They found her father and Gowan resting in the cool porch after a particularly hard day's ride. The puncher was strumming soft melodies on a guitar. Knowles was peering at his report of the Reclamation Service, held to windward of a belching cloud of pipe smoke. His daughter darted to him regardless of the offending incense. "Oh, Daddy!" she cried. "What do you think! Mr. Blake is coming to visit us!" "Blake?" repeated the cowman, staring blankly over his pipe. "Yes, Mr. Blake, the engineer--the great Thomas Blake of the Zariba Dam." "By--James!" swore Gowan, dropping his guitar and springing up to confront Ashton with deadly menace in his cold eyes. "This is what comes of nursing scotched rattlers! This here tenderfoot skunk has been foreriding for that engineer! I warned you, Mr. Knowles! I told you he had sent for him to come out here and cut up our range with his damned irrigation schemes!" "I send for Blake--I?" protested Ashton. He burst into a discordant laugh. "Laugh, will you?" said Gowan, dropping his hand to his hip. The girl flung herself before him. "Stop! stop, Kid! Are you locoed? He had nothing to do with it. I myself sent for Mr. Blake." "_You!_" cried Gowan. The cowman slowly stood up, his eyes fixed on the girl in an incredulous stare. "Chuckie," he half whispered, "you couldn't ha' done it. You're--you're dreaming, honey!" "No. Listen, Daddy! It's been growing on you so--your fear that we'll lose our range. I thought if Mr. Blake came and told you it can't be done--Don't you see?" "What if he finds it can?" huskily demanded Knowles. "He can't. I'm sure he can't. If he builds a reservoir, where could he get enough water to fill it? The watershed above us is too small. He couldn't impound more than three thousand acre feet of flood waters at the utmost." "How about the whole river going to waste, down in Deep Canyon?" queried her father. "Heavens, Mr. Knowles! How would he ever get a drop of water out of that awful chasm?" exclaimed Ashton. "I looked down into it. The river is thousands of feet down. It must be way below the level of Dry Mesa." "I'm not so sure about that," replied the cowman. "Holes are mighty deceiving." "Well, what if it ain't so deep as the mesa?" argued Gowan, for once half in accord with Ashton. "It shore is deep enough, ain't it? Even allowing that this man Blake is the biggest engineer in the U.S., how's he going to pump that water up over the rim of the canyon? The devil himself couldn't do it." "If I am mistaken regarding the depth, that is, if the river really is higher than the mesa," remarked Ashton, "there is the possibility that it might be tapped by a tunnel through the side of High Mesa. But even if it is possible, it still is quite out of the question. The cost would be prohibitive." "You see, Daddy!" exclaimed Isobel. "Lafe knows. He's an engineer himself." "How's that?" growled her father, frowning heavily at Ashton. "You never told me you're an engineer."