Desert Conquest; or, Precious Waters

by A. M. Chisholm

Once in the night he awoke with the impression that he had heard thunder, but as the stars were shining he put it down to a dream and went to sleep again. In the morning one of the watchmen reported a distant sound resembling a blast, but he had no idea where it was. Farwell attached no importance to it.

But in the middle of the morning his ditch foreman, Bergin, rode in angry and profane. And his report caused similar manifestations in Farwell.

The main canal and larger ditches had been blown up in half a dozen places, usually where they wound around sidehills, and the released water had wrought hideous damage to the banks, causing landslides, washing thousands of tons of soil away, making it necessary to alter the ditch line altogether or put in fluming where the damage had occurred.

Nor was this all. Some three miles from the camp the main canal crossed a deep coulée. To get the water across, a trestle had been erected and a flume laid on it. The fluming was the largest size, patent-metal stuff, half round, joined with rods, riveted and clinched. To carry the volume of water there were three rows of this laid side by side, cemented into the main canal at the ends. It had been a beautiful and expensive job; and it reproduced finely in advertising matter. It was now a wreck.

Farwell rode out with Bergin to the scene of devastation. Now trestle and fluming lay in bent, rent, and riven ruin at the bottom of the coulée. The canal vomited its contents indecently down the nearest bank. A muddy river flowed down the coulée's bed. And the peculiarly bitter part of the whole affair was that the water, following the course of the coulée, ran back into the river again, whence it was available for use by the ranchers. It was as if the river had never been dammed. What water was diverted by the temporary dam got back to the river by way of the canal and coulée, somewhat muddied, but equally wet, and just as good as ever for irrigation purposes.

Bergin cursed afresh, but Farwell's anger was too bitter and deep for mere profanity. He sat in his saddle scowling at the wreck.

Once more it had been put over on him. He thought he had taken every possible precaution. Of course, ditches might be cut at any time; short of a constant patrol there was no way of preventing that. But this coulée was a thing which any man with eyes in his head and a brain back of them might have seen and thought of. And he had allowed this costly bit of fluming to lie open to destruction when it was the very key to the situation, so far as the ranchers were concerned!

His instructions had been to take the water to bring them to a properly humble frame of mind. It was part of his job to protect his employers' property; that was what he was there for. He had taken ordinary precautions, too, so far as the dam was concerned. But he had entirely overlooked the fact, as obvious as that water runs downhill, that if his canal were cut at the coulée its contents must flow back into the river. Everything was now set back. With this second outrage land sales would stop altogether. It was a sickening jolt. He thought of the questions he would have to answer. He would be asked why he hadn't done this. It would be no answer to point out that he had done that. People were always so cursed wise after the event!

And then he remembered Casey Dunne's words. Dunne had said that he was not getting enough water, had asked for more, had practically given him warning. Now every rancher's ditches were running full, and all he had to show for his work was a horrible mass of wreckage.

Farwell had disliked Dunne at first sight; now he hated him. He would have liked to come to actual grips with him, to break that lean, wiry body with his own tremendous strength, to bruise and batter that quietly mocking face with his great fists.