Scouts sent out to watch the work on the river reported it was crippled. The white man would be sending for the Indian soon. The waiting braves sat on their haunches, grinning and smoking their pipes.
On Thursday, Forestier, who must feed his reservation Indians while away from the reservation, grew anxious. He tried arguments with the Indians; then with Rickard. That engineer had just been closeted with Marshall who was taking a swift run out to Tucson that day. Rickard would not budge from his position. The Indians must work Monday, or not at all. He refused to discuss the situation with Forestier, or any one. He was apparently engrossed with the setting of the piles. That the brush-cutting was held up, the work on the levee halted, he waived as unimportant. The look of the Hardin faction was getting on his nerves; he was learning to swear and smile at the same time.
Marshall carried a worried face from the Heading. He must back his man in this! And he never forgot the levee. Still, if he should fail— He determined to arrange to pull some track crews from Salton and the West Coast to send to Rickard for emergency.
Saturday night, the camp went gloomily to bed. On the Indian side, there was no revel, no feasting or dancing. Forestier was closeted with Rickard.
“I’ll have to take them back to their reservations,” he said. “I can’t keep them here, we can’t afford to. They’ve got to be fed. You know, Rickard, the howl that’d be raised if the thing gets out twisted. Sentimental, the Indian feeling is, you and I know that, but it’d be uncomfortable. The man who’d kick an Indian out of his back yard would go to Washington to start up a scandal if any blamed buck says he was starving.”
“Hold them here a few days, you can,” Rickard was worried, himself. Forestier could not keep them out of their reservations if they were not earning money. He knew that. Already, he was needing them badly at the river. Something, will or reason, he was not sure, would not let him give in.
“Just two or three days,” he urged Forestier.
“I’ll try.” The face of the Indian agent was not reassuring. Rickard did not turn in until after midnight, planning alternatives. He was sleeping hard when MacLean, at dawn, dashed into his tent.
“Quick, what does this mean?”
Rickard was scrambling into his clothes. It was the river, of course. The trestles had been carried out? He was into his khaki trousers and slippers. He made a dive into his shirt as he followed MacLean to the tent door, his head working through the bag of cloth to the light-well at the top.