“When the waters of the Gila run red, look for trouble!” He doubted that they ever ran red. He would ask Cor’nel. He had also spoken of a cycle, known to Indians, of a hundredth year, when the Dragon grows restless; this he had declared was a hundredth year.
On the road from Maldonado’s, Rickard had met several Indians swaying from their saddles; a half-breed lurching unsteadily toward Yuma. He had made note of that. Who was selling liquor to those Indians, those half-breeds? Maldonado could have told him, Maldonado who wore the dirty unrecognizable uniform of a rurale. Rickard was going to use Indian labor; must depend, he knew, for steady work, the brush clearing and the mattress weaving, on the natives. If any one was selling mescal and tequila within a day’s ride of the Heading, it was his place to find out.
Following his talk with Maldonado, and the accidental happy chance meeting with Coronel at the Crossing, Rickard had written his first report to Tod Marshall. Before he had come to the Heading, he had expected to advise against the completion of the wooden head-gate at the Crossing. Hamlin had given him a new view-point. There was a fighting chance. And he wanted to be fair. Next to being successful, he wanted to be fair.
He smiled as he remembered MacLean’s cramped fingers after the dictation was done. “Holy Minnie,” he had exclaimed, rubbing his joints. “If you call that going slow!”
“It’s time to be hearing from Marshall,” Rickard was thinking, as he walked back to the hotel. “I wonder what he will say.” He felt it had been fair to put it up to Marshall; personally, he would like to begin with a clean slate; begin right. Clumsy work had been done, it was true, yet there were urgent reasons now for haste; and the gate was nearly half done! He had gone carefully over the situation. The heavy snowfall, unprecedented for years, a hundred, according to the Indians,—on the Wind River Mountains—the lakes swollen with ice, the Gila restless, the summer floods yet to be met; perhaps, he now thought, he had been overfair in emphasizing the arguments for the head-gate. For the hundred feet were now a thousand feet—yet he had spoken of that to Marshall: “Calculate for yourself the difference in expense since the flood widened the break. It is a vastly different problem now. Disaster Island, which they figured on for anchor, is a mere pit of corroding sugar in the channel. An infant Colorado could wash it away. However, a lot of work has already been done, and a lot of money spent. There is a fighting chance. Perhaps the bad year is all Indian talk.”
A guess, at best, whatever they did! It was pure gamble what the tricky Colorado would do. Anyway, he had given the whole situation to Marshall.
In his box at the hotel was a telegram which had been sent over from the office; from Tod Marshall. “Take the fighting chance. But remember to speak more respectfully of Indians!”
“Marshall all over,” laughed his subordinate. “Now, it’s a case of hustle! But dollars to doughnuts, as Junior says, we don’t do it!”
CHAPTER XIV
HARDIN’S LUCK
TWO days later, there was a shock of earthquake, so slight that the lapping of the water in Rickard’s bath was his intimation of the earth’s uneasiness. In the dining-room, later, he found every one discussing it. “Who could remember an earthquake in that desert?” “The first shake!”