She knew the danger; she had heard the engineers talk with Tom. The gradient from Yuma to the Basin was four feet to the mile, in land which corroded like sugar. The very thing which had helped them in their initial labor of canal building would militate against the safety of the valley now, with the marauding Dragon at large.
As she reined in her horse, Rickard stepped out on the sidewalk. He, too, was heavy-eyed from a snatched nap.
“Were you looking for me?”
The scorn in the girl’s face told him that his question was stupid. For him!
“Has my brother come back?”
He said he did not know. “You can see, I have been dreaming!” She would not smile back at him, but rode off toward the levee. Rickard stood watching her.
Down the street, Fred Eggers was opening his store. She could see two Indians peering in through the open door.
Was this the river? West of the levee, a sea of muddy water spread over the land. There was yet a chance to save the towns, the town, she corrected herself, as her eye fell on the Mexican village across the ditch. For Mexicali was doomed. Some of the mud-huts had already fallen; the water was running close to the station-house.
She saw Wooster standing near, calculating the distance, the time, perhaps, before the new station would go. Over the door, in freshly painted letters, were the words—“Ferro Carril de Baja California.” To the east, a few feet only away, was one of the monuments of the series placed by the engineers of the Gadsen survey. They marched from Yuma to the sea in the path of the old Santa Fe trail, marking on the way the grave of many a gold-seeker.
She hailed Wooster. Ruin was presaged in the lines of his forehead.