The weekly Iberian. (New Iberia, La.) 1894-1946, 1919-09-06

| whispered OF rs incompetent, one OF
Marshall's clerks He was given
short time to blow himself out A
hookman, q theorist
AS well put sentinels few miles
from prison and leave the Jail doors
| openl' This was Wooster's gihe. All
saw the Colorado ms n marauder at
large. And little heap of sand
stacked up to scare it off It's
scream !"
! Mrs. Hardin found it difficult to
meet with diplomacy the condolences
which inevitably came her way. AS
Hardin's wife she was expected To en-
! JOY the universal ceusure the new man
was acquiring. Gerty's light touches.
too slight for championship, passed as
n sweet charity. Her own position
those days was trying. She did not
yet know her diplomatic lesson.
Apparently unaware of the talk,
Richard spent the greater part of his
time experimenting the levee lie
| could trust no one else to do It. no
one unless it were Estrada. who was
rushing his steel rails through to the
| front and was needed there.
Things were moving under his con
slant goading The extra pay was
showing results. He should be at the
Heading now, he kept telling himself,
| but he was convinced that the instant
he turned his back, the work on the
levee would stop; and all the reasons
excellent Some emergency would be
cooked up to warrant the withdrawal
Of the hands. Chafe rs he might at
the situation, 1t was to be guerrilla
warfare. Not fight in the open, he
knew how to meet that, but that baf-
fling resistance, the polite silence of
| the office when he entered-"Well,
they'll be doing my way pretty soon,
or my name isn't Richard. That's
! fiat"
He was fretting to be Mt work, to
start the wheels of the o. F., its vast
machinery toward his problem. He
knew that that organization, like we'll
drilled militia, was ready for his call.
The call Jagged, not that he did not
need men, but there was no place
ready for them. The camp, that was
another rub. There was no camp 1t
was not equipped for a sudden inta
ton of men. The inefliciency of the
projectors of this desert scheme had
never seemed so criminal as when he
had surveyed the equipment at the In
take. "Get ready first: your tools.
your stoves, your beds That was the
training of the good executive, Of men
like Marshall and MacLean Nothing
to be left to chance; to foresee emer-
gencieS. not to he taken by them I'M
aware The reason of Hardin's down
fall was his slipshod habits. How could
he be good officer who had never
drilled rs a soldier? There was the
gap at the intake, Hardin's grotesque
folly, widened from one hundred feet
to ten times the original cut; widening
every day, with neither equipment nor
camp adequate to push through WORK
of half the original magnitude. Cut
ting away, moreover, was the island
Disaster island; 1t had received apt
christening by the engineers, Its pap
tismal water the Colorado. The last
floods had played with it as though 1t
were a bar of sugar There was no
rock at hand; no rock on the way, no
rock ordered. Could anyone piece to-
gether such recklessness?
Richard knew where he would get
his rock Already he had requisitioned
the entire output of the Tacna and
Patagonia quarries. He had ordered
steam shovels to be installed at the
quarry back Of old Hamlin's. That
rock Dit would be his first crutch, and
the gravel bed-that was find! AS
he paced the levee west Of the towns,
he was planning his campaign. Por-
ter was securing Zacatecas for men !;
he himself had offered, as bait, free
transportation the O. p. he knew
would back him. He was going to
throw out spur-track from the Head
ing, touching at the quarry and grave.
pit on to the main road at Yuma.
Double track most Of the way; sidings
every three miles. Rock must be
rushed; the trains must be pushed
through. He itched to begin. 1t never
occurred to him that, like Hardin, he
might fail.
Though it's no pink tea he told
himself. cts no picnic" At tucson
he knew that the situation was a
grave one, but his talk with Brandon,
who knew his river as does a good In
dian, made the year significant,
evpntful one. Matt Hamlin. too, whose
shrewd eyes had grown rlver-wise, he,
too. had had tales to tell of the tricky
river. Maldonado, the half-breed. had
confirmed their portents while they sat
together under his Oleander, famous
throughout that section of the conn-
try. And powerfully had Cornell, the
Indian who had piloted Estrada's party
across he desert, whom Richard had
met at the Crossing, deeply had he i'm
pressed him. The river grew into a
malevolent hooking personality; he
could see ii q dragon of yellow waters,
dragging it's slow, sluggish length
across the baked desert sands: deceiv-
ing men by its inertness; Turing the
explorer by a mild mood to rise sud
denly with its wild fellow, the ella
sending boat and boatmen TO their
swift doom.
Richard was thinking of the half
breed. Maldonado, as he Inspected the
now stretch of levee between the