It merely illustrates Patricia’s firmness with herself that she did not add her reason for hating Los Angeles. In May she had loved it better than any other place on earth.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH THIS PLACE?”
With his beautifully typed AGREEMENT OF CONTRACT in his inner coat pocket, and two hundred dollars of Patricia’s money in his purse, James Blaine Hawkins set out from Los Angeles to drive overland to Johnnywater, Nevada. He knew no more of Johnnywater than Patricia had told him, but he had worked through three haying seasons on a big cattle ranch in King County, California, and he felt qualified to fulfill his share of the agreement, especially that clause concerning two thirds of the increase of the stock and other profits from the ranch.
James Blaine Hawkins belonged to that class of men which is tired of working for wages. A certain percentage of that class is apparently tired of working for anything; James Blaine Hawkins formed a part of that percentage. His idea of raising range cattle was the popular one of sitting in the shade and watching the cattle grow. In all sincerity he agreed with Patricia that one simply cannot lose money in cattle.
I am going to say right here that James Blaine Hawkins owned many of the instincts for villainy. He actually sat in Patricia’s trustful presence and wondered just how far the law protected an absent owner of squatter’s rights on a piece of unsurveyed land. He thought he would look it up. He believed that the man who lives on the place is the real squatter, and that Waddell, in leaving Johnnywater, had legally abandoned the place and had no right to sell his claim on it to Patricia or any one else.
James Blaine Hawkins did not look Patricia in the eyes and actually plan to rob her of Johnnywater, but he did sit there and wonder who would have the best title to the place, if he went and lived there for a year or two, and Patricia failed to live there at all. To James Blaine Hawkins it seemed but common justice that the man who lived on a ranch so isolated, and braved the hardships of the wilderness, should acquire unqualified title to the land. He did not discuss this point, however, with Patricia.
Patricia’s two hundred dollars had been easily obtained as an advance for supplies, which, under the terms of the contract, Patricia was to furnish. So James Blaine Hawkins was almost enthusiastic over the proposition and couldn’t see why three or four years at the most shouldn’t put him on Easy Street, which is rainbow’s end for all men of his type.
He made the trip without mishap to Las Vegas, and was fortunate enough to find there a man who could—and did—give him explicit directions for reaching Johnnywater. And along about four o’clock on the afternoon of the fourth day, Patricia’s new partner let down a new wire gate in the mended fence across the cañon just above the water hole, and gazed about him with an air of possession before he got into the car and drove on to the cabin. He did not know, of course, that the gate was very new indeed, or that the fence had been mended less than a week before. He was therefore considerably astonished when a young man with his sleeves rolled to his elbows and the wind blowing through his hair came walking out of the grove to meet him.
James Blaine Hawkins frowned. He felt so much the master of Johnnywater that he resented the sight of a trespasser who looked so much at home as did Gary Marshall. He grunted a gruff hello in response to Gary’s greeting, drove on into the dooryard and killed his engine.
Gary turned back and came close to the car. He was rather quick at reading a man’s mood from little, indefinable signs which would have been overlooked by another man. Something in the general attitude of James Blaine Hawkins spelled insolence which Gary instinctively challenged.