Part 39

"Thanks," he said stiffly, and did as she bid him.

"Light up," she urged, and fumbled in a pocket of her waistcoat for a match which she handed him. "Guess I'll smoke myself. It helps me talk, and that's what we're here for."

He had not known that she smoked, and as he watched her roll a cigarette with the skill of much practice the action filled him with fresh repugnance. Through rings of smoke he regarded her with coldly quizzical eyes while he waited for her to open the conversation.

"I've got a proposition to put up to you," she began, "a scheme that I had in the back of my head ever since you started in to 'make the desert bloom like the rose.'"

Her covert sneer did not escape him, but he made no sign.

She went on--

"It's an easy graft; it's done everywhere, and I know it'll work here like a breeze."

Graft was a raw word and Symes's face hardened slightly, but he waited to hear her out.

"You're putting a big force of men on the ditch, I understand. How many?"

"About five hundred."

"Give me a medical contract."

So that was it? His eyes lit up with understanding. She wanted to make money--through him? Her tone and attitude was not exactly that of a person asking a favor. A faint smile of derision curved his lips. She saw it and added--

"I'll give you a rake-off."

He resented both the words and her tone, but she only laughed at the frown which appeared for a moment.

"You're 'out for the stuff,' aren't you?" she demanded. "Well, so am I."

He regarded her silently. Had she always been so coarse of speech, he wondered, or for some reason he could not divine was she merely throwing off restraint? Brushing the ashes from his cigar with deliberation, he inquired non-committally--

"Just what is your scheme?"

"It's simple enough, and customary. Take a dollar a month out of your employees' wages for medical services and I'll look after them and put up some kind of a jimcrow hospital in case they get too bad to lie in the bunk-house on the works. I can run in some kind of a cheap woman to cook and look after them and you bet the grub won't founder 'em. Why, there's nothin' to it, Mr. Symes--I can run the joint, give you two bits out of every dollar, and still make money."

Symes scarcely heard what she said for looking at her face. It seemed transformed by cupidity, a kind of mean penuriousness which he had observed in the faces of persons of small interests, but never to such a degree. "She's money mad," Grandmother Kunkel had said; the old woman was right.

He was not squeamish, Andy P. Symes, and it was true that he was "out for the stuff," but the woman's bald statement shocked him. Upon a few occasions Symes had been surprised to find that he had standards of conduct, unsuspected ideals, and somehow, her attitude toward her profession outraged his sense of decency. If a minister of the gospel had hung over his Bible and shouted from the pulpit "I'm out for the stuff!" the effect upon Symes would have been much the same.

Until she thrust her sordid views upon him he had not realized that he entertained for the medical profession any deeper respect than for any other class of persons engaged in earning a livelihood, but now he remembered that the best physicians he had known had seemed to look upon their life-work as a consecration of themselves to humanity and the most flippant among them, as men, had always a dignity apart from themselves when they became the physician, and he knew, too, that as a class they were jealous of the good name of their profession and sensitive to a degree where anything affected its honor. The viewpoint now presented was new to him and sufficiently interesting to investigate further; besides it shed a new light upon the woman's character.

"But supposing the men object to such a deduction," he said tentatively. "There's little sickness in this climate and the camps are sanitary."

"Object? What of it!" she argued eagerly. "They'll have to submit if you say so; certainly they're not goin' to throw up their jobs for a dollar. Work's too scarce for that. They can't kick and they won't kick if you give 'em to understand that they've got to dig up this dollar or quit."

"But," Symes evaded, "the most of this work is let to contractors and it's for them to determine; I don't feel like dictating to them."

"Why not?" Her voice quavered with impatience. "They want new contracts. They'd make the arrangement if they thought it would please you?"

"But," Symes answered coolly, "I don't know that it would please me."

He saw the quick, antagonistic glitter which leaped into her eyes, but he went on calmly--

"Where the work is dangerous and the force is large your scheme is customary and practicable, I know, but upon a project of this size where the conditions are healthy, there is nothing to justify me in demanding a compulsory contribution of $500 a month for your benefit."