“What can you do?” came the words as if
spoken by cold iron.
Don’t you like my desert,
Mr. Holmes?
After his noon-day meal, Willard Holmes, following
the example of others, sought the shade of the arcade
in front of the hotel. Helping himself to a chair
and moving a little away from the general company,
he sat enjoying his cigar, musing on the novelty of
his surroundings and reviewing his impressions of
the last few hours.
It was natural that he should make comparisons—that
he should see men and things in the light of the only
men and things he had ever known. Abe Lee he
measured by the standing of his own school-trained
engineering friends, demanding that the desert-born
and desert-trained surveyor exhibit all the hall-marks
of Boston. He might as consistently have demanded
that the flood of sunlight that fell in such blinding
glory upon the new world before him should shine as
through the smoke-grimed city atmosphere of New York.
One was no more impossible than the other. Jefferson
Worth he compared with the college and university
friends of his father—with Mr. Greenfield
and the New York-bred business men of his class, demanding
that the western pioneer banker show the same characteristics
that distinguished the cultured capitalists whose
great-great-grandfathers were pioneers. Rubio
City he saw in the light of those eastern cities that
were founded in the days when men knew not that there
was any world west of the Alleghanies.
Turning his head now and then to look over the typical
groups that sat in the shade of the arcade, dressed—or
undressed—with all the easy freedom of
a land too young as yet to have conventions, he recalled
his favorite hotels in his home cities and smiled to
think what would happen if some of these roughly clad
individuals were to appear there among the guests.
He did not know yet that some of these roughly clad
individuals were as much at home in those same favorite
hotels as was he himself. Likewise as he watched
the passing citizens in the street he recalled the
scene from the windows of his club at home—a
famous club on a famous avenue.
That young woman, for instance, with her khaki divided
skirt, wide sombrero, fringed gauntlets and the big
western saddle coming there on a horse whose feet
seemed scarcely to touch the ground as he plunged
and pranced impatiently along, springing side-wise,
with arched neck and pointed ears, at every object
that could possibly be made into something frightful
by his playful fancy! What a sensation she would
create at home! By Jove! but she could ride, though.
He watched with admiring eyes the strong, graceful
figure that sat the high-strung, uncertain horse as
easily and unconsciously as any one of his women friends
at home would rest in a comfortable chair.
