The Iron Furrow Part 6

"Or forced," said his son, with reckless bright eyes.

"Men generally depart from a locality when public opinion is brought to bear on them," the elder remarked. "He can be made unpopular until he desires to leave."

"We'll run him out, just leave that part to me."

"Charlie, nothing rash must be done, remember that, and nothing illegal. I shall think of some plan soon."

"Nothing rash, but nothing uncertain, father. Two hundred thousand is a lot of money. I, too, shall plan."

The prospect of ousting an intruder who had challenged his family's right to control what it wished here, who indeed had the audacity to attempt to robe the effort under a claim of legality, appealed to young Menocal as an undertaking most attractive. The fact that all the advantage was on his side, of influence, of wealth, of race, of power that might be exerted through ignorant Mexicans in a hundred subtle and vindictive ways, made the enterprise all the more alluring. The Indian strain in his blood--a strain which accounts for much that sets American and Mexican apart, unconsciously in his case gave a tinge of cruelty to his antic.i.p.ation. Aspiring himself to pa.s.s as an American, it never failed to please him when he could slight or humiliate an American; and he lacked his father's restraint of impulses, as he came short of his sagacity and perseverance. Indeed, secretly the son believed his father too conservative, too cautious, too old-fashioned and slow; and at times was exceedingly impatient with methods that he was confident he could immensely improve.

His father considered him for a time.

"Charlie, you leave this matter alone," he said. "You keep out of it.

Whatever's to be done, I'll do. You would go too far. You can give your attention to seeing that the crops are watered and the hay cut on time; you should be down at Rosita now looking after things."

"I'll run down in the car this evening," was the answer. "To-morrow I'm going to Kennard, where I haven't been for two weeks. The wool in the warehouse there should be sold, and a buyer from Boston wrote, you know, that he would be there this week. And I think we can get our price."

Kennard was the nearest railroad point and forty miles south. It was a pleasant little city, with some of the attractions of larger places.

Of these Charlie was thinking rather than of the wool. He would attend to the wool business, of course, but it was an excuse instead of a reason for the projected visit on the morrow.

"Very well, it's time the wool is sold; the price is good at present,"

his father agreed.

Charlie recurred to the matter of the Stevenson ranch.

"What's this fellow's name who bought out Stevenson?"

"Lee Bryant. A young man. And I don't like him; I'm afraid he's a trouble-maker. You should remember him, Charlie, for he's the fellow who filled the radiator of the car at the ford on Perro Creek and who threw your money back in your face."

Young Menocal's thin figure stiffened, while his small black moustache rose in two points of ire.

"Him! That scoundrel who insulted me before Louise! That lamb-stealer!" he shrilled.

"That is the man," his father affirmed.

Charlie spat forth a string of Spanish curses. When he had recovered from his outburst of pa.s.sion, he said:

"Well, I'm glad he's the man. He'll pay for that. Louise said nothing, but she heard him. And now he's trying to steal our water, too! I'd like to tie him down on a cactus-bed and run a band of sheep over him."

"Charlie, Charlie, control yourself. Don't exhaust your strength by being angry; it's bad for you in this heat; sunstrokes are sometimes brought on that way. Besides, such talk as you uttered is foolish and dangerous."

"Bah, I'm not afraid of a sunstroke."

"Anyway, it's unwise to be angry," his father warned. "When you're in a temper, you talk loud; and people may hear it and repeat it, making trouble. Now I must return to the bank. But remember what I say: you're not to meddle in this Perro Creek matter. Do you hear?"

"Oh, yes, I hear," said Charlie.

His face as his father walked away did not, however, indicate acquiescence in this tame course. His heart was full of rancour for the insulting stranger of the ford; and where the fires of his hatred blew, his feet would follow.

CHAPTER V

Though Lee Bryant, during his colloquy with Menocal, had spoken confidently of his ability to obtain money wherewith to construct a ca.n.a.l 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 t.i.tle to the land and water right, seemed favourable. If no insurmountable obstacle stood in the way of building a dam and a ca.n.a.l, arising from construction elements, it a.s.suredly 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 ca.n.a.l 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 Canon, 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 ca.n.a.l, 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 ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l 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 Ca.n.a.l, extending down to Perro Creek."

The man stared at the earth under his feet.

"No, I see no ca.n.a.l," he stated, now looking right and left as if to make sure. "There is no ca.n.a.l."

"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 ca.n.a.l after he built it; that's the trouble. h.e.l.lo, 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 ca.n.a.l and likewise the right of way. So you see, Jose, 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 ca.n.a.l in this field. You must get off."

"No; you're mistaken. Go see Mr. Menocal and he will set you right."