“Is he really mad? Do they get over it?”
“They get over it!” He did not tell her how! To divert her, he told her that these were the men for whom Porter had been scouring Zacatecas.
“Mexicans don’t take kindly to a contract when it means arrow-weed. Rickard’s Indians haven’t come yet, the men Forestier’s promised; he’s the Indian agent. The hoboes are still wandering in, but not in the numbers we expected. Rickard was right. You can’t count on that sort of labor.”
Rickard was right? She glanced sharply at the beautiful face of her companion. Then who was wrong? She was growing sensitive, ready for a slight to hit her brother.
“If they go, I wouldn’t swap places with Rickard.” The Mexican was moody.
For the first time, she forgot to notice the incongruity of his speech. His years at an American college had given him a vocabulary which belied his nationality. She was resenting his concern. Every one thinking of Rickard! What responsibility was his? He was here to direct the work, but if it failed, was the stigma not all her brother’s? She flamed into speech.
“It’s a snap for him, for Mr. Rickard,” she cried. “All the pioneering, the breaking of earth has been done! Your father, Mr. Estrada, and my brother paved the way for him. With the entire equipment of a great organization like the O. P. behind him—money, men, everything, it isn’t fair. He’ll walk in and win, and the world will think he did it.”
“You wouldn’t like it to fail, would you? And it’s not so easy as you think, Miss Hardin.” He was carefully picking his way. “He’s told he has a free hand, but he hasn’t. The work’s stopped up there at Laguna; there’s no use going on with that until we make good. If we can’t control the river here, their quicksand works go, but you know that?”
She nodded. Tom had told her all that.
“Those men are swarming in here like bees to honey. They’ve been told to help, and then they are curious. They have all got ideas of their own. And they’re talking and writing to the higher-ups. It all gets back to Rickard, sooner or later.”