The Naulahka | Page 9

rival's system of politics by openly declining to buy a single ticket. This
feeble-foolish wish to please everybody was, he understood very well,
at the root of Sheriff's attitude toward his daughter's mania. Kitty
wanted to go so bad, he supposed he'd better let her, was his slouching
version of the situation at home. He declared that he had opposed the
idea strongly when she had first suggested it, and Tarvin did not doubt
that Sheriff, who he knew was fond of her, had really done what he
could. His complaint against him was not on the score of disposition
but of capacity. He recognised, however, that this was finally a
complaint, like all his others; against Kate; for it was Kate's will which
made all pleadings vain.
When the train for Topaz arrived at the station, Sheriff and Tarvin got
into the drawingroom car together. Tarvin did not yearn to talk to
Sheriff on the way to Topaz, but neither did he wish to seem to shirk
conversation. Sheriff offered him a cigar in the smoking-room of the
Pullman, and when Dave Lewis, the conductor, came through, Tarvin
hailed him as an old friend, and made him come back and join them
when he had gone his rounds. Tarvin liked Lewis in the way that he
liked the thousand other casual acquaintances in the State with whom
he was popular; and his invitation was not altogether a device for
avoiding private talk with Sheriff. The conductor told them that he had
the president of the Three C.'s on behind in a special car, with his party.
'No!' exclaimed Tarvin, and begged him to introduce him on the spot;
he was precisely the man he wanted to see. The conductor laughed, and
said he wasn't a director of the road--not himself; but when he had left
them to go about his duties, he came back, after a time, to say that the

president had been asking whom he could recommend at Topaz as a
fair-minded and public-spirited man, able to discuss in a reasonable
spirit the question of the Three C.'s coming to Topaz. The conductor
told him that he had two such gentlemen on board his train at that
moment; and the president sent word to them by him that he would be
glad to have a little talk with them if they would come back to his car.
For a year the directorate of the Three C.'s had been talking of running
their line through Topaz, in the dispassionate and impartial manner of
directorates which await encouragement. The board of trade at Topaz
had promptly met and voted the encouragement. It took the shape of
town bonds and gifts of land, and finally of an undertaking to purchase
shares of stock in the road itself, at an inflated price. This was
handsome even for a board of trade; but, under the prick of town
ambition and town pride, Rustler had done better. Rustler lay fifteen
miles from Topaz, up in the mountains, and by that much nearer the
mines; and Topaz recognised it as its rival in other matters than that of
the Three C.'s.
The two towns had enjoyed their boom at about the same time; then the
boom had left Rustler and had betaken itself to Topaz. This had cost
Rustler a number of citizens, who moved to the more prosperous place.
Some of the citizens took their houses up bodily, loaded them on a flat
car and sent them over to Topaz as freight, to the desolation of the
remaining inhabitants of Rustler. But Topaz now began in her turn to
feel that she was losing her clutch. A house or two had been moved
back. It was Rustler this time which was gaining. If the railroad went
there, Topaz was lost. If Topaz secured the railroad, the town was made.
The two towns hated each other as such towns hate in the
West--malignantly, viciously, joyously. If a convulsion of nature had
obliterated one town, the other must have died from sheer lack of
interest in life. If Topaz could have killed Rustler, or if Rustler could
have killed Topaz, by more enterprise, push, and go, or by the
lightnings of the local press, the surviving town would have organised a
triumphal procession and a dance of victory. But the destruction of the
other town by any other than the heaven-appointed means of schemes,
rustle, and a board of trade, would have been a poignant grief to the

survivor.
The most precious possession of a citizen of the West is his town pride.
It is the flower of that pride to hate the rival town. Town pride cannot
exist without town jealousy, and it was therefore fortunate that Topaz
and Rustler lay within convenient hating distance of