Stringer and the Deadly Flood by Lou Cameron Page A

bare-tree Mexican saddle and horsehair bridle thrown in for another ten. They’d flatly refused to hire him by the day once he’d mentioned he might be riding out on the desert. He knew Juanita had the shotgun aboard her gypsy cart. But as long as he was in downtown El Centro and meant to let the Sun pay these unforeseen travel expenses, if they would, he picked up a used Winchester and a couple of boxes of .44-.40 and some more .38 Longs at the hardware store next door.
    He was halfway back to the willows when he met up with Juanita in her cart, coming toward him. As he wheeled his mule to fall in beside her, she called, “I put your bag in the back. I did not open it.”
    â€œI never thought you would,” he assured her. Then he asked, “How come we’re headed north? I thought Old Mexico was the other way.”
    She seemed to repress a shudder as she replied, “I would rather take my chances with hired gringo guns than Los Indios in the desert to the south.”
    He asked, “How many wild Indians do you still have down Mexico way?”
    â€œToo many,” she replied. “Those hiding from the Federáles in the bleakest parts of the desert are most desperate. They do not attack because they hate your kind and mine. They attack anything that moves because if it moves they feel free to eat it or rob it.”
    Stringer figured she knew what she was doing, and he followed her lead without more questions. When they had crossed the railroad tracks and began pushing through greasewood, she sighed and explained further. “Herberto and I came to El Centro for to be above the floodwaters when they swept in from the east. I do not know how far north we can go before we are lower than the Sea of Cortez. But we must go somewhere and Herberto said any ground higher than the beaches of long ago should be high enough.”
    Stringer swept their seemingly dead-flat surroundings with his eyes. There was nothing in the way of a serious dip or rise before the purple mountains in the east and west looming above the horizon. There was nothing above the horizon line to the north or south.
    â€œIf this is what Lockwood called high ground,” he commented, “I can’t wait to see what he called low ground. It looks mighty flat to me.”
    She nodded in reply. “That is for why Herberto was a water engineer and you and I are not. Did you see those trees back there, where first we met? Herberto said they had sprouted there and grown so fast because all the well water that people threw out as slops ran north, but, of course, mucho slowly. Herberto said that long before Cortez or even Cristo the sea reached as far inland as the town of Indio, far to the north, almost a hundred of your Yanqui miles. Do not ask me for why this is all very dry ground today. When we make camp I can show you the charts he drew. I do not understand them. Pero, that hombre who came for them may have. That is for why I did not want to give them to him. I do not think it was fair of them to fire Herberto for being wrong if they thought he was right, do you?”
    Stringer shook his head and turned in the saddle to gaze back the way they’d just come. The rooftops of El Centro weren’t half as far back as he’d hoped they’d be by now, and in the shimmering heat waves he just couldn’t tell whether anyone back there was showing any interest in their departure or not.
    He told the girl, “Keep driving. I’m fixing to rein in here for a spell to cover our retreat.”
    When she asked if anyone was following them, he said that was what he meant to find out. She nodded and drove on, while Stringer drew the Winchester from its saddle boot and dismounted to rest his mule. As long as he had the chance, he decided to water some greasewood, keeping his back well turned to the onward-moving cart. If anyone to the south was close enough to see his fool pecker, they were way too close.
    While