"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, Señor 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 Señor 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."
A mutual discovery—they both cared.
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."
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