“It’s the show place of Calexico. I’ll take you around. It is the only place in town that is comfortable when it’s hot, or when the wind blows, and that’s the program all summer. Take my place, Pete.”
Pete, the young giant, with the face of his infancy enlarged rather than matured, slipped into the vacant chair. He had been the first to discover the stranger, but he had evaded the responsibility. The game immediately absorbed him.
“It’s nice here,” repeated the young fellow, leading the way. They were followed by a few idle glances.
Rickard looked with approval at the tall slim figure which was assuming the courtesy of the towns. The fine handsome face was almost too girlish, the muscles of the mouth too sensitive yet for manly beauty, but he liked the type. Lithe as a young desert-reared Indian, his manner and carriage told of a careful home and rigid school discipline.
It was the type Rickard liked, he was thinking, because it was the type he understood. He preferred the rapier to the bludgeon, the toughened college man to the world-veneered man of the field. He revered the progress of a Jefferson or a Hamilton; he would always distrust the evolution of a contemporary Lincoln. It is easier, he maintained, to skip classes, or grades in world discipline, than in a rigorous college. This was the kind which in his own classes had attracted him. He had missed them in his years on the road—in Mexico, Wyoming, North Dakota, where rough material had been his to shape.
He was ushered into a large cool room. The furnishings he inventoried: a few stiff chairs, a long table and a typewriter desk, closed for the Sabbath.
“The stenographer’s room,” announced the lad superfluously.
“Whose stenographer?”
“General property, now. Every one has a right to use her time. She used to be Hardin’s, the general manager’s. She is his still, in a way. But Ogilvie keeps her busy most of the time.”
Rickard had not heard of Ogilvie. He made a mental register.