ature might have planned when the mountains were
carved, the lake set in its deep bowl. Fifteen feet from this end of
the lake the water swept into a narrow channel, a ridge running down
from each side. Here was the spot to deflect the waters before they
sped on down over the steep fall. Upon the south side there was a
jagged cut in the saw-toothed cliff line. Even now the lowest part of
that cut, when once the free soil was scooped out, was not ten feet
above the level of the water.

"I rode up here purt' near a week ago," said Ettinger. "I looked this
over an' rode back all the way down Dry Creek. It's dead easy,
Shandon."

Already Ettinger visualised the cut deepened and widened here with
flood gates to control the current. He spurred his horse up the bank
as far as he could force the animal, then got down and scrambled on,
gesticulating and talking swiftly. Shandon followed him. In a little
they came to a point from which they could look back upon the lake, and
forward to the windings of the canon through which Dry Creek ran in
winter and spring.

"It can be done," muttered Shandon slowly. "It can be done, Ettinger.
I don't know what it will cost, five thousand or ten or twenty; but I
do know that those lands down in Dry Valley are going to jump over the
moon."

Ettinger made little clucking sounds with his mouth, his way of
expressing joy unbounded.

"An' you don't see it all yet," he chuckled. "Lord, I've been layin'
awake nights figgerin' on it. We'll bond everything that's loose in
the valley. I've got Norfolk settin' tight and we'll round up a lot of
the little fellers. It's sort of late, maybe, but them other fellers
ain't got everything sewed up by a jugful."

"What other fellows?" asked Shandon, mystified.

Then Ettinger, in his rare good humour loosened his tongue until it
poured out everything there was in his seething brain. He told of the
scheme of Martin Leland and Sledge Hume, for Garth Conway had dropped
an incautious word and the shrewd brain of Ettinger had worked out the
puzzle. He told how the three men were trying to do this very thing,
how they had planned on getting the water themselves, how Martin Leland
had tied up thousands in options and purchases, how Ettinger had been
one too many for them and had beat them to Shandon. He chuckled over
everything, but most of all over the fact that Martin Leland had tried
to buy him out. Old Leland was the keenest business man i