But at last the government had taken up the work again. Little by little the river allowed itself to be brought under control, and finally accepted even the obstructing dam. Then it was that Robledo’s and Watson’s canals drank their first waters, letting the vivifying irrigating stream run over their oozy beds. After that had been accomplished, all that was needed was a little time to allow the miracle of water to work its own lesser miracles. Then men from all the lands of the globe began streaming into the dead settlement, eager to break up and cultivate this new soil which would ultimately belong to them.
A delicate luminous green was now creeping over the fields that had before been stretches of pebbles and dust. The dry, prickly matorrales gave place to young shade trees. Nourished by the accumulated fertility of a soil that had slept for thousands of years, constantly refreshed by the water gliding at their feet, in a marvellously short space of time these young growths developed prodigiously.
The miserable adobe hovels, that had fallen into decay and ruin during the period of poverty and abandonment, were now replaced by brick buildings that were wide and low, with an inner patio copied from the Spanish architecture of the colonial period. The Gallego’s former boliche became an enormous store, employing numerous clerks, where everything that might be required by customers, whose chief occupation was cultivating the miraculously redeemed soil, could be found; all manner of business was carried on at the almacén, including a large amount of banking.
The owner of the “store” had other sources of income as well, since his barren fields too had become irrigated lands. He had even realized his dream of returning to Spain, leaving one of his clerks in charge of the business.
“I had a letter from don Antonio yesterday,” said Robledo with good-natured irony. “He wants us to go to Madrid. He wants to show off his house and his automobiles, and especially his friends. It seems that his dinner parties have been getting into the newspapers. And he says that he has received a decoration, and that one of these days he is to be presented to the king.... Lucky man!”
But at this reminder of her distant homeland, a shadow passed over Celinda’s face.
“She’s thinking of her father,” said Watson to his partner. “She can’t bear to think of La Presa, and of his being there alone. But I don’t see that we could help it if the old man wouldn’t come with us!”
Robledo nodded, and tried to cheer the down-cast Celinda. They had all done their best to persuade don Carlos to accompany them but he had not been able to make up his mind to leave the ranch. For him there was no particular interest in seeing the Europe where he had committed so many follies in his youth. No; he clung to his old illusions, he did not want to risk losing them. And besides, he was afraid that he would not have time to enjoy all the changes brought about on his estate.
“I have so few years left to live,” he explained; “I don’t want to waste them wandering about through strange places, when there are so many things to do here. Celinda is going to give me a lot of grandchildren to provide for, and I don’t want them to be beggars.”
Robledo’s irrigation ditches had been carried as far as the Rojas ranch, and had transformed the thin dry pasturage of other times into inviting meadows of alfalfa, always humid and green. The herds were fattening and multiplying prodigiously. In the early days don Carlos had had to ride miles in order to find one of his hard-horned, bony steers, as it strayed about the barren ranch in the hope of discovering some isolated patch of coarse grass. But now the steers, sleek and fat, their forelegs fairly doubling up under the weight of their accumulating flesh, stood munching the succulent alfalfa that surrounded them without their having to stir a hoof to reach it.