Читать книгу The Temptress (La tierra de todos) онлайн

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Celinda was uttering sharp cries to excite her horse; it seemed as though she must share her delight with him. In a little while she was going to meet what interested her most in that whole wide countryside! As she followed a turn in the river bank, the surface of the stream suddenly widened before her eyes, forming a quiet and solitary lake. At its farthest limit, at the point where the banks pressed in and disturbed its waters, were outlined the iron profiles of several great derricks, and the tin or straw roofs of a settlement. This was the little town that had grown up near the dam, a town of houses that had risen but a slight distance above the ground, with not a single second story to break the monotonous level of its roof line.

But Celinda’s curiosity stopped short of the settlement. Reining in her horse, she walked him through several squads of men working at some distance from the river, at the point where the level of the ground began to rise abruptly.

These peons, some of them Europeans, others half-breeds, were removing and heaping up the soil which they took from the ditches that were to become part of the irrigation system. Two ditching machines, with a great roar of motors, were also attacking the ground in an attempt to facilitate this human labor.