Stringer and the Deadly Flood

By Lou Cameron

Everyone knows that Salton's Sink is the driest patch of greasewood in the whole damned Colorado Desert. So when a slick land syndicate promises cheap water to a pack of greenhorn settlers, Stringer is more than a mite suspicious. One booze-thirsty engineer knows the truth about International Irrigation, but he's six feet under with a chest full of lead. Just a drunk's bad luck? Maybe, but Stringer's hanging on to his Winchester because in the Colorado Desert, the cheapest piece of land a man can buy is an unmarked grave.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
• Release date: Aug 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9781620641545

Lou Cameron

Lou Cameron (1924–2010) was a prolific American novelist with over three hundred titles to his credit, from adventure, science fiction, crime, and war to movie novelizations, Westerns, and more. In addition to the Stringer Western series, he created the Longarm character, writing under the name Tabor Evans, as well as the Renegade series, writing as Ramsay Thorne. Cameron won the Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Novel in 1976, and he was also an accomplished comic book illustrator.

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Adventures

CHAPTER ONE

Earth tremors went with the fog and fleas of Frisco and seldom caused as much embarrassment as the one Stringer was suffering as he crept down the boarding-house stairs by the dawn’s early light. He’d had to resort to sneaking to work in the mornings ever since the gal on the second landing had taken to leaving her door invitingly open. She worked odd hours as a nude model over on Russian Hill, and if she owned any clothing at all Stringer had yet to notice. Besides, it was mighty distracting at any hour to pass an open doorway with a naked lady on the bed inside blowing violet-scented tobacco smoke and sending knowing looks his way while he had to pass as best he could.

But this particular morning, to Stringer’s relief, her door was barely ajar when he got down to her landing. He could hear her purring or snoring in there. He started to ease by softly—or tried to anyways, for just about then the city of San Francisco readjusted her corset with a mighty heave and the next thing Stringer knew he’d crashed into the room to join the gal on her bed.

She awoke to find the fully dressed Stringer across her naked lap. Sitting bolt upright, she regarded the seat of his pants with some confusion before she asked him, I give up. Do you want me to spank you or is this a novel way of introducing yourself, Mister MacKail?

He sprang off her and the bed, ears burning. I suspect we just had an earthquake, ma’am.

She shrugged her bare shoulders, Oh, I had hoped you were just being impetuous. Then she yawned and eyed him with renewed interest. But as long as you’re here, would you mind closing the hall door before you leap on me again? I don’t think our landlady shares our, ah, Bohemian views on boarding house manners.

Stringer didn’t, either. Not because he was a prude, but because a gent who messed with gals where he boarded had to be at least as dumb as a gent who messed with the gals where he drew his paycheck. So he shot her a gallantly regretful smile and told her, I got to get to work now, no offense.

She lay back down, fully and invitingly exposed, shut her eyes again, and sighed. My mother warned me the men I’d meet in this big, wicked city would treat me just awful. I had no idea how right her warning would turn out to be.

Stringer agreed life in the big city could be pure hell, then got out of there before his resolve could weaken. He had to walk a full block down the slopes of Rincon Hill before his damn-fool erection calmed down enough for comfortable walking in his too-tight city pants. He hated wearing a suit to work instead of the more comfortable cowhand duds he’d been raised in. But downtown Frisco was inclined to sneer at gents dressed cow. And judging from some of the superior looks he got that morning, it didn’t approve much more of a gent duded up in a soft collar and an inexpensive suit. To look at the snappy Bay Area gents on their way to work, no one would suspect the businessmen running things of late were the near-descendants of the ragged-ass ’49ers and the gussied up gals who’d followed them out west to get rich.

Impervious to any stares directed his way that early morning, Stringer crossed Market Street and headed up Montgomery to the cast-iron classic front of the San Francisco Sun. He almost tripped over a brace of stenographers as the three of them tried to enter at the same time. One of them was at least as pretty as the gal on the second landing, and he made an effort not to picture her with her hair down and that Gibson Girl middy blouse out of the way. It wasn’t easy, but a man did what a man just had to do. So he wasn’t thinking dirty when he entered the frosted-glass cubicle where they kept Sam Barca, their feature editor, out of harm or temptation’s way.

The crusty old editor never invited anyone to have a seat, so Stringer just hauled in a handy bentwood chair and plunked it down next to old Sam’s cluttered desk. As he sat astride it, resting his elbows on the back of the chair, he said, Morning, boss. Where were you when that earthquake hit this morning?

Barca growled, Right here, of course. Unlike some lazy freelance stringers I could mention, they expect me to punch that goddamned time clock out front. Besides, it wasn’t much of a jolt, and even if it had been we wouldn’t be running it. It’s against the editorial policy of this paper to even intimate that the Golden State is subject to occasional rain or, God forbid, wobbly underpinnings. Barca rummaged through the clutter on his desk. I’ve vouchered that feature you did on Bully Teddy’s Great White Fleet, though I had to blue-pencil a lot of your smart-ass remarks to make the piece presentable. So what are you working on now?

I’m stuck for a new angle on whitewashed battleships, Stringer replied. Then he asked thoughtfully, Did you know they built the main water reservoir of this town smack on an earthquake fault, Sam?

Barca shrugged. They had to build it some damned place, and I just told you we don’t run earth tremor stories in the Sun, damn it.

Stringer reached inside his city vest for the cowboy makings he preferred to smoke, insisting, One of these days we’re going to have to. In their infinite wisdom the city engineers laid all the water mains our fire department may ever need right across some other known faults. When, not if, we ever get a real earthquake, every fire hydrant in town figures to go out of business about the same time.

We’re not paid to find faults in or about this fair city, damn it, Sam Barca snapped. Half our classified ads deal with real estate. How do you feel about doing another exposé of the goddamned Octopus, MacKail?

Stringer frowned thoughtfully down at the smoke he was rolling. I dunno, Sam. Beating up on the Southern Pacific Railroad strikes me as a mite old hat since Frank Norris wrote that book-length expose at the turn of the century and called it The Octopus. Made old C. P. Huntington so mad he died, they say. But I hear his nephew and only heir, Henry Huntington, has been running the family railroad pretty decent of late.

Barca glowered with genuine distaste. Toad squat! Creep Huntington may be dead, but the apple never falls far from the tree and the whole damned family should have been hung for murder years ago!

As Stringer sealed his cigarette with a lick of his tongue and put it between his lips, Barca droned on, I was about your age when I covered the Massacre at Mussel Slough for this very paper. To drum up business for his railroad, Creep Huntington lured settlers into the arid wastes of Tulare County with promises to sell ’em railroad grant land at two or three dollars an acre. Then, once he had the poor suckers there, he upped the price to fifteen to forty bucks an acre instead.

Stringer ventured cautiously, Nobody ever accused C. P. Huntington of being less than a hard-headed businessman, Sam. But, like I said, the man is dead.

Barca ignored his younger visitor’s interruption as he cut back in. So are a number of other gents, all murdered by the Southern Pacific in the Year of Our Lord 1880. When Creep Huntington sent railroad dicks under a tame U.S. marshal to evict the settlers who just couldn’t pay his jacked-up prices, the battle that ensued took the lives of seven men. Most of them were settlers, and of course even the survivors had to pay up or get out in the end. I reported it when it happened, twenty years before Frank Norris got it in print. Naturally, nobody was willing to run such a story while Creep Huntington and his private army of hired guns were still holding full sway. I was mad as hell. Like I said, I was about your age then. It takes a man a while to learn he’s just not big enough to change the world with his writings. The asshole who said the pen was mightier than the sword must have never worked for a publication that runs railroad advertising.

Stringer blew a lazy smoke ring before he nodded. Well, if you need a rehash of the Battle of Mussel Slough I reckon I can go through the morgue and see if I can come up with a new angle.

Barca shook his head. News that’s old enough to vote is hardly news. We may have more recent crimes to pin on the Southern Pacific. I just got an interesting tip from an engineer down in the old Colorado Desert. I have it somewhere in all these fool papers. You know the area, of course?

Stringer answered, Only that you should cross by rail and at night if possible. It’s hot as hell’s hinges most of the year and boring all the time. Dead flat and covered with knee-high greasewood as far as the eye can see. I’ve crossed it a couple of times by rail, but it must have been a pisser to cross in the covered wagon days.

Sam Barca nodded vigorously in assent. It was. I crossed it that way one time. They called it the Colorado Desert then. Now they’re calling it the Imperial Valley and selling it by the full section as prime farm land.

Stringer laughed incredulously. That’s mighty wild, even when you consider bullshit artists like old Wyatt Earp have gone into California real estate of late. I’ve heard of quick-buck land mongers tying oranges to Joshua trees and selling the whole mess as an orange grove, but there’s just no damned way to call those greasewood flats anything but pure desolation. Water holes lie sixty to eighty miles apart down there, and such water as there might be is almost too salty for a mule to drink.

Sam Barca nodded again and growled, I told you I once crossed that desert—the hard way. Nowadays the tracks avoid the worst part, a big bare salt flat called Salton’s Sink—named after a prospector called Salton, by the way. Some geologists hold that the entire area used to be sea bottom. They say many a seashell and an ocean’s worth of salt can still be found by sort of shoving the greasewood and lizards out of the way. So that’s the news angle.

Stringer shot Barca a bemused look as he queried, What news angle? That the dead heart of the Colorado Desert lies betwixt San Diego and Yuma, Sam? Wagon trains following the southern route reported as much back in 1849, for God’s sake.

Shut up and pay attention to your elders, Barca growled. God has nothing to do with this tale. The Southern Pacific bridged that dry, dusty two or three days of wagon travel with rails a spell this side of ’49. To encourage them to do so the government gave ’em the usual railroad grants, every other section or square mile alongside the track in a sort of checkerboard ribbon. The government no doubt figured it could afford to be so generous with public land in the Colorado Desert. It gets two inches of rain in a wet year, and it’s so hot even this early in the year that nobody ever had to fight any Indians for it. Creep Huntington had no more use for acres and acres of mummy dust than the Indians. He simply had to lay his tracks across that desert to move his trains on over to Texas. But being an octopus by nature, he naturally accepted every square inch the land office offered.

Stringer blew smoke out both nostrils in bored annoyance and sighed. Sam, you’re still talking ancient history. I’ve taken that line to Arizona Territory and beyond. I wasn’t the only passenger. So I suspect a lot of other folk know there’s a railroad across the Colorado Desert now.

Barca snapped, That’s not the whole story. Just keep in mind that the Octopus owns one hell of a lot of flat and fairly fertile desert land, if only it ever rained out yonder. He paused to light an Italian cigar that rather resembled a twisted length of grape vine before he continued. Around the turn of the century a land speculator called Charley Rockford took a ride on that same railroad. It didn’t take him long to notice how much open land there was and that half of it was still free for the claiming, sun-baked as it might be. So he put together a flim-flam holding company with more than one name on its stock certificates and a sort of vague mailing address. Then, as soon as he had other men’s money to work with, he enlisted a well-known irrigation engineer named George Chaffey, and put him to work. Then they dubbed the dead heart of the desert the Imperial Valley and promised to make the desert bloom like a rose as they set about selling it off as prime farm land. Naturally the railroad proceeded to do the same, in cahoots with the quick-buck artists. They had Chaffey run a diversion canal from the Colorado River out across the greasewood flats.

Stringer nodded, Now that you mention it, I recall some construction going on, over by the Chocolate Mountains, the last time I passed through. But that was some time ago, Sam. So I’m still waiting for the news angle.

Barca blew smoke back at him and explained. New homesteads are not news, provided nothing interesting happens after anyone drills in the first crop. The water lords and land mongers gave assurance to their suckers that the irrigated mummy dust of the so-called Imperial Valley would grow two crops a year of asparagus to zucchini squash—and maybe it would, given all that water they promised. But it’s easier to promise watering the desert than to do so.

Barca irritatedly chewed on his half-smoked cigar. Things went well enough at first. Chaffey’s main channel was easy enough to dig in soil that’s soft as baby powder. They ran branch lines off to the north and had close to two thousand settlers and a hundred thousand acres more or less under irrigation within a year or so. Well, let’s say they claimed the ‘more’ part, but the settlers say it was a hell of a lot less in their spanking new Garden of Eden ’cause the irrigation canals silt up almost as fast as they can be dug. The Colorado is one mighty muddy river. It drains mostly higher desert, so it packs at least a quart of solid mud for every gallon of water. And it drops a steamship load of that mud per diem. The whole damned Colorado Desert was spread across the north end of the Gulf of California in the first place by the Colorado and Gila as a sort of combined delta. So in no time at all the main diversion channel wound up full to the brim with fresh dry land.

Stringer whistled softly, then commented, Leaving all those poor suckers high and dry indeed. Is that the story you want me to cover, boss?

Barca shook his head. We ran that last summer, had you paid attention to page three. It gets trickier than that. The water lords and the railroad still have many a dusty desert acre to sell. So as a stopgap, while Chaffey hopes to clean out the main channel, they’ve subcontracted to run emergency channels on the north and south of the sink. The main diversion channel will drain spring flooding, they hope, south through the Mexican parts of the desert to sea level. Such water would hardly grow much asparagus, of course. So they have another subcontractor running a more modest amount of river water in line with the railroad, feeding the irrigation grid to the north.

Stringer frowned at the rather confused mental map he