Shandon looked at him in amazement, thinking at first that the man was a little mad. But Ettinger's shrewd eyes were sane enough.
"We go right up to your lake," he cried shrilly. "We git busy with some engineers an' pick an' shovel men. We blow the side of a hill all to hell an' what happens? The water just comes a bulgin' down into Dry Creek, an' all we got to do down in the valley, twenty, thirty miles away, is dig ditches an' watch our land turn into a gold mine!"
In a flash Shandon saw the utter simplicity of the whole scheme. Whereas now the river from Laughter Lake shot down the mountains through its rocky gorge, watering his own land and running through little narrow, rocky valleys to the lower slopes, it might here near the head be deflected so that it sped at first through the cañon of the upper Dry Creek, and following a natural course be brought with little expense to Dry Valley. Ettinger's proposition was no fanciful dream; it was hard, unvarnished fact. And, as so often happens when a man sees a radiant possibility, he wondered that he had not seen it for himself long ago.
Here was the golden opportunity his soul, in a mist, had yearned for! He shot out his hand gripping Ruf Ettinger's until the little man squirmed. But even the pain of nearly crushed fingers did not drive the grin from Ettinger's face.
"You're on," he cried exultantly. "Shandon, we'll frame a deal that'll make millionaires out of us."
"And man's work!" was the thought stirring Shandon's heart and brightening his eyes.
They rode on, as Ettinger had planned from the beginning, and covered the two miles to Laughter Lake in a few minutes. They rode up the shoulder of the ridge to the level of the lake; and there Ruf Ettinger's eager finger pointed out where the work was to be done.
It was work which Nature might have planned when the mountains were carved, the lake set in its deep bowl. Fifteen feet from this end of the lake the water swept into a narrow channel, a ridge running down from each side. Here was the spot to deflect the waters before they sped on down over the steep fall. Upon the south side there was a jagged cut in the saw-toothed cliff line. Even now the lowest part of that cut, when once the free soil was scooped out, was not ten feet above the level of the water.
"I rode up here purt' near a week ago," said Ettinger. "I looked this over an' rode back all the way down Dry Creek. It's dead easy, Shandon."
Already Ettinger visualised the cut deepened and widened here with flood gates to control the current. He spurred his horse up the bank as far as he could force the animal, then got down and scrambled on, gesticulating and talking swiftly. Shandon followed him. In a little they came to a point from which they could look back upon the lake, and forward to the windings of the cañon through which Dry Creek ran in winter and spring.