The Aberdeen weekly., 1919-04-04

snort lliue 10 DiOW nlInSeII out A
bookman. a theOrist.
"AS we'll put sentinelS a few miles
from prison and leave the Jail doors
| open - This was Woosters gibe. All
saw the Colorado as Il marauder at
| large. And a little heap of sand
| stacked up TO scare il off It's a
screaml"
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 cenSure 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,
| Rickard spent the greater part of his
| time experimenting the levee. He
| could trust no one else to do it, no
one unless it were Estrada, who was
rushing his steel rails through 10 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
eXcellenti Some emergency would be
cooked up to warrant the withdrawal
| of the hands. Chafe as he might at
the situation, it was to be guerrilla
warfare. Not a fight in the open, he
knew how TO meet that, but that baf-
fling resistance, the polite silence of
the office when he entered-"Wel,
they'll be doing my way pretty soon,
or my name isn't Rickard. That's
fiat"
He was fretting to be at work, TO
start the wheels of the o. p, 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 inf1a-
tion of men. The inefficiency 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; 30 foreSce emer-
gencieS, not to be taken by them un-
aware. The reason of Hardin's down
fall was his sllpshod habits. How could
he be a good officer who had never
Ir;I no
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; it had received apt
christening by the engineers, its bap-
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?
Rickard knew where he would get
his rock Already he had requisitioned
the entire output of the Tacna and
L 1dtuSOuld he lASiQ OAdCACb
steam ShOvelS to be installed at the
quarry back of old Hamlin's. That
rock pit would be his first crutch, and
the gravel beC---that was, a 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. 2. he knew
would back him. He was going -
throw out a spur-track from the head
ing, touching at the quarry end gravel
pit, on to the main rOad at Yuma.
Double track most of tie way; sidings
every three miles. Rock must be
rushed the trains must be pushed
through He itcheG to begin. 1t never
occurred to him that, like Hardin, he
might fail.
Though it's no pink tea" he told
himself, its no picnic" At Tucson
he knew that the situation was
grave one, but his talk with Brandon,
who knew his river as does good In
dian, made the year a significant,
eventful one. Matt Hamlin, too, whose
shrewd eyes had grown rIver-wise, he,
too, had had tales TO tell of the tricky
river. MaldonadO, the halfbreed, had
confirmed their pOrtents while they sat
together under his oleander, famous
throughout that section of the coun-
try. An0 powerfully had aScr'nel, the
Indian who had piloted EstraSa's party
across the desert, whom RicR;,-d had
met at the Crossing. deeply had e i'm
pressed him. The river grew into 4
malevolent. mOcking personality; he
could see it q dragon of yellow waters,
dragging its 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 Gila,
sending boat and boatmen to their
swift doom.
Rickard was thinking of the half
breed, Maldonado, as he inspected the
new stretch of leyee between the
towns. He had heard from others be-
sides Estrada of the river knowledge
of this descendant of trapper aud
squaw, and had thought it worth while
to ride the twenty miles from down
the river to talk with him. The mans
suavity, his narrow Sits of eyes, the