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THE RI\ By EDNA1 SYNOPSIS. CHAPTER I?K. C. Rickard, a engineer of the Overland Pacific,_ i cafied to the office of President Mar ; shall in Tucson, Ariz. "Casey" is an enigma to the office force; he wear "dude" clothes, but he had resigned , a chair of engineering in the East t j go on the road as a fireman and hi j promotion had been spectacular. While waiting for Marshall Richar j reads a report on the ravages of the Colorado, 'despite the efforts of Tho-j . mas Hardin of th e Desert Reclamation compapy. This Hardin had beenl; a student 'under Rickard and had married Gerty Holmes, with whom Ridkard had fancied he was in love, i CHAPTER II?Marshall tells Rick-1 ard the Overland Pacific has got to 1 step in to save the Imperial Valley and sends him to the break. Rickard declines because he does not want to supplant Hardin, but is won over.: : "Stop the River; damn the expense," says Marshall. !', CHAPTER III?Rickard journeys , to Calexico, sees the irrigate a aesert . and learns much about Hardin and his work. , CHAPTER IV?At the hotel he i meefe Mr. and Mrs. Hardin and Innes i Hardin, Hardin's half sister. Disap- ] pfeinted in her husband and an in- , corrigible coquette,"Mrs. Hardin sets < her cap for her former lover and in-.' ] vites him to dinner. t CHAPTER V?Rickard visits the company's offices and takes control | He finds the engineersxloyal to Har din and hostile to him. Estrada, a 1 Mexican, son of the "Father of the ] Imperial Valley," tells him of the, i general situation. V ] ~ CHAPTER VI?Rickard attends i l&eeting of the directors and asserts his authority. Hardin rages. Estrada ] tells Rickard of his foreboding that his work will fail. "I can't see it finished." CHAPTER VII?Innes is discover- i ed in her garden. She tries to cheerj j up Hardin, who is furious against Rickard. * , / CHAPTER VIII?A family lunch- ; eon of the Hardins which throws light j": V. t I 1 on them. \ CHAPTER IX?Hardin discovers that Rickard is planning a levee to protect Calexico and puts him down as incompetent. Gerty thinks her lord jealous. CHAPTER X?The Hardin dinner to Rickard discloses further the fam-!1 ily characteristics . Hardin is surly and sulky. Innes is hardly polite. Gerty plans a "progressive ride" in Rickard's honor. j (Continued From Tuesday) CHAPTER X . ji In spite of his haunting sense - of ultimate failure the growing belief In the omnipotence of the Great Yellow ( Dragon as the Cocopahs visualized it, Estrada's work was as intense as though he were hastening a sure victory. The dauntless spirit of the elder Estrada pushed the track over the hot sands where he must danfe at times to keep his feet from burning. Many of the rails they laid at night. I "RIckard's gone hog-wild," Hardin |; told his family the.- next morning. I "Building a levee between the towns! ' The man's off his head." "There isn't any danger?" Gerty's i, anxiety made the deep blue eyes look ; black. Innes looked up for Tom's answer, i His face was uclv with wassion. "Danger! It's a bluff, a big show j of activity here because he's buffa- j 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 engineers foregathered; among the-chair tilters who idled in front of the Desert hotel. "The man does not know . how to tackle his job!" A levee, and the gate held up! What protection to the towns would be that toy levee if the river should return on one of its spectacular sprees? A levee, and the intake itself not guarded? lie was whispered of as incompetent; one of Marshall's clerks. He was given a short time to blow himself out. A bookman, a theorist. "As well put sentinels a few miles E3 from prison and leave the jail doors open!" This was woosters gibe. All saw the Colorado as a marauder at large. "And a little heap of sand stacked np to s?are it off! It's a scream 1" Mrs. Hardin found It difficult to meet with diplomacy the confidences which inevitably came her way. As Hardin's wife she was expected to enjoy the universal censure the new man was acquiring. Gerty's light touches, too slight for championship, passed as a sweet charity. _Her own position .. .. ( 'ER I A AIKEN 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 superintending the levee. Ho could trust no one else to do It, no one umess it were c-siruuu, wno was rushing his steel rails through to tha front and was needed there. Things were moving under his constant goading. The extra pay was showing results. He should be a( 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 cookcd 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 baffling resistance, the polite silence of the office when he entered?"Well, they'll be doing my way pretty soon, or my name isn't Rickard. That's flat." 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 wellirilled militia, was ready for his call, rhe call lugged, not that he did not across the desert, whom Ricknrd had met at the Crossing, deeply had he impressed him. The river grew into a malevolent, mocking personality; he could sco it a dragon of yellow waters, dragging its slow, sluggish length across the baked desert sands; deceiving men by its inertness; luring the explorer by a mild mood to rise suddenly with its wild fellow, the Gila, sending boat and boatmen to their swift doom. Rlckard was thinklftsr of the hnlf breed, Maklonado, as he inspected the new stretch of levee between the towns. lie had heard from others besides Estrada of the river knowledge of this descendant of trapper and squaw, and had thought it worth while to ride the twenty miles from down the river to talk with him. The man's suavity, his narrow slits of eyes, the lips thin and facile, deep lines of cruelty falling from them, had repelled his visitor. The mystery of the place / need men, but there was no place i ready for them. The campr that was unother rub. There was no camp! It j was not equipped for a sudden infla- j tlon of men. The inefficiency of the projectors of this desert scheme had 1 never seemed so criminal as when he had surveyed 9&S35BS& & tafce. *vrct rr-iuy lirs?; ^uur {OOIS, your stoves, your beds." That was the training of the good executive, of men j like Marshall and MacLean. Nothing ' to be left to Chance; to foresee einer [jencles, not to be taken by them un- i aware... The reason of Hardin's down* j fall was his slipshod habits. How could 1 lie b? a gcod officer who had never drilled as a soldier? There was thf chip 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 a work half the^riginal magnitude. Cutting away, moreover, was the island, "isastpr island; it had received apt 'listening by the engineers, its bapi -:nal water the Colorado. The last j ' tis had played with it as though it i 'vcrj a bar of sugar. There was no j .".nek at hand; no rock on the way, no rock ordered. Could anyone piece to?0?her such recklessness? llickard knew where he would get rock. Already he had requisitioned the entire output of the Tacna and Patagonia quarries. He had ordered steam shovels to be installed at the quarry back ofv ohl Hamlin's. That rock pit would be his first crutch, and the gravel bed?that was a find! as he paced the levee west of the towns, he was planning his campaign. Porter was scouring Zacatecas for men; he himself had offered, as bait, free transportation; the O. P. he knew would back him. He was going to throw out a spur-track from the Heading, touching at the quarry and gravel pit, on to the main road at Yuma. Double track most of the way; sidings every three miles. Rock must be rushed; the trams must be pushed through. He itched to begin. It never occurred tt Ma ttetc ttk* Hardly b? might fail. "Though it's no pink tea," he told himself, "it's no picnic." At Tucson he knew that the situation was a grave one, but his talk with Brandon, who knew his river as does a good Indian, made the year a significant, eventful one. Matt llamlin, too, whoso shrewd eyes had grown river-wise, he, too. had had tales to tell of the tricky river. Maldonarln. tbo hnlf-lirepd. had confirmed their portents while they sat together under his oleander, famous throughout that section of the country. And powerfully had Cor'nel, tlio Indian who had piloted Estrada's nartv e which completely surrounded the ^ small, low dwellings? Why the can- q tlous admittance, the atmosphere of ^ suspicion? Rickard had seen the wife, a frightened shadow of a woman; had ? seen her flinch when the brute called for her. He had questioned Cor'nel Q about the half-breed. He was remem- ^ bering the wrinkles of contempt on the old Indian's face as he delivered himself of an oracular grunt. "White man? No. Indian? Nol Coyote!" Though he suspected Maldonndo a would lie on principle, though it might be that two-thirds of his glib tissue r] were false," yet a thread of truth coincident with the others, Brandon and Hamlin and Cor'nel, might be pulled d out of his romantic fabric. "When the waters of the Gila run red look out for trouble!" He doubted that they ever ran red. He would a ask Cor'nel. He had also spoken of ^ a cycle, known to Indians, of a hundredth year, when the Dragon grows restless; this he had declared was a c] hundredth year. Following his talk with Maldonado e and the accidental happy chance meet- ^ ing with Coronel at the Crossing Rick- e ard had written his first report to Tod Marshall. Before he had come to the Heading he had expected to advise against tfee completion of the wooden a headfrnts nt the Crossing. Hamlin jj had given him a new viewpoint. There ^ was a fighting chance. And he wanted Maldonado Had Confirmed Their Por., a ? tents, * a p to be fair. Next to being successful he wanted to be fair. r; "It's time to be heariftg from Mar- h shall," Rickard was thinking, as he walked back to the hotel. "I wonder what he will say." He felt it had been fair to put it up to Marshall; personally, he would like to begin with V a clean slate?begin right. Clumsy ^ work had been done, It was true, yet ^ there were urgent reasons now for haste; and the gale was nearly half done! He had gone carefully over ^ the situation. The heavy snowfall, unprecedented for years, a h'indred, acJ coraing to the Indians?on the Wind ^ j Rover mountains?the lakes swollen I Ir?r\ fl\/\ r?!lrt KAoflaeta fha C11TYITTIPI* * *v.t, uic ui^a icoucoo) tuv/ ? | floods yet to be met; perhaps, he now I thought, he had been ovsrfair in em- c phasizing the arguments for the head- ^ gate. For the hundred feet were now a thousand feet?yet he had spoken of that to Marshall: "Calculate for S yourself the difference In expense since the flood widened the break. It ~ is a vastly different problem now. Disaster island, which they figured on for anchor, is a mere pit of corroding sugar in the channel. An Infant Colorado could wash it away. However, a lot of work has already been done, and a lot of money spent. There is a fighting chance. Perhaps the bad year * is all Indian talk." ? A guess, at best, whatever they did! H It was pure gamble what tho tricky ? Colorado would do Anyway, he had f given the whole situation to Marshall. In his box at the hotel was a tele- Jl pram which had been sent over from 9 the office?frofn Tod Marshall. "Take ' the fighting chance. But remember *?? | 1 speak more respectfully of Indians." j "Marshall all over," laughed his suit j I ordinate. "Now it's a case of hustle! i But dollars to doughnuts, as Junior I * says, we don't do it!" 3 CHAPTER XII. I ? I Hardin's Luck. $ Two days later there was a shock of 8 earthquake, so slight that the lapping a ! of the water in Illckard's lmth was his ' # ! intimation of the earth's uneasiness. % ' In the dining room later he found ev- $ ! eryone discussing it. "Who could re- ? I member an earthquake in that desert?" i "The first shake!" $j During the morning, unfathered, as rumors are horn, the whisper of disi aster somewhere spread. Their own g ! slight shock was the et^ge of the con- Jg ; vulsion which had been serious else- iffi ! where, no one knew quite where, or 1 why tliey knew it at all. The men j| who were shoveling earth on the levee y began to talk of San Francisco. Some- ifl one said that morning that the city gj was badly hurt. No one could confirm fj rninnr 1 >11 f it mvw with till} dllV. H i Rickartl met it at the office late in the afternoon. lie went direct to the j telegraph operator's desk. "Get Los Angeles, the O. P. office. ( And be quick about it." In ten minutes lie was talking to Babcock. Babcock said that the dam| age by the earthquake to that city was j not known, but it was afire. San Jose ; had confirmed it. Oakland hajd.report-1" $ <T the flames creeping tip the real- ^ ence hills of that gay Western city, linders were already falling In the & ransbny town. h< RIckard dropped the receiver, w Where's Hardifl?" Tom Hardin emerged from a knot nj f men who were talking In a corner y the door. ' "Where's that machinery?" S "What machinery?" RIckard saw the answer to his queslon In the other's face. ^ "The dredge machinery. Did you ttend to that? Did you send ?or It?" "Oh, yes, that's all right. It's all ? Ight." _ "Is It here?" Hardin attempted. Jocularity. "I idn't know as you wanted it here. I rdered It sent to Yuma." "Is It at Yuma?" Hardin admitted that it was not yet t Yuma; It would be there soon; he ad written; oh, It was all right. ' "When did you write?" Hardin reddened under the catetiism of questions. He resented belg held up before his men. The othrg felt the electricity in the air. HarIn and his successor were glaring at ach other like belligerents. "I asked when did you write?" "Yesterday." "Yesterday!" Rickard ripped out n oath. "Yesterday. Why at all, I'd* If A f A TrnnwO TM/I TTAM H r\ /I Awn4-n n /I IXC IV ftUV" * -L/1U jruu UUUCIOLUUU lat you were ordered to get that ere? Now. it's gone." "Gone?" The others crowded up. "San Francslco's burning." He alked into his inner office, mad clear irough. He was not thinking of the uin of the gay young city; not a lought yet did he have of the human ragedies enacting there; of homes, i vee, fortunes swept into that huge onfire. As it affected the work at the i iver, the first block to his campaign, le catastrophe came home to him. He ' ad a picture of tortured, twisted i on, of ruined machinery, the ma-1 folnery for his dredge. He saw it lying .ke a spent Laocoon, writhing in its ist struggle. He blamed himself for ;aving even such a small detail as the astenlng of the parts to Hardin's"1 are, for Hardin wasn't fit.to be trustd for anything. No one could tell im now the man was unlucky; he :as a fool. A month wasted, and iljst pictivuo. n. liiuuui i luuuiiia. | [nrdin's luck. Oh, hell! Then he began to speculate as he ooled over the trouble up yonder. A :hole city burning? They would sure7 get it under control. He began to | [link of the Isolation; the telegraph ! ires all down. That might happen j nywheri;! He walked to the door \ nd looked thoughtfully at the Romany's big water tower. That wasa't uch a bnd idea! He picked up hia at, and went out. (To be Continued Tuesday) v. "Trrrrr.<<' V VV^\V vvwv ; v COLD SPRING NEWS. S. xxxxxxxvxxxxxxx \ \ Cold Springs, March 26.?Miss Ola Vinn spent Saturday night at Mr j IT. B. -Uldricks. Mr. and Mrs. A. B. Newell andj hildren spent Sunday with Mr. and Irs. Otis Smith. \ Mrs. J. M. Rowe returned home on aturday after a week's visit with' , IREAL EJ city property. These 100 ACRE TRACT?Six ind one-half miles from Abbe- . ville in Sharon neighborhood; tiuac L u at'iiuui unu vxiui^n* Three-room house and barn. Per Acre $32.50 ! 32 ACRE TRACT OF LAND?' 4 miles south of Abbeville. rTenant house, barn, 8 or 10 acres of fine branch bottoms, 35 acres in cultivation balance in woods both pine and ash. Rented for this year. Near school house. Price per acre $20.00 LOT?on South side of town, 150x150 feet. Price, $150.00 156 ACRE TRACT?Located 4 miles Southeast of Abbeville S. C. Six room dwelling, 3room tenant house, barn. Ahout 2-horse farm rented for this' year. Good bottom land, plenty ashe wood and timber. Price $4,400. TWO GOOD RESIDENCES? on North Main Street, for sale. Ask for prices. ACRE LOT?In Fort Pickens. Good location. Price __$600. 231 1-2 ACRES?7 miles South of Abbeville, two tenant houses, barn, well; 15 acres bottoms, 150,000 feet saw i ome people. Misses Ruth, Eupheenia Uldrick returned home with er. They will be gone atout two eeks. o Miss Maggie Hagen spent Saturday ight with Miss Jessie Stroud. Mr. and Mrs. R. A. Hagen spent unday at Mr. T. F. Uldrick's. Cooperation and organization are le keys to successful country develmlent. FARM FOR 87 ACRES?12 mile jivxc^uriiiiujts. v^uu of W. D. Morrah P 40 ACRES?About i ville, no improve and thiiber. 79 3-4 ACRES?3 mi one settlement? on place. Plenty running through 227 1-2 ACRES?1 ville. This is a sp erty?. A lot of sav P 100 1-2 ACRES?1! ville. Good resid ings. Well atere and timber, Pi 189 1-4 ACRES?V -mil d A orJorirl v niv? x jl ojy 1 viiu provements, abo torn lands. P 541 ACRES?1-2 m: ' mile from Calhc farm being oper Lies well," is well abundance of w( Pr Can Arrar ROBERT STATE <$, are good investmentstimber. Two horse farm already rented for 1919. Price per acre $25.00 6-ROOM RESIDENCE?On S. Main St., containing 4 acres, more or less. Good barn, 1 tenant house, rat proof crib, with branch running through property. Cheap at $2,100.00 TWO STORY DWELLING?6 room, nan, electric ngnts ana sewerage, 5 minutes walk from square. Bargain .at $1,250.00 120 ACRES?Four miles South East of Abbeville, dwelling, tenant house, well, 500 cords w'ood, ^ome saw timber. Cheap at $17.50 per acre. I icfr Vmii" Prnnprfir \A7il V Ml. or Exch Jno. F. Su Abbeville, CITY ELECTION.. The regular City Election, will be held at the City Council Chamber, Abbeville, S. C., Apql 8thf. I9191, for four Aldermen. Managers of Election, T. C. Seal, J. L. Clark: ami G. A. Botts. J. MOORE MARS, Mayor. T. G. PERRIN, City Clerk. &-2?-2t. Fri. LANDS HE..... s from Abbeville, in nty, adjoining lands i. rice, $30.00 per acre. six miles from Abbe3mentsr all in wood Price, $25 per acre. les from Abbeville? -two horse farm open wood, and stream place. Price, $2,000.00. L miles from Abbe?lendid*piece of proper timber on this place rice, $17.50 per acre. 2 miles from Abbeience and out buildd and plenty wood rice, $30.00 per acre. . A *1 - _ J? A 1-1- _ * if rimes irom Auue- : id farm but no im- ; ut 50 or 60 acres botrice, $18.00 per acre. ile from Hester, one rnn Falls. 15 horse j ated on the place, j [ watered and has an >od and timber, ice, $40.00 per acre. am ige Terms ' S, LINK I r for immediate sale 1 Mowing country and \ -Ask About Them 166 ACRES?6 miles from Abbeville. Good dwelling, barn *: tenant house, located in Leb- j anon section, close to school and church. g ' Trice per acre $30.00 ! FOR QUICK SALE?120 Acre TVor?f rt-f T.nnrl wifh R Paawi 9 dwelling, barn, good pasture, 9 enough to pasture 40 head of ; cattle. Rents for 5 bales cot- H ton. Price $60.00 Per Acre 5-ROOM DWELLING? On South Main Street, at Cotton Mill. Price, $1,125.00. 5-ROOM COTTAGE? Right at High School, on Parker St. Lot 80x198. Price, $1,600.00. I th Me for Sale, Rent ange. S)| m therland South Carolina