II
THE RED DESERT
In the beginning the Red Desert, figuring unpronounceably under itsNavajo name of Tse-nastci--Circle-of-Red-Stones--was shunned alike byman and beast, and the bravest of the gold-hunters, seeking to penetrateto the placer ground in the hill gulches between the twin Timanyoniranges, made a hundred-mile detour to avoid it.
Later, the discoveries of rich "pocket" deposits in the Red Buttedistrict lifted the intermontane hill country temporarily to the highplane of a bonanza field. In the rush that followed, a few prudent oneschose the longer detour; others, hardier and more temerarious, outfittedat Copah, and assaulting the hill barrier of the Little Pinons atCrosswater Gap, faced the jornada through the Land of Thirst.
Of these earliest of the desert caravans, the railroad builders,following the same trail and pointing toward the same destination in thegold gulches, found dismal reminders. In the longest of the thirstystretches there were clean-picked skeletons, and they were not alwaysthe relics of the patient pack-animals. In which event Chandler, chiefof the Red Butte Western construction, proclaimed himself Eastern-bredand a tenderfoot by compelling the grade contractors to stop and burythem.
Why the railroad builders, with Copah for a starting-point and Red Buttefor a terminus, had elected to pitch their head-quarters camp in thewestern edge of the desert, no later comer could ever determine. Lost,also, is the identity of the camp's sponsor who, visioning the thingsthat were to be, borrowed from the California pioneers and named thehalting-place on the desert's edge "Angels." But for the more materialdetails Chandler was responsible. It was he who laid out the divisionyards on the bald plain at the foot of the first mesa, planting the"Crow's Nest" head-quarters building on the mesa side of the gridironingtracks, and scattering the shops and repair plant along the oppositeboundary of the wide right-of-way.
The town had followed the shops, as a sheer necessity. First and alwaysthe railroad nucleus, Angels became in turn, and in addition, theforwarding station for a copper-mining district in the Timanyonifoot-hills, and a little later, when a few adventurous cattlemen haddiscovered that the sun-cured herbage of the desert borders wasnutritious and fattening, a stock-shipping point. But even in the day ofpromise, when the railroad building was at its height and a handful ofpromoters were plotting streets and town lots on the second mesa, andprinting glowing tributes--for strictly Eastern distribution--to the dryatmosphere and the unfailing sunshine, the desert leaven was silently atwork. A few of the railroad men transplanted their families; but apartfrom these, Angels was a man's town with elemental appetites, and withonly the coarse fare of the frontier fighting line to satisfy them.
Farther along, the desert came more definitely to its own. The rich RedButte "pockets" began to show signs of exhaustion, and the gulch and oremining afforded but a precarious alternative to the thousands who hadgone in on the crest of the bonanza wave. Almost as tumultuously as ithad swept into the hill country, the tide of population swept out. Forthe gulch hamlets between the Timanyonis there was still an industrialreason for being; but the railroad languished, and Angels became theweir to catch and retain many of the leavings, the driftwood stranded inthe slack water of the outgoing tide. With the railroad, the CopperetteMine, and the "X-bar-Z" pay-days to bring regularly recurring moments offlushness, and with every alternate door in Mesa Avenue the entrance toa bar, a dance-hall, a gambling den, or the three in combination, theelemental appetites grew avid, and the hot breath of the desert fannedslow fires of brutality that ate the deeper when they penetrated to thepunk heart of the driftwood.
It was during this period of deflagration and dry rot that the Easternowners of the railroad lost heart. Since the year of the Red Butteinrush there had been no dividends; and Chandler, summoned from anotherbattle with the canyons in the far Northwest, was sent in to make anexpert report on the property. "Sell it for what it will bring," was thesubstance of Chandler's advice; but there were no bidders, and from thistime on a masterless railroad was added to the spoils of war--theinexpiable war of the Red Desert upon its invaders.
At the moment of the moribund railroad's purchase by the PacificSouthwestern, the desert was encroaching more and more upon the townplanted in its western border. In the height of Angels's prosperitythere had been electric lights and a one-car street tramway, a bank,and a Building and Loan Association attesting its presence in rows ofornate cottages on the second mesa--alluring bait thrown out to catchthe potential savings of the railroad colonists.
But now only the railroad plant was electric-lighted; the singleramshackle street-car had been turned into a _chile-con-carne_ stand;the bank, unable to compete with the faro games and the roulette wheels,had gone into liquidation; the Building and Loan directors had longsince looted the treasury and sought fresh fields, and the cottages werechiefly empty shells.
Of the charter members of the Building and Loan Association, shrewdestof the many boom-time schemes for the separation of the pay-roll manfrom his money, only two remained as residents of Angels the decadent.One of these was Gridley, the master-mechanic, and the other wasHallock, chief clerk for a diminishing series of importedsuperintendents, and now for the third time the disappointed applicantfor the headship of the Red Butte Western.
Associated for some brief time in the real-estate venture, and hailingfrom the same far-away Eastern State and city, these two had been atfirst yoke-fellows, and afterward, as if by tacit consent, inertenemies. As widely separated as the poles in characteristics, habits,and in their outlook upon life, they had little in common, and manyantipathies.
Gridley was a large man, virile of face and figure, and he marched inthe ranks of the full-fed and the self-indulgent. Hallock was big-bonedand cadaverous of face, but otherwise a fair physical match for themaster-mechanic; a dark man with gloomy eyes and a permanent frown.Jovial good-nature went with the master-mechanic's gray eyes twinklingeasily to a genial smile, but it stopped rather abruptly at thestraight-lined, sensual mouth, and found a second negation in the brutaljaw which was only thinly masked by the neatly trimmed beard. Hallock'ssmile was bitter, and if he had a social side no one in Angels had everdiscovered it. In a region where fellowship in some sort, if it wereonly that of the bottle and the card-table, was any man's for thetaking, he was a hermit, an ascetic; and his attitude toward others, allothers, so far as Angels knew, was that of silent and morose ferocity.
It was in an upper room of the "Crow's Nest" head-quarters building thatthese two, the master-mechanic and the acting superintendent, met latein the evening of the day when Vice-President Ford had kept hisappointment in Copah with Lidgerwood.
Gridley, clad like a gentleman, and tilting comfortably in his chair ashe smoked a cigar that neither love nor money could have bought inAngels, was jocosely sarcastic. Hallock, shirt-sleeved, unkempt, andwith the permanent frown deepening the furrow between his eyes, neithertilted nor smoked.
"They tell me you have missed the step up again, Hallock," said thesmoker lazily, when the purely technical matter that had brought him toHallock's office had been settled.
"Who tells you?" demanded the other; and a listener, knowing neither,would have remarked the curious similarity of the grating note in bothvoices as infallibly as a student of human nature would have contrastedthe two men in every other personal characteristic.
"I don't remember," said Gridley, good-naturedly refusing to commit hisinformant, "but it's on the wires. Vice-President Ford is in Copah, andthe new superintendent is with him."
Hallock leaned forward in his chair.
"Who is the new man?" he asked.
"Nobody seems to know him by name. But he is a friend of Ford's allright. That is how he gets the job."
Hallock took a plug of black tobacco from his pocket, and cut a smallsliver from it for a chew. It was his one concession to appetite, and hemade it grudgingly.
"A college man, I suppose," he commented. "Otherwise Ford wouldn't bebacking him."
"Oh, yes, I guess it's safe to count on
that."
"And a man who will carry out the Ford policy?"
Gridley's eyes smiled, but lower down on his face the smile became acynical baring of the strong teeth.
"A man who may try to carry out the Ford idea," he qualified; adding,"The desert will get hold of him and eat him alive, as it has theothers."
"Maybe," said Hallock thoughtfully. Then, with sudden heat, "It's hell,Gridley! I've hung on and waited and done the work for theirfigure-heads, one after another. The job belongs to me!"
This time Gridley's smile was a thinly veiled sneer.
"What makes you so keen for it, Hallock?" he asked. "You have no use forthe money, and still less for the title."
"How do you know I don't want the salary?" snapped the other. "BecauseI don't have my clothes made in New York, or blow myself across thetables in Mesa Avenue, does it go without saying that I have no use formoney?"
"But you haven't, you know you haven't," was the taunting rejoinder."And the title, when you have, and have always had, the real authority,means still less to you."
"Authority!" scoffed the chief clerk, his gloomy eyes lighting up withslow fire, "this maverick railroad don't know the meaning of the word.By God! Gridley, if I had the club in my hands for a few months I'd show'em!"
"Oh, I guess not," said the cigar-smoker easily. "You're not built rightfor it, Hallock; the desert would give you the horse-laugh."
"Would it? Not before I had squared off a few old debts, Gridley; don'tyou forget that."
There was a menace in the harsh retort, and the chief clerk made noattempt to conceal it.
"Threatening, are you?" jeered the full-fed one, still good-naturedlysarcastic. "What would you do, if you had the chance, Rankin?"
"I'd kill out some of the waste and recklessness, if it took the lastman off the pay-rolls; and I'd break even with at least one man over inthe Timanyoni, if I had to use the whole Red Butte Western to pry himloose!"
"Flemister again?" queried the master-mechanic. And then, in milddeprecation, "You are a bad loser, Hallock, a damned bad loser. But Isuppose that is one of your limitations."
A silence settled down upon the upper room, but Gridley made no move togo. Out in the yards the night men were making up a westbound freight,and the crashing of box-cars carelessly "kicked" into place added itsnote to the discord of inefficiency and destructive breakage.
Over in the town a dance-hall piano was jangling, and the raucous voiceof the dance-master calling the figures came across to the Crow's Nestcuriously like the barking of a distant dog. Suddenly the barking voicestopped, and the piano clamor ended futilely in an aimless tinkling. Forclimax a pistol-shot rang out, followed by a scattering volley. It was aprecise commentary on the time and the place that neither of the two menin the head-quarters upper room gave heed to the pistol-shots, or to theyelling uproar that accompanied them.
It was after the shouting had died away in a confused clatter of hoofs,and the pistol cracklings were coming only at intervals and from anincreasing distance, that the corridor door opened and the nightdespatcher's off-trick man came in with a message for Hallock.
It was a mere routine notification from the line-end operator at Copah,and the chief clerk read it sullenly to the master-mechanic.
"Engine 266, Williams, engineer, and Blackmar, fireman, with service-carNaught-One, Bradford, conductor, will leave Copah at 12:01 A.M., and runspecial to Angels. By order of Howard Lidgerwood, GeneralSuperintendent."
Gridley's pivot-chair righted itself with a snap. But he waited untilthe off-trick man was gone before he said, "Lidgerwood! Well, by all thegods!" then, with a laugh that was more than half a snarl, "There is achance for you yet, Rankin."
"Why, do you know him?"
"No, but I know something about him. I've got a line on New York, thesame as you have, and I get a hint now and then. I knew that Lidgerwoodhad been considered for the place, but I was given to understand that hewould refuse the job if it were offered to him."
"Why should he refuse?" demanded Hallock.
"That is where my wire-tapper fell down; he couldn't tell."
"Then why do you say there is still a chance for me?"
"Oh, on general principles, I guess. If it was an even break that hewould refuse, it is still more likely that he won't stay after he hasseen what he is up against, don't you think?"
Hallock did not say what he thought. He rarely did.
"Of course, you made inquiries about him when you found out he was apossible; I'd trust you to do that, Gridley. What do you know?"
"Not much that you can use. He is out of the Middle West; a young manand a graduate of Purdue. He took the Civil degree, but stayed two yearslonger and romped through the Mechanical. He ought to be pretty well upon theory, you'd say."
"Theory be damned!" snapped the chief clerk. "What he'll need in the RedDesert will be nerve and a good gun. If he has the nerve, he can buy thegun."
"But having the gun he couldn't always be sure of buying the nerve, eh?I guess you are right, Rankin; you usually are when you can forget to bevindictive. And that brings us around to the jumping-off place again. Ofcourse, you will stay on with the new man--if he wants you to?"
"I don't know. That is my business, and none of yours."
It was a bid for a renewal of the quarrel which was never more than halfveiled between these two. But Gridley did not lift the challenge.
"Let it go at that," he said placably. "But if you should decide tostay, I want you to let up on Flemister."
The morose antagonism died out of Hallock's eyes, and in its place camecraft.
"I'd kill Flemister on sight, if I had the sand; you know that, Gridley.Some day it may come to that. But in the meantime----"
"In the meantime you have been snapping at his heels like a fice-dog,Hallock; holding out ore-cars on him, delaying his coal supplies,stirring up trouble with his miners. That was all right, up toyesterday. But now it has got to stop."
"Not for any orders that you can give," retorted the chief clerk, oncemore opening the door for the quarrel.
The master-mechanic got up and flicked the cigar ash from hiscoat-sleeve with a handkerchief that was fine enough to be a woman's.
"I am not going to come to blows with you. Rankin--not if I can helpit," he said, with his hand on the door-knob. "But what I have saidwill have to go as it lies. Shoot Flemister out of hand, if you feellike it, but quit hampering his business."
Hallock stood up, and when he was on his feet his big frame made himlook still more a fair match physically for the handsomemaster-mechanic.
"Why?" The single word shot out of the loose-lipped mouth like anexplosive bullet.
Gridley opened the door and turned upon the threshold.
"I might borrow the word from you and say that Flemister's business andmine are none of yours. But I won't do that. I'll merely say thatFlemister may need a little Red Butte Western nursing in the Ute Valleyirrigation scheme he is promoting, and I want you to see that he getsit. You may take that as a word to the wise, or as a kicked-in hint to ablind mule; whichever you please. You can't afford to fight me, Hallock,and you know it. Sleep on it a few hours, and you'll see it in that way,I'm sure. Good-night."
The Taming of Red Butte Western Page 2