My father nodded. “That’s what I think,” said he.
“And there’s another thing,” cried I, taking up Joe’s line of prophecy. “If a big vein of lead-ore should be discovered anywhere about the head of our creek, the natural way for the freighters to get down to San Remo would be through here, if——”
“That’s it,” interrupted my father. “That’s the whole thing. I-f, if.”
Dear me! What a big, big little word that was. To represent it of the size it looked to us, it would be necessary to paint it on the sky with the tail of a comet dipped in an ocean of ink!
After a pause of a minute or two, during which we all sat silent, considering over again what we had considered many and many a time before: whether there were not some possible way of draining off the “forty rods,” Joe suddenly straightened himself in his seat, rumpled his hair once more—by which sign I knew he had some idea in his head—and said:
“I suppose you have thought of it before, Mr. Crawford, but would it be possible to run a tunnel up from the lower edge of the First Mesa, and so draw off the water?”
“I have thought of it before, Joe,” replied my father, “and while I think it might work, I have concluded that it is out of the question. How long a tunnel would it take, do you calculate?”
“Well, a little more than a quarter of a mile, I suppose.”
“Yes. Say twelve hundred feet, at least. Well, to run a tunnel of that length would be cheap at ten dollars a foot.”
“Phew!” Joe whistled, opening his eyes widely. “That is a staggerer, sure enough. It does look as if there was no way out of it.”