"

Mr. Parrott's lengthened jaw rested between the "white wings" of his
collar as he turned away. It might have reached his shirt-stud had he
known the number of creditors that had preceded him.

Even Symes's confident assurances that the complete failure of the
Homeseekers' Excursion was relatively a small matter, could not entirely
eradicate from the minds of Crowheart's merchants the picture presented
by the procession of excursionists returning with their satchels to the
station, glowering at Crowheart's citizens as they passed and making
loud charges of misrepresentation and fraud.

When the door closed behind him Symes dropped the catch that he might
read Mudge's bulky letter undisturbed. Mudge's diction was ever open to
criticism, but he had a faculty for conveying his meaning which genius
well might envy.

The letter read:

MY DEAR SYMES:

Are you the damnedest fool or the biggest scoundrel out of jail?
Write and let me know.

I told you there was something wrong; that some outside influence
was queering us all along the line and I let myself be talked out of
my conviction by you instead of getting busy and finding out the
truth.

The stock and bondholders have had a meeting and are going to ask
the court to appoint a Receiver, and when he gets through with us
we'll cut as much ice in the affairs of the Company as two
office-boys, with no cause for complaint if we keep out of jail.

There's been a high-priced engineer doing detective work on the
project for days and his report wouldn't be apt to swell your head.
The bondholders know more about the Symes Irrigation Company and
conditions under the project than I ever did.

They know that your none too perfect water-right won't furnish water
for a third of the land under the ditch. They know that if you had
every water-right on the river that there's some ten thousand acres
of high land that couldn't be reached with a fire-hose. They know
that there's another thousand or so where the soil isn't deep enough
to grow radishes, let alone sugar-beets. They know, too, that
instead of the $250,000 of your estimate to complete the ditch it
will require nearly half a million, and they're on to the fact that
in order to get this estimate you cut your own engineer's figures in
two, and then some, upon the cost of making cuts and handling loose
rock.

Rou