There came a butterless epoch; a horrid gap. Ling did not manage right. Butterless toast and broiled chicory! Small wonder the manager foraged for his meals. Somehow, the thought of Rickard living as did Hardin in times of stress, as the bird of the air, did not occur to the woman who thought of Rickard as different, a gentleman who required luxury. She had created a man from her own imaginings; she was evolving a woman to meet the approbation of her creation.
A dinner of pale oily beans, followed by a dessert of prunes swimming in a pallid sirup, gave her a morning of reflection. The Hamlin kitchen was giving her uneasiness. Her own abilities, unoccupied, were ironic. She worked out a mission as she lay across her bed that hot afternoon.
“To justify my being here.” A phrase of Innes recurred to her; it became now her own.
Her duty became so clear that she could no longer lie still. Immediately, she must retrieve her weeks of idleness; what must Rickard think of her? In spite of the scorching space that lay between her tent and the ramada, of the sun beating down like burning hail on the glittering sand, she must dress and seek out Rickard.
She buttoned herself thoughtfully into a frock of pale-colored muslin, cream slipping toward canary. White was too glaring on a red-hot day like this. Pink was too hot, blue too definite. Pity the lavender dress was still a fabric of dreams! A parasol of pastel green, and she looked like a sprig of fragrant mignonette. The exertion of dressing brought the perspiration to her face. It had to be carefully dusted with powder. Strange, how she used to think the summers of the desert insupportable. After a torrid season of New York in her toy apartment, that humid sticky heat, that shut-oven of smells, this was to be borne. Already, the desert was improving; for she herself had not changed, of course.
It was the ice! She decided that any place could be endured once ice is procurable. Even bad butter is disguised when frozen into bricks. Her thoughts rounded the circle, brought her back to her grievances. Ling certainly needed help.
She found the open space of the trapezium swarming with strange dark faces. So silent their coming, she had not heard the arrival of the tribes. Over by Ling’s coveted mesquits gathered an increasing group of bucks with their pinto ponies which had carried them across a country of glaring distances. She isolated the Cocopahs, stately as bronze statues, their long hair streaming, or wound, mud-caked under brilliant head-cloths. Foregathering with them were men of other tribes; these must be the Yumas and Deguinos, the men needed on the river. Tom had told her that the long-haired tribes were famous for their water-craft. These were the men who were to work on the rafts, weave the great mattresses. A squad of short-haired Pimas with their squaws and babies and their gaudy bundles, gaped at the fair-haired woman as she passed. They were dazed and dizzy from their first long railroad ride. The central space was filling up with Pimas and Maricopas, Papagoes, too; she knew them collectively by their short hair. These were the brush-cutters to replace the stampeding peons. This, then, meant the beginning of real activity. Tom would at last be satisfied. He would no longer sulk and rage alternately at the hold-up of the work.
It began to look dramatic to her. She picked her way through the stolid groups, the children and squaws staring at her finery, at the queer color of her hair. The value of the enterprise pricked at her consciousness. And she was going to help it; in her own way, but that was the womanly way! She wished that she had thought of it before.
Her bright darting glance discovered MacLean under one of Ling’s mesquits. He was poring over some of his own hieroglyphs in his stenographic pad. One of her bright detached smiles reached him. He followed her direction, his mouth puckering.
Before she reached the ramada, she saw that another woman was there. She caught an impassioned gesture. Her only surmise rested on Innes. The visitor, following Rickard’s eyes, turned. Gerty saw that she was dark; she looked the half-breed. The brown woman drew back as the white woman entered. Gerty smiled an airy reassurance. She herself would wait. She did not want to be hurried. She told Rickard that she had plenty of time.