"Yes. Just a little dam. That's easy." Winston drew a dust cloth over the map and weighted it down. "I wish I could get reliable data on the size of the dam it will take to turn some of this fool-money into a channel of common sense. What I am afraid of is, that when this boom breaks, the fools who have not been ruined, will be too badly scared to put money into government bonds, let alone an irrigation plant, and before they recover their wits, they'll either forget that there is such a place as California, or use it to slug themselves with when they feel another fool attack coming on."
"You leave that to me. I've got something more to show than a sand-flat pegged full of white stakes. Oranges will do better than that. Dry hillsides at nothing a square mile are going to be a thousand an acre when we get water on them."
"Let up, Elijah. Keep your chips off from that spot. That's a safer proposition than Ysleta lots with hot-air values, but it's the same kind of a wheel after all. If you once get the hum of it in your ears you'll go to pieces like all the rest."
"Are your estimates completed?"
"Yes; ready to be typed. You think they'd better be typed first, don't you?"
"Yes. We can have them printed afterward. I don't want anything gorgeous. Just plain, conservative figures. I have my statement of what has been done in the three years on my ranch. There is just one thing I have left out. It would be a telling thing to put in, but I think we can use it to better advantage by keeping it to ourselves."
"What's that?"
Elijah drew a neatly folded sheet from his pocket. It was filled with columns of figures.
"It's an idea of my own. What do you think of it?"
Winston looked rapidly over the sheet, then gave a low, meditative whistle.