The Iron Furrow | Page 7

that's certain," Lee Bryant remarked.
"It's hard luck that your band ran down just when the price of mutton
and wool is going up. So you're letting the ranch slide?"
"Yes, I can't pay the mortgage; Menocal would foreclose at once if I
tried to stay. Last time I was in town he asked me about paying it off
and when I told him I shouldn't be able to do that, he said he'd have me
deed it back to him to save foreclosure proceedings. And he was
smiling, too. He knew all the time that he'd get the ranch back; and
when he does, he'll sell it to some other sucker."
"Both of us have wished a hundred times that we'd never sold our
Illinois farm to come here," Mrs. Stevenson said, plaintively. "I don't
know what we'll do when we go back, for that matter. Just rent a place,
I guess. Land is so high-priced there that we'll never be able to buy a
farm again."
"Renting there is better than starving here," her husband declared.
"We'll have a better home, too. When we first came to this place, we
planned on building a fine house, but I never had the money loose, and
we've just kept on from year to year living in this 'dobe hole. Good
thing I didn't have the money, however, for we'd lose the house along
with the ranch if we had built. Well, we're going back East, anyhow, as
soon as I sell the sheep. Graham, who has the big ranch on Diamond
Creek, south of where those girls are homesteading, is coming up in a
day or two to look at them, maybe buy them. You can see Graham's big
white house from the Kennard trail."

Bryant nodded. "I know the place, saw it when passing," said he. Then
he went on, "When I was at the ford watering my horse before coming
here, an auto crossed the creek. In the rear seat were a fat Mexican,
whom I took to be Menocal, and a white man with a pointed beard. The
latter perhaps was Graham?"
"Yes, that must have been him. Which way were they driving?"
"South."
"Going to the Graham ranch, I s'pose."
"There was a slim young fellow driving the car--some Mexican blood
in him," Lee stated.
"Menocal's son, Charlie, a half-breed snippet who puts on airs because
his father's rich," Stevenson said, in a disgusted tone. "A white woman
married Menocal, you know."
"In the front seat with the young fellow was a girl, rather pretty,"
Bryant appended.
"That's Louise, I imagine," Mrs. Stevenson said, reflectively. "Yes, it
must have been her. She's Mr. Graham's daughter. A nice girl, too. That
Menocal boy is crazy to marry her, the talk is."
"And is she crazy to marry him?" Lee inquired, amused by this gossip.
"Well, not exactly crazy, I'd say; I don't see how she could be. But he'll
be worth a lot of money some day, and she may overlook considerable
on that account. Menocal's boy has been to college; besides, the family
goes everywhere with white folks. I guess a Mexican is supposed to be
really white, isn't he?"
"Those having pure Spanish blood," the engineer explained. "Nearly all
the ones around here that I've seen have more Indian in them than
anything else, however, with a dash of other races perhaps. From the
glimpse I had of Menocal, I'll venture to say he has Red men among his

ancestors."
"Mexican or Indian or whatever he is, he can squeeze money out of
nothing, like a Jew," Stevenson complained. "Look how much he has
made out of this ranch; look at what he has made out of me! And it's
just that way with everything he holds. The Mexicans all around this
section sell him their stuff cheap and take what he pays, because they
don't know any better and because he's their leader. He has the big store
at Bartolo, which you've seen, and owns the bank there, and has any
number of farms up and down the Pinas River, and runs I don't know
how many bands of sheep; and besides, he elects the county officers,
and fixes the taxes to suit himself, and recommends the water inspector
for this district, and--and--well, what chance has an ordinary man to get
ahead here?"
Lee Bryant let a pause ensue. He rolled a cigarette and struck a light
and carefully got the tobacco to burning.
"You say you're going to let the ranch go back to Menocal," he stated,
abruptly. "You've made up your mind that you won't keep it, anyway.
All right. Now I've a proposition to make you."
Stevenson looked at him with curiosity.
"A proposition? What is it?" he asked.
"It's this: I've a