The Ely miner., 1919-06-13

general manager of the company. He
was allowed to resign, to save his
face, as the Chinese say. may tell
you that 1t was a case of firing. He'd
made. terrible fluke down there"
II know" murmured Rickard. 1t
was growing more difficult, more dis
tasteful. If Marshall wanted him to
supplant Hardin! 1t had been incred-
ible, that mans folly! Reckless gam
bling, nothing else. Make cut in the
banks of wild river, without put
ting in head gates to control it; a
child would guess better! 1t was a
problem now, all right; the writer of
the report he'd just read wasn't the
only one who was prophesying failure.
Let the river cut back, and the gov
ernment works at Laguna would be
useless; pickle Hardin had made.
Still to gain time he suggested that
Marshall tell him the situation. "Tve
followed only the engineering side of
1t. don't know the relationship Of
the two companies"
Where the railroad came in? The
inside of that story? Pm responsible
| Il guaranteed to Faraday the closing
of that break. There was big dis
trict to save, a district that the rail-
road tapped-but I'll tell you that
LATER" He was leisurely putting blue,
perfectly formed rings into the air,
his eyes admiring them.
Perhaps you've heard how Estrada,
the general, took party of men into
the desert to sell mine he owned.
After the deal was made he decided
to let it slip. He'd found something
bigger to do, more to his liking than
the sale of mine. Estrada was a
big man, great man. He had the
Idea Powell and others had, of turn
ing the river, of saving the desert. He
dreamed himself of doing it. If sick
ness hadn't come to him the Colorado
would be meekly carrying water now
instead of flooding a country. Pity
Eduardo, the son, is not like him. He's
like his mother-you never know what
they are dreaming about Not at all
alike, my wife and Estrada's."
Then it came to Riekard that he
had heard somewhere that Marshall
and General Estrada had married sis
ters, famous beauties of Guadalaj jara.
He began to piece together the per-
sonal background of the story.
"It was "a long time before Estrada
could get it started, and it's long
story. As soon as he began he was
knocked down. Other men took hold.
You'll hear it all in the valley. Har-
din took a day to tell it to me! He
sees himself as martyr. Promoters
got in; the thing swelled into a
swindle, spectacular swindle. They
showed oranges on Broadway before
a drop of water was brought in Har-
din has lots of grievances! He'd made
the original survey. So when he sued
for his back wages he took the papers
of the bankrupt company in settle
ment. He's grim sort Of Intellectual
bulldog. He's clung with his teeth
to the Estrada idea. And he's not big
enough for it. He uses the optimistic
method-gives you only half Of case,
half Of the problem, gets started on
false premise. Well, he got up an
other company on that method, the
Desert Reclamation company, tried to
whitewash the desert project; it was
in bad odor then, and he managed to
bring a few drops Of water to the
desert" . -t saa
'It was Hardin who did that?"
"But he couldn't deliver enough.
The cut silted up. He cut again, the
same story. He was in a pretty bad
hole. He'd brought colonists in al
ready; he'd used their money, the
money they'd paid for land with wa
ter, to make the cuts. No wonder he
was desperate" F@ d
1t recalled the man Rickard had
disliked, the rough-shod, loud-voiced
student of his first class in engineer
ing. That was the man who had made
the fiamboyant carpets of the Holmes
boarding house impossible any longer
to him. He had sudden disconcert-
ing vision Of a large unfinished face
peering through the honeysuckles at
man and girl drawing apart in
confusion from their first and last
kiss. He wanted to tell Marshall he
was wasting his time. /, ngf
overwhelmed with lawsuits" Mar
shall was saying. Hardin had to de-
liver water to those colonists. 1t was