The consul came the following day. He interviewed the other ranchers and verified Bob's statements. He took affidavits, and made up quite a bulky report and dispatched it by mail to Washington. In the meantime he wired, briefly outlining the substance of his letter, and asked for temporary authority to take measures that would force the Mexican officials to act. Bob was fairly hopeful over this. He waited anxiously for twenty-four hours for some answer. None came. This was the third day since his cotton began to need water. The thermometer went to 131 at two o'clock. No green plant could survive long without water. He rode all day enlisting the cooperation of influential men in the valley on the American side, and got several of them to send wires to Washington. Every night when he returned to Calexico he went eagerly to the telegraph office; but each time the operator emphatically shook his head. Then Bob laboured over another long telegram, begging for haste; he paid nine dollars and forty cents toll and urged that the message be rushed. By the fifth day Rogeen was getting desperate. He returned to Calexico at seven o'clock, jumped out of his car, and hurried into the telegraph office. A message! A telegram for him at last! He had got action. Maybe even yet he could save most of his crop. The message was collect--$1.62. He dropped two silver dollars on the counter and without noticing the change tore open the message. It was from the department at Washington and was brief: DEAR SIR: If you file your complaints in writing, they will be referred to the proper department for consideration. R. P. M., _Ass't to Sec. of State._ Then Bob gave up, turned about gloomily, and went out to his machine, and started south toward the Chandler ranch. CHAPTER XXVII As the sun, like a burnished lid to some hotter caldron, slid down behind the yellow sandhills that rimmed the desert, Imogene Chandler felt as though she must scream. She would have made some wild outcry of relief if it had not been for her father, who still sat in the doorway of the shack, as he had all day, gray and bent like a dusty, wilted mullein stalk. It had been a terrible day--the hottest of the summer. And for a week now the irrigation ditches had been dry. To-day the cotton leaves had wilted; and the girl had looked away from the fields all afternoon. It tortured her to see those rich green plants choking for water. The sun gone, and a little relief from the heat, she began to prepare supper. [Illustration: "Shut off the water? Why all the cotton in the valley will be withered in a day."]