The Desert Fiddler Read online

  The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Desert Fiddler, by William H. Hamby

  This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

  almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

  re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

  with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

  Title: The Desert Fiddler

  Author: William H. Hamby

  Release Date: July 3, 2008 [EBook #25960]

  Language: English

  *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DESERT FIDDLER ***

  Produced by Al Haines

  Charles Ray as Bob Rogeen, and Barbara Bedford as Imogene Chandler.

  THE DESERT FIDDLER

  BY

  WILLIAM H. HAMBY

  PHOTOPLAY TITLE

  PERCY

  ILLUSTRATED WITH SCENES

  FROM THE PHOTOPLAY

  A THOS. H. INCE PRODUCTION

  RELEASED BY PATHÉ PICTURES

  NEW YORK

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

  PUBLISHERS

  COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY

  CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY

  COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY

  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES

  AT

  THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII CHAPTER XIII CHAPTER XIV CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI CHAPTER XVII CHAPTER XVIII CHAPTER XIX CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI CHAPTER XXII CHAPTER XXIII CHAPTER XXIV CHAPTER XXV

  CHAPTER XXVI CHAPTER XXVII CHAPTER XXVIII CHAPTER XXIX CHAPTER XXX

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  Charles Ray as Bob Rogeen, and

  Barbara Bedford as Imogene Chandler . . . . Frontispiece

  Jenkins and Lolita awed by Percy's fiddling.

  Lolita tries her wiles on Percy.

  Reedy Jenkins makes a proposition to Imogene.

  A mutual discovery—they both cared.

  Holy Joe shanghaies Imogene's ranchmen and discovers

  Percy—a willing ally.

  "Make it plain to the Chandler girl that this is her

  last chance to sell before I ruin her crop."

  "Shut off the water? Why all the cotton in the valley

  will be withered in a day."

  THE DESERT FIDDLER

  CHAPTER I

  Bob Rogeen slept in the east wing of the squat adobe house. About midnight there was a vigorous and persistent shaking of the screen door.

  "Yes?" he called, sleepily.

  "They have just telephoned in from the Red Butte Ranch"—it was Dayton, his employer, at the door—"the engine on that tractor has balked. They want a man out there by daylight to fix it."

  Bob put up his arms and stretched, and replied yawningly:

  "Well, I guess I'm the fixer."

  "I guess you are," agreed the implement dealer. "You know the way, don't you? Better ride the gray; and don't forget to take your gun." The boss crossed the patio to his own wing of the house.

  The young fellow sat up and kicked along under the edge of the bed, feeling for his shoes.

  "A love—lee time to go to work," he growled, good-naturedly. "Here is where the early bird catches the tractor—and the devil."

  When he came out of the door a few minutes later, buttoning his corduroy coat—even in Imperial Valley, which knows no winter, one needs a coat on a March night—Rogeen stood for a moment on the step and put up his long arms again to stretch some of the deep sleep from his muscles. He was not at all enthusiastic about odd jobs at midnight; but in a moment his eyes fell on the slanting moonlight that shone mistily on the chinaberry tree in the patio; the town on the American side was fast asleep; the wind with the smell of sagebrush stirred a clump of bamboo. The desert night had him—and when he rode away toward the Mexican line he had forgotten his gun and taken his fiddle.

  He passed through Mexicali, the Mexican town, where the saloons were still open and the lights over the Red Owl, the great gambling hall, winked with glittering sleeplessness; and out upon the road by the irrigation canal, fringed with cottonwood and willows.

  He let the reins drop over the saddlehorn, and brought the fiddle round in front of him. There was no hurry, he would be there before daylight. And he laughed as he ran his right thumb over the strings:

  "What a combination—a fool, a fiddle, and a tractor."

  Bob could not explain what impulse had made him bring a fiddle with him on the way to mend a balky gasoline engine. As a youth—they had called him rather a wild youth—he had often ridden through the Ozark hills at night time with his fiddle under his arm. But in the last eight years he had played the thing only once, and that once had come so near finishing him that he still carried the receipt of the undertaker who came to bury him the next day.

  "Oh, well," Bob grinned into the night as he threw his right knee over the saddlehorn and put the fiddle to his shoulder, "we'll see how she goes once more."

  For three miles he rode leisurely on, a striking figure in the dim moonlight—a tall young man on a gray horse, fiddling wildly to the desert night.

  He crossed the bridge over the main canal, left the fringe of cottonwood and willow, and turned across the open toward the Red Butte Ranch. The fiddle was under his arm. Then he saw a shack in the open field to the right of the road. It was one of those temporary structures of willow poles and arrow weed that serve for a house for the renter on the Mexican side. The setting moon was at its back, and the open doorway showed only as a darker splotch. He lifted the fiddle again. "Chinaboy, Jap, Hindu, Poor Man, Rich Man, Beggar Man or Mexican—I'll give you a serenade all the samee."

  The gleeful melody had scarcely jigged its way into the desert night when, in the black splotch of the doorway, a figure appeared—a woman in a white nightdress. Swiftly Bob changed the jig tune into a real serenade, a clear, haunting, calling melody. The figure stood straight and motionless in the dark doorway as long as he could see. Someway he knew it was a white woman and that she was young.

  He put the fiddle back in the bag and turned in his saddle to mark the location of the hut in his mind—there was a clump of eucalyptus trees just north of it. Yes, he would know the place, and he would learn tomorrow who lived there. That listening figure had caught his imagination.

  But again he grinned into the night, ruefully this time as he remembered the disaster that had followed his last two experiences with this diabolical instrument of glee and grief.

  "Oh, well," he shook his head determinedly and threw his leg across the saddle, "the first time was with a preacher; the second with a gun; now we'll give the lady a chance."

  The fiddle and the figure in the doorway had stirred in Bob a lot of reflections. At twenty he had given up his music and most of the careless fun that went with it, because a sudden jolt had made him see that to win through he must fight and not fiddle. For eight years he had worked tremendously hard at half a dozen jobs across half a dozen states; and there had been plenty of fighting. But what had he won?—a job as a hardware clerk at twenty dollars a week.

  "Oh, well"—he had learned to give the Mexican shrug of the shoulder—"twenty dollars in a land of opportunity is better than fifty where everything is already fixed."

  That must be the Red Butte Ranch across yonder. He turned into the left-hand fork of the road.

  "Hello, there!" A tall, rambling fellow rose up from the side of the road. "Are you the good Samaritan or merely one of the thieves?"

  "N
either," replied Bob, guessing this was a messenger from the Red Butte, "but I work for both. Where is your balky tractor?"

  "This way." The rambling fellow turned to the right and started down the road, talking over his left shoulder:

  "I'm the chauffeur of that blamed tractor—I told Old Benson I didn't know any more about it than he does of the New Jerusalem; but he put me at it anyhow.

  "I'm a willin' cuss. But the main trouble with me is I ain't got no brains. If I had, I wouldn't be on this job, and if I was, I could fix the darn thing myself.

  "My dad," continued the guide, "was purty strong on brains, but I didn't take after him much. If I was as posted on tractors as the old man was on hell fire, I wouldn't need you."

  Something in this hill billy's tone stirred in Bob a sudden recollection.

  "Was he a preacher?"

  "Yep, named Foster, and I'm his wandering boy to-night."

  Bob lifted his head and laughed. It was a queer world. He inquired about the trouble with the tractor.

  "I sure hope you can fix it," said Noah Ezekiel. "Old Benson will swear bloody-murder if we don't get the cotton in before the tenth of April. He wants to unload the lease."

  The sun was scarcely an hour high when the steady, energetic chuck, chuck of the tractor engine told Bob his work was done. He shut it off, and turned to Noah Ezekiel.

  "There you are—as good as new. And it is worth ten men and forty mules. Not much like we used to farm back in the Ozarks, is it?"

  "We?" Noah Ezekiel rubbed his lean jaw and looked questioningly at the fixer. "I'm from the Ozarks, but as the silk hat said to the ash can, 'Where in hell does the we come in?'"

  "You don't happen to remember me?" There was a humorous quirk at the corner of Rogeen's mouth as he stood wiping the oil and grease from his hands with a bunch of dry grass.

  The shambling hill billy took off his floppy-brimmed straw hat and scratched his head as he studied Bob with the careless but always alert blue eyes of the mountain-turkey hunter—eyes that never miss the turn of a leaf nor forget a trail.

  Those eyes began at the feet, took in the straight waistline, the well-knit shoulders. Bob weighed a hundred and eighty and looked as though he were put together to stay. For a moment Noah Ezekiel studied the friendly mouth, the resolute nose, the frank brown eyes; but not until they concentrated on the tangled mop of dark hair did a light dawn on the hill billy's face.

  "Well, I'll be durned!" The exclamation was deep and soul-satisfying, and he held out his hand. "If you ain't Fiddlin' Bob Rogeen, I'll eat my hat!"

  "Save your hat." Bob met the recognition with a friendly grin.

  "I never saw you but once," reflected Noah Ezekiel, "and that was the Sunday at Mt. Pisgah when my dad lambasted you in his sermon for fiddlin' for the dance Saturday night."

  "That sermon," Bob's smile was still a little rueful, "lost me the best job I had ever had."

  "Oh, well," consoled the hill billy, "if you hadn't lost it somethin' might have fell on you. That's what I always think when I have to move on." And he repeated with a nonchalant air a nonsensical hill parody:

  I eat when I'm hungry,

  I drink when I'm dry,

  And if a tree don't fall on me

  I'll live till I die.

  Then his eyes veered round to Bob's fiddle lying to one side on the grass.

  "I notice," he grinned, "dad did not convert you."

  "No," said Bob, "but he cured me—almost. I've only played the thing twice since."

  Rogeen picked up his fiddle and started for his horse.

  "Well, so long, Noah. You've got a nice place to work out here." His eyes swept almost covetously over the five-thousand-acre ranch, level as a floor, not a stump or a stone. "If I had this ranch I'd raise six thousand bales of cotton a year, or know the reason why."

  "That ain't what the last fellow said," remarked the hill billy, grinningly. "Reedy Jenkins was out yesterday figuring on buyin' the lease; and he said: 'If I had it—I'd raise the rent.'"

  CHAPTER II

  Bob was out in front of the hardware store dressed in a woollen shirt and overalls, and bareheaded, setting up a cotton planter, when an old gentleman in a linen duster, who had been pacing restlessly up and down the walk like a distant relative waiting for the funeral procession to start, stopped on the sidewalk to watch him work. Whether it was the young man's appearance, his whistling at his work or merely the way he used his hands that attracted the old gentleman was not certain. But after a moment he remarked in a crabbedly friendly tone:

  "Young man, you know your business."

  "The other fellow's business, you mean," replied Bob without looking up from the bolt he was adjusting. "It is not mine, you know." Bob had been repeating during the last two days the remark of the hill billy—"I'm a willin' cuss, but I ain't got no brains." He had begun to wonder if he was not in the same wagon. He had always thought he had brains, but here he was at twenty-eight no better off than the hill billy. Perhaps not as well, for Noah Ezekiel Foster was getting more per month for riding one tractor than Bob was for selling twenty.

  The old gentleman made a noise in his throat that corresponded to a chuckle in a less belligerent man.

  "Do you sell farm machinery over there?" The store faced the line; and he nodded toward the Mexican side.

  "Yes," answered Bob.

  "Know the country pretty well?"

  "Yes." The young man rose up with the wrench in his hand, and looked for the first time into the gray-blue eyes under the bushy iron-gray brows. "The country is the same as it is on this side. The people somewhat different."

  "Any good chances to invest money over there?" asked the old gentleman.

  "I suppose so." Bob stopped to pick up another nut and started to screw it on. "I'm not bothered much hunting for investments. But I reckon there is a chance for a man with money anywhere."

  "To spend it," added the other fellow, sharply. "Any place will do for a fool and his money to part. But, young man, it is easier to earn money with brains than it is to keep it without them."

  Bob's eyes looking past the old gentleman saw a youngish woman dressed in widow's weeds—very expensive weeds—coming rapidly down the walk from the hotel, and knew she was coming for the old man. As she came nearer, Bob saw she had tawny yellow hair, with slate-coloured eyes and a pious mouth. Her carriage was very erect, very ladylike, and patently she was from the East.

  "Oh, Uncle," she gurgled and, as the old gentleman turned, with a little burst of enthusiasm she threw her arms about his neck.

  "When did you get in, Evy?" The old gentleman managed to disengage the arms without giving the appearance of heartlessness. His voice was crabbed, but sounded as though it might be from the length of the vocal cords rather than the shortness of disposition.

  "Last night." There was an aggrieved touch of self-denying complaint in the tone. "And the little hotel is perfectly wretched. I had such a horrid room—and I felt so conspicuous alone. The landlady told me you had been there looking for me this morning before I was up. I'm so glad to see you, Uncle; just as soon as I heard of poor Aunt Ellen's death I felt that I must come and look after you at any sacrifice." There was a slight pause in which the old gentleman did not venture a remark. "But, Uncle"—there was accusation in the tone—"why did you ever come out to this awful country? The dust was simply awful—I think some of my clothes are ruined."

  "The old horse is across the street." The uncle turned and started toward a very high-powered, expensive car.

  "Who was that old chap?" Bob asked of Dayton, who came up from breakfast just as the car drove off.

  "That's Jim Crill—Texas oil fields. Staying at El Centro and looking for a place to drop his money, I hear. But I wonder who's the lady? I saw her get off the train with Reedy Jenkins yesterday evening."

  "A dear relative," remarked Bob with a grin, "come to take care of him since his wife died—and he struck oil."

  After a moment—the planter finished—Bob as
ked casually:

  "Does Benson own the Red Butte Ranch?"

  "No," answered the implement dealer, "it belongs to the Dan Ryan tract. Dan is one of the very few Americans who has a real title to land on the Mexican side. When Benson leased it two years ago it was merely sand hummocks and mesquite, like the rest of the desert. Spent a lot of money levelling it and getting it ready to water. He lives at Los Angeles, and is one of those fellows who try to farm with money instead of brains and elbow grease. Lost a lot on last year's crop, and now he wants to get rid of his lease."

  Bob had been thinking of that ranch most of the time since he fixed the tractor. He loved the soil, and surely a man could get real returns from a field like that.

  "I wonder," he remarked without meeting his employer's eyes, "if he would sublease it?"

  "Don't know," replied Dayton; "Reedy Jenkins is trying to buy the lease."

  "Then," thought Bob as his employer went into the store, "Jenkins ought to offer a market for farm machinery. I'll go up and see him."

  On his way to Jenkins' office Bob's mind was busy with his own personal problems. He had been struggling with his ambitions a long time and never could quite figure why he did not get on faster. He had thought a great deal the last few days about Jim Crill, the old man with bushy eyebrows—and oil wells. Two or three things the gruff old chap had said stuck in Bob's mind. He had begun to wonder if it was not just as easy for a fellow to make a bad investment of his brains and muscles as it was with his money. "That's it," he said almost aloud at a definite conclusion; "I haven't been making a good investment of myself. I wonder if I could sublease that Red Butte Ranch?"