Part 12 (1/2)
”You think I'm talking too much about myself,” he said quickly. ”That's so. I'm sorry. You people have treated me well, no matter what you thought, and I appreciate it. I've enjoyed the evening very much. I wonder”--he hesitated for a moment--”I wonder if you'd mind my riding over here once in a while?”
”Of course not--if you care to come,” Sheila replied. Intuitively she divined that she had interested him, and she guessed by his manner that it was not his custom to be interested in young women. Apart from the ranchers' grievance against the corporation he represented, she had no reason for refusal. She rather liked his downrightness. Casey Dunne had said that he was a bit of a bully, but not a bluff. His extreme frankness, while it amused her, seemed genuine.
”Thank you!” he said. ”I don't flatter myself that you want me particularly, and I'm quite satisfied with the bare permission. I'm not entertaining or pleasant, and I know it. I've been busy all my life. No time for--for--well, no time for anything but work. But this little job isn't going to keep me more than half busy. I've done all the hard work of it now.”
”I didn't know it was so nearly finished.”
”I mean I've been over the ground and over the figures, and I know all that is to be done. Now it's merely a question of bossing a gang. A foreman could do that.”
Sheila could find no fault with the last statement. Obviously it was a fact. But the tone more than the words was self-a.s.sertive, even arrogant. She was unreasonably annoyed.
”Naturally you consider yourself above foreman's work,” she commented, with faint sarcasm.
”I don't consider myself above any work when it's up to me to do it or see it left undone,” he replied. ”I've held a riveter and driven spikes and s.h.i.+mmed up ties before now. But a concern that pays a first-cla.s.s man to do third-cla.s.s work is robbing itself. This is the last time I'll do it. That's how I feel about it.”
Sheila was not accustomed to hear a man blow his own horn so frankly.
The best men of her acquaintance--her father, Casey Dunne, Tom McHale, and others--seldom talked of themselves, never bragged, never mentioned their proficiency in anything. She had been brought up to regard a boaster and a bluff as synonymous. To her an egotist was also a bluff.
His bad taste repelled her. And yet he did not seem to stress the announcement.
”A first-cla.s.s man should not waste his time,” she observed, but to save her life she could not keep her tone free from sarcasm. He took up her meaning with extraordinary quickness.
”You think I might have let somebody else say that? Pshaw! I'm not mock-modest. I _am_ a good man, and I'm paid accordingly. I want you to know it. I don't want you to take me for a poor devil of a line runner.”
”What on earth does it matter what I take you for?” said Sheila. ”I don't care whether you have a hundred or a thousand a month. What difference does it make to me?”
”None--but it makes a whole lot to me,” said Farwell. ”I'm interested in my profession. I want to get to the top of it. I'm halfway up, and time counts. And then to be sent down here on this rotten job! Pah! it makes me sick.”
”I'm glad to hear you admit that it's rotten,” said Sheila. ”It's outrageous--a straight steal.”
He stared at her a moment, laughed, and shook his head.
”You don't understand me. It's rotten from my standpoint--too trivial to waste time on.”
”It's rotten from our standpoint. Can't you get away from your supreme self for a moment? Can't you appreciate what it means to us?”
”I know exactly what it means, but I can't help it. You know--but you can't help it. What are you going to do, anyway?”
”I don't know,” she admitted, thinking of her conversation with Casey Dunne.
”You're sure you don't? We heard rumours--I may as well tell you--that the ranchers were prepared to make trouble for us.”
”Then you've heard more than I have.”
He eyed her a moment in silence. She returned his glance unwaveringly.
”I'm glad to know it,” he said at length. ”I don't want a row. Now, you people here--on this ranch--why don't you sell and get out?”
She thought it brutally put. ”In the first place, we don't want to sell out. And in the next place who would buy?”
”That's so,” he said. ”I guess you wouldn't find many buyers. Still, if you got the chance----”
Whatever he was about to say was lost in a clamour of wheels and hoofs.