Stringer and the Deadly Flood Read online

  The engineer replied with a morose nod, “He’s right, H.E. Of course, we’re talking about at least some years in the future. That’s one hell of an inland sea to fill all the way to the brim with fresh water, given the yearly flow of the Gila-Colorado system.”

  Stringer pointed out, “The resulting lake won’t be fresh at all. It’s sure to soak up all the salt left by the fossil sea that used to be there. As it climbs higher each year it will drown out all the crop lands you and others have already sold a heap of suckers, Hank. Meanwhile, the Mexican farmers who used to depend on fresh river water below Yuma and the nearby border won’t have any water at all. Ah, do you reckon that book by Frank Morris has been translated into Spanish yet?”

  “If it hasn’t, I can see it soon will be,” Huntington groaned. “You don’t have to tell me about the human yen for easy villains. But didn’t you just say it was the men running the water syndicate who made this terrible misjudgment?”

  Stringer nodded. “The field supervisor who really done this part of the deed is dead. He was cutting corners for a bonus against any instructions the big shots in Yuma might have fed him. So no matter what they told him to do, they’re sure to insist it wasn’t their fault, and none of them are half as famous, or notorious, as you, Hank.”

  Huntington groaned again. “Just what I want to hear.

  At least a few years of constant complaints and so-called exposé articles about the way I turned most of the Imperial Valley into a great, big, useless, salty mud puddle! But what in the hell do you expect me to do about a mistake I never made, damn it!”

  Stringer laughed. “You just answered yourself, Hank. Solve the problem by damming it. You have to replace your tracks out here in any case. How much more will it cost you to dam the new channel with a causeway dam instead of a skimpy bridge on piles?”

  Huntington frowned at the now quieter but impressive river running north across his right of way and demanded, “Hoover?”

  The engineer answered, “A lot, sir. That’s a wicked current, and should the waters rise again before we can fill such a broad channel in with coffer dams and rip-rap all bets are off. I’d have to work out the details with my staff, of course, but as a conservative estimate, I can promise you that a causeway on piles, allowing the water to pass on through, would cost you less than a tenth as much.”

  Stringer’s heart sank as he saw the cash-register tags click up and down in the railroad magnate’s shrewd eyes. He tried again. “What about the settlers you’ve already sold land to? Land you know damn well figures to wind up under salty water?”

  Huntington shrugged in reply. “I don’t own or pay taxes on land I no longer own. I understand the value of good public relations as well as anyone, young sir. God knows I’ve spent enough of it trying to make the peasants show just a little more respect to me and mine, for all the good it’s done. I even gave a public park to Pasadena and the ruffians still hiss at my poor wife when she drives by it!”

  Stringer said, “Some folk are like that when they see a fancy carriage, no matter who might be riding in it, Hank. Playing Lord and Lady Bountiful is one thing. You have a chance right here to be a hero. All the farm folk you save will never forget you—if you save ’em that is. How much can one little dam cost, next to that ‘Blueboy’ on the wall of your big house in Pasadena?”

  Huntington didn’t have to turn to his engineer to answer that one. “One hell of a lot more,” he snapped. “We’re not talking about a ‘little dam,’ you idiot. Look at that damned river out there now. You expect me to dam the waters of the Gila and Colorado combined, just to get in good with the neighbors?”

  Stringer tried to make his shrug look as if he didn’t care. “I would, if I had half your money and gave two hoots and a holler about my neighbors. Whether you like folk or not, Hank, this is your chance to make up for all the mean things the Southern Pacific ever did to anyone. Can’t you see how it would spin old Creep Huntington in his grave if the awful Octopus he set up wound up as the knight in shining armor who saved the whole Imperial Valley, out of the goodness of its hitherto miserly heart?”

  Huntington turned away from the depressing view of brown water rolling past, fast and no doubt just as stubborn as his late greedy uncle. Instead of answering Stringer, he just commented, “We’d best all get back aboard and back off now. We’ve seen the damage. It’s worse than I thought, but Hoover here will have to work out some procedures before we do anything about it.”

  Stringer pressed him for a direct reply. “I wasn’t planning on spending the night out here, Hank. So what’s it going to be, a solid dam or a leaky causeway? My readers might want to know whether there’s to be farm land or a seashore here. In case they want to take up plowing or sailboating on what surely won’t be much of a desert any more!”

  Huntington said he had to think about it.

  Stringer knew that was the polite way such big shots usually said no.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Huntington Special was already bound back to the L.A. yards. Nobody had actually been thrown off at El Centro, but that was where Stringer and the other survivors wound up anyway. The Mexicans, including Maria Herrerra, were anxious for further news about their kith and kin. Cactus Jack was anxious to be near Maria. And Stringer had to offer at least some explanation of his shoot-out in the desert to the county authorities before they heard some Mex singing a corrido about it and put out a fugitive warrant on him.

  Stringer and Cactus Jack agreed it would look better if he took the credit, or blame, for both Blacky and Gus, lest the county coroner fear Cactus Jack was making a habit of “fair fights” within local jurisdiction. Stringer waited until his fellow survivors were set up in town, whether visiting injured relatives or just glad to be safe at last, before he recruited a pair of sensible Mex witnesses who seemed to be on his side. He left Cactus Jack to comfort Maria and led his witnesses to the dinky county courthouse, braced for a grilling on the killing of Blacky and Gus.

  The hearing, before one of the coroner’s clerks in a side room, was perfunctory and anticlimatical. The big flood had swamped the local authorities’ ability to deal with more than one disaster at a time. The clerk listened only a few minutes and never questioned Stringer’s witnesses before he confided, “I thank you for reporting two more flood casualties to me, Mister MacKail. But wouldn’t it save us all a lot of trouble if we just wrote those rascals off as drowned, along with all the others? Nobody liked either one of ’em, you know, and I’ll take your word you gunned them fair in self-defense if you’ll take my word they were victims of the deluge.”

  Stringer protested mildly. “Far be it from me to tell Imperial County how to keep its books. But the last I saw of their cadavers, each had a bullet hole in it.”

  The assistant coroner shrugged. “By the time all the bodies are gathered for mass burial in this heat, if we ever find them all, who’s going to notice? I’ll explain it off-the-record to anyone important who might ask. I doubt anyone will. Gus Mason was a known paid assassin and everyone knew he was working for Burke. It was just one of those things that’s more easy to know than to prove in court. Both the sheriff and district attorney will be pleased to hear the sons of bitches are no longer a threat to local law and order. But, naturally, it wouldn’t look tidy if they congratulated anyone in particular for exterminating such vermin. So why don’t you just forget it, and the county will say no more about it.”

  Stringer agreed that sounded more than fair. So they shook on it, and he took his witnesses across the street and bought them drinks by way of an apology for wasting their time. Each in turn insisted on springing for the next round. So three drinks and almost forty minutes after squaring things with the county Stringer was free to get down to more serious business.

  At the Western Union office down the way the clerk on duty said he did, indeed, recall a Miss Kathy Doyle of the San Francisco Examiner sending quite a long wire, at day rates, to San Francisco.

  “It was a good th
ing she got here first,” he added. “We’ve been busy as hell ever since, what with all the messages coming in or going out. That flood out in the desert must be a pisser. They’ve even wired Sacramento to send in the National Guard. Looters from both sides of the border figure to get here before any troops can, right?”

  Stringer nodded absently and asked if the clerk was sure Miss Doyle had wired the first flash to nobody else but her own paper. The clerk nodded. “I am. Her message was too long and complicated for me to recall worth mention, even if company policy allowed me to tell one customer just what another one might have sent. I can tell you she only sent the one long wire, though. Was she supposed to send more than one?”

  Stringer sighed. “Not really. I knew better, but I had more important matters than my job to worry about. I don’t suppose you have any messages from my paper to me?”

  The clerk said he sure did and handed three envelopes across the counter. Sam Barca had sent all three at ever-shorter intervals, no doubt after reading the headlines of the goddamned Examiner. Only the first could be taken as sardonic. It read, “SO MUCH FOR FLOOD STOP COULD YOU AT LEAST SEND FOLLOW UP WITH ANGLE SOMEONE ELSE MAY NOT HAVE QUESTION MARK BARCA.”

  The second message thanked him for scooping the rival papers on the public statement issued from Yuma by the Imperial Valley Improvement Company, as the water trust was now calling itself with no mention of water. The third confirmed the Guard had been called out and pleaded with him to at least dig up some local color for “DELETED BY WESTERN UNION,” if he was still alive and thought it at all possible he was still writing for the Sun.

  Stringer picked up a yellow telegram blank and wrote, “IN EL CENTRO INTERVIEWING LOCALS STOP MORE WHEN NEWSWORTHY STOP” and asked the clerk to get that right off. Then he went out to get back on the job.

  He had to pick up another notebook at the general store well before sundown for taking down the tales he heard even using his tight reporter’s shorthand. There were many personal stories indeed, each in itself a worthy subject for an adventure novel, whether they’d ever run as a news paragraph or not. For minute by minute the transient population of El Centro kept growing as refugees streamed in to the nearest shelter. Stringer set up shop on the steps of the dinky saloon nearest the railroad platform and took notes as the survivors straggled in. Some were in good shape. Others looked as if they’d been hauled through the keyhole backwards. Stringer didn’t pester the ones who seemed just too stunned to feel like talking or even stopping. He offered a helpful service of his own by directing them to the clinic the local doctors, working together as an emergency team, had set up in the shade of the trees where Juanita’s gypsy cart had stood what now seemed so long ago. Most of the injuries were cuts and bruises, but swimming in even knee-deep water that was more greasewood and lumber chowder could tear one up considerable. Those caught by the sudden rush of unexpected irrigation who’d actually drowned or bled to death out on the desert could hardly be interviewed. Stringer had to just guess on the numbers, as survivors, spotting a man with a notebook who might actually know something, asked or told him about missing members of their families.

  As the big picture slowly emerged from the bits and pieces each survivor could offer, Stringer learned that the first high wall of muddy water had fanned out widely from the break, losing some but not enough of its punch as it roared across the gentle grade, doing more damage by slamming debris into things and then picking up the pieces to use them in turn like a locust swarm of bitty battering rams. Folk caught by the flood crest any distance out from the first breakthrough had found they’d survived by managing to stay on their feet or, better yet, climbing aboard something high and solid. He heard many a tale of those who’d been hit by floating timber, knocked under, and never seen again. Most tragic was the story of a young mother who’d climbed up in a wagon bed with her three kids, only to find the wagon floating fast toward Salton’s Sink. Then suddenly, to the horror of a vaquero watching in the lee of an immovable kitchen range, the woman’s wagon had been flipped over and then over and over again by the chocolate-colored floodwater.

  A late arrival, coming in on a mighty muddy pony, told of being caught way out by water running only inches deep down the steeper slope of the once-extinct inland sea. He told Stringer that Salton’s Sink was already a good-sized lake to the north. But his tale was less of a new lake in what had been bare desert less than twenty-four hours before than that of the naked body of a woman, rolling at him like a log in the swift shallow water, that knocked his pony’s legs from under it and rolled them both a ways before horse and rider could stagger back to their feet and somehow keep going. When Stringer asked whether the dead woman had been Anglo or Mex the muddy rider shuddered and replied, “You couldn’t tell. Her hair and hide had been sort of sanded off in her travels. I don’t want to think about her no more. If I ever in this world find a place to lay my head, I sure hope I don’t dream about her coming at me ass over teakettle, with her peeled-off face grinning up at me like that just before she hit us.”

  Stringer was more cheered when, late in the afternoon, he spied a big tractor bumping over the train tracks at him with a little train of farm wagons trailing behind its slow but powerful wheels. Stringer leaped to his feet with a happy cry as he recognized old W.R. Brown driving the tractor with a not at all displeased expression. The friendly Coopers and some of the other nester families who’d treated him neighborly right after he’d buried Juanita were aboard the overloaded wagons as well.

  As they greeted each other like survivors of a battle meeting later in the rear area, W.R. Brown explained dryly, “You told me to act more neighborly. Me and old Cooper had just plowed that extra length of drainage when the canal commenced to run into it like hell. We could see there was way more water than one canal or even a river could hold. So we got cracking, picking neighbors up as we moved to such high ground as there was. It wasn’t near high enough. By the time we got in sight of the railroad bank every wagon I was towing was bed deep in the water and trying to float off with the current. But old Betsy here was just too big and heavy and, thank God, strong enough to hold us all together ’til the water put all our wheels back on the ground.”

  Cooper joined them to catch the last of that and add, “None of us would have made it if it hadn’t been for old W.R. and his monster machine. We lost our housing, our crops in the field, and damn near our lives. But every time I look at my wife and family since, nothing else seems to matter.”

  W.R. said, “There you go. Our land is still there as well.” He turned back to Stringer, explaining. “The water had narrowed down to sort of cut a regular channel by the time it got low enough for us to swing west for town. I don’t mind saying Old Betsy had a time getting us across that stretch. She was wheel-hub deep and chewing deeper out in the middle, and no mule team could have hauled one wagon through the mudflats spread all about on both sides. That first boiling wave tore all the greasewood and lizards up by the roots and left the land scalped Cheyenne style. Drilling fruit trees in ought to be a heap easier, once we head back to rebuild.”

  Cooper sighed. “If it ain’t under water for keeps, you mean. Remember that rider we met out yonder who said Salton’s Sink was more like a Salton Sea right now, and still rising?”

  W.R. grimaced as he replied, “Hell, don’t be so pessimisticated. Desert flash floods always dry up in a few days. By this time tomorrow you’ll be bitching about the dust again. Ain’t that right, pard?”

  Stringer nodded, even though he wasn’t at all sure about that. These half-drowned nesters needed food and shelter more than they needed more to worry about. So he told them, “Unless you folk salvaged some tents, you’d best get to looking for some place to stay here in El Centro. When I left my hotel, quite a spell back, they’d already hired out most of the rooms they had and it’s been getting more crowded here in El Centro ever since.”

  W.R. Brown, who seemed to be in charge whether anyone else had anything to say about that or not,
turned to call out, “All right, you folk back there. We’re moving on just a mite. So all of you hang on tight, hear?”

  Stringer waited until the improvised trackless train passed on, waving back to the one little girl who waved at him, and then he seated himself to write their desert saga down in shorthand while it was fresh in his memory. It was nice to report a bright spot amid all this tragedy. For it was a tragedy, whether or not the survivors themselves were injured in mind and body. Even if the new Salton Sea was stopped no higher than that fossil beach out yonder, rebuilding figured to be a heartbreaking and bankroll-busting task. If the now briny water rose much higher, of course, the settlers north of the tracks at the very least would be ruined. Those who’d bought sections south of the tracks had nothing to feel smug about either if the Colorado started searching for another outlet once it filled everything below sea level to the brim.

  Huntington’s engineer had said he figured it would take at least a few years for the rogue river to fill the basin to the north. That might mean time to work out a new channel or even get the Colorado back in its own channel, given time, determination, and above all money. If all the threatened settlers, the water trust, the railroad, and mayhaps the government got right at it and soon, there was an outside chance of snatching success out of this disaster. But to date the flood victims were still stunned, the National Guard was more interested in shooting looters than ditch digging, and both the railroad and the water trust were issuing statements denying any responsibility for this act of God, as they’d likely wind up calling human error.

  Stringer took his notes inside the saloon and sat at a table to recompose his news feature, knowing there was no way the Sun was going to have space for half the sad tales he’d just heard. One beer and two smokes later he had the draft he meant to wire in. He was just about to rise from the table and go send it when an elderly Hispanic in a torn shirt and muddy pants moved to hover over him and ask, “Permiso, señor?”