ll in good enough shape. We ain't lost none. Next
year'll be better."

"What makes you think so?" asked Bob.

"Well, Smith, he's superintendent at White Oaks, you know, he's
favourable to us. I seed him myself. And even Plant, he's sent old
California John back to look over what shape the ranges are in. There
ain't no doubt as to which way he'll report. Old John is a cattleman,
and he's square."

One day Bob found himself belated after a fishing excursion to the upper
end of the valley. As a matter of course he stopped over night with the
first people whose ranch he came to. It was not much of a ranch and it's
two-room house was of logs and shakes, but the owners were hospitable.
Bob put his horse into a ramshackle shed, banked with earth against the
winter cold. He had a good time all the evening.

"I'm going to hike out before breakfast," said he before turning in, "so
if you'll just show me where the lantern is, I won't bother you in the
morning."

"Lantern!" snorted the mountaineer. "You turn on the switch. It's just
to the right of the door as you go in."

So Bob encountered another of the curious anomalies not infrequent to
the West. He entered a log stable in the remote backwoods and turned on
a sixteen-candle-power electric globe! As he extended his rides among
the low mountains of the First Rampart, he ran across many more places
where electric light and even electric power were used in the rudest
habitations.

The explanation was very simple; these men had possessed small water
rights which Baker had needed. As part of their compensation they
received from Power House Number One what current they required for
their own use.

Thus reminded, Bob one Sunday visited Power House Number One. It proved
to be a corrugated iron structure through which poured a great stream
and from which went high-tension wires strung to mushroom-shaped
insulators. It was filled with the clean and shining machinery of
electricity. Bob rode up the flume to the reservoir, a great lake penned
in canon walls by a dam sixty feet high. The flume itself was of
concrete, large enough to carry a rushing stream. He made the
acquaintance of some of the men along the works. They tramped and rode
back and forth along the right of way, occupied with their insulations,
the height of their water, their watts and volts and amperes.
Surroundings were a matter of indifference to them. Activity was of the
same sort, whether in the city or in th