"I'm getting you, a little at a time," said the colonel, taking his first lesson in high finance as a duck takes to the water. Then he added: "It won't take much of a lick to kill off the old company, in the shape it's got into now. How will you work it?" Smith had the plan at his fingers' ends. With the daring of all the perils had come a fresh access of fighting fitness that made him feel as if he could cope with anything. "We must close up the company's affairs and then reorganize promptly and, with just as little noise as may be, form another company--which we will call Timanyoni High Line--and let it take over the old outfit, stock, liabilities, and assets entire. You say your present capital stock is one hundred thousand dollars; is it all paid in?" "Every dollar of it except a little for a few shares of treasury stock that we've been holding for emergencies. As I told you last night, I went up to Red Butte and tried to sell that treasury stock to Drake, the banker; but he wouldn't bite." "Which was mighty lucky for us," Smith put in. "It would have queered us beautifully if he had, and the story had got out that the president of Timanyoni Ditch had sold a block of treasury stock at thirty-nine." "Well, he didn't take it," said the colonel. "He was so blame' chilly that I like to froze to death before I could get out of the bank." "All right; then we'll go on. This new company that I am speaking of will be capitalized at, say, an even half million. To the present holders of Timanyoni Ditch we'll give the new stock for the old, share for share, with a bonus of twenty-five shares of the new stock for every twenty-five shares of the old surrendered and exchanged. This will be practically giving the present shareholders two for one. Will that satisfy them?" This time Colonel Dexter Baldwin's smile was grim. "You're just juggling now, John, and you know it. Out here on the woolly edge of things a dollar is just a plain iron dollar, and you can't make it two merely by calling it so." "Never you mind about that," cut in the new financier. "The first rule of investment is that a dollar is worth just what it will earn in dividends; no more, and equally no less. You know, and I know, that if we can pull this thing through there is a barrel of money in it for all concerned. But we'll skip that part of it and stick to the details. At two to one for the amortization of the old company we shall still have something like three hundred thousand dollars treasury stock upon which to realize for the new capital needed, and that will be amply sufficient to complete the dam and the ditches and to provide a fighting fund. Now then, tell me this: how near can we come to placing that treasury stock right here in Timanyoni Park? In other words, can the money be had here at any price?" "You mean that you don't want to go East to raise it?"