VIII
Timanyoni Ditch
Smith had his vote of thanks from Colonel Dexter Baldwin in person latein the afternoon of the day following the summary eviction of the shammine locators in the upper reservoir; presidential thanks for his promptdefense of the company's interests, and a warm outhanding of fatherlygratitude for the rescue at the unloading side-track. The vote waspassed in Williams's sheet-iron office at the dam, the colonel havingdriven out to the camp for the express purpose; and the chief ofconstruction himself was not present.
"You've loaded us up with a tolerably heavy obligation, Smith--Corry'smother and me," was the way the colonel summed up in the personal field."If you hadn't been on deck and strictly on the job at that railroadcrossing yesterday morning----"
"Don't mention it, Colonel," Smith broke in, protesting honestly asplain "John" where a "J. Montague" might have made self-gratulatorycapital. "There is only one thing in this world more onerous than owingan obligation, and that is the feeling that you've got to live up toone. I did nothing more than any man would have done for any woman. Youknow it, and I know it. Let's leave it that way and forget it."
The tall Missourian's laugh was entirely approbative.
"I like that," he said. "It's a good, man-fashion way of looking at it.Corry wanted me to tell her what I was going to say to you, and I saidI'd be hanged if I knew. I owe you one for making it easy. You know howI feel about it--how any father would feel; and that's enough."
"Plenty," was the brief rejoinder.
"But there's another chapter to it that neither of us can cross out;you'll have to come out to the ranch and let Corry's mother have a hackat you," Baldwin went on. "I couldn't figure you out of that if I shouldtry. And now about those claim-jumpers: I suppose you didn't know any ofthem by name?"
"No."
"Corry says you gave them the time of their lives. By George, I wish I'dbeen there to see!" and the colonel slapped his leg and laughed. "Didthey look like the real thing--sure-enough prospectors?"
"They looked like a bunch of hired assassins," said Smith, with a grin."It's some more of the interference, isn't it?"
The colonel's square jaw settled into the fighting angle.
"How much do you know about this business mix-up of ours, Smith?" heasked.
"All that Williams could tell me in a little heart-to-heart talk we hadthe other day."
"You agreed with him that there was a tolerably big nigger in thewood-pile, didn't you?"
"I had already gathered that much from the camp gossip."
"Well, it's so. We're just about as helpless as a bunch of cattle in asink-hole," was the ranchman president's confirmation of the campguesses. "As long as it was a straightaway stunt of buying land andbuilding a dam and digging a few ditches, we were in the fight. We knewwhat we wanted, and we had the money to go out and buy it. But now itlooks as if we were aiming to get it where the chicken got the cleaver.If our hunch about the Escalante irrigation trust is right, we are notonly going to lose our money and our work; we've run slap up against aproposition that will shut us out of the water altogether and force usto buy it of these Eastern sharks--at their own price. When it comes tothat, we may as well make 'em a present of the entire Little Creekdistrict. They can take it whenever they have a mind to."
Smith was thinking of the young woman with the resolute slaty-gray eyeswhen he said: "That is, of course, if you lie down and let them put thesteam-roller over you. But you're not going to do that, are you?"
Baldwin shook his head as one who will not permit himself to minimize ahazard.
"Keep that notion of the cattle in a sink-hole in front of you, Smith,and you'll get a pretty fair idea of the chances. What in the name ofthe great horn spoon can we do--more than we have done?"
"There are a number of things that might be done," said Smith, fallingback reflectively upon the presumably dead and buried bank-cashier partof him. "In the first place, these trust people can't take your dam andyour ditch right of way until after they have bought up a voting controlof your stock. It is very pointedly up to you and your fellowstockholders to say whether or not you are going to let them scare orforce you into selling, isn't it?"
"I reckon maybe it is. But two of our men have already sold out, andmore will follow. These Eastern sharks 've got the bulge on us; theyhave the money, and we're just about as good as dead broke."
"Of course," said the younger man. "That was part of the game; to swampyou with costly lawsuits, use up your capital, and break your credit.It's done every day in business, and in a thousand different ways, someof them pure robberies, but most of them legally defensible. You folkshave made the mistake of letting it go too far on too small acapitalization. You're left without a fighting fund. Still, while thereis life there is always hope. And if you can manage to stay in the gameand play it out, there is big money in it for all of you; enough to makeit well worth while for you to put up the fight of your lives."
"Big money?--you mean in saving our investment?"
"Oh, no; not at all; in cinching the other fellows," Smith put ingenially. "As Williams explained it to me, there is the biggest kind ofa killing in it for you people, if you can hold on and win out."
Colonel Dexter Baldwin lifted his soft hat and ran his fingers throughhis grizzled hair.
"Say, Smith; you mustn't forget that I'm from Missouri," he said halfquizzically.
"But I shouldn't think you'd need to be 'shown' in this particularinstance," was the smiling rejoinder. "Why are these Eastern capitalistsspending their good money on a scheme to freeze out your little handfulof ranch owners, Colonel? Surely you've asked yourself that questionlong before this, haven't you?"
"Why, yes; it's because they want to get something for nothing, isn'tit?"
"In a general sense, of course, that is the basis of all crookedbusiness schemes. But the chance to sell you people water from your owndam isn't the only thing or the main thing in this case; that part of itis merely incidental. Didn't Williams tell me that they are obliged tohave this dam site, or, at least, one as high up the river as this, inorder to get the water over to their newly alienated grant in thewestern half of the park?"
"I don't know what Bartley told you, but that is the fact."
"No way of dodging that, is there? They couldn't possibly build a dam oftheir own, lower down, and make it work, could they? I'm asking becausewhat I don't know about irrigation engineering would fill a Carnegielibrary in a good-sized little city."
"You've got it straight," said the colonel. "A good part of theEscalante Grant lies higher than our Little Creek ranches. From anypoint farther down the river than this, they'd have to pump the water toget it up to the Escalante mesas."
"Very good. Then they're simply obliged to have your dam, or--Don't yousee the alternative now, Colonel?"
"Heavens to Betsy!" exclaimed the breeder of fine horses, bringing hisfist down upon Williams's desk with a crash that made the ink-bottlesdance. And then: "The Lord have mercy! What a lot of fence-posts weare--the whole kit and b'ilin' of us! If they get the dam, they sellwater to us; if they don't get it, _we sell it to them_!"
"That's it, exactly," Smith put in quietly. "And I should say that yourstake in the game is worth the stiffest fight you can make to save it.Don't you agree with me?"
"Great Jehu! I should say so!" ejaculated the amateur trust fighter.Then he broke down the barriers masterfully. "That settles it, Smith.You can't wiggle out of it now, no way or shape. You've got to come overinto Macedonia and help us. Williams tells me you refused him, but youcan't refuse me."
If Smith hesitated, it was only partly on his own account. He wasthinking again of the young woman with the honest eyes when he said: "Doyou know why I turned Williams down when he spoke to me the other day?"
Colonel Dexter Baldwin had his faults, like other men, but they were notthose of indirection.
"I reckon I do know, son," he said, with large tolerance. "You're a'lame duck' of some sort; you've made that pretty
plain in your talkswith Williams, haven't you? But that's our lookout. Bartley is ready toswear that you are not a crooked crook, whatever else it is that you'redodging for, and if we want to shut our eyes to the way you won't loosenup about yourself.... Besides, there's yesterday; and what you did downat the railroad crossing and out yonder in the hills----"
"We agreed to forget the yesterday incidents," the lame duck remindedhim quickly. And then: "I ought to say 'No,' Colonel Baldwin; say itstraight out, and stick to it. If I don't say it--if I ask for a littletime--it is because I want to weigh up a few things--the things I can'ttalk about to you or to Williams. If, in the end, I should be foolenough to say 'Yes,' it will be merely because, the way things haveturned out with me, I'd a little rather fight than eat. But even in thatcase it is only fair to you to say that, right in the middle of thescrap, I may fall to pieces on you."
Baldwin was too shrewd to try to push his advantage when there was, orseemed to be, a chance that the desired end was as good as halfattained. And it was a purely manful prompting that made him get up andthrust out his hand to the young fellow who was trying to be as frank ashe dared to be.
"Put it there, John," he said heartily. "Nobody in the Timanyoni isgoing to pry into you an inch farther than you care to let 'em; and ifyou get into trouble by helping us, you can count on at least one backerwho will stand by you until the cows come home. Now then, hunt up yourcoat, and we'll drive over to Hillcrest for a bite to eat. I know youwon't be easy in your mind until you've had it out with Corry'smother--about that little railroad trick--and you may as well do it nowand have it over with. No; excuses don't go, this time. I had my ordersfrom the Missus before I left town, and I know better than to go homewithout you. Never mind the commissary khaki. It won't be the first timethat the working-clothes have figured at the Hillcrest table--not by along shot."
And because he did not know how to frame a refusal that would refuse,Smith got his coat and went.
The Real Man Page 8