The Rules of the Game Part 22

II

All next day the train puffed over the snow-blown plains. There was little in the prospect, save an inspiration to thankfulness that the cars were warm and comfortable. Bob and Welton spent the morning going over their plans for the new country. After lunch, which in the manner of trans-continental travellers they stretched over as long a period as possible, they again repaired to the smoking car. Baker hailed them jovially, waving a stubby forefinger at vacant seats.

"Say, do Populists grow whiskers, or do whiskers make Populists?" he demanded.

"Give it up," replied Welton promptly. "Why?"

"Because if whiskers make Populists, I don't blame this state for going Pop. A fellow'd have to grow some kind of natural chest protector in self-defence. Look at that snow! And thirty dollars will take you out where there's none of it, and the soil's better, and you can see something around you besides fresh air. Why, any one of these poor pinhead farmers could come out our way, get twenty acres of irrigated land, and in five years--"

"Hold on!" cried Bob, "you haven't by any chance some of that real estate for sale--or a sandbag?"

Baker laughed.

"Everybody gets that way," said he. "I'll bet the first five men you meet will fill you up on statistics."

He knew the country well, and pointed out in turn the first low rises of the prairie swell, and the distant Rockies like a faint blue and white cloud close down along the horizon. Bob had never seen any real mountains before, and so was much interested. The train laboured up the grades, steep to the engine, but insignificant to the eye; it pa.s.sed through the canons to the broad central plateau. The country was broken and strange, with its wide, free sweeps, its sage brush, its stunted trees, but it was not mountainous as Bob had conceived mountains. Baker grinned at him.

"Snowclad peaks not up to specifications?" he inquired. "Chromos much better? Mountain grandeur somewhat on the blink? Where'd you expect them to put a railroad--out where the scenery is? Never mind. Wait till you slide off 'Cape Horn' into California."

The cold weather followed them to the top of the Sierras. Snow, dull clouds, mists and cold enveloped the train. Miles of snowsheds necessitated keeping the artificial light burning even at midday. Winter held them in its grip.

Then one morning they rounded the bold corner of a high mountain. Far below them dropped away the lesser peaks, down a breathless descent. And from beneath, so distant as to draw over themselves a tender veil of pearl gray, flowed out foothills and green plains. The engine coughed, shut off the roar of her exhaust. The train glided silently forward.

"Now come to the rear platform," Baker advised.

They sat in the open air while the train rushed downward. From the great drifts they ran to the soft, melting snow, then to the mud and freshness of early spring. Small boys crowded early wild-flowers on them whenever they stopped at the small towns built on the red clay. The air became indescribably soft and balmy, full of a gentle caress. At the next station the children brought oranges. A little farther the foothill ranches began to show the brightness of flowers. The most dilapidated hovel was glorified by splendid sprays of red roses big as cabbages.

Dooryards of the tiniest shacks blazed with red and yellow. Trees and plants new to Bob's experience and strangely and delightfully exotic in suggestion began to usurp the landscape. To the far Northerner, brought up in only a common-school knowledge of olive trees, palms, eucalyptus, oranges, banana trees, pomegranates and the ordinary semi-tropical fruits, there is something delightful and wonderful in the first sight of them living and flouris.h.i.+ng in the open. When closer investigation reveals a whole series of which he probably does not remember ever to have heard, he feels indeed an explorer in a new and wonderful land.

After a few months these things become old stories. They take their places in his cosmos as accustomed things. He is then at some pains to understand his visitor's extravagant interest and delight over loquats, chiramoyas, alligator pears, tamarinds, guavas, the blooming of century plants, the fruits of chollas and the like. Baker pointed out some of these things to Bob.

"Winter to summer in two jumps and a hop," said he. "The come-on stuff rings the bell in this respect, anyway. Smell the air: it's real air.

'Listen to the mocking bird.'"

"Seriously or figuratively?" asked Bob. "I mean, is that a real mocking bird?"

"Surest thing you know," replied Baker as the train moved on, leaving the songster to his ecstasies. "They sing all night out here. Sounds fine when you haven't a grouch. Then you want to collect a brick and drive the darn fowl off the reservation."

"I never saw one before outside a cage," said Bob.

"There's lots of things you haven't seen that you're going to see, now you've got out to the Real Thing," said Baker. "Why, right in your own line: you don't know what big pine is. Wait till you see the woods out here. We've got the biggest trees, and the biggest mountains, and the biggest crops and the biggest--."

"Liars," broke in Bob, laughing. "Don't forget them."

"Yes, the biggest liars, too," agreed Baker. "A man's got to lie big out here to keep in practice so he can tell the plain truth without straining himself."

Before they changed cars to the Valley line, Baker had a suggestion to make.

"Look here," said he, "why _don't_ you come and look at the tall buildings? You can't do anything in the mountains yet, and when you get going you'll be too busy to see California. Come, make a pasear. Glad to show you the sights. Get reckless. Take a chance. Peruse carefully your copy of Rules for Rubes and try it on."

"Go ahead," said Welton, unexpectedly.

III

Bob went on to Los Angeles with the sprightly Baker. At first glance the city seemed to him like any other. Then, as he wandered its streets, the marvel and vigour and humour of the place seized on him.

"Don't you suppose I see the joke?" complained Baker at the end of one of their long trolley rides. "Just get onto that house; it looks like a mission-style switch engine. And the one next to it, built to shed snow.

Funny! sure it's funny. But you ain't talking to me! It's alive! Those fellows wanted something different from anybody else--so does everybody.

After they'd used up the regular styles, they had to make 'em up out of the fresh air. But anyway, they weren't satisfied just to copy Si Golosh's idea of a Noah's Ark chicken coop."

They stopped opposite very elaborate and impressive iron gates opening across a graded street. These gates were supported by a pair of stone towers crowned with tiles. A smaller pair of towers and gates guarded the concrete sidewalk. As a matter of fact, all these barriers enclosed nothing, for even in the remote possibility that the inquiring visitor should find them shut, an insignificant detour would circ.u.mvent their fenceless flanks.

"Maudsley Court," Bob read sculptured on one of the towers.

"That makes this particular subdivision mighty exclusive," grinned Baker. "Now if you were a homeseeker wouldn't you love to bring your dinner pail back to the cawstle every night?"

Bob peered down the single street. It was graded, guttered and sidewalked. A small sentry box labelled "office," and inscribed with glowing eulogiums, occupied a strategic position near the gates. From this house Bob immediately became aware of close scrutiny by a man half concealed by the indoor dimness.

"The spider," said Baker. "He's onto us big as a house. He can spot a yap at four hundred yards' range, and you bet they don't get much nearer than that alone."

A huge sign shrieked of Maudsley Court. "Get a grin!" was its first advice.

"They all try for a catchword--every one of 'em," explained Baker.

"You'll see all kinds in the ads; some pretty good, most of 'em rotten."

"They seem to have made a start, anyway," observed Bob, indicating a new cottage half way down the street. It was a super-artistic structure, exhibiting the ends of huge brown beams at all points. Baker laughed.

"That's what it's intended to seem," said he. "That's the come-on house.

It's built by the spider. It's stick-um for the flies. 'This is going to be a high-brow proposition,' says the intending purchaser; 'look at the beautiful house already up. I must join this young and thriving colony.'

Hence this settled look."

He waved his hand abroad. Dotted over the low, rounded hills of the charming landscapes were new and modern bungalows. They were s.p.a.ced widely, and each was flanked by an advertising board and guarded by a pair of gates shutting their private thoroughfares from the country highways. Between them showed green the new crops.

"Nine out of ten come-on houses," said Baker, "and all exclusive. If you can't afford iron gates, you can at least put up a pair of s.h.i.+ngled pillars. It's the game."

"Will these lots ever be sold?" asked Bob.

"Out here, yes," replied Baker. "That's part of the joke. The methods are on the blink, but the goods insist on delivering themselves. Most of these fellows are just bunks or optimists. All hands are surprised when things turn out right. But if _all_ the lots are ever sold, Los Angeles will have a population of five million."

They boarded an inward-bound trolley. Bob read the devices as they flashed past. "Hill-top Acres," he read near a street plastered against an apparently perpendicular hill. "Buy before the rise!" advised this man's rival at its foot. The true suburbs strung by in a panorama of strange little houses--imitation Swiss chalets jostling b.a.s.t.a.r.d Moorish, cobblestones elbowing plaster--a bewildering succession of forced effects. Baker caught Bob's expression.

"These are workingmen's and small clerks' houses," he said quietly.

"Pretty bad, eh? But they're trying. Remember what they lived in back East."