Despite his protests, she started water boiling in her chafing-dish. He had not time for tea, he declared, but she insisted on making this call of a social nature. She opened a box of sugar wafers, her zeal that of a child with a toy kitchen; she was playing doll’s house.
Rickard made several openings for his errand, but her wits sped like a gopher from his labored digging. He suggested that she was working too hard.
“Oh, I love it,” she declared. “It justifies my being here. I know you must think women a nuisance here at camp, Mr. Rickard. I like to do my little best. And Ling needed help. We get along pretty well. He is crude, of course. What could you expect? I’ve taken the liberty of sending out for some extra things. And that reminds me, has my bundle been heard from? Isn’t that the most mysterious thing? It left Chicago, why, it must be months ago.”
Rickard said that the missing bundle had been last heard from in Tepic; by some stupid mistake, it had got into the hands of the Mexican officials, “who were playing ball with it!”
“The mistake came in having it sent here; this is Mexico; everything gets balled up the instant it crosses the line. If you’d had it sent to Yuma now—but you were speaking of orders, camp orders—”
“I’m not going to trouble you with that,” cried Gerty, filling up his cup with an aromatic blend of tea she had sent for to Los Angeles. So far, it had been wasted on the men of the Service, boys, most of them. She felt more at home with Rickard than ever before. The quizzical, amused glance of appraisement was gone, replaced by an earnestness she misread. She met his mood with womanly dignity; she tutored her coquetries, withheld her archness. She remembered a day when her flirtations had deflected her whole life; she no longer said “ruined.” One battle lost? “Time to fight another!” She placed a wafer or two on his protesting plate.
He brought up Ling’s contrariness, and he found they were discussing the Indians. There were a hundred questions she wanted to ask about them. Was it true the popular impression that they caked their heads with mud to—clean their hair? It was true? How dreadful! She liked to believe that it was some religious custom, a penance of some kind.
Rickard saw another opening. He related his plan of having the camp on the Arizona side of the river to save duties on food stuffs; they ate, the Indians, in Arizona, and slept in old Mexico: “It saves the O. P. a nice little sum every month. It’s not an easy thing to manage a commissary, as you know—”
The new hole was dug, but the gopher was out of sight. She spoke of a new book the critics were praising.
He found he would have to discard diplomacy, blurt out his message; use bludgeons for this scampering agility.