The Desert Fiddler Part 25

"But," insisted Bob, "to save us, it must be done quickly. Jenkins'

cotton must be seized and held for his debts, and the water turned into the ca.n.a.ls at once."

This was also promised as soon as legal papers could be prepared. In leaving the office Bob dropped the telegram from the consul, accidentally.

"It apparently will not be needed," he said to himself as he left the office, "but it won't hurt to lose it."

The telegram left in the office read:

Present your situation to the governor, and if immediate relief is not given I'll close the border within twenty-four hours so tight that not a man, a mule, nor a machine can cross it either way.

LANIER, _Consul._

Two hours later a secretary who spoke good English and a Mexican captain appeared at the Chinese hotel where Bob was waiting.

"We have here," the secretary presented Bob with two papers, "an attachment for Senor Jenkins' cotton and an order that the water must be turned into the ca.n.a.ls at once, and at the old rate. El Capitan and I will accompany you in the governor's own machine to see these orders are obeyed."

Rogeen requested that no message be sent to Mexicali regarding these attachments, as that would give Reedy a chance to dodge.

"Can we go back over the Mexican road, and come into the valley round the Laguna Salada?" Bob asked. Reedy might already be rus.h.i.+ng his cotton on those trucks down to the waiting boat on the Gulf, and by going this route they would intercept them.

The road over the mountains was not completed, said the secretary, but they could have another machine from the valley to meet them, and in that machine make the circuit as proposed.

At ten o'clock that night Rogeen, the captain, and the secretary left the machine and the chauffeur at the top of the mountain grade, and began the two-mile descent to the ancient bed of the sea--the desert round the Laguna Salada.

Bob's satisfaction at winning the governor was more than overbalanced by the torturing fear that it would all be too late. He believed they would be in time to stop Reedy from getting away with his four hundred thousand dollars' worth of cotton. Jenkins would not start until he had lost hope of getting that $150,000 from the ranchers for water.

But Bob feared he was already too late to save his own cotton and Chandler's.

The point on the mountain where they left the machine was almost a mile high. The descent to the valley was by a steep and precarious trail.

The captain who was familiar with it took the lead.

It was twelve-thirty when they reached the road at the bottom which led to Mexicali. The machine was not there.

"What do you suppose is the matter?" Bob's voice sounded surprisingly cool but a little flat, even to himself. Although the hot winds struck them here, his skin felt clammily cold.

"He'll be here by and by." The secretary lighted a cigarette. He did not share Bob's anxiety and felt no undue fret over a little delay. "I telegraphed the _comandante_ to send driver and car here about midnight. He'll be here before long," he rea.s.sured. For an hour Bob walked back and forth peering at every turn far into the desert, listening until his ears ached. But no sight of car, no sound of puffing engine. Another hour pa.s.sed, and another. His anxiety increased until the delay seemed unbearable.

They waited nine hours. At last they saw the black bug of a machine crawling snortingly across the twenty-mile strip of sand between them and the pa.s.s through the Cocopa Mountains.

At nine-thirty the car arrived, a powerful machine of expensive make.

The chauffeur was a slender, yellowish young Mexican who delighted in taking dangerous curves at fifty miles an hour and who savagely thrilled at the terrific punishment his car could take and still go.

Through the secretary Bob told him of the plan to skirt the Laguna Salada and go south round the Cocopas instead of going through the pa.s.s. This way they would follow the ancient bed of the Gulf of California and forty miles south turn across the desert of the Lower Colorado, thence northeastward until they struck the trail along the river. By this route they could reach the Red b.u.t.te, the head of the Dillenbeck ca.n.a.l, almost as quickly as through the pa.s.s and by Mexicali, while at the same time they would follow for thirty miles up the river trail down which Jenkins' trucks must pa.s.s on the way to the head of the Gulf.

"Do you think we can do it?" Bob asked the chauffeur.

The chap lighted a cigarette, shrugged, and replied they could do any d.a.m.n thing.

"Let's be doing it then," urged Bob, jumping into the luxurious car.

The Laguna Salada is a dead lake made from the overflow of the Colorado River and salted by the ancient bed of the sea. There is no vegetation round it, no life upon it. Along the salty, sandy sh.o.r.e that glitters in the sun there is no road, no broken trail. But the reckless chauffeur hit the sand with the exultant fierceness of a bull fighter.

And at every lunge Bob clung to the iron bar overhead and devoutly prayed that the machine would live through it.

It did. At one o'clock they swung round the headlands into the main desert--the worst of its size on the continent, the desert of the Lower Colorado.

As far as the eye could see stretched the dead waste, so dead that not a mesquite bush, not a cactus, not a living thing grew or crawled or flew. And upon it smote the sun so hot it seemed a flame, and over it boiled a wind like the breath of a volcano.

It staggered even the four men, used as they were to the heat of the valley. But it was only forty miles to the river.

"Pretty d.a.m.n bad," the chauffeur muttered in Spanish, and shrugged.

Then he turned the nose of his machine northeast, and straight across the hard-packed sand shot into the blistering desert.

"Two miles, four miles, six----" Bob counted off, watching the speedometer. Every mile took him nearer the road, the water gates--and Reedy Jenkins.

"Eight--nine----" he continued. Then a terrific roar; the machine staggered; the chauffeur swore and applied the brakes.

They all jumped out. It was the right hind tire--a hole blown through it ten inches long. The chauffeur kicked it two or three times, lighted a cigarette, and stood looking at the burst tire. Finally he shrugged and glanced across the desert. The wind was blowing hard; there was sand in it. He shrugged and sauntered round to the front of the car, got out his jack and wrenches, took the wheel off, prowled round a quarter of an hour, then lighted another cigarette, again stood looking at the burst tire, and kicked it a few times as though trying to make it wake up and mend itself.

"What is the matter?" asked Bob. He had been afraid to ask.

"He says," interpreted the secretary, "he has no inner tube. Forgot to bring any."

"Then he'll have to run on the rim," said Bob, desperately; "we've got to get out of this."

But the secretary nodded toward the radiator which roared as though about to blow up.

"Where is his water?" Rogeen felt more than the heat surging through his head.

The chauffeur sauntered round the car twice as though looking for it.

"Says," explained the secretary, "he had a can but must have lost it."

They tried running on the rim, without water and with the hot wind blowing the same direction they were going. The machine lasted four miles, and then quit in the middle of a sand drift, with the most infernal finality in its death surge.

Bob got out and looked at the stalled car hopelessly. The boiling wind surged over the hot dust and smote him witheringly. The driven sand almost suffocated him. It was twenty-five miles at least to the river, twenty more to possible a.s.sistance. He looked at his watch--it was five minutes after one. Six hours before the sun would set, and until then walking would be suicide.

He climbed back into the machine, and sank limply into the shaded corner of the seat. Six hours of this--it would be torture; and there would be one long night of walking to reach water; another day of waiting for night--without food--and again a long, staggering walk before they reached a human habitation.

Two days and nights of delay--then it would be too late!

CHAPTER XXIX

There are times when torture of the body heals the suffering of the mind, and times when mental agony blots out physical pain. But there are other times when the two run together. It was so with Bob as they toiled doggedly through that long night across the desert toward the river. He kept his course by the North Star, and lost little distance by getting off the compa.s.s. It was just daylight when they reached the river. The stream was bank full--midsummer is high water for the Colorado--and was very muddy. But its water was more beautiful than jasper seas to those four men.

After they had drunk and cooled themselves in it, they crawled under a clump of willows beside the road to rest through the day. Bob had just stretched out on his back and covered his face with a handkerchief, ready to sleep, when a chuck-chuck and a grinding noise came down the road. He was up instantly, and so were the three Mexicans.