“That’s the least of it.”
“I hope that he will make a good stenographer! Good morning, gentlemen.”
At table, neither Estrada nor his guest uncovered their active thought which revolved around Hardin and his hurt. Instead, Rickard had questions to ask his host on river history. As they talked, it came to him that something was amiss—Estrada was accurate; he had all his facts. Was it enthusiasm, sympathy, he lacked? Presently he challenged him with it.
Estrada’s eyes dreamed out of the window, followed the gorge of the New River, as though out there, somewhere, the answer hovered.
“Do you mean, do you doubt it?” exclaimed Rickard, watching the melancholy in the beautiful eyes.
Estrada shook his head, but without decision. “Nothing you’d not laugh at. I can laugh at it myself, sometimes.”
Rickard waited, not sure that anything more was coming. The Mexican’s dark eyes were troubled; a puzzle brooded in them. “It’s a purely negative sense that I’ve had, since I was a child. Something falls between me and a plan. If I said it was a veil, it would be—something!” His voice fell to a ghost of tunefulness. “And it’s—nothing. A blank—I know then it’s not going to happen. It is terribly final! It’s happened, often. Now, I wait for that—veil. When it falls, I know what it means.”
“And you have had that—sense about this river business?”
Estrada turned his pensive gaze on the American. “Yes, often. I thought, after father’s death, that that was what it meant. But it came again. It kept coming. I had it while you were all talking, just now. I don’t speak of this. It sounds chicken-hearted. And I’m in this with all my soul—my father—I couldn’t do it any other way, but—”
“You think we are going to fail?”