"Are they never going to take that miserable train out of the way?" she exclaimed. "I've got to see Mr. Williams, and there isn't a minute to spare. That is why I was breaking all the speed limits." "They are about ready to pull out now," he returned, with a glance over his shoulder at the train. "I'm a sort of general utility man up at the camp: can you use me in any way?" "I'm afraid you won't do," she replied, with a little laughing grimace that made him wonder where and when in the past he had seen some young woman do the same thing under exactly similar conditions. "It's a matter of business--awfully urgent business. Colonel-da--I mean my father, has gone up to Red Butte, and a little while ago they telephoned over to the ranch from the Brewster office to say that there was going to be some more trouble at the dam." "They?" he queried. "Mr. Martin, the head bookkeeper. He said he'd been trying to get Mr. Williams, but the wires to the camp were out of order." "They're not," said Smith shortly, remembering that Perkins had been talking from the camp to the Brewster railroad agent within the half-hour. "But never mind that: go on." Again she let him see the piquant little grimace. "You say that just as if you _were_ Mr. Williams's assistant," she threw back at him. "But I haven't time to quarrel with you this morning, Mr. Real-name Smith. If you'll take your foot off the fender I'll go on up to the dam and find Mr. Williams." "You couldn't quarrel with me if you should try," was the good-natured rejoinder, and Smith tried in vain to imagine himself taking his present attitude with any of the young women he had known in his cotillon days--with Verda Richlander, for example. Then he added: "You won't find Williams at the camp. He started out early this morning to ride the lower ditch lines beyond Little Creek, and he said he wouldn't be back until some time to-morrow. Now will you tell me what you're needing--and give me a possible chance to get my pay raised?" "_Oh!_" she exclaimed, with a little gasp of disappointment, presumably for the Williams absence. "I've simply _got_ to find Mr. Williams--or somebody! Do you happen to know anything about the lawsuit troubles?" "I know all about them; Williams has told me." "Then I'll tell you what Mr. Martin telephoned. He said that three men were going to pretend to relocate a mining claim in the hills back of the dam, somewhere near the upper end of the reservoir lake-that-is-to-be. They're doing it so that they can get out an injunction, or whatever you call it, and then we'll have to buy them off, as the others have been bought off." Smith was by this time entirely familiar with the maps and profiles and other records of the ditch company's lands and holdings. "All the land within the limits of the flood level has been bought and paid for--some of it more than once, hasn't it?" he asked.