In the Pullman washroom Grant collapsed to the seat and smeared soap into his eyes while he tried to check tears of laughter. The fall of the peppery little Spaniard had been colossal, and he guessed it had been wrought at the quick prompting of the spirited girl in khaki. What a wonder she was! All laughter and bubbling spirits one minute; quick as a leopard to strike the next.
“Man”—Grant addressed a beaming face in the glass—“man, always lay your bets on a red-headed girl!”
That minute of communion with a smiling confidant was an important one in the life of Grant Hickman, cautious bachelor. For it came to him with the force of a hammer blow that he wanted and must have this vivid creature of the desert named Benicia O’Donoju. Girl of fire and sparkle—of a spirit free and piquant as the winds that blow across the wastes—unspoiled of cities and the stale conventions of drawing rooms. Oh, he would have her! Gone she might be, out into a land beyond his ken. Unguessed barriers of circumstance, of others’ intervention, might have to be scaled; but somehow, somewhere, Grant Hickman was going to find and win Benicia O’Donoju.
Love at first sight—old-fashioned, mid-Victorian stuff, says the cynical débutante over her cigarette and outlaw cocktail. In New York tearooms and Washington ballrooms, quite so. Where girls of twenty must know the sum that stands in bank to Clarence’s credit, before Clarence is marked down as eligible, love at first sight is, in truth, dead as the dodo bird. Even so, spirit still calls to spirit and like leaps to like most all the world over. It is only where fungus spots stain the garden that love will not bloom.
When Grant quit the Pullman Colonel Urgo was nowhere to be seen. Grant idly wondered as he walked to the hotel, directly across a plaza from the station, how long it would be before he encountered this half-portion rival of his and what would be the Spaniard’s first move in his frank threat of reprisals of the night before. But when he was shown to his room—and the New York man whimsically reflected he had seen better ones at the Admiral on Madison Avenue—events of recent hours were pushed back from his attention by the more immediate demands of his presence in Arizora. He took from his suitcase the letter that had brought him sky-hooting across the continent to this back-water of life on the Mexican Line and skimmed it through:
“... I know just how hard it is for you to settle down to office routine after the Big Show. All of us are in the same fix, Old-timer, but I have the edge on you because out here in this man’s country there’s something breaking every minute. That’s the reason I’m writing you this mysterious letter.... Old Doc Stooder is counted the prime nut of Southern Arizona, but I believe he’s got a whale of a proposition and that’s why I’m counting myself—and you—in on the deal.
“I’ve sewed myself up with him—promised not to peep a word of the real dope to you in this letter. The old Doc says, ‘We’ll need a good engineer and if your buddy in France has a head on him and knows how to keep his mouth shut tell him to come out here.’ ... So if you still have that old take-a-chance spirit that hopped you through the Big Mill from Cantigny to Sedan I’ll see you in Arizora. If I’m not in town when you arrive dig up Doc Stooder—everybody knows him.
“Yours for the big chance,
“Bim.”
Grant folded the letter with a smile. Good old Bim with his “whale of a proposition.” Running true to form was Bim in this characteristic letter. Just as Grant had come to know and love him in training area and dugout: Bim Bagley, six-feet-one of tough Arizona bone and muscle and brimful of wild optimism. Always ready to take a chance, whether at the enemy on all fours through midnight mud or at fortune in the wild lands of the Border: that was Bim Bagley of Arizona, “the finest country in the Southwest.”