undred an' fifty the acre! An' I'm damned if I do
it! My nose smells somethin' when a man wants that place that bad, an'
I git busy follerin' the smell. If I ever sell at less than two
hundred dollars I'm gone crazy."

His excitement growing as the vision of much gold became clearer, he
ran on with hasty explanations. He had five hundred acres; Norfolk had
close to a thousand and he had made Norfolk begin to think for the
first time in his life. He himself had a little money in the bank and
Norfolk had some. There were other men, little ranchers, whom they
could whip into line. _And Wayne Shandon had the water!_

Shandon looked at him in amazement, thinking at first that the man was
a little mad. But Ettinger's shrewd eyes were sane enough.

"We go right up to your lake," he cried shrilly. "We git busy with
some engineers an' pick an' shovel men. We blow the side of a hill all
to hell an' what happens? The water just comes a bulgin' down into Dry
Creek, an' all we got to do down in the valley, twenty, thirty miles
away, is dig ditches an' watch our land turn into a gold mine!"

In a flash Shandon saw the utter simplicity of the whole scheme.
Whereas now the river from Laughter Lake shot down the mountains
through its rocky gorge, watering his own land and running through
little narrow, rocky valleys to the lower slopes, it might here near
the head be deflected so that it sped at first through the canon of the
upper Dry Creek, and following a natural course be brought with little
expense to Dry Valley. Ettinger's proposition was no fanciful dream;
it was hard, unvarnished fact. And, as so often happens when a man
sees a radiant possibility, he wondered that he had not seen it for
himself long ago.

Here was the golden opportunity his soul, in a mist, had yearned for!
He shot out his hand gripping Ruf Ettinger's until the little man
squirmed. But even the pain of nearly crushed fingers did not drive
the grin from Ettinger's face.

"You're on," he cried exultantly. "Shandon, we'll frame a deal that'll
make millionaires out of us."

"And man's work!" was the thought stirring Shandon's heart and
brightening his eyes.

They rode on, as Ettinger had planned from the beginning, and covered
the two miles to Laughter Lake in a few minutes. They rode up the
shoulder of the ridge to the level of the lake; and there Ruf
Ettinger's eager finger pointed out where the work was to be done.

It was work which N