"Say, Smith; you mustn't forget that I'm from Missouri," he said half quizzically. "But I shouldn't think you'd need to be 'shown' in this particular instance," was the smiling rejoinder. "Why are these Eastern capitalists spending their good money on a scheme to freeze out your little handful of ranch owners, Colonel? Surely you've asked yourself that question long before this, haven't you?" "Why, yes; it's because they want to get something for nothing, isn't it?" "In a general sense, of course, that is the basis of all crooked business schemes. But the chance to sell you people water from your own dam isn't the only thing or the main thing in this case; that part of it is merely incidental. Didn't Williams tell me that they are obliged to have this dam site, or, at least, one as high up the river as this, in order to get the water over to their newly alienated grant in the western half of the park?" "I don't know what Bartley told you, but that is the fact." "No way of dodging that, is there? They couldn't possibly build a dam of their own, lower down, and make it work, could they? I'm asking because what I don't know about irrigation engineering would fill a Carnegie library in a good-sized little city." "You've got it straight," said the colonel. "A good part of the Escalante Grant lies higher than our Little Creek ranches. From any point farther down the river than this, they'd have to pump the water to get it up to the Escalante mesas." "Very good. Then they're simply obliged to have your dam, or--Don't you see the alternative now, Colonel?" "Heavens to Betsy!" exclaimed the breeder of fine horses, bringing his fist down upon Williams's desk with a crash that made the ink-bottles dance. And then: "The Lord have mercy! What a lot of fence-posts we are--the whole kit and b'ilin' of us! If they get the dam, they sell water to us; if they don't get it, _we sell it to them_!" "That's it, exactly," Smith put in quietly. "And I should say that your stake in the game is worth the stiffest fight you can make to save it. Don't you agree with me?" "Great Jehu! I should say so!" ejaculated the amateur trust fighter. Then he broke down the barriers masterfully. "That settles it, Smith. You can't wiggle out of it now, no way or shape. You've got to come over into Macedonia and help us. Williams tells me you refused him, but you can't refuse me." If Smith hesitated, it was only partly on his own account. He was thinking again of the young woman with the honest eyes when he said: "Do you know why I turned Williams down when he spoke to me the other day?" Colonel Dexter Baldwin had his faults, like other men, but they were not those of indirection.