“But he’s worth a dozen workers,” Hamlin had once told Rickard. “Get Coronel on your side. He’s got influence; they do as he says.” Behind that grizzled mask, Rickard surmised a pride of authorship in the reclamation project. Coronel had known Powell; he had crossed the desert with Estrada; that his proudest boast. Assiduously, Rickard cultivated the old Indian who crouched days through by the bank of the river.
The engineers felt the whip of excitement. Silent, up at the Crossing, at work on the great concrete head-gate, which would ultimately control the water supply of the valley, was prodding his men to finish before the winter storms were on. His loyalty to the Hardin gate did not admit a contingency there, but it was the thought which lurked in every man’s mind. Never a man left his camp in the morning who did not look toward that span crawling across the treacherous stream, measure that widened by-pass. Would the gate stand? Would pilings driven through brush mats into a bed of silt, a bottomless pit, hold against that river, should it turn and lash its great tail? The Hardin men halloed for the gate, but looked each morning to see if it were still there. The Reclamation Service men and the engineers of the railroad were openly skeptical; Sisyphus outdone at his own game! Estrada and Rickard looked furtively at the gate, with doubt at each other. Uneasiness electrified the air.
Hardin, himself, was repressed, an eager live wire. His days he spent on the river; his nights, long hours of them, open-eyed, on his back, watching the slow-wheeling, star-pricked dome of desert sky. His was the suspense of the man on trial; this was his trial; Gerty, Rickard, the valley, his judge and jury. Gradually, the peace of the atom lost in infinity would absorb him; toward morning he would sleep. But the first touch of dawn would bring him back to the situation; the sun not so tender as the stars! Dishonored,—he had to make good, to make good to the men who loved him, to prove to Gerty who scorned failure— By the eternal, he must prove to Gerty! She must give him respect from those scornful eyes of hers. If ever he had worked, in his life, he must work for his life now! The gate grew to be a symbol with him of restored honor, an obsession of desire. It must be all right!
Rickard was all over the place, up at the Crossing with Silent at the concrete gate, Marshall’s gate; down the levee inspecting the bank with untiring vigilance; watching the mat-makers on the rafts weave their cross-threads of willow branches and steel cable; directing, reporting. “Watching every piece of rock that’s dumped in the river,” complained Wooster. “Believe he marks them at night!”
They were preparing for the final rush. In a week or two, the work would be continuous, night-shifts to begin when the rock-pouring commenced. Large lamps were being suspended across the channel, acetylene whose candle-power was that of an arc light. Soon there would be no night at the break. When the time for the quick coup would come, the dam must be closed without break or slip. One mat was down, dropped on the floor that had already swallowed two such gigantic mouthfuls; covered with rock; pinned down to the slippery bottom with piles. Another mat was ready to drop; rock was waiting to be poured over it; the deepest place in the channel was reduced from fifteen to seven feet. Each day the overpour, anxiously measured, increased. A third steam-shovel had been added; the railroad sent in several work-trains fully equipped for service; attracted by the excitement, the hoboes were commencing to come in, from New Orleans where the sewer system was finished and throwing men out of work; from Los Angeles, released by the completion of the San Pedro breakwater; from San Francisco they were turning, the excitement over. No fat pickings there!
It was a battle of big numbers, a duel of great force where time was the umpire. Any minute hot weather might fall on those snowy peaks up yonder, and the released waters, rushing down, would tear out the defenses as a wave breaks over a child’s fort made of sand. This was a race, and all knew it. A regular train despatch system was in force that the inrushing cars might drop their burden of rock and gravel and be off after more. The Dragon was being fed rude meals, its appetite whetted by the glut of pouring rock.
Tod Marshall came down from Tucson in his car. The coming of the Palmyra and Claudia rippled the social waters at the Front for days ahead. Gerty Hardin, to whom had been rudely flung days of leisure, though she still hated Rickard, wondered if she were not glad that her hours were to be her own when the grand Mrs. Marshall came. For Marshall was a great man, the man of the Southwest; his wife, whom she had not yet met, must be a personage. Gerty’s position as a helper of Ling’s might have been misunderstood. Yet too proud to tell her astonished family that she wanted to desert the mess-tent, she shook herself from her injury, and “did up” all her lingerie gowns. Mrs. Marshall was not going to patronize her, even if her husband had snubbed Tom. It was hot, ironing in her tent, the doors closed. It would have hurt her to acknowledge the importance of the impending visit.
Everything carried a sting those indoor hours. She was aflame with hot vanity. Twice, she had openly encouraged him; twice, he had flouted her. That was his kind! Men who prefer Mexicans—! She would never forgive him, never!
She followed devious channels to involve Tom’s responsibility. There was a cabal against the wife of Hardin. Working like a servant! she called it necessity. Everything, every one punished her for that one act of folly. Life had caught her. She saw no way, as she ironed her mull ruffles, no way out of her cage. Her spirit beat wild wings against her bars. If she could see a way out!
She really was not free to establish an honest independent life. Horticulturists speak of the habit of a plant. Psychologists take the long road and find a Mediterranean word; temperament. Gerty was a vine; its habit to cling for support. Her tendrils had been rudely torn, thrown back at herself; world-winds were waiting their chance at her—a vine is not a pretty thing when it trails in the dust— Sometimes she would shiver over her ironing-board when she thought of the dust. She knew her habit, which she, too, called temperament. Nothing to do but to stay with Tom!