The Desert Fiddler Part 24

It was unfortunate, Bob reflected, that Jim Crill had bought up all the debts against Jenkins' cotton. If these debts had been left scattered among the banks and stores and implement dealers, there would have been some influential cooperation in his effort to get action from the Mexican officials.

Bob went across the line and filed a long telegram to the State Department at Washington outlining the situation and asking for a.s.sistance. Then he caught the train for Los Angeles, where he had learned the American consul at the nearest Mexican port, whom he knew, was on a vacation.

The consul was very indignant at the treatment Rogeen was receiving and promised to investigate.

"Investigate!" Bob ran his fingers through his thick, sweaty hair, and unconsciously gave it a jerk. "But, man, I need water right now! It's the most critical time of the whole crop. Every day of delay means a loss of ten, fifteen, twenty thousand dollars."

"I know," said the consul; "but don't you see no officer can act merely on the word of one man. We have to get evidence and forward it to the department. If only I had the authority to act on my own initiative, I could bring them to time in twenty-four hours."

"If you wired to the department for authority," suggested Bob, "couldn't you get it?"

The consul shook his head doubtfully. He really was impressed by Bob's desperate situation. "I'll try it, and I'll be down to-morrow to see what I can do."

Bob returned to Calexico with a little hope--not much but a little.

Anyway, he was anxious to see the department's reply to his own appeal.

But it had not replied. The Western Union operator was almost insulted that Bob should imagine there was a message there for him.

Bob wrote another appeal, a little longer, and if possible more urgent, and fired that into Washington.

The consul came the following day. He interviewed the other ranchers and verified Bob's statements. He took affidavits, and made up quite a bulky report and dispatched it by mail to Washington. In the meantime he wired, briefly outlining the substance of his letter, and asked for temporary authority to take measures that would force the Mexican officials to act.

Bob was fairly hopeful over this. He waited anxiously for twenty-four hours for some answer. None came. This was the third day since his cotton began to need water. The thermometer went to 131 at two o'clock. No green plant could survive long without water.

He rode all day enlisting the cooperation of influential men in the valley on the American side, and got several of them to send wires to Washington. Every night when he returned to Calexico he went eagerly to the telegraph office; but each time the operator emphatically shook his head. Then Bob laboured over another long telegram, begging for haste; he paid nine dollars and forty cents toll and urged that the message be rushed.

By the fifth day Rogeen was getting desperate. He returned to Calexico at seven o'clock, jumped out of his car, and hurried into the telegraph office.

A message! A telegram for him at last! He had got action. Maybe even yet he could save most of his crop. The message was collect--$1.62.

He dropped two silver dollars on the counter and without noticing the change tore open the message. It was from the department at Washington and was brief:

DEAR SIR:

If you file your complaints in writing, they will be referred to the proper department for consideration.

R. P. M., _a.s.s't to Sec. of State._

Then Bob gave up, turned about gloomily, and went out to his machine, and started south toward the Chandler ranch.

CHAPTER XXVII

As the sun, like a burnished lid to some hotter caldron, slid down behind the yellow sandhills that rimmed the desert, Imogene Chandler felt as though she must scream. She would have made some wild outcry of relief if it had not been for her father, who still sat in the doorway of the shack, as he had all day, gray and bent like a dusty, wilted mullein stalk.

It had been a terrible day--the hottest of the summer. And for a week now the irrigation ditches had been dry. To-day the cotton leaves had wilted; and the girl had looked away from the fields all afternoon. It tortured her to see those rich green plants choking for water.

The sun gone, and a little relief from the heat, she began to prepare supper.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Shut off the water? Why all the cotton in the valley will be withered in a day."]

As she stirred flour for biscuits, Imogene was blaming herself for ever bringing her father here. But it had looked so like the great opportunity to escape from the fetters of dry rot and poverty. So near were they to success, with the rising prices this crop would make them a small fortune--five thousand, perhaps seven or eight thousand dollars clear--if only it had water. But to see it burn day by day, and all because of the greed of Reedy Jenkins! She had sent her father with the tribute of sixteen hundred dollars to Jenkins, but he had refused it. He could not turn on the water for so small a ranch. She knew he was trying to force Bob Rogeen through her to submit to the robbery.

Imogene and her father were dully eating their supper when Bob's machine stopped at the ranch. But the moment the light from the swinging lantern over the table fell on his face, she knew it was hopeless, and her mind leaped from her own trouble to his.

"It all comes down to this"--they had not discussed the fight until the little professor had gone to bed--"my backing must mean more to the Mexican officials than Reedy Jenkins'. If I could only get Washington to give the consul power to act, then we could apply pressure.

But"--he shrugged his shoulders fatalistically and looked moodily up at the glittering stars--"you see how hopeless that is."

She gave a jump that almost scared him, and grabbed his arm. Her face was so close to his he could see the excitement in her eyes even through the dusk.

"I can help; it can be done!"

She was electrically alive now. "Daddy was a cla.s.smate of the President's and was an instructor under him before we came West. He thinks a lot of daddy, but daddy would never use his friendship with the President to get a job. He's got to use it now--for you--for all of us! Write a personal telegram to the President--the sort that will get immediate action--and I'll make daddy sign it."

Bob was fairly white with excitement, and his hand shook as they sat down at the board table under the lantern and carefully composed that telegram. This was their one last hope, and it must get action.

"There, that will do it," Imogene nodded sagely. They were sitting side by side, their heads close together, studying the final draft of the appeal. The night wind blew a strand of her hair against his face, and for a moment he forgot the desert, forgot the fight, forgot the telegram, and saw only her. Then he shook himself free from the spell.

He must save the girl and himself before he dared speak.

Imogene roused up her father, and had him sign the message. And an hour later by a combination of bribes, threats, and pleadings Bob got a sleepy operator to reopen the telegraph office and speed the message to Washington.

At five o'clock the next day the reply came. Bob signed for it, and his fingers shook as he tore it open.

DEAR THEO:

State Department instructing consul by wire to take any action necessary to protect American ranchers.

W.

By eleven o'clock that night he got a message from the consul; and thirty minutes later Bob was speeding toward Tia Juana, a hundred and fifty miles west, to see the Mexican governor.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Early next morning Rogeen got an interview with the executive of the Mexican province, whom he had never met. The governor received him most courteously and manifested both alert intelligence and a spirit of fairness. During that long night ride Bob had thought out most carefully his exact line of appeal.

"Your Excellency," he said, earnestly, "wishes, of course, for the fullest development of the Imperial Valley in Mexico. To that end the ranchers must know they have full protection, not alone for their lives as they now have, but also for their crops. They must know it is profitable to farm in Mexico. I, myself, have five thousand acres of cotton, which will pay in export duties alone perhaps $25,000. Next year I wish to grow much more. Besides, I'm the agent for a very rich man who lends hundreds of thousands of dollars to other ranchers in your province.

"But this can continue only if those who do business on your side of the line obey the laws and pay their debts. Such men as Reedy Jenkins must be compelled to deal honestly or get out."

The governor agreed to what Rogeen said, and promised to take prompt action.