Not even the levee, she knew then, would save the towns. This was the end.
CHAPTER XVIII
ON THE LEVEE
HARDIN did not go home that night. He was feeling to the quick the irony of his position; his duty now to protect the levee he’d ridiculed; now the only hope of the towns! The integrity of the man never faltered, though his thoughts ran wild. Like the relentless hounds of Actæon, they pursued him, barking at his vanity.
He started the anxious ranchers at sacking sand. Bodefeldt ran up to tell him that there was a hill of filled sacks over in Mexicali. “Rickard had a bunch of Indians working for a week.”
The confusion of the shy fellow did not escape Hardin. Oh, he knew what Bodefeldt was thinking, what every one was saying! They were all laughing at him. The coincidence of this extraordinary flood had upheld Rickard’s wild guess, haloed his judgment. It was all a piece of his infernal luck. Sickening, that’s what it was! His orders scattered. He ran up and down the levee, giving orders; recalling them when he found he was repeating Rickard’s.
This new humiliation, coming on the heels of the dredge fiasco, put him in execrable temper. He shouted his orders over the noises of the night. He rated the men, bullied them. No one did anything right! Lord, what he had to put up with! The other men, the ranchers and engineers, saw in his excitement certainty of the valley’s doom.
The wind and the darkness contributed to the confusion. Eager shovels were tossing up earth before any one could tell where the danger point would be. The water was not yet high enough to determine the place of battle. Sacked sand was being brought over from Mexicali. Fifty pair of hands made short work of Rickard’s “Hill.” Lanterns were flashing through the darkness like restless fireflies. The wind and rushing water deadened the sound of the voices. It was a battle of giants against pygmies. In the darkness, the giants threatened to conquer.
At three in the morning, a horseman rode in from Fassett’s, one of the big ranches to the north, cut by the New River.
“The river is cutting back,” he called through the din, “cutting back toward the towns.”
A turn in the gorge, a careless dump-pit had pulled the river like a mad horse back on its haunches. It was kicking back.