Though Lee Bryant, during his colloquy with Menocal, had spoken
confidently of his ability to obtain money wherewith to construct a
canal system linking the Pinas River and the Perro Creek ranch, he had
no definite promise of funds from any source. Nor would the project be
ripe for financing before he had completed his surveys and made his
cost estimates.
He had become interested in the undertaking in this way. Staying over
night with the Stevensons by chance a month previous, a stranger, his
speculation was aroused when through questions about the ranch he
learned of the unused Pinas River water right, a right valid but
apparently impracticable. Was it indeed impracticable? Would the cost
of bringing water to the land be, after all, prohibitive? In fact, had
a competent engineer ever gone into the matter? He doubted it. The
history of the property, so far as he could glean from Stevenson,
disclosed on the part of no one any serious effort ever to develop the
ranch. In the beginning Menocal had probably had some faint notion of
carrying out the scheme, but if so, had afterward abandoned the
enterprise. The tract of five thousand acres of land had originally
been a small Mexican grant; it lay in the midst of government land;
and when Menocal came into possession of the ranch, some conception of
utilizing water from the Pinas must have inspired him to acquire the
appropriation of one hundred and twenty-five second feet. Well, the
land, theoretically at any rate, had water; and if water actually
could be delivered, an extraordinary value would accrue to the now
nearly worthless tract. It was a problem for engineers; it was one of
the possibilities that if seized might be converted into a fact.
Bryant was an engineer, and he was just then foot-loose.
From the worried ranchman, Stevenson, who appeared glad to talk of his
affairs to someone, he learned that the man was both dissatisfied with
the country and straitened in circumstances. Bryant judged that his
host would consider any offer which would enable him to realize
something on the ranch and to depart; so that particular aspect of the
matter if undertaken, namely, securing title to the land and water
right, seemed favourable. If no insurmountable obstacle stood in the
way of building a dam and a canal, arising from construction elements,
it assuredly looked as if money was to be made out of the project.
With his mind kindling to the idea Bryant rode northward next morning
along the base of the mountains, studying the hillsides where a canal
naturally should run, all the way up to the Pinas River. Afterward he
reconnoitered the mesa, hitting at last on a slight elevation, hardly
to be called a ridge, that projected from a hillside a mile below
Bartolo and curved in a gentle crescent for about three miles from the
range of mountains down the mesa, again bending in toward the hills
close to the north line of the Perro Creek ranch.
Next, he absented himself for a week at the state capital, where he
industriously studied the water and land records pertaining to the
district. When he returned, he brought with him a surveying instrument
and a boy for helper. He pitched a tent out of sight in a hollow at
the foot of a hill, worked early and late running his lines,
establishing a dam site, and surveying the river bottom near the mouth
of Pinas Cañon, and remained practically unseen except by a few
incurious Mexicans. His instrument proved the correctness of his
conclusion regarding the crescent-shaped elevation as a practical
grade for a canal, which though necessitating a longer course would
nevertheless immensely lessen the time, expense, and difficulties of
digging when compared with a line along the mountains' flanks with its
danger of washouts and earth slides. Nor did he stop there. He made
rapid but reliable topographical measurements, on a general scale, of
the mesa for five miles out from the mountains, between Bartolo and
Perro Creek, locating among other things a large depression in the
plain, three miles southwest of the town, which might by diking be
converted into a flood water reservoir. Then he folded his tent and
again disappeared for a week. When, finally, he rode to Stevenson's
ranch house that hot July afternoon and made a trade for the five
thousand acres of land, he was the possessor of considerably more
knowledge of the locality and its possibilities than any one would
have guessed.
And now he was owner of the ranch and committed to the enterprise.
A few days after Bryant's visit to Bartolo Stevenson disposed of his
sheep to Graham, the owner of the large ranch on Diamond Creek, loaded
his household goods, except the stove and some of the furniture which
the engineer bought, and with his wife and boy drove away in his sheep
wagon for Kennard and for the new farm in Nebraska. Bryant's own
effects--trunk, bedding, provisions, surveying instruments,
draughting-board, and the like, came up from the railroad town by
wagon, and with them the fourteen-year-old lad, Dave Morris, a
gangling, long-legged boy extremely dependable and extraordinarily
serious, who had carried rod for the engineer during the week of
preliminary surveying.
The man and boy now attacked the canal line in earnest, with Bryant
intent on establishing its course, location, and displacement exactly,
so that he could make necessary blueprints and compile construction
estimates. It was while they were working along the first mile of the
line, where it ran from the Pinas River along the base of a hill to
the low ridge that bore out upon the mesa, that they received their
first interruption. The worst and most expensive part of the canal to
build would be this section, and the engineer was therefore taking
especial care in its surveying; near the river the line traversed
several fenced tracts of ground extending part way up the hillside,
fields owned by natives; and it was one of these Mexicans who slouched
forward to the spot where Bryant and Dave worked and ordered them to
get out of his field.
Bryant straightened up from sighting through his transit, and asked,
"What's on your mind? What's disturbing your brain, _hombre_?"
"You get off," was the unkempt fellow's answer.
"Why?"
"You can't come on my ranch; get off."
The engineer pulled a map from his hip pocket--a copy made from one
filed in the land commissioner's office thirty years previous. He
spread it open before the Mexican.
"See this? Here is Bartolo, here is the river, here is your field," he
said, pointing with a finger. "Now look at that line; it runs across
this field right where we stand. That's the Perro Creek Canal,
extending down to Perro Creek."
The man stared at the earth under his feet.
"No, I see no canal," he stated, now looking right and left as if to
make sure. "There is no canal."
"Yes, there is. But it needs cleaning badly. I'm surveying its banks
again and then I shall clean out the dirt. You can see that it needs
cleaning, because you can scarcely see it at all. Menocal, the banker,
didn't take very good care of the canal after he built it; that's the
trouble. Hello, does that surprise you? Yes, Mr. Menocal got the water
right and dug the ditch in the first place; and he also secured a
right of way across these fields, sixty feet wide, by buying it from
whoever owned the ground at that time, and the right of way is
certified to the state. Now, I own Perro Creek ranch and the Perro
Creek canal and likewise the right of way. So you see, José, or
whatever your name is, we're standing on my ground and not yours; I
could even make you take down your fence where it crosses my right of
way."
The Mexican blinked stupidly.
"I was born here; my father was born here; my grandfather lived here,"
he said. "There have been little ditches, many of them, but never a
big canal in this field. You must get off."
"No; you're mistaken. Go see Mr. Menocal and he will set you right."
"I saw Charlie Menocal, who said to drive strangers off."
"Well, Charlie had best keep his fingers out of this dish, or he may
find it full of pepper, and you tell him so next time you talk with
him."
Bryant folded his map and restored it to his pocket, while the Mexican
went away to his house.
That day the engineer worked until darkness shut down. At three
o'clock next morning he routed his young assistant out of bed and by
dawn they were in the fields again. Knowing that the Menocals had set
about impeding and if possible altogether obstructing him, he proposed
to be done, as quickly as careful surveying allowed, with the fenced
part of the hillside where plausible controversies could be invented.
Toward the end of the second day he had progressed into the last tract
of owned ground. He breathed more freely. In his statement to the
Mexican concerning the right of way he had been exactly right; and he
was following to a dot the original course taken by the early ditch.
He could have improved upon this section of the canal by another
survey, but that would have involved him in a host of troubles, very
likely unsolvable ones, in securing title to another strip of ground
across the fields. Without question Menocal's influence would prevent
the owners from selling, even if Bryant had the money with which to
buy a second right of way, which he had not. Dollar for dollar it
would be cheaper in the long run to use the old line. Well, Dave was
already across the last fence with his rod; they would soon be
working entirely on government land; and with that, it did not matter
for the present what the Mexican landowners thought or did.
Bryant had walked fifty yards or so away from his transit to call
something to Dave, when the crack of a rifle sounded from the hillside
and a bullet whined near by. The engineer pivoted about. Another shot
followed, and he beheld a spurt of dust close by his instrument. The
hidden rifleman was not seeking to murder him, but to destroy his
tools.
There were no more shots and he resumed work. Later on, as he neared
the fence and was establishing his last points within the field, a
horseman with a gray moustache came galloping up along the stretch of
barb wire. He nodded, inquired if the engineer was named Bryant, and
announced that he had half a dozen injunctions to serve.
"I expected something like this; glad you didn't arrive any sooner,"
Lee remarked.
"Well, I was away from town, or I'd have been here by noon," the
horseman, an American, stated. "The injunctions cover all these places
between here and the river. You and any one you hire must keep off the
tracts specified until the cases come up before the judge."
"All right, sheriff. Wait till I take a last squint or two and I'll
vacate."
The horseman idly watched the engineer make his final measurements,
then when Bryant had lifted his tripod over the wire and told his
assistant Dave they would call it a day and stop, he dismounted and
sat down for a smoke with the man on whom he had served his papers.
"Looks as if you've stirred up some interest in your doings," he
remarked, expelling a thread of smoke. "All the Mexicans from here
down to Rosita are gabbling about your canal. Don't seem pleased with
you."
"There's one who doesn't, in any case," was the response. "He took a
couple of shots at my instrument a while ago from up yonder in the
sagebrush when I had stepped aside for a moment."
The sheriff gazed at the hillside.
"A few _hombres_ around here will bear watching," said he. For a
little he meditated, then went on, "You're a white man and so am I;
they don't like our colour any too well, at bottom. I s'pose you know
that."
"Yes. But they needn't express their feelings with rifles. As far as
these injunctions are concerned, they'll be dismissed eventually, for
there's no question about my right of way through here. Menocal
secured it himself and it's all a matter of record--the deeds, the
certificate to the state, and the rest."
"Menocal got it, you say?"
"Nobody else. Some time or other he must have expected to water Perro
Creek ranch, which he owned until he sold it to Stevenson."
"I knew he had that place," said the visitor, "but I didn't know it
carried a water right from the Pinas. Where does this move of yours
hit Menocal?"
"In his ranches down the river; he's been using this water for them,"
Bryant explained. "I suppose it's been taken for granted by nearly
everyone that the water belonged to those farms down there, but it
doesn't."
"How much water in this right?"
"Hundred and twenty-five second feet."
"Whew! That takes a chunk out of the Pinas. And I presume that by this
time Menocal knows what you're doing?"
"Oh, yes; I told him. He doesn't like it, of course."
The sheriff turned for a full view of Bryant's face. In respect to
features the two men were not unlike: both had the same thin curving
nose and level eyes and cut of jaw.
"Well, let me say as between man and man," the elder spoke, "that
Menocal won't let you take away that much water from him if he can
help it. And I'll drop you some more news, in addition: several
Mexicans are going to file on homesteads or desert claims along the
base of the hills south of here, scattered along like and running part
way up the mountain sides. I don't know where your canal to Perro
Creek will go, but if its line follows the foot of the range, as may
be likely, it might happen to find those claims in the way."
"Any idea in your mind where those fellows may locate their filings?"
"No; I can't say definitely. Shouldn't be surprised if they began
stringing them along a couple of miles south of here till they reached
Perro Creek."
Bryant gazed at the flank of the mountain. The gentle ridge where his
ditch line left the hillside was but half a mile away. Beyond that the
Mexicans could file to their hearts' content, for they would be left
on one side by the canal. But in all this he perceived Menocal's
cunning hand.
"Much obliged to you, sheriff," said he. "I'll see if I can't find
some way to satisfy those chaps when the time comes."
His visitor rose and put foot in stirrup.
"If any of these Mexicans grow ugly, let me know," he remarked. "I'll
tell them where to head in. Drop in at my office at the courthouse
when you're in town; Winship's my name. I brought these notices over
myself in order to look at you, for they were saying you are a
trouble-maker, but that's what these natives frequently state when
they want to fix an alibi for themselves before they start something.
I'll see if I can learn anything of the fellow who was up yonder
shooting. These _hombres_ are altogether too free with firearms,
anyway. Better feed that lad there with you a few more meals a day;
looks as if he could use them."
Bryant laughed.
"Dave's a little lean, but he's all there. Looks don't count, do they,
partner?"
"I do the best I can," Dave responded, solemnly.
"Not at meal-time, I reckon," the sheriff said. "Feed up and get fat.
A kid like you has no business having so many joints and bones
sticking out."
"I been through a hard winter last winter, and this spring, too, till
Mr. Bryant picked me up."
"How's that?" the horseman inquired.
"My mother died at Kennard. I didn't get on very well after that; not
much there for a boy to work at. And I hadn't any folks."
"Hump. What's your last name?"
"Morris."
"Any relation to Jack Morris?"
"He was my father."
The sheriff nodded. "Knew him well; he died four years ago. And your
mother died last winter? Little woman, I recall."
"Little, but a lot better than plenty of bigger ones I know of," Dave
asserted, stoutly. "She died of pneumonia."
"Boy, I've held you on my knee when you were about as high as my hand.
But I guess you don't remember that, and I'm mighty sorry to learn
your mother's gone. Dave--is that your name? Well, now, Dave, fight
your grub harder from now on."
The speaker gathered his reins, nodded, and rode away along the barb
wire fence.