“I’m going to live wherever you do, Joy,” declared Margie, helping herself to more.
“You’ll have another sort of ache, if you don’t quit eating soon,” chuckled Ted. “We’re going to irrigate this afternoon and we’ll need your help.”
Leaving the girls to wash the dishes, the young homesteaders set out with Mr. Jay and their horses to prepare the dry land. Mindful of all they had learned the day before, the boys were able to work much more rapidly, and when the girls came to call them for dinner, four fields were ready for irrigation.
After dinner Ted took his sisters and Joy to the farm ditch and instructed them about placing the canvas dams so as to throw the water into the laterals and onto the four fields.
“But we’ll get our skirts sopping,” protested Sallie, as they walked to the dam.
“Why can’t we put on some of the boys’ overalls?” asked Margie. “It would be a lark and there won’t be anybody to see us.”
Accordingly it was decided that they should don the apparel. Quickly they returned to the hut to do so, and while they were busy at the task, Ted took out the table Steve had given him and calculated the length of time it would take to irrigate the four fields.
“Why, we can do it all in half a day,” he declared, after having covered several pieces of paper with figures. “Our stream is 37 miner’s inches. With that we can get the required 2.3 acre-inches onto a field in a little more than three hours. But we have so much water in the reservoir that we can turn on 74 miner’s inches, which will reduce the time to an hour and a half, only six hours for the four fields.”
“We can do it sooner than that,” returned his brother. “We have head enough so that we can irrigate all four fields at once. Anyhow, we’ll try it.”
“What’s a ‘head’ of water?” demanded Margie. “I’ve heard of blockheads, but never of a water—”