Part 15 (1/2)
Alvarez rose and walked to the bar.
”Is this money; a hundred dollars?” he inquired of the Mexican proprietor of the saloon.
”One hundred dollars, yes,” said the latter, with an a.s.suring smile.
”Made payable to you, Alvarez. Good? Good at any bank, good here at my saloon, good as gold. Better than gold, Alvarez, because easier to carry. Do you wish the money for it?”
The Mexican ex-bandit jingled some dollars in his trousers' pockets.
”I have enough to eat and drink,” said he. ”If the paper is good, if you will give me gold for it, then I will wait until I return. As you say, it's not so heavy to carry.”
”Bring it to me when you return. Mr. Menocal is very wealthy, very rich. He has much land and many sheep. Besides, he owns a bank full of gold and silver. The paper is good.”
Alvarez was impressed. He stood in thought.
”Those sheep and that bank full of money! In Mexico we would form a company of revolutionists and help ourselves,” he said.
”That isn't the custom here,” was the reply.
Alvarez again stared at the check, then folded it, bit the edge with his teeth, placed it in a small leather bag suspended under his s.h.i.+rt by a cord about his neck, and returned to the table where Charlie Menocal waited.
”I will go up yonder in a few days, senor,” he stated. ”There are girls there, are there not?”
One day a week later, after Bryant and Dave had returned to Kennard, and after numerous conferences with Mr. McDonnell, his attorney and an engineer called in for consultation, Lee exclaimed to his companion, ”We win. McDonnell will take hold of it. Bully for him!” And he went about clearing up the odds and ends of business at a great rate.
Moreover, McDonnell believed he could dispose of the bonds within a fortnight, by the middle of September. That would enable Bryant to make good headway with the dam on the Pinas River while the water was low and before cold weather set in. The attorney would look after the incorporation of the company and the stock and bond issues. Lee could at once engage a staff of a.s.sistant engineers and arrange to let the building contract. In the matter of the ca.n.a.l line, he had received ample a.s.surance from members of the Land and Water Board at Santa Fe that the changes he asked would be granted. Everything was propitious, everything exactly as he would wish.
”Out of those town duds, Dave,” he exclaimed. ”You can't be a sport any longer. Back to Perro Creek for us and your new spotted pony. And it's high time, too, for I saw you making eyes at that girl with yellow hair and angel blue eyes, whose mamma----”
”You never did!” Dave yelled, crimson with ire.
CHAPTER XII
October. And the last golden leaves twirling down from cottonwood and aspen and mountain maple; the lofty brown peaks fresh powdered with snow; the air dazzling, keen, heady like wine; frost a-sparkle of mornings on stone, fence-post, roof, with a rainbow coruscation of diamonds; clear, high moons; marvellous, moonlit nights.
It was the middle of the month. Three weeks previous, with the bonds sold and the injunction suits dismissed, the contractor employed had unloaded his outfit at Kennard, moved up the Pinas River, raised in a day his camp at the mouth of the canon above Bartolo, and begun his task. This man, Pat Carrigan, had been in Bryant's mind from the first: a Pueblo contractor of Irish extraction, born in a railroad camp, trained on a dump, and now grizzled and aging but unequalled in handling men, in keeping them satisfied, in moving dirt. In his time he had turned off jobs from Maine to California, from Wisconsin to Texas. Already along the hillside a yellow gash was deepening from the dam site through the fenced fields where ran the right of way; while in the Pinas, low at this season, the traverse section of the river bed had been cleaned out and the base of the dam was building of stones and brush.
Late on a certain afternoon Ruth Gardner and Imogene Martin stood waiting by a gray runabout at the edge of the camp. A storm was sweeping up the Ventisquero Range from the south, one of the autumn storms that marked the change of seasons, enveloping, as it advanced, the gray peaks one after another in its fog and trailing over the mesa gauzy brown streamers of rain. In the west the sun still shone un.o.bscured, but with its light failing to a chill saffron glare as the cloud expanded over the sky.
Bryant and another man, a newcomer in the last few days, an engineer from the East representing the bondholders, were walking toward the girl from the dam. As the men walked, they engaged in rather spirited argument.
”You'd better hurry, you two,” Ruth called. ”Don't you see that rain coming? Imo and I want to reach home, Mr. Gretzinger, without being soaked.”
Bryant's companion waved an a.s.suring hand without ceasing his rapid and forceful statement addressed to his fellow. Half a head shorter than Lee, he was of stockier build, a man somewhere near thirty-five or six years of age, with hair tinged with gray above his ears. Both in manner and speech he exhibited by turns superficial gayety, latent cynicism, and an egregious a.s.sumption. When Lee had introduced him to the young ladies at Sarita Creek, he had made himself at home in three minutes. He had the latest witticisms of restaurants and theatres, the newest stories, the most recent slang; his clothes were of the autumn's extreme mode; he was intelligent if frankly materialistic; and he interested, amused, and diverted the two girls. From his gay and airy talk they gathered that he had been married and divorced, that the West might have the scenery but New York had the bright lights; that money could buy anything from food to fame; and that ”movies” were a bore. To the girls he was like a breath from the metropolis itself, that hard, throbbing, restless, glaring, convivial, avid, fascinating city in which is centred everything of wealth and misery, everything intense and abnormal, and everything to satisfy the desires. But the effect upon the girls was different. Imogene, though entertained, continued calm, unimpressed, unenvious; Ruth, however, as she listened and asked questions, the better they became acquainted, was bright-eyed and excited. ”Don't you think him a remarkable man?”
she had exclaimed to Imogene. ”So experienced, so polished, so--well, everything.” This was after his second visit, which he made without Bryant, stopping on his way from the dam camp to Kennard where he made the chief hotel his headquarters. Imogene had replied, ”Oh, he's amusing company, and he can't be accused of being diffident, at least.
But I wonder if he would wear well. His divorced wife's opinion would be valuable on that point, I fancy.” That had caused Ruth to sniff.
She said, ”You heard his explanation; they didn't agree and so they just separated. That was sensible. When two people find they're not compatible, they shouldn't live together a minute. And I shouldn't be surprised if she was a cat.”