Community, Resources, and Conflict Theme Analysis

And there wasn’t a sound, except that dry little cough that father had then. When Mother lifted her head, her lips were pressed tightly together, and her voice wasn’t trembly any more. “The Bible says, ‘Trust in the lord and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.’ The hand of God has led us here; we have set our shoulders to the wheel, and we will not turn back.”

While I was busy, he went over and talked to the man who had been leading the horses out to the ring. They were looking at the cows when I got back, and I saw Fred slip a silver dollar into the man’s hand when he turned away from the corral.

“Why man, you couldn’t run ten inches of water to this garden from where the ditch comes onto your place; the ground would drink it all up on the way. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ve got two hundred inches with my place. I’ll use all the water that comes as far as me for twenty days, then give you the whole head for one. That’ll let you give about twenty acres a good soaking often enough to make a crop the first year. After that you might handle as much as twenty-five.”

I didn’t want to be carried that night. It just didn’t seem right to be carried home when we were taking the check that I had helped earn. Father understood how I felt, and he walked slow enough that I didn’t have to trot anymore, and let me carry the check home to mother in my overall pocket.

“Those fellows up there are holding the trump cards, and they know it. I’m not too sure I wouldn’t take pretty near my full measure of water if I were in their places and saw my crops drying up. I don’t think they want a court fight, or a fist fight, or a gun fight any more than we do, but I don’t think they’re going to give up the hand without winning the odd trick. I wouldn’t do it, and I don’t think any of you fellows would. I’m inclined to think we’d be better off to have the assurance of a reasonable part of our share in dry time, than to take the chance of not getting any and losing all our late crops.”

There weren’t any more fights over water that year, and when Willie Aldivote came up to the pasture to visit me a few days later, he seemed to think Father was quite a hero. I was proud because he said Father could fight like hell for a sick man, and that everybody thought he did a smart job getting the men up the ditch to agree about the water.

“Damn bull-headed Yankee,” he was saying, “God and everybody knows we’d never got a dime for our crops if he hadn’t rigged that water gauge at the ditch head. And there he stands with a hundred and twenty dollars in his hand for a year’s work and too damned proud to take a bale of hay from a neighbor. What the hell are you goin’ to do with a man like that?”