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main channel dug by Chaffey meant the channel was blocked—or perhaps each dash indicated the channel had been cleaned out to that point. The newer southern channel, parts of it looping south of the Mexican border as it aimed for the desert crossing of Calexico-Mexicali, and a fossil streambed leading south to the sea had symbols here and there that might have indicated floodgates. Dotted lines ran north from each, which Stringer assumed indicated canals to be dug at some future date. To the north, cutting across the tops of the more complex and even skinnier lines of the irrigation maze, ran the diversion canal that was intended to get temporary water to the area while the original silted-up canal was being cleaned out to do the job properly. Since the Southern Pacific had crossed the same desert a lot earlier, its railbed was printed in ink. Stringer had to peer hard to distinguish the diversion canal that was being dug in line with it. The water scheme made more sense once he saw that, although the new canal was being run south of the tracks and crossed feeder ditches that apparently ran under the railroad through culverts. Barca had been right apparently about the Southern Pacific working in cahoots with the water outfit. But Stringer failed to see anything more criminal than the idea sounded in the first place. So where was the news? News was stuff that had happened recently. The half- baked plans of old Charly Rockwood had been third page news at least three or more years back.
    Stringer almost missed the spidery handwritten notations the late Herb Lockwood had added in an even lighter hand, as if meant for his own eyes alone. There was naturally a surveyed contour line around the whole so-called valley, marked, “Mean Sea Level.” Out in the middle of what had once been a vast shallow lagoon lay Salton’s Sink, the deepest part, had there still been a drop of water within miles of its thirsty salt flats. The survey bench marks indicated Salton’s Sink lay a good fifty feet or more below the level of the Gulf of Mexico, many miles to the south. That was not as ominous as Lockwood’s penciled-in notation reading, “Wrong! At least minus 300 feet!”
    Stringer whistled thoughtfully. But even if the dead engineer was right, Salton’s Sink was still a hell of a ways out on bone-dry desert floor. Nobody was ever going to settle on land half that salty, and if the sink was that deep, it figured to take one hell of a lot more water to its salty bosom than anyone would ever be able to drain into it through mere irrigation ditches. The problem on land this flat, or land with such a gentle grade at least, would be getting the water to run anywhere, as it had to eventually lest it salt the irrigated farmland. The Colorado was a semi-saline stream to begin with, and nobody had been joshing when they’d named one of the Gila’s main tributaries the Salt River.
    Stringer held the map slantwise to the light to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. He saw he had. Smack across the route of the temporary diversion canal to the north, Lockwood had impatiently scrawled, “Remember the Alamo!”
    Stringer lowered the penciled-over chart to his knees to think about that. At first reading it had struck him that poor old Herb had been out in the sun too long. For the Alamo was one hell of a ways off in space and time combined. The Mexican border was a lot closer, of course. Could the dead man have meant an attack by mad Mexican ditch diggers?
    Stringer muttered aloud. “That’s just too cock-eyed to consider. Even if some Mexicans were plotting against the gringo water lords, they’d hit first at the south canal, parts of it inside Mexico, for heaven’s sake.”
    He recalled from the morgue material Barca had given him to read on the train that as either the California or Imperial Valley holding company, old Rockwood had negotiated a deal with El Presidente Diaz to dig up