"What do you think they meant?"
"What any sensible man would think. You may take sufficient water to run your trains, to fill your tanks, to use in any way in connection with your business of transportation, and nobody will object to that; but when you undertake to divert a whole river to irrigate lands in order to sell them, you go too far. That is the business of a real-estate company, and not of a railway company."
Cromwell York, who had obtained the unanimous opinions of three eminent corporation counsel upon that very point, smiled tolerantly.
"You are not a lawyer, Mr. Dunne?"
"No."
"Nor am I. But I have had this clause passed upon, and I tell you that we are quite within our rights. The charter covers the case completely, according to the best legal opinion."
"But nobody thought of irrigation when this charter was granted," objected Dunne. "The land was supposed to be worthless. That was why Prairie Southern got such a large land grant. You know that."
"That has nothing to do with the case. Let us stick to the point. What, so far, have you to complain of?"
"This," said Dunne shortly. "You have a charter which you say entitles you to all the water in the river. You are constructing ditches sufficient to carry it all; you are constructing a dam to divert it all; and you are selling land to an acreage which, if cultivated, will require it all. You admit your intentions. When that dam is built and those ditches are filled our ranches must go dry. It spells our ruin. We are living on sufferance. And yet you ask us what we have to complain of!"
"I need scarcely assure you," said York, "that unless and until we require the water it will not be taken."