ake water that you can't
use."

"Not to mince matters with you, Dunne," Farwell returned, "I may as
well say that we intend to take as much as we like and when we like.
There's plenty of water left in the river. It's merely a question of
building your dams to catch it."

"Will you say that there will be plenty when your big dam is finished?"

Farwell lifted his big shoulders in a shrug which coupled utter
indifference with an implication that the future was in the hands of
Providence.

"Good Lord, Dunne, there's no use talking about that!" said he. "We
will take what water we want. You get what is left. Is that plain?"

"Yes," said Casey quietly. "I won't bother you any more."

"But I will," said McHale. "I'll just bother you to make good that
bluff of yours about firin' me out of here. Why, you durn,
low-flung----"

"Quit it!" Casey interrupted. "Stay where you are, Farwell, I'm not
going to have a scrap. Tom, you come with me."

"Oh, well, just as you say, Casey," grumbled McHale. "I ain't hostile,
special. Only I don't want him to run no blazers on me. He----"

But Casey got him outside and administered a vitriolic lecture that had
some effect.

"I'm sorry, Casey," McHale acknowledged, contritely. "I s'pose I ought
to known better. But that gent with the gun and Farwell between them
got me goin'. Honest, I never hunted trouble in my life. It just
naturally tracks up on me when I'm lyin' all quiet in camp. Course, it
has to be took care of when it comes."

"There'll be enough to keep you busy," said Casey grimly. And
apparently in instant fulfilment of the prophecy came the short,
decisive bark of a six-shooter. By the sound, the shot had been fired
outside the camp, in the direction of the gate.

"It's that cuss that held us up!" snarled McHale, and swore viciously.

Both men went up into their saddles as if catapulted from the earth.
McHale yelled as he hit the leather--a wild, ear-splitting screech, the
old trouble cry of his kind in days gone by--and both horses leaped
frantically into motion, accomplishing the feat peculiar to cow and
polo ponies of attaining their maximum speed in three jumps. They
surged around the medley of tents and shacks, and came into the open
neck and neck, running like singed cats.

A few hundred yards away, where the new sign-board stood beside the
trail a horse struggled to rise, heaved its fore quarters up, and
crashed down again, kicking in agony, raising a cloud of