voice that ever drawled the Southern 'r.'"

"Humph! That isn't exactly the portrait of a fire-eater."

"Don't you make any mistake. I've described the man you'll meet
socially. On the other side, he's a fighter from away back; the kind of
man who makes no account of the odds against him, and who doesn't know
when he is licked. He has told us openly and repeatedly that he will do
us up if we swamp his house and mine; that he will make it pinch us for
the entire value of our investment in the dam. I believe he'll do it,
too; but President Pelham won't back down an inch. So there you
are--irresistible moving body; immovable fixed body: the collision
imminent; and we poor devils in between."

Ballard drew back his chair and sat down again. "You are miles beyond my
depth now," he asserted. "I had less than an hour with Mr. Pelham in
Denver, and what he didn't tell me would make a good-sized library.
Begin at the front, and let me have the story of this feud between the
company and Colonel Craigmiles."

Again Bromley said: "I supposed, of course, that you knew all about
it"--after which he supplied the missing details.

"It was Braithwaite who was primarily to blame. When the company's plans
were made public, the colonel did not oppose them, though he knew that
the irrigation scheme spelled death to the cattle industry. The fight
began when Braithwaite located the dam here at Elbow Canyon in the
foothill hogback. There is a better site farther down the river; a
second depression where an earthwork dike might have taken the place of
all this costly rockwork."

"I saw it as we came up this evening."

"Yes. Well, the colonel argued for the lower site; offered to donate
three or four homesteads in it which he had taken up through his
employees; offered further to take stock in the company; but Braithwaite
was pig-headed about it. He had been a Government man, and was a crank
on permanent structures and things monumental; wherefore he was
determined on building masonry. He ignored the colonel, reported on the
present site, and the work was begun."

"Go on," said Ballard.

"Naturally, the colonel took this as a flat declaration of war. He has a
magnificent country house in the upper valley, which must have cost him,
at this distance from a base of supplies, a round half-million or more.
When we fill our reservoir, this house will stand on an island of less
than a half-dozen acres in extent, with its orchards, lawns, and