“One would think he’d been brought up in a convent, he finds the valley so distracting. Time to go to dinners. Sickening!”
MacLean did not understand the allusion.
“He said,” MacLean hesitated, wondering if the statement had been a confidence. But Bodefeldt had been there. “He said something about a levee for the towns. He’s got to investigate that before he goes to the front.”
“A levee? Well, wouldn’t that jar you?” Hardin addressed the stenographer in the transparent shirt-waist. “Does he think we’re going to have another flood this season? Thinks it’s going to reach the hotel and wet his clothes? Take the starch out of his shirts?” He flung out of his chair, throwing the papers back into a drawer.
He stamped out of the office, mad clear through. To this crisis they had sent down a dandy, a bookman who wanted to build a levee. Oh, hell! He laughed out his bitterness aloud, and did not care that Coulter, who kept the store, and two gaily dressed squaws turned to look after him. For it was a crisis, and the O. P. was making it so. They should have learned their lesson by this time. Trust Maitland? And now, Rickard!
“They’ll come crawling after me to help them after this fellow’s buried himself under river mud, come calling to me as they did after Maitland failed. ‘Please, Mr. Hardin, won’t you come back and finish your gate!’ I’ll see them dead first. No, I’ll be fool enough to do it. I can’t help myself. I’m a Hardin. I have to finish what I’ve begun.”
It was not because this was a pet enterprise, the great work of his life, that he must eagerly eat humble pie, take the buffets, the falls, and come whining back when they whistled to him. He told himself that it was because of his debt to the valley, to the ranchers. He saw himself sacrificing everything to a great obligation. “Who was the Bible fellow who led his people across the desert? I must polish up my Bible,” he resolved. He remembered that he had not opened one since his mother’s death, and that was so long past that the thought brought no physical thrill.
The colonists were about desperate. Who could blame them? The last year’s floods had worked havoc with their crops; this year had been a horror. The district they called Number Six was a screaming irony of ruin. The last debauch of the river had made great gashes through the ranches, had scoured deep gorges which had undermined the canals on which the water supply for Number Six depended. The suits were piling up against the D. R., damage suits, and they hold up his gate, while he gets the curses of the valley. And Mr. Rickard thinks he’ll build a levee!
Hardin was in the mood to fancy slights. He was convinced that Petrie went back into the bank to avoid him. Two ranchers, Hollister and Wilson, from the Palo Verde, busy with their teams, did not return his halloo. The ranchers hated him. “That’s what you get for crucifying yourself.”
He flung himself on the couch in the tent. Gerty was laying a careful cloth for supper. A brave determined smile was arranged on her lips. The noon storm had passed. She hummed a gay little tune. If there was anything Hardin hated, it was humming.