e and end nowhere? A cripple could walk from one end of the town
to the other in seven minutes. You couldn't raise enough outside capital
to buy the spikes for it.

"Take fossils--a school boy would know that the demand for fossils is
limited, and who is sure that the bed is inexhaustible until it's
tested. When the government is taking nitrates out of the air in Prouty
to make ammunition, you and I will be under the daisies, Governor."

If looks could kill, Toomey would have died standing. But he continued
emphatically:

"The salvation of Prouty is water. By water I mean the completion of the
irrigation project. Gentlemen--I am here to state unreservedly that I
can put that enterprise through, providing the stockholders will give me
an option upon fifty-one per cent. of the stock. I must have the
controlling interest."

Could he have an option? _Could_ he! Only the restraining hand of a
neighbor upon his coat tail prevented Walt Scales from hurdling the
intervening chairs to reach Toomey to thrust his shares upon him. Hope
and skepticism of the genuineness of his assertions commingled in the
faces upon which Toomey looked, while he waited for an answer. He saw
the doubt and took Prentiss's letter from his pocket. Shaking it at
them, he declared impressively:

"This communication is from a party I have interested--an old friend of
mine of wealth and standing, who will finance the project providing it
is as represented, and under the condition I have just mentioned."
Toomey himself so thoroughly believed what he said that he carried
conviction, although nowadays his veracity under oath would have been
questioned.

The prospect of unloading his stock made Hiram Butefish as thirsty as if
he had eaten herring, and, overlooking the glass in his excitement, he
drank long and deep from the water pitcher before he said tremulously:

"Undoubtedly that can be arranged, Mr. Toomey."

It was obvious that the Boosters Club shared its president's opinion.
Each quivered with an eagerness to get at Toomey which was not unlike
that of a race horse fretting to be first over the starting line. They
crowded around him when the meeting was ended, offering their
congratulations and their stock to him, but taking care to avoid any
mention of the various sums that he owed each and all.

As for Toomey, it was like the old days when his appearance upon the
streets of Prouty was an event, when they called him "Mister" and
touched their