Noah, bent low, slipped forward in utter silence--more silence than
necessary. The American water keeper, Madrigal, and the Mexican guard
were too profoundly busy with a crap game on the floor under the
lantern to be disturbed by the mere breaking of a twig.
But all at once from out the night came a drawling voice:
"Brethren, let's raise our hands." Three pairs of eyes leaped up from
the dice and looked into the muzzle of the most vicious shotgun they
had ever seen--not ten feet away. Six hands went up without a word.
"Stand up," was the next drawling command. "Turn your backs." Noah
flung two small ropes at their feet.
"You," he ordered Madrigal, "tie the Mex's hands behind him--and stand
him over by the wall."
"Whitey," he ordered the water keeper when that was done, "tie the
Hebrew's hands and feet and set him down over by the wall, facing this
way.
"Now," Noah again commanded the water keeper, "go to the telephone and
order the water turned in. Tell 'em we are dry--that all the trouble
is settled, and to shoot the water down banks full, right away, quick."
The water keeper was shaking as though with the ague. He knew danger
when he saw it and he was perfectly sure he saw it.
He went to the telephone and called the keeper at the Valley Irrigation
Company's office. As he started to speak Madrigal stirred on the floor
as though trying to get up.
Still keeping the water keeper covered with the shotgun, Noah looked
round at Madrigal and drawled:
"If I was you, Hebrew, I'd keep sayin' over that parable which reads:
'Once there was a Mexican who was shot in the stomach with half a pint
of buckshot; and in hell he lifted up his eyes and said, "Father
Abraham, send me a drop of water." And Father Abraham says, "Not a
drop. Ain't you the man that helped burn up the Imperial Valley?
Hell's too good for you, but it's all we've got."'"
The telephone message was given.
"It sounded all right," said Noah to the water keeper. "Sit down over
there and be comfortable, while we wait and see; and keep your eye on
the muzzle of the gun. It is the only way to keep it from smokin'."
Forty minutes passed. Noah's eyes were on his prisoners, but his ears
kept listening. Fifty minutes, then he heard a loud woosh--almost a
roar. The water was coming!
"Now let's go out and open up all gates," ordered Noah. The water
keeper obeyed.
"For the time being," drawled Noah, "you can lie down out there in the
open beside the canal and take a nap. Shootin' craps has been sort of
hard on your nerves. I'll look after the water for a spell."
About nine o'clock at night Imogene Chandler came in from the cotton
field.
Out there in the dim starlight stretched the long rows of cotton,
erect, green, luxuriant. The water had come in time. It had flowed
into their ditches at four o'clock the morning after Noah Ezekiel
passed. They had been ready for it. For three days it had flowed
abundantly, and all their fields were watered.
Imogene lifted her face to the wind. She loved the desert again. And
yet there was restlessness in her movements; even in the stillness her
ears strained to catch some other sound than the soft rustle of the
wind.
Nothing had happened to him of course or she would have heard. But she
had watched for him that first night after the water was turned in; the
next night she was expecting him, and last night she felt sure he would
come. If he did not come tonight---- Maybe something had happened,
maybe he had been shot by some of Jenkins' hired assassins? Fear,
which really had been hovering about for three days, but put off by her
faith in Bob's utter competence to take care of himself, swooped down
on her suddenly. Her throat grew dry, her heart beat like a frightened
bird's, she whirled and started to run for the house. She would start
in search at once.
Then came the sound that her ears had been straining for--the chuck,
chuck of his little machine.
She dropped down on the bench under the arrowwood shelter and let
herself go. But the sobs were over, her eyes dry, her lips smiling, as
he came across the yard in the dusk with a dark bulk under his arms.
He had brought his fiddle. She did not stir from the bench. She felt
utterly, blissfully relaxed. Her arm lay loosely along the back of the
bench, her head dropped slightly forward, the wind still stirring her
hair.
"Hello." That was her only greeting. But the tone of it went through
him like a soft breath of wind in the woods following a lull in the
storm.
"Hello," and that was his only reply as he sat down on the bench beside
her, the fiddle across his knees.
Her arm lying lazily along the back of the bench was almost touching
him; but he had not noticed it, and she left it there.
"I don't hardly know where to begin," Bob said directly, and laughed to
try to cover up his emotions. He knew that no matter where he began he
never could put in words the horror of the night when the ghost of
utter defeat and failure walked with him over that terrible desert; nor
yet the great upsweep of triumph that engulfed him when he reached the
water gates the next day and learned that Noah Ezekiel and a
double-barrelled shotgun had saved the crops three days before--his and
all the rest.
To feel one moment that he was in debt for life, beaten and wrecked,
and the next to know he would be worth in three months at least a
hundred thousand dollars! No, he could not put that in words; so he
merely twanged softly the violin strings with his thumb, and remarked
casually:
"Well, I got the money."
"What money?" Still the girl did not stir. She was so blissfully
lethargic, and she was not thinking at all of money or cotton.
"For poor old Ah Sing, and for Jim Crill. I seized Reedy's cotton this
morning and sold it this afternoon. Got $410,000 for the cotton and
the seed. But Jenkins was in deeper than we knew. He's gambled away
fifty thousand or so. After I'd paid up all his debts, including the
duty, there was only $25,000 left for Reedy. And Mrs. Barnett came
down on me like a squawking hen, demanding that. Said Reedy had
promised it to her for getting the loans from her uncle. But Reedy
denied it."
"What did you do?" asked Imogene as he paused. "I compromised--told
Reedy I was entitled to that much for commission and damages, but that
I'd give it to him provided he and Mrs. Barnett married. They did."
Imogene laughed, a rich warm laugh in which there was no sting of
revenge, only humour for human faults. This was such a good world, and
such a beautiful desert!
Bob did not think of anything more to tell of his exploits. Somehow
his mind would not stay on them. Instead, he looked up at the stars
and sighed with deep content, then put the fiddle to his shoulder and
raised the bow.
When he finished he turned to look down at her, and in that moment felt
the touch of her arm at his back. She was very still; he was not sure
whether she was crying or smiling.
"Do you know what it said?" he asked, huskily.
"Y-e-s," she answered, softly, "but I want to hear it in words, too."
He slipped his arm round her and drew her to him. "You wonderful
darling," he said, kissing her, "you'll hear it a million times in
words."
THE END