Sprague had found a cigar in an overlooked pocket and was calmly lighting it. Though he did not tell Stillings so, the argument had finally gotten around into the field toward which he had been pushing it from the first.
“Three days ago, your High Line treasurer, Mr. J. Montague Smith, declared in the presence of witnesses—it was right here in this hotel lobby, and I happened to overhear it—that a ten-foot rise in the river, which, as you know, would submerge and sweep away miles of the railroad track in the canyon, would by no means endanger his dam. There you are, Mr. Stillings. Now fish or cut bait.”
“Great Scott! what could Smith have been thinking of!” ejaculated the lawyer.
“It was merely a bit of loyal brag, as he admitted to Starbuck and me on the train this afternoon; and it had been craftily provoked by one of the men who heard it. But he said it, and what is more, he said it to—Jennings!”
This time the attorney’s start carried him out of his chair and stood him upon his feet.
“I shall have to see Smith at once,” he said hurriedly. “Still, I can’t believe that these New York stock pirates would authorize any such murderous thing as this!”
“Authorize murder or violence? Of course not; big business never does that. What it does is to put a man into the field, telling him in general terms the end that is to be accomplished. The head pushers would turn blue under their finger-nails if you’d charge them with murder.”
“But that is what this would amount to—cold-blooded murder!”
“Hold on a minute,” objected Sprague. “Let’s apply a little scientific reasoning. Suppose this thing has been accurately figured out, engineering-wise. Suppose that, by careful computation, it has been found that a certain quantity of water, turned loose at the mouth of Mesquite Valley, would produce a flood of a certain height in the full length of Timanyoni Canyon—say ten or twelve feet—sufficient to obliterate thirty-five or forty miles of the railroad track. Below its path of the greatest destruction it comes out into your High Line reservoir lake, with some miles farther to go, and a greatly enlarged area over which to diffuse itself.”
Stillings was nodding intelligence. “I am beginning to see,” he said. “Ten feet in the canyon wouldn’t necessarily mean ten feet at Smith’s dam.”