The Desert Fiddler Part 15

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 blus.h.i.+ng.

Mrs. Barnett's face took on the frozen look of a thousand generations of d.a.m.ning 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 cas.h.i.+er's window.

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

"He did," replied the cas.h.i.+er.

"Are there any strings to it?"

"None," responded the cas.h.i.+er 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 grat.i.tude, "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," a.s.sented 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?"