Desert Conquest Part 2

"Two can play at that," York replied grimly.

"There's mighty little play about Jim Hess when he goes on the warpath," Rapp commented. "Well, let's get the worst over. There's short of three hundred miles of this Prairie Southern, as I understand it. It runs somewhere near the foothills. The country doesn't grow anything yet. The only reason for its building was a coal-mine boom that petered out. Its bonding privilege was one of the most disgraceful bits of jobbery ever lobbied through a corrupt little legislature. It was a political scandal from its birth. It is burdened with a mult.i.tude of equities. It never has paid, and likely it never will pay. You know these things as well as I do. I'm hanged if I see why you want it."

"If we don't get it some one else will," said York. "I wish you'd look into their affairs, and see what sort of a legal bill of health they have. I am putting our accountants on their finances."

"All right," said Rapp. "I'll give 'em a bill of health like a pest-house record. Their bonded indebtedness is shocking, and they have all sorts of litigation pending against them."

"I'll tell you one thing," York said. "They have a large land grant."

"Which they got because the land was worthless."

"Supposed to be worthless," York amended.

Rapp c.o.c.ked his head like a terrier that suddenly discerns a large and promising rat hole. "Come through," he said.

"This land," York explained, "is in the dry belt. It was supposed to be worth nothing when the P.S. charter was granted, and so the government of that day was generous with it. As a matter of fact, the land is good when irrigated; and it can be irrigated--or most of it can."

"How do you know it's any good?"

"There are some first-cla.s.s ranches down there."

"If that is so, why don't P.S. put the lands on the market? They need the money."

"No advertising or selling machinery, and not enough money to put in an irrigation system, and no credit. They can't afford to wait."

Rapp considered. "Plenty of water for these lands?"

"That's a question," York admitted. "The main water down that way is a river called the Coldstream. The ranchers have their water records, which of course take precedence of any we might file. There may be enough--I don't know. That will have to be ascertained. But if this stuff can be irrigated it can be sold. Our land department will look after that."

"Almost any sort of an irrigated gold brick can be sold nowadays," said Rapp cynically. "I admit that you have some pretty fair con men in your land department."

"We never put anything on the market that wasn't a perfectly legitimate proposition," said York, with dignity.

"Depends on what you call 'legitimate,'" said Rapp. "I've read some of your land advertising. If you sold shares by means of a prospectus no more truthful, you'd do time for it. You know blame well you unload your stuff on people who depend on selected photographs and pretty pen pictures of annual yields per acre. Of course, any man who buys land without seeing it deserves exactly the sort of land he gets. I'm not criticising at all--merely pointing out that I know the rudiments of the game."

"Help us play it, then," said York. "Dig into Prairie Southern, and see what we get for our money."

William Bates Rapp did so. By various complicated and technical doc.u.ments he grafted the moribund Prairie Southern upon the vigorous trunk of Western Airline, after which he washed his hands of the operation by a carefully worded letter accompanying a huge bill of costs, and dismissed the matter from his mind; for it was only one transaction among a score of more important ones.

Later, the experts of the Airline descended on the carca.s.s of poor old Prairie Southern, to see what had best be done with the meat upon its bones, and the result was fairly satisfactory. The traffic was inconsiderable, but showed signs of improvement. The land hunger was upon the people, frightened by the cry that cheap lands were almost at an end. Many were stampeded into buying worthless acres which they did not want, in the fear that if they delayed there would be nothing left to buy. Fake real-estate schemes--colonies, ten-acre orchard tracts, hen farms, orange groves, prune plantations--flourished over the width and length of a continent, and promoters reaped a harvest. Land with a legitimate basis of value doubled and trebled in price between seasons.

It was a period of inflation, of claim without proof, of discounting the future. Men raw from the city bought barren acres on which practical farmers had starved, in the expectation of making an easy, healthful living. And in this madness the lands of the old Prairie Southern grant, at one time supposed to be worthless, justified the foresight of Cromwell York by reaching a value in excess of even his expectations. For, given water, they were very good lands indeed, and Western Airline was prepared to sell them with a water guarantee.

This took time; and it was two years after the acquisition of Prairie Southern that York, a trifle grayer and a shade more dictatorial than before, was one morning handed a card by his secretary. He frowned at it, for the name was strange.

"Who's this Casey Dunne, and what does he want?"

Dunne, it appeared, wished to see him in connection with the Coldstream irrigation project, then well under way. He owned property in that vicinity; he also represented certain other ranchers.

"Lawyer?" snapped York. The secretary thought not. "Show him in."

When Dunne entered York did not immediately look up from his papers.

This was for general effect. When he did look he became conscious that even as he was measuring so was he being measured.

Casey Dunne carried an atmosphere of outdoors. From the deep tan of his neck, against which the white of his collar lay in startling contrast, to the slender, sinewy brown hands, he bore token of wind and sun and activity in the open. His clothes were new, excellent in fit and material; but, though he did not wear them awkwardly, one gathered the impression that he was accustomed to easier, more informal garments.

His manner was entirely self-confident, and betrayed neither awe nor embarra.s.sment. Which gave York an unfavourable impression to start with.

"Take a chair, Mr. Dunne," he said. "I can give you five minutes or ten. Not more. What can I do for you?"

"I may have to ask you to stretch that time limit a little," said Dunne, smiling as if York were an old friend. "Let me start at the beginning, and then I won't have to go back. I live down on the Coldstream, on the line of the old Prairie Southern, which you acquired a couple of years ago. With it you got their land grant. Your land department, after looking the Coldstream blocks over, decided to irrigate and sell these lands; and they undertook a main ditch and a system of ditches, and they are selling the lands at the present time."

"I know all this," said York impatiently. "Carrol runs our land department, and he deals with these matters. He's the man you want to see."

"He referred me to you," said Dunne. "I know this is ancient history, but I'm cleaning up as I go along. You will get your water for these lands from the Coldstream. I and others own property there, and we get our water from the river below your intake. Are you aware that your ditch system is capable of carrying, and that the lands you are selling with a guarantee of an adequate water supply will require, _almost the entire normal flow of the Coldstream_?"

"I have understood from our land department"--York chose his words carefully--"that the river contains ample water to irrigate our lands."

"Which, I need scarcely point out, is not an answer to my question,"

Dunne commented quietly.

"But which," York countered, "is all that I am concerned with, Mr.

Dunne."

The railway man and the younger, bronzed out-of-doors man eyed each other in silence while one might count ten. In the last words the railway's policy had been laid down, an issue defined, a challenge given.

Casey Dunne's eyes narrowed a little, and his mouth tightened. He spoke very quietly, but it was the exercised quiet of self-restraint:

"I had hoped that you would not take that ground, Mr. York. Let me show you how this concerns myself and others. Take my own case: I have a ranch down there; I have my water record. I have gone on working the ranch, making improvements from year to year, and every dollar I could sc.r.a.pe up I put into more land. I wasn't speculating. I can gamble with any man when I have to; but this wasn't gambling. There was the land, and there was the water. The increase of value was merely a question of time. Others bought as I bought. We put our money and our years of work into lands along the Coldstream. Our whole stake is there. I want you to appreciate that--to get our viewpoint--because with us this isn't a question of greater or less profit, but a question of existence itself.

If you take away our water our lands are worthless, and we go broke. I can't put it any plainer than that."

"And without water," said York, "the railway's lands are worthless--or so I am told. The unfortunate feature, according to what you say, seems to be that there is not water enough for you and for us. Therefore each must stand upon his legal rights."

"You raise the point," said Dunne. "It is a question of legal and moral right against what I think--and I don't want to be offensive--but what I think is an attempt to read into a clause of an old charter a meaning which it was never intended to carry."

York's eyebrows drew down. "The clause in the Prairie Southern's charter to which I presume you refer is perfectly clear. It states that the railway company may take from the Coldstream or any other running stream 'sufficient water for its own purposes.' Those are the exact words of the charter. It saves existing rights, but there were none then existing. Therefore the railway's right is first, and all water records are subject to it. The charter further empowers the company to improve, buy, sell, and deal in land. These, then, are purposes of the company, according to its charter, and for these purposes it may construct and maintain all necessary works. Could anything be clearer?

We acquired every right that Prairie Southern possessed. The rights were in existence when you bought your land. Therefore I do not think you should complain when we exercise them, even though they may affect you to some extent."

"I follow your argument," Dunne observed, "but the words 'sufficient water for its own purposes' were never intended to mean that the railway should take the whole river."

"What do you think they meant?"

"What any sensible man would think. You may take sufficient water to run your trains, to fill your tanks, to use in any way in connection with your business of transportation, and n.o.body will object to that; but when you undertake to divert a whole river to irrigate lands in order to sell them, you go too far. That is the business of a real-estate company, and not of a railway company."

Cromwell York, who had obtained the unanimous opinions of three eminent corporation counsel upon that very point, smiled tolerantly.

"You are not a lawyer, Mr. Dunne?"

"No."