The Pulaskian., 1919-04-11

Estrada's work was as intense as though he were hastening sure vic tory. The dauntless spirit of the elder Estrada pushed the track over the hot sands where he must dance at times to keep his feet from burning Many of the rails they laid at night.
 "Rickard's gone hog-wild," Hardin told his family the next morning Building levee between the towns 1! The mans off his head"
 "There isn't any danger?" Gertys anxiety made the deep blue eyes look black.
 Innes looked up for Toms answer. His face was ugly with passion.
 'fDangerl It's a bluff, a big show of activity here because he's buffa- loed; he doesn't know how to tackle the job out there."
 It had begun to look that way to more than one. It was talked over at Coulter's store in the outer office of the D. R. company where the engl- neers foregathered; among the chair | filters who idled in front of the Des- ert hotel. "The man does not know how to tackle his jobl !" A levee, and the gate held up! What protection to the towns would be that toy levee if I the river should return on one of it's l spectacular sprees? A levee, and the intake itself not guarded? He was whispered of as incompetent; one of MarshalPs clerks. He was given a short time to blow himself out. A bookman, a theorist.
 "As well put sentine1s q few miles from prison and leave the jail doors open!" This was Wooster's gibe. All SEW the Colorado as marauder at large. And a little heap of sand stacked up to scare it off! It's a 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- l joy the universal censure the new man was acquiring. Gerty's light touches too slight for championship, passed as 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, nc 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. stant 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 as he might al the situation, it 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 1 the office when he entered-"Well, 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, it's 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 campl It was not equipped for sudden infia- 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; to foresee emer- l gencies, not to be taken by them un- aware. The reason of Hardin's down fall was his slipshod habits. How could | he be good officer who had never drilled as 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; it had received apt christening by the engineers, its bap- tismal water the Colorado. The last floods had played with it as though it were 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 Patagonia quarries. He had ordered steam shoyels to be installed at the quarry back of old Hamlin's. That rock pit would be his first crutch, and the gravel bed-that was a find As l. n q II.