Abe rolled another cigarette and with the first cloud of smoke came the slow words: "Well, then, let's get the data."
Even at what seemed a hopeless suggestion the discouraged heart of the old engineer beat more quickly. He turned his face toward the younger man. "Where?"
Abe stretched forth a long arm toward the broad Colorado at their feet and toward the desert beyond. "The King's Basin. You've often told me about that country. If I sabe the lay of the land we're somewhere at the southern end of it, at the beginning of the high ground of the delta that shuts out the ocean. There's water enough here for five times that territory."
"Do you mean—" the Seer began quickly and stopped.
"I mean this: you already know the north and northeastern part of the Basin from the railroad. You have been through it from the west on the San Felipe trail. Send the outfit in to-morrow with the boys. Give them orders on the bank for their pay and let them go. You and I can scout around the delta end of that country over there for a week or two and if it looks good, with what you have already seen, you have enough to talk on. Then go on to New York and when you report on the southern project turn loose on 'em with this."
"Abe," said the engineer thoughtfully, "if anyone but you were to propose that I go before these capitalists to interest them in a project without ever having put an instrument on it I would knock him down. Such recklessness would ruin any civil engineer in the world, if—"
"If he guessed wrong," finished Abe dryly.
"If he guessed wrong," admitted the Seer reluctantly.
"If it looked good enough for you to risk an opinion you would have some strong talking points," ventured Abe. "There must be five hundred thousand acres in that old sea-bed. The Colorado carries water enough for five times that area. There's the railroad already built along one side; there's San Felipe and the whole Coast country within easy reach. It beats the other proposition a hundred to one, if it can be done at all."
The Seer rose and paced up and down in the bright moonlight. Presently he said: "If you accept the position with Hunt up north you should go on at once. That job would be the best thing you ever had. Don't you want to take it?"