"Et es so, señor," Madrigal said, warmly. He abated Rogeen on his own account, for Señor Madrigal had formed a violent attachment for the Señorita Chandler. And the damned Americano with his fiddle was in the way.
"If," suggested Reedy, smoking slowly, "Rogeen should be induced to leave the country within three weeks—or in case he happened to some accident so he could not leave at all—we'd make four thousand out of his ranch. Half of that would be two thousand."
Madrigal's black eyes narrowed wickedly, and his thick lips rolled up under his long nose.
"Mexico, señor, is the land of accidents."
"All right, Madrigal," Reedy waved dismissal and turned to his desk and began to figure—or pretend to figure.
The Mexican turned in the door, looked back on the bulky form of Jenkins, started to speak, grinned wickedly, and went down the outside stairway.
On the evening of the third of August Bob came in from the fields and prepared his own supper. Since the arrest of his Chinamen a few weeks before Rogeen had not employed any other help. The cotton cultivation was over, and he and Noah could manage the irrigation. The hill billy had gone to town early in the afternoon, and would return directly to the Chandler ranch where he was still on guard at nights. Bob believed his warning to Jenkins had stopped all further molestation, but he was not willing to take any chances—at least not with Imogene Chandler.
Bob had been irrigating all day and was dead tired. After supper he sat in front of his shack as usual to cool a little before turning in. The day had been the hottest of the summer, and now at eight o'clock it was still much over a hundred.
In that heat there is little life astir even in the most luxuriant fields. It was still to-night—scarcely the croak of a frog or the note of a bird. There was no moon, but in the deep, vast, clear spaces of the sky the stars burned like torches held down from the heavens. A wind blew lightly, but hot off the fields. The weeds beside the ditches shook slitheringly, and the dry grass roof of the shack rustled.
To be the centre of stillness, to be alone in a vast space, either crushes one with loneliness or gives him an unbounded exhilaration. To-night Bob felt the latter sensation. It seemed instead of being a small, lost atom in a swirling world, he was a part of all this lambent starlight; this whispering air of the desert.