“Arizona,” Rawley went on, after a minute of contemplating the complete satisfaction of Old Jess, “Arizona wants water for irrigation. One hundred and fifty thousand acres of desert land can be made fertile with the water of the Colorado, properly diverted into a system of canals.” “They kin have the water,” the Vulture conceded benificently. “We don’t want it. Glad to git rid of it. You kin tell ’em I said so.” Young Jess laughed hoarsely. “Sure. Glad to git it off’n our hands!” “The State of Nevada wants power for her mines. The copper interests are after a dam up the river here, so that they can resume the output of copper. They want a smelter, operated by power from the Colorado. Two million brake horse-power of electric energy is slipping past your door, worse than wasted. “California wants more power for her industries--” “She’s welcome,” Old Jess stated smugly. “We ain’t hoggin’ no electric energy ’t I know of.” “You are, if you interfere with the building of a dam of sufficient size and strength to conserve that power.” Young Jess leaned forward, grinning impudently into Rawley’s face. “Hell! There’s thousands uh miles up river that we ain’t doin’ a thing to. They kin build dams from here to Denver, fer all we care! That’s all poppycock, our interferin’. Everybody with ten cents in his pocket is talkin’ about buildin’ a dam in the Colorado. Why the hell don’t they go ahead and _do_ it? We ain’t stoppin’ nobody!” “You may be, without knowing it,” Rawley explained patiently, determined to educate them beyond their single-track idea, if possible. “I see how it looks to you, of course. But I’ll explain how it looks to the greatest engineers in the country, Jess. You remember I was rather keen for it, myself. It was out of my line, and I didn’t know. “Now the fact is, you are attempting, with a certain amount of rock blown into the river from the sides, to dam a river second only to the Mississippi. “I know, the Missouri is wider, but I am speaking now of the volume of water that passes through this canyon right here. It is a swift river, and it is a deep river. You don’t realize, any of you, just how deep and how swift it is, though you have lived beside it all your lives.