“I used ter know a woman’s love, an’ read a woman’s eyes,
An’ look into my baby’s face an’ dwell in paradise,
Until a comp’ny foreman, plum’ heedless in his mind
Let nitroglycereen explode an’ made me go stone blind.”
Spurrier, half-turning, saw a traveling salesman standing at his elbow with a repressed grin of amusement struggling in his glance.
“Queer card, that,” whispered the drummer. “I’ve seen him before; one of the wrecks left over from the oil-boom days. A ‘go-devil’ let loose too soon and blinded him.” He paused, then added as though by way of apology for his seeming callousness: “Some people say the old boy is a sort of a miser and has a snug pile salted away.”
Spurrier nodded and went on into the office, but later in the day he sought out the blind fiddler and engaged him in conversation. The man’s blinding had left him a legacy of hate for all oil operators, and from such relics as this of the active days Spurrier knew how to evoke scraps of available information. It was not until later that it occurred to him that he had answered questions as well as asked them—but, of course, he had not been indiscreet.
With John Spurrier, riding across hills afoam with dogwood blossom and tenderly vivid with young green, went persistently the thought of the blind beggar who seemed almost epic in his symbolism of human wreckage adrift in the wake of the boom. Yet he was honest enough to admit inwardly that should victory fall to his banners there would be flotsam in the wake of his triumph, too; simple folk despoiled of their birthright. He came as no altruist to fight 114 for the native born. He, no less than A. O. and G., sought to exploit them.
When he went to the house of Dyke Cappeze he did not admit the curiosity, amounting to positive anxiety, to see again the little barbarian, who slurred consonants, doubled her negatives, split her infinitives and retorted in the Latin of Blackstone. Yet when Glory did not at once appear, he found himself unaccountably disappointed.