That, too, seemed cheap and pointless.

He felt nauseated with Bland Halliday and his petty grafting.
A little more and he would have told Bland so and sent him about his business.

At that moment of revulsion against Bland he was almost in the mood to give up the whole scheme and do as Mary V wished him to do: settle down there at the ranch and work out his debt where he had made it.

Looking down into the grimy, friendly faces of those who had braved desert wind and sun for him, the sallow, shifty-eyed face of Bland Halliday seemed to epitomize the sordid avariciousness of the man and made him wonder if any measure of success would atone for the forced intimacy with the fellow.

Mary V, had she known his mood then, might have won her way with him and altered immeasurably the future.
But Mary V knew only that he was staying down there with that unbearable Bland Halliday, fussing around his horrid old airplane instead of coming to the house and telling her he was sorry.