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

"And you never told me!" Kitty Wade commented, as her husband had done. "It's a real romance in real life. But I think you are the most generous girl I ever heard of. If you were in love with him, of course that would explain it. Aren't you, now—a little?"

"I'm not in love with him, Kitty—honestly I'm not," Clyde responded. "I don't know whether I shall ever be or not. He did me a service which I would like to repay. I have more money than I know what to do with. If money would help him over a rough place it was up to me. At least, that's how I looked at it. And as for going out to his country—why, I want to, that's all. I want to see the country which produces that sort of man. He's different from the others, somehow. I don't think he cares whether I have money or not. He wasn't going to recall himself to me till I practically recognized him. I know I'm good-looking and I know he knows it, but I don't think he cares. And he'd never have written me in this world or told me a thing about it himself if I hadn't written him first and asked him to."

"Why, Clyde!" Kitty Wade exclaimed in amazement.

"That's exactly what I did," Clyde asseverated. "If I were in love with him that would be the last thing I'd own up to, wouldn't it? Heavens above! Kitty, I know it's unmaidenly by all the old standards. You're married; you have your husband and your home and your interests. I have none of these things. You can't realize how utterly purposeless and idle and empty my life is. Just killing time. That was well enough a few years ago, and I enjoyed it. But now I'm as old as you are. I want something different from the daily and yearly round of sameness. If I were a man I'd work sixteen hours a day. If I had any special talent I'd cultivate it. But I haven't. I'm just an ordinary rich girl, in danger of physical and mental stagnation—in danger of marrying some equally rich man whom I don't love, in order to provide myself with new interests."

"Casey Dunne is a new interest, I suppose," said Kitty Wade dryly.

"I wish you wouldn't, Kitty," said Clyde.

"Then I won't," said Kitty Wade, "for I think you believe what you say. Which," she added to herself, "is more than I do, young lady."

CHAPTER XVI

On all the ranches along the Coldstream there was water in plenty. The ditches ran brimful. In the fields the soil was dark with grateful moisture; the roots of the grain drank deep, fed full on the stored fertility of ages magically released by the water, and shot suddenly from small, frail plants, apparently lying thinly in the drills, into crowding, lusty growths, vigorous, strong-stemmed, robust, throwing millions of green pennants to the warm winds. Down the length of the fields at narrow intervals trickled little streams like liquid silver wires strung against a background of living emerald. Pullulation was forced, swift, marvellous; one could almost hear the grain grow.

Though everything pointed to a bumper crop, this depended on a continued water supply, and the ranchers took full advantage of the present, for none could tell how long the conditions would endure. As soon as one piece of land had sufficient moisture the water was shifted elsewhere; they allowed no overflow, no waste. This meant long hours, continuous, if not arduous work.

Naturally each ranch's main ditch was the heart of its water supply. From these, smaller ditches carried the supply to the different fields. These represented the arteries. The small streams trickling down the long irrigation marks through the grain and root crops might be likened to veins. To supply these it was necessary to tap the arteries every few yards; and the adjustment of these outlets, as ditches always lower during the heat of the day when suction and evaporation are the greatest and rise in the cooler hours of the night, was a matter of some skill and difficulty.

Dunne and his entire force worked overtime, taking all they could get while they could get it. Glass, the timorous would-be investor, paid him several visits. The first time Casey himself showed him over the ranch, explaining the theory and practice of irrigation, telling him what crops could be grown, what could not be grown, and what might perhaps be grown but as yet had not been proven. Glass absorbed this information like a sponge. Once more he recited his doubts and fears, going over the same ground with wearying detail. Casey, on the second visit, handed him over to Tom McHale, who listened pityingly.

"This here Glass sure needs a guardian or a nursemaid or something," he told Casey afterward. "He don't seem to know which way to string his chips. He makes me that tired I sorter suggests maybe he'd better pray about it; and he says he's done that, too, but don't seem to git no straight answer. So I tells him if the Lord don't know I surely don't. And then he says he'll ask his wife. His wife! Whatever do you think of that? I quit him right there!"

But Glass wandered from ranch to ranch, a harmless bore, relating his perplexities to people too busy to listen. Finally he announced that he had bought land and sent for his family. And on the strength of this began his rounds again, eager for agricultural information.

At this time Casey received a letter from Wade giving the date of his long-promised visit to Coldstream. He added that his wife and Miss Burnaby would accompany him. They would stay, he said, in town, at the hotel. Immediately Casey went into committee with Tom McHale.

"Wade was coming here," he said. "The ladies complicate matters, but we'll have to do the best we can. It's the house that worries me. It's not furnished the way I'd like to have it. And then it's small. I guess we'll have to move out, Tom."

"Sure," McHale agreed at once. "We can bed down anywheres. I'll rig up a couple of bunks in the new tool house. We're pretty well along with the water. I can 'tend to that while you show 'em the country."

Straightway Casey commanded Feng, his Chinaman, to clean and scrub, much to that Celestial's disgust.

"What foh?" he demanded. "Housee plenty clean. Las spling me hiyu sclub, hiyu wash, hiyu sweep undeh bed. All light now."

"All right for man; no good for woman," Casey explained. "Two lady come stop, Feng."

"Ho!" said Feng, adjusting his mind to a new situation. "You and Tom mally him?"

"No," Casey responded. "One married already. Ladies all same my friends, Feng."

"No good." Feng announced with certainty. "Woman fliend no good. All time makee too much wo'k. All time kick at glub. Mebbyso want blekfust in bed. Mebbyso bling baby. Neveh give Chinaboy a dolla'. No good. S'pose you bling woman fliend me quit. Me go back to China."

"If you quit me now, one dead China boy stop," Casey threatened. He added craftily: "This lady tyee lady. All same mandarin's daughter. Hiyu rich!"

"Ho!" said Feng thoughtfully. "Hiyu lich, eh? All light. Me clean housee."

But, though he had won this diplomatic victory, Casey was not satisfied. Finally he took his perplexities to Sheila, enlisting her aid in problems of decoration and the like.

"Where does this Miss Burnaby come in?" she asked. "Who is she?"

Casey told her, and she frowned dubiously.

"Seems to me you butted into real society when you went outside, Casey. If she has all that money she's apt to be pernickity. I hate fussy women. Is she pretty?"

"Why—yes, I think so," he admitted. "Oh, yes, she's pretty—no doubt about that. But I don't think she's fussy. You'll like her, Sheila. She doesn't scare or rattle easily. In some ways she reminds me of you."

"Thank you. And how do you know she doesn't scare or rattle?"

He evaded the question. "I don't think she would."

"Why didn't you ever mention her before?"

"Never thought of it. I hadn't the least notion that Mrs. Wade was coming, let alone Miss Burnaby. You see, it puts me up against it. I'll be ever so much obliged if you'll help me out."

"I'll come over and arrange things in the rooms, of course," Sheila acquiesced.

And so, when Casey awaited the coming of the train which bore his guests, it was with the knowledge that his rough-and-tumble, quarters had been made as presentable as possible.

Wade and his party descended, attended by an obsequious porter laden with bags, and in a moment Casey was shaking hands.

"And so this is your country!" said Mrs. Wade eying her surroundings rather dubiously. In her heart she was appalled at the prospect of passing several weeks in such a place.

"Well, some of it isn't mine," he laughed. "I wish it were. This is only the makings, Mrs. Wade. Wait a few years. Now, here's what we do. We have dinner at the hotel. Afterward we drive out to the ranch where you are all to stay."

Wade and his wife protested. They couldn't think of it. Clyde said nothing. Casey appealed to her.

"What do you say Miss Burnaby? Will you brave the discomforts of a shack in the dry belt?"

"I'm in the hands of my friends," she laughed.

"That includes me," said Casey. "Everything's fixed for you. This is my stamping ground, and I'm boss. What I say goes." He introduced Mr. Quilty, who was hovering in the background, and chuckled as that garrulous gentleman proceeded to unwind an apparently endless welcome.

"I like him," Clyde whispered.

"Pure gold," said Casey, and created a diversion. He helped Quilty deposit the bags in the station.

"Thon's a fine gyurrl," said the latter, with a jerk of his thumb toward the platform."

"Right," Casey replied.

"Oh, trust a quiet devil like yourself to pick wan out," said the little station agent. "I was the same meself, whin I was more younger nor what I am now. I fell dead in love with a fine, big gyurrl be th' name iv—iv—dom'd if I don't forget the name iv her, onless it was Mary or Josephine—no, thim came afther. What th' divil are ye laughin' at? Annyways, me an' this gyurrl that I loved that I forget the name iv, was strollin' wan night be moonlight, d'ye see me, now? And we come to where there was a stump risin' maybe two fut clear iv th' ground—ye'll wonder what th' stump had to do wid ut, but listen—and I stopped and put me arrm around her waist—or tried to; for a fine circumferenshus waist she had. Faix, a wan-arrmed man'd've been up against it intirely wid her—and I sez to her, 'Lena'—that was her name, Lena, I remimber now, and she was a Swede—'Lena,' I sez, 'luk at the moon!' 'Ay see him,' she sez. 'Turn yer sweet face a little more to the southeast,' I sez, that bein' to'rd the stump I mintioned before; an' when I had her at the right angle I made a lep up on the stump and kissed her. Faix, and the same was a forced play, me bein' the height I am, and her over six fut. 'I love yez,' I sez; 'say yez love me!'"

"Well, what did she say?" asked Casey, as Mr. Quilty paused for breath.

"She concealed her feelin's," Mr. Quilty replied sadly. "She said, 'Ay tenk ve go home now. Ay don't vant no feller vat have to mek love med a step-ladder!' And afther that, mind ye, what does she do but take up wid another little divil wid no legs at all, havin' lost them under a shuntin' ingin. But his artfulness is such that he gets extra-long imitation wans, like stilts, to do his coortin' on. An', though he looks like a cross bechune a sparrow and a crane and has to carry an oil can when he walks or else creak