"I think you can close the sluices," said Geoffrey, when the foreman returned. "Then set all hands filling in this hole. I want you, Gillow."
"We are going to have trouble," he predicted, when English Jim stood before him in his tent. "Hudson unfortunately is either connected with our enemies, or in their clutches, and he'll try to persuade his neighbors to join him in an appeal to the authorities. Send a messenger off at once with this telegram to Vancouver, but stay—first find me the drawing of the defective gate."
English Jim spent several minutes searching before he answered: "I'm sorry I can't quite lay my hands upon it. It may be in Vancouver, and I'll write a note to the folks down there."
He did so, and when he went out shook his head ruefully. "That confounded sketch must have been the one I lost on board the steamer," he decided with a qualm of misgiving. "However, there is no use meeting trouble half-way by telling Thurston so, until I'm sure beyond a doubt."
Some time had passed, and the greater portion of Hudson's ranch still lay under water when, in consequence of representations made by its owner and some of his friends, a Government official armed with full powers to investigate held an informal court of inquiry in the big store shed, at which most of the neighboring ranchers were present. Geoffrey and Thomas Savine, who brought a lawyer with him, awaited the proceedings with some impatience.
"I have nothing to do with any claim for damages. If necessary, the sufferers can appeal to the civil courts," announced the official. "My business is to ascertain whether, as alleged, the way these operations are conducted endangers the occupied, and unappropriated Crown lands in this vicinity. I am willing to hear your opinions, gentlemen, beginning with the complainants."
Rancher Hudson was the first to speak, and he said:
"No sensible man would need much convincing that it's mighty bad for growing crops to have a full-bore flood turned loose on them. What's the use of raising hay and potatoes for the river to wash away? And it's plain that what has just happened is going to happen again. Before Savine began these dykes the river spread itself all over the lower swamp; now the walls hold it up, and each time it makes a hole in them, our property's most turned into a lake. I'm neither farming for pleasure nor running a salmon hatchery."
There was a hum of approval from the speaker's supporters, whose possessions lay near the higher end of the valley, and dissenting growls from those whose boundaries lay below. After several of the ranchers from the lower valley had spoken the official said:
"I hardly think you have cited sufficient to convince an unprejudiced person that the works are a public danger. You have certainly proved that two holdings have been temporarily flooded, but the first speaker pointed out that this was because the river was prevented from spreading all over the lower end of the valley, as it formerly did. Now a portion of the district is already under cultivation, and even the area under crop exceeds that of the damaged plots by at least five acres to one."