The Iron Furrow | Page 9

listen," he began. "You're an older man than I am, but just the same I'm going to say a few things that you need to hear. I couldn't say them and wouldn't say them before your wife, but now I'm going to turn loose. You can do as you damn please about trading, take my offer or leave it; if you refuse, though, you'll lose both ranch and farm. The trouble with you is that you can't see the difference between a good proposition and a bad one. That's why you bought this ranch on say-so. That's why now you're turning down my offer. You either jump without first looking, or you wait until it's too late. You don't pay attention strictly to what's immediately under your hand, but waste your energy wondering if you can't get rich from something out of your reach. That's what has been the trouble with you in the sheep business, I imagine. Here when I offer you a farm for a ranch that's slipping through your fingers, you at once get greedy. Most of the time you don't know your own mind; you hesitate and speculate and vacillate and worry. Why, you deserve to lose your ranch and your sheep and everything else. And your wife suffers for your faults! You're a failure, and you've dragged her down with you. If you're not a failure, and a fool, too, go bring her back into this room and tell her you're going to make this trade, so you two will have a farm and the home she wants and so her mind will be easy once more. You've been thinking of only yourself long enough; now begin to think of her comfort and happiness."
Stevenson came angrily to his feet.
"No man ever talked to me like that before, I'll have you know!" he cried.
The engineer kept his place, with no change of countenance.
"Well, one has talked to you like that now and I'm the man," he said. "And I don't retract a word. It's the truth straight from the shoulder. What are you going to do about it? Why, nothing, just nothing. Because I've talked cold, hard facts, and you know it."
The momentary fire died from Stevenson's eyes. He shuffled his feet for a little, looked about the room with the worried aspect he usually showed, brushed his lips with the back of his hand.
"You're pretty rough----" he began.
"Don't stand there talking; go get your wife," Bryant said, sharply.
Stevenson turned and walked slowly to the closed door. He cleared his throat, stared at the panels for a moment, and at last pushed it open.
"Come out, Sarah, we're going to trade," he announced.
The woman came forth. About her eyes was a slight redness, but on her lips there was a tremulous smile.
"I'm glad," she said, "I'm glad, John."
"Yes, I decided it was a good trade to make," her husband assured her. "No need to think it over longer."
They came to where Bryant stood, unconcealed pleasure showing on Mrs. Stevenson's face.
"You may like to see these kodak pictures of the farm and its house," the young man said, producing an envelope from a pocket. "Take a chair here by the window, Mrs. Stevenson, where you'll have the light. See, this one shows the house, with the trees and lilac bushes in front, and gives you a glimpse of the flower garden. Pretty, don't you think?"
She readjusted her spectacles. After a time she gazed from the pictures through the window at the stretch of sagebrush.
"And I'll have neighbours, too," she said, in an unsteady voice. "The loneliness here was killing me."
Stevenson considered the backs of his hands in awkward silence.
"Neighbours, lots of them," Bryant affirmed.
"I kind of pity you having to stay," she said, looking up at him with a smile.
The engineer laughed.
"Why, this country suits me right down to the ground," he replied. "I've been in the West ten years, wouldn't live anywhere else. And I don't expect to be lonely; Menocal will probably attend to that. Besides, there are two good-looking young ladies just south of here, on Sarita Creek."
"That's so," she said, laughing also.
"First thing we hear, you'll be married," Stevenson remarked, with a quick grin.
"Oh, I'm safe--there are two of them," Bryant returned, clapping the rancher on the shoulder.
CHAPTER III
The town of Bartolo slumbered in the July sunshine. Nothing stirred on its one long street, lined with scarcely a break on either side by mud-plastered houses that made a continuous brown wall, marked at intervals by a door or pierced by a window; nothing stirred, neither in front of Menocal's large frame store at the upper end of it, with the little bank adjoining, nor before the small courthouse grounds across the way, where the huge old cottonwoods spread their shade, nor along the entire