chest valleys I ever saw; sheltered
by the mountains, watered by the springs which create the source of
Indian Creek. The climate is like that of the California foothills.
And the soil is fertile--anything will grow there. I saw that twenty
years ago. I knew that the place was made for a town-site--and I made
the town. There are a lot of smaller valleys about it; there are
orchards there now and vineyards. There are mines, paying mines. There
is no end to the herds of cattle running through the valleys and at
the bases of the hills. The town has a railroad, a narrow-gage from
Bolton on the Pacific Central & Western. Building such a town, giving
it railroad connection, electric lights, and all the things which go
with unlimited water-power was simple enough."

Conniston sat back and watched the man who spoke of city building as
of the making of a summer home. Mr. Crawford was leaning forward in
his chair, his cigar between his fingers, his eyes very steady upon
Conniston's.

"But now," he went on, his eyes clear, but his brows drawn over them,
"we come to something different--entirely different. Out yonder in the
lap of the desert is what they call Rattlesnake Valley. It is no
valley at all, merely a great depression, a sort of natural sink. It
is twenty miles wide, forty miles long. I have found no drop of water
within thirty miles of it, no single spring, no creek. It is nothing
but sand--dry, barren, unfertile sand--five hundred square miles of
it, to look at it. And right there, in the heart of that sink, I am
going to build a town."

He spoke quietly, his voice low, no hint of boastfulness in his tone,
no hint of doubt. He spoke as a man who has studied his ground and who
knows both the difficulties which lie ahead of him and the
possibilities. Conniston, seeing only the impossibility, the madness
of such a project, looked questioningly from him to the girl. Argyl's
face was flushed, her eyes were very bright with an intense eager
interest.

"It sounds so big," Conniston hesitated, his gaze coming back to the
older man's face. "So daring, so impossible!"

"It is big! Bigger than I have even hinted at. It is daring. Of
course, I take a chance of sinking everything I have out there and
finding only failure in the end."

He shrugged his shoulders, and Conniston noticed for the first time
how big and broad they were.

"But it is not impossible. It is merely the repetition of such work as
has been done successf