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-class 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, hell! 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 damned 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 buttonhole. 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.

Reedy relighted his cigar, put his thumbs in his vest holes, and began slowly puffing smoke toward the ceiling. He liked to keep his subordinates waiting.

"Madrigal," he said, directly, "I want those two ranches—Chandler's and Rogeen's."

"Si, si." The Mexican nodded shrewdly. "And Senor Jenkins shall have them."

"We've got to get rid of Rogeen first. Then the other will be easy."

"Et es so, senor," Madrigal said, warmly. He abated Rogeen on his own account, for Senor Madrigal had formed a violent attachment for the Senorita Chandler. And the damned Americano with his fiddle was in the way.

"If," suggested Reedy, smoking slowly, "Rogeen should be induced to leave the country within three weeks—or in case he happened to some accident so he could not leave at all—we'd make four thousand out of his ranch. Half of that would be two thousand."

Madrigal's black eyes narrowed wickedly, and his thick lips rolled up under his long nose.

"Mexico, senor, is the land of accidents."

"All right, Madrigal," Reedy waved dismissal and turned to his desk and began to figure—or pretend to figure.

The Mexican turned in the door, looked back on the bulky form of Jenkins, started to speak, grinned wickedly, and went down the outside stairway.

On the evening of the third of August Bob came in from the fields and prepared his own supper. Since the arrest of his Chinamen a few weeks before Rogeen had not employed any other help. The cotton cultivation was over, and he and Noah could manage the irrigation. The hill billy had gone to town early in the afternoon, and would return directly to the Chandler ranch where he was still on guard at nights. Bob believed his warning to Jenkins had stopped all further molestation, but he was not willing to take any chances—at least not with Imogene Chandler.

Bob had been irrigating all day and was dead tired. After supper he sat in front of his shack as usual to cool a little before turning in. The day had been the hottest of the summer, and now at eight o'clock it was still much over a hundred.

In that heat there is little life astir even in the most luxuriant fields. It was still to-night—scarcely the croak of a frog or the note of a bird. There was no moon, but in the deep, vast, clear spaces of the sky the stars burned like torches held down from the heavens. A wind blew lightly, but hot off the fields. The weeds beside the ditches shook slitheringly, and the dry grass roof of the shack rustled.

To be the centre of stillness, to be alone in a vast space, either crushes one with loneliness or gives him an unbounded exhilaration. To-night Bob felt the latter sensation. It seemed instead of being a small, lost atom in a swirling world, he was a part of all this lambent starlight; this whispering air of the desert.

He breathed slowly and deeply of the dry, clean wind, rose, and stretched his tired muscles, and turned in. So accustomed had he become to the heat that scarcely had he stretched out on the cot before he was asleep. And Bob was a sound sleeper. The sides of the shack were open above a three-foot siding of boards, open save for a mosquito netting. An old screen door was set up at the front, but Bob had not even latched that. If one was in danger out here, he was simply in danger, that was all, for there was no way to hide from it.

A little after midnight two Mexicans crept along on all-fours between the cotton rows at the edge of Bob's field. At the end of the rows, fifty yards from the shack, they crouched on their haunches and listened. The wind shook the tall rank cotton and rustled the weeds along the ditches. But no other sound. Nothing was stirring anywhere.

Bending low and walking swiftly they slipped toward the back of the shack. Their eyes peered ahead and they slipped with their hearts in their throats, trusting the Americano was asleep.

He was. As they crouched low behind the shelter of the three-foot wall of boards they could hear his breathing. He was sound asleep.

Slowly, on hands and knees, they crawled around the west side toward the entrance. In the right hand of the one in front was the dull glint of a knife. The other held a revolver.

Cautiously the one ahead tried the screen door—pushing it open an inch or two. It was unlatched. Motioning for the other to stand by the door, he arose, pushed the door back with his left hand very slowly so as not to make a squeak. In the right he held the knife.

Bob stirred in his sleep and turned on the cot. The Mexican stood motionless, ready to spring either way if he awoke. But the steady breathing of a sound sleeper began again.

The Mexican let the door to softly and took one quick step toward the bed.

Then with a wild, blood-curdling yell he fell on the floor. Something from above had leaped on him, something that enveloped him, that grappled with him. He went down screaming and stabbing like a madman. His companion at the door fired one shot in the air, dropped his gun, and ran as if all the devils in hell were after him.

The commotion awoke Bob. Instantly he sat up in bed, and as he rose he reached for a gun with one hand and a flashlight with the other. In an instant the light was in the Mexican's face—and the gun also.

"Hold up your hands, Madrigal." Bob's tone brought swift obedience. Around the Mexican and on him were the ripped and torn fragments of a dummy man—made of a sack of oats, with flapping arms and a tangle of ropes. Bob had not felt sure but some attempt might be made on his life, and half in jest and half as a precaution, he and Noah had put this dummy overhead with a trip rope just inside the door. They knew the fright of something unexpected falling on an intruder would be more effective than a machine gun.

"Get up," Bob ordered, and the shaken Madrigal staggered to his feet, with his hands held stiffly straight up. "March out." Rogeen's decision had come quickly. He followed with the gun in close proximity to the Mexican's back.

Madrigal was ordered to pick up a hoe and a shovel, and then was marched along the water ditch toward the back of the field.

"Here." Bob ordered a stop. They were half a mile from the road, at the edge of the desert. The Mexican had recovered enough from his first fright to feel the cold clutch of another, surer danger. "Dig," ordered Bob. And the Mexican obeyed. "About two feet that way." Bob sat down on the bank of the water ditch and kept the digger covered. "Make it seven feet long," he ordered, coldly.

Slowly Madrigal dug and shovelled, and slowly but surely as the thing took shape, he saw what it was—a grave. His grave!

He glared wildly about as he paused for a breath.

"Hurry," came the insistent command.

Another shovelful, and he glanced up at the light. But the muzzle of the gun was level with the light! A wrong move and he knew the thing would be over even before the grave was done.

For an hour he worked. Off there at the edge of the desert, this grave levelled as a part of the cotton field—and no one would ever find it. His very bones seemed to sweat with horror. Was the American going to bury him alive? Or would he shoot him first?

All the stealth and cruelty he had ever felt toward others now turned in on himself, and a horror that filled him with blind, wild terror of that hollow grave shook him until he could no longer dig. He stood there in front of the flashlight blanched and shaking.

"That will do," said Rogeen. "Madrigal," he put into that word all the still terror of a cool courage, "that is your grave."

For a full moment he paused. "You will stay out of it just as long as you stay off my land—out of reach of my gun. Don't ever even pass the road by my place.

"Your boss has had his warning. This is yours. That grave will stay open, day and night, waiting for you.

"Good-night, Senor Madrigal. Go fast and don't look back."

The last injunction was entirely superfluous.

After the night had swallowed up the fleeing figure Bob rolled on the bank and laughed until his ribs ached.

"No more oat sacks for Senor Madrigal! I wonder who the other one was—and what became of him?"



CHAPTER XV

It was October. The bolls had opened beautifully. The cotton was ready to pick. As Bob and Noah walked down the rows the stalks came up to their shoulders. It was the finest crop of cotton either of them had ever seen.

"As dad used to say," remarked Noah Ezekiel, "the fields are white for the harvest, but where are the reapers?" There was no one in the fields at work.

Bob shook his head gloomily. "I have no money for the pickers. I owe you, Noah, for the last two months."

"Yes, I remember it," said the hill billy, plucking an extra large boll of lint. "I've tried to forget it, but somehow those things sort of stick in a fellow's mind."

In August the great war had broke in Europe.

Ships were rushing with war supplies, blockades declared, factories shut down. The American stock exchanges had closed to save a panic. Buying and selling almost ceased. Money scuttled to the cover of safety vaults, and the price of cotton had dropped and dropped until finally it ceased to sell at all.

"It is going to bankrupt almost every grower in the valley," remarked Bob. "I'm certainly sorry for the Chandlers. They're up against it hard."

"As the poet says," Noah Ezekiel drew down the corners of his mouth, pulling a long face, "ain't life real?"

Bob laughed in spite of troubles. "Noah, I believe you'd joke at your own funeral."

"Why shouldn't I?" said Noah. "You joked with your undertaker's receipt." He grinned at the recollection of that event. "You sure broke that yellow dog Jenkins from suckin' eggs—temporarily."

"But ain't he stuck with his leases though. If I had as much money as he owes, I could fix these gamblers at the Red Owl so they wouldn't have to work any for the rest of their natural lives."

"Noah," Bob turned to his faithful foreman, "I want you to stick until we put this thing through. I'll see you don't lose a dollar."

"Don't you worry about me sticking," said Noah Ezekiel. "I never quit a man as long as he owes me anything."

The loyalty of the hill billy touched Rogeen, but as is the way of men, he covered it up with a brusque tone.

"You get the sacks ready. I'm going in to town and raise the money somehow to pick this cotton. I'll pick it if I never get a dollar out of it—can't bear to see a crop like that go to waste."

The cotton-gin people were in a desperate panic, but Bob went after them hard:

"Now see here, that war in Europe is not going to end the world; and as long as the world stands there will be a demand for cotton. This flurry will pass, and there's sure to be a big jump in the market for cotton seed. The war will increase the demand for oils of all kinds.

"That cotton has got to be picked, and you'll have to furnish the money. When it is ginned you can certainly borrow five cents a pound on it. That will pay for the water and the lease, the picking and the ginning—and the duty, too.

"Now you get the money for me to pick my field and Chandler's field. They owe only $600 on the crop; so you'll be even safer there than with me. We'll leave the cotton with you as security. And then after you have borrowed all you can on it, I'll give you my personal note for all the balance I owe, and see you get every dollar of it, if I have to work it out during the next three years at twenty dollars a week."

It was that promise that turned the scales. No man of discernment could look at Rogeen and doubt either his pluck or his honesty.

Two days later forty Chinamen, more eager for jobs now than ever, were picking cotton at the Chandler and Rogeen ranches—twenty at each place.

Tom Barton went up the outside stairway thumping each iron step viciously. Six months of gloomy forebodings had terminated even more disastrously than he had feared. He found Reedy Jenkins rumpled and unshaven, laboriously figuring at his desk.

Reedy looked up with a sly-dog sort of smile. There were little rims of red round his eyes, but it was plain he had something new to spring on his creditor.

"I'm not figuring debts"—Jenkins reached in the drawer and got out a cigar and lighted it—"but profits."

"Yes," said Barton, murderously, "that is what you are always figuring on. Debts don't mean anything to you, because you aren't worth a damn. But debts count with me. You owe me $40,000 on this bright idea of yours, and your leases aren't worth a tadpole in Tahoe."

"Easy, easy!" Reedy waved his hand as though getting ready to make a speech. "Perhaps I have temporarily lost my credit; but with a requisite amount of cash, a man can always get it back—or do without it.

"I admit this damn war has swamped me. I admit on the face of the returns I am snowed under—bankrupt to the tune of over $200,000. But nevertheless and notwithstanding I am going to get away with some coin."

"Well, I hope you don't get away with mine," growled Barton.

A laundry driver entered the door with a bill in his hand. Reedy grew a little redder and waved at the man angrily.

"Don't bother me with that now; don't you see I'm busy?"

"So am I," said the driver, aggressively, "and this is the third call."

"Leave it," said Jenkins, angrily, "and I'll have my secretary send you a check for it."

The driver threw it on Reedy's desk and left sullenly. Barton caught the figures on the unpaid bill—seventy-eight cents.

"I admit," Barton spoke sarcastically as he started for the door, "that your credit is gone. But if you don't dig up that forty thousand, you'll be as sorry you ever borrowed it as I am that I lent it."

The last of November Bob went down to the Chandler ranch to give an account of the cotton picking.

"You have 150 bales at the compress. I put up the compress receipts for the debts," said Bob to Imogene. "There is $3,123 against your cotton. I could not borrow another dollar on it."

"You have done so much for us already," the girl said, feelingly. "And we'll get along some way. If cotton would only begin to sell, we would have a little fortune."

"I have 180 bales," said Bob, "but I owe something over $4,000 on it. I am going up to Calexico and get a job until spring." He hesitated a moment, looking at the girl thoughtfully. The summer and hard work and constant worry had left her thin and with a look of anxiety in her eyes.

"Hadn't you also better move to town?"

She laughed at that. "Why, dear sir, what do you suppose we should live on in town? Out here we have no rent and can at least raise some vegetables. No, we'll stick it out until we see whether this war is merely a flurry or a deluge."

For a week Bob hunted a job in Calexico. His need for funds was acute. He had managed to get enough on his cotton to pay all his labour bills but had not kept a dollar for himself.

Tuesday evening he had gone up to his room at the hotel, a court room with one window and broken plaster and a chipped water pitcher. There was no job in sight. Everything was at a standstill, and the cotton market looked absolutely hopeless. His note for the $4,000 fell due January first. If he could not sell the cotton by that time, his creditors would take it over; and besides, he was held for any amount of the debt above what the cotton would bring at a forced sale.

He was bluer than he had been since he lost that first good job nine years ago. He went to the battered old trunk, opened the lid, and lifted the fiddle; stood with it in his hands a moment, put it against his shoulder and raised the bow. He was thinking of her, the girl left alone down there on the ranch—still fighting it out with the desert, the Mexicans, and the trailing calamities of this World War. He dropped the bow, he could not play. And just as he was returning the fiddle to his trunk there was a knock followed by the opening of the door. A chambermaid's head pushed in.

"There's a man down in the office wants to see you," announced the girl.

"Who is it?" asked Bob.

"Dunno—old fellow with eyebrows like a hair brush—and a long linen duster."

"I'll be right down," said Bob.

Jim Crill was sitting in a corner of the hotel office when Rogeen came down; and he motioned to Bob to take the chair beside him.

"Notice a cotton gin being built across the line?" the old gentleman asked, crossing his legs and thrusting his hands into his trousers pockets.

"Yes," Bob nodded. "I wondered if you had."

"Reckon I have," remarked Crill, dryly. "I'm puttin' up the money for it."

"You are?" Bob was surprised. This upset his suspicions in regard to that gin.

"Yes; don't you think it's a good investment?" The old gentleman's keen blue eyes looked searchingly from under the shaggy brows at Rogeen.

"Lots of cotton raised over there," Bob answered, noncommittally. "And the Mexicans really ought to have a gin on their side of the line."

The old gentleman cleared his throat as though about to say something else; and then changed his mind and sat frowning in silence so long Bob wondered why he had sent for him.

"Lots of cotton raisers 'll go broke this fall." Crill broke the silence abruptly.

"Already are," replied Bob.

"Know what it means." The old gentleman jerked his head up and down. "Hauled my last bale of five-cent cotton to the store many a time, and begged 'em to let the rest of my bill run another year. That was before I ran the store myself; and then struck oil on a patch of Texas land. Haven't got as much money as folks think but too much to let lie around idle. Think this valley is a good place to invest, don't you?" Again the searching blue eyes peered at the young man.

"I certainly do," answered Bob with conviction. "The soil is bottomless; it will grow anything and grow it all the year."

"If it gets water," added the old gentleman.

"Of course—but we had plenty of water this year. And," went on Bob, "this war is not going to smash the cotton market forever. It's going to smash most of us who have no money to hold on with. But next spring or next summer or a year after, sooner or later, prices will begin to climb. The war will decrease production more than it will consumption. The war demands will send the price of wool up, and when wool goes up it pulls cotton along with it. Cotton will go to twenty cents, maybe more."

"That sounds like sense." The old gentleman nodded slowly. "And it is the fellow that is a year ahead that gets rich on the rise; and the fellow a year behind that gets busted on the drop in prices."

"There are going to be some fortunes made in raising cotton over there," Bob nodded toward the Mexican line, "in the next four years that will sound like an Arabian Nights' tale of farming.

"I figured it out this summer. That land is all for lease; it is level, it is rich. They get water cheaper than we do on this side; and I can get Chinese help, which is the best field labour in the world, for sixty-five cents to a dollar a day. I was planning before this smash came to plant six hundred acres of cotton next year."

"That's what I wanted to see you about," said Crill. "Want to lend some money over there, and you are the fellow to do it. Want to lend it to fellows you can trust on their honour without any mortgages. Guess mortgages over there aren't much account anyway.

"Want to keep the cotton industry up here in the valley. May want to start a cotton mill myself. Anyway," he added, belligerently, "a lot of 'em are about to lose their cotton crops; and this is a good time to stick 'em for a stiff rate of interest. Charge 'em 10 per cent—and half the cotton seed. I'm no philanthropist."

Bob smiled discreetly at the fierceness. That was the usual rate for loans on the Mexican side. And it was very reasonable considering the risk.

"Want to hire you," said the old man, "to lend money on cotton—and collect it. What you want a month?"

"I'll do it for $150 a month," answered Bob, "if it does not interfere with my own cotton growing next spring."

"We can fix that," agreed the old man.

"I think," replied Bob, "the best loans and the greatest help would be just now on the cotton already baled and at the compress. Most of the growers have debts for leases and water and supplies and borrowed money against their cotton, and cannot sell it at any price. Unless they do sell or can borrow on it by January first, these debts will take the cotton. If you would lend them six cents a pound on their compress receipts that would put most of them in the clear, and enable them to hold on a few months for a possible rise in price."

"That's your business." The old gentleman got up briskly. "I'll put $25,000 to your credit in the morning at the International Bank. It's your job to lend it. When it's gone, let me know."

"Oh, by the way," Bob's heart had been beating excitedly through all this arrangement, but he had hesitated to ask what was on his mind. "Do you mind if—if I lend myself five cents a pound on 180 bales?"

The old man turned and glared at him fiercely.

"Do you reckon I'd trust you to lend to others if I didn't trust you myself? Make the loans, then explain the paper afterward."

Next morning Bob bought a second-hand automobile for two hundred and fifty dollars and gave his note for it. It was not much of an automobile, but it was of the sort that always comes home.

Rogeen headed straight south, and in less than an hour stopped at the Chandler ranch.

Imogene was under the shade of the arrow-weed roof, reading a magazine. Rogeen felt a quick thrill as he saw her flush slightly as she came out to meet him.

"What means the gasolene chariot?" she asked. "Prosperity or mere recklessness?"

"Merely hopefulness," he answered. "I brought a paper for you. Sign on the dotted line." He handed her a promissory note, due in six months, for $4,500.

"What is this?" She had been living so long on a few dollars at a time that the figures sounded startling.

"I've got a loan on your cotton," replied Bob with huge satisfaction. "And you can have it as soon as you and your father have signed the note."

"Good heavens!" The blood had left her face. "You are not joking, are you? Why, man alive, that means that we live! It will give us $1,400 above the debts."

Bob felt a choking in his throat. The pluckiness of the girl! And that he could bring her relief! "Yes, and I'm going to take you back to town, where you can pay off the debts and get your money."

The exuberant gayety that broke over the girl's spirits as they returned to town moved Bob deeply. What a long, hard pull she and her father had had; no wonder the unexpected relief sent her spirits on the rebound.

"Thank the Lord," he said, fervently, to himself, "for that sharp old man with bushy eyebrows!"

As they drove up to the International Bank where Bob had asked the compress company to send all the bills against the Chandler cotton, another machine was just driving away and a woman was entering the bank.

"By the great horn spoon," Bob exclaimed aloud, "that is Mrs. Barnett."

"Who is Mrs. Barnett?" Imogene Chandler asked archly. "Some special friend of yours?"

"Hardly," Bob replied, remembering that Miss Chandler knew neither Jim Crill nor his niece.

"And the man who was driving away," said Imogene, "was Reedy Jenkins."

"It was?" Bob turned quickly. "Are you sure? I was watching the woman and did not notice the machine."



As they entered the bank Mrs. Barnett, dressed in a very girlish travelling suit, was standing by the check counter as though waiting. At sight of Bob she nodded and smiled reservedly.

"Oh, Mr. Rogeen," she arched her brows and called to him as he started to the cashier's window with Imogene Chandler.

Bob excused himself and approached her, a little uneasy and decidedly annoyed. Her mouth was simpering, but her eyes had that sharp, predatory look he had seen before.

"Mr. Rogeen," she began in a cool, ladylike voice, "my uncle told me of the arrangement he had made with you and asked me to O. K. all the loans before you make them."

"Is that so?" Bob felt a mingling of wrath and despair. "He did not say anything to me about it."

"N-o?"—questioningly—"we talked it over last night, and he felt sure this would be the better plan."

Bob hesitated for a moment. Imogene had gone to the other note counter, and was trying idly not to be aware of the conversation. It would be utterly too cruel to disappoint her now. It went against the grain, but Rogeen swallowed his resentment and distaste.

"All right," he nodded brightly. "I've got one loan already for you." He drew the papers from his pocket. "It is six cents on 150 bales of cotton now in the yards. Here are the compress receipts."

"Whom is this for?" Her eyes looked at him challengingly; her lips shaped the words accusingly.

"To Miss Chandler and her father." Bob felt himself idiotically blushing.

Mrs. Barnett's face took on the frozen look of a thousand generations of damning disapprobation.

"No! Not one cent to that woman. Uncle and I don't care to encourage that sort."

For a moment Bob stood looking straight into the frigid face of Mrs. Barnett. It was the first time in his life he would have willingly sacrificed his personal pride for money. He would have done almost anything to get that money for Imogene Chandler. But it was useless to try to persuade the widow that she was wrong. Back of her own narrowness was Reedy Jenkins. This was Reedy's move; he was using the widow's vanity and personal greed for his own ends; and his ends were the destruction of Rogeen and the capitulation of Miss Chandler.

Mrs. Barnett's eyes met his defiantly, but her mouth quivered a little nervously. A doubt flashed through his mind. Was she authorized to do this? Surely she would not dare take such authority without her uncle's consent. He might telephone, anyway, then a more direct resolution followed swiftly. He turned away from Mrs. Barnett and went to the cashier's window.

"Did Jim Crill deposit $25,000 here subject to my check?" he asked.

"He did," replied the cashier.

"Are there any strings to it?"

"None," responded the cashier promptly.

Without so much as glancing toward the widow, who had watched this move with a venomous suspicion, Bob went to Miss Chandler by the desk and took the papers from his pocket, and laid them before her.

"Indorse the compress receipts over to Mr. Crill."

Then he wrote two checks—one to the bank for $3,123 to pay off all the claims against the Chandler cotton and one to Imogene for $1,377.

"You don't know, Mr. Rogeen," she started to say in a low, tense voice as she took the check, "how much——"

"I don't need to," he smilingly interrupted her gratitude, "for it isn't my money. I'll see you at lunch; and then take you back home in my car." He lifted his hat and turned back to the counter where Mrs. Barnett stood loftily, disdainfully, yet furiously angry.

"Well," said Bob, casually, "I've made one loan, anyway."

"It will be your last." Mrs. Barnett clutched her hands vindictively. "You'll be discharged as quick as I get to Uncle Jim."

Bob really expected he would, but not for three jobs would he have recalled that loan and the light of relief in Imogene Chandler's eyes.



CHAPTER XVI

Mrs. Barnett went direct from the bank to Reedy Jenkins' office. As she climbed the outside stairway she was so angry she forgot to watch to see that her skirts did not lift above her shoe tops. As she entered the door her head was held as high and stiff as though she had been insulted by a disobedient cook. White showed around her mouth and the base of her nose, and her nostrils were dilated.

"Why, Mrs. Barnett!" Reedy arose with an oratorical gesture. "What a pleasant surprise. Have a chair."

She took the chair he placed for her without a word and her right hand clutched the wrist of the left. She was breathing audibly.

"Did you see Rogeen?" Jenkins suggested suavely.

"Yes." The tone indicated that total annihilation should be the end of that unworthy creature. But her revenge, like Reedy's expectations, was in the future. She hated to confess this. She breathed hard twice. "And I'll show him whose word counts."

"You don't mean," Reedy swiped his left hand roughly at the wisp of hair on his forehead, "that he disregarded your wishes?"

"He certainly did." Indignation was getting the better of her voice. "The low-lived—the contemptible—common person. And he insulted me with that—that creature."

"Well, of all the gall!" Reedy was quite as indignant as Mrs. Barnett, for very different if more substantial reasons. He had seen more and more that a fight with Rogeen was ahead, a fight to the finish; and the further he went the larger that fight looked. The easiest way to smash a man, Reedy had found, was to deprive him of money. A man can't carry out many schemes unless he can get hold of money. Jenkins had kept a close eye on Jim Crill, and had grown continually more uneasy lest the old chap become too favourably impressed with Rogeen. He had early sensed the old man's weak spot—one of them—Crill hated to be pestered. That was the vulnerable side at which Evelyn Barnett, the niece, could jab. And Reedy had planned all her attacks. This last move of Crill's—hiring Rogeen to lend money for him, had alarmed Reedy more than anything that had happened. For it would give Rogeen a big influence on the Mexican side. Most of the ranchers needed to borrow money, and it would put the man on whose word the loans would be made in mighty high favour. To offset this, Reedy had engineered an attack by Mrs. Barnett on the old gentleman's leisure. She had worried him and nagged him with the argument that he ought not to bother with a lot of business details, but should turn them over to her. She would see to the little things for him. He had reluctantly granted some sort of consent to this, a consent which Evelyn had construed meant blanket authority.

"He flatly refused," Mrs. Barnett was still thinking blisteringly of Bob Rogeen, "to obey my wishes in the matter. I told him plainly," she bit her lips again, "that neither Uncle nor I would consent to money being furnished women like that."

"I should say not." Reedy agreed with unctuous righteousness in his plump face. "And to think of that scalawag, making a loan right in your face, after you had vetoed it."

"He'll never make another." Mrs. Barnett's lips would have almost bit a thread in two. "Just wait until I get to Uncle Jim!"

"I'll drive you up," said Reedy. He reached to the top of the desk for his hat.

"Of course," remarked Reedy on the way, "your uncle is very generous to want to help these fellows across the line that are broke. But they are riff-raff. He will lose every dollar of it. I know them. Good Lord! haven't I befriended them, and helped them fifty ways? And do they appreciate it? Well, I should say not!"

"The more you do for people the less they appreciate it," said Mrs. Barnett still in a bitter mood.

"Some people," corrected Reedy. "There are a few, a very few, who never forget a favour."

"Yes, that is true," assented the widow, and began to relent in her mind, seeing how kind was Mr. Jenkins.

"I'm very sorry," continued Reedy, frowning, "that your uncle has taken up this fellow. I've been looking up Rogeen's past—and he is no good, absolutely no good. Been a drifter all his life. Never had a hundred dollars of his own.

"By the way," Reedy suddenly remembered a coincidence in regard to that undertaker's receipt, "where was it your husband lost the sale of that mine?"

"At Blindon, Colorado."

"By George!" Reedy released the wheel with the right hand and slapped his leg. "I thought so. Do you know who that young man with the fiddle was who ruined your fortune?"

"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 asseverated.

"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, hell!" 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 bumped 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 Chink 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 Chink 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.'"

Bob smiled appreciatively. "I've seen things like that happen more than once. And it is not because they are simple and ignorant either."

"You know," pursued Noah Ezekiel, "if I's Karniggy, I'd send a lot of 'em out as missionaries."

They were at Ah Sing's ranch. The three-hundred-acre field was level as a table, broken deep, thoroughly disked, and listed ready to water. The Chinaman, without any money or the slightest assurance he could get any for his planting, had worked all winter preparing the fields.

Ah Sing stood in front of his weed-and-pole shack waiting with that stoical anxiety which never betrays itself by hurry or nervousness. If the man of money came and saw fit to lend, "vellee well—if not, doee best I can."

"You go out and take a look at the field," Bob directed Noah, "see if there is any marsh grass or alfalfa roots, and look over his water ditches while I talk to the Chinaman."

"Good morning, Ah Sing," he said, extending his hand.

"Good morning, Misty Rogee." The Chinaman smiled and gave the visitor a friendly handshake. He was of medium height, had a well-shaped head and dignified bearing, and eyes that met yours straight. He looked about forty, but one never knows the age of a Chinaman.

"Nice farm, Ah Sing," Bob nodded approvingly at the well-plowed fields.

"He do vellee well." The Chinaman was pleased.

"And you have no money to make a crop?" Bob asked.

"No money," Ah Sing said, stoically.

"I heard last fall you had made a good deal of money raising cotton over here," suggested Bob.

"Me make some," admitted Ah Sing. "Workee vellee hard many year—make maybe eighteen—twentee thousan'."

"What became of it, Ah Sing? Don't gamble, do you?"

The Chinaman shook his head emphatically, "Me no gamble. Gamble—nobody trust. Me pick cotton for Misty Jenkins."

Bob was interested in that. He knew that after raising Jenkins' crop Ah Sing had taken the contract to pick it. Bob had heard other things but not from the Chinaman. "Didn't you make some money on that, too?"

"No money."

"Why not?" Bob spoke quickly. "Tell me about it, Ah Sing."

The Chinaman sighed again and the long, long look came into his patient oriental eyes.

"Ah work in America ever since leetle boy—so high. After while I save leetle money. Want go back China visit. I have cer-tificate. When I come back, say it's no good. Put me in jail. Don't know why. Stay long time. Send me back China. Then I come Mexico. Can't cross line; say damn Mexican Chinaman. I raise cotton—I raise lettuce—make leetle money. Maybee twent' thousan'.

"Misty Jenkins say 'Ah Sing, want pick my cotton?' I say, 'Maybee.' He say, 'Give you ten dollar bale. You do all work—feed Chinamen.' I say, 'Vellee well.' Lots Chinaboys need work. I hire seven hund'—eight hund'—maybee thousan.' I feed 'em. I pick cotton. Pick eight thousan' bale. Take all my money feed 'em. I owe Chinaboys fifty thousan' dollar.

"No pay. No see Misty Jenkins. No cross line. Misty Jenkins pay sometime maybee—maybee not." The old Chinaman shook his head fatalistically.

"And you spent all you had earned and saved in forty years, and then went in debt fifty thousand to other Chinamen to pick that cotton, and he hasn't paid you a dollar?"

"No pay yet; maybee some time," he replied, stoically.

"What a damn shame!" Bob seldom swore, but he felt justified for this once. "Can't you collect it under the Mexican laws?"

Ah Sing slowly, futilely, turned his hands palms outward.

"Mexican say Misty Jenkins big man. Damn Chinaman no good no way."

Noah Ezekiel came in from the field.

"As my dad says," remarked the hill billy, "this Chink has held on to the handle of the plow without ever looking back. The field is O. K."

"How much will you need, Ah Sing?" Bob turned to the Chinaman.

"Maybee get along with thousan' dollars—fifteen hund' maybee."

"All right," said Bob, "I'm going to let you have it. You can get the money three hundred at a time as you need it."

Bob stood thinking for a moment.

"Ah Sing," he said, decisively, "how would you like to have a partner? Suppose I go in with you; furnish the money and look after the buying and selling, tend to the business end; you raise the cotton. Me pay all the expenses, including wages, for you; and then divide the profits?"

The Chinaman's face lost its stoic endurance and lighted with relief.

"I likee him vellee much!" He put out his hand. "Me and you partners, heh?"

"Yes," Bob gripped the hand, "we are partners."



CHAPTER XVIII

Nothing Bob Rogeen had overheard about Reedy Jenkins and his schemes had so intensified his anger as this treatment of the patient, defenceless Ah Sing.

"A Chinaman has the system," remarked Noah Ezekiel as they drove away. "He'll lease a ranch, then take in half a dozen partners and put a partner in charge of each section of the field. Raisin' cotton is all-fired particular work, especially with borrowed water—there are as many ways to ruin it as there are to spoil a pancake. And a partner isn't so apt to go to sleep at the ditch."

"That is why I went into partnership with Ah Sing," said Bob. "I have never seen much money made in farming anywhere unless a man who had an interest in the crop was on the job."

"You bet you haven't," agreed Noah Ezekiel. "Absent treatment may remove warts and bad dispositions, but it sure won't work on cockleburs and Bermuda grass."

For several miles Bob's mind was busy.

"Noah," he asked, abruptly, "how would you like to go into partnership with me and take over the management of that hundred and sixty acres we cultivated last year?"

"As my dad used to say," replied Noah Ezekiel, skeptically, "'Faith is the substance of things hoped for'; and as I never hope for any substance, I ain't got no faith—especially in profits. Whenever I come round, profits hide out like a bunch of quails on a rainy day. I prefer wages."

Bob laughed. "Suppose we make it both. I'll pay you wages, and besides give you one fifth of the net profits."

"I reckon that'll be satisfactory," agreed Noah. "But any Saturday night you find yourself a little short on net profits, you can buy my share for about twenty dollars in real money."

As they crossed the line Noah Ezekiel inquired:

"But if me and the Chinaman raise your cotton, what are you goin' to do?"

"Raise more cotton," Bob answered. "You know," he spoke what had been in his mind all the time, "I never saw anything I wanted as much as that Red Butte Ranch. It is on that Dillenbeck System and its water costs about twice as much as on the regular canals, but it is rich enough to make up the difference."

"Well, why don't you get it?" asked Noah. "Reedy Jenkins is goin' to lose all his leases inside of a month if he doesn't sell 'em; and with cotton at six cents, they ain't shovin' each other off of Reedy's stairway tryin' to get to him first. It's my idea that a fellow could buy out the Red Butte for a song, and hire a parrot to sing it for a cracker."

"But that is the smallest part of it," said Bob. "To farm that five thousand acres in cotton this season would take round a hundred thousand dollars, and," he laughed, "I lack considerable over ninety-nine thousand of having that much."

"Lend it to yourself out of money you are lending for old Crill," suggested Noah.

After Bob dropped Noah at the Greek restaurant—"Open Day and Night—Waffles"—he drove down the street, stopped in front of an office building, and went up to see a lawyer that he knew.

"T. J.," he began at once, "I want you to see what is the lowest dollar that will buy the Red Butte Ranch and its equipment. Reedy Jenkins can't farm it, and he can't afford to pay $15,000 rent and let it lie idle. You ought to be able to get it cheap. Get a rock-bottom offer, but don't by any means let him know who wants it."

As Bob went down the stairs his head was fairly whizzing with plans. This thing had taken strong hold of him. He had longed for many months to get possession of that ranch but had never seriously thought of it as a possibility. But if Jim Crill would risk the money, it would be the great opportunity. Five thousand acres of cotton might make a big fortune in one year.

"Of course"—doubt had its inning as he drove north toward El Centro—"if he failed it would mean, instead of a fortune, a lifetime debt." Yet he was so feverishly hopeful he let out the little machine a few notches beyond the speed limit. At El Centro he went direct to the Crill bungalow.

Mrs. Barnett opened the door when he knocked, opened it about fourteen inches, and stood looking at him as though he were a leper and had eaten onions besides.

"Is Mr. Crill in?" Bob asked.

"Mr. Crill is not in." She bit off each word with the finality of a closed argument and shut the door with a whack so decisive it was almost a slam.

Bob found Jim Crill in the lobby of the hotel, smoking; he sat down by him, and concentrated for a moment on the line of argument he had thought out.

"Mr. Crill, cotton is selling at six cents now. It won't go any lower."

"It doesn't need to as far as I'm concerned." The old gentleman puffed his pipe vigorously.

"It will be at least ten cents this fall." Bob was figuring on the back of an old envelope. "Much more next year."

Then he opened up on the Red Butte Ranch. Bob never did such talking in his life. He knew every step of his plan, for he had thought out fifty times just what he would do with that ranch if he had it. He outlined this plan clearly and definitely to Jim Crill. He carefully estimated every expense, and allowed liberally for incidentals. He figured the lowest probable price for cotton, and in addition discussed the possibilities of failure.

"I feel sure," he concluded, definitely, "that I can put it through, that I can make from fifty to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in profits on one crop. If you want to risk it and stake me, I'll go fifty-fifty on the profits."

"No partnership for me," Crill shook his head vigorously. He had made some figures on an envelope and sat scowling at them. He had a good deal of idle money. It this crop paid out—and he felt reasonably sure Bob would make it go—it would give him $10,000 interest on the $100,000; and his half of the cotton seed would be worth at least $10,000 more. Twenty thousand returns against nothing was worth some risk.

"Besides," added Bob, "the lease itself, if cotton goes up, will be worth fifty thousand next year."

"That's what Reedy Jenkins said," remarked the old gentleman, dryly. "Just left here an hour ago—wanted to borrow money to pay the rent this year and let the land lie idle."

Bob's heart beat uneasily. "Did you lend it to him?"

"No!" The old man almost spat the word out. "He owes me too much already."

For two minutes, three, four, Jim Crill smoked and Bob waited, counting the thump of his heartbeats in his temple.

"I'll let you have the hundred thousand," he said directly. "I've watched you; I know an honest man when I see one."

Bob's spirits went up like a rocket; but his mind quickly veered round to Reedy Jenkins.

"This will make Reedy Jenkins about the maddest man in America," he remarked. He knew now that Reedy would fight him to the bitterest end.

Jim Crill grinned. "So'll Evy be mad. You fight Reedy, and I'll—run."



CHAPTER XIX

Imogene Chandler was washing the breakfast dishes out under the canopy of arrow-weed roof, where they ate summer and winter. The job was quickly done, for the breakfast service was very abbreviated. She took a broad-brimmed straw hat from a nail on the corner post, and swinging it in her hand, for the sun was yet scarcely over the rim of the Red Buttes far to the east, went out across the field to where her father was already at work.

March is the middle of spring in the Imperial Valley and already the grass grew thick beside the water ditches, and leaves were full grown on the cottonwood trees. The sunlight, soft through the dewy early morning, filled the whole valley with a yellow radiance. And out along the water course a meadowlark sang.

The girl threw up her arm swinging the hat over her head. She wanted to shout. She felt the sweeping surge of spring, the call of the wind, the glow of the sunlight, the boundless freedom of the desert. She had never felt so abounding in exuberant hope. It had been hard work to hold on to this lease, a fight for bread at times. But wealth was here in this soil and in this sun. And more than wealth. There was health and liberty in it. No heckling social restrictions, no vapid idle piffle at dull teas; no lugubrious pretence of burdensome duties. Here one slept and ate and worked and watched the changing light, and breathed the desert air and lived. It was a good world.

The girl stopped and crumbled some of the newly plowed earth under the toe of a trim shoe. How queer that after all these hundreds and thousands of years the stored chemicals of this land should be released, and turned by those streams of water into streams of wealth—fleecy cotton, luscious fruit and melons, food and clothes. And what nice people lived out here. The Chinamen who worked in the field, quaint and friendly and faithful. Even the Mexicans with their less industrious and more tricky habits were warm hearted and courteous. That serenading Madrigal was very interesting—and handsome. He had fire in him; perhaps dangerous fire, but what a contrast to the vapid white-collared clerks or professors in the prim little eastern town she had known.

Of course Bob Rogeen did not like him. Imogene instinctively put up her hand and brushed the wind-blown hair from her forehead, and smiled.

Bob was jealous.

But what a man Rogeen was! She had believed there were such men so unobtrusively generous and chivalrous. But no one she had ever known before was quite like Bob Rogeen. She remembered the black hair that clustered thickly over his temples, and the whimsical twist of his mouth, and the reticent but unafraid brown eyes.

She had thought many, many times of Rogeen, and always it seemed that he filled in just what was wanting in this desert—warmth of human fellowship. Always she thought of him just north over there—out of sight but very near. True he came very rarely. She wrinkled her forehead and rubbed the end of her nose with a forefinger. Why was that? Why didn't he come oftener? Wasn't she interesting? Didn't he approve of her?

A reassuring warmth came up to her face and neck. Yes, she believed he did. His eyes looked it when he thought she was not noticing.



She reached down and picked up a stick and threw it with a quick, impulsive gesture into the water and watched it float on down the ditch. Yes, she was pretty sure Rogeen liked her—but how much? Oh, well—she took a dozen girlish skips along the path, her hair flying about her face, and her heart dancing with the early sun on the green fields before her and the brown desert beyond—oh, well, time would tell.

"Daddy," she had come up to where the little bald-headed man was plowing—throwing up the ridges, "don't you like spring?"

The ex-professor stopped the team, looked at her through his glasses, then glanced around the field at the grass and weeds and early plants that were up.

"I believe," he said, mildly, "that we are approaching the vernal equinox. But I had not observed before the gradual unfoldment of vegetation which we have come to associate in our minds with spring."

"Oh, daddy, daddy," she laughed deliciously, and leaned over the handle of the plow and pulled his ear. "You funny, funny man. Why, it's spring, it's spring! Don't you feel it in your bones? Don't you love the whole world and everybody?"

Professor Chandler seriously contemplated the skyline, where the sunlight showed red on the distant buttes. "I should say, daughter, that it does give one a feeling of kinship with nature. I fancy the early Greeks felt it."

"I fancy they did," said Imogene, "especially if they were in love."

"In love?" The professor brought his spectacles around to his daughter questioningly.

"With everything," she said, laughing. "Daddy, I'm awfully glad we are back to the soil—instead of back to the Greeks."

"I am not discontent with our environment." And the little professor plowed on. She smiled maternally at his back. And then two swift tears sprang to her eyes. Tender tears.

"Dear old daddy. It has been good for him. He would have dried up and blown away in that little old college."

Returning to the shack she was still bareheaded. She loved the feel of the sun, and the few freckles it brought only added a piquancy to her face.

"I wonder if he"—she meant Rogeen—"will make it go this year. I hope he has a good crop. It makes one feel that maybe after all things are as they ought to be when a man like he succeeds. Wonder what his plans are?"

Then as she sat down in the shade and began a little very necessary mending:

"I do wish he'd come over—and tell me some more about cotton crops—and himself."



CHAPTER XX

It is a good thing the wind does not blow from the same direction all the time. Things would never grow straight if it did. And if one emotion persists too long the human mind becomes even worse twisted than a tree. For that reason, if we are normal, buoyance and depression, ecstasy and pain follow each other as regularly as ripples on a stream. It is good they do, but it is hard to believe it when we are down in the trough of the wave.

As Bob started away with the promise of Jim Crill to lend him the money for the Red Butte Ranch, his blood was pumping faster than the running engine of his car. But directly enthusiasm began to slow down.

Suppose he lost—what an appalling debt for a man working at a hundred and fifty a month! It never figured in Bob's calculation to settle his debts in red ink. And there were chances to lose. The lawyer was waiting for him at the hotel when he returned.

"I saw Jenkins," he reported. "Says they paid $20,000 for the Red Butte lease last spring. Half of it for bonus on the lease, and half for the equipment. He claims the mules and equipment are easily worth $10,000; and he offers to sell lease and all for that, but won't consider a dollar less. I heard on the street this evening that a Chinaman had offered them $7,500. I have an option on it until eleven o'clock in the morning at $10,000."

"Thanks, T. J." Bob was figuring in his mind the basis of this price. "I'll let you know before that time." He went up to his room to think it out. He could hardly see any chance for loss, yet of course there was. If this was such a sure thing, why had not some of the more experienced cotton growers in the valley jumped at it? But Bob dismissed that line of reasoning with a positive jerk of his head. That was a weak man's reason—the excuse of failures, sheep philosophy. Every day of the year some new man came into a community and picked up a profitable opportunity that other people had stumbled over for years.

The lease was certainly a bargain; the land was in excellent condition, and there would be no difficulty about labour with plenty of Chinese and Mexicans. The price of cotton could scarcely go lower. Bob had no fear of that. Then what were the dangers? The chance of a water shortage was remote. There had been little trouble about water. Of course bad farming could spoil a crop; but Lou Wing was an expert cotton grower, and you could trust a Chinaman's vigilance. With Lou as a partner he could be sure the crop would receive proper attention.

"It seems good!" Bob walked out of his room on to the balcony that ran the length of the hotel and stood overlooking the twinkling lights of the town. Calexico was getting to be quite a little city, and the string of lights were flung out for half a mile to the east and north. Across the line the high-arched sign of the Red Owl already winked alluringly.

He looked at his watch. It was only a quarter past eight. He turned back to his room, took his violin from the battered trunk, went to the garage, and in fifteen minutes was chugging south between the rows of cottonwood and willows that stood dim guardians in the night against the desert.

Imogene Chandler heard the machine coming. She put on her new spring coat and came out into the yard. The night was a little cool, and that new coat was the first article of wearing apparel she had bought for herself in three years.

"I'm glad you brought your fiddle again," she said as Bob came into the yard. She was bare-headed, and her hair showed loose and wavy in the starlight. "I've felt rather lilty all day." She snapped her fingers and danced round in a circle. "Just a little hippety-hoppety," she laughed, dropping down upon the bench. "Sit down and play to us—me and this wonderful night."

"I want to talk first." He laid the fiddle across his knees. In spite of the spell of the desert, figures were still running through his head.

"How like a man!" she said, mockingly. "And is it about yourself?"

"Of course," he replied, soberly. "You don't think I'd waste gasolene to come down here to talk about any other man, do you?"

"Before you begin on that absorbing subject," she bantered, "tell me, will our cotton now sell for enough to pay Mr. Crill that note?"

"Yes, but you are not going to sell it. He has extended the note another six months. Cotton is going up this fall."

"Isn't that great!" she exclaimed. "Here we have money enough for another crop, and can speculate on last year's cotton by holding for higher prices. Why, man, if it should go to ten cents we'd clear $3,000 on that cotton above what we already have."

"Yes, and if it goes to twelve, you'll have $4,500 to the good."

He sat still for a moment, gripping the neck of his fiddle with his fingers as though choking it into waiting.

"Well?" she prompted.

"I've got a chance for something big." He got up and walked, holding the fiddle by the neck, swinging it back and forth. "If I put it through, it will be a fortune; but if I fail I'll be in debt world without end—mortgaged all the rest of my life!"

Walking back and forth before her in the starlight he told Imogene Chandler of the big opportunity—of the rare combination of circumstances which made it possible for him, without property or backing, to borrow one hundred thousand dollars for a crop; and marshalled his reasons for belief in its success. "The water might fail," she suggested, when he had finished and sat down again with the fiddle across his knee.

"Yes, it might," he admitted.

"The Chinamen might get into trouble among themselves or with the Mexicans and leave you at a critical time."

"Possibly."

"The duty might be raised on cotton," she added.

"Yes," he confessed.

"But," she continued, "there is one thing much more likely than any of these—a thing fairly certain. Reedy Jenkins will fight you in every way he can invent. First he'll fight to get your money; and then he'll fight you just for hate."

"I have thought of that," Bob again got up, moved by the agitation of doubt. If it were his own money to be risked he would not hesitate a moment—but one hundred thousand dollars of another man's money and his own reputation!

"For these reasons," continued Imogene Chandler, "I advise you to go into it—and you'll win.

"Now play to me."



CHAPTER XXI

Imogene Chandler had spoken most confidently to Bob of his success. But after he was gone she began to be pestered by uneasy doubts—which is the way of a woman.

She and her father had been compelled to operate on small capital. They had figured, or rather Imogene had, dollar at a time. This new venture of Rogeen's rather appalled her. A hundred thousand of borrowed money! It was almost unthinkable. Anywhere else but in this land of surprises such a proposition would seem entirely fantastic.

With so much involved any disastrous turn would leave him hopelessly in debt. And besides—her thoughts took a more uneasy turn—she felt it was going to put him in danger. Reedy Jenkins and his Mexican associates would be very bitter over Bob's getting the Red Butte—and they might do anything.

The next evening, when Noah Ezekiel came over, Imogene had not gone to her shack.

"Sit down, Noah," she said, "I want to talk to you."

"That's what my maw used to say when I'd been swimmin' on Sunday," observed the hill billy as he let his lank form down on the bench.

Imogene laughed. "Well, I'm not going to scold you for breaking the Sabbath or getting your feet wet, or forgetting to shut the gate. What I want, Noah, is to get your opinion."

"It's funny about opinions," remarked Noah impersonally to the stars. "Somebody is always gettin' your opinion just to see how big a fool you are, and how smart they are."

"Noah Ezekiel Foster," the girl spoke reprovingly. "You know better than that. You know I want your opinion because I think you know more about cotton than I do."

"All right," said Noah, meekly. "Lead on. I got more opinions in my head than Ben Davis' sheep used to have cockle burs in their wool."

"What do you think of the Red Butte Ranch?"

"It's a blamed fine ranch."

"Do you think Mr. Rogeen will make money on it?" She tried to sound disinterested.

"That reminds me," replied Noah, "of Sam Scott. Sam went to Dixion and started a pool hall under Ike Golberg's clothing store. After Sam got it all fixed up with nice green-topped tables and white balls, and places to spit between shots, he got me down there to look it over.

"'How does she look?' says Sam.

"'She looks all right,' I said.

"'I'm going to get rich,' declares Sam.

"'That all depends' I says, 'on one thing.'

"'What's that?' says Sam.

"'On whuther there is more money comes down them stairs than goes up.'"

Noah twisted his shoulders and again looked up impersonally at the stars.

"You see makin' money is mighty simple. All you got to do is take in more than you pay out. But the dickens of it is, losin' it is just as simple—and a durned sight easier."

Imogene was smiling into the dusk, but her thoughts were on serious matters.

"Well, which do you think Mr. Rogeen will do?"

Noah twisted his shoulders again, and shuffled his feet on the ground.

"I always hate to give a plumb out opinion—because it nearly always ruins your reputation as a prophet. But Bob ain't nobody's fool. And he's white from his heels to his eyeballs—everything except his liver."

Imogene laughed, but felt a swelling in the throat. That tribute from the hill bill meant more than the verdict of a court.

"The only trouble is," Noah was speaking a little uneasily himself, "Reedy Jenkins is a skunk and he's got some pizen rats gnawing for him. There ain't nothin' they won't do—except what they are afraid to. Bob's got 'em so they don't tie their goats around his shack any more. But they are going to do him dirt, sure as a tadpole makes a toad.

"Reedy Jenkins has got hold of a lot of money somewhere again; and he's set out to bush Bob, and get away with the pile. I don't know just how he's aimin' to do it; but Reedy don't never have any regrets over what happens to the other fellow if it makes money for him."

The hill billy's words made Imogene more uneasy than before. And yet looking at the lank, droll fellow sitting there in the starlight, she again smiled, and sighed.

"Well, I'm mighty glad Mr. Rogeen has you for a friend," she said aloud.

"A friend," observed Noah, "is sorter like a gun—expensive in town but comfortin' in the country.

"But really I ain't no good, Miss Chandler. As I used to say to my dad, 'if the Lord made me, he must have done it sort of absent mindedly, for he ain't never found no place for me.'"

Imogene arose. She knew this big-hearted, rough hill billy must be tired. She went over and laid her hand lightly on his shoulder and said with a solemn tightening of the throat—"Noah, you are the salt of the earth—and I'd rather have you for a friend than a diamond king."

Noah arose, emotion always made him uncomfortable, and shuffled off to his tent without a word.

But he turned at the entrance to the tent, and looked back. The girl sat quite still, her face turned up toward the stars.

"Well," said Noah to himself, "she's got me all right."

On the fourteenth of June Bob Rogeen and Noah Ezekiel Foster rode through the Red Butte Ranch.

The fields lay before them checkered off into squares by the irrigation ditches, level as a table. The long rows of cotton were five to ten inches high, and of a dark green colour. The stand on most of the fields was almost perfect. One Chinaman with a span of mules cultivated fifty acres.

"Lou Wing is a great farmer," continued Bob, enthusiastically. "He is doing the work for 45 per cent. of the crop. I pay the water and the rent; and of course I have to advance him the money to feed and pay his hands. He has twenty partners with a separate camp for each; and each partner has four Chinamen working for him. That is system, Noah. It certainly looks like riches, doesn't it?"

"All flesh is grass," Noah sighed lugubriously, "except some that's weeds."

"Cotton is going up every day," said Bob. "It was nine cents and a fraction yesterday."

"That means," remarked Noah Ezekiel, "Reedy Jenkins could sell them eight thousand bales he's got stacked up on this side and pay all his debts and have twenty thousand over."

"But Reedy is not paying his debts."

"Not yet," said Noah; "he is borrowin' more money."

"Is that so?" Bob was sharply interested. He had not feared Reedy much while he was out of funds. "When did you hear that?"

"Saturday night," replied Noah. "You can gather a whole lot more information round the Red Owl than you can moss."

"I wonder what he is going to do with it?" Bob's mind was still on Reedy Jenkins.

"He's done done with it," answered Noah. "He's bought the Dillenbeck irrigation system."

Instantly all exuberant desire to shout went from Bob's throat and a chill ran along his veins. In a twinkling the heat of the friendly sun upon those wide green fields with their fingered network of a hundred water ditches became a threat and a menace. After all, by what a narrow thread does security hang!

Bob walked as one on a precipice during the following weeks. Never was a man more torn between hope and fear. On the one hand, the cotton grew amazingly. Fed by the nourishment stored in that soil which had lain dormant for thousands of years, watered by the full sluices from the Colorado River and warmed like a hotbed by the floods of sunshine day after day, the stalks climbed and climbed and branched until they looked more like green bushes than frail plants. Bob rode the fields all day long, even when the thermometer crept up to 127 in the shade, and a skillet left in the sun would fry bacon and eggs perfectly done in seven minutes. Often he continued to ride until far into the night, watching the chopping of the weeds, watching the men in the fields, and most of all watching the watering. Yes, the crop was advancing with a promise almost staggering in its richness. It looked now as though some of these fields would go to a bale and a half an acre. And slowly but surely the price of cotton had climbed since March, a quarter of a cent one day, a half the next, a jump of a whole cent one Friday; and now on the second day of August it touched 10.37. With a bale to the acre at that price Bob could add $30,000 to his estimated expense and still clear a hundred thousand dollars on this crop. When he thought of it as he rode along the water ditches in the early evening, he grew fairly dizzy with hope. But then on the other side: the unformed menace—Reedy Jenkins owned the water system!

The fear had taken tangible shape when he got his water bill for June. But there was no raise in price. Again yesterday, the bill for July came, and still no raise in price.

It was ten o'clock that night when he got into Calexico and went to the hotel.

As the clerk gave him the key to his room, he also handed him a letter, saying:

"A special delivery that came for you an hour ago; I signed for it."

Bob's fingers shook slightly as he took it. Glancing swiftly at the corner of the envelope he read:

DILLENBECK WATER CO.



CHAPTER XXII

Reedy Jenkins, the first night of August, sat in his office, the windows open, the door open, the neck of his soft shirt open, and his low shoes kicked off. But his plump, pink face was freshly shaven and massaged and he wore two-dollar silk socks. Even in dishabille Reedy had an air of ready money.

There had been dark days last fall when he had been so closely cornered by his creditors that it took many a writhe and a wriggle to get through. Nobody but himself, unless it was the dour Tom Barton, knew how overwhelmingly he was bankrupt.

But Reedy had kept up an affable front to all his creditors and a ready explanation. "We are all broke, everybody in same boat. Why sweat over it? Of course I've got some cotton across the line; we'll just leave it there and save the duty until it'll sell. Then I'll pay out."

He kept up this reassurance until cotton began to sell, and then he postponed:

"Wait; we are all easier now. Got enough so I can cash in any day and have plenty to pay all bills. But just wait until it goes a little higher."

And when it had gone to eight cents, eight and a half, and at last nine, his creditors had ceased to worry him. Now that Reedy could sell out any day and liquidate, and still be worth a hundred thousand or more, there was no hurry to collect. Nobody wants to push a man who can pay his debts any hour. Some of them even began to lend him more money. He had borrowed $25,000 as a first payment on the $200,000 for the Dillenbeck water system.

To-night Reedy had a list of figures before him again. Cotton had touched 9.76 to-day. Things were coming to a head. It was time to act.

Reedy had one set of figures in which 8,000 bales were multiplied by fifty and a fraction. It added $474,000. There was a column of smaller sums, the largest of which was, Revenue $28,000. These smaller sums were totalled and subtracted from $474,000, leaving $365,000—a sum over which Reedy moistened his lips. Then he multiplied 15,000 acres by something and set that sum also under the $365,000 and added again. The total made him roll his pencil between his two plump hands.

Madrigal, the Mexican Jew, entered with a jaunty gesture, and took a chair and lighted a cigarette.

"When did you get back from Guaymas?" Reedy leaned back, lighted a match on the bottom of his chair and touched it to a plump cigar.

"Yesterday, Senor Reedy." There was always a mixture of aggressiveness and mocking freshness in Madrigal's tone and air.

"See Bondeberg?"

The Mexican nodded.

"Everything all right?"

"Si, si." Madrigal sometimes was American and sometimes Mexican.

"I've had a dickens of a time getting trucks," said Reedy, speaking in a low, casual tone. "But I got 'em—twenty. Be unloaded to-morrow or the next day. I've arranged to take care of the duty. They are to be sold, you understand, with an actual bill of sale to each of the twenty Mexican chauffeurs you have employed."

Madrigal nodded lightly as though all of this was primer work for him.

"Have everything ready by the tenth. I think I can close up this water deal by that time."

As the Mexican left, Reedy reached for his telephone and called El Centro.

"Mrs. Barnett?" Soft oiliness oozed from his voice. "This is Reedy. What are you doing this evening? Nothing? How would you like a little spin out to the foot of the mountains to get a cool breath and watch the moon rise?—All right. I'll be along in about thirty minutes. By, by." The words sounded almost like kisses.

"Mrs. Barnett"—Reedy slowed down the machine as they drove off across the desert toward the foothills—"I owe everything to you."

The widow, all in white now—very light, cool white—felt a little shivery thrill of pride go over her. She half simpered and tried to sound deprecating.

"Oh, you merely flatter me." She was rolling a small dainty handkerchief in her palms.

"No, indeed!" responded Reedy, roundly. "No one can estimate the influence of a good woman on a man's life."

"I'm so glad"—the shivery thrill got to her throat—"if I've really helped you—Reedy." It was the first time she had used his given name, although he had often urged it.

"You know," he continued, "in spite of the great opportunities for wealth here, I do not believe that I could have endured this valley if it had not been for you. You can't imagine what it means to a man, after the disagreeable hurly-burly of the day's business, to know there is a pure, sweet, womanly woman waiting for him on the porch."

Mrs. Barnett gulped, filled with emotion. "I do believe," she almost gushed, "men like the shy, womanly woman who keeps her place best after all."

"They certainly do!"

"I don't see," mused Mrs. Barnett, "how a man really could care for a woman who becomes so—so—well, rough and sunburned, and coarsened by sordid work—like that Chandler woman, for instance. I mean, I don't see how any good man could care for that sort."

"Nor I," said Reedy, emphatically. He steered with one hand, and got both of her hands in the other.

"This year is going to be a great one for me. Cotton is already over ten cents. I'll need only $25,000 more, and then I can clean up a fortune for all of us."

Mrs. Barnett, still thrilling to that hand pressure, moved a little uneasily.

"Uncle Jim has been right hard to manage for the last two times. He was real ugly about that last $40,000. I had to remind him how much my poor mother did for him and how little he had done for us before he would listen to me."

No wonder the widow quaked within her at the honour of being elected to do it all over again. It was not because she hesitated to attempt it for so noble a man; but for the moment she was desperate for a way to go at it. She had used in the last effort every "womanly" device known to conservative tradition for separating a man from his money. But she hesitated only a moment. A watery heart and a dry eye never won a fat loan. Undoubtedly her womanly intuition—or Providence—would show her a way.

"I'll do my best, Mr. Jenkins"—she lapsed into the formal again—"to get the loan for you. But Uncle is getting right obstinate."

"That's all right, little girl," he patted her hands. "I trust you to do it, you could move the heart of Gibraltar. And as I've promised you all the time, when I close up these deals I'm going to give you personally $25,000 of the profits in appreciation of your assistance. And that is not all"—he squeezed both the widow's hands a moment, then released them as if by terrific resolution—"but more of that later. We must close up this prosaic business first."

The next morning at ten o'clock Jim Crill stamped up the outside stairway, stamped through the open door and threw a check for $25,000 on Reedy's desk.

"That's the last," the old gentleman snapped with finality. "And I want to begin to see some payments mighty quick."

Reedy smiled as the old gentleman stamped back down the stairs, proud of his own ability as a "worker." And he was not without admiration for Mrs. Barnett's ability in that line. It would be interesting to know how she had done it so quickly.

"If the old man knew," Reedy picked up the check and grinned at the crabbed signature, "what this is going for, he'd drop dead with apoplexy at the foot of the stairs."

He reached for the telephone and called the freight agent:

"Are those motor trucks in yet? Good! We'll have them unloaded at once."

There are two ways to make a lot of money perfectly honestly: One is to produce much at a time when the product legitimately has such a high value that it shows a good profit. The other is to plan, invent, or organize so as to help a great many men save a little more, or earn a little more, and share the little with each of the many benefited. And there are two ways to get money wrongfully: One is by criminal dishonesty—taking under some of the multiple forms of theft what does not at all belong to one. The other is by moral dishonesty—forcing or aggravating acute needs, and taking an unfair advantage of them, blackmailing a man by his critical wants.

Reedy Jenkins had merely intended to be the latter. He had not planned to produce anything, nor yet to help other men produce, but to farm other men's needs—get hold of something so necessary for their success that it would force tribute from them. He planned to hold a hammer over the weakest link in others' financial deals and threaten to break it unless they paid him double for the hammer.

Reedy indorsed Jim Crill's check, and stuck it in his vest pocket. He liked to go into a bank and carelessly pull $25,000 checks out of his vest pocket. Then he took from a drawer twenty letters already typed, signed them, and put them into envelopes addressed to the ranchers who bought water of the Dillenbeck Water Co.

"Now"—Reedy moistened his lips and nodded his head—"we are all set."



CHAPTER XXIII

Bob tore the letter open with one rip, and read it with his back to the desk:

DEAR SIR:

We regret to say that dredging and other immediate repairs on our canal make a rather heavy assessment imperative. The work must be done at once, and the company's funds are entirely exhausted. Your assessment is $10 an acre; and this must be paid before we can serve you with any more water.

Very truly, DILLENBECK WATER Co., Per R. Jenkins, Pres. & Mgr.

Ten dollars an acre! Fifty thousand dollars! Bob walked slowly out of the hotel. There was no use to go up to his room. No sleep to-night.

Jenkins' plot was clear now. He had merely been waiting for the most critical time. The next two waterings were the most vital of the whole season. The little squares that form the boll were taking shape. If the cotton did not get water at this time the bolls would fall off instead of setting.

Bob walked down the street, on through to the Mexican section of town, thinking. He must do something, but what?

It was a sweltering night and people were mostly outdoors. Under the vines in front of a small Mexican house a man played a guitar and a woman hummed an accompaniment. Across the street a little Holiness Mission was holding prayer meeting, and through the open windows an organ and twenty voices wailed out a religious tune.

Bob turned and walked back rapidly, and crossed the Mexican line. At the Red Owl he might hear something.

It was so hot that even the gamblers were listless to-night. The only stir of excitement was round one roulette wheel. Bob started toward the group, and saw the centre of it was Reedy Jenkins with his hat tipped back, shirt open at the throat, sleeves rolled to elbows, playing stacks of silver dollars on the "thirty."

Bob leaned against one of the idle tables and talked with the game keeper, a pleasant, friendly young chap.

"Wonder what the Mexicans are going to do with so many motor trucks?" the gamester asked casually.

"Motor trucks?" Bob repeated.

"Yes, they unloaded a whole string of them over here to-day. One of the boys said he counted twenty."

As Bob left the gambling hall Reedy was still playing the roulette wheel at twenty dollars a throw.

Rogeen got his car and started south. He would see for himself if there was any basis for Jenkins' claim that immediate work must be done on the water system. It was late and there were no lights at any of the little ranch shacks over the fields.

Chandler's place was dark like the rest. They were sleeping. Their notice would not come until to-morrow or next day. He would not wake them. Anyway to-night he had forgotten his fiddle, but he grimly remembered his gun.

He drove through the Red Butte Ranch without stopping. He could scarcely bear even to look to the right or left at those long rich rows of dark green cotton.

Turning off the main road south toward the Dillenbeck canal, something unusual stirred in Bob's consciousness. At first he could not think what was the matter; but directly he got it—the car was running differently. This road across a patch of the desert was usually so bumpy one had to hold himself down. To-night the car ran smoothly. The road had been worked—was being worked now—for a quarter of a mile ahead he heard an engine and made out some sort of road-dragging outfit.

The simplest way in the world to make a road across a sandy desert, or to work one that has been used, is to take two telephone poles, fasten them the same distance apart as automobile wheels, hitch on an engine, and drag them lengthwise along the road. This not only grinds down the uneven bumps but packs the sand into a smooth, firm bed for the machine's wheels.

That was what they were doing here. Bob stayed back and watched. He did not want to overtake them. The road-breaking outfit crossed the canal directly and headed south by east off into the desert. Bob stopped his machine on the plank bridge, and watched them pull away into the night. Then he gave a long, speculative whistle.

"I wonder," he said, "what philanthropist is abroad in the land at one o'clock in the morning?"

Rogeen left his machine and followed on foot along the bank of the canal for two miles. The water was flowing freely. There was no sign of immediate need for dredging. Some of the small ranches were getting water to-night. He was glad of that. The Red Butte had finished watering its five-thousand-acre crop a week ago. It would be three days before they would need to begin again.

He went back to his machine and drove clear up to the intake from the Valley Irrigation Company's canal. The water was running smoothly all the way. The ditches seemed open, and in fair shape. Some work was needed of course every day; but there was no call for any quick, expensive repairs.



No, Jenkins' call for money was purely for himself and not the water system. The whole thing was robbery. But how could it be prevented? Injunctions by American courts did not extend over here, and Reedy undoubtedly had an understanding with the Mexican authorities.

There was nothing for it, thought Bob, but to choose one of two evils: Be robbed of $50,000, or lose five thousand acres of cotton. He set his teeth and started the little car plugging back across the sand toward the American line.



CHAPTER XXIV

A little after daylight Bob was in El Centro. Jim Crill, always an early riser, was on the porch reading the morning paper.

"Come and have breakfast with me," Bob called from the machine. "Got some things to talk over."

He handed Crill the letter from the water company. Not a muscle in the old gentleman's face changed as he read, but two spots of red showed at the points of his sharp cheekbones.

"If it was your own money in that crop, what would you do?" asked Jim Crill, shortly.

"I'd fight him to hell and back." Bob's eyes smoldered.

"Then fight him to hell and back," said the old man, shortly. "And if you don't get back, I'll put up a tombstone for you.

"I've believed all along," said Jim Crill, "that Reedy Jenkins is a rascal. But," he lifted his left eyebrow significantly, "womenfolks don't always see things as we do. Anyway, my trust was in cotton—it is honest—and sooner or later I'll get his cotton. He's got to bring it across the line to sell it.

"I've taken up all the other liens on that cotton," Crill continued, "so there'll be no conflicting claims. I've got $215,000 against those eight thousand bales."

He took a bill book from his hip pocket, and removed some papers.

"I was coming over to see you this morning. Been called away. Trouble in our Texas oil field. Main gusher stopped. May be a pauper instead of a millionaire. Would have got out of this damned heat before now if I hadn't wanted to keep an eye on Jenkins.

"Now I'm going to turn these bills over to you for collection. Get $215,000 with 10 per cent. interest, and half his cotton seed."

Bob's eyes were straight ahead on the road as he drove back to Calexico; his hands held the wheel with a steady grip, but his mind was neither on the road nor on the machine.

"Well," he smiled to himself, grimly, "at any rate, I'm accumulating a good deal of business to transact with Reedy Jenkins. I suppose first move is a personal interview with him."

Bob stopped the machine in the side street and went up the outside stairway of the red brick building, with purpose in his steps. But the door of the office was closed, a notice tacked on it. Bob stepped forward and read it eagerly:

"Mr. Jenkins' office is temporarily removed to the main building of the Mexican Cotton Ginning Co."

"And so," said Bob as he went down the stairs, "Reedy has moved across the line." That was puzzling, and not at all reassuring.

Rogeen did not go to the cotton gin to see Reedy. He wanted first to find out what the move meant. For two days he was on the road eighteen hours a day, most of the time on the Mexican side, gathering up the threads of Jenkins' plot. The other ranchers by this time had all received their notices, and there was murder in some of their eyes. But most of them were Americans, the rest Chinamen, and neither wanted any trouble on that side.

"Jenkins has a stand-in, damn him," said Black Ben, one of the ranchers. "I'd like to plug him, but I don't want to get into a Mexican jail."

The second evening he met Noah Ezekiel at the entrance of the Red Owl. Bob had instructed Noah and Lou Wing to continue the work in the cotton fields exactly as though nothing impended.

"I was just lookin' for you," said Noah a little sheepishly.

"All right," responded Bob. "You've found me. What is on your mind?"

"Let us go a little apart from these sons of Belial," said Noah, sauntering past the Owl into the shadows.

"I picked up a fellow down by the Red Butte today," began Noah, "that had been on one of these here walkin' tours—the kind you take when your money gives out. After he'd stuffed himself with pottage and Chinese greens, and fried bacon, and a few other things round the camp, he got right talkative. He says they've broke a good road through the sand straight from Red Butte to the head of the Gulf of California. And that there is a little ship down there from Guaymas lying round waiting for something to happen."

"Noah"—Bob gripped Ezekiel's arm—"I've been working on that very theory. Your news clinches it. Reedy is never going to take that cotton across the American line. He is planning to shoot it down across that eighty-five miles of desert to the Gulf on motor trucks, ship it to Guaymas, and sell it there to an exporter. He is not even going to pay poor old Ah Sing for picking it; and as a final get-away stake he is trying to hold us up for $150,000 on the water. He has moved across the line for safety, and never intends to move back."

"He won't need to," said Noah Ezekiel. "He is due to get away with about half a million. But what do we care?" Noah shook his head solemnly. "As my dad used to say, 'Virtue is its own reward.' That ought to comfort you, Brother Rogeen, when you are working out that $78,000 of debts at forty dollars a month."



CHAPTER XXV

Early next morning Bob went to the executive offices, and waited two hours for the arrival of the governor. Rogeen knew of course that Madrigal, the Mexican Jew, was engineering the Mexican end of the conspiracy; but he wanted to discover who the Mexican official was from whom they were securing protection.

Bob stated his business briefly, forcibly. He was one of the ranchers who got water from the Dillenbeck canal. The company was endeavouring to rob them. The ranchers wanted protection, and wanted water at once. The official was very courteous, solicitous, sympathetic. He would look into it immediately. Would Senor Rogeen call again tomorrow?

Senor Rogeen would most certainly call again tomorrow. When he left the office he went direct to Ah Sing's ranch.

"Ah Sing," said Bob, "I want you to turn over to me your $80,000 claim against Reedy Jenkins for picking his eight thousand bales of cotton, and give me power of attorney to collect it."

"Allee light, I give him."

The next morning when the Mexican official came down to the office at ten o'clock he assured Bob most regretfully that although impetuous and violent efforts had been made to right his wrongs, unfortunately so far they had found no law governing the case. The Dillenbeck Company was a private water company, owned by American citizens; the Mexican officials had no power to fix the rate.

Bob went direct to the Mexican cotton gin.

"Jenkins"—Bob sat down on the edge of the offered chair, his feet on the floor, his knees bent as though ready to spring up—"I need to begin watering the Red Butte to-day, but your man tells me he has orders to keep the gates shut."

Reedy nodded, his plump lips shut tight, an amused leer in the tail of his eye. "You got my notice, didn't you? No cash, no water. Either ten dollars an acre spot cash or no spot cotton."