Stringer and the Deadly Flood by Lou Cameron

it. His mule smelled water and began to press forward. Stringer wasn’t about to ride out of the desert at full gallop and likely scare some poor nester spitless. So he reined in, fired a shot up at the overcast sky, and rode in at a more polite trot.
    As he reached the cleared door yard of the spread he found a man, a woman, three kids, and a couple of Mex or Indian hands lined up out front for his inspection and, judging from the casual rifle cradled in the nester’s elbow-crook, vice versa.
    He reined in. “Howdy. I’d be, ah, Don MacEwen. I’m trying to get to that big water outfit’s work camp in case they may still be hiring.”
    The nester informed him, “I doubt you’ll make it this side of sundown and change on that jaded mule. We’re talking close to fifteen miles cut up with fencing and irrigation ditches. You and your mount are welcome to bed down in the barn for the night.”
    His once-pretty but now sun-bleached wife chimed in. “We’re the Coopers—Fred and Doris. Our kids, here, answer to Sarah, Betty, and Fred Junior. These other gents would be the Gomez brothers. You’re just in time for supper. Iffen you like, you can wash up by our kitchen door after you see to your mule, Mister MacEwen.”
    He thanked her politely and, dismounting, led the mule toward the barn. One of the Mex hands fell in beside him to help. As they unsaddled, watered, and fed the mule in the barn, Stringer had the chance to ask the helpful Mex how much he ought to offer for the unexpected hospitality.
    The Mex replied sharply, “No, señor, no money. La Señora is most sensitive about dinero. I fear they have put their life savings into this new spread and, as you shall see, the food they have to share will be simple fare. If you wish to show your gratitude, just do not ask for second helpings.”
    Stringer said he understood, and as they walked back to the house to run some water over their hands he pumped the hired hand for information about his hosts.
    It seemed that the young family had sunk everything they owned into the purchase and improvement of this full section at the north end of a sort of skinny irrigation ditch, and whether they made it or not depended on the forty acres of cash crop they’d just drilled in. When Stringer asked about the windmill Gomez explained it didn’t pump ground water since there was no ground water. The grade here was so flat, the loquacious Mexican told Stringer, that water had to be pumped from the feeder ditch to the fields and up to an attic tank that fed the tap they were using. Now Stringer understood why the wash water had felt so warm.
    Dinner, as he had been warned, was meager and plain, boiled spuds, beans, a mighty skinny slice of raisin pie, and even thinner coffee. After dinner, while Mrs. Cooper and the two daughters did the dishes, Fred Cooper and his young son took Stringer for a stroll around the family estate. Most of it was still covered with greasewood which Big Fred said was a bitch to grub up. “However,” he added, “our neighbors to the south have a steam tractor. Come some cash I mean to hire it to plow these infernal roots right. You have to kill every root and then soak the soil deep, more’n once, afore anything else will grow in it.”
    Stringer knew better than to ask why Cooper didn’t want to ask a new neighbor for the free loan of his tractor. Instead, he inquired about the amount of water it took to farm such soil and, more casually, how much the Southern Pacific was charging an acre-foot for the same.
    Cooper explained, “We didn’t buy this section off the railroad. Got it at better terms off Imperial Land Management in Yuma. The water comes with, for the first year or more. They say once they have the whole irrigation scheme laid in and metered, our water ought to cost us less than a dollar an acre-foot. I reckon we can live with that.” Stringer knew