Squaw Creek was the key to the situation. This was a fact which became more and more plain. However, Sprudell was undoubtedly quite as well aware of this as he was himself and would lose no time in applying for the water right. The situation looked dark indeed to Bruce as he tossed and turned. Then like a lost word or name which one gropes for for hours, days, weeks perhaps, there suddenly jumped before Bruce's eyes a paragraph from the state mining laws which he had glanced over carelessly in an idle moment. It stood out before him now as though it were in double-leaded type. "If it isn't too late! If it isn't too late!" he breathed excitedly. "Dog-gone, if it isn't too late!" With the same movement that he sprang out on the floor he reached for his hat; then he recalled that telegraph operators were sometimes ladies and it would be as well to dress. He made short work of the performance, however, and went downstairs two steps at a time rather than wait for the sleepy bell-boy, who did double duty on the elevator at night. The telegraph office was two squares away, the wondering night-clerk told him, and Bruce, stepping frequently on his shoelaces, went up the street at a gait which was more than half suspicious to the somnambulant officer on the beat. The trust company's doors had not been opened many minutes the next morning before Bruce arrived. The clerk who listened to his inquiries was willing enough to give him any information that he had but he had none beyond the fact that the property in question had passed from the possession of a family named Dunbar into the hands of the trust company many years ago, and no person named Naudain had figured in the transfer, or any other transfer so far as he could ascertain from consulting various deeds and documents in the vault. It was puzzling enough to Bruce, who was sure that he had read the number and the street correctly and had remembered it, but the clerk was waiting politely for him to go, so he thanked him and went out. As Bruce stood in the wide stone archway of the building watching the stream of passers-by hastening to their offices and shops, some faint glimmerings of the magnitude of the task he had set himself in raising money among strangers to defend the placer ground if need be and install the hydro-electric plant for working it, came to him. He had little, if any, idea how to begin or where, and he had a feeling as he studied the self-centred faces of the hurrying throng that if he should fall on his knees before anyone among them and beg for a hearing they would merely walk around him and go on. It occurred to Bruce that the clerk inside was an uncommonly good fellow, and friendly; he believed he would ask his advice. He might make some useful suggestions. Bruce acted at once upon the idea and again the clerk came forward cheerfully. Going to the point at once, Bruce demanded: "How would a stranger go about raising money here for a mining proposition?"