He meant that he intended some day to have such a ranch, and in this sense Daphne now understood him. But a time was to come when his speech was to return to torment her.
II
The next fifteen months passed. Arguello was jogging along again, but not quite as before. Its spirit was no more progressive than in the old days, but the force of circumstances had raised its normal. The railroad was in at last, subject still to delay of washout or avalanche, where it crept under the cliffs or tunnelled through the mountains, but nevertheless arriving every once in a while. The receding wash of the boom had left rich spoil in the shape of settlers. The little white stakes that bounded the old corner, lots still marked the graves of departed hopes, but more and more of them were being ploughed under each year. Men talked in terms not of profits, but of production. And Patrick Boyd knew that at last the time had come for him to forward his old scheme of irrigated small farms.
The idea had expanded: and curiously enough the cause of expansion was the failure of the experimental artesian well at Corona del Monte. Boyd now visioned a big water project in the Sur. During the rains water in plenty flowed back in the fastnesses of the ranges. It was possible to impound it and lead it down into the valley. Furthermore, Boyd saw a possibility of hydro-electricity, then quite a new thought. By means of suitable conduits this water could be widely distributed—over the sagebrush foothills of Boyd's original purchase, for example. To be sure most of that land belonged now in small bits to hundreds of would-be millionaires; but it could be repurchased at a song through Spinner. That young man, by the way, owned some of it: he was one of the chastened ex-millionaires. There were also other properties that would come in under such a development. But it could not be denied that the broad acres of Corona del Monte were the foundation of the scheme. Their proximity to town, their topographical character, and a dozen other considerations made them the keystone of the arch. With them the scheme was worth millions both to its originator and
