This time Colonel Dexter Baldwin's smile was grim.
"You're just juggling now, John, and you know it. Out here on the woolly edge of things a dollar is just a plain iron dollar, and you can't make it two merely by calling it so."
"Never you mind about that," cut in the new financier. "The first rule of investment is that a dollar is worth just what it will earn in dividends; no more, and equally no less. You know, and I know, that if we can pull this thing through there is a barrel of money in it for all concerned. But we'll skip that part of it and stick to the details. At two to one for the amortization of the old company we shall still have something like three hundred thousand dollars treasury stock upon which to realize for the new capital needed, and that will be amply sufficient to complete the dam and the ditches and to provide a fighting fund. Now then, tell me this: how near can we come to placing that treasury stock right here in Timanyoni Park? In other words, can the money be had here at any price?"
"You mean that you don't want to go East to raise it?"
"I mean that we haven't time. More than that, it's up to us to keep this thing in the family, so to speak; and the moment we go into other markets, we are getting over into the enemy's country. I'm not saying that the money couldn't be raised in New York; but if we should go there, the trust would have an underhold on us, right from the start."
"I see," said the colonel, who was indeed seeing many things that his simple-hearted philosophy had never dreamed of; and then he answered the direct question. "There is plenty of money right here in the Timanyonis; not all of it in Brewster, perhaps, but in the country among the Gloria and Little Butte mine owners, smelter men, and the better class of ranchmen. Take Dick Maxwell, the railroad superintendent—he's a miner on the side, you know—he could put ten or twenty thousand more into it without turning a hair; and so could some of the others."
Smith nodded. He was getting his second wind now, and the race promised to be a keen joy.
"But they would have to be 'shown,' you think?" he suggested. "All right; we'll proceed to show them. Now we can come down to present necessities. We've got to keep the work going—and speed it up to the limit: we ought to double Williams's force at once—put on a night shift to work by electric light. I took the liberty of telephoning Williams from Hillcrest this morning while you were reading your newspaper. I told him to wire advertisements for more labor to the newspapers in Denver, offering wages high enough to make the thing look attractive."
The colonel blinked twice and swallowed hard.
"Say, John," he said, leaning across the table-desk; "you've sure got your nerve with you. Do you know what our present bank balance happens to be?"