The Iron Furrow | Page 4

the front seat sat a girl whose clear pink
complexion made plain that in her was no mingling of races; her hat
held by a streaming blue veil and her form incased in a silk dust coat.
The tonneau was occupied by two men: one an American with a van
dyke beard sprinkled with gray, the other a short, stout, swarthy
Mexican, whose sweeping white moustache was in marked contrast to
his coffee-coloured face.

The car, with radiator steaming and hissing, was stopped at a spot close
to where Lee Bryant and his companions stood. The young man at the
wheel, unlatching the door, stepped out.
"I'll bet the stop-cock of the radiator is open," he addressed the girl with
the blue veil, "or the engine wouldn't be so hot." After making an
examination of the faucet, he returned to the door and procured a
folding canvas bucket, saying, "That's the trouble, and the radiator is
empty."
But the young lady scarcely heeded him. She had loosened the blue veil
knotted at her throat and pushed it back from her cheeks to free them to
the air; she sat regarding with interested eyes the group of three
standing a few paces off by the horses. In her gaze, too, there was a
faint curiosity, as if she wondered who the persons might be, and what
they were doing here, and of what they had been conversing when
interrupted. An exceedingly lovely girl she was, as the engineer had
instantly perceived; her features molded in soft lines and curves that
enchanted, a tint like that of peach petals in her cheeks, with warm,
sensitive lips and brown, shining eyes--a radiant, intelligent face.
Against the background of the place, the creek bed of sand and stones
and the banks fringed with dusty sagebrush, she glowed with the
freshness of a desert rose.
The driver of the car took a step toward Bryant, extending the bucket.
"Dip me some water out of that hole while I look at my tires, will you?"
he said.
At the words, which were rather more of a command than a request, the
engineer regarded him fixedly while the blood stirred beneath his tan,
but finally took the bucket. The other turned back to the car, where he
made a pretense of inspecting a front wheel and then, with a foot on the
running-board and elbow resting on knee, twisting indolently a point of
his small moustache, he began to converse with his companion of the
blue veil.
Bryant filled the radiator. Two trips to the pool were necessary to

obtain enough water for that purpose, but he finished the job with the
same thoroughness that he went through with any business once
undertaken, whether pleasant or otherwise. As he poured the contents
of the bucket into the radiator's spout, he took stock of the automobile
party. His face hardened with a slight contempt when he considered the
effeminate-appearing young Mexican who had bade him bring water
and the girl talking with him; which she must have noticed and taken to
herself, for when their eyes met he saw that a flush dyed her cheeks and
that she bit her lip nervously.
He snapped the radiator cap shut. At the click the man stopped
fingering his moustache, ended his talk, mounted to his seat, and started
the engine. Bryant handed him the bucket, folded flat again, which the
recipient tossed down by his feet.
"Here, my man," said the olive-skinned young fellow at the wheel, with
a forefinger and thumb searching a waistcoat pocket as the car began
slowly to move forward.
He tossed a quarter to the engineer. Bryant instinctively caught it, as
one catches any suddenly thrown object. For an instant he remained
transfixed, incredulous, astounded, then the blood flamed in his face
and he cast the coin back at its donor.
"No Mexican can throw money to me!" he exclaimed.
For answer he received an angry look and snarled word from the driver.
Beyond the man Bryant beheld the startled, embarrassed, and yet
interested face of the girl with the veil, her lips a little parted, her eyes
intent on him. Then the car lurched out of the sand, splashed through
the rivulet, ascended the inclined roadway of the creek bank, and sped
from view.
The sudden spark of antagonism flashing between the engineer and the
young Mexican made the two girls by the ponies acutely aware that the
horseman after all was a stranger, a man of whom they knew nothing,
an unknown quantity. And so the two exchanged a glance and drew on
their gauntlets and said they must be riding home. Thereupon Bryant

assisted them to mount.
As he separated from them to follow the trail up the creek to the ranch
house by the