Desert Conquest, A. M. Chisholm [best reads .TXT] 📗

But prospective buyers proved annoyingly inquisitive. After looking at the company's holdings, they naturally wished to see for themselves what the country was good for; and the obvious way to find out was to visit the established ranches.

Sleeman could not prevent it—nor appear to wish to prevent it. In fact, he had to acquiesce cheerfully and take them himself. That was better than letting them go alone. But the very air seemed to carry rumours. In vain he assured them that there was no fear of trouble, that in any event the company would protect them; in vain he showed them the big canal and beautiful system of ditches, and pointed with much enthusiasm to the armour-belted, double-riveted clause in the sale contracts, guaranteeing to the lucky buyer the delivery of so many miner's inches or cubic feet of water every day in the year.

"It's like this," said one prospective buyer: "They ain't enough water for the whole country, and you're certainly aimin' to cinch some of the men that's here already so tight they can't breathe. If I buy water they're gettin' now, they're mighty apt to be sore on me. Dunno's I blame them, either. I like to stand well with my neighbours. Your land'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 good proposition; but he was handicapped by conditions not of his creating and beyond his control. And he knew quite well that, while a corporation may not give an employee any credit whatever for satisfactory results, it invariably saddles him with the discredit of unsatisfactory ones.

He foresaw that sooner or later—and very probably sooner—he would be asked to explain why he was not making sales. And he came to the conclusion that, as something was sure to start, he might as well start it himself.

His cogitations crystallized in the form of a letter to his chief, the head of the land department, wherein he told the bald and shining truth without even a mental reservation. And he intimated tactfully that if the department had another man whom they considered better fitted to deal with the unfortunate local conditions, he, Sleeman, would be charmed to assist him, or to go elsewhere in their service, if that seemed best to their aggregate wisdom. He worded his part of this letter very carefully, for he had seen as good men as himself incontinently fired merely because they could not deny themselves the luxury of a petulant phrase.

His letter bore fruit; for Carrol, the mighty head of the land department, came down to see things for himself.

Carrol, however, suffered from a species of myopia not uncommon among gentlemen who have for a long time represented large interests. He had so come to look upon Western Airline as an irresistible force, that the concept of an immovable body was quite beyond him. He had nothing but contempt for any person or set of persons—corporations with equal capital always excepted—rash enough to oppose any of its plans.

"Now, see here," he said at a conference with Sleeman and Farwell. "We can't afford to have our sales blocked this way. Our ditches will carry water now, and the dam itself is nearly completed. Open up the ditches and take all the water you can. Then we'll see whether there is anything 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—if anybody should ask you. The sooner we take it the sooner we shall be able to acquire these ranches. Once the men see what they're up against they'll ask us to buy, which we'll do on our own terms. That's the programme. 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 a fair price. That's McCrae, who owns Talapus Ranch. It's the biggest and best 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, Carrol looked shocked and grieved. "Why, good Lord! Farwell," he said, "he wants almost what his ranch is worth."

"Funny that he should, isn't it?" sneered Farwell, who stood in no awe of 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 I could 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 another Sentinel of it if you like."

The reference was to the town site of Sentinel, a half section of prairie which had been bought for three thousand dollars and sold as town lots on paper at a couple of hundred thousand to confiding, distant investors. It was still prairie, and apt to remain so. Carrol had engineered the deal, and he would have blushed if he had not forgotten 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 quizzical expression of Sleeman's eye. "He doesn't want to sell, but I want him to have the chance of refusing real money. He may take it, or he may not. Anyway, I make it as a personal request."

Carrol eyed him for a moment. He knew Farwell's reputation for uncompromising hostility to any one who thwarted his plans, accidentally or otherwise. Also Farwell was a good man. He was bound to rise. Some day, he, Carrol, might require his help and he kept a sharp eye on possibilities of that nature. So he said:

"It isn't business, but to oblige you, Farwell—all right, I'll take the chance that he won't accept. But it's sudden death, mind. No dickering. He accepts, or he doesn't. If not, he'll get just dry-belt prices with the rest when they surrender."

And so a few days afterward Farwell, armed with a check representing one hundred and fifty thousand dollars of lawful money, procured because he considered it likely to have a good moral effect, sought Talapus Ranch and Donald McCrae. And McCrae, as he feared, turned the offer down.

Farwell had calculated on producing the check at the proper psychological moment, in practically stampeding him. The trouble was that the psychological moment failed to arrive. McCrae showed no symptoms 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," urged Farwell. "At 6 per cent. it's nine thousand a year from now to eternity for you and your wife and children. If you refuse, the best you can hope 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 be harried off the little bit of earth that's mine. It's good of you to take 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 your family—your wife and daughter particularly? It's due to them."

"I will not," McCrae refused, with patriarchal scorn. "I am the family. I speak for all."

"The old mule!" thought Farwell. Aloud he said: "I want to tell you that in a few days you'll lose half your water. The rest will go when the 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 you make or break yourself and your wife and children."

"That's my affair," said McCrae. "I tell you no, and no." He plucked the oblong paper from Farwell's unresisting fingers. "A lot of money, aren't you?" he apostrophized it. "More than I've ever seen before, or will see again, like enough." Suddenly he tore the check in half, and again 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. "One is 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 had anticipated this outcome; but, nevertheless, he was disappointed, vaguely apprehensive. In vain he told himself that it was nothing to him. The sense of failure persisted. Once he half turned in his saddle, looking backward, and he caught, or fancied he caught, the flutter of white against the shade of the veranda of the distant ranch house. That must be Sheila McCrae.

For the first time he realized that his concern was for her alone, that he did not care a hoot for the rest of the family. All this bother he had been to, all his efforts with old McCrae, his practical holdup of Carrol, even—he owned it to himself frankly—his failure to push the construction work as fast as he might had been for her and because of her. And what was the answer?

"Surely," said Farwell, straightening himself in the saddle, "surely to blazes I'm not getting fond of the girl!"

As became a decent, respectable, contented bachelor, he shied from the idea. It was absolutely ridiculous, unheard-of. The girl was all right, sensible, good-looking. She suited him as well as any woman he had ever met; but that, after all, was not saying much. He liked her—he made that concession candidly—but as for anything more—nothing to it!

But the idea, once born, refused to be disposed of thus summarily; it persisted. He found himself recalling trivial things, all pertaining to Sheila—tricks of manner, of speech, intonations, movements of the hands, body, and lips—these avalanched themselves upon him, swamping connected, reasonable thought.

"What cursed nonsense!" said Farwell angrily to himself. "I don't care a 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 recalled shudderingly brother engineers whose wives dragged about with them, living on the edge of construction camps under canvas in summer, in rough-boarded, tar-papered shacks in the winter; or perhaps in half-furnished cottages in some nearby jerk-water town.

He had pitied the men, fought shy of the women. Most of them had put the best face upon their lives, rejoicing in the occasional streaks of fat, eating the lean uncomplainingly. They led a migratory existence, moved arbitrarily, like pawns, at the will of eminent and elderly gentlemen a thousand or so miles away, whom they did not know and who did not know them. Continually, as their temporary habitations began to take on the semblance of homes, they were transferred, from mountains to plains, from the far north to the tropics. Their few household goods bore 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 life at the front. These set up establishments in the new, cheap residential districts of cities. There the wives kept camp; thither, at long intervals, the husbands took journeys ranging from hundreds of miles to thousands. True, there were those who had attained eminence. These lived properly