“This is ten times better than Chihuahua city,” Tranquilino told the men he was drinking with.
“You ever been to Chihuahua?” one asked.
“No. But this is better.”
He spent two months in Denver, earning money at eight different jobs. But life in the golden city was expensive, and he found himself with little left over to send south. Then one night in a cantina where there was much singing, he met Magdalena, a young woman of twenty-two who could have had any man she wanted, and she invited him to live with her. She had a job in a restaurant and together they could eat well.
“Why me?” he asked in real perplexity.
“Because you’re good-looking ... and kind,” she said “I’m tired of fighters. You’re like your name. It would feel good to come home to a man like you.”
She was altogether different from Serafina, whom he never mentioned. Magdalena had a turbulence of spirit, a wildness in her love-making. She liked to be with men, but she was afraid of them and was at ease only with Tranquilino. When it came time to pay the rent for their room, she discovered that he had been sending giros postales to his wife in Old Mexico, and instead of becoming angry, she kissed him feverishly, crying, “That’s why I need you, Tranquilino. Because if I was your wife and you were” away, you’d send me money, too.”
At times he grew frightened as to what might happen to them, because he could never do what some men did: they had one wife in Sonora or Sinaloa, but they got married just the same in Denver—part of the year in Mexico with one wife, part in Denver with the other. Father Zapata, who ran the mission on Santa Fe Street, came to talk with them one afternoon.
“It’s not right, what you’re doing,” he said gravely. “Magdalena, you’re a fine beautiful woman and you’re entitled to a home ... to children. Porfirio has sent me to ask you to marry him. He’s a good man, and he’ll make you a fine husband.”
To the priest’s surprise, the girl broke into violent sobbing. “I’m afraid,” she said.
“Of what?” the priest asked.
“Of what’s going to happen,” she said. “My father and brothers have gone to the mountains. They’re outlaws with Capitan Frijoles. All of Méjico ...” She could not continue. With a terrible clarity of vision she could almost foresee the nation in its madness, and she was afraid.
Father Zapata, who was a good priest working with almost no funds and little encouragement, brought Porfirio Menendez around to the house. He was a tall, silent man who worked on a farm north of Brighton, and he needed a wife. He said, “The farmer wants me to live there permanent. I have a house with inside running water.”
Tranquilino told him, “She’s the best woman I’ve seen in Colorado. She’s nervous but she’s a very good woman.”
“Will you have me?” Porfirio asked, but she would give no answer.
On his next visit Porfirio brought Father Zapata again, and the two men convinced Magdalena that she should marry and move to the farm, which she did, but three weeks later Porfirio was back, distraught and begging help from Tranquilino. “Did she come here?” he asked pathetically,
“Not to me,” Tranquilino said, and because he was concerned about this girl he accompanied Porfirio to the priest, who told them, “She passed through here a few days ago. On her way to the Sierra Madre to join her father and her brothers.”
That night Tranquilino and Porfirio walked the streets together, and they came to the park which overlooked the new capital, and boys started to tease them because they were Mexicans, but Tranquilino said in his bad English, “You go away now. We are not happy.” This brought additional jeers, and after a while a policeman came and told the men, “You’d better move out. We want no trouble here,” and they continued to walk the streets, and finally Porfirio broke down and cried, right in the middle of Santa Fe Street, and when he regained control he said, “I’ll never see her again. She was going to have a baby. I think it was yours.” And the two men parted.
In the closing years of the last century the Union Pacific Railroad performed an outstanding service for the nation, and nowhere was its contribution more salutary than in Centennial.
It decided, in its own self-interest, that the easiest way to earn a profit was to acquire a large number of customers, especially farmers who might want to ship their produce by rail. Accordingly, it hired two groups of special assistants. One group traveled to Europe, extolling the virtues of settling in states like Colorado and Utah. These men did a splendid job of explaining American patterns of living and the opportunities for a good life- in the west. They were responsible for the immigration of many trainloads of Germans, Czechs, Poles and Irishmen, who settled the plains; they were particularly successful in enlisting people from the Scandinavian countries.
The second group was less dramatic in its operations, but in the long run, more effective. These men traveled through the west itself, issuing a flood of roseate pamphlets. always with photographs, showing what could be done by a hardworking farmer with forty or sixty acres of good irrigated land. Millions of these publications circulated throughout America and Europe, and if a man had even a shred of interest in the soil, his expectations were bound to be aroused, for the corn raised by Farmer Bigley, who had emigrated from Illinois, stood seven feet tall and the melons produced by Farmer Wright were so big they could scarcely be lifted.
The pamphlet for Centennial was one of the best, and much of what later generations would know about the town came from it. In thirty-two well-written pages this pamphlet provided a storehouse of information about the town and the rich agricultural land that surrounded it. Temperatures for each month were given, with rainfall to match. Length of growing season was spelled out, with the warning:
Crops which can be grown without concern in states like Virginia and Pennsylvania cannot possibly be grown in Centennial, for the growing season is restricted, but one glance at our photographs will assure even the most skeptical that crops of a much different kind and of greater commercial value can easily be grown.
The Centennial pamphlet was exceptional because the railroad had commissioned two atypical people to write it. The unadorned facts were provided by the elderly schoolteacher Miss Keller, who loved the land she was writing about and showed her enthusiasm. With no exaggeration she laid these facts before the reader; she built a portrait of a territory rich in history but even richer in promise.
The flamboyant salesmanship of the pamphlet came from a much different individual. When the railroad agent arrived in town, looking for someone to do the pamphlet, he had stayed at the Railway Arms of course, and while lounging in the bar, fell into conversation with a man of such outgoing enthusiasm and such an apparent knowledge of agriculture that he knew immediately that this was the man he sought.
The man was forty-nine years old, tall, handsome, well mannered and with the bearing of a gentleman. He expressed through a choice use of words a very lively interest in the visitor’s proposed project and a most sympathetic comprehension of what needed to be done.
“This, sir,” he said gravely, his finely chiseled face close to the agent’s, “could be the new Garden of Eden. Wherever I have been able to bring water onto the soil, my crops have flourished. I say flourished, sir, and I mean nothing less.” Here he reached out and with his left hand took the stranger by the arm. With his right hand he painted an imaginary portrait of largesse: “I see a land teeming with industrious peasants from Europe, each man a king in his new empire. If he will but apply himself to land as I have done, he will see it augment yearly ...”
“I don’t believe I caught your name,” the railroad man interrupted,
“Mervin Wendell, sir. Agriculturist.”
“You may be the very man I’m looking for, Mr. Wendell.”
“I would be honored to be of service,” Wendell said.
“We’re contemplating a real estate operation ...”
“You have the advantage of me, sir. Your name?”
“Norris. Omaha.�
��
“Mr. Norris. Let’s sit over here. Just what did you have in mind when you said real estate?”
From this accidental but auspicious beginning, one of the soundest Centennial businesses was born: MERVIN WENDELL. Slap Your Brand on a Hunk of Land.
The first step would be the pamphlet, which Wendell would supervise. “No finer pen exists in the west than that of Miss Keller,” he assured Norris, “and we can depend on her to provide the facts. But the presentation of them ...” He felt that this required his special attention, and he began by requisitioning a railroad photographer to come to Centennial to take a series of bold, exciting pictures. The captions, similar to those in all railroad pamphlets of the time, told the story of irrigation:
Palatial home of Messmore Garrett, who runs sheep in the Centennial district.
Elegant home of Mervin Wendell, well-known agriculturist, who arrived in Centennial nine years ago penniless.
Imposing bank of Centennial, owned locally and the source of loans at low interest.
Hans Brumbaugh, immigrant from Russia. Observe the size of the squash he has grown on his irrigated land.
James Lloyd, who arrived from Texas without a penny, standing beside his herd of white-faced Herefords.
The pamphlet contained twenty-four photographs of palatial homes. thriving businesses and outsized vegetables. The last picture in the booklet showed Mervin Wendell’s fine office on First Avenue facing the railway station.
The strange thing about this pamphlet was that it contained no hyperbole. The palatial homes shown had been built by men who arrived on the scene with no money. The crops of the farmers were exactly as pictured. And any hard-working newcomer who bought irrigated land in the years from 1896 through 1910 acquired a bargain whose value would multiply with the years. This was bonanza time, when the last of the great irrigation ditches were being dug, when desert land was being made to blossom.
Mervin Wendell’s real estate business flourished. Using Union Pacific funds at first, then reinvesting his substantial profits, he patiently acquired for himself a collection of the choicest acres. Whenever a new area was opened up, and the railroad delivered fifty or a hundred eager buyers, he sold off the poorest land first and managed by careful investment to hold back the best for himself.
He now owned not only the Karpitz farm, which had been his first purchase, but also some four thousand additional acres, not all of them irrigated, to be sure, but all of them capable of producing some kind of crop. He became, indeed, the largest landowner in the district, if one counted only cropland, and if his fields received enough rainfall, he would soon be the richest.
The “elegant home of Mervin Wendell” was not a new structure. He had taken the place won from Gribben in the badger game, and imposed upon it a new façade, a wine to the north, a new porch, new cement walks and a bright new iron fence. Its size had been doubled and it was, as the photograph claimed, elegant.
The citizens of Centennial took pride in the way the Wendells had handled themselves. Starting with practically nothing, this engaging couple had worked in the community, had helped others and had been exemplary citizens. Apart from the renovation. they did not spend money conspicuously. “Every nickel that man earns he puts into land,” the admiring banker reported. Long before the Union Pacific arrived with its plan for a real estate operation, Mervin Wendell had acquired enough land to launch one of his own.
As Maude Wendell grew older, she grew more gracious. As an actress heading her own company, she had always had a flair for clothes and a dignified manner, but now, with middle-class stability, she blossomed and became the social leader of the community. She exerted this leadership not by virtue of her income, which was becoming substantial, but because she was a relaxed woman with a sincere interest in the community and what it wished to accomplish. Dinner at the Wendells’ became the highlight of any week, and the Clarion duly noted the sedate but delightful entertainments given there.
Few of the leaders of our intellectual and social community were absent on Thursday night when Maude and Mervin Wendell entertained at their refurbished home on First Street. The sideboards groaned with refreshments hastened in by train from Chicago and California. One saw on the library table the latest magazines from New York and even one from London. A string quartet from the college at Greeley played Mozart, but as always when this gracious couple entertains, the highlight of the evening came when they were persuaded to give their delightful rendition of “Listen to the Mockingbird.” This reporter never heard a finer whistler than Maude. She brings distinction to this community. They closed the evening by demand with the duet which has become their trademark, “Whispering Hope.”
The reporter did not share with his readers the one contretemps of the evening. Some guests, recalling the old days, wanted young Philip Wendell to join his parents in the duets, but he refused. They then asked him to play the violin, but again he proved surly, whereupon Mervin Wendell said sharply, “Play for the people,” and the fair-haired young man, now approaching twenty-one, glared at his father and stomped from the room.
“He’s behaving like a ten-year-old,” the banker muttered, and his wife said, “He’s always been turned around. When he was ten he behaved like a grown man.”
The Wendells were not happy with the way Philip was developing. A student of music at the university in Boulder, he demonstrated a solid comprehension of classical works and had trained himself to be a violinist of some skill, but when he was home he refused to perform at his parents’ entertainments. If Mervin persisted, he made excuses and retired to his room. Nor could he manifest any interest in the family real estate business; Mervin told his associates, “I really don’t know what’s going to become of Philip.” Maude understood that her son’s involvement in the murder of Mr. Sorenson had affected him much more deeply than they had recognized at the time, but she never spoke to him about the burden he was carrying.
The senior Wendells certainly did not allow the murder to trouble their consciences. From her seat at the dining-room table, Maude could look out the window and see the spot on Beaver Creek where her son had concealed the corpse, but she felt no morbid preoccupation with it. She was free to look at it or not, as her fancy dictated.
Philip’s main problem was with his father, whom he saw with increasing clarity as a pompous, vain poseur. Once he confided to a girl in Boulder who had a similar problem with her father, a lawyer in Denver, “If he told me that tomorrow was Thursday I’d check to see whether it was Friday or Tuesday. He’s incapable of telling the truth.”
For Mervin, the passage of time had erased completely those moments of agony following the murder. He could no longer recall having pitched the corpse down the well, nor of having fainted when Sheriff Dumire came up empty-handed. Indeed, he had come to treat the event as a family joke. “Come on,” he would say if he ever saw Maude looking out the window in the direction of the well. “Tell me where you hid it.”
If Philip ever chanced to hear this, he would wince and stare at him harshly, and Mervin could guess what the boy was thinking. “All right, all right. You think I’d blab the secret ... get drunk at the Railway Arms ... All right, if that’s what you think, don’t tell me.”
On January 17, 1904, he said brightly at breakfast, “This is my birthday, Philip. Today you must tell me where you hid it.” Philip left the table and was not seen again that day.
The one man Mervin Wendell fooled completely was Mr. Norris of the Union Pacific. After the Centennial pamphlet was published and the railroad began receiving inquiries about the purchase of land along the Platte, Norris returned to town at the end of a trip during which he had encouraged other communities along the line to publish pamphlets as enticing as Centennial’s.
He visited Miss Keller, and told her, “You should be proud of that effort. Your text is being copied by all the railroads that run into the west. A beautiful piece of writing, Miss Keller.” Then he added, “Of course, you and I were lucky to stumb
le upon an experienced farmer like Mervin Wendell to pull the thing together.”
“He’s never farmed,” Miss Keller said.
“He’s known as an agriculturist,” Norris protested. “He talked with me at the highest level of authority.”
“He can discuss anything at the highest level,” Miss Keller said. She was not being derogatory but merely descriptive, like the good teacher she was.
“You mean Mervin Wendell never farmed?”
“He was an actor ... and a good one. Take him to Omaha and he’ll explain to your president how to run the railroad.” She was an old lady now, but she loved the nonsense of life. Rising, she went to Mr. Norris and with her left hand grasped his arm. With her right she drew great windy pictures against the wall of her little room. “Mr. President,” she said in a cathedral voice, “I see your Union Pacific probing into the mountains, crossing Berthoud Pass to unite Denver and Salt Lake. I see hordes of people ...”
She laughed and returned to her chair. “There’s a church social tonight, Mr. Norris. I haven’t attended one for a long time, but I’m inviting you ... as my guest. It’s time you heard Mervin Wendell sing.”
Centennial Page 104