The Sweetwater Dam project had been initiated to water what was known as the Flat Tops, a mesa that stretched from the edge of the valley to the foothills. It had been and still was being bitterly opposed by some of the cattlemen of Paradise Valley because its purpose was to reclaim for farming a large territory over which cattle had hitherto ranged at will. Their contention held nothing of novelty. It had been argued all over the West ever since the first nesters came in to dispute with the cattle barons the possession of the grazing lands. A hundred districts in a dozen States had heard the claim that this was a cattle country, unfit for farming and intensive settlement. Many of them had seen it disproved.
The opposition of powerful ranching interests had not deterred Justin Merrick. Threats did not disturb him. He set his square jaw and pushed forward to the accomplishment of his purpose. As he rode or drove through the valley, he knew that he was watched with hostile eyes by reckless cowpunchers who knew that his success would put a period to the occupation they followed. Two of them had tried to pick a quarrel with him at Wild Horse on one occasion, and had weakened before his cool and impassive fearlessness.
But he did not deceive himself. At any hour the anger of these men might flare out against him in explosive action. For the first time in his life he was carrying a revolver.
Clint Reed was a stockholder and a backer of the irrigation project. He owned several thousand acres on the Flat Tops, and it was largely on account of his energy that capital had undertaken the reclamation of the dry mesa.
The head and front of the opposition was Jake Prowers, who had brought down from early days an unsavory reputation that rumor said he more than deserved. Strange stories were whispered about this mild-mannered little man with the falsetto voice and the skim-milk eyes. One of them was that he had murdered from ambush the successful wooer of the girl he wanted, that the whole countryside accepted the circumstantial evidence as true, and in spite of this he had married the young widow within a year and buried her inside of two. Nesters in the hills near his ranch had disappeared and never been seen again. Word passed as on the breath of the winds that Prowers had dry-gulched them. Old-timers still lived who had seen him fight a duel with two desperadoes on the main street of Wild Horse. He had been carried to the nearest house on a shutter with three bullets in him, but the two bad men had been buried next day.
The two most important ranchmen in the valley were Clint Reed and Jake Prowers. They never had been friendly. Usually they were opposed to each other on any public question that arose. Each was the leader of his faction. On politics they differed. Clint was a Republican, Jake a Democrat. There had been times when they had come close to open hostilities. The rivalry between them had deepened to hatred on the part of Prowers. When Reed announced through the local paper the inception of the Sweetwater Dam project, his enemy had sworn that it should never go through while he was alive.
Hitherto Prowers had made no move, but everybody in the district knew that he was biding his time. Competent engineers of the Government had passed adversely on this irrigation project. They had decided water could not be brought down from the hills to the Flat Tops. Jake had seen the surveys and believed them to be correct. He was willing that Reed and the capitalists he had interested should waste their money on a fool’s dream. If Justin Merrick was right—if he could bring water through Elk Creek Cañon to the Flat Tops—it would be time enough for Prowers to strike. Knowing the man as he did, Clint Reed had no doubt that, if it became necessary in order to defeat the project, his enemy would move ruthlessly and without scruple. It was by his advice that Justin Merrick kept the dam guarded at night and carried a revolver with him when he drove over or tramped across the hills.
CHAPTER IX
UNDER FIRE
All day the faint far whir of the reaper could have been heard from the house of the Diamond Bar K ranch. The last of the fields had been cut. Much of the grain had been gathered and was ready for the thresher.
The crop was good. Prices would be fair. Clint Reed rode over the fields with the sense of satisfaction it always gave him to see gathered the fruits of the earth. His pleasure in harvesting or in rounding-up beef steers was not only that of the seller looking to his profit. Back of this was the spiritual gratification of having been a factor in supplying the world’s needs. To look at rippling wheat ripening under the sun, to feed the thresher while the fan scattered a cloud of chaff and the grain dropped into the sacks waiting for it, ministered to his mental well-being by justifying his existence. He had converted hundreds of acres of desert into fertile farm land. All his life he had been a producer of essentials for mankind. He found in this, as many farmers do, a source of content. He was paying his way in the world.