CHAPTER V
A GAME OF CHECKERS
THE uneasy mood of the desert, the wind-blown sand, drove people indoors the next morning. Rickard was served a substantial, indifferently cooked breakfast in the dining-room of the Desert Hotel, whose limitations were as conspicuous to the newcomer as they were non-existent to the other men. They were finding it a soft contrast to sand-blown tents, to life in the open.
Later, he wandered through the group of staring idlers in the office, past the popular soda-stand and the few chair-tilters on the sidewalk, going on, as if without purpose, to the railroad sheds, and then on, down to the offices of the Desert Reclamation Company. He discovered it to be the one engaging spot in the hastily thrown-together town. There were oleanders, rose and white, blooming in the patch of purple blossoming alfalfa that stood for a lawn. Morning-glories clambered over the supports of the veranda, and on over the roof. Rickard’s deductions led him to the Hardins.
What school of experience had so changed the awkward country fellow? He had resented his rivalry, not that he was a rival, but that he was a boor. His kisses still warm on her lips, and she had turned to welcome, to coquet with Tom Hardin! The woman who was to be his wife must be steadier than that! It had cooled his fever. Not for him the aspen who could shake and bend her pretty boughs to each rough breeze that blew!
Men tossed into a desert, fighting to keep a foothold, do not garland their offices with morning-glories! Was it the gracious quiet influence of a wife, a Gerty Hardin? The festive building he was approaching was as unexpected—as Captain Brandon! Rickard walked on, smiling.
He was fairly blown into the outer room, the door banging behind him. Every one looked up at the noisy interruption. There were several men in the long room. Among them two alert, clean-faced youths, college-graduates, or students out on furlough, the kind of stuff in his class at Lawrence. Three of the seasoned, road-coached type were leaning their chairs against the cool thick walls. One was puffing at a cigar. The other, a big shy giant, was drawing clouds of comfort from a pipe. There was a telegraph operator at work in one end of the room, her instrument rapidly clicking. In an opposite corner was a telephone exchange. A girl with a metal band around her forehead was punching connections between the valley towns. Rickard lost the feeling of having gone into a remote and isolated region. The twin towns were on the map.
One of the older men returned his nod. The young men returned their hastily withdrawn attention to their game of checkers. The other smoker was watching with cross-eyed absorption the rings his cigar was sending into the air. Rickard might not have been there.
One of the checker players looked up.
“Anything I can do for you? Do you want to see any one in particular?”
“No,” it was admitted. “No one in particular. I was just looking round.”