Hardin, from his morose unshared table, could see the anxious curiosity setting toward the railroad group. Over glasses, heads were close together. Near him, the talk ran high. Scraps of inflammable speeches blew his way from Barton’s party.
Hardin’s mouth wore a set sneer. “Water company talk!” Black was haranguing his comrades. “Stand out against them. Don’t let them bluff you. Marshall will try to bluff you. Stand together!” Barton’s resonant organ broke through the clatter. “Marshall is not going to bluff us.” Grace and Black began to talk at once. Hardin’s lip grew rougher. Where had they all been if it had not been for him? Why, he’d pulled them from their little farms back East, where they were toiling—where they’d be toiling yet. They’d had the vision of sudden wealth—they hadn’t the grit to work for it, to wait for it! How many years had he been struggling? He was a young man when he’d gone into this thing, and he was old now.
His eyes fell on Hollister from the Palo Verde, with Youngberg and his wife, who in pale gray cloth looked as though she were on her way to a reception. He scowled at the leveling of gold lorgnettes in Morton’s group—the eastern swells there for a possible sensation! And Senator Graves had thought it important enough to come down from Los Angeles? The tall duffer with him, his head gleaming like a billiard ball, was probably the New York lawyer who was dickering for the A B C ranch. He had read of it in the Los Angeles papers; a big syndicate thought this the time to get in cheap, when confidence was at a low ebb. “It’s high-water mark with Graves, or nothing,” scowled Hardin. “He’s no spring chicken. They’ll all make money out of this valley, but me. I haven’t tried to make money; I’ve made the valley! And is there a more hated man in this room? Sickening!”
Coffee and cigars had been reached of the midday dinner. Babcock was nervously consulting his watch. “Shouldn’t we arrange the meeting?” he asked for the third time. The social and casual air of the meeting had teased him. What had the political situation in Mexico to do with the important session confronting them? His fussy soul had no polite salons; office rooms every one of them. MacLean looked to Tod Marshall to answer.
“I think it will arrange itself,” his voice was silken. “It is to be a discussion, a conference. You can’t slate that.”
“We could program,” began Babcock, looking at his watch again.
“I don’t think we’ll have to.” Marshall smiled across the table. “You’ll find this meeting will run itself. There is not a man here who is not burning to speak. Look at them now! Drop a paper in that crowd, and see the blaze you’d get! You can open the meeting, Mr. Babcock, and I would suggest that you call on Mr. de la Vega first.”
“And next?” Babcock’s nervous pencil hovered over his note-book.
“The rest will resolve itself.” Marshall’s eyes were twinkling. “We’ll find our cue. I’ll kick you under the table when I want to talk. You can’t program against passions, Babcock.”
“But we ought to be starting.” Fussily Babcock marshaled them from their leisurely cigars. “It is getting late.”