with a separate camp for each; and each
partner has four Chinamen working for him. That is system, Noah. It
certainly looks like riches, doesn't it?"

"All flesh is grass," Noah sighed lugubriously, "except some that's
weeds."

"Cotton is going up every day," said Bob. "It was nine cents and a
fraction yesterday."

"That means," remarked Noah Ezekiel, "Reedy Jenkins could sell them
eight thousand bales he's got stacked up on this side and pay all his
debts and have twenty thousand over."

"But Reedy is not paying his debts."

"Not yet," said Noah; "he is borrowin' more money."

"Is that so?" Bob was sharply interested. He had not feared Reedy
much while he was out of funds. "When did you hear that?"

"Saturday night," replied Noah. "You can gather a whole lot more
information round the Red Owl than you can moss."

"I wonder what he is going to do with it?" Bob's mind was still on
Reedy Jenkins.

"He's done done with it," answered Noah. "He's bought the Dillenbeck
irrigation system."

Instantly all exuberant desire to shout went from Bob's throat and a
chill ran along his veins. In a twinkling the heat of the friendly sun
upon those wide green fields with their fingered network of a hundred
water ditches became a threat and a menace. After all, by what a
narrow thread does security hang!

Bob walked as one on a precipice during the following weeks. Never was
a man more torn between hope and fear. On the one hand, the cotton
grew amazingly. Fed by the nourishment stored in that soil which had
lain dormant for thousands of years, watered by the full sluices from
the Colorado River and warmed like a hotbed by the floods of sunshine
day after day, the stalks climbed and climbed and branched until they
looked more like green bushes than frail plants. Bob rode the fields
all day long, even when the thermometer crept up to 127 in the shade,
and a skillet left in the sun would fry bacon and eggs perfectly done
in seven minutes. Often he continued to ride until far into the night,
watching the chopping of the weeds, watching the men in the fields, and
most of all watching the watering. Yes, the crop was advancing with a
promise almost staggering in its richness. It looked now as though
some of these fields would go to a bale and a half an acre. And slowly
but surely the price of cotton had climbed since March, a quarter of a
cent one day, a half the next, a jump of a whole cent one Friday; and
no