Desert Conquest Part 13

"I'm another," McCrae retorted swiftly. "Look here, Mr. Farwell, I was in this country when its only crop was buffalo hides and bad Indians.

Land!--you couldn't give it away. I can show you a town with hotels and banks and paved streets and electric lights--a fine little town.

Twenty-odd years ago I was offered the section that town now stands on, for a team and a two weeks' grubstake for a man and his wife. They wanted to get out, and they couldn't. I gave 'em the grub, and told 'em it was worth the price of it to me not to own the land. Yes, sir--and I meant it. I was that shortsighted. So were others. We thought the country would never fill up, just as we thought the buffalo would never be killed out, and we kept on drifting. When I woke up, the cheap lands were about gone. And then, ten years late, I made my grab for a piece of what was left. I hiked for this country that I knew ahead of everybody, and I picked out the best bunch of stuff there was in it, and I sat down to wait for the rush to catch up to me. Now it's caught me and the rest of us who came in early. And now you people tell me I've got to move off my reservation, and go away somewhere and begin again. I won't do it--I tell you I won't! And, what's more, don't you crowd me too hard--me and the rest of the boys--or there'll be h.e.l.l a-popping right here. Now, you mind what I'm telling you."

He spoke deliberately, evenly, without raising his voice. His manner, even more than his words, expressed fixed determination. Farwell lifted his eyebrows, and puckered his lips in a silent whistle. His diplomacy was turning out badly, and he repressed an inclination to retort.

"Well, I'm sorry," he said. "I hoped we could fix this up. Think it over, anyway."

"I've done my thinking."

"But, man, you're on the wrong side of the fence, and you know it. The railway is too strong for you. What's the sense of bucking it?"

"Not much, maybe. I guess you mean well, and I take it friendly, but this ain't a question of sense."

"Of what, then?"

"Of a man's right to keep what he's worked for, and to live on the land he owns." McCrae replied. "That's the way I look at it."

It was the old question once more--older than the country, older than the _Mayflower_, older than the Great Charter wrested from John the King----the eternal battle between the common man and cla.s.s or privilege. Here, in the new country, in place of the divine right of kings and the hereditary power of n.o.bles, was subst.i.tuted the might of money, the power of the corporate body, itself a creation of law, overriding the power which created it.

"Well, it's your funeral," said Farwell. "I can't help my job, just remember that. And of course I've got to earn my pay."

"Sure," said McCrae; "sure, I understand."

They were at the camp. Farwell jumped out inviting McCrae to put his team up and come to his quarters. McCrae refused. It was late; he must be getting back.

"Just as you say," said Farwell. "I'm coming over to your ranch now and then, if you don't mind."

"Come along," said McCrae. "Latchstring's always out. You, Jeff; you, Dinny! G'lang, boys!"

The buckboard leaped to the sudden plunge of the little road team.

Farwell stood for a moment listening to the diminishing drum roll of hoofs, whir of spokes, and clank of axles in their boxes.

"The blamed fool!" he thought. "Well, I gave him his chance. But it's going to be hard on his folks." He shook his head. "Yes, it will be pretty hard on his wife and the girl--what do they call her? Sheila.

Nice name that--odd! Sheila!" He repeated the name aloud.

"h.e.l.lo, did you speak to me?" said the voice of his a.s.sistant, Keeler, in the darkness.

"No!" snapped Farwell, with unnecessary curtness; "I didn't."

CHAPTER VIII

At the end of a week Farwell told Keeler that he was going to ride over to Talapus. He added unnecessarily that he wanted to see how his horse was getting on. Whereat his a.s.sistant, who had very good ears, grinned internally, though outwardly he kept a decorous face. He did not expect his chief back till late.

But Farwell returned early, and spent a busy half hour in blowing up everybody from Keeler down. On this occasion he had not seen Sheila at all. She and Casey Dunne, so Mrs. McCrae informed him, were at the latter's ranch. Mr. Dunne, it appeared, was buying some house furnishings, and wanted Sheila's advice. Farwell took an abrupt departure, declining a hospitable invitation. He barely looked at the lame horse.

For another week he sulked in a poisonous temper. He was done with Talapus. He thought that McCrae girl had some sense, but if she was going traipsing all over the country with Dunne, why, that let him out.

Maybe she was going to marry Dunne. It looked like it. Anyway, it was none of his business. But the end of it was that he went to Talapus again.

This time he found Sheila alone. The elder McCraes were gone to Coldstream in the buckboard. Young Alec was somewhere on the ditch.

Sheila, flanked by clothesbasket and workbasket, sat on the veranda mending his shirts. The occupation was thoroughly unromantic, little calculated to appeal to the imagination. Nevertheless, it appealed to Farwell.

Largely because it is the perverse nature of man to believe that the Fates have set him in the wrong groove, Farwell, like many others whose lives have been spent in exclusively masculine surroundings, believed his tastes to be domestic. Not that he had ever pushed this belief beyond the theoretical stage; nor would he have exchanged places with any of his confreres who had taken wives. But he railed inwardly at the intense masculinity of his life, for the same reason that the sailorman curses the sea and the plainsman the plains. Just as the tragedian is certain in his inmost soul that his proper role is light comedy, while the popular comedian is equally positive that he should be starring in the legitimate; so Farwell, harsh, dominant, impatient, brutal on occasion, a typical lone male of his species, knowing little of and caring less for the softer side of life, cherished a firm belief that his proper place was the exact centre of a family circle.

Although he had never seen a home that he cared beans about--including the one of his childhood--the singing of "Home, Sweet Home" invariably left him pensive for half an hour. Theoretically--heretofore always strictly theoretically--he possessed a strong _dulce domum_ impulse.

And so the spectacle of Sheila mending her brother's shirts was one of which he thoroughly approved. It gave him a feeling of intimacy, as though he had been admitted to the performance of a domestic rite.

Sheila picked up a second shirt, inspected it critically, and frowned.

"Now, isn't that a wreck?" she observed. "Sandy's awfully hard on his shirts." She nipped a thread recklessly between her teeth, shot the end deftly through the needle's eye, and sighed. "Oh, well, I suppose I must just do the best I can with the thing."

"Your brother is lucky," said Farwell. "My things get thrown away. No one to look after them when they begin to go."

"That's very wasteful," she reproved him. "Why don't you send them somewhere?"

"Where, for instance?"

"Oh, anywhere. I don't know. There must be women in every town who would like to earn a little money."

"Well, I haven't time to hunt for them. If you know any one around here who would undertake the job, I could give her quite a bit of work. So could the others."

"You don't mean me, do you?" laughed Sheila. "Sandy gives me all I can handle."

"Of course I never thought of such a thing," said Farwell seriously.

"Did it sound like that?"

"No, I am joking. I think you take things seriously, Mr. Farwell."

"I suppose so," he admitted. "Yes, I guess I do. I can't help it. I'm no joker; no time for that. Jokers don't get anywhere. Never saw one that did. It's the fellow who keeps thinking about his job and banging away at it who gets there."

"The inference being that I won't get anywhere."

Farwell, puzzled momentarily, endeavoured to remember what he had said.

"I guess I made another break. I wasn't thinking of you. Women don't have to get anywhere. Men do--that is, men who count. I've seen a lot of fellows in my own profession--smart, clever chaps--but, instead of buckling down to work, they were eternally running about having a good time. And what did any of them ever amount to? Not that!" He snapped his fingers contemptuously.

"But wasn't that the fault of the men themselves? I mean that, apart from their liking for a good time, perhaps they hadn't the other qualities to make them successful."

"Yes, they had," said Farwell positively. "Didn't I say they were clever? It wasn't lack of that--it was their confounded fooling around.

Almost every man gets one chance to make good. If he's ready for it when it comes, he's made. If he isn't--well, he isn't. That was the way with these fellows. When they should have been digging into the ground-work of their profession they weren't. And so, when good things were given them, they fell down hard. They lost money for other people, and that doesn't do. Now they're down and out--lucky to get a job with a level and one rodman to boss. There's no sympathy coming to them. It was their own fault."

He spoke positively, with finality, beating the heel of his clenched fist against his knee to emphasize his words. Evidently he spoke out of the faith that was in him. Not a line of his face suggested humour or whimsicality. Not a twinkle of the eye relieved its hardness. He was grave, dour, purposeful, matter-of-fact. He took himself, his life, and the things of life with exceeding seriousness.

Sheila regarded him thoughtfully. Somehow she was reminded of her father. There was the same gravity, marching hand in hand with tenacity of purpose, fixity of ideas; the same grim scorn of the tonic wine of jest and laughter. But in the elder man these were mellowed and softened. In Farwell, in the strength of his prime, they were in full tide, accentuated.

"Every man should have a good chance, and be ready for it," she replied; "but some men never get it."