Stringer and the Deadly Flood by Lou Cameron Read Free Book Online

much. El Centro was so small he could see outside it by peering down any street. A few of the buildings were badly built adobes, although most were boomtown frame. The soil underfoot was a sort of talcum powder silt that didn’t make for firm ’dobe bricks no matter how much straw and cow shit was mixed in with it. He spied a sign in the middle distance offering beer or Coca Cola, both on ice. So he spat out some liquid mud and headed that way.
    As he did so, a one-horse hearse and some dusty Mexicans playing a funeral dirge passed him, headed the other way. Stringer idly assumed they meant to either bury the poor cuss farther out amid the slate-blue greasewood clumps or, just as likely, put the body on the next train through. If that was their intention, he could only hope they’d used plenty of embalming fluid. Trains ran few and far between along this stretch of the Southern Pacific. The track drifted south of the official border past Mexicali, but nobody seemed to care. Anyone aiming to cross the border unlawfully in these parts would have to be mighty ambitious as well as half camel. For unless and until that irrigation project ever got here, there wasn’t another water hole for many a dusty mile, north or south. A lazy daisy windmill back by the trackside water tower announced the presence of ground water, deep under the chalky surface. The railroad had apparently built the drab little settlement as a water stop for its thirsty locomotives. No matter where in the world they wandered, a steam train had to jerk water every hundred miles or so.
    Stringer entered the dinky saloon and put down his bag. He’d strapped his gun on before getting down from the cross-country train, but there was hardly anyone in the place to mind. The saloon was store-front wide and about forty feet back, with the bar along one of the longer walls. The other wall was lined with tables and chairs, all painted an electric blue in the Mexican manner. Some said the color repelled flies, and that may have been why the flies in the saloon were circling a strip of flypaper at the far end of the bar. The old-timer mopping the other end with a damp rag asked Stringer to name his pleasure. He said he’d drink just about anything that was cold and wet, but he was still a mite surprised when the barkeep served him a bottle of Coca Cola, saying, “You may as well help me get rid of this stuff then. Hardly any of my regular customers seem to like it since Teddy Roosevelt made ’em take the cocaine outten Coca Cola. Nothing to it now but cola-nut juice and sugar water. They’ll likely be going out of business any day now.”
    Stringer was too thirsty to argue. He guzzled half the bottle at one gulp, belched, and observed, “Sure tastes better than your topsoil.”
    The old-timer chuckled. “Oh, the soil ain’t so bad, this far to the south. Goes from good loam to pure alkali as you ride north into Salton’s Sink.”
    â€œIf you say so,” Stringer said, sipping some more soda pop. “I’d hate to try to grow serious weeds out there though.”
    The old barkeep nodded. “So would I, without water. But it’s still damned fine dirt, brung all the way down from the Rockies by the Colorado. It assays out as all sorts of interesting minerals combined. You’ll see a few local folk have planted garths as you wander about. Stick a seed in, sprinkle it with water, and step back pronto lest you wind up with a sunflower stalk up your ass.”
    Stringer said he hadn’t come to argue, put down the empty bottle, and asked if he could have a beer. The keeper of local lore chuckled agreeably. “Sure. Order more than one beer and that soda pop was on the house.” Then, as he opened a cold beer bottle for Stringer, he observed, “You didn’t say what brung you here, if it wasn’t to argue about our fine topsoil, stranger.”
    Stringer nodded and introduced himself.