VII
THE POLO PLAYERS
Ballard gave the Saturday, his first day in the new field, to Bromleyand the work on the dam, inspecting, criticising, suggesting changes,and otherwise adjusting the wheels of the complicated constructingmechanism at the Elbow Canyon nerve centre to run efficiently andsmoothly, and at accelerated speed.
"That's about all there is to say," he summed up to his admiringassistant, at the close of his first administrative day. "You're keyedup to concert pitch all right, here, and the _tempo_ is not so bad. But'drive' is the word, Loudon. Wherever you see a chance to cut a corner,cut it. The Fitzpatricks are a little inclined to be slow and sure:crowd the idea into old Brian's head that bonuses are earned by beingswift and sure."
"Which means that you're not going to stay here and drive the stone andconcrete gangs yourself?" queried Bromley.
"That is what it means, for the present," replied the new chief; and atdaybreak Monday morning he was off, bronco-back, to put in a busyfortnight quartering the field in all directions and getting in touchwith the various subcontractors at the many subsidiary camps of ditchdiggers and railroad builders scattered over the length and breadth ofthe Kingdom of Arcadia.
On one of the few nights when he was able to return to the headquarterscamp for supper and lodging, Bromley proposed a visit to Castle 'Cadia.Ballard's refusal was prompt and decided.
"No, Loudon; not for me, yet a while. I'm too tired to be anybody's goodcompany," was the form the refusal took. "Go gossiping, if you feel likeit, but leave me out of the social game until I get a little better gripon the working details. Later on, perhaps, I'll go with you and pay myrespects to Colonel Craigmiles--but not to-night."
Bromley went alone and found that Ballard's guess based upon his glimpseof the loaded buckboards _en route_ was borne out by the facts. Castle'Cadia was comfortably filled with a summer house-party; and MissCraigmiles had given up her European yachting voyage to come home andplay the hostess to her father's guests.
Also, Bromley discovered that the colonel's daughter drew her ownconclusions from Ballard's refusal to present himself, the discoverydeveloping upon Miss Elsa's frank statement of her convictions.
"I know your new tyrant," she laughed; "I have known him for ages. Hewon't come to Castle 'Cadia; he is afraid we might make him disloyal tohis Arcadia Irrigation salt. You may tell him I said so, if you happento remember it."
Bromley did remember it, but it was late when he returned to the camp atthe canyon, and Ballard was asleep. And the next morning the diligentnew chief was mounted and gone as usual long before the "turn-out"whistle blew; for which cause Miss Elsa's challenge remainedundelivered; was allowed to lie until the dust of intervening busy dayshad quite obscured it.
It was on these scouting gallops to the outlying camps that Ballarddefined the limits of the "hoodoo." Its influence, he found, diminishedproportionately as the square of the distance from the headquarters campat Elbow Canyon. But in the wider field there were hindrances of anotherand more tangible sort.
Bourke Fitzpatrick, the younger of the brothers in the contracting firm,was in charge of the ditch digging; and he had irritating tales to tellof the lawless doings of Colonel Craigmiles's herdsmen.
"I'm telling you, Mr. Ballard, there isn't anything them devils won't beup to," he complained, not without bitterness. "One night they'lluncouple every wagon on the job and throw the coupling-pins away; andthe next, maybe, they'll be stampeding the mules. Two weeks ago, on DanMoriarty's section, they came with men and horses in the dead of night,hitched up the scrapers, and put a thousand yards of earth back into theditch."
"Wear it out good-naturedly, if you can, Bourke; it is only horse-play,"was Ballard's advice. That grown men should seriously hope to defeat thedesigns of a great corporation by any such puerile means wasinconceivable.
"Horse-play, is it?" snapped Fitzpatrick. "Don't you believe it, Mr.Ballard. I can take a joke with any man living; but this is no joke. Itcomes mighty near being war--with the scrapping all on one side."
"A night guard?" suggested Ballard.
Fitzpatrick shook his head.
"We've tried that; and you'll not get a man to patrol the work sinceDenny Flaherty took his medicine. The cow-punchers roped him and skiddedhim 'round over the prairie till it took one of the men a whole blessedday to dig the cactus thorns out of him. And me paying both of themovertime. Would you call that a joke?"
Ballard's reply revealed some latent doubt as to the justification forBromley's defense of Colonel Craigmiles's fighting methods.
"If it isn't merely rough horse-play, it is guerrilla warfare, as yousay, Bourke. Have you seen anything to make you believe that thesefellows have a tip from the big house in the upper valley?"
The contractor shook his head.
"The colonel doesn't figure in the details of the cow business at all,as far as anybody can see. He turns it all over to Manuel, his Mexicanforeman; and Manuel is in this guerrilla deviltry as big as anybody.Flaherty says he'll take his oath that the foreman was with the gangthat roped him."
Ballard was feeling less peaceable when he rode on to the next camp, andas he made the round of the northern outposts the fighting strain whichhad come down to him from his pioneer ancestors began to assert itselfin spite of his efforts to control it. At every stopping-placeFitzpatrick's complaint was amplified. Depredations had followed eachother with increasing frequency since Macpherson's death; and once, whenone of the subcontractors had been provoked into resistance, arms hadbeen used and a free fight had ensued.
Turning the matter over in his mind in growing indignation, Ballard haddetermined, by the time he had made the complete round of the outlyingcamps, upon the course he should pursue. "I'll run a sheriff's posse inhere and clean up the entire outfit; that's about what I'll do!" he wassaying wrathfully to himself as he galloped eastward on the stage traillate in the afternoon of the final day. "The Lord knows I don't want tomake a blood-feud of it, but if they will have it----"
The interruption was a little object-lesson illustrating the grievancesof the contractors. Roughly paralleling the stage trail ran the line ofthe proposed southern lateral canal, marked by its double row oflocation stakes. At a turn in the road Ballard came suddenly upon whatappeared to be an impromptu game of polo.
Flap-hatted herdsmen in shaggy overalls, and swinging long clubs in lieuof polo sticks, were riding in curious zigzags over the canal course,and bending for a drive at each right and left swerve of their wirylittle mounts. It took the Kentuckian a full minute to master theintricacies of the game. Then he saw what was doing. The location stakesfor the ditch boundaries were set opposite and alternate, and the objectof the dodging riders was to determine which of them could club thegreatest number of stakes out of the ground without missing a blow ordrawing rein.
Ballard singled out the leader, a handsome, well-built _caballero_, withthe face, figure, and saddle-seat of the Cid, and rode into the thick ofthings, red wrath to the fore.
"Hi! you there!" he shouted. "Is your name Manuel?"
"_Si, Senor_," was the mild reply; and the cavalier took off hisbullion-corded sombrero and bowed to the saddle-horn.
"Well, mine is Ballard, and I am the chief engineer for the ArcadiaCompany."
"Ha! Senor Ballar', I am ver' much delight to meet you."
"Never mind that; the pleasure isn't mutual, by a damned sight. You tellyour men to stop that monkey-business, and have them put those stakesback where they found them." Ballard was hot.
"You give-a the h-order in this valley, senor?" asked the Mexicansoftly.
"I do, where the company's property is concerned. Call your men off!"
"Senor Ballar', I have biffo to-day killed a man for that he spik to melike-a that!"
"Senor Ballar', I have biffo' to-day killed a man forthat he spik to me like-a-that!"]
"Have you?" snorted Ballard contemptuously. "Well, you won't kill me.Call your men off, I say!"
There was no need. The ma
keshift polo game had paused, and the riderswere gathering about the quarrelling two.
"Bat your left eye once, and we'll rope him for you, Manuel," said one.
"Wonder if I c'd knock a two-bagger with that hat o' his'n withoutmussin' his hair?" said another.
"Say, you fellers, wait a minute till I make that bronc' o' his'n do acake-walk!" interposed a third, casting the loop of his riata on theground so that Ballard's horse would be thrown if he lifted hoof.
It was an awkward crisis, and the engineer stood to come off with littlecredit. He was armed, but even in the unfettered cattle country onecannot pistol a laughing jeer. It was the saving sense of humour thatcame to his aid, banishing red wrath. There was no malice in the jeers.
"Sail in when you're ready, boys," he laughed. "I fight for my brand thesame as you'd fight for yours. Those pegs have got to go back in theground where you found them."
One of the flap-hatted riders dropped his reins, drummed with hiselbows, and crowed lustily. The foreman backed his horse deftly out ofthe enclosing ring; and the man nearest to Ballard on the right made alittle cast of his looped rope, designed to whip Ballard's pistol out ofits holster. If the engineer had been the tenderfoot they took him for,the trouble would have culminated quickly.
With the laugh still on his lips, the Kentuckian was watching every moveof the Mexican. There was bloodthirst, waiting only for the shadow of anexcuse, glooming in the handsome black eyes. Ballard rememberedSanderson's fate, and a quick thrill of racial sympathy for the dead mantuned him to the fighting pitch. He knew he was confronting atreacherous bully of the type known to the West as a "killer"; a manwhose regard for human life could be accurately and exactly measured byhis chance for escaping the penalty for its taking.
It was at this climaxing moment, while Ballard was tightening hiseye-hold upon the one dangerous antagonist, and foiling with his freehand the attempts of the playful "Scotty" at his right to disarm him,that the diversion came. A cloud of dust on the near-by stage trailresolved itself into a fiery-red, purring motor-car with a singleoccupant; and a moment later the car had left the road and was headingacross the grassy interspace.
Manuel's left hand was hovering above his pistol-butt; and Ballard tookhis eyes from the menace long enough to glance aside at the approachingmotorist. He was a kingly figure of a man well on in years,white-haired, ruddy of face, with huge military mustaches and a goatee.He brought the car with a skilful turn into the midst of things; andBallard, confident now that the Mexican foreman no longer neededwatching, saw a singular happening.
While one might count two, the old man in the motor-car stared hard athim, rose in his place behind the steering-wheel, staggered, groped withhis hands as the blind grope, and then fell back into the driving-seatwith a groan.
Ballard was off his horse instantly, tendering his pocket-flask. But theold man's indisposition seemed to pass as suddenly as it had come.
"Thank you, suh," he said in a voice that boomed for its very depth andsweetness; "I reckon I've been driving a little too fast. Youh--youhname is Ballard--Breckenridge Ballard, isn't it?" he inquiredcourteously, completely ignoring the dissolving ring of practicaljokers.
"It is. And you are Colonel Craigmiles?"
"At youh service, suh; entiahly at youh service. I should have known youanywhere for a Ballard. Youh mother was a Hardaway, but you don't takeafter that side. No, suh"--with calm deliberation--"you are youh father'sson, Mistah Ballard." Then, as one coming at a bound from the remote pastto the present: "Was thah any--ah--little discussion going on between youand--ah--Manuel, Mistuh Ballard?"
Five minutes earlier the engineer had been angry enough to preferspiteful charges against the polo players all and singular. But thebooming of the deep voice had a curiously mollifying effect.
"It is hardly worth mentioning," he found himself replying. "I wasprotesting to your foreman because the boys were having a little game ofpolo at our expense--knocking our location stakes out of the ground."
The kingly old man in the motor-car drew himself up, and there was amild explosion directed at the Mexican foreman.
"Manuel, I'm suhprised--right much suhprised and humiliated, suh! Ithought it was--ah--distinctly undehstood that all this schoolboytriflin' was to be stopped. Let me heah no more of it. And see thatthese heah stakes are replaced; carefully replaced, if you please, suh."And then to the complainant: "I'm right sorry, I assure you, MistuhBallard. Let me prove it by carrying you off to dinneh with us at Castle'Cadia. Grigsby, heah, will lead youh horse to camp, and fetch anylittle necessaries you might care to send for. Indulge me, suh, and letme make amends. My daughter speaks of you so often that I feel we oughtto be mo' friendly."
Under much less favourable conditions it is conceivable that theKentuckian would have overridden many barriers for the sake of findingthe open door at Castle 'Cadia. And, the tour of inspection beingcompleted, there was no special duty call to sound a warning.
"I shall be delighted, I'm sure," he burbled, quite like an infatuatedlover; and when the cow-boy messenger was charged with the errand to theheadquarters camp, Ballard took his place beside the company's enemy,and the car was sent purring across to the hill-skirting stage road.
The King of Arcadia Page 7