“The order’s from Tucson.” Rickard yawned covertly.
“A child’s order!” exploded Hardin. “Why doesn’t Marshall come and see for himself? Brush jetties! It will never stand!”
“He is coming.” Rickard wrinkled the sleep out of his eyes. “He will be here next week.”
“It’s a crime!” Hardin unfolded his map, spreading it over the table. A bottle of ink was upset in his eagerness. Rickard was thoroughly awake by the time he had mopped the purple black flood with towels and blotting-paper. Hardin recovered his map, but slightly damaged. Two of Rickard’s books were ruined.
“See here,” cried Hardin, still excited. “Calculate that distance. If this is a farce, Marshall ought to say so.” He pulled a chair up to the ink-stained table. “Brush aprons! He’s wasting our time, and the company’s money.”
Rickard resigned himself to a long argument. It was three o’clock when Hardin let him turn in.
When he was getting ready for bed, he remembered the melodramatic scene Hardin had entered upon. He stared comprehendingly at the screen door—seeing, with understanding, Hardin’s coarse sneer—the Maldonado, breathing fast, her hand over her heart. “Of course, he’ll think—good lord, these people will make me into an old woman! I don’t care what the whole caboodle of them think!”
Five minutes after blowing out his candle, he was deeply sleeping.
CHAPTER XXX
SMUDGE
FROM her tent, where she was writing a letter that lagged somehow, Innes Hardin had seen Rickard go to her sister’s tent. She did not need to analyze the sickness of sight that watched the dancing step acknowledge its intention. It meant wretchedness, for Tom. At a time when he most needed gentleness and sympathy, rasped as he was by his humiliations and disappointments—how could any woman be so cruel? As for Rickard, he was beneath contempt—if it were true, Gerty’s story, told in shrugs and dashes. She had jilted him for Tom; and this his revenge? Did it hang together, if he still loved her? Loved Gerty? How was it that those clear-sighted, quizzical eyes had not at once penetrated her flimsy evasions, her deviousness? Could he ever have cared, or was the story a web of vanity? Still caring, what would be the end of it all?