ROBBINS Harold - The Carpetbaggers

"I'll talk to him," I said, starting through the foyer.

"I’ll fix some steak sandwiches and coffee, Mr. Cord."

I stopped and looked back at the tall Negro. He never seemed to age. His hair was still black and thick, his frame giant-sized and powerful. "Hey, Robair, you know something? I missed you."

He smiled again. There was nothing subservient or false about his smile. It was the smile of a friend. "I missed you, too, Mr. Cord."

I turned and walked into the living room. Robair was more than just a friend. In a way, he was my guardian angel. I don't know how I would have held together after Rina died if it hadn't been for Robair.

By the time I'd got back to Reno from New York, I was a wreck. There was nothing I wanted to do. Just drink and forget. I'd had enough of people.

My father rode my shoulders like a desert Indian on a pony. It had been his woman I had wanted. It had been his woman who had died. Why did I cry? Why was I so empty?

Then one morning, I awakened in the dirt of the yard, back of Nevada's room in the bunkhouse, to find Robair bending over me. I vaguely remembered having leaned my back against the wall of the bunkhouse while I finished a bottle of bourbon. That had been last night. I turned my head slowly. The empty bottle lay beside me.

I placed my hands in the dirt and braced myself. My head hurt and my mouth was dry and when I tried to get to my feet, I found I didn't have the strength.

I felt Robair's arm slip around behind me and lift me to my feet. We started to walk across the hard-packed earth. "Thank you," I said, leaning against him gratefully. "I’ll be all right once I get a drink."

His voice had been so soft that at first I thought I hadn't heard him. "No more whisky, Mr. Cord."

I stared up into his face. "What did you say?"

His large eyes were impassive. "No more whisky, Mr. Cord," he repeated. "I reckon it's time you stopped."

The anger pulled up in me and gave me strength. I shoved myself away from him. "Just who in hell do you think you are?" I shouted. "If I want a drink, I'll take a drink!"

He shook his head. "No more whisky. You're not a little boy no more. You can't run an' hide your head in the whisky bottle ever’ time a little bad comes your way."

I stared at him, speechless for a moment, as the shock and anger ran through me in ice-cold waves. Then I found my voice. "You're fired!" I screamed. "No black son of a bitch is going to own me!"

I turned and started for the house. I felt his hand on my shoulder and turned. There was a look of sadness on his face. "I’m sorry, Mr. Cord," he said.

"There's no use in apologizing, Robair."

"I’m not apologizing for what I said, Mr. Cord," he replied in a low voice. Then I saw his giant, hamlike fist racing toward me. I tried to move away but nothing in my body seemed to work the way it should and I plunged into the dark again.

This time when I woke up, I was in bed, covered with clean sheets. There was a fire going in the fireplace and I felt very weak. I turned my head. Robair was sitting in a chair next to the bed. There was a small tureen of hot soup on the table next to him. "I got some hot soup here for you," he said, his eyes meeting mine levelly.

"Why'd you bring me up here?"

"The mountain air'll do you good."

"I won't stay," I said, pushing myself up. I'd had enough of this cabin when I was here the last time. On my honeymoon.

Robair's big hand pushed me back against the pillow. "You'll stay," he said quietly. He picked up the tureen and dipped a spoon into it, then held the spoon of soup out to me. "Eat."

There was such a note of authority in his quiet voice that involuntarily I opened my mouth before I thought. The hot soup scalded its way down. Then I pushed his hand away. "I don't want any."

I stared into his dark eyes for a moment, then I felt rise up inside me a hurt and a loneliness that I had never felt before. Suddenly, I began to cry.

He put down the tureen. "Go ahead an' weep, Mr. Cord. Cry yourself out. But you'll find tears won't drown you any more than whisky."

He was sitting on the porch in the late-afternoon sun when I finally came out. It was green all around, bushes and trees all the way down the side of the mountain, until it ran into the red and yellow sands of the desert. He got to his feet when I opened the door.

I walked over to the railing and looked down. We were a long way from people. I turned and looked back at him. "What's for dinner, Robair?" I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. "To tell the truth, Mr. Cord, I was kind of waitin' on how you felt."

"There's a brook near here that has the biggest trout you ever saw."

He smiled. "A mess o' trout sounds fine, Mr. Cord."

It was almost two years before we came down from the mountain. Game was plentiful and once a week, Robair would drive down for supplies. I grew lean and dark from the sun and the bloat of the cities disappeared as the muscles tightened and hardened in my body.

We developed a routine and it was amazing how well the business got along without me. It merely proved the old axiom: once you reached a certain size, it was pretty difficult to stop growing. All the companies were doing fine except the picture company. It was undercapitalized but it didn't matter that much to me any more.

Three times a week, I spoke to McAllister on the telephone. That was generally sufficient to take care of most problems. Once a month, Mac would come driving up the winding road to the cabin, his brief case filled with papers for me to sign or reports for me to study.

Mac was a remarkably thorough man. There was very little that escaped his observant eye. In some mysterious way, everything of importance that was going on in any of the companies found its way into his reports. There were many things I knew I should attend to personally but somehow, everything seemed a long way off and very unimportant.

We'd been there almost a year and a half when we had our first outside visitor. I'd been out hunting and was coming back up the trail, with a brace of quail swinging from my hand, when I saw a strange car parked in front of the cabin. It was a Chevy with California license plates.

I walked around and looked at the registration on the steering column: Rosa Strassmer, M.D., 1104 Coast Highway, Malibu, Cal. I turned and walked into the cabin. There was a young woman seated on the couch, smoking a cigarette. She had dark hair, gray eyes and a determined jaw.

When she stood up, I saw she was wearing a faded pair of Levis that somehow accentuated the slim, feminine curve of her hips. "Mr. Cord?" she asked, holding her hand out to me, a curious, faint accent in her voice. "I’m Rosa Strassmer, Otto Strassmer's daughter."

I took her hand, staring at her for a moment. Her grip was firm. I tried to keep the faint tinge of annoyance from showing in my voice. "How did you know where to find me?"

She took out an envelope and gave it to me. "Mr. McAllister asked me to drop this off when he heard I was driving through here on my vacation."

I opened the envelope and looked at the paper inside. It was nothing that couldn't have waited until his next visit. I dropped it on the table. Robair came into the room just then. He looked at me curiously as he took the brace of quail and my gun and went back into the kitchen.

"I hope I haven't disturbed you, Mr. Cord," she said quickly.

I looked at her. Whatever it was I felt, it wasn't her fault. It was Mac's not too subtle reminder that I couldn't stay on the mountain forever. "No," I answered. "You must forgive my surprise. We don't get many visitors up here."

She smiled suddenly. When she smiled, her face took on a strange bright beauty. "And I can understand why you don't ask people to come, Mr. Cord," she said. "More than two people would crowd a paradise like this."