CHAPTER XIX
Imogene Chandler was washing the breakfast dishes out under the canopyof arrow-weed roof, where they ate summer and winter. The job wasquickly done, for the breakfast service was very abbreviated. She tooka broad-brimmed straw hat from a nail on the corner post, and swingingit in her hand, for the sun was yet scarcely over the rim of the RedButtes far to the east, went out across the field to where her fatherwas already at work.
March is the middle of spring in the Imperial Valley and already thegrass grew thick beside the water ditches, and leaves were full grownon the cottonwood trees. The sunlight, soft through the dewy earlymorning, filled the whole valley with a yellow radiance. And out alongthe water course a meadowlark sang.
The girl threw up her arm swinging the hat over her head. She wantedto shout. She felt the sweeping surge of spring, the call of the wind,the glow of the sunlight, the boundless freedom of the desert. She hadnever felt so abounding in exuberant hope. It had been hard work tohold on to this lease, a fight for bread at times. But wealth was herein this soil and in this sun. And more than wealth. There was healthand liberty in it. No heckling social restrictions, no vapid idlepiffle at dull teas; no lugubrious pretence of burdensome duties. Hereone slept and ate and worked and watched the changing light, andbreathed the desert air and lived. It was a good world.
The girl stopped and crumbled some of the newly plowed earth under thetoe of a trim shoe. How queer that after all these hundreds andthousands of years the stored chemicals of this land should bereleased, and turned by those streams of water into streams ofwealth--fleecy cotton, luscious fruit and melons, food and clothes.And what nice people lived out here. The Chinamen who worked in thefield, quaint and friendly and faithful. Even the Mexicans with theirless industrious and more tricky habits were warm hearted andcourteous. That serenading Madrigal was very interesting--andhandsome. He had fire in him; perhaps dangerous fire, but what acontrast to the vapid white-collared clerks or professors in the primlittle eastern town she had known.
Of course Bob Rogeen did not like him. Imogene instinctively put upher hand and brushed the wind-blown hair from her forehead, and smiled.
Bob was jealous.
But what a man Rogeen was! She had believed there were such men sounobtrusively generous and chivalrous. But no one she had ever knownbefore was quite like Bob Rogeen. She remembered the black hair thatclustered thickly over his temples, and the whimsical twist of hismouth, and the reticent but unafraid brown eyes.
She had thought many, many times of Rogeen, and always it seemed thathe filled in just what was wanting in this desert--warmth of humanfellowship. Always she thought of him just north over there--out ofsight but very near. True he came very rarely. She wrinkled herforehead and rubbed the end of her nose with a forefinger. Why wasthat? Why didn't he come oftener? Wasn't she interesting? Didn't heapprove of her?
A reassuring warmth came up to her face and neck. Yes, she believed hedid. His eyes looked it when he thought she was not noticing.
Holy Joe shanghaies Imogene's ranchmen and discoversPercy--a willing ally.]
She reached down and picked up a stick and threw it with a quick,impulsive gesture into the water and watched it float on down theditch. Yes, she was pretty sure Rogeen liked her--but how much? Oh,well--she took a dozen girlish skips along the path, her hair flyingabout her face, and her heart dancing with the early sun on the greenfields before her and the brown desert beyond--oh, well, time wouldtell.
"Daddy," she had come up to where the little bald-headed man wasplowing--throwing up the ridges, "don't you like spring?"
The ex-professor stopped the team, looked at her through his glasses,then glanced around the field at the grass and weeds and early plantsthat were up.
"I believe," he said, mildly, "that we are approaching the vernalequinox. But I had not observed before the gradual unfoldment ofvegetation which we have come to associate in our minds with spring."
"Oh, daddy, daddy," she laughed deliciously, and leaned over the handleof the plow and pulled his ear. "You funny, funny man. Why, it'sspring, it's spring! Don't you feel it in your bones? Don't you lovethe whole world and everybody?"
Professor Chandler seriously contemplated the skyline, where thesunlight showed red on the distant buttes. "I should say, daughter,that it does give one a feeling of kinship with nature. I fancy theearly Greeks felt it."
"I fancy they did," said Imogene, "especially if they were in love."
"In love?" The professor brought his spectacles around to his daughterquestioningly.
"With everything," she said, laughing. "Daddy, I'm awfully glad we areback to the soil--instead of back to the Greeks."
"I am not discontent with our environment." And the little professorplowed on. She smiled maternally at his back. And then two swifttears sprang to her eyes. Tender tears.
"Dear old daddy. It has been good for him. He would have dried up andblown away in that little old college."
Returning to the shack she was still bareheaded. She loved the feel ofthe sun, and the few freckles it brought only added a piquancy to herface.
"I wonder if he"--she meant Rogeen--"will make it go this year. I hopehe has a good crop. It makes one feel that maybe after all things areas they ought to be when a man like he succeeds. Wonder what his plansare?"
Then as she sat down in the shade and began a little very necessarymending:
"I do wish he'd come over--and tell me some more about cottoncrops--and himself."