CHAPTER XIX
Imogene Chandler was washing the breakfast dishes out under the canopy of arrow-weed roof, where they ate summer and winter. The job was quickly done, for the breakfast service was very abbreviated. She took a broad-brimmed straw hat from a nail on the corner post, and swinging it in her hand, for the sun was yet scarcely over the rim of the Red Buttes far to the east, went out across the field to where her father was already at work.
March is the middle of spring in the Imperial Valley and already the grass grew thick beside the water ditches, and leaves were full grown on the cottonwood trees. The sunlight, soft through the dewy early morning, filled the whole valley with a yellow radiance. And out along the water course a meadowlark sang.
The girl threw up her arm swinging the hat over her head. She wanted to shout. She felt the sweeping surge of spring, the call of the wind, the glow of the sunlight, the boundless freedom of the desert. She had never felt so abounding in exuberant hope. It had been hard work to hold on to this lease, a fight for bread at times. But wealth was here in this soil and in this sun. And more than wealth. There was health and liberty in it. No heckling social restrictions, no vapid idle piffle at dull teas; no lugubrious pretence of burdensome duties. Here one slept and ate and worked and watched the changing light, and breathed the desert air and lived. It was a good world.
The girl stopped and crumbled some of the newly plowed earth under the toe of a trim shoe. How queer that after all these hundreds and thousands of years the stored chemicals of this land should be released, and turned by those streams of water into streams of wealth—fleecy cotton, luscious fruit and melons, food and clothes. And what nice people lived out here. The Chinamen who worked in the field, quaint and friendly and faithful. Even the Mexicans with their less industrious and more tricky habits were warm hearted and courteous. That serenading Madrigal was very interesting—and handsome. He had fire in him; perhaps dangerous fire, but what a contrast to the vapid white-collared clerks or professors in the prim little eastern town she had known.
Of course Bob Rogeen did not like him. Imogene instinctively put up her hand and brushed the wind-blown hair from her forehead, and smiled.
Bob was jealous.
But what a man Rogeen was! She had believed there were such men so unobtrusively generous and chivalrous. But no one she had ever known before was quite like Bob Rogeen. She remembered the black hair that clustered thickly over his temples, and the whimsical twist of his mouth, and the reticent but unafraid brown eyes.
She had thought many, many times of Rogeen, and always it seemed that he filled in just what was wanting in this desert—warmth of human fellowship. Always she thought of him just north over there—out of sight but very near. True he came very rarely. She wrinkled her forehead and rubbed the end of her nose with a forefinger. Why was that? Why didn't he come oftener? Wasn't she interesting? Didn't he approve of her?
A reassuring warmth came up to her face and neck. Yes, she believed he did. His eyes looked it when he thought she was not noticing.
Holy Joe shanghaies Imogene's ranchmen and discovers Percy—a willing ally.
She reached down and picked up a stick and threw it with a quick, impulsive gesture into the water and watched it float on down the ditch. Yes, she was pretty sure Rogeen liked her—but how much? Oh, well—she took a dozen girlish skips along the path, her hair flying about her face, and her heart dancing with the early sun on the green fields before her and the brown desert beyond—oh, well, time would tell.
"Daddy," she had come up to where the little bald-headed man was plowing—throwing up the ridges, "don't you like spring?"
The ex-professor stopped the team, looked at her through his glasses, then glanced around the field at the grass and weeds and early plants that were up.
"I believe," he said, mildly, "that we are approaching the vernal equinox. But I had not observed before the gradual unfoldment of vegetation which we have come to associate in our minds with spring."
"Oh, daddy, daddy," she laughed deliciously, and leaned over the handle of the plow and pulled his ear. "You funny, funny man. Why, it's spring, it's spring! Don't you feel it in your bones? Don't you love the whole world and everybody?"
Professor Chandler seriously contemplated the skyline, where the sunlight showed red on the distant buttes. "I should say, daughter, that it does give one a feeling of kinship with nature. I fancy the early Greeks felt it."
"I fancy they did," said Imogene, "especially if they were in love."
"In love?" The professor brought his spectacles around to his daughter questioningly.
"With everything," she said, laughing. "Daddy, I'm awfully glad we are back to the soil—instead of back to the Greeks."
"I am not discontent with our environment." And the little professor plowed on. She smiled maternally at his back. And then two swift tears sprang to her eyes. Tender tears.
"Dear old daddy. It has been good for him. He would have dried up and blown away in that little old college."
Returning to the shack she was still bareheaded. She loved the feel of the sun, and the few freckles it brought only added a piquancy to her face.
"I wonder if he"—she meant Rogeen—"will make it go this year. I hope he has a good crop. It makes one feel that maybe after all things are as they ought to be when a man like he succeeds. Wonder what his plans are?"
Then as she sat down in the shade and began a little very necessary mending:
"I do wish he'd come over—and tell me some more about cotton crops—and himself."