a
'boost' the district would receive if all this unavailable material were
suddenly to become a valuable and marketable commodity."

"I should think it would!" exclaimed Joe, enthusiastically. "The
prospectors would be getting out by hundreds; the population of Sulphide
would double; San Remo would take a great jump forward; while we--why,
we shouldn't _begin_ to be able to grow oats and hay enough to meet the
demand."

My father nodded. "That's what I think," said he.

"And there's another thing," cried I, taking up Joe's line of prophecy.
"If a big vein of lead-ore should be discovered anywhere about the head
of our creek, the natural way for the freighters to get down to San Remo
would be through here, if----"

"That's it," interrupted my father. "That's the whole thing. I-F, IF."

Dear me! What a big, big little word that was. To represent it of the
size it looked to us, it would be necessary to paint it on the sky with
the tail of a comet dipped in an ocean of ink!

After a pause of a minute or two, during which we all sat silent,
considering over again what we had considered many and many a time
before: whether there were not some possible way of draining off the
"forty rods," Joe suddenly straightened himself in his seat, rumpled his
hair once more--by which sign I knew he had some idea in his head--and
said:

"I suppose you have thought of it before, Mr. Crawford, but would it be
possible to run a tunnel up from the lower edge of the First Mesa, and
so draw off the water?"

"I have thought of it before, Joe," replied my father, "and while I
think it might work, I have concluded that it is out of the question.
How long a tunnel would it take, do you calculate?"

"Well, a little more than a quarter of a mile, I suppose."

"Yes. Say twelve hundred feet, at least. Well, to run a tunnel of that
length would be cheap at ten dollars a foot."

"Phew!" Joe whistled, opening his eyes widely. "That is a staggerer,
sure enough. It does look as if there was no way out of it."

"No, I'm afraid not," said my father. "And as to making a permanent road
across the marsh, I have tried everything I can think of including
corduroying with long poles covered with brush and earth. But it was no
use. We had a very wet season that summer, and the road, poles and all,
was covered with water. That settled it to my mind; we could not expect
the freighters and others to come our way when, at any time, they might
find the road