzled.

  "Of course your name is not Smith, nor do you come from Reno," said the man in gray abruptly. "I've seen you somewhere before, but I can't place you. Are you a newspaperman?"

  "I've been thinking the same of you," returned Bob. "No, I'm just plain tourist."

  "I don't imagine you're particularly interested in Lucky," said the gray man. "Why did you come?"

  "Just idleness and curiosity," replied Bob frankly.

  "Of course we try to get the most value in return for our expenditures on these excursions by taking men who are at least interested in the country," suggested the gray man.

  "By Jove, I never thought of that!" cried Bob. "Of course, I'd no business to take that free ticket. I'll pay you my fare."

  The gray man had been scrutinizing him intensely and keenly. At Bob's comically contrite expression, his own face cleared.

  "No, you misunderstand me," he replied in his crisp fashion. "We give these excursions as an advertisement of what we have. The more people to know about Lucky, the better our chances. We made an offer of which you have taken advantage. You're perfectly welcome, and I hope you'll enjoy yourself. Here, Selwyn," he called to one of the salesman, "this is Mr.—what did you say your name is?"

  "Orde," replied Bob.

  The gray man seemed for an almost imperceptible instant to stiffen in his seat. The gray eyes glazed ov
er; the gray lined face froze.

  "Orde," he repeated harshly; "where from?"

  "Michigan," Bob replied.

  The gray man rose stiffly. "Well, Selwyn," said he, "this is Mr. Orde—of Michigan—and I want you to show him around."

  He moved down the aisle to take a seat, distant, but facing the two young men. Bob felt himself the object of a furtive but minute scrutiny which lasted until the train slowed down at the outskirts of Lucky.

  Selwyn proved to be an agreeable young man, keen-faced, clean-cut, full of energy and enthusiasm. He soon discovered that Bob did not contemplate going into ranching, and at once admitted that young man to his confidence.

  "You just nail a seat in that surrey over there, while I chase out my two 'prospects.' We sell on commission and I've got to rustle."

  They drove out of the sleepy little village on which had been grafted showy samples of the Company's progress. The day was beautiful with sunshine, with the mellow calls of meadow larks, with warmth and sweet odours. As the surrey took its zigzag way through the brush, as the quail paced away to right and left, as the delicate aroma of the sage rose to his nostrils, Bob began to be very glad he had come. Here and there the brush had been cleared, small shacks built, fences of wire strung, and the land ploughed over. At such places the surrey paused while Selwyn held forth to his two stolid "prospects" on how long these newcomers had been there and how well they were getting on. The country rose in a gradual slope to the slate-blue mountains. Ditches ran here and there. Everywhere were small square stakes painted white, indicating the boundaries of tracts yet unsold.

  They visited the reservoir, which looked to Bob uncommonly like a muddy duck pond, but whose value Selwyn soon made very clear. They wandered through the Chiquito ranch, whence came the exhibition fruit and other products, and which formed the basis of most Lucky arguments. The owner had taken many medals for his fruit, and had spent twenty-five years in making the Chiquito a model.