BAKER COLE

Baker Cole was a man who did his own thinking and was willing that the other fellow should do the same; indeed, he was tolerantly disdainful when the other fellow failed to do the same. He was so rich that he did not think much about money, or judge a man by his Bradstreet rating. Money flowed toward Baker Cole apparently of its own volition. He had started life with a fortune for his birthright, and he had gone on his way with a humorous philosophy which armored him against flattery, abuse or the deliberate attacks of other men whose fortunes equalled his but who were not content with another man's well-being.

Baker Cole's interest was first attracted to Bill's straight suppleness in the surf, and by the fact that, brown though he was to shoulders and chest, Bill was just learning to swim. Because of this incongruity, Baker Cole was given the opportunity of grabbing Bill by the hair and saving him from a vicious undertow. He wondered a bit, until he discovered that a man working in a sleeveless, low-necked undershirt under a desert sun may have the mark of a beach lounger burned into his skin.

"That accounts for your legs not being tanned." Baker Cole hauled himself out of the surf like a big, good-looking seal, and lay puffing and looking Bill over. "Wish I had muscles like yours," he remarked, crooking his finger toward a young man who immediately hurried up with cigarettes and matches. Bill accepted a smoke, and the two began to talk.

An hour later, they went toeing deep in the fine, loose sand to where a huge, striped umbrella hid all but a shapely, canvas-shod foot. Bill helped Doris to her feet and introduced Baker Cole, who appraised her shrewdly with one glance and decided that his wife would like her.

That began the acquaintance. In a week, the Baker Coles and the William Gordon Dales (Doris had quietly insisted upon full names from the first hotel register,—and had put it over with complete success) were pairing off together quite naturally and without deliberate intent; which is the test of congeniality the world over.

From a surreptitiously acquired paid teacher, Doris had learned bridge. She succeeded in teaching Bill, chiefly because he couldn't bear to disappoint her and because it gave him an opportunity to watch her hands without betraying a fatuous admiration. He had learned that Doris considered open love-making bad form, and was acquiring a more restrained manner of worship in accordance with her expressed wish. Wherefore, Bill willingly learned bridge after hours in their rooms, when he was dead tired, and watched unobtrusively for some sign of weariness in the sweet face opposite him. The reward for that was a more complete intimacy between the Baker Coles and the William Gordon Dales.

Bill could not remember afterwards just when or how Doris first found her pleasures apart from him. He saw that "nice" women were becoming her friends, and of course there were little parties and purely feminine gatherings to which Doris went with avid enjoyment. She would sit and tell Bill all about them afterwards, and Bill would listen bewilderingly to detailed descriptions of gowns and refreshments and scores and prizes, and to gossip not quite so harmless.

Sometimes his thoughts would wander to certain experiences of his own,—innocent experiences, though he did not tell her about them always. Baker Cole was at present amused with the spectacle of money flowing out of crude oil pumped from the ground. It amazed even him to see how fast the oil could turn into money. He called Bill's attention to the phenomenon, and Bill was immediately interested, and for reasons which he kept to himself.

Through Baker Cole's shrewd acquaintance with the game of directing and augmenting the flow of money, Bill turned tiny trickles toward his own bank account, and was amazed at the speed with which they became swift-moving streams.

"Lord, I thought Parowan was a miracle I'd never see repeated," he confided one day to Baker Cole. "Money commenced piling up before we started to move the gold. We laid out a town site, and people came in droves to buy lots and start building. It used to give me a chill at the chances they were taking. What if there wasn't a real mine there? Where would the town get off? Baker, if those men had lost on the gamble, who'd be responsible—me?"

Baker Cole rolled a fragrant cigar between his lips and regarded Bill meditatively through half-closed eyes.

"Depends on what or who induced them to speculate," he said bluntly. "How did you work it, Bill?"

Bill shook his head and looked away to where breakers were beating white foam against a segment of cliffs.

"Hell, I dunno," he confessed helplessly. "I found the mine. Then some government men came along and advised me to incorporate and to lay out a town site. I got them to resign their positions and take hold of it. We laid out the town site, and took some gold up to Goldfield and showed it, and that started the parade. Folks tromped each other's feet to get in."

"What did you do then? Sell out?" Perhaps Baker Cole knew, since he was an exceedingly well-informed man. But he waited for Bill to tell him.

"No, I'm president of the company. They fixed things so I wouldn't have to be on the ground, and we came out here to play around awhile." Bill started to explain that he had not wanted to leave, but shut his teeth upon the words. That would be unfair to Doris.

"How are things going, with you out here? Got any idea?"

Bill grinned, with a worried look back of his eyes.

"Two railroads are busting a lung trying to see which one will whistle first at the depot," he detailed laconically. "I guess that tells the tale, doesn't it?"

"Several." Baker Cole took out his cigar and looked it over carefully before he put it back in his mouth.

"The money keeps coming in," Bill went on. "Everything's fine. We're building a mill and that employs a good many men. A lot of companies have sprung up, claiming to have discovered gold—which I guess they have. The Parowan Record comes out every Saturday, and there's a bank and hotel—you know. It's a town. I feel like a loafer," he admitted ruefully. "But the boys are doing all I could do, I guess. They say everything is running smooth, and the town's a dandy—for a boom town. Soon as the railroads get there, so as to haul material faster, there'll be some fine buildings go up. Contracts are let and all."

He sighed and looked around at Baker Cole, seeking understanding.

"Parowan kind of rides my neck," he said simply. "It's all right—our mine is rich enough to hold it up till other mines get to producing—but I can't help feeling responsible for it, just the same. I feel as if I ought to be on the job myself."

"The wife likes it here," Baker Cole stated calmly.

"Yes. She hates the desert. I wouldn't take her back there into that raw mining town—I wouldn't think of such a thing."

Baker Cole finished his cigar. Very deliberately he put out his hand, drew the ash tray closer and laid the cigar butt exactly in the middle of the tray, moving it twice, fractions of an inch to the center. Bill, his eyes fixed upon him, knew that Baker Cole was not conscious of tray, cigar, or mathematical measurements.

"Bill, I've made money all my life," he said, drawing a long breath as if an important matter had been successfully accomplished. "As far as it's possible to make money honestly, I've made it. Silver in Mexico, copper in Michigan and Montana and Colorado, crude petroleum here in California; I've taken more millions from the ground, Bill, than you'd dare believe if I told you. Had half a million when I was born. Then I was taught how to take care of what I had—and I learned how to make more.

"This Parowan of yours, now, would be something in my line; only, I'd want to take it in the start and handle it myself. I wouldn't invest a dime in the other fellow's game—not if he were my own brother. I'm not afraid of losing money—I can't lose money, seems like. It's the game. I see a chance to get something out of the ground that the world has use for, and I go after it like a dog after a ground squirrel. Money piles up when I've got it—but I've had the fun of the getting. And of course the money helps to play again. Dollars, you know, are mostly what you dig with. Dollars are the master tool of industry—and I don't see why the working men howl so about the man that can furnish that master tool. You take Parowan, now. Leaving out the gamblers that are risking their money, you've helped many a poor man to a job at top wages. Ain't that so?"

"I reckon it is," Bill assented perfunctorily. "There's always big wages where there's a boom, and many a man got his start that way. But you've hit the spot that hurts. It's the fun of doing things that I want. The money's coming in fast enough for all we want, but I'm a loafer for the first time in my life, Baker. My Lord! Think of a grown man putting in day after day just taking a horseback ride in the morning and a swim in the afternoon; and calling that exercise!

"When I was prospecting, Baker, I put in my time from dawn to dusk, hiking over the hills or swinging a pick. I ate because I was hungry. Now, by gosh, folks don't get hungry—they don't give themselves a chance. They eat because somebody's paid a big price to make grub taste good! This is a mighty pretty place to play around in, Baker—but I can't make a business of doing nothing." He made himself a cigarette—rolling his own whenever he was not under Doris' watchful eye—and lighted it absently. "Doris likes this sort of thing," he added pensively. "It's all right for women—but I'll be damned if it's any kinda life for a man!"

Baker Cole chuckled somewhere down in his chest and laid an impressive forefinger on Bill's arm.

"You come on and play with me, in my game," he invited. "I can't promise you won't make money at it—but you'll have fun."

"I bet I would, at that," said Bill. "But my wife doesn't want me to get into business. She wants me to run along and play." It was the nearest that Bill had ever come to uttering a complaint. He did not realize that it was even distantly related to a protest against the future which Doris had mapped out for them.

But as he spoke, he saw a swift, mental panorama of cities and shops and long, pillared, hotel corridors and suites furnished in velvet upholstery. He felt his feet sinking into the sickish softness of deep-piled carpets, and boys with bright buttons and little caps and silver trays dogging him with the prematurely calculating smirk. He saw long, shaded avenues down which he was carried swiftly on cushions,—always cushions and carpets and a smothery, scented atmosphere that sometimes nauseated him with its cloying sweetness.

He shut his eyes, pressing his lips together in silent revolt against the picture. And there, sharply outlined before him, were the stark, barren hills of the desert. Volcanic rubble in the foreground, and stunted sage, and a lizard ducking its head with a queer, ticking motion while it watched him from a rock; soft shadows lying at the foot of great boulders, and all the magic tints of distance; the two burros shuffling before him, picking their way daintily, setting tiny feet between the rocks; Sister Mitchell, horny and gray and solemn, clinging to the canvas with claws thrust out from her shell the size of a dinner plate; and Luella, a vivid bit of green in the gray monotone, riding gallantly the pack of Wise One and talking gravely of things a parrot shouldn't know; and Hez, solemnly herding the little company and believing himself indispensable,—Bill's teeth came down hard on his under lip.

"You're homesick," Baker Cole's voice shattered the vision for the moment.

Bill swallowed and could not meet his eyes. He threw away his cigarette, gone cold between his lips—bitten, too, in the sharp pain of remembrance—and reached for his sack of tobacco.

"I want the crunch of gravel under my feet," he admitted, smiling a twisted smile. "The ocean kind of filled the hankering for distance—but I want to get out and walk and walk—— Aw, hell! A man can't have everything at once. I had the desert, and all the while I dreamed of being rich and not having to eat beans and bacon. I was almost as sick of that country as Mrs. Dale was. But somehow—she takes to this life better than I do. She hates to be reminded of Nevada, and has been trying to coax her folks to sell out and come to the Coast. I don't blame her—not for one minute. It's no place for a woman, back there."

Baker Cole rose and flicked cigar ashes off his vest.

"You're dated up with me for a little trip down Bakersfield way," he grinned. "I'll show you desert—and a game you'll like to play. It's going to be a stag party, so you'll have to get your wife's permission. We'll be gone a week, maybe. You'll have to sleep on the ground and cook over a camp fire. Bring a roll of blankets, if you like. Can you make it to-morrow?"

Doris thought it was rather sudden. She had several things on for the week, however,—things which Bill-dear would not enjoy at all. Moreover, she had learned that close friendship with the Baker Coles was like being favored by royalty, and the necessity of explaining that her husband was off somewhere with Baker Cole for a week would cause the other women to twitter enviously and draw her closer within their hallowed circle.

"It'll be awfully lonesome, dear man, but I do think you'll enjoy the change. Don't worry one minute about me, Bill-dear. With my maid and chauffeur, I shall be all right. And Mrs. Baker Cole has asked me to stay with her, if I feel at all strange here at the hotel. Perhaps I shall. I haven't decided, yet."

Had she met the situation with a shade less equanimity, Bill would not have gone with Baker Cole. And that would have made a great difference, later on. But Destiny has a way of providing for the seemingly unimportant things of life,—which are never unimportant, whether we know it or not. He went with Baker Cole down into a region where men were pumping wealth from the ground deep under the sage-covered plains. His going was the beginning of several changes in Bill's life.