She called after him; “Parrish, too, if you can find him!”
She watched the white-capped waves break into harmless spray against the levee. A little higher, and those waves would not be harmless. If the wind kept up, if those waters rose—ah, these men would be needing their strength to-night!
The dawn was creeping in like a laggard culprit. The whitecaps caught the light, scattering it as foam. The flashing lanterns grew pale; Innes could discern some of the faces. She saw Coronel wrapped in a gray blanket, squatting on the newly-raised bank. His unbound hair slapped his old weathered mask. “The map of the desert furrowed on his face,” Captain Brandon had once said. She wrapped her coat around her head.
Silent came back. “Dowker’s gone, I couldn’t find Parrish.” He cut his words off with a click, for through the rush of the wind and water came the whistle of a locomotive.
“A special!” cried Silent. Hardin’s sister and his friend looked at each other, the same thought in mind: Rickard, in from the Heading!
On her face Silent saw the same spectacular impulse which had flashed over Hardin’s features a short time before.
She put her hand on his arm. “Silent, you’re his friend. Straighten this out. We can’t have him come back—spying—and find this.” She waved her hand toward the disorganized groups.
“I’d take more orders,” suggested the engineer.
“Then send a third of them home, tell them to come back to-night at six. Send away the other third, tell them to come back at noon. Keep the other shift. Say you’ll have coffee sent from the hotel, tell them Hardin says to stop wasting stuff. Tell them, oh, tell them anything you can think of, Silent, before he comes.” Her breakdown was girlish.
She could hear the signal of the locomotive; coming closer. Then she could hear the pant of the engine as it worked up the grade. It was a steady gentle climb all the way from the Junction, two hundred feet below sea-level, to the towns resting at the level of the sea. It quickened her thought of the power of the river. Nothing between it and the tracks at Salton. Nothing to stop its flow into that spectacular new sea whose basin did not need a drop of the precious misguided flow. She could hear the bells; now the train was coming into the station; she would not wait for Silent. She did not want to meet Rickard.