"Huh!" Angus snorted. "She ought to look at her own."
"Heavens, Angus! I believe you're vain."
"Vain—blazes!" Angus growled. "I suppose I ought to be tickled when an old she-mick says I look like a totem pole."
"Like a god!" his sister chuckled. "Don't get sore, old boy. Miss Winton says she's never complimentary to the people she likes best. She thinks you've made a hit with the lady."
"Then I wonder what she'd have said about my figurehead if I hadn't?" Angus grinned. "I like the old girl, myself, but she sure does hand it to me. Well, I guess I can take my medicine."
But Angus had more important things to think about. One which began to worry him was exceptionally dry weather. High, drying winds sucked all the moisture from the soil, and with the loss of it the surface earth shifted and blew away from the roots of the grain. Deprived of this support, they twisted in the winds, their arteries of life hardened and withered. The grass crops were poor, short and wiry when they should have been lush and long. Pallid green instead of dark dominated the hue of the fields, the worst possible sign to the eye of the rancher. And this was in spite of the best that could be done by way of irrigation.
Now Angus obtained the water for his ditch system from a mountain creek fed by innumerable springs as well as by melting snows back in the hills. But for the first time in his experience he found himself without sufficient water. For he had been clearing land steadily, year after year, without enlarging his main ditch. So far the seasons had favored him. But now, in the first, old-time dry season for years, he found that his ditch was insufficient to irrigate his enlarged acreage.
It was out of the question to deepen or broaden the ditch just then. To do so would be a task of some magnitude, for from intake to ranch was nearly two miles. Time had packed and cemented the gravel of its banks, and further bound them with roots of grasses and willows. Again, to avoid expensive fluming the ditch wound sinuously around the flanks of several steep sidehills, and to disturb existing sidehill ditches is to invite slides, which necessitate flumes. He made up his mind to enlarge the ditch before another season, but meanwhile he had to depend on it. So he took every drop of water it would carry. The creek was high, a muddy torrent, and he set the water gate of his intake so that the ditch should run rap full, but no spill, and thus cause washouts along its banks.
One morning in the gray of dawn Angus awoke. The wind which had blown all night seemed to have lulled. He heard Gus pass his door on the way to the stables, but as he was dressing the big Swede returned. He pounded on Angus' door.
"Hey, gat oop!" he cried. He stuck his head inside, his eyes round and goggling. "We ent gat no watter!" he announced.