efore to-morrow. You hike back to Cobre and hit the road for all
points East, I'll go over to the Gavilan to be counted--take this
dynamite and stuff, and make a bluff at workin', keeping my ears open and
my mouth not. Pledge cousin to come see when we wire for him--as soon as
we get possession. If he finds the sight satisfactory, we'll organize
a company, you and me keepin' control. We'll give 'em forty per cent for
a million cash in the treasury. I want nine percent for my Tucson
friends, who'll put up a little preliminary cash and help us with the
first fightin', if any. Make your dicker on that basis; take no less.
If your cousin can't swing it, we'll go elsewhere.

"Tell him our proposition would be a gracious gift at two millions,
undeveloped; but we're not selling. Tell him there'll be a million
needed for development before there'll be a dollar of return. There's no
water; just enough to do assessment work on, and that to be hauled
twenty-five miles from those little rock tanks at Cabeza Prieta. Deep
drillin' may get water--I hope so. But that will take time and money.
There'll have to be a seventy-five-mile spur of railroad built, anyway,
leaving the main line somewhere about Mohawk: we'd just as well count on
hauling water from the Gila the first year. Them tanks will about run a
ten-man gang a month after each rain, countin' in the team that does the
hauling.

"Tell him one claim, six hundred feet by fifteen hundred, will pretty
near cover our hill; but we'll stake two for margin. We don't want
any more; but we'll have to locate a town site or something, to be sure
of our right of way for our railroad. Every foot of these hills will be
staked out by some one, eventually. If any of these outside claims turns
out to be any good, so much the better. But there can't be the usual rush
very well--'cause there ain't enough water. We'll have to locate the
tanks and keep a guard there; we'll have to pull off a franchise for our
little jerkwater railroad.

"We got to build a wagon road to Mohawk, set six-horse teams to hauling
water, and other teams to hauling water to stations along the road for
the teams that haul water for us. All this at once; it's going to be some
complicated.

"That's the lay: Development work; appropriation for honest men in the
first camp; another for lawyers; patentin' three claims; haul water
seventy-five miles, no road, and part of that through sand; minin'
machinery; build a railroad; s