The Iron Furrow Part 15

Alvarez rose and walked to the bar.

"Is this money; a hundred dollars?" he inquired of the Mexican proprietor of the saloon.

"One hundred dollars, yes," said the latter, with an a.s.suring smile.

"Made payable to you, Alvarez. Good? Good at any bank, good here at my saloon, good as gold. Better than gold, Alvarez, because easier to carry. Do you wish the money for it?"

The Mexican ex-bandit jingled some dollars in his trousers' pockets.

"I have enough to eat and drink," said he. "If the paper is good, if you will give me gold for it, then I will wait until I return. As you say, it's not so heavy to carry."

"Bring it to me when you return. Mr. Menocal is very wealthy, very rich. He has much land and many sheep. Besides, he owns a bank full of gold and silver. The paper is good."

Alvarez was impressed. He stood in thought.

"Those sheep and that bank full of money! In Mexico we would form a company of revolutionists and help ourselves," he said.

"That isn't the custom here," was the reply.

Alvarez again stared at the check, then folded it, bit the edge with his teeth, placed it in a small leather bag suspended under his s.h.i.+rt by a cord about his neck, and returned to the table where Charlie Menocal waited.

"I will go up yonder in a few days, senor," he stated. "There are girls there, are there not?"

One day a week later, after Bryant and Dave had returned to Kennard, and after numerous conferences with Mr. McDonnell, his attorney and an engineer called in for consultation, Lee exclaimed to his companion, "We win. McDonnell will take hold of it. Bully for him!" And he went about clearing up the odds and ends of business at a great rate.

Moreover, McDonnell believed he could dispose of the bonds within a fortnight, by the middle of September. That would enable Bryant to make good headway with the dam on the Pinas River while the water was low and before cold weather set in. The attorney would look after the incorporation of the company and the stock and bond issues. Lee could at once engage a staff of a.s.sistant engineers and arrange to let the building contract. In the matter of the ca.n.a.l line, he had received ample a.s.surance from members of the Land and Water Board at Santa Fe that the changes he asked would be granted. Everything was propitious, everything exactly as he would wish.

"Out of those town duds, Dave," he exclaimed. "You can't be a sport any longer. Back to Perro Creek for us and your new spotted pony. And it's high time, too, for I saw you making eyes at that girl with yellow hair and angel blue eyes, whose mamma----"

"You never did!" Dave yelled, crimson with ire.

CHAPTER XII

October. And the last golden leaves twirling down from cottonwood and aspen and mountain maple; the lofty brown peaks fresh powdered with snow; the air dazzling, keen, heady like wine; frost a-sparkle of mornings on stone, fence-post, roof, with a rainbow coruscation of diamonds; clear, high moons; marvellous, moonlit nights.

It was the middle of the month. Three weeks previous, with the bonds sold and the injunction suits dismissed, the contractor employed had unloaded his outfit at Kennard, moved up the Pinas River, raised in a day his camp at the mouth of the canon above Bartolo, and begun his task. This man, Pat Carrigan, had been in Bryant's mind from the first: a Pueblo contractor of Irish extraction, born in a railroad camp, trained on a dump, and now grizzled and aging but unequalled in handling men, in keeping them satisfied, in moving dirt. In his time he had turned off jobs from Maine to California, from Wisconsin to Texas. Already along the hillside a yellow gash was deepening from the dam site through the fenced fields where ran the right of way; while in the Pinas, low at this season, the traverse section of the river bed had been cleaned out and the base of the dam was building of stones and brush.

Late on a certain afternoon Ruth Gardner and Imogene Martin stood waiting by a gray runabout at the edge of the camp. A storm was sweeping up the Ventisquero Range from the south, one of the autumn storms that marked the change of seasons, enveloping, as it advanced, the gray peaks one after another in its fog and trailing over the mesa gauzy brown streamers of rain. In the west the sun still shone un.o.bscured, but with its light failing to a chill saffron glare as the cloud expanded over the sky.

Bryant and another man, a newcomer in the last few days, an engineer from the East representing the bondholders, were walking toward the girl from the dam. As the men walked, they engaged in rather spirited argument.

"You'd better hurry, you two," Ruth called. "Don't you see that rain coming? Imo and I want to reach home, Mr. Gretzinger, without being soaked."

Bryant's companion waved an a.s.suring hand without ceasing his rapid and forceful statement addressed to his fellow. Half a head shorter than Lee, he was of stockier build, a man somewhere near thirty-five or six years of age, with hair tinged with gray above his ears. Both in manner and speech he exhibited by turns superficial gayety, latent cynicism, and an egregious a.s.sumption. When Lee had introduced him to the young ladies at Sarita Creek, he had made himself at home in three minutes. He had the latest witticisms of restaurants and theatres, the newest stories, the most recent slang; his clothes were of the autumn's extreme mode; he was intelligent if frankly materialistic; and he interested, amused, and diverted the two girls. From his gay and airy talk they gathered that he had been married and divorced, that the West might have the scenery but New York had the bright lights; that money could buy anything from food to fame; and that "movies" were a bore. To the girls he was like a breath from the metropolis itself, that hard, throbbing, restless, glaring, convivial, avid, fascinating city in which is centred everything of wealth and misery, everything intense and abnormal, and everything to satisfy the desires. But the effect upon the girls was different. Imogene, though entertained, continued calm, unimpressed, unenvious; Ruth, however, as she listened and asked questions, the better they became acquainted, was bright-eyed and excited. "Don't you think him a remarkable man?"

she had exclaimed to Imogene. "So experienced, so polished, so--well, everything." This was after his second visit, which he made without Bryant, stopping on his way from the dam camp to Kennard where he made the chief hotel his headquarters. Imogene had replied, "Oh, he's amusing company, and he can't be accused of being diffident, at least.

But I wonder if he would wear well. His divorced wife's opinion would be valuable on that point, I fancy." That had caused Ruth to sniff.

She said, "You heard his explanation; they didn't agree and so they just separated. That was sensible. When two people find they're not compatible, they shouldn't live together a minute. And I shouldn't be surprised if she was a cat."

Gretzinger's speech as he and Bryant advanced toward the girls and the gray runabout was quick, determined, and uncompromising. His fleshy, aggressive face, that lacked the tan of his companion's, was fixed in dogmatic lines. From time to time he switched his gauntlets against the skirt of his fas.h.i.+onably cut ulster with lively impatience.

"I certainly demand that these changes be made and shall recommend to the bondholders," he was saying, "that they also insist on them."

"Can't help it if you do," was Lee Bryant's reply. "I know what I'm talking about: concrete is necessary. No irrigation engineer to-day who knows his business would think of anything else. Mr. McDonnell's man approved its use, the state engineer likewise. The latter wouldn't allow the change even should I ask it."

"Pah! He'd not concern himself either way. I know how these state officers run things. Leave it to me; I'll arrange the matter."

"Not with my consent. And he'll never grant the change over my opposition."

Gretzinger gave his knee an angry slap.

"I tell you it must be different, Bryant. In addition to the bonds my men have their share of stock. They consider this stock bonus as part of their investment. It is. And they intend to see that that stock earns every dollar--every dollar, do you understand?--that's to be made out of the project. I'm here to protect their interests, and shall do it."

"Well?"

"Now, Bryant, be reasonable. It means more profit in your own pocket, too. You're no philanthropist pure and simple, I take it, and want to make money out of this thing. So agree to this change. You'll make a saving both in time and cash. Carrigan's contract doesn't include the building of these drops; you plan to do that yourself; and if you subst.i.tute wood for concrete in these drops and in the gate-frames, it would lessen the labour cost, the material cost, the freighting cost, the----"

"And in five years the wood will have rotted and then concrete will have to be put in after all," Lee interrupted. "More than that, the water will undercut wooden drops, then rip the devil out of the ca.n.a.l along the ridge, making the cost of rebuilding ten times what it is now and very likely causing a water shortage in the middle of an irrigating season so that the farmers' crops will be a dead loss.

Fine! I suppose you didn't allow yourself to think that far."

"Why should I?" Gretzinger retorted. "It's not our business to figure on all the calamities that may occur in the next fifty years, or the next ten, or the next five. We build the ca.n.a.l, then it's up to the farmers to keep it in shape after we turn it over to them. If anything happens, that's their lookout and the lookout of the engineer in charge."

The two had come to a halt just out of earshot of the runabout. Bryant could discover on the speaker's face no other expression than a fixed intent to maintain his view.

"Leaving out the injustice of such a course----"

"Injustice, nothing!" the New Yorker derided. "This is cold business.

The project must be built as cheaply as possible in order to give the investors the largest return. My father is one of them, and when he puts money into a thing he wants all out of it that's coming to him.

So do his a.s.sociates."

"Let me finish what I started to say," Lee remarked. "Aside from what purchasers of land under this ca.n.a.l scheme have the right to expect, and what they would suffer from a disaster, it hits our own pockets in the end. Poor construction always turns out to be expensive construction. Aside from the initial cash payments from buyers, all we have from them will be notes--mortgage notes that can be paid only by crops from the land. The water insures these crops. Let the ca.n.a.l system go smash, and where are these notes? Nowhere. I don't propose to lose fifty or sixty thousand dollars for a short-sighted gain of ten."

Gretzinger laughed, then tapped the other's shoulder with a forefinger.

"Do you imagine for a minute we'll keep the paper?" he inquired.

"Well, I should say not! We'll discount it ten, and if necessary twenty, per cent. to make a quick clean-up and be out. A mortgage company in the East will attend to that part of the business. These mortgages run for ten years; you certainly don't think we'll sit around that long waiting for our money and profits. The discount will make the paper attractive to small investors, among whom it will be peddled and who want long-time securities. And you'll profit from that along with the rest of us; we couldn't leave you out if we wished."

"No, you can't leave me out of your calculations," said Bryant, grimly.

"You see now, I hope, why it's to your interest as well as ours to make the change I suggest," Gretzinger continued. "It will equal the amount of the discount. In a year or so we'll all be out from under with bonds and stock liquidated dollar for dollar. In other words, with our profits in cash in the bank instead of in notes."

"And somebody else holding the sack, eh?" Bryant's aquiline nose came down a little as he asked the question. "No, Gretzinger, you haven't persuaded me, and you never will by that argument. A pretty rotten scheme, that of yours. I shall go right ahead and use concrete."

"Then you don't intend to consider bondholders as having a voice in matters?"