Dust of the Desert

by Robert Welles Ritchie

  CHAPTER III

  DOC STOODER

  With evenly divided cause and equal cheerfulness Grant could havekicked the porter and himself when he awoke tardily next morningand found his car at a standstill. He raised the berth curtain andlooked out. On the eaves of a station he saw a white board with thename "Arizora" painted upon it and certain irrelevant advice as tothe distance to New Orleans and to Culiacan. Out through the curtainspopped his head and he whistled the porter.

  "Why didn't you give me a call?" was his angry demand.

  "Yassuh, yassuh, ev'body in this kyar gets out here. Mos' have gone an'done it a'ready. You see, Cap'n, this kyar's been switched off here atthe Line two hours ago; train's kep' right on goin' into Sonora."

  Grant, cursing his luck, boiled into his clothes and made a race forthe washroom. He was hoping against luck that Benicia O'Donoju had notbeen an earlier riser than himself. With his face puffy with lather,he stopped from minute to minute to peep through the window giving ontothe station platform. A decrepit autobus was backed up against the curbwith a few passengers sitting patiently on its frayed seats; loungerswere dangling their legs from baggage trucks; under wooden awnings of abusiness block across from the station a Mexican was languidly sweepingout a store. Arizora had not yet come to life.

  Just as Grant was towelling the last remnants of shaving lather fromhis cheeks he made another quick survey of the platform and hisheart dropped into his shoes. Benicia walked into the field of thewashroom window; with her the unspeakable Spaniard, who carried herneat travelling satchel as well as his own bag. The girl was freshas the dawn in a suit of khaki, short-skirted over high laced bootsof russet leather. Rebellious hair strayed from beneath the brim ofa soft-crowned Stetson, saucily noosed to her head by a fillet ofleather under her chin. Soft green of a scarf lightly drew together ather throat the wings of her khaki collar. Nothing of the theatricalor self-consciousness of tailoring in the picture the desert girlmade; she was the spirit of the Southwest, unsophisticated and withoutpretence. By her side the little Spaniard with his knife-edgedtrousers and thin-waisted coat appeared comic.

  As Grant, towel in hand, lingered by the window feeding his soul withvain regrets, a crazy thing on wheels swung around the station and cameto a stop by the girl's side. It might have been called an automobileby courtesy, though there was little to identify it as a member ofthe gas family save that it went of its own traction. Engine naked,dash gone, two high-backed seats of unpainted tin like the wing ofan old-fashioned sitz-bath and unprotected by a top; behind these ahome-built box body wherein a trunk and a suitcase were lashed. Grantwas seeing his first desert speeder, rebuilt for service of a highlyspecialized kind. The man at the wheel was no less in character--anIndian in overalls and high peaked sombrero; a giant of a man withshoulders of a wrestler and dull bronze features of a Roman bust.

  What ensued upon the arrival of the auto nearly drove the watcher,shirtless as he was, out to two-fisted intervention. Urgo, thesalamander, evidently was of a mind to make a third in the car. Grantsaw his humped shoulders and expostulating hands, saw Benicia tilther chin as she gave him some cold refusal. But the colonel calmlystowed his suitcase by the side of the trunk in the box body, evidentlyplanning to use it as a seat. Again Benicia, now in her place by theside of the Indian giant, turned to give him peremptory refusal. TheIndian at the wheel had his engine going and was sitting statue-like,utterly detached from the quarrel.

  Urgo stepped on the rear wheel's hub and had one hand on the floor ofthe box body when one of the Indian's hands flashed up the spark evenas his foot went down on the gear pedal. The crazy little car leapedlike a singed cat. Colonel Urgo cut a neat arc, hit the road on hisback and rolled over just in time to escape receiving amidships hissuitcase, which the Indian driver had dropped from the car withoutturning his head.

  In the Pullman washroom Grant collapsed to the seat and smeared soapinto his eyes while he tried to check tears of laughter. The fall ofthe peppery little Spaniard had been colossal, and he guessed it hadbeen wrought at the quick prompting of the spirited girl in khaki. Whata wonder she was! All laughter and bubbling spirits one minute; quickas a leopard to strike the next.

  "Man"--Grant addressed a beaming face in the glass--"man, always layyour bets on a red-headed girl!"

  That minute of communion with a smiling confidant was an importantone in the life of Grant Hickman, cautious bachelor. For it came tohim with the force of a hammer blow that he wanted and must have thisvivid creature of the desert named Benicia O'Donoju. Girl of fire andsparkle--of a spirit free and piquant as the winds that blow across thewastes--unspoiled of cities and the stale conventions of drawing rooms.Oh, he would have her! Gone she might be, out into a land beyond hisken. Unguessed barriers of circumstance, of others' intervention, mighthave to be scaled; but somehow, somewhere, Grant Hickman was going tofind and win Benicia O'Donoju.

  Love at first sight--old-fashioned, mid-Victorian stuff, says thecynical debutante over her cigarette and outlaw cocktail. In New Yorktearooms and Washington ballrooms, quite so. Where girls of twenty mustknow the sum that stands in bank to Clarence's credit, before Clarenceis marked down as eligible, love at first sight is, in truth, dead asthe dodo bird. Even so, spirit still calls to spirit and like leaps tolike most all the world over. It is only where fungus spots stain thegarden that love will not bloom.

  When Grant quit the Pullman Colonel Urgo was nowhere to be seen. Grantidly wondered as he walked to the hotel, directly across a plazafrom the station, how long it would be before he encountered thishalf-portion rival of his and what would be the Spaniard's first movein his frank threat of reprisals of the night before. But when he wasshown to his room--and the New York man whimsically reflected he hadseen better ones at the Admiral on Madison Avenue--events of recenthours were pushed back from his attention by the more immediate demandsof his presence in Arizora. He took from his suitcase the letter thathad brought him sky-hooting across the continent to this back-water oflife on the Mexican Line and skimmed it through:

  "... I know just how hard it is for you to settle down to office routine after the Big Show. All of us are in the same fix, Old-timer, but I have the edge on you because out here in this man's country there's something breaking every minute. That's the reason I'm writing you this mysterious letter.... Old Doc Stooder is counted the prime nut of Southern Arizona, but I believe he's got a whale of a proposition and that's why I'm counting myself--and you--in on the deal.

  "I've sewed myself up with him--promised not to peep a word of the real dope to you in this letter. The old Doc says, 'We'll need a good engineer and if your buddy in France has a head on him and knows how to keep his mouth shut tell him to come out here.' ... So if you still have that old take-a-chance spirit that hopped you through the Big Mill from Cantigny to Sedan I'll see you in Arizora. If I'm not in town when you arrive dig up Doc Stooder--everybody knows him.

  "Yours for the big chance,

  "BIM."

  Grant folded the letter with a smile. Good old Bim with his "whale ofa proposition." Running true to form was Bim in this characteristicletter. Just as Grant had come to know and love him in training areaand dugout: Bim Bagley, six-feet-one of tough Arizona bone and muscleand brimful of wild optimism. Always ready to take a chance, whetherat the enemy on all fours through midnight mud or at fortune in thewild lands of the Border: that was Bim Bagley of Arizona, "the finestcountry in the Southwest."

  And Bim had shot truer than he could know when he sent this hint of bigthings in the offing back to a man two years out of uniform and mopingfor excitement on the sixteenth floor of a skyscraper in Manhattan.Two years of civilian's life had been just that span of slow moralsuffocation for Grant. For all his thirty years, for all his betterthan moderate success in a profession of sharp competition, GrantHickman still could hear the call to the swimmin' hole of adventure.How he had yearned to hear it these past two years when the springs ofhis soul still tin
gled with the high tension of battle lines! Then thisletter from a pal, promising all the substance of his dreams. It hadnot been a week in the engineer's pocket before he was on the train forArizora.

  Grant went out to find Bagley. He located his office--"Insurance,Bonds, Investments" was the sign on the glass of the door; but the lockwas turned and no one opened at his knock. His eye caught a corner ofwhite paper projecting through the letter slot.

  "Grant:--Called out of town--back Friday. B. B." was the scrawl acrossthe face of it. A stab of disappointment was his; he had buildedheavily on that moment of meeting when Bim's big hand would have hisown in a vise. Nothing to do now but see the town and amuse himself ashe might, or call on that mysterious Doc Stooder and discover why GrantHickman had come racing out to this Arizora. He decided to do both.

  The Arizora Grant saw in an hour's swinging round the circle wassomething different from the "hick town" his New York smugness hadpictured in anticipation. It was a condensed El Paso, jammed in thenarrow compass of a mountain gorge, with railroad yards monopolizingthe whole of the flat space between crowding hills. A man could go fromhis home to business by the simple trick of leaping off the front porchof his bungalow with an opened umbrella. Arizora's streets were jammedwith cars--fantastic desert coursers stripped to the nines and withcanteens strapped to the running board. Sidewalks swarmed with men--bigmen with steady eyes looking out from beneath sombreros the size of awoman's garden hat; men with high-heeled boots and the pins of manylodges stuck on their unbuttoned vests; lantern-jawed, hollow-templedmen of the sun, whose bodies were indurated by the desert law ofstruggle and whose souls were simple as a fairy book.

  Across Main Street stretched a fence of rabbit-proof wire with threestrands of barbed wire topping that; a fence with something like apasture gate swung back for traffic. This was the Line. On the hitherside of that rabbit-proof wire web the authority of a President and hisCongress stopped; on the far side the authority of quite a differentpresident and his peculiar congress began. Over yonder, where stood aman under a straw sombrero and with a rifle hung on one shoulder, laySonora and the beginning of a thousand mile stretch of fantastic landcalled Mexico. A cart with solid wooden wheels and drawn by oxen undera ponderous yoke blocked the way of a twelve-cylinder auto seekingclearance at the international gate.

  When he had tired of sight seeing Grant inquired at a cigar counterwhere Dr. Stooder could be found. The breezy man in shirtsleevesgrinned and glanced at the clock on the wall behind him.

  "Well, sir, usually mornings he's over across the Line gettingorganized for the day on tequila. Mostly he comes back to his officeround noon time, steppin' wide and handsome. Office's over yonder,top-side of the Bon Ton barber shop. You might give it a look."

  Grant acted on the cigar clerk's advice. He located a dingy doorat the end of a dark upper hallway with the lettering, "A. Stooder,M.D.," on a tin sign over the transom. Entering, he found himself in asad company. Three Mexican women and a man of the same race sat likemourners on chairs about the wall; a big-eyed child squatted in themiddle of the floor and listlessly pulled a magazine to bits. The stampof woe and of infinite patience was set on all the dark faces. Mephiticsmell of iodoform was in the air. Grant hastily withdrew. After anhour's walking and when the whistles were blowing noon he returned. Adifferent collection of patient waiters occupied the chairs; evidentlythe doctor was in and at work.

  He took a chair by the window where he could look down into the streetand so keep the set masks of misery out of his eyes. After fifteenminutes the door to the inner office was violently opened and a Mexicanwoman shot out of it as if propelled by a kick. Thundering Spanishpursued her. Grant saw a scarecrow figure framed in the doorway.

  Tall beyond the average and gaunt almost to the point of emaciation;frock coated like a senator of the Eighties; thin shoulders seemingbowed by the weight of the garments hung thereon; enormous, heavilyveined hands carried as if hooked onto invisible hinges behind thestained white cuffs:--this the superficial aspect of Dr. Stooder. Vitalcharacter of the man was all summed up in his face: skin like wrinkledvellum stretched on a rack; eyes glinting from deep caves on eitherside of a veritable crag of a nose which had been broken and skewed offthe true. A great mane of grey hair reared up and back from his highforehead; tufts of the same colour on lip and chin in the ancient modeof the "Imperial" added the last daguerreotype touch to his features.

  Black eyes roved the room and fell on Grant, who had risen. The doctorcrooked a bony finger at him and he passed through into the privateoffice, taking the seat indicated. Without paying his visitor the leastheed, Dr. Stooder went to a closet, poured two fingers of some whiteliquid into a graduating glass and drank it. His lips smacked like apistol shot. Then he returned and took a swivel chair before a veryshabby and littered desk.

  "I never seen you before, sah"--the man's accent reeked of Texas, theold Texas before the oil invasions. "So I'll answer the question everystranger's just mortal dying to ask and don't dare. How'd I come toget this scar?" The surprising doctor tilted his great head back andtraced with his fore-finger an angry weal which encircled his throatlike a collar gall. "Well, sah, I was informally hanged once--and cutdown. Now we can get down to business. What's your symptoms?"

  Grant, caught off balance by so unconventional a reception, stammeredthat he had no symptoms.

  "My friend, Bim Bagley, who is out of town for a few days, told me tolook you up. My name is Grant Hickman. I'm from New York." The blackeyes, never deviating from their disconcerting stare, showed no flickerof recognition at the name.

  "What you want of me if you have no symptoms?" abruptly in the doctor'snasal bray. "I'm not in the market for the World's Library of Wit andHumour. I'll cut you for a tumour or dose you for dyspepsia; but Iwon't buy a book."

  "I have no books to sell." Grant found his temperature rising. "I havecome out from New York because you told my friend Bagley to send forme."

  Doc Stooder suddenly snapped out of his chair like a yard ruleunfolding and strode to the closet. With bottle and graduating glasspoised he bent a severe eye upon his visitor.

  "You say you don't drink. Highly commendable. I do." Again the pistolshot from satisfied lips. He replaced the bottle and tucked his handsunder the tails of his coat where they flapped the sleazy garmentrestlessly.

  "You call yourself an engineer. How do I know you are?"

  Grant had said nothing about being an engineer. Doc Stooder hadidentified him right enough. What reason for his bluff, then?

  "My dear sir, graduates of Boston Tech. do not carry their diplomasround with them on their key rings. You'll have to take Bagley's wordfor it that I'm an engineer if my own is not convincing."

  The gangling doctor took two turns of the office with enormous strides;one hand tugged at his straggling goatee. Abruptly he stopped byGrant's chair.

  "Young man, what need do you figure a doctor in Arizora would have ofan engineer--more especial an engineer from New York? Why should I tellthis Bagley, who's as crazy as a June-bug, to fetch a graduate engineerout to Arizora? Engineers are a drug on the market here--and every oneof 'em a crook."

  Grant's patience snapped. He rose and strode to the door.

  "Dr. Stooder, I didn't come away out here to your town to havesomebody play horse with me. When you are sober you can find me at theInternational Hotel."

  A grin started under Doc Stooder's moustache and travelled swiftly tohis ears.

  "God bless my soul, boy! When I'm sober, you say. I'm never sober and Ihope I never will be--"

  Grant slammed the door behind him.