CHAPTER XXOPPOSITION
THE second night of the flood, the women of the towns dragged brush and filled sacks for the men to carry. It was past midnight when Innes Hardin left the levee. While her feet and fingers had toiled, her mind had been fretting over Tom. Two nights, and no rest! It was told by men who came down the river how Hardin was heroically laboring. She yearned to go to him; perhaps he would stop for a few hours to her entreaty. But an uncertain trail across country, with the dust-laden wind in her face? She decided to wait for the dawn. A snatched sleep first, but who would call her? She would sleep for hours, so weary every muscle. Her mind fixed on Sam as the only man in town who had time to saddle a horse for a woman.
She went in search of him. She found that the long adobe office building had already taken on the look of defeat, of ruin. The casements had been torn from the partitions; the doors and windows were out. The furniture had been hauled up to the White Refuge for safety. She went hunting through the ghoulish gloom for the darky, turning her lantern in every dark corner. She knew that she would find him sleeping.
Then she heard steps on the veranda. She ran toward them, expecting to see Sam. She swung herlantern full on two figures mounting the shallow steps. Rickard was with her sister-in-law.
“Oh, excuse me!” she blurted blunderingly. Of course Gerty would take a wrong intention from the stupid words!
The blue eyes met those of Innes with defiance. It was as though she had spoken: “Well, think what you will of it, you Hardins! I don’t care what you think of me!”
What indeed did she think of it? Why should she feel like the culprit before these two, her words deserting her? It was Gerty’s look that made her feel guilty, as though she had been spying. To meet them together, here at midnight, why should nottheyfeel ashamed? She had done nothing wrong. And Tom down yonder fighting—and they make his absence a cover for their rendezvous—
“I’m looking for Sam!” The effort behind the words turned them into an oratorical challenge.
“So are we. I want to send him home with Mrs. Hardin. She’s worn out.”
“She can go home with me. I am going directly. As soon as I give a message to Sam.” She instantly regretted her words, abruptly halting. It came to her that Rickard would insist upon delivering her message. Of course, he would oppose her going. Some petty reason or other. She knew from the men that he was oppositional, that he liked to show his power. Not safe, he would say, or the horse was needed, or Sam too busy to wait on her!
“You can not go home alone, you two. The town is full of strange Indians. Give me your lantern, Miss Hardin; I’ll rout out that darky.”
Rebelliously she gave him the lantern. The light turned full on her averted angry eyes.
A haughty Thusnelda followed him.
Sam was discovered asleep in the only room where the windows had not yet been attacked. His head rested on a bundle of sacked trees which the ladies of the Improvement Club had planned to plant the next day. Deep snores betrayed his refuge.
“Here, Sam! I want you to take these ladies home. Chase yourself. They’ve been working while you’ve slept. I thought you’d have all these windows out by now.”
Gerty had to supply the courtesy for two. She told Mr. Rickard in her appealing way that he had been very kind; that she “would have been frightened to death to go home alone.”
Innes had to say something! “Good night!” The words had an insulting ring.
The wind covered a passionate silence, as the two women, followed by Sam, yawning and stretching, made their way down the shrieking street. “It was true,” Innes was thinking. She had at last stumbled on the rout, but it was not a matter of personal, but moral untidiness; not a carelessness of pins or plates, of tapes or dishes. It was far worse; a slackness of ethics. It meant more unhappiness for Tom.
As she put her foot on the step leading to her tent, it discovered something, bulky, resistant.
“Sam,” she cried. “Come back!”
Both Sam and Mrs. Hardin came running from different directions. An Indian, dead-drunk, lay sprawling across her steps.
“Oh, suppose we had come alone?” moaned Gerty.
“Well, we didn’t,” retorted her sister with intentional rudeness. “What can you do with him, Sam?”
It was a half-hour before Sam could get the reeling Cocopah started toward Mexicali.
“Don’t forget to call me at five!” cried Innes after him.
Her aching muscles told her that she could not have slept four hours when the darky was back, knocking at her door.
“All right,” she pulled herself together. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
“I’ll have to hold him, Miss Innes,” came the negro voice through the screen door. “He’ll get all tangled up in the rope. The winds got him all skittish.”
She came out, rubbing her eyes; her khaki suit creased where she had lain in it. She asked him if he had seen her brother.
Sam, whom sleep had been occupying, answered evasively. “I’m not looking for him yet-a-way, Miss Innes! The river’s cuttin’ back, mighty fas’, they say. A third of a mile in twenty-fo’ hours. If it keeps up that-away, it’ll be on us right soon. Mr. Hardin he’s not a-comin’ back so long’s he’s got that there river to fight.”
“I’m going after him. He’s got to stop for me. Don’t tell any one, Sam, where I’ve gone.”
“You oughtn’t to be goin’ alone, Miss Innes,” he called after her loping horse. “The new boss wouldn’t like it. He’s mighty careful about womenfolk!”
She sent a mocking grimace over her shoulder. “Pff!”
Sam grinned. “If she ain’t jes’ the spit of her brother!” His pace lagged. It had been a hard night’s work!
Innes’ horse loped through the silent streets.
“I’ll run past the levee; perhaps Tom has come back.” It occurred to her that there might be a message at the hotel. She pulled on her left rein, and swept past the deserted adobe.
The gorge of the New River was but a rod or so now from the west side. Sam was right. If the scouring out of the channel could not be kept to the farther bank, the towns must go. The levee wouldn’t help them then.
She knew the danger; she had heard the engineers talk with Tom. The gradient from Yuma to the Basin was four feet to the mile, in land which corroded like sugar. The very thing which had helped them in their initial labor of canal building would militate against the safety of the valley now, with the marauding Dragon at large.
As she reined in her horse, Rickard stepped out on the sidewalk. He, too, was heavy-eyed from a snatched nap.
“Were you looking for me?”
The scorn in the girl’s face told him that his question was stupid. Forhim!
“Has my brother come back?”
He said he did not know. “You can see, I have been dreaming!” She would not smile back at him, but rode off toward the levee. Rickard stood watching her.
Down the street, Fred Eggers was opening his store. She could see two Indians peering in through the open door.
Was this the river? West of the levee, a sea of muddy water spread over the land. There was yet a chance to save the towns, thetown, she corrected herself, as her eye fell on the Mexican village across theditch. For Mexicali was doomed. Some of the mud-huts had already fallen; the water was running close to the station-house.
She saw Wooster standing near, calculating the distance, the time, perhaps, before the new station would go. Over the door, in freshly painted letters, were the words—“Ferro Carril de Baja California.” To the east, a few feet only away, was one of the monuments of the series placed by the engineers of the Gadsen survey. They marched from Yuma to the sea in the path of the old Santa Fe trail, marking on the way the grave of many a gold-seeker.
She hailed Wooster. Ruin was presaged in the lines of his forehead.
“Pretty bad?” she cried.
He shook his head.
“Is Tom back?”
“He’s over there, now. Fighting like all possessed. He’ll work till he drops.” Wooster was proud of that method.
“We all know Tom!” Her pride sprang up. “But he’s got to stop for a while. I’m going up after him.”
“Not if my name’s Wooster. I’ll go. He’ll mind me.” What if he were dropping, himself, with sleep and fatigue? It was a chance to serve Hardin; to bring a smile of gratitude to the eyes of this little comrade of the desert, whom the engineers adored in their several fashions. Wooster’s worship was louder than the others; the younger men shyer, but more fervent. Wooster found her calm boyish eyes beautiful, but not disturbing. But she was a Hardin; and a pretty one. Wooster would serve a Hardin, or a pretty woman, were his last hour come.
“Can you?” she cried; meaning—“Would you be so good?”
“Can I? He’ll mind me,” bragged Wooster. His small bright eyes snapped over some recollections. “I’ve made him rest before when he didn’t want to. I can do it again.”
“It’s terribly good of you, but I mean, can you get away?”
“I’m through here.” He omitted to say that he was to report at six in the evening. “I’ll send him back to you, Miss Hardin.”
“You’re terribly good,” she repeated.
She watched the flowing river, swollen with wreckage. She saw, with comprehension, a section of a fence; somebody’s crop gone. There was a railway tie, another! The river was eating up Estrada’s new road-bed? A cry broke from her as a mesquit on the coffee-colored tide caught on a buried snag. The current swirled dangerously around it. Instantly, the water rose toward the top of the levee. Men came running to pry away the tree. A minute later, it was dancing down the stream. They raised the bank against the pressing lapping waves. There, the tree had stuck again. They ran down the levee with their long poles. Each time that happened, unless the obstruction were swiftly dislodged, she knew it meant an artificial fall somewhere, a quick scouring out of the channel. The men were working like silent parts of a big machine; the confusion of the first night was gone. From their faces one would not guess that their fortunes, their homes, hung on the subduing of that indomitable force which had not yet known defeat, which had turned back explorer and conquistador. Ah, there was the lurking fear ofit! Victory still lay to its credit; the other column was blank.
“Mr. Parrish,” she called.
A man on the bank paused, shovel in hand.
She spurred her horse abreast of him.
“How is your wife?”
“Pretty bad. I had to leave her at midnight. I couldn’t get no one to stay with her. The women have to mind the ranches these days. She had a spell of her neuralgia. She couldn’t have come with me any way.” He was torn between his duty and his fears.
“When do you go back?”
“I don’t know. We are all needed here. Mexicali’s going. I’ll be lucky if I get sent back to-night.”
“It’s going down the Wistaria?”
“Enough to scare her. The ranch’s as good as gone already. What good’s the land if we can’t get water up to it?”
“I know,” murmured Innes.
“I’m not blaming any one, Miss Hardin. Unless it’s myself. I ought never to have brought her here. Not until the river’s settled. The wind’s the worst to her; she’s that scared of the wind.”
“I’ll go and bring her home with me. You’ll feel better to have her near town,” she suggested.
“That’s first-class.” His relief was pathetic. His dull fidelity, his love for that nervous wreck of a woman, rose that instant to the dignity of a romance. She thought of the purple flannel waist, the untidy home, the smell of burning rice, of scorched codfish, the loving struggle of the woman who dared life in the desert beside her mate, lacking the strength to make it tolerable to either.
“I’ll bring her home with me,” she repeated.
She did not wait for his gratitude. Her horse was turned back to town. She saw Wooster coming toward her. His snapping black eyes shot out sparks of anger.
“He won’t let me go.”
“Who won’t let you?” But she knew.
“Casey. Says he’ll send some one else. I said as nobody else’d make Hardin stop. He said as that was up to Hardin.”
Of course, he wouldn’t let Wooster go! Her offer to Parrish suddenly shackled her.
“Orders me to bed,” spat Wooster. “Wonder why he didn’t order gruel, too. It’s spite, antagonism to Hardin, that’s what it is!” She believed that, too. Tom was right. Rickard did take advantage of his authority.
She did not see Rickard until he stood by her side.
“I’m sorry not to spare Wooster, Miss Hardin. But there’s stiff work ahead. He’s got to be ready for a call. If Hardin insists on spoiling one good soldier, that’s his affair. I can’t let him spoil two.”
Wooster shrugged, and left them. “Spoiling good soldiers!”
“I’ve taken Bodefeldt off duty. I told him to relieve Hardin.”
Bodefeldt who blushed when any one looked at him! He would be about as persuasive to Tom as a veil to a desert wind! She turned away, but not before Rickard saw again that transforming anger. Her eyes shone like topazes in sunlight. She would not trust herself to speak. Wooster was waiting for her. Rickard could hear the man repeat. “I’m sorry, Miss Hardin. It’s an outrage. That’s what it is.”
Queer, they couldn’t see that it was Hardin’s fault;Hardin, who was up the river fighting like a melodramatic hero; fighting without caution or reserve, demoralizing discipline; he couldn’t help admiring the bulldog energy, himself. That was what all these men adored. He’d clenched the girl’s antagonism, now, for sure! How her eyes had flashed at him!
Hello! There was a tree floating down toward the station-house....
“Bring your poles!” he yelled.