Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 6, 2025
Bryant kept his eyes fixed on the amazed banker's orbs. "Didn't I speak clearly?" he inquired. "I own one hundred and twenty-five second feet of water in this river and it's my intention to apply it. I'm going to make a real ranch down there." A shadow seemed to settle on Menocal's face, leaving it altered, less placid, more purposeful.
Nothing stirred on its one long street, lined with scarcely a break on either side by mud-plastered houses that made a continuous brown wall, marked at intervals by a door or pierced by a window; nothing stirred, neither in front of Menocal's large frame store at the upper end of it, with the little bank adjoining, nor before the small courthouse grounds across the way, where the huge old cottonwoods spread their shade, nor along the entire length of the beaten street down to Gomez's blacksmith shop and Martinez's saloon across from each other at the lower end; nothing, not even the pair of burros drowsing in the shade of the wall, or the dogs lying before doors, or the goats a-kneel by the saloon, or the fowls nested down in the dust.
Menocal; you have only me to deal with; there are no capitalists running this show yet. But the water system will be built, never fear." Menocal's eyebrows went up. "Ah, so?" he asked, softly. Then his face smoothed itself out; and Bryant realized that he had been led into a betrayal of importance. "You would do well to name a price, Mr. Bryant."
Beside the latter stood Menocal's house, with its smooth green lawn and its beds of poppies, its trees, its fence massed with sweet peas, and its vine-covered veranda, where the engineer had a glimpse of a corpulent figure in a hammock. The only sound from the place was the musical gurgle of water in a little irrigation ditch bordering the lawn.
And I think we've made every dollar go as far as it would under the circumstances." "My word for that." "It's this little trick of Menocal's that's burning up good coin. Sixty thousand would have built the project ordinarily; my estimates were correct enough. But having to do the job in this infernal weather is what's raising the cost forty thousand more.
Water was appropriated out of the Pinas River, but that's eight miles north of here, and it would cost a hundred thousand dollars, if not more, to build a dam and a canal along the mountain side. No, sir; that appropriation was just some more of Menocal's tricky work!
But what if he then refuses to sell me goods from his store?" "You can buy at the commissary," Lee said. "Why should you lose five dollars a day because of Menocal's bad feeling for me? You remain idle but does he pay you, or feed you? And the wages I offer you, and the doctor's services, and the other accommodations, I also offer to other Mexicans who will work. You may tell them so.
She would presently see the real values of things; Charlie Menocal's monkey tricks would no longer amuse her, and she would perceive what a shallow harlequin he was, while she would comprehend Gretzinger's vicious, unprincipled sophistry and turn in disgust from the man. She was inexperienced, that was all.
That Menocal boy is crazy to marry her, the talk is." "And is she crazy to marry him?" Lee inquired, amused by this gossip. "Well, not exactly crazy, I'd say; I don't see how she could be. But he'll be worth a lot of money some day, and she may overlook considerable on that account. Menocal's boy has been to college; besides, the family goes everywhere with white folks.
You should remember him, Charlie, for he's the fellow who filled the radiator of the car at the ford on Perro Creek and who threw your money back in your face." Young Menocal's thin figure stiffened, while his small black moustache rose in two points of ire. "Him! That scoundrel who insulted me before Louise! That lamb-stealer!" he shrilled. "That is the man," his father affirmed.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking