“Well, then I reckon he’ll be along pronto.”
The next morning when Abe went to the site of the
work the first man he saw was Barbara’s friend,
Pablo. The Mexican greeted the surveyor with
a show of white teeth.
“Did you come to work?” asked Abe.
“Si, Senor. Senor Texas he come las’
night with two horses. He say Senor Abe want
you quick, Pablo. La Senorita say you come.
So I am come pronto, like he say.”
“Texas Joe went for you last night?” repeated
Abe.
“Si, Senor. If you want me come—if
La Senorita want me come—Senor Tex he go
tell me come. I come. It is no much ride
for vaqueros like Senor Tex and me.”
“But you have your job with the Company?”
The Mexican shrugged his shoulders and his teeth showed.
“Senor Worth and Senores Lee and Tex and Pat
good company for Pablo. Beside, is there not
La Senorita? She was good to me when I was sick
with no one to help. Do not we all—Senores
Lee and Tex and Pat, and Senor Worth and me—do
not we all work for La Senorita in La Palma de la
Mano de Dios? Is it not so? Beside I think
sometime La Senorita come—then I would
be near. In the Company there is no Senorita.”
MUCH CONFUSION AND HAPPY EXCITEMENT.
As the trying months of the semi-tropical summer approached,
the great Desert, so awful in its fierce desolation,
so pregnant with the life it was still so reluctant
to yield, gathered all its dreadful forces to withstand
the inflowing streams of human energy. In the
fierce winds that rushed through the mountain passes
and swept across the hot plains like a torrid furnace
blast; in the blinding, stinging, choking, smothering
dust that moved in golden clouds from rim to rim of
the Basin; in the blazing, scorching strength of the
sun; in the hard, hot sky, without shred or raveling
of cloud; in the creeping, silent, poison life of insect
and reptile; in the maddening dryness of the thirsty
vegetation; in the weird, beautiful falseness of the
ever-changing mirage, the spirit of the Desert issued
its silent challenge.
It was not the majestic challenge of the mountains
with their unsealed heights of peak and dome and impassable
barriers of rugged crag and sheer cliff. It was
not the glad challenge of the untamed wilderness with
its myriad formed life of tree and plant and glen
and stream. It was not the noble challenge of
the wide-sweeping, pathless plains; nor the wild challenge
of the restless, storm-driven sea. It was the
silent, sinister, menacing threat of a desolation
that had conquered by cruel waiting and that lay in
wait still to conquer.
With grim determination, nervous energy, enduring
strength and a dogged tenacity of purpose, the invading
flood of humanity, irresistibly driven by that master
passion, Good Business, matched its strength against
that of the Desert in the season of its greatest power.
