"You say that just as if you were Mr. Williams's assistant," she threw back at him. "But I haven't time to quarrel with you this morning, Mr. Real-name Smith. If you'll take your foot off the fender I'll go on up to the dam and find Mr. Williams."
"You couldn't quarrel with me if you should try," was the good-natured rejoinder, and Smith tried in vain to imagine himself taking his present attitude with any of the young women he had known in his cotillon days—with Verda Richlander, for example. Then he added: "You won't find Williams at the camp. He started out early this morning to ride the lower ditch lines beyond Little Creek, and he said he wouldn't be back until some time to-morrow. Now will you tell me what you're needing—and give me a possible chance to get my pay raised?"
"Oh!" she exclaimed, with a little gasp of disappointment, presumably for the Williams absence. "I've simply got to find Mr. Williams—or somebody! Do you happen to know anything about the lawsuit troubles?"
"I know all about them; Williams has told me."
"Then I'll tell you what Mr. Martin telephoned. He said that three men were going to pretend to relocate a mining claim in the hills back of the dam, somewhere near the upper end of the reservoir lake-that-is-to-be. They're doing it so that they can get out an injunction, or whatever you call it, and then we'll have to buy them off, as the others have been bought off."
Smith was by this time entirely familiar with the maps and profiles and other records of the ditch company's lands and holdings.
"All the land within the limits of the flood level has been bought and paid for—some of it more than once, hasn't it?" he asked.
"Oh, yes; but that doesn't make any difference. These men will claim that their location was made long ago, and that they are just now getting ready to work it. It's often done in the case of mining claims."
"When is all this going to happen?" he inquired.
"It is already happening," she broke out impatiently. "Mr. Martin said the three men left town a little after daybreak and crossed on the Brewster bridge to go up on the other side of the Timanyoni. They had a two-horse team and a camping outfit. They are probably at work long before this time."