s!" swore Gowan, dropping his guitar and springing up to
confront Ashton with deadly menace in his cold eyes. "This is what
comes of nursing scotched rattlers! This here tenderfoot skunk has
been foreriding for that engineer! I warned you, Mr. Knowles! I told
you he had sent for him to come out here and cut up our range with his
damned irrigation schemes!"

"I send for Blake--I?" protested Ashton. He burst into a discordant
laugh.

"Laugh, will you?" said Gowan, dropping his hand to his hip.

The girl flung herself before him. "Stop! stop, Kid! Are you locoed?
He had nothing to do with it. I myself sent for Mr. Blake."

"_You!_" cried Gowan.

The cowman slowly stood up, his eyes fixed on the girl in an
incredulous stare. "Chuckie," he half whispered, "you couldn't ha'
done it. You're--you're dreaming, honey!"

"No. Listen, Daddy! It's been growing on you so--your fear that we'll
lose our range. I thought if Mr. Blake came and told you it can't be
done--Don't you see?"

"What if he finds it can?" huskily demanded Knowles.

"He can't. I'm sure he can't. If he builds a reservoir, where could he
get enough water to fill it? The watershed above us is too small. He
couldn't impound more than three thousand acre feet of flood waters
at the utmost."

"How about the whole river going to waste, down in Deep Canyon?"
queried her father.

"Heavens, Mr. Knowles! How would he ever get a drop of water out of
that awful chasm?" exclaimed Ashton. "I looked down into it. The river
is thousands of feet down. It must be way below the level of Dry
Mesa."

"I'm not so sure about that," replied the cowman. "Holes are mighty
deceiving."

"Well, what if it ain't so deep as the mesa?" argued Gowan, for once
half in accord with Ashton. "It shore is deep enough, ain't it? Even
allowing that this man Blake is the biggest engineer in the U.S.,
how's he going to pump that water up over the rim of the canyon? The
devil himself couldn't do it."

"If I am mistaken regarding the depth, that is, if the river really is
higher than the mesa," remarked Ashton, "there is the possibility that
it might be tapped by a tunnel through the side of High Mesa. But even
if it is possible, it still is quite out of the question. The cost
would be prohibitive."

"You see, Daddy!" exclaimed Isobel. "Lafe knows. He's an engineer
himself."

"How's that?" growled her father, frowning heavily at Ashton. "You
never told me you're an engineer."

"I told