“The only way I see is to divert the flow here; then, if our underground stream stops, we shall know this is it.”
“Yes, but how are we to divert it?”
“Why, look here,”Joe answered. “The spring, I suppose, is a little extra-strong just now, causing that slight overflow up above here. Well, what we must do is to take the line marked out for us by the overflow, and following it from the channel down to the crack in the crater-wall, break up and throw aside all the rocks that get in the way; then cut a new channel and send the whole stream off through the crack, when it will pour into the cañon, run across the ranch on the surface, and the ‘forty rods’ will dry up!”
He gazed at me eagerly, with his fists shut tight, as though he were all ready to spring upon the impeding rocks and fling them out of the way at once.
“That’s all right, Joe,”I replied. “It’s a good programme. But it’s a tremendous piece of work, all the same. There are scores of rocks to be broken up and moved; and when that is done, there is still the new channel to be cut in the solid stone bed of the crater. The present channel is about eighteen inches deep; we shall have to make the new one six inches deeper, and something like a hundred feet long: a big job by itself, Joe.”
“I know that,”Joe answered. “It’s a big job, sure enough, and will take time and lots of hard work. Still, we can do it——”
“And what’s more we will do it!”I cried. “What’s the best way of setting about it?”
“We shall have to blast out the channel and blow to pieces all the bigger rocks,”Joe replied. “It would take forever to do it with pick and sledge—in fact, it couldn’t be done. We shall have to use powder and drill.”
“Well, then,”said I, “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll borrow the tools from Tom Connor. He left a number of drills, you know, stored in our blacksmith-shop, and he’ll lend ’em to us I’m sure. One of us had better drive back to the Big Reuben to-morrow morning and ask him.”