The Iron Furrow | Page 4

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 three cottonwoods, Ruth Gardner called to him not to forget his promised visit to their cabins. He assured them he should remember. When the girls were some distance off, they waved across the sagebrush at him and he swung his hat in reply. Off then the pair went at a gallop, with the automobile on the road far south of them leaving a hazy streamer of dust above