Early next morning Rogeen got an interview with the executive of the
Mexican province, whom he had never met. The governor received him
most courteously and manifested both alert intelligence and a spirit of
fairness. During that long night ride Bob had thought out most
carefully his exact line of appeal.
"Your Excellency," he said, earnestly, "wishes, of course, for the
fullest development of the Imperial Valley in Mexico. To that end the
ranchers must know they have full protection, not alone for their lives
as they now have, but also for their crops. They must know it is
profitable to farm in Mexico. I, myself, have five thousand acres of
cotton, which will pay in export duties alone perhaps $25,000. Next
year I wish to grow much more. Besides, I'm the agent for a very rich
man who lends hundreds of thousands of dollars to other ranchers in
your province.
"But this can continue only if those who do business on your side of
the line obey the laws and pay their debts. Such men as Reedy Jenkins
must be compelled to deal honestly or get out."
The governor agreed to what Rogeen said, and promised to take prompt
action.
"But," insisted Bob, "to save us, it must be done quickly. Jenkins'
cotton must be seized and held for his debts, and the water turned into
the canals at once."
This was also promised as soon as legal papers could be prepared. In
leaving the office Bob dropped the telegram from the consul,
accidentally.
"It apparently will not be needed," he said to himself as he left the
office, "but it won't hurt to lose it."
The telegram left in the office read:
Present your situation to the governor, and if immediate relief is not
given I'll close the border within twenty-four hours so tight that not
a man, a mule, nor a machine can cross it either way.
LANIER, _Consul._
Two hours later a secretary who spoke good English and a Mexican
captain appeared at the Chinese hotel where Bob was waiting.
"We have here," the secretary presented Bob with two papers, "an
attachment for Senor Jenkins' cotton and an order that the water must
be turned into the canals at once, and at the old rate. El Capitan and
I will accompany you in the governor's own machine to see these orders
are obeyed."
Rogeen requested that no message be sent to Mexicali regarding these
attachments, as that would give Reedy a chance to dodge.
"Can we go back over the Mexican road, and come into the valley round
the Laguna Salada?" Bob asked. Reedy might already be rushing his
cotton on those trucks down to the waiting boat on the Gulf, and by
going this route they would intercept them.
The road over the mountains was not completed, said the secretary, but
they could have another machine from the valley to meet them, and in
that machine make the circuit as proposed.
At ten o'clock that night Rogeen, the captain, and the secretary left
the machine and the chauffeur at the top of the mountain grade, and
began the two-mile descent to the ancient bed of the sea--the desert
round the Laguna Salada.
Bob's satisfaction at winning the governor was more than overbalanced
by the torturing fear that it would all be too late. He believed they
would be in time to stop Reedy from getting away with his four hundred
thousand dollars' worth of cotton. Jenkins would not start until he
had lost hope of getting that $150,000 from the ranchers for water.
But Bob feared he was already too late to save his own cotton and
Chandler's.
The point on the mountain where they left the machine was almost a mile
high. The descent to the valley was by a steep and precarious trail.
The captain who was familiar with it took the lead.
It was twelve-thirty when they reached the road at the bottom which led
to Mexicali. The machine was not there.
"What do you suppose is the matter?" Bob's voice sounded surprisingly
cool but a little flat, even to himself. Although the hot winds struck
them here, his skin felt clammily cold.
"He'll be here by and by." The secretary lighted a cigarette. He did
not share Bob's anxiety and felt no undue fret over a little delay. "I
telegraphed the _comandante_ to send driver and car here about
midnight. He'll be here before long," he reassured. For an hour Bob
walked back and forth peering at every turn far into the desert,
listening until his ears ached. But no sight of car, no sound of
puffing engine. Another hour passed, and another. His anxiety
increased until the delay seemed unbearable.
They waited nine hours. At last they saw the black bug of a machine
crawling snortingly across the twenty-mile strip of sand between them
and the pass through the Cocopa Mountains.
At nine-thirty the car arrived, a powerful machine of expensive make.
The chauffeur was a slender, yellowish young Mexican who delighted in
taking dangerous curves at fifty miles an hour and who savagely
thrilled at the terrific punishment his car could take and still go.
Through the secretary Bob told him of the plan to skirt the Laguna
Salada and go south round the Cocopas instead of going through the
pass. This way they would follow the ancient bed of the Gulf of
California and forty miles south turn across the desert of the Lower
Colorado, thence northeastward until they struck the trail along the
river. By this route they could reach the Red Butte, the head of the
Dillenbeck canal, almost as quickly as through the pass and by
Mexicali, while at the same time they would follow for thirty miles up
the river trail down which Jenkins' trucks must pass on the way to the
head of the Gulf.
"Do you think we can do it?" Bob asked the chauffeur.
The chap lighted a cigarette, shrugged, and replied they could do any
damn thing.
"Let's be doing it then," urged Bob, jumping into the luxurious car.
The Laguna Salada is a dead lake made from the overflow of the Colorado
River and salted by the ancient bed of the sea. There is no vegetation
round it, no life upon it. Along the salty, sandy shore that glitters
in the sun there is no road, no broken trail. But the reckless
chauffeur hit the sand with the exultant fierceness of a bull fighter.
And at every lunge Bob clung to the iron bar overhead and devoutly
prayed that the machine would live through it.
It did. At one o'clock they swung round the headlands into the main
desert--the worst of its size on the continent, the desert of the Lower
Colorado.
As far as the eye could see stretched the dead waste, so dead that not
a mesquite bush, not a cactus, not a living thing grew or crawled or
flew. And upon it smote the sun so hot it seemed a flame, and over it
boiled a wind like the breath of a volcano.
It staggered even the four men, used as they were to the heat of the
valley. But it was only forty miles to the river.
"Pretty damn bad," the chauffeur muttered in Spanish, and shrugged.
Then he turned the nose of his machine northeast, and straight across
the hard-packed sand shot into the blistering desert.
"Two miles, four miles, six----" Bob counted off, watching the
speedometer. Every mile took him nearer the road, the water gates--and
Reedy Jenkins.
"Eight--nine----" he continued. Then a terrific roar; the machine
staggered; the chauffeur swore and applied the brakes.
They all jumped out. It was the right hind tire--a hole blown through
it ten inches long. The chauffeur kicked it two or three times,
lighted a cigarette, and stood looking at the burst tire. Finally he
shrugged and glanced across the desert. The wind was blowing hard;
there was sand in it. He shrugged and sauntered round to the front of
the car, got out his jack and wrenches, took the wheel off, prowled
round a quarter of an hour, then lighted another cigarette, again stood
looking at the burst tire, and kicked it a few times as though trying
to make it wake up and mend itself.
"What is the matter?" asked Bob. He had been afraid to ask.
"He says," interpreted the secretary, "he has no inner tube. Forgot to
bring any."
"Then he'll have to run on the rim," said Bob, desperately; "we've got
to get out of this."
But the secretary nodded toward the radiator which roared as though
about to blow up.
"Where is his water?" Rogeen felt more than the heat surging through
his head.
The chauffeur sauntered round the car twice as though looking for it.
"Says," explained the secretary, "he had a can but must have lost it."
They tried running on the rim, without water and with the hot wind
blowing the same direction they were going. The machine lasted four
miles, and then quit in the middle of a sand drift, with the most
infernal finality in its death surge.
Bob got out and looked at the stalled car hopelessly. The boiling wind
surged over the hot dust and smote him witheringly. The driven sand
almost suffocated him. It was twenty-five miles at least to the river,
twenty more to possible assistance. He looked at his watch--it was
five minutes after one. Six hours before the sun would set, and until
then walking would be suicide.
He climbed back into the machine, and sank limply into the shaded
corner of the seat. Six hours of this--it would be torture; and there
would be one long night of walking to reach water; another day of
waiting for night--without food--and again a long, staggering walk
before they reached a human habitation.
Two days and nights of delay--then it would be too late!