The dusty road was peopled with dark formless shapes. The signals had spread the alarm; the desert world was flocking to the gorge of the New River, to the levee. Gerty was swept past the stores which had gaped at her in the morning. Coulter’s was deserted. At Fred Eggers’, a candle flickered behind a green curtain. Gerty could see the half finished sign on the plate-glass windows of the bank. “The Desert” shone wanly at her.
The women were dumped without ceremony on the sidewalk, under the screened bird-cage of the Desert Hotel. Shivering, her pretty teeth chattering, Gerty Hardin ushered them into the deserted hall. The Chinese cook snored away his vigil in an armchair by the open fire. The men had rushed away to the levee.
“Women must wait,” Gerty’s laugh was hysterical. “We can do no good down there.” She threw herself, conscious of heroineship, into the ordeal of her spoilt entertainment.
It was always an incoherent dream to Innes Hardin, that wild ride homeward, the lurching scraping buggies, the apprehensive silence, this huddling of women like scared rabbits around a table that had else been gay. The women’s teeth shivered over the ices. Their faces looked ghastly by the light shed by Gerty’s green shades. She wished she were at the levee. She simply must go to the levee. “I’m going to get a wrap,” she threw to Gerty as she passed. “I left it in the hall.”
She stole through the deserted office, past the white and silver soda fountain, and out into the speeding blur of the night. Formless shapes, soft footed, passed her. As she sped past the French windows of the dining-room she could get a view of the shattered party. The candles were glittering; some overzealous maid had lighted them when the table was carried into the dining-room. No others could be found. The Chinese cook was that instant entering with a large lamp backed by a tin reflector. Mrs. Youngberg was huddled in her fur cape. A sight to laugh over, when it became a memory! The eyes of several of the women were visualizing ruin, Mrs. Blinn among them. The others wore sleepy masks.
Innes made a dive into the darkness. There was a dim outline of hastening figures in front of her. She could hear some one breathing heavily by her side. They kept apace, stumbling, occasionally, the moving gloom betraying their feet. A man came running back toward the town. “It’s cutting back!” He cried. “Nothing but the levee will save the towns!”
The levee!
The harsh breathing followed her. As they passed the wretched hut of a Mexican gambler, a sputtering light shone out. Innes looked back. She saw the wrinkled face of Coronel, who had left his water-tower. His black coarse hair was streaming in the wind, his mouth, ajar, was expressionless, though the fulfilment of the Great Prophecy was at hand. Beneath the cheek-splotches of green and red paint rested a curious dignity. The Indian was to come again into his own.
What was his own, she questioned, as her feet stumbled over loosened boarding, a ditch crossing she had not seen. More corn, perhaps more fiery stuff to wash down the corn! More white man’s money in the brown man’s pocket—that, his happiness. Why should he not thank the gods? His gods were speaking! For when the waters of the great river ran back to the desert, the long ago outraged gods were no longer angry. The towns might go, but the great Indian gods were showing their good will!
She joined a group at the levee, winding her veil over mouth and forehead. Dark shapes swayed near her. The wind was making havoc of the mad waters rushing down from the channel. The noise of wind and waters was appalling. Strange loud voices came through the din, of Indians, Mexicans; guttural sounds. Men ran past her, carrying shovels, pulling sacks of sand; lanterns, blown dim, flashed their pale light on her chilled cheeks.