by Lou Cameron
“For openers you’d best break out a water can and carry it down to that swamp.” Stringer took off both his hat and sateen bandana and handed them to her. “If you can use my hat to bail water and screen it through this close-meshed sateen, you ought to wind up with boiler water that’ll just have to do. Any fresh water those others still have right now are for human gizzards alone.”
She protested, “Where will you be while I do all the work?”
He pointed down the track and explained grimly. “Yonder. I know we can’t carry the whole blamed camp to El Centro in your steamer, but somebody could be more hurt than the others.”
Kathy started to ask a dumb question. Then she nodded and said, “Well, anyone can see we can’t stay here.”
Stringer didn’t answer. He was already legging it east in his squishy boots. It only took him a few minutes to make the half mile or so. When he got there he found Blacky Burke, Gus, and about two dozen Mexicans staring in awe at the broad brown river pouring through the gap in the railroad bank. When he asked who the others on the far side might be, Burke shrugged and answered, “Your guess is as good as mine. Me and Gus are the only white men who made it out in time this way.”
Stringer nodded and called out in Spanish, asking if anyone was hurt. There were over a half dozen customers for Kathy’s Stanley steamer, and a couple of badly gashed kids looked as if they’d barely make it. Their mothers, some of them banged up as well, had managed to dress the more serious wounds with torn strips of muddy skirting.
Stringer counted noses and impatiently shushed the babble. “Bueno. If the able-bodied will help me get the injured to that white horseless carriage you can see up the tracks to the west, the gringa who owns it may have just enough room to get at least the more badly hurt to the doctors in El Centro. Now, vamanos!”
Burke and Gus were the only men there who didn’t offer help as Stringer led the pitiful group toward Kathy’s Stanley, carrying a baby in his arms and leading a little girl with a gashed forehead. As they all got close enough to make out details Stringer saw that Maria had brushed off most of the mud which had dried by now and had thrown the blanket aside as the desert sun got warmer. She was a lot prettier than he’d imagined, even with her hair still a mess and her riding skirt torn up one side to expose some mighty shapely thigh.
Both girls moved to meet them. Maria took the baby from Stringer, cooing at it like a desert dove, while Kathy picked up the little girl, calling her a poor dear and setting her in the back seat atop their gear. As she fussed over the child, she told Stringer, “I filled the boiler. Don’t ask me with what. It smells just awful.”
He told her it ought to get them at least as far as El Centro and added, “You can’t miss it if you just follow the tracks to the southwest. On the dry side, of course.”
As Maria helped a fat Mexican woman with one arm in a sling into the back beside the little girl, Kathy anxiously asked Stringer why he needed to give her directions. “Aren’t you coming with us, for heaven’s sake?” she cried, as he shook his head and started to explain.
Then someone gasped, “Mira!” and they all turned to see Cactus Jack Donovan or his mud-caked ghost floundering up the bank from the south, gasping, cussing, and sort of sobbing to himself. As one of the Mexicans helped him up to the flatter surface Cactus Jack spotted Stringer in the crowd and blurted, “I lost my pony out yonder. Lord knows how I ever made it. I didn’t know I could swim. The folks I rode out to warn had already cleared out by the time I got there. The water was over their doorsill by then. But as I was headed back I saw more water coming at me than I ever want to see again. It come in one big wave, saddle-horn high and studded with tore-up sticker bush. We tried to outrun it, but it caught up with us and the next I knew me and my poor pony was going ass over tea kettle for a million wet years. I don’t know where my pony wound up. All I know is I come to be hung up to dry in a greasewood clump along the shallows of that infernal deluge. Do you reckon my Maria and her folk made it?”
Stringer was about to give him the good news when Blacky Burke bulled through the crowd to join them. “You got back just in time, you love-sick cuss. We were just fixing to light out for town in this here horseless carriage.”
Stringer shook his head. “Not hardly. There’s barely room for the injured. Us able-bodied men have to stay put here until help from the outside world arrives.”
Burke snapped, “The hell you say. The trackside wires are torn out for at least a mile, and trains don’t run when the wires are down. We can’t just stay out here with no food and water. And even if we could, I don’t aim to. I’m still in charge of this outfit.”
“That’s right,” growled the nearby Gus, making a meaningful adjustment to his gunbelt, as Stringer weighed the odds. He didn’t like them, but he didn’t fool with his own gunbelt. He’d been raised to leave his gun alone unless he meant to draw it. He took a deep breath, let half of it out to keep his voice firm, and said, “We got plenty of water out here now, thanks to you boys, and I fail to see any outfit anymores for anyone to be in charge of it. You screwed things up by the numbers, Blacky. It’s about time to start doing things sensible for a change, and anyone can see these folk you’ve banged up and damn near drowned need doctoring more than you or me.”
Burke smiled thinly, shot a meaningful glance each way to include his two hired gunmen, and asked Stringer, “Would you like to bet on that?”
Stringer took a step backwards to get them all in view at the same time as he replied softly, “If I have to.”
Blacky had just replied, “You have to,” when Maria Herrerra got out of the Stanley steamer, calling out, “El Señor is right! Nobody who is not badly hurt should take up room in this machine. I am staying here as well!”
Cactus Jack’s jaw dropped, even as Blacky Burke, oblivious to what he must have taken as more Spanish she-male chatter, went for his six-gun!
Stringer beat him to the draw, just barely, and knew even as he aimed at Blacky that both Gus and Cactus Jack had their own guns clear of leather. But as the shot Stringer put into Blacky’s chest was followed a split second later by the roar of Cactus Jack’s big .45, it was Gus, not himself, that staggered backwards.
Stringer still dropped to one side and covered Cactus Jack as the gunsmoke from the close quarter’s fight hung misty above the tracks. Then Stringer saw Gus had rolled down the far side into the mud, Blacky Burke lay flat on his back between the eastbound tracks, and Cactus Jack had lowered the smoking muzzle of his .45 to stare in moonstruck admiration at the spunky Maria, declaring, “Tell her how glad I am to see her alive, MacEwen.”
Stringer didn’t have to. Maria shyly told the mud-covered lout to speak for himself, adding, “You were most brave just now, Señor Juan. I confess I thought you were one of those most wicked men until the last moment!”
Cactus Jack scuffed at the railroad ballast with an awkward toe and put his warm .45 away as he answered soberly, “So did they, I reckon. I sure can’t say I was brung up no angel, Miss Maria, but anyone can see old MacEwen here had the right notion.”
Stringer got back to his feet, reloading the spent chamber of his .38 as he grinned. “Welcome to the human race, Jack. You had me worried there for a moment.”
The man who’d no doubt murdered Herbert Lockwood in cold blood shrugged. “There’s limits to what any man who shaves with a mirror can abide. What say we get these sick folk on their way, now?”
Stringer agreed and pushed through the crowd to where an ashen-faced Kathy Doyle sat behind the wheel of her overloaded steamer.
“I’d like my hat and bandana back now, honey,” he told her. “If this critter can run less’n fifty miles on stinky and no-doubt alkali water, you ought to make it in less than three hours. I’d ask you to wire my story in for me as well, but considering past and future favors let’s just say adios and hope you don’t get stuck in the desert.”
She nodded and told everyone to stand back as she threw her overloaded machine in reverse an
d tore backwards off the railroad bank amid clouds of dust and considerable screams of terror from her passengers. As she spun around to go crashing west in an even higher cloud of dust, Stringer chuckled and asked Maria and Cactus Jack, “Ain’t she the bee’s knees? I don’t think she knows how to drive that thing slow.”
“She sure steers it good fast,” Cactus Jack replied. “What was that about her wiring a story for you, MacEwen? I couldn’t help overhearing.”
Stringer said, “My name’s not MacEwen. It’s MacKail, Stringer MacKail. I’m not a gunslick. I’m a newspaperman, just like she is, save for her skirts.”
Cactus Jack laughed incredulously. “Do tell? Well I’ll be swanned. Blacky had me looking to gun you if ever you showed up.”
Maria said firmly, “Don’t you dare, Juan! El Señor is the one who saved me from drowning out there on the flooded flats!”
Cactus Jack nodded shyly as he replied, “I just said as much, little darling. But I’m sure glad to know I had even more call to help him just now.” Then he turned back to Stringer, asking, “What do you want us to do now, seeing you seem to be the one in charge here, pard?”
It was a good question, and Stringer could see that almost a dozen Mexican men and a couple more brave mujeres expected him to answer it.
“Well,” he said, “we’d best all move back to see if anything at all may be left of that camp. There could be some supplies that weren’t swept through when the bank gave way betwixt the culverts. I’m afraid your late boss was right about the wires being down. Any trains coming will be coming mighty slow and thoughtful, if at all. We’re more likely to die of cholera than thirst unless we boil any of that water we drink. Food will be our big problem, followed by shade. So let’s see what we can work out.”
One of the workers asked what Stringer wanted to do about Burke’s remains. When Stringer said he didn’t care, a trio of them lagged behind to help themselves to the dead man’s valuables before they rolled him over the side to sprawl in the muck with old Gus.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was late afternoon when the Southern Pacific Special ordered out of the L.A. yards by Mister Henry Huntington in the flesh nosed to a cautious stop near the brandnew and very inconvenient channel of the Colorado River.
As the middle-aged railroad magnate climbed stiffly down from his private car near the rear of the Special to crunch warily up the north and therefore westbound tracks, he told one of the lackies with him, “It seems to be true. How long do our slide-rule boys say it will take to fill up the whole damned basin, Roy?”
The yes-man replied soberly, “Two or three years, sir. The river doesn’t carry half as much water most of the year.”
Huntington paused to stare northwards. He wasn’t sure whether it was a mirage or a distant blue lake he was gazing at on the horizon. He grimaced, then demanded, “No chance of the river returning to its old bed, once this high water goes down?”
Another member of his party, dressed in riding britches and laced boots, and hence less required to fawn, answered him. “Not now, H.E. Yuma reports, the long way around, that once the current to the gulf reversed, the flood waters dropped tons of silt to dam the old channel. Now that it has a way to run deeper than sea level, I can’t see it trying to cut its way through those sea level and mudflats to the south.”
Huntington grumbled. “All right. Let’s move on up and see what we’re talking about.”
As the modest trainload of S.P. dignitaries moved on down the line they soon encountered Stringer and his bedraggled followers camped under improvised tents with greasewood cook fires burning between the tracks.
H.E. Huntington strode forward with his silver-handled cane, pointing its tip at the nearest fire as he met Stringer and demanding, “What do you mean by camping on my railroad’s right of way, young sir?”
Stringer replied directly, “We had to. It’s the only solid camping ground in these parts. I’m Stringer MacKail from the San Francisco Sun. These other folk are the survivors of the construction camp that used to be around here somewhere. Some of ’em waded across from the far tracks once the water settled down.”
The railroad magnate turned to his field engineer and said, “Make a note of that, Hoover. The channel isn’t as deep as it may look. I just wish it wasn’t so damned wide. Do you think we can drive piles that might stay put?”
The younger man called Hoover nodded dubiously and replied, “A causeway on piles will surely cost less than a bridge span that wide, H.E. Of course, we’ll want to drop some rip-rap just downstream to slow the current, but…”
“Don’t you mean upstream?” demanded his boss, who seemed to feel he knew everything.
The engineer shook his head. “No, sir. You want to back the current under the piles and let the mud in that soupy current settle, not scour deeper.”
Stringer interrupted this exchange. “This is all mighty interesting, gents, but I got some folk here who haven’t had a square meal all day. We could all use a ride back to at least as far as El Centro too.”
The big boss shot an impatient glance past Stringer, softened when he saw how bedraggled they all looked, and nodded curtly. “Of course. My help will see to feeding everyone from my kitchen car, and naturally we can’t leave you here as we consider our options. I’m Henry E. Huntington by the way.”
Stringer nodded in response. “I figured you might be.”
Then he waved Cactus Jack over and told him, “Have our refugees toss all that stuff off the tracks and make sure the fires are out for good. Then herd ’em all back to wherever Mister Huntington here wants ’em. We’re getting out of here after all, courtesy of the Southern Pacific.”
Cactus Jack looked dubious as he replied, “I was told never to look a gift whore in the mouth. But my grandchildren will never believe me and Maria was saved by the Octopus!”
Huntington cursed under his breath and ordered one of his yes-men to go with Cactus Jack and see to it. As they moved away, he growled, “I wish I could get my hands on that damned Frank Norris! He had no right to stick us with that libelous nickname!”
Stringer replied casually, “The Battle of Mussel Slough was before my time, Hank. I’ll take your word the S.P. hasn’t out and out murdered anyone since your uncle, Creep Huntington, passed his railroad down to you.”
The surviving member of the Huntington clan muttered sarcastically, “Oh, thank you very much. Now, suppose you tell me who I have to thank for tearing out the mile or so of my main line across this damned desert!”
Stringer said, “Your own water outfit, Hank. They were running the water too far north in spite of the warnings of a hydraulic engineer who knew better. That sort of tree stump sticking up out of the mud yonder is what’s left to show of the steam shovel you lost as well digging the waterway straight and careless too close to your tracks.”
Huntington looked indignant and demanded, “Where do you get off accusing me or my railroad of digging anything, goddamn it? That water syndicate was irrigating this valley on its own, you idiot!”
Stringer cocked an eyebrow as he replied. “Do tell? Seems to me you and your S.P. land office was selling off a heap of fine new irrigated or soon to be irrigated land in these part, Hank.”
Huntington snapped, “Of course we sold off all the old land grants around here that we could. What would you do with desert land that could be irrigated, pay the damned taxes on it in hopes of a better deal?” Then he added, “I’m not used to being addressed as Hank, by the way. I’m not sure I like your attitude, young sir.”
Stringer noticed some of the others were trying not to grin back at him as he replied dryly, “It’s a good thing I don’t work for you then, right? You know what everyone’s going to say about this mess once it gets out, don’t you?”
Huntington shrugged. “They’ll no doubt describe it as one hell of a mess. At least for once nobody can pin anything from an earthquake to a falling redwood on the poor old Southern Pacific!”
Stringer aske
d, “Want to bet? More folk have read that novel by Frank Norris than your railroad has ever given one ride to. I mean to check out your denial that we don’t have the Octopus to thank for the inland sea California seems to be sprouting as we stand here. If it’s true nobody working for you caused this more recent disaster, I’ll be proud to say so when I write the story for the Sun. Whether anyone will buy it is sort up for grabs. You and your railroad have an awful reputation to live down, Hank.”
Huntington almost groaned as he sadly replied, “I know that all too well, damn it. But what can I do about the business methods of my dead uncle? He didn’t do half the mean things he was accused of, and I can’t seem to convince anyone the S.P. is under new management. I’ve been trying to get along with everyone better, but every time some hobo falls off one of our box cars half the papers in California chalk him up as yet another innocent victim of the… well, you know.”
“Octopus,” Stringer replied flatly. Then he added, “I’ve heard of the charity work your lady does, Hank. I know you collect fine art and even let folk in free to look at it, when you feel up to company. But whether the one and original C.P. Huntington did half the things they say he did or was only bragging, you do have some family skeletons to live down, don’t you?”
Huntington’s shoulders sagged as he sighed. “That’s for damned sure. But you say you’ll report this mess out here the way it really happened, with no remarks about aquatic life forms?”
Stringer nodded, but pointed east at the rolling brown water running down into poor little Juanita’s ghost sea. “Southern California is surely going to demand a villain to blame all this on. No offense, but you and your S.P. have a head start. That big basin to the north isn’t just going to fill to sea level and then stop. It figures to keep filling, and filling some more, until such time as it gets to slop over the other way and head for the sea once more by way of any channel it feels like cutting.”
Huntington grimaced and turned questioningly to his nearby engineer. Hoover?”
