THE PASSING OF THE WATERS
BABCOCK came rushing down from Los Angeles that morning to see what in
thunder it was all about. He asked every one he met why some one didn’t
get busy and stop the cutting back of that river? There was no one at
the offices of the company to report to him! Why, the building was
deserted! Ogilvie’s letters had prophesied ruin. It all looked wrong
to him. Going on to the levee, he met MacLean, Jr., who was coming
away. The boy told him vaguely that he would find Rickard around there,
somewhere.
“I’ll hunt him up for you.”
“Why, they are letting it get ahead of them!” Babcock’s manner
suggested that he was aggrieved that such carelessness to his revered
company should go unpunished. Something, he told MacLean, might have
been done before the situation got as bad as this!
His excited stride carried him across the dividing ditch, which now
was carrying no water, into Mexicali. MacLean had to lengthen his step
to keep pace with him. The havoc done to the Mexican village excited
Babcock still more.
Estrada, just in from his submerged tracks, was lounging against an
adobe wall. His pensive gaze was turned up-stream. The posture of
exhaustion suggested laziness to Babcock, who was on the hunt for
responsibility. He was more than ever convinced that the right thing
was not being done.
“Estrada!”
Estrada took his eyes from the river. Babcock looked like a snapping
terrier taking the ditch at a bound. MacLean, Jr., a lithe greyhound,
followed.
“What the devil are you doing to stop this?” A nervous hand indicated
the Mexican station gleaming in its fresh coat of paint; to the muddy
water undermining its foundation.
Estrada drew a cigarette out of his pocket; lighted it before answering.
“Not a God damn thing. What do you suggest?”
A big wave struck the bank. The car on the siding trembled.
“Another wave like that and that car’ll go over,” cried Babcock,
jumping, mad. “Why don’t you do something? Why don’t you hustle--all of
you?” He would report this incompetency.
Down the stream came a mass of débris, broken timbers, ravaged brush, a
wrenched fence post, a chicken coop. A red hen, clinging to its swaying
ship, took the rapids.
“Hustle--what?” murmured Estrada.
Babcock glared at him, then at the river. His eye caught the
approaching wreckage. Men came running with their poles. The caving
bank was too far gone. The instant the drifting mass struck it, there
was a shudder of falling earth, the car toppled toward the flood
waters, the waves breaking into clouds of spray.
Human responsibility fell to a cipher. The river’s might was
magnificent. Even Babcock, come to carp, caught the excitement. “Come,
MacLean,” he cried. “Watch this! The station’s going!” He joined
Estrada by the adobe wall.
“Have a cigarette?” murmured Eduardo.
His eyes glued to the lurching station-house, Babcock took a
brown-paper-rolled cigarette from the proffered box.
“Look,” he cried. “There, she’ll go. See that--”
There was a splash of splintering timber; a Niagara of spray as the
building fell into the flood. A minute later, a wreckage of painted
boards was floating down-stream.
At table Babcock resumed his campaign. “The trouble with you all, you
have cold feet. You’re all scared off too soon.”
Wooster, up from his nap, looked across the table. “Cold feet? So you’d
have if you had been up for nights, wetting your feet on the levee, as
some of us have, as Hardin has. Mine are cold all right.” He lifted an
amazed foot. “Cold! Look here, boys, they’re wet!” The men looked to
find the water creeping in--Babcock climbed on his chair.
“This means the station,” cried Wooster. Every man jumped. If the
waters had got to _them_, it wouldn’t be long before they were reaching
the O. P. depot! The tracks would go-- They were piling out of the door
when the telephone caught them. It was a message from Rickard. A car
was to be rigged up, papers, tickets and express matter taken from the
station. The river was cutting close to the track. The car would be the
terminal, a half-mile from town.
The situation looked black. Coulter, Eggers, began to pack their stock.
The levee, it was said, would not hold-- Half of Mexicali was gone.
Calexico would go next. Rickard’s Indians were kept stolidly piling
brush and stuffed sacks on the levee. This, the word ran, would be the
fierce night--no one expected to sleep.
They were preparing for the big battle, the final struggle, when the
grade recession passed the town. Spectacular as was its coming, there
was an anticlimax in its retreat. The water reached the platform of the
depot, and halted. The town held its breath. There was some sleep that
night.
The next day, the nerves of the valley relaxed. The river was not
cutting back. The men at the levee dropped their shovels, and went back
to the discussion of their lawsuits. Their crops were ruined; too much
water, or too little. Whatever way they had been hurt, the company
would have to pay for it!
A small shift guarded the river. Rickard, in his room at the Desert
Hotel, and Hardin up the river, slept a day and a night without waking.
The chair-tilters picked up their argument where they had left it:
was the railroad reaping a harvest of damage suits when they should
be thanked instead? Faraday, the newspapers reported, was trying to
shift his responsibility; he had appealed to the president. Their
correspondence was published. The government was in no hurry to
take the burden. A telegraphic sermon, preaching duty, distributing
blame, was sent from Washington. Perhaps not Faraday himself was more
disturbed than the debaters of the Desert Hotel.
“The railroad’s no infant in arms! It wasn’t asleep when it took over
the affairs of the D. R.” Here spoke the majority. “A benefaction! It
was self-interest! When the river is harnessed, who’ll profit the most
from the valley prosperity? It can afford to pay the obligations; that
is, it could. It will find a way,” the ravens croaked, “of shaking the
Desert Reclamation Company’s debts; of evading the damage suits. Look
how Hardin was treated!”
The feeling ran higher. For many of the ranchers were ruined; there
was no money to put in the next year’s crop unless the promises of the
irrigation company were kept. A few landowners, and others who had not
completed their contracts, distrusting the good faith of the company,
or its ability to pay, had “quit” in disgust, to begin again somewhere
else. Parrish, and Dowker, and others of the “Sixth” scoured district
had secured the promise of employment at the Heading. Work, it was
expected, would be begun at once now that the danger to Calexico had
passed.
MacLean and Estrada met outside the water-tower.
“Have you been up?” Estrada nodded toward the platform that carried the
great tank. “Come up with me. They say it’s worth seeing.”
“Can’t.” MacLean was plunging toward the office, his boyish face
indicating the enjoyment of his importance. “Too much work. The office
work is all piled up. The office, itself, looks like the day after a
fire! They’re putting back the windows. Casey and I have a desk between
us. We’re requisitioning quarries, and scraping the country with a fine
comb for labor. Jinks, but it’s great!”
Estrada climbed alone the steep inner staircase of the water-tower.
He was thinking of the young American, vaguely envying him. There was
something the other had that he wanted. He himself could work as hard
for the river; but shout for it? That was where he stopped. He lacked,
he could admit it to himself, the quality of enthusiasm. A son of
Guillermo Estrada,--lacking enthusiasm!
From the platform he looked down over the submerged country. To the
west, the muddy waters spread out over the land. Eleven miles, he had
heard it said, were covered. His sympathy was seeing, not a drowned
country, but submerged hopes. The pain of it, the histories beneath
it, tugged at his heart. Distantly, he could see the ravaged district
of the Wistaria, spoiled for this year surely, perhaps forever made
useless. Not until the waters withdrew, would they know the extent of
the ruin. From the north, between Fassett’s and the towns, steadily
advancing, Hardin’s gang was still serenading; the boom of his drums
came clearly through the still air.
Below him lay the valley of his father’s vision. The story of that
desert journey had been told him so vividly, so variously that he
had made himself one of the party. Coronel was there, the general,
and Bliss--dead soon after; Hardin, Silent. Out of a clear morning,
following the storm, flashed the mirage which came to Estrada
as prophecy,--the city vision which summoned him to fulfil the
Fremont-Powell dream. “That barren land, and a rich river flowing over
yonder!” His father’s vibrant voice returned to his memory; how often
had he heard him cry: “The young men pressing in from the congested
cities to get their living out of that unworked soil; a clean living,
Eduardo!” And Silent had told him how the general had looked like a
prophet of ancient Israel that mystic morning when he turned from the
mirage of spires and turrets and tender colored walls, exclaiming,
“God! If I were young like you, Silent, I’d build that city! that city
that we see!”
And now, the cities, embryonic, were there, but would they stay? Built
like the parabled city upon sand--sand without water!--would they not
crumble and melt away, even as the mirage had faded? He forced himself
to translate his conviction into material reasons. The desert was
convincing. With its past defying history, its future appealed to the
imagination as unchanging, eternal. Even now, those houses down yonder,
in their ugly concreteness, were less real than the idea of the desert
surrounding the little patch of civilization. Brandon’s words, from his
monograph on desert soils, recurred to him. “The desert is a condition,
not a fact.” To him, the desert was a fact.
Eduardo was conscious that he was thinking with the surface of his
mind. He was withholding the belief in the negative sense which
told him that he would never see that river subdued to service. A
skeptic, Innes had called him! He made himself argue it out as a
matter of temperament; his father’s had been optimistic, fervid; his
was detached and analytical. The general had been militant; he was
a dreamer. To him, this was a drama of form and color, a picture, a
panorama--Parrish, Hardin, each in his place.
Had he but the dynamic energy which had swept his father through
his vivid, versatile life! Once, under the spell of the general’s
magnetism, he had been able to force that zeal, that enthusiasm,
to recharge his own weakened batteries; but later, while flinging,
perhaps, a track across a waste of sands, and a squaw’s bright skirt
against a cloud-free sky, or a buck’s striped breast rising from a
clump of creosote, would make his work a grind again. He had misplaced
himself. What else, then, should he be doing?
Often, and now, looking down on that chocolate-colored land, it
would come to him that his was the yearning, the wistfulness of the
painter. Those purple mountains flushing to rosy points against a
clear blue sky, that rushing water, what did it rouse in him? A sense
of militancy, as with Rickard and Hardin, MacLean, all of them? It
pricked instead, an irritation, a feeling of incompleteness. He wanted
something; could a man be homesick for what he never had?
It was not the valley scheme alone, which made of his mind a
battle-ground. Did he not meet life so, with a ready hand and a lagging
spirit? That girl down there! Had he the blood of his father in his
veins, would he not take her of the steady boyish gaze, match her
sweetness with just loving? What was it that told him it would never
be? Why did he keep guard over lips and eyes? She looked at others with
the same level, straightforward frankness she gave to him; the game
was, perhaps, yet to him who ran! If it were going to be, there would
be a spring of joy within his heart. It was not going to be. He had
asked before, and it had answered.
Whose was the answer, that came to him, sometimes at call, often
unbidden? Intangible as moonlight, real as the voice of a friend? Can
you see a voice? No substance to a voice? Let it come to again, let it
tell him of that river; should he see it, the vision of his father, of
the others, he, Eduardo?
Standing in the wash of clear sunlight, his arms outstretched to the
land his father’s vision had peopled, he sent out his call that he
should see that dream fulfilled, the river conquered. Give him back his
belief! Give him back the courage that would make him one with the folk
down there!
Out of that land of silence came, as a wave of darkness, a mist
shutting out the sun, separating him from his fellows, the answer. No
need to question that! Had it ever erred? Slowly, as a dream-walker, he
went down the tower steps, and mingled with men again.
A week later, he was standing on the same platform. The sky was still
fleckless; the painted flat mountains made sharp points into the vivid
blue of the sky. The heat was holding off. The desert was spelling out
her siren lure. But her lover had retreated to his gipsy bed; her brown
lean breast was no longer pillowing him.
In the gorge west of the town, the water was now confined. The
recession of the waters disclosed the ravaged Palo Verde, its
shattered vineyard set in a square of eucalyptus trees, young giants
of three years’ planting. Northward, Estrada caught the gleam of
sunshine on broad barley-fields; he saw the glistening foliage of the
orange orchards, Busby’s and the others. Between him and the eastern
range spread miles of sweet-smelling alfalfa. Young willow growth
checker-boarded the country, marking the canal system. All that in a
few years; the miracle of irrigation. He had seen virgin desert, as
this had been when his father had crossed with Bliss and Hardin; six
years before, when he had first seen it, it was still desert, such as
he was flinging a track across, of creosote-bush, and tough mesquit
roots, and here and there, the arrow-weed. Who could tell of the next
six years? Perhaps, the rest would be vanquished, and the river yet a
meek water-carrier? But he knew!
On the veranda of the office, an hour later, he met Rickard, carrying
his Gladstone.
“I’m off!” The American halted, poised, as if for the next step of a
dance, so it appeared to Estrada. His eyes were glowing, as though a
boy springing toward vacation.
“The Heading? Have you had word yet?”
“They’re still passing the buck to each other! But I’ll be there when
it comes. You’ll see that Dragon scotched yet, Estrada!”
He carried the look of victory. But so also, had Tom Hardin! So once
had the general! And the river still running to the sea!