“Peter has spoken of the amount of money they are talking of spending to build a dam at Boulder Canyon, up here. The canyon there is as narrow as this; perhaps narrower. And to hold back the tremendous volume of water that flows past your door, engineers have said that they must go down one hundred and fifty feet, to bed rock, and start there to build their dam. They say that the dam will--must--to hold back the terrific pressure of water, rise something like six hundred feet above low-water mark. It will keep several thousand men working for eight or ten years to complete the dam, its spillways and main canals. It will cost around one hundred million dollars, and it will bring both protection and prosperity to thousands and thousands of people. That,” he declared, leaning forward, “is what it means to dam the Colorado.” “It don’t mean that to us,” Old Jess stated, turning his quid to the other cheek. “We aim to show ’em something about buildin’ dams.” He grinned and showed yellow snags of teeth. “Yeah. Wait till they see how _we_ aim to do it,” snickered Young Jess. “We’ll be rakin’ in the gold whilst they’re still standin’ around with their mouths open.” Peter had fallen into a taciturn, grim mood, staring somber-eyed at the river. Beside him, Nevada leaned chin upon her cupped palm and stared also. Several thousand men, working for eight years! That was as long as the years back to her first sight of the convent where Peter took her to be educated. Thousands of men working all that time--thousands! Was it, then, so deceptively vast, that river? Would the cliffs they had undermined fall in and be swept disdainfully away? Did it really belong to the government, that river, so that no man living all his life on its bank might say what should be done with it? Had Uncle Peter, and Young Jess and her grandfather been children, playing all these years beside a stream they must not touch or tamper with? “It sounds as big as the stars,” she observed vaguely. “As if we had been waving a handkerchief at Mars, down here by the river, and then some one comes along and pushes us back and says, ‘Here, here, you must stand back. You are obstructing the view. The President wants to wave his handkerchief. You annoy him.’ Do you think,” she flashed at Rawley, “it is going to make any difference to the river--who dams it first?”