CHAPTER XVI
Mrs. Barnett went direct from the bank to Reedy Jenkins' office. As she climbed the outside stairway she was so angry she forgot to watch to see that her skirts did not lift above her shoe tops. As she entered the door her head was held as high and stiff as though she had been insulted by a disobedient cook. White showed around her mouth and the base of her nose, and her nostrils were dilated.
"Why, Mrs. Barnett!" Reedy arose with an oratorical gesture. "What a pleasant surprise. Have a chair."
She took the chair he placed for her without a word and her right hand clutched the wrist of the left. She was breathing audibly.
"Did you see Rogeen?" Jenkins suggested suavely.
"Yes." The tone indicated that total annihilation should be the end of that unworthy creature. But her revenge, like Reedy's expectations, was in the future. She hated to confess this. She breathed hard twice. "And I'll show him whose word counts."
"You don't mean," Reedy swiped his left hand roughly at the wisp of hair on his forehead, "that he disregarded your wishes?"
"He certainly did." Indignation was getting the better of her voice. "The low-lived—the contemptible—common person. And he insulted me with that—that creature."
"Well, of all the gall!" Reedy was quite as indignant as Mrs. Barnett, for very different if more substantial reasons. He had seen more and more that a fight with Rogeen was ahead, a fight to the finish; and the further he went the larger that fight looked. The easiest way to smash a man, Reedy had found, was to deprive him of money. A man can't carry out many schemes unless he can get hold of money. Jenkins had kept a close eye on Jim Crill, and had grown continually more uneasy lest the old chap become too favourably impressed with Rogeen. He had early sensed the old man's weak spot—one of them—Crill hated to be pestered. That was the vulnerable side at which Evelyn Barnett, the niece, could jab. And Reedy had planned all her attacks. This last move of Crill's—hiring Rogeen to lend money for him, had alarmed Reedy more than anything that had happened. For it would give Rogeen a big influence on the Mexican side. Most of the ranchers needed to borrow money, and it would put the man on whose word the loans would be made in mighty high favour. To offset this, Reedy had engineered an attack by Mrs. Barnett on the old gentleman's leisure. She had worried him and nagged him with the argument that he ought not to bother with a lot of business details, but should turn them over to her. She would see to the little things for him. He had reluctantly granted some sort of consent to this, a consent which Evelyn had construed meant blanket authority.
"He flatly refused," Mrs. Barnett was still thinking blisteringly of Bob Rogeen, "to obey my wishes in the matter. I told him plainly," she bit her lips again, "that neither Uncle nor I would consent to money being furnished women like that."
"I should say not." Reedy agreed with unctuous righteousness in his plump face. "And to think of that scalawag, making a loan right in your face, after you had vetoed it."
"He'll never make another." Mrs. Barnett's lips would have almost bit a thread in two. "Just wait until I get to Uncle Jim!"
"I'll drive you up," said Reedy. He reached to the top of the desk for his hat.
"Of course," remarked Reedy on the way, "your uncle is very generous to want to help these fellows across the line that are broke. But they are riff-raff. He will lose every dollar of it. I know them. Good Lord! haven't I befriended them, and helped them fifty ways? And do they appreciate it? Well, I should say not!"
"The more you do for people the less they appreciate it," said Mrs. Barnett still in a bitter mood.
"Some people," corrected Reedy. "There are a few, a very few, who never forget a favour."
"Yes, that is true," assented the widow, and began to relent in her mind, seeing how kind was Mr. Jenkins.
"I'm very sorry," continued Reedy, frowning, "that your uncle has taken up this fellow. I've been looking up Rogeen's past—and he is no good, absolutely no good. Been a drifter all his life. Never had a hundred dollars of his own.
"By the way," Reedy suddenly remembered a coincidence in regard to that undertaker's receipt, "where was it your husband lost the sale of that mine?"
"At Blindon, Colorado."
"By George!" Reedy released the wheel with the right hand and slapped his leg. "I thought so. Do you know who that young man with the fiddle was who ruined your fortune?"
"No." Evelyn Barnett came around sharply.
"Bob Rogeen—that fellow who insulted you this morning."
"No? Not really?" Angry incredulity.
Reedy nodded. "As I told you, I've been looking up his past. And I got the story straight."
"The vile scoundrel!" Mrs. Barnett said, bitterly. "And to think Uncle would trust him with his money."
"We must stop it," said Reedy. "It isn't right that your uncle should be fleeced by this rascal."
"He shan't be!" declared Mrs. Barnett, gritting her teeth.
"There are too many really worthy investments," added Reedy.
"I'll see that this is the last money that man gets," Mrs. Barnett asseverated.
"Your uncle is a little bull headed, isn't he?" suggested Reedy, cautiously. "Better be careful how you approach him."
"Oh, I'll manage him, never fear," she said positively.
Jenkins set Mrs. Barnett down at the entrance to the bungalow court. He preferred that Jim Crill should not see him with her. It might lead him to think Reedy was trying to influence her.
As Mrs. Barnett stalked up the steps, Jim Crill was sitting on the porch in his shirt sleeves, smoking.
"How are you feeling, dear?" she asked, solicitously.
"Ain't feelin'," Crill grunted—"I'm comfortable."
Evelyn sank into a chair, held her hands, and sighed.
"Oh, dear, it is so lonely since poor Tom Barnett died."
Uncle Jim puffed on—he had some faint knowledge of the poor deceased Tom.
"Do you know, Uncle Jim, I made a discovery to-day. The man who kept my poor husband from making a fortune was that person."
"What person?" growled the old chap looking straight ahead.
"That Rogeen person you are trusting your money to."
Jim Crill bit his pipe stem to hide a dry grin. He had often heard the story of the bursted mine sale. He had some suspicions, knowing Barnett, of what the mine really was.
"And, Uncle Jim, of course you won't keep him. Besides, he insulted me this morning."
"How?" It was another grunt.
Evelyn went into the painful details of her humiliation at the bank. "When she got through Uncle Jim turned sharply in his chair.
"Did you do that?"
"Do what?" gasped Evelyn.
"Try to interfere with his loans?"
"Why, why, yes." She was aghast at the tone, ready to shed protective tears. "Didn't you tell me—wasn't I to have charge of the little things?"
"Oh, hell!" Uncle Jim burst out. "Little things, yes—about the house I meant. Not my business. Dry up that sobbing now—and don't monkey any more with my business."
Uncle Jim got up and stalked off downtown.