The Desert Fiddler Part 16

"No." Evelyn Barnett came around sharply.

"Bob Rogeen--that fellow who insulted you this morning."

"No? Not really?" Angry incredulity.

Reedy nodded. "As I told you, I've been looking up his past. And I got the story straight."

"The vile scoundrel!" Mrs. Barnett said, bitterly. "And to think Uncle would trust him with his money."

"We must stop it," said Reedy. "It isn't right that your uncle should be fleeced by this rascal."

"He shan't be!" declared Mrs. Barnett, gritting her teeth.

"There are too many really worthy investments," added Reedy.

"I'll see that this is the last money that man gets," Mrs. Barnett a.s.severated.

"Your uncle is a little bull headed, isn't he?" suggested Reedy, cautiously. "Better be careful how you approach him."

"Oh, I'll manage him, never fear," she said positively.

Jenkins set Mrs. Barnett down at the entrance to the bungalow court.

He preferred that Jim Crill should not see him with her. It might lead him to think Reedy was trying to influence her.

As Mrs. Barnett stalked up the steps, Jim Crill was sitting on the porch in his shirt sleeves, smoking.

"How are you feeling, dear?" she asked, solicitously.

"Ain't feelin'," Crill grunted--"I'm comfortable."

Evelyn sank into a chair, held her hands, and sighed.

"Oh, dear, it is so lonely since poor Tom Barnett died."

Uncle Jim puffed on--he had some faint knowledge of the poor deceased Tom.

"Do you know, Uncle Jim, I made a discovery to-day. The man who kept my poor husband from making a fortune was that person."

"What person?" growled the old chap looking straight ahead.

"That Rogeen person you are trusting your money to."

Jim Crill bit his pipe stem to hide a dry grin. He had often heard the story of the bursted mine sale. He had some suspicions, knowing Barnett, of what the mine really was.

"And, Uncle Jim, of course you won't keep him. Besides, he insulted me this morning."

"How?" It was another grunt.

Evelyn went into the painful details of her humiliation at the bank.

"When she got through Uncle Jim turned sharply in his chair.

"Did you do that?"

"Do what?" gasped Evelyn.

"Try to interfere with his loans?"

"Why, why, yes." She was aghast at the tone, ready to shed protective tears. "Didn't you tell me--wasn't I to have charge of the little things?"

"Oh, h.e.l.l!" Uncle Jim burst out. "Little things, yes--about the house I meant. Not my business. Dry up that sobbing now--and don't monkey any more with my business."

Uncle Jim got up and stalked off downtown.

CHAPTER XVII

Early one morning in March Bob picked Noah Ezekiel Foster up at a lunch counter where the hill billy was just finishing his fourth waffle.

"Want you to go out and look at two or three leases with me," said Rogeen as they got into the small car.

Bob had not lost his job with Crill over the Chandler loan. He was still lending the old gentleman's money and doing it without Mrs.

Barnett's approval. But the widow had, he felt sure, done the moist, self-sacrificing, nagging stunt so persistently that her uncle had compromised by advancing much more money to Reedy Jenkins than safety justified. Crill had never mentioned the matter, but Bob knew Jenkins had got money from somewhere, and there certainly was no one else in the valley that would have lent it to him. For Reedy had managed to pick his cotton and gin it at the new gin on the Mexican side, where the bales were still stacked in the yards.

"Why do you suppose," asked Bob as they drove south past the Mexican gin, "Jenkins has left his cotton over on this side all winter?" Bob had formulated his own suspicions but wanted to learn what Noah Ezekiel thought, for Noah picked up a lot of shrewd information.

"Shucks," said Noah, "it's so plain that a way-farin' man though a cotton grower can see. He's kept it over there because he owes about three hundred thousand dollars on the American side, and as quick as he takes it across the line there'll be about as many fellows pullin' at every bale as there are ahold of them overall pants you see advertised."

"But cotton is selling now; it was six cents yesterday," remarked Bob.

"At that he ought to have enough to pay his debts."

Noah Ezekiel snorted: "Reedy isn't livin' to pay his debts. He ain't hankerin' for receipts; what he wants is currency. His creditors on the American side are layin' low, because they can't do anything else.

Reedy put one over on 'em when he built this gin. He can hold his cotton over here for high prices, and let them that he owes on the American side go somewhere and whistle in a rain barrel to keep from gettin' dry.

"As my dad used to say, 'The children of this world can give the children of light four aces and still take the jack pot with a pair of deuces.'"

Bob knew Noah was right. He had watched Jenkins pretty closely all winter. Reedy had endeavoured to convince all his creditors, and succeeded in convincing some, that he had not brought the cotton across the line because there was no market yet for it. "It is costing us nothing to leave it over there, so why bring it across and have to pay storage and also lose the interest on the $25,000 Mexican export duty which we must pay when it is removed?"

"Noah," remarked Bob, as the little car b.u.mped across the bridge over the irrigation ditch, "I'm taking you out to see a Chinaman's lease.

He has three hundred acres ready to plant and wants to borrow money to raise the crop. If you like the field and I like the Chinaman, I'm going to make the loan."

"Accordin' to my observation," remarked Noah, "a heathen Chinese has about all the virtues that a Christian ought to have, but ain't regularly got.

"The other mornin' after I'd been to the Red Owl the night before, I felt like I needed a cup of coffee. I went round to a c.h.i.n.k that I'd never met but two or three times, and says, 'John, I'm broke, will you lend me a hundred dollars?'

"That blasted c.h.i.n.k never batted an eye, never asked me if I owned any personal property subject to mortgage, nor if I could get three good men to go on my note. He just says, 'Surlee, Misty Foster,' and dived down in a greasy old drawer and began to count out greenbacks. 'Here,'

I says, 'if you are that much of a Christian, I ain't an all-fired heathen myself. Give me a dime and keep the change.'"