The Desert Fiddler Part 11

Toward the last of June old cotton growers told Bob that his field was sure to go a bale and a quarter an acre, and Chandler's was about as good.

On the twenty-sixth of June a Mexican officer came to the ranch and arrested Rogeen's Chinese cook and one of his field hands. Bob offered bail, but it was refused. The day following the remaining Chinaman was arrested.

Bob got other hands, but on July first all three of these were arrested.

"I see," Bob said to himself, thinking it over that evening, "this is the first of Jenkins' schemes. They are going to make Chinamen afraid to work for me. Well, Noah and I can manage until I can hire some Americans."

At nine o'clock it was yet too hot to sleep, and Bob too restless to sit still. He got up and started out to walk. Without any definite intention he turned down the road south. He had gone about half a mile and thought of turning back when he saw something in the road ahead--something white. It was a woman, and she was running toward him.

CHAPTER XIII

Bob hastened to meet the figure in the road. He knew it was Imogene Chandler, and that her haste meant she was either desperately frightened or in great trouble.

"Is that you, Mr. Rogeen?" She checked up and called to him fifty yards away.

"Yes. What is the matter?"

"I've been frightened three times in the last week." She caught her breath. "A man hid in the weeds near the house, and his movements gave me a scare; but I didn't think so much about it until Sat.u.r.day night, when I went out after dark to gather sticks for the breakfast cooking, a man slipped from the shadow of the trees and spoke to me and I ran and he followed me nearly to the house. I got my gun and shot at him.

"But to-night," she gasped for breath again, "just as I was going from papa's tent to my own, a man jumped out and grabbed me. I screamed and he ran away."

Bob put his hand on her arm. He felt it still quivering under his fingers.

"I'll walk back with you," he said in a quiet, rea.s.suring tone.

"Can you lend me a blanket?" he asked when they reached the Chandler ranch. "And let me have your gun, I'll sleep out here to one side of your tent."

She protested, but without avail.

Next morning when Bob returned to his own ranch he spoke to Noah Ezekiel Foster.

"Noah, this afternoon move your tent down to the Chandler ranch. Put it up on the north side of Miss Chandler's so she will be between yours and her father's. I'm going to town and I'll bring out a double-barrelled riot shotgun that won't miss even in the dark. You and that gun are going to sleep side by side."

Noah Ezekiel grinned.

Bob went to the shack, put his own pistol in his pocket, and rode off to Calexico.

Reedy Jenkins sat at his desk in shirt sleeves, his pink face a trifle pasty as he sweated over a column of figures. He looked up annoyedly as someone entered through the open door; and the annoyance changed to surprise when he saw that it was Bob Rogeen.

"I merely came in to tell you a story," said Bob as he dropped into a chair and took a paper from the pocket of his shirt and held it in his left hand.

"This," Bob flecked the paper and spoke reminiscently, "is quite a curiosity. I got it up near Blindon, Colorado. A bunch of rascals jumped me one night when my back was turned.

"Next day my friends hired an undertaker to take charge of my remains, and made up money to pay him. This paper is the undertaker's receipt for my funeral.

"The rascals did not get either me or the cash they were after; but they taught me a valuable lesson: never to have my back turned again."

He stopped.

"You see," went on Bob in a tone that did not suggest argument, "there is a ranch over my way you happen to want--two of them, in fact. The last week the lessees have both been much annoyed; the one on the south one especially.

"Now, of course, we can kill Madrigal and any other Mexican that keeps up that annoyance. But instead, I suggest that you call them off. For the Chandlers have fully made up their minds not to sell, and so have I."

Bob rose. "If anything further happens down there, I'm afraid there'll be an accident on this side of the line. It was merely that you might be prepared in advance that I dropped in this morning to make you a present of this." He tossed the paper on Jenkins' desk and went out.

Reedy picked up the receipt. The undertaker, after Rogeen's recovery, had facetiously written on the back:

This receipt is still good for one first-cla.s.s funeral--and it is negotiable.

Reedy felt all the sneer go out of his lips and a sort of coldness steal along his sweaty skin. Underneath this writing was another line:

Transferred for value received to Reedy Jenkins.

BOB ROGEEN.

CHAPTER XIV

It was five minutes after Bob Rogeen had gone out of the door before Reedy Jenkins stirred in his chair. Then he gave his head a vicious jerk and swiped the angling wisp of hair back from his forehead.

"Oh, h.e.l.l! He can't bluff me."

He sat gritting his teeth, remembering the insulting retorts he might have made, slapped his thigh a whack with his open hand in vexation that he had not made them; got up and walked the floor.

No, he was not afraid of Rogeen, not by a d.a.m.ned sight. Afraid of a twenty-dollar hardware clerk? _Not much!_ He would show him he had struck the wrong town and the wrong man for his cheap bluffs. And yet Reedy kept remembering a certain expression in Rogeen's eye, a certain taut look in his muscles. Of course a man of Reedy's reputation did not want to be mixed up in any brawls. Whatever was done, should be done smoothly--and safely.

He telephoned for Madrigal, the Mexican Jew. Madrigal could manage it.

While waiting for his agent, Reedy lighted a cigar, but became so busily engaged with his thoughts that he forgot to puff until it went out. Jenkins was taking stock of the situation. He had boasted of his influence with the Mexican authorities; but like most boasters he was talking about the influence he was going to have rather than what he had. Just now he was not sure he had any pull across the line at all.

Of course as a great ranch owner and a very rich man--as he was going to be inside of three years--he could have great influence. And yet he remembered that the present Mexican Governor of Baja California was an exceedingly competent man. He was shrewd and efficient, and deeply interested in the development of his province. Moreover, he was friendly to Americans, and seemed to have more than an ordinary sense of justice toward them.

Reedy shook his head. He did not believe he could have much chance with the Governor--not at present, anyway. But perhaps some minor official might help put over his schemes. Anyway, Madrigal would know.

The Mexican Jew came directly, dressed in light flannels, a flower in his b.u.t.tonhole. Debonairly he lifted his panama and bowed with exaggerated politeness to Jenkins.

"What great good has Senor Reedy clabbering in his coco now?" He grinned impudently.

Jenkins frowned. His dignity was not to be so trifled with.

"Sit down," he ordered.