Evidently his keeping silence was wise, for a minute later Whitney continued, “Although everything seems all right on the surface, I’m afraid there’s going to be trouble with the Mexican laborers. Somebody’s been tampering with them and the trouble down on the border isn’t helping the situation any.”
“Gee, if the Greasers struck it would tie us up for fair,” broke in Bob anxiously. “Except for the mechanics, and that bunch of Indians from the reservation, they are about all we’ve got. We would have to shut down, wouldn’t we?”
“I don’t reckon it would be as bad as that,” answered Whitney. “When Uncle Sam once starts something, he is pretty likely to carry it through. But we’d have a rough time of it all right. If I could only find out who’s behind ’em—they are not capable of stirring it up amongst themselves—I’d be able to nip the trouble before it got started. If they do strike and we are delayed, the Water Users Association will start on the rampage again.”
“Who are they and why should they be worried by what happens here?” Bob wanted to know.
A bullet whistled by him. Then came another and
another. (Page [195].)
“They are the farmers who expect to benefit by the water stored by the dam,” explained the man. “They are the people who got together and collectively pledged themselves to pay the Government a certain amount of money each year until all the money the Government has spent is returned. They firmly believe that the engineers in charge of the dam take a malicious pleasure in delaying progress and that they try to spend as much money as possible simply to make the farmers pay more in the end. Naturally, as they make such a fuss, all the engineers know that whenever trouble comes, they will be the first mourners.”
“Gee, that’s tough!” commented Bob, happy that Mr. Whitney had enough confidence to tell him all these things. “But about the Mexicans; you don’t suspect anyone around the job is the trouble maker, do you?”
“No.” The answer was final and assured. “But I wouldn’t put it beyond a lot of the stock and cattlemen around here. They’ve been sore about the dam, with as little reason as they have on every job the Service has tackled. They always end by being a lot better off with the project finished than they ever would have been if the range had been left alone. At first they can’t help but suffer some annoyance from the building of the dam. A good part of the land which we will irrigate, while not sufficiently productive to be good farming land, raises enough natural grass to feed stock. Above the dam the stored water will form a lake that will cover thousands of acres of such pasturage, I’ll admit. But the cattlemen are so blind that this point is all that they can see. They will have the same chance to profit by the irrigated lands below. It has always worked out well in the end.”
“I think it’s a rotten deal they’re handing you!” exploded the boy.