What I am afraid of is, that when this boom
breaks, the fools who have not been ruined, will be too badly scared to
put money into government bonds, let alone an irrigation plant, and
before they recover their wits, they'll either forget that there is such
a place as California, or use it to slug themselves with when they feel
another fool attack coming on."

"You leave that to me. I've got something more to show than a sand-flat
pegged full of white stakes. Oranges will do better than that. Dry
hillsides at nothing a square mile are going to be a thousand an acre
when we get water on them."

"Let up, Elijah. Keep your chips off from that spot. That's a safer
proposition than Ysleta lots with hot-air values, but it's the same kind
of a wheel after all. If you once get the hum of it in your ears you'll
go to pieces like all the rest."

"Are your estimates completed?"

"Yes; ready to be typed. You think they'd better be typed first, don't
you?"

"Yes. We can have them printed afterward. I don't want anything
gorgeous. Just plain, conservative figures. I have my statement of what
has been done in the three years on my ranch. There is just one thing I
have left out. It would be a telling thing to put in, but I think we can
use it to better advantage by keeping it to ourselves."

"What's that?"

Elijah drew a neatly folded sheet from his pocket. It was filled with
columns of figures.

"It's an idea of my own. What do you think of it?"

Winston looked rapidly over the sheet, then gave a low, meditative
whistle.

"Are you sure of this?"

"Dead sure. I've been making observations with self-registering
thermometers. That's the result." Elijah pointed to the sheet.

"A frostless belt!" Winston snatched the sheet from his drawing-board
and bent over the map, one finger on the sheet, the other eagerly
tracing lines on the surface of the map. "That's the greatest thing yet!
There is a big fortune for all of us in that alone."

Elijah half closed his eyes, his teeth bared with a smile suggestive of
malice.

"May I offer you some of your advice to me?"

"Certainly, and I'll take it too, when I need it. But say, Elijah, what
in the name of the immortals do you want to leave this out for? It's the
most telling thing we've got."

Elijah's eyes narrowed closely.

"I haven't got control of the whole belt yet. That's one thing. Another
is, that when orange lands get under way, there's going to be a demand
that the fr