river before he retired, to find the
watchman very wide awake and a torrent booming through the stone-faced
canal intake, to be distributed through a network of ditches upon the
company's lands miles away. Farwell, satisfied, instructed the watchmen
to keep a bright lookout, and turned in.

Once in the night he awoke with the impression that he had heard
thunder, but as the stars were shining he put it down to a dream and
went to sleep again. In the morning one of the watchmen reported a
distant sound resembling a blast, but he had no idea where it was.
Farwell attached no importance to it.

But in the middle of the morning his ditch foreman, Bergin, rode in
angry and profane. And his report caused similar manifestations in
Farwell.

The main canal and larger ditches had been blown up in half a dozen
places, usually where they wound around sidehills, and the released
water had wrought hideous damage to the banks, causing landslides,
washing thousands of tons of soil away, making it necessary to alter
the ditch line altogether or put in fluming where the damage had
occurred.

Nor was this all. Some three miles from the camp the main canal crossed
a deep coulee. To get the water across, a trestle had been erected and
a flume laid on it. The fluming was the largest size, patent-metal
stuff, half round, joined with rods, riveted and clinched. To carry the
volume of water there were three rows of this laid side by side,
cemented into the main canal at the ends. It had been a beautiful and
expensive job; and it reproduced finely in advertising matter. It was
now a wreck.

Farwell rode out with Bergin to the scene of devastation. Now trestle
and fluming lay in bent, rent, and riven ruin at the bottom of the
coulee. The canal vomited its contents indecently down the nearest
bank. A muddy river flowed down the coulee's bed. And the peculiarly
bitter part of the whole affair was that the water, following the
course of the coulee, ran back into the river again, whence it was
available for use by the ranchers. It was as if the river had never
been dammed. What water was diverted by the temporary dam got back to
the river by way of the canal and coulee, somewhat muddied, but equally
wet, and just as good as ever for irrigation purposes.

Bergin cursed afresh, but Farwell's anger was too bitter and deep for
mere profanity. He sat in his saddle scowling at the wreck.

Once more it had been put over on him. He thought he had