"Suppose we ride down the valley. I prefer flat land to rolling
country when I ride."
"No game down that way," Farrel explained patiently. "We'll take the
hounds and put something up a tree over Caliente Basin way before we
get back. Besides, I have a great curiosity to inspect the dam you're
building and the artesian wells you're drilling over in that country."
"Confound you, Farrel! You realized the possibilities of that basin,
then?"
"Years ago. The basin comes to a bottle-neck between two high hills;
all you have to do is dam that narrow gorge, and when the Rio San
Gregorio is up and brimming in freshet time, you'll have a lake
a hundred feet deep, a mile wide, and five miles long before you
know it. Did you ever consider the possibility of leading a ditch
from the lake thus formed along the shoulder of El Palomar, that
forty-five-hundred-foot peak for which the ranch is named, and giving
it a sixty-five-per-cent. nine-hundred-foot drop to a snug little
power-station at the base of the mountain. You could develop thirty or
forty thousand horse-power very easily and sell it easier; after your
water had passed through the penstock and delivered its power, you
could run it off through a lateral to the main ditch down the San
Gregorio and sell it to your Japanese farmers for irrigation."
"By Jupiter, I believe you would have done something with this ranch if
you had had the backing, Farrel!"
"Never speculated very hard on securing the backing," Don Mike
admitted, with a frank grin.
Pages:
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200