The Desert Fiddler.

by William H. Hamby.

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 b.u.t.te 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, b.u.t.toning 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 pa.s.sed 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 ca.n.a.l, 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 ca.n.a.l, left the fringe of cottonwood and willow, and turned across the open toward the Red b.u.t.te 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, j.a.p, 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 b.u.t.te Ranch across yonder. He turned into the left-hand fork of the road.

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

"Neither," replied Bob, guessing this was a messenger from the Red b.u.t.te, "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 h.e.l.l 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 b.l.o.o.d.y-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 h.e.l.l 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 gra.s.s.

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 Sat.u.r.day 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: