Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/115

Rh Spinner whirled his chair back to the desk, snatched open a drawer, flipped over a pack of green cards, another of pink cards, and a third of white cards; selected a half dozen or so of each, slammed shut the roll top desk and arose.

"Come on," he said.

"Where?"

"To look at houses, of course," rejoined Spinner impatiently.

In meekness, admiration, and considerable amusement Boyd trailed his guide around the corner to where stood a horse and buggy. Spinner ran over his cards and climbed in.

"We'll look at rent places first," he announced.

"Would you mind my looking at these cards?" asked Boyd.

"Not at all. Help yourself."

In the year eighteen hundred and eighty-odd, card filing systems were so rare as to be practically unknown. Boyd looked upon Spinner's crude beginning with respect.

"Very ingenious," he commented, "and very handy."

"Saves time," said Spinner.

As they drove about from one place to another, Spinner kept up a rattling staccato commentary on Arguello, its resources, its climate, its future. As he talked a new and different Arguello took the place of the old. The bare and vacant foothills twinkled whitely with villas looking across Italian-wise to the sea, the rutted streets smoothed under pavements echoing to horses hoofs, the rolling reaches of the cattle country became snug with irrigated farms, fountains spouted in the barren square of the city park, a boulevard skirted the sea "It's a comer," he repeated, "a comer! All we need is a little enterprise to grasp the chance. It will come. These people here are asleep; they're dead. It needs a new lot, people who appreciate opportunities and have the bustle and get up and git."

"You can't very well kill the inhabitants off," laughed Boyd.

"Won't need to. They'll be submerged, lost. This town will grow so fast you won't be able to find an old hard-shell with a search warrant."

"Perhaps they can be waked up," suggested Boyd.

"They're dead," repeated Spinner, "you can't wake the dead.