“An outrage!”
“A damned shame!” This from Wooster.
“Hardin’s luck!”
On the other side of the door, Rickard deliberated. The hotel and its curious loungers, or his new office, where Ogilvie was making a great show of occupation? He had not seen Estrada. He was making a sudden dive for his hotel, when the gentle voice of the Mexican hailed him.
“Will you come to my car? It’s on the siding right here. We can have a little lunch, and then look over some maps together. I have some pictures of the river and the gate. They may be new to you.”
Rickard spent the afternoon in the car. The twin towns did not seem so hostile. He thought he might like the Mexican.
Estrada was earning his father’s mantle. He was the superintendent of the road which the Overland Pacific was building between the twin towns and the Crossing; a director of the Desert Reclamation Company; and the head of a small subsidiary company which had been created to protect rights and keep harmonious relation with the sister country. Rickard found him full of meat, and heard, for the first time consecutively, the story of the rakish river. Particularly interesting to him was the relation of Hardin to the company.
“He has the bad luck, that man!” exclaimed Estrada’s soft tuneful voice. “Everything is in his hands, capital is promised, and he goes to New York to have the papers drawn up. The day he gets there, the Maine is destroyed. Of course, capital is shy. He’s had the devil’s own luck with men: Gifford, honest, but mulish; Sather, mulish and not honest—oh, there’s a string of them. Once, he went to Hermosillo to get an option on my father’s lands. They were already covered by an option held by some men in Scotland. Another man would have waited for the three months to pass. Not Hardin. He went to Scotland, thought he’d interest those men with his maps and papers. He owned all the data, then. He’d made the survey.”
Estrada repeated the story Brandon and Marshall had told, with little discrepancy. A friendly refrain followed the narrative. “He has the bad luck, that man!”
“And the Scotched option?” reminded Rickard, smiling at his own poor joke.