“You got no kick at Black. Hadn’t been for him I’ll bet Ruth wouldn’t ’a’ been here a-tall. Point is, that with him there Jake and this Cig couldn’t put over any shenanigan.”
The owner of the Diamond Bar K stepped across to the homesteader. “Take it all back, Don. I’m mightily obliged to you for bringing my li’l’ girl home. If I ever get a chance—”
Black interrupted. “Oh, that’s all right. What do you take me for, anyhow? I ain’t any Apache. Why wouldn’t I bring a kid home when I find her lost? You birds make me tired.”
He nodded brusquely, wheeled his horse, and rode away.
CHAPTER XXI
IRREFUTABLE LOGIC
Merrick sat at a table in the log cabin that served him as field headquarters. A cheap lamp pinned down one corner of the map in front of him, a jar of tobacco the opposite one. Tug Hollister looked over his shoulder. He was here to get instructions for his new assignment.
Piñon knots crackled cheerfully in the fireplace, emphasizing the comfort within the cabin as compared with the weather outside. It was raining heavily and had been for forty-eight hours.
“Here’s where the engineers of the Reclamation Service ran their lines,” Merrick said, following with the point of a pencil a crooked course from Sweetwater Dam to the upper mouth of Elk Creek Cañon. “They made a mistake, probably because they were short of time. It was clear that the water from the dam had to get down to the Flat Tops by way of Elk Creek if at all. As soon as they learned that the upper entrance to the cañon is higher than the site of the dam by eighty feet they admitted the project would not do. All the reports are based on that. Water won’t flow uphill. Therefore no feasible connecting canal could be built.”
Hollister walked round and took the chair at the other side of the table. “Irrefutable logic,” he said.
“Absolutely. But I wasn’t sure of the facts upon which it was based.”