Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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CMAPTtK I. Marshall Sends for Rickard. The large round clock was striking nine as "Casey" Rickard's dancing step carried him into the outer office of Tod Marshall. The ushering clerk, coatless and vestless in expectation of the third hot spring day, made a critical appraisement of the engineer's get-up before he spoke. Then he stated that Mr. Marshall had not yet come. For a London tie and a white silk Bhirt belted into white serge trousers were smart for Tucson. The clerks In the employ of the Overland Pacific and of the Sonora and Yaqui railroads had stared at Rickard as he entered; they followed his progress through the room. He was a newcomer In Tucson. He had not yet acquired the apathetic habits of its citizens. He wore belts, instead of suspenders. His white trousers, duck or serge, carried a newly pressed crease each morning. The office had not reached a verdict on the subject of K. C. Rickard. The Bhirt-aleeved, collurless clerks would have been quick to dub him a dandy were it not for a page of his history that was puzzling them. He had held a chair of engineering in some eastern city. He had resigned, the wind-tossed page said, to go on the road as a fireman. His rapid promotion had 4Ka l?cf mAra Q UVtu spcviutuiai t uic iaoc uiviv, w few years ago, to fill an office position in Tucson. The summons had found him on the west coast of Mexico, where the Overland Pacific was pushing Its tracks. 'Ton can wait here," suggested the clerk, looking covertly at the shoes of the man who a few years before had been shoveling coal on a Wyoming engine. "Mr. Marshall said to wait." "Ribbons, instead of shoe laces!" carped the human machine that must ever write letters which other men sign. "And a blue pin to match his tie I I call that going some!" It would never have occurred to Rickard, had he thought about it at all that morning as he knotted his tie of dark, brilliant bine silk, that the selection of his lapis pin was a choice; . it wa's an inevitable result, an instinctive discretion of his fingers. It warped, however, the suspended judgment of Marshall's men, who had uever seen him shoveling coal, disfigured by a denim jumper. They did not know that they themselves were slovens, ruined by the climate that dolls vanity and wilts collars^ "Give him a year to change some of his fine habits!" wagered Smythe, the stoop-shouldered clerk, as the door of the inner office closed. i"To change his habits less!" amended the office wit And then they fell to speculating what Marshall was going to do with him. What pawn was he In the game that everyone in Tucson followed with eager self-interested concern? Marshall's was the controlling hand in Arizona politics; the maker of governors, the arbiter of big corporations; president of a half dozen railroads. Not a move of his on the board that escaped notice. On the other side of the door Rick* ard was echoing the office question. This play Job, where did it lead to? He had liked his work, under Stratton. There had been soipe pretty problems rto meet?what did Marshall mean to do with him? The note had set the appointment for nine. Rlckard glanced at his swatch and took out his Engineering Review. It would be ten before that door opened on Tod Marshall! He knew that, on the road, Mar* shall's work began at dawn. "A man won't break from overwork or rust from underwork If he follows the example of the sun," Rlckard had often heard htm expound his favorite the ory. "It 1b only the players, the sybarites, who can afford to pervert the arrangement nature intended for us." But in Tucson, controlled by the wife>ly solicitude of his Claudia, he was coerced lata a regular perversion. His office never saw him until the morn* Jng was half gone. A half-hoar later Rlckard finished reading a report on the diversion of a great western river. The name of I Thomas Hardin bad sent him off on a tangent of memory. The Thomas Hardin whose efforts to bring water to the desert of the Colorado had been j so spectacularly unsuccessful was the Tom Hardin he had known ! The sister had told him so, the girl with tbe odd bronze eyes'; opal matrix they were, with glints of gold, or was It green? She herself was as unlike the raw boor of his memory as a mountain lily Is like the coarse rock of its background. Even a half-sister to Hardin, as Marshall, their host at dinner the week before, had explained It?no, even that did not explain it. That any of the Hardin blood should be sh8"*-d by the veins of that girl, why It was incredible! The name "Hardin" suggested crudity, loudf 7st/s& IYER, r \ EDNAH ? AIKEN <5> 7M?30B&3 -/tf/XtfU. CO/tPW mouthed bragging; conceit. He could understand the failure of the river project since the sister had assured him that it was the same Tom Hardin who had gone to college at Lawrence; had married Gerty Holmes. Queer KnoSnAon UfA +hof hn cllAlllfl PPrtfifi. U UOiUCOOl lUCf UiUb UV even so remotely, their orbits again. That was a chapter he liked to skip. He walked over to the windows, shielded by bright awnings, and looked down on the city where the I He Walked to the Window. ! next few years of his life might be J J caught. Comforting to reflet that an J J engineer is like a soldier, never can j i be certain about tomorrow. Time enough to know that tomorrow meant | Tucson! What was that threadbare proverb in the Overland Pacific that Tod Marshall always keeps his men until they lose their teeth? Th^t defined the men who made themselves necessary! His eyes were resting on the banalities of the modern city that had robbed "old town" of its flavor. Were it not for the beauty of the distant hills, the jar and rumble of the trains whose roar called- to near-by pleasure cities, twinkling lights and crowded theaters, stretches of parks and recreation grounds, he, who loved the thrill and ; confinement of an engine, who had; found enticement in a desert, a char* j ter of adventure in the barrancas of j If J nil Aa Im I I I A 1V1A1* j Ju.trA.iuu, wuuiu auut* m xuwuii; n.uiciican progress was as yet too thin a veneer on Mexican indifference to make ,the place endurable?as ai city, j "I'm good for a lifetirhe here, If 3 want it," his thoughts would work back to the starting place. "If I knuckle down to it, let him grow to depend on me, it's as good as settled that I am buried in Tucson 1" Hadn't he heard Marshall himself say that he "didn't keep a kindergarten?that his office wasn't a training school for men!" He wanted his men to stayl That, one of the reasons of the great man's power; detail rested on the shoulders of his employees. It kept his own brain clear, receptive to big achievements. "Perhaps as the work unrolls, as 1 see more of what he wants of me, why he wants me, I may like It, I may get to shout for Tucson 1" It was impossible enough to smile overl Child's work, compared to Mexico. I The distinction of serving Marshall j well certainly had Its drawbacks. He wanted to sweep on. Whether he had a definite terminal, a concrete goal, had he ever stopped to think? Specialization had always a fascination for him. It was that which had thrown him out of his Instructorshlp Into the firebox of a western engine. It had governed his course at college? to know one thing well, and then to prove that he knew it well 1 Contented In the Mexican barracks, here he was chafing, restive, after a few weeks of Tucson. For what was he j getting here? Adding what scrap of I experience to the rounding of his profession? Retrospectively engineering could hardly be said to be the work of his choice. Bather had it appeared to choose him. From boyhood engineers had always been, to him, the soldiers of modern civilization. To conquer and subdue mountains, to shackle wild rivers, to suspend trestles over dizzy heights, to throw the tracks of an ad vancing civilization along a newly blazed trail, there would always be a thrill in it for him. It had changed the best quarterback of his high school into the primmest of students at college. Only for a short time had he let his vanity sidetrack him, when the honor of teaching what he had learned stopped his own progress. A rut!? He remembered the day when it had burst ah him, the realization of the rut he wus In. He could see his Lawrence schoolroom, could see yet the face under the red-haired mop belong lng to Jerry Ma*son?queer-lie remembered the nome after all those years I He could picture the look of consternation when he threw down his booh and announced his desertion. He had handed in his resignation the next day. A month later and he was shoveling coal on the steep grades of Wyoming. "Marshall keeps his men with him!" The engineer's glance traveled around the fleckless office. A stranger to Marshall would get a wrong idea of the man who worked in It! Those precise files, the desk, orderly and polished, the gleaming linoleum?and then the man who made the negro janitor's life a proud burden! His clothes always crumpled?spots, too, unless his Clau dia had had a chance at them! Blach string tie askew, all the outward visible signs of the southern gentleman of assured ancoscry. Not even a valel would ever keep Tod Marshall up tc the standard of that office. What did he have servants for,, he had demand ea or lucKaru, 11 u were noi 10 juiut. after him, picking up the loose ends he dropped? Curious thing, magnetism. Thai man's step on the stair, and everj man-jack of them would jump to attention, from Ben, the colored janitor who would not swap his post for a sinecure so long as Tod Mashall's one lung kept him in Arizona, to Smytlie ;he stoop-shouldered clerk, who hac followed Marshall's cough from Sat Francisco. It was said in Arizonahe himself had met the statement ir Tucson?that any man who had evei worked for Tod Marshall would rathei be warmed by the reflection of his greatness than be given posts of per eonal distinction. "Was it office routine Marshall in tended hira for? He admired withoul stint Tod Marshall, but he preferred to work by the side of the other kind the strong men, without physical han dicap, the men who take risks, th( men who live the life of soldiers. Thai was the life he wanted. He woulc wait long enough to get Marshall's in tention, and then, if it meant?this he would break loose. He would gc back to the front where he belonged? back to the firing line. As the hands ofJthe round clock ii the outer office were pointing to ter the door opened and Marshall entered His clothes, of indefinite blackish hue would have disgraced an eastern man His string tie had a starboard list and his hat was ready for a rummage sale. But few would have looked al his clothes. The latent energy of th( dynamic spirif'that would frequently turn that quiet office into a mael strom gleamed in these Indian-blacl eyes. Beneath the shabby cloth on< suspected the daily polished skin; un der the old slouch hat was the moutl of purpose, the lips that no woman even his Claudia, had kissed wlthoui the thrill of fear. Morchall <rlnn/*ori Vionlr of tha nlni<1r and then toward his visitor. "On time!" he observed. Rickard, smiling, put his book to his pocket. CHAPTER II. A Bit of Oratory. Marshall threw his hat on a chair the morning paper on his desk. H< aimed his burned-out cigar at the near est cuspidor, but it fell foul, the ashei scattering over Sam's lately scoure( linoleum. Instantly there was appear ance of settled disorder. Marshal emptied his pockets of loose papers spreading them out on his flat-toi desk. "Sit down!" Rickard took the chair at the othp: Bide of the desk. Marshall rang a bell. Instantly thi shirt-sleeved clerk entered. "I shall not see anyone," the chle announced. "I don't want to be inter rupted. Take these to Smythe." nis eyes luuoweu uie suuumg o. the door, then turned square upoi Rickard. "I need you. It's a b?1 o: a mess!" The engineer wanted to know wha: kind of a "mess" it was. "That river. It's running away fron them. I'm going to send you down t< stop it" "The Colorado!" exclaimed Rickard It was no hose to be turned, simply off from a garden bed. "Of course you've been following it! It's one of the biggest things that'* happened in this part of the world Too big for the men who have beer trying to swing it. You've followed It?" "Yes." Queer coincidence, reading that report just now! "I've not been there. But the engineering papers used to get to me in Mexico. I've read all the reports." His superior's question was uncharacteristically superfluous. Who had not read with thrilled nerves of that wild river which men had been trying to put under work harness? Who, even among the stay-at-homes, had not followed the newspaper stories of the failure to .make a meek servant and water carrier of the Colorado, that wild steed of mountain and desert? What engineer, no matter how remote, would not "follow" that spectacular struggle between men and Titans? "Going to send me to Salton?" he Inquired. The railroad had been kept Jumping to keep its feet dry. His job to be by that Inland sea which last year had been desert! "No. Bralnerd Is there. He can manage the tracks. I am going to send you down to the break." Rlckard did not answer. He felt the questioning eyes of his chief. The break?where those Hardlns were?how In thunder was he going to get ozc of that, and save his skin? Marshall liked his own way? "We'll consider it settled, then." I Who's in charge thiire?" Rickarrl | | svas only gaining time. He thought . he knew the name he would hear. ; Marshall's first word surprised him. "No one. Up to a few months ago i it was Hardin, Tom Hardin. He was i general manager of the company. He i was allowed to resign, to save*his i Still to gain time he suggested tnai Marshall tell him the situation. *Tvt ( followed only the engineering side o 1 it. I don't know the relationship ol t the two companies." ? . "Where the railroad came in?J The I Inside of that story? I'm responsibh ?I guaranteed to Faraday the closinj: of that break. There was a big dis trict to save, a district that the railroad tapped?but I'll tell you thai later." He was leisurely puffing blue perfectly formed rings into the air his eyes admiring them. "Perhaps you've heard how Estrada ( the general, took a party of men intc the desert to sell1 a mine he owned. After the deal was made he decided ' to let it slip! He'd found somethinr bigger to do, more to his liking thar ! the sale of a mine. Estrada was a big man, a great man. He had the Idea Powell and others had, of turn Ing the river, of saving the desert. Ht dreamed himself of doihg it. If sickness hadn't come to him the Colorado . would be meekly carrying water now' j instead of flooding a country. Pity . Eduardo, the. son, is not like him. He's s like his mother?you never know what ] they are dreaming about. Not at all u alike, my wife and Estrada's." I Then it came to Rickard that he . had heard somewhere that Marshall 3 and General Estrada had married sisters, famous beauties of Guadalajara. He began to piece together the pert sonal background of the story. "It was a long time before Estrada 3 could get It started, and it's a long story. As soon as he began he was ( knocked down. Other men took hold. b You'll hear it all In the valley. Hardin took a day to tell It to me! He ^ sees himself as a martyr. Promoters , got in; the thing swelled Into a | swindle, a spectacular swindle. They showed oranges on Broadway before I a drop of water was brought in. Hardin has lots of grievances I He'd made j the original survey. So when he sued l for his back wages he took the papers of the bankrupt company In settlement. He's a grim sort of Ineffectual I ' bulldog. He's clung with his teeth ' to the Estrada Idea. And he's not bi^ enough for it. He uses the optimistic motliod?gives you only half of a case. half of the problem, gets started on| ' a false premise, \tell, he got up an] other company on that method, the] Desert Reclamation company, tried t?.i w hitewash the desert project; it was: in bad odor then, and he managed to1 bring a few drops of water to tfct ! 1 desert." 1 "It was Hardin who did that?" "But he couldn't aeliver enough.; The cut silted up. He cut again, tin i I same story. He was in a pretty baa : hole. He'd brought colonists in al 'j I ready; he'd used their money, thi i money they'd paid for land with wa-1 ter, to make the cuts. No wonder ht 1 was desperate." It recalled the man Rickard had | disliked, the rough-shod, loud-voiced j student of his first class In engineering. That was the man who had made | the flamboyant carpets of the Holmes" I boarding house Impossible any longer I lo him. He had a sudden disconcert- j ing vision of a large unfinished face j peering through the honeysuckles at i a man and a girl drawing apart in j confusion from their first and iust i i?iss. Fie wanted to tell Marshall he was wasting his time. "Overwhelmed with lawsuits," Mart -hall was saying. "Hardin had to deliver water to those colonists. It was .Jien that he ran over into Mexico, n as to 'et a lu'tiii* gradient for nisj an:;', *.?d made his cut there. You! Know rho rest. It ran away from lum, it made the Saltou sea." "j "I Am Going to Send You Down to the 1; Break." j : lace, as xne t;mnese say. 1 may n-n ) you that It was a case of firing. He'c made a fcerribie fluke down there." "I know," murmured Rickard. I' was growing more difficult, more dis t tasteful. If Marshall wanted him tr I supplant Hardin! It had been incred , ible, that man's folly! Reckless gam bling, nothing else. Make a cut in the ! banks of a wild river, without put t ting in head gates to control it; i 1 child would guess better! It was c problem now, all right; the writer o; I the report he'd just read wasn't tht ) only one who was prophesying failure. Let the river cut back, and the government works at Laguna would b< i useless; a pickle Hardin had made. GUDRUN WALBERG, Dainty Dane Military Musical Comedy, "MY SOL Opera Houce, WEDNESDAY / socle. He couldn't muke it clear to the man whose stare was balancing him why he could not oust Tom Hardin. "Is it a personal reason?" Marshall's gaze had returned to his ring making. Rickard admitted'it was personal. "Then' I don't accept it. I wouldn't be your friend if I didn't advise you to disregard the little thing, to take the big thing. Maybe you are going to be married." He did not wait for Rickard's vigorous negative. "That can wait. The river won't. There's a river running away down yonder, ruining the yalley, ruining the homes of families men have carried in with them. I've asked you to save them. There's a debt of honor to be paid. My promise. I have asked you k> pay it. There's history being written in that desert. I've asked you to write It. And you say 'No?'" "No! I say yes!" clipped Rickard. The Marshall oratory had swept him to his feet. ~The dramatic moment was chilled by their Anglo-Saxon self-consciousness. An awkward silence hung. Then: "\Vhen can you go?" "Tn/lov tnmftr"rnro tVio fipcf rnln X WUUJl lUtUVltVH) VMV M* wv out." "Good!" _. ?*}^* "Any Instructions?!-^^'"1 "Just stop that river!" "The expense?" demanded th? engineer. "How far can I go." "D n the expense!" cried Tod Marshall. "Just go ahead." (To Be Continued Friday.) FERTfl f . ? l J.L. y 1 represent ine Works, of Charlestc hand a good stock. / hard to get a little la ' in supplying your ne ROBT. I Not Only The 9 But at the present pri GRANITE is the CHEA construction of WALLS, NTCYR and TTNDFIRPTNM or on the Farm. We can furinsh prompt class of work drilled and b two men can handle. Carload Shij WRITE FO OGLESBY G ELBERTON, telephone: I er and comedienne with the Big >IER GIRL," at the Municipal NIGHT, FEBRUARY 19th. "BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY." Clemsoft College, Feb. 14.?The cotton farmer who puts cotton prices on the toboggan by over-production is gambling to lose and is unbalancing farming as a business. 2. Produce food and feed for % home consumption. The "exchange value" of cotton will probably be such that it will pay .to make the farm self-supporting, more so than ever before. 3. Plant non-perishable staple crops until further improvement in transportation and marketing. 4. Make corn the basis of Southern food production.5. The world being short of foods, the South should increase its meat, milk, and egg supply. 6. Market excess products for cash throughout the year at most favorable times and prices. 7. Fertilizers, though high, are not relatively too high for judicious use. Home mixing will save something on the cost. i These are suggestions made for safe farming, by Mr. Bradford Knapp, chief of the office of extension work in the South, at a recent meeting of extension forces* ,,: JZERS Ashepoe Fertilizer ?n, S. C., and have on Fertilizers may be ter on, so don't delay eds. ,d S. LINK. I \ Most Durable ce of building materials PEST you can use in the FOUNDATIONS, CHIMIING for Houses in Town lv stone suitable for this roken in sizes that one and oments Only R PRICES. RANITE CO. , GEORGIA 5 2602?208.