CHAPTER VI
Three days after Bob had returned from Los Angeles and found that Reedy Jenkins had bought the Benson lease, he rode up from the Mexican side and jumped off in front of the hardware store. Dayton was talking to the old man with bushy eyebrows and a linen duster.
"Here's Rogeen now," said the implement dealer. "Mr. Crill was just inquiring about you, Bob."
The two men shook hands.
"How you comin'?" asked the old man, his blue eyes looking sharply into Rogeen's.
"I'm starting in on my own," replied Bob; "going to raise cotton over the line."
"Why?" The heavy brows worked frowningly.
"Got to win through." Bob's brows also contracted and he shook his head resolutely. "And I can't do it working by the month. Some men can, but I can't."
"See that?" The old gentleman pointed to a tractor with ten plows attached. "That's success. Those plows are good and the engine is good; but it's only when they are hooked up together they are worth twenty teams and ten men. That's the way to multiply results—hook good things together. Resolution and hard work aren't enough. Got to have brains. Got to use 'em. Organize your forces.
"Don't tell me," the old chap spoke with some heat, "that a man who uses his brains and by one day's work makes something that saves a million men ten days' work is only entitled to one day's pay. Not a bit of it. He's entitled to part of what he saves every one of those million men. That's the difference between a little success and a big success. The little one makes something for himself; the big one makes something for a thousand men—and takes part of it. Has a right to. Those Chinamen across the line get sixty-five cents a day. If you can manage them so they earn a dollar and a half a day and give them a dollar and thirty cents of it and keep twenty cents, you are a public benefactor as well as a smart man. That is the way to do it; use your brains to increase other men's production and take a fair per cent. of it, and you'll be both rich and honest."
Bob's brown eyes were eagerly attentive. He liked this cryptic old man. This was real stuff he was talking; and it was getting at the bottom of Rogeen's own problem. All these years he had tried to produce value single-handed. But to win big, he must think, plan, organize so as to make money for many people, and therefore entitle himself to large returns.
"I'm going to try that very thing," he said. "I've just leased one hundred and sixty acres. Half already planted in cotton, and I'm going to plant the rest."
Bob was proud of his achievement. He had been really glad he failed to get the Red Butte Ranch. It was entirely too big to tackle without capital or experience. But he had found a rancher anxious to turn loose his lease for about half what he had spent improving it. Rogeen then convinced a cotton-gin man that he was a good risk; and offered to give him ten per cent. interest, half the cotton seed, and to gin the crop at his mill if he would advance money sufficient to buy the lease and raise the crop. The gin man had agreed to do it.
Crill jerked his head approvingly. "Good move. That's the way to go at it. Think first, then work like the devil at the close of a revival."
Crill paused, and then asked abruptly:
"Know a man named Jenkins?"
"Yes," replied Bob.
"Is he safe?"
Bob grinned. "About as safe as a rattlesnake in dog days."
As Jim Crill stalked up the outside stairway of Reedy Jenkins' office, the wind whipping the tail of the linen duster about his legs, he carried with him two very conflicting opinions of Reedy—Mrs. Barnett's and Bob Rogeen's. Maybe one of them was prejudiced—possibly both. Well, he would see for himself.
Reedy jumped up, gave his head a cordial fling, and grabbed Jim Crill's hand as warmly as though he were chairman of the committee welcoming the candidate for vice-president to a tank-station stop. Reedy remembered very distinctly meeting Mr. Crill in Chicago five years ago. In fact, Mr. Crill had for a long time been Mr. Jenkins' ideal of the real American business man—shrewd, quick to think, and fearless in action; willing to take a chance but seldom going wrong.
"Evy said you wanted to see me about borrowing some money," the old man dryly interrupted the flow of eloquence.
"Yes—why, yes." Reedy brought up suddenly before he had naturally reached his climax, floundered for a moment. "Why, yes, we have an investment that I thought would certainly interest you." Reedy had decided not only to get the old man to finance the Red Butte purchase but his whole project.
He began to explain his maps and figures as volubly as though he were selling the Encyclopedia Britannica, and again the old man cut in:
"How many acres you got leased?"
"Ten thousand—practically." Reedy paused to answer, his pencil touching the Dillenbeck Canal.
"What did you pay for them?"
"I got most of them for about a third to half what they cost the ranchers."
"Why did they sell so cheap?"
"Oh," Reedy waved, vaguely evasive, "you know how that is; fellows are like sheep—stampede into a country, and then one makes a break, and they stampede out. Now that Benson has sold, a lot more of them will get cold feet."
"Altogether how much money have you put in over there?"
"Forty-two thousand dollars," replied Reedy, consulting a memorandum. "You understand," he continued to explain, "I'm not a cotton grower at all; I am an investor. I'm dealing in leases; and I merely took over the planted crop on the Benson leases because I got it so cheap there is bound to be money in it."
"What is it you want?" demanded Crill.
"Seventy thousand or so for the lease and the crop. I have 8,000 acres already planted, some of it coming up. I'll pay you 10 per cent. for the money, and half the cotton seed, and give you first mortgage on the crop. Those are the usual terms here."
The sharp blue eyes under the shaggy brows had been investigating Reedy as they talked. He wanted to make loans, for he had a lot of idle money. "There are two sorts of men who pay their debts," the old man said to himself. "One who wants to owe more, and one who doesn't want to owe anything." Jenkins would want to borrow more, therefore he would pay his first loan. Even rascals are usually good pay when they are making money. And it looked like this fellow would make money on these leases. Anyway, Jim Crill moved a little annoyedly in his chair at the thought of his niece. It would be almost worth the risk to be rid of Evy's nagging him about it.
"Fix up the papers," he said, shortly, to Reedy's delight. He had expected to have to work much harder on the old man.
The next morning after the interview with Jim Crill Bob was at the hardware store assembling the implements he had bought, when a tall, shambling hill billy sauntered up.
"Hello, Noah Ezekiel Foster," said Bob, without looking up.
"Hello," responded the hill billy. "Reckon you know a hoss at long range."
"Reckon I do." Bob resumed his whistling.
"Don't also know somebody that wants a chauffeur for a tractor? Benson sold out my job."
"No." Bob straightened up and looked at the lank fellow appraisingly. "But I know a fellow who wants a chauffeur for a team of mules."
Noah Ezekiel shook his head. "Me and mules have parted ways a long time ago. I prefer gasoline." Then in a moment: "Who is the fellow?"
Bob grinned and tapped himself. "I'm the man."
Noah Ezekiel shook his head again.
"You look too all-fired industrious; I'd rather work for a fellow that lives at Los Angeles."
Bob laughed. "Just as you like."
But Noah Ezekiel ventured one more question:
"You workin' for Reedy Jenkins?"
"Not much!" Bob put emphasis in that.
"Where is your ranch?"
"On the road a couple of miles north of Chandler's."
The hill billy's forehead wrinkled and his eyes looked off into empty space.
"I reckon I'll change my mind. I'll take the job. How much am I gettin' a month?"