The Vision of Elijah Berl. Nason Frank Lewis
It's one of three things. Tunnels, aqueducts, or inverted siphons. It's a toss-up between tunnels and aqueducts, so far as cost is concerned. Siphons will cost about half, but you know what a choke or a break means, so out go siphons."
"You favor tunnels?"
"By all means. The ditch line is shortened by them, anyway. You'll save there."
Elijah gazed long and lovingly at the map, then looked up with a relieved sigh.
"Just a little dam will turn the whole stream into the canal."
"Yes. Just a little dam. That's easy." Winston drew a dust cloth over the map and weighted it down. "I wish I could get reliable data on the size of the dam it will take to turn some of this fool-money into a channel of common sense. What I am afraid of is, that when this boom breaks, the fools who have not been ruined, will be too badly scared to put money into government bonds, let alone an irrigation plant, and before they recover their wits, they'll either forget that there is such a place as California, or use it to slug themselves with when they feel another fool attack coming on."
"You leave that to me. I've got something more to show than a sand-flat pegged full of white stakes. Oranges will do better than that. Dry hillsides at nothing a square mile are going to be a thousand an acre when we get water on them."
"Let up, Elijah. Keep your chips off from that spot. That's a safer proposition than Ysleta lots with hot-air values, but it's the same kind of a wheel after all. If you once get the hum of it in your ears you'll go to pieces like all the rest."
"Are your estimates completed?"
"Yes; ready to be typed. You think they'd better be typed first, don't you?"
"Yes. We can have them printed afterward. I don't want anything gorgeous. Just plain, conservative figures. I have my statement of what has been done in the three years on my ranch. There is just one thing I have left out. It would be a telling thing to put in, but I think we can use it to better advantage by keeping it to ourselves."
"What's that?"
Elijah drew a neatly folded sheet from his pocket. It was filled with columns of figures.
"It's an idea of my own. What do you think of it?"
Winston looked rapidly over the sheet, then gave a low, meditative whistle.
"Are you sure of this?"
"Dead sure. I've been making observations with self-registering thermometers. That's the result." Elijah pointed to the sheet.
"A frostless belt!" Winston snatched the sheet from his drawing-board and bent over the map, one finger on the sheet, the other eagerly tracing lines on the surface of the map. "That's the greatest thing yet! There is a big fortune for all of us in that alone."
Elijah half closed his eyes, his teeth bared with a smile suggestive of malice.
"May I offer you some of your advice to me?"
"Certainly, and I'll take it too, when I need it. But say, Elijah, what in the name of the immortals do you want to leave this out for? It's the most telling thing we've got."
Elijah's eyes narrowed closely.
"I haven't got control of the whole belt yet. That's one thing. Another is, that when orange lands get under way, there's going to be a demand that the frostless belt isn't going to supply."
Winston's face set.
"You don't mean that you are going to sell lands for orange ranches that you know won't grow oranges?"
"I don't know that they won't grow oranges," Elijah answered doggedly. "I only know what will."
"You are going to let people find that out at their own expense?"
"Why not? That's the way I got my information."
There was a contemptuous look on Winston's face.
"Well, I'll be hanged. God does move in a mysterious way, if you are a fair sample of his stamping ground."
Elijah's face set with resentment. He straightened his lips for an angry retort, but restrained himself. He answered sullenly.
"I tell you, I don't know that the land won't grow oranges. I only know what will. I'm going to get control of this frostless belt. I found it and there's nothing wrong in taking advantage of it. Why not tell the Mexicans who own it now and are glad to sell for a dollar an acre, that their land will grow oranges and that it's worth a thousand?" There was a triumphant note in his last words.
Winston was ready to dismiss this phase of the question.
"Don't ask me. You settle that between you. I notice that the Almighty isn't a hard one to manage when you take him in your lap and reason with him. He usually comes around to your way of thinking."
Elijah's puritanism blinded his eyes to Winston's sarcasm. He saw only the apparently sacrilegious blasphemy of his words. He stood aghast as a superstitious heathen before his smitten idol. His five years of struggle in the West had changed him in no essential point. It had only given room for the full development of the motive that had lain dormant in his former cramped surroundings. Side by side, yet wholly independent the one of the other, his faith in Divine guidance, his reverence for God, his New England land-hunger, his greed for wealth, his lust for power, had grown and were growing with every new opportunity. He had learned to keep in the background, to some extent, the expression of his fanatical beliefs, not because his personal faith had waned, but in reality because he saw that Divine guidance had less convincing weight with others than the logic of hard, common sense. He learned only that which he wished to learn, believed only that which he wished to believe, did only that which he wished to do; not because of conscious hypocrisy, but because his very faith in God's guidance had blinded his eyes to its recognition and forbidden him to question his own desires.
Elijah thought quickly. Even Winston was hardly aware of the pause that ensued after his last words.
"We're drifting from our point. The water question comes first. The other can come up later."
"A good deal later, I hope," Winston replied drily. "Let's get over to Miss Lonsdale's office. She's doing my clerical work now."
Winston was not slow in noting signs and he had seen a good many in his relations with Elijah which had disquieted him. He went steadily on his way, however, confident in his own strength. He gathered a few papers in his hand and with Elijah went out into the street. They entered another redwood cottage that bore a sign, announcing, "Helen Lonsdale, Stenographer, Typewriter and Notary Public."
"Miss Lonsdale, my friend, Mr. Berl. We want some work done right away. Can you attend to it?"
Miss Lonsdale acknowledged the introduction, swept aside a litter of papers, stripped a half-written page from her machine, drew forth a note-book, and, after pushing her cuffs from her wrists, assumed a waiting attitude.
Winston addressed Elijah.
"I guess you're fixed now. You go on with Helen and I'll get back to my work. If you need me, I'll come in." Then he left the office.
Elijah had all but forgotten his business in the contemplation of the girl before him. It was with an almost unconscious feeling of resentment that he heard Winston call her familiarly "Helen."
"I am afraid, Miss Lonsdale," he began, when he was interrupted.
"You can call me Helen. Every one does. It saves time. Time is money, pretty fast too, just now." The words were spoken with a light ripple.
It faintly occurred to Elijah that he had heard something like her laughter before. There was a suggestion of fresh, crisp air, the opening of spring, of young green plants pushing through the black soil beside New England brooks. There was a further suggestion that very hard stones in the brook caused the soft ripples. One look in the great, liquid, black eyes that absorbed everything and gave back nothing, took away the disagreeable impression and replaced it with one more agreeable. There was no perceptible pause, for while Elijah's thoughts were busy with Helen Lonsdale, his hands were assorting his papers. He turned to Helen.
"I was going to say, that I am afraid this work will be rather dry."
Helen