The Desert Fiddler

  CHAPTER VII

  Some men fail because they invest their money in bad business. Morefail because they invest themselves in sorry human material. Theytrust their plans to people who cannot or will not carry them out.

  Bob from his first day as an employer realized that to be able to planand work himself was only half of success. One must be able to pickmen who will carry out his plans, must invest his brains, hisgenerosity, his fair treatment, and his affections in human beings whowill return him loyalty for loyalty.

  He had made no mistake in Noah Ezekiel Foster. Noah was a good cottonplanter; moreover, he knew a good deal about Chinese. Bob had employedsix Chinamen to help get the ground in shape and the cotton planted.

  "Noah," Bob stopped beside the disk plow and its double team, "youunderstand mules."

  "I ought to." Noah rubbed his lean jaw. "I've been kicked by 'emenough."

  Bob smiled. Somehow Noah's look of drollery always put him in a goodhumour. He noticed it also tickled the Chinamen, who thought "MistyZeekee" one of the greatest of Anglo-Saxons.

  "You see," remarked Noah, picking up the lines again, "as my dad usedto say, 'He that taketh hold of the handles of a plow and looketh back,verily, he shall be kicked by a mule.' I never calculate to be kickedin the back. But if that Chinaman over there"--he frowned at aChinaboy who was fumbling over a cotton planter--"don't get a move onhim, he'll be kicked wherever he happens to hit my foot first. Hi,there"--Noah threw up his head and yelled to the Chinaboy--"get a moveon. Plantee cotton. Goee like hellee." And the Chinaman did.

  Bob laughed.

  "Do you reckon you could let me have five dollars to-night?" NoahEzekiel asked, looking down at his plow. "I want to go up to the RedOwl at Mexicali."

  "Not going to gamble, are you?" Bob asked.

  Noah Ezekiel shook his head. "No, I ain't goin' to gamble. Goin' toinvest the five in my education. I want to learn how many ways thereare for a fool and his money to part."

  After supper, when Noah Ezekiel had ridden away to invest his fivedollars in the educational processes of the Red Owl, Bob brought astool out of the house and sat down to rest his tired muscles and watchthe coming night a little while before he turned in. Bob and hisforeman occupied the same shack--the term "house," as Noah Ezekielsaid, being merely a flower of speech. Although there were severalhundred thousand acres of very rich land under cultivation on theMexican side, with two or three exceptions there was not a house on anyof the ranches that two men could not have built in one day and stillobserve union hours. Four willow poles driven in the ground, a fewcrosspieces, a thatch of arrowweed, three strips of plank nailed roundthe bottom, some mosquito netting, and it was done. A Chinaman wouldtake another day off and build a smoking adobe oven; but Bob and Noahhad a second-hand oil stove on which a Chinese boy did their cooking.

  Bob sat and looked out over the level field in the dusk. A quarter ofa mile away the light glimmered in the hut of his Chinese help, andthere came the good-natured jabber of their supper activities. He feltthe expansive thrill of the planter, the employer--the man whoorganizes an enterprise and makes it go.

  The heat of the day was already gone, and pleasant coolness was on thenight wind that brought the smell of desert sage from beyond thewatered fields. Bob stirred from the chair and got up. His tirednesswas gone. The desert night had him. He went into the shack and tookfrom an old scarred trunk his fiddle, and started down the road thatpassed his ranch to the south. He had not yet called on the Chandlers.

  The little house was dark. Rogeen wondered if the Chandlers wereasleep. But his heart took a quicker turn; he fancied he saw somethingwhite in the yard--the girl was also feeling the spell of the desertnight.

  Then suddenly, but softly, a guitar thrummed, and a voice with thehalf-wailing cadence of the Spanish took up the melody.

  Bob stood still, the blood crowding his veins until his face was hotand his whole body prickled. This was Madrigal, the Mexican Jew.

  The song ended. Faintly came the clapping of hands, and the ripple ofa girl's laughter. Bob turned angrily and walked swiftly back up theroad, walked clear past his own ranch without noticing, and finallyturned aside by a clump of cottonwood trees along the levee of the mainirrigation canal. The water, a little river here, ran swiftly,muddily, black under the desert stars. Bob lifted his fiddle and flungit into the middle of the stream.

  The heat of his anger was gone. He felt instantly cold, and infinitelylonesome. There upon the muddy water floated away the thousand songsof the hills--the melody, the ecstasy, the colour and light of hisearly youth.

  With sudden repentance he turned and dashed down the bank after thehurrying current. The fall is rapid here, and the fiddle was alreadyfar down the stream. He ran stumblingly, desperately, along the unevenbank, dodging willows and arrowweed, stopping now and again to peer upand down the stream.

  It was nowhere in sight. A sort of frenzy seized him. He had a queerfancy that in that moment of anger he had thrown away his soul--all ofhim that was not bread and dollars. He must get it back--he must!Another dash, and again he stopped on the bank. Something darker thanthe current bobbed upon the muddy water. Without a moment's hesitancyhe plunged into the stream and waded waist deep into the middle of thecurrent.

  Yes, it was his violin. Back on the bank, dripping wet, he hugged itto him like a little girl with a doll that was lost and is found.