“Surely! But I am also an admirer of Mr. Rickard, I mean of his methods. I can never forget the levee.”
She had to acknowledge that Rickard had scored there. And the burning of the machinery had left a wound that she still must salve.
“You have no confidence in the gate?”
“The conditions have changed,” urged Estrada. “You’ve seen the mess-tent? As it was planned, it was all right, a hurry-up defense. Marshall all along intended the concrete gate for the permanent intake. Have you seen the gap the Hardin gate is to close? Have you heard what the last floods did to it? It’s now twenty-six hundred feet, and Disaster Island, which your brother planned to anchor to, swept away! If it can be done, it will, you can rest assured, with Rickard—” he saw the Hardin mouth then!—“and your brother’s zeal, and the strength of the railroad back of them. I haven’t shown you the office yet. Can you stand this glare? You ought to have smoked glasses.”
“I have. I forgot them.” She pulled her wide Mexican brim low over her eyes.
The camp formed a hollow trapezium; the Hardins’ tents, and Mrs. Dowker’s, were isolated on the short parallel. Rickard’s ramada and his tent were huddled with the engineers’. Across, toward the river, behind Ling’s mesquits, began another polygon, the camp of foremen and white labor. Some of these tents were empty.
“Is this Mexico, or the states?” asked Innes.
“Mexico.” She wondered why he halted so abruptly. She did not see, for the glare in her eyes, a woman’s skirt in the ramada they approached.
Estrada marched on.
Outside the ramada, the two women met. Gerty’s step carried her past like a high-bred horse. Her high heels cut into the hard sand. There was a suggestion of prance in her mien. She waved her hand gaily at the two, cried, “How hot it is!” and passed on.