“Poor Duddy and Fuddy would be in the happy hunting grounds if they had to cover my ground this afternoon,” he laughed, at the same time mapping his program. “Between now and dinner I’ve got to do a hundred and twenty miles. I’m taking the racer, and it’s going to be some dust and bump and only an occasional low place. I haven’t the heart to ask you along. You go on and take it out of Duddy and Fuddy.”
Paula sighed, but so poor an actress was she that in the sigh, intended for him as a customary reluctant yielding of his company, he could not fail to detect the relief at his decision.
“Whither away?” she asked brightly, and again he noticed the color in her face, the happiness, and the brilliance of her eyes.
“Oh, I’m shooting away down the river to the dredging work—Carlson insists I must advise him—and then up in to Sacramento, running over the Teal Slough land on the way, to see Wing Fo Wong.”
“And in heaven’s name who is this Wing Fo Wong?” she laughingly queried, “that you must trot and see him?”
“A very important personage, my dear. Worth all of two millions—made in potatoes and asparagus down in the Delta country. I’m leasing three hundred acres of the Teal Slough land to him.” Dick addressed himself to the farm students. “That land lies just out of Sacramento on the west side of the river. It’s a good example of the land famine that is surely coming. It was tule swamp when I bought it, and I was well laughed at by the old-timers. I even had to buy out a dozen hunting preserves. It averaged me eighteen dollars an acre, and not so many years ago either.
“You know the tule swamps. Worthless, save for ducks and low-water pasturage. It cost over three hundred an acre to dredge and drain and to pay my quota of the river reclamation work. And on what basis of value do you think I am making a ten years’ lease to old Wing Fo Wong? Two thousand an acre. I couldn’t net more than that if I truck-farmed it myself. Those Chinese are wizards with vegetables, and gluttons for work. No eight hours for them. It’s eighteen hours. The last coolie is a partner with a microscopic share. That’s the way Wing Fo Wong gets around the eight hour law.”
Twice warned and once arrested, was Dick through the long afternoon. He drove alone, and though he drove with speed he drove with safety. Accidents, for which he personally might be responsible, were things he did not tolerate. And they never occurred. That same sureness and definiteness of adjustment with which, without fumbling or approximating, he picked up a pencil or reached for a door-knob, was his in the more complicated adjustments, with which, as instance, he drove a high-powered machine at high speed over busy country roads.
But drive as he would, transact business as he would, at high pressure with Carlson and Wing Fo Wong, continually, in the middle ground of his consciousness, persisted the thought that Paula had gone out of her way and done the most unusual in driving Graham the long eight miles from Eldorado to the ranch.