Desert Conquest Part 4

She took him at his word, finding that his acquaintance with current literature and topics of the day was rather more intimate than her own.

He seemed to have ideas and opinions formed by his own thought, not mere repet.i.tions of reviews or newspaper comment.

As she glanced at his profile from time to time she became aware of an odd familiarity. He resembled some one she had seen before, but the ident.i.ty eluded her. Their conversation gradually took a more personal form. Dunne told a story, and told it well. He spoke casually of the West, but inst.i.tuted no comparisons.

"You are really an exception," Clyde told him. "The average Westerner is such a superior mortal. He looks down on the East, and when he comes among Easterners he condescends."

"It's a relief to have some one admit that Chicago is in the East," he laughed. "No, I don't brag about the West. It's a good country, and it will be better when we have approximated more to Eastern conditions. We are undeveloped as yet. In twenty years----"

"Ah, there it is!" she interrupted. "Scratch a Russian, and find a Tartar. And I took you for an exception!"

He laughed. "I plead guilty. The microbe is in the air. We all have it.

Can you blame us? Do you know the West?"

"Only what I have seen from the train. I have told you of every one here. In return tell me about yourself. Mrs. Wade says that you are a rancher."

"Yes, I have a good little ranch in the dry belt, within sight of the mountains."

"The dry belt?" she queried.

"Yes. We call that part of the country which has little or no rain the 'dry belt.' Formerly, for that reason, it was supposed to be useless.

But since irrigation has been discovered--you see, it's really a recent discovery with us in America, whatever it is with other peoples--we dry-belt ranchers are in a better position than any others. For we are able to give the land moisture whenever it needs it. Whereas others have to depend on the uncertainties of rainfall. About once in five years their crops are ruined by drought. But we are able to water our fields as the city man waters his lawn."

"So that you are certain of a good crop every year."

"No, not certain. We have merely eliminated one cause of failure. We are still at the tender mercies of hot winds, hail, and frosts late and early."

These things were but names to her. They called up no concrete visions of the baking, siroccolike winds that curdled the grain in the milk, the hail that threshed it and beat it flat, of the late frosts that nipped the tender green shoots in spring, and the early ones in fall that soured the kernels before the complete ripening. But she saw that to him they typified enemies, real, deadly, ever threatening, impossible, so far, to guard against.

Dimly she began to perceive that while certain forces of nature made always for growth, still others, equally powerful, made for destruction. Between the warring forces stood the Man of the Soil, puny, insignificant, matching his own hardly won and his forefather's harder-won knowledge against the elements; bending some to his advantage, minimizing the effects of others, openly defying those he could neither control nor avoid. And she partly realized his triumph in having vanquished one of these inimical forces, one of his most dreaded enemies, Drought.

"You like the life?"

"Yes, I like it. It's idyllic, compared with some phases of existence that I have experienced."

"You have had varied experiences?"

"'Varied!' Yes, I suppose you may call them that."

"Won't you tell me about them?"

"There isn't much to tell, and that little not very entertaining. You see, Miss Burnaby, if my youthful mouth was ever acquainted with a silver spoon it was s.n.a.t.c.hed away at a tender age."

"I beg your pardon," said Clyde quickly. "I'm afraid my request was impertinent."

"Not at all. I went West when I was a kid, and I've seen quite a bit of country. Then, when I had money enough, I put it into land, and went to ranching. That's all there is to it."

She was quite certain, somehow, that there was a great deal more to it.

She fell to studying his hands. The fingers were long and slender, but flat, sinewy, and powerful. They seemed to express tenacity of purpose, a grip of whatever they undertook. Once more she looked at his profile, and again she was struck by an elusive familiarity.

"You remind me of somebody--of something," she said. "I can't place it."

"Indeed!" he responded. "Now, I hope the unplaced recollection is not unpleasant."

"It's not definite enough. But it is there. It's not so much when you face me--it's the side view. I've never met you before, of course."

"Of course not," he agreed, but his eyes laughed at her.

"Have I?" she exclaimed. "Surely not! I'm not forgetful, as a rule."

"I was wondering," he said, "if you would remember me. I knew you at once, but I can't claim the honour of having been presented before to-night. Our acquaintance, if I may call it that, was very informal."

"But when--where?" she demanded. "I don't recall----"

"Well, it's not surprising," he admitted. "I was dressed differently.

Naturally you wouldn't expect to see me in these." He glanced down at his evening clothes. "The fact is, I sat across the aisle from you in the car when----"

"Oh!" she cried. "Now I know. When the train was held up. Why, of course it _was_ you. I'm so glad to meet you again. I've always wanted to thank you for relieving me of the attentions of that--that----"

"That fresh guy," he supplied gravely.

"Thank you! That 'fresh guy,'" she smiled. "But for you I should have lost my watch. And then you lent me ten dollars."

"Well, you see, they got all your cash."

"I don't know whatever made me take it. I have it still. I didn't need it. I had a book of travellers' checks and credits at the coast. I intended to give it back to you at once. I hope it didn't inconvenience----"

She stopped, conscious that her estimate of the finances of the man in the train had probably been mistaken.

"Not a bit," he replied. "I had a small roll stowed away."

"But what became of you?" she asked. "You didn't come back. I asked the conductor and the porters--everybody. What happened?"

"Why, the explanation is very simple, though I'm not proud of it. When I heard the shooting up in front I thought it was up to me to help the train boys, and I went out with the best intentions. The holdups were backing off, burning a lot of powder but doing no harm, and I guessed that their horses were in a bluff about five hundred yards from the track. Of course, once they got in the saddle they would make a get-away, so far as we were concerned, and I thought if I could beat them to the horses and turn the animals loose we would practically have them rounded up. That's what I tried to do. But as I was running I tripped, and went headfirst into a stump or a stone. Anyway, it knocked me out, and when I emerged from dreamland the train was moving, and I couldn't catch it. So I just tramped the ties to the next station. And there I had a job explaining that I wasn't a holdup myself. It didn't strike those boneheads that no sane holdup would come walking along the track a few hours after a robbery."

Clyde was disappointed at the baldness of his narration. Almost any man would have made some effort at description. Dunne had made none whatever. He had confined himself to the barest of bare facts.

"You make a poor raconteur, Mr. Dunne."

"Really, that's all there was to it," he replied. "'We fit and they fit; and they ran and we ran'--or at least I did till I tripped."

Mrs. Wade rose.

"After you have had your cigar we will continue our conversation, if you care to," said Clyde.

"Just what I was going to ask. I hope Wade's cigars are small."

When the ladies had gone, Harrison Wade drew his chair beside Dunne's.