here on the ground. There is plenty of limestone and an excellent shale in those hills just beyond our camp; and for burning fuel there is a fairly good vein of bituminous coal underlying that farther range at the head of the valley."

"H'm," said the millionaire; "a cement plant, eh? There's money in that anywhere on the face of the globe, just now. And over here, where there is no transportation—Gad! if you only had somebody to sell cement to, you could ask your own price. The materials have all been tested, I suppose?"

"Oh, yes; we've had experts in here for more than a year. The material is all right."

"And your labor?"

"On the dam, you mean? One advantage of concrete work is that it does not require any great proportion of skilled labor, the crushing, mixing, and placing all being done by machinery. We shall work all the Indians we can get from the Navajo Reservation, forty-odd miles south of here; for the remainder we shall import men from the States, bringing them in over the Timanyoni High Line—the trail from Quesado on the Red Butte Western. At least, that is what we shall do for the present. Later on, the railroad will probably build an extension up the Barking Dog and over War Arrow Pass."

Mr. Cortwright's calculating eye roved once more over the attractive prospect.

"Fuel for your power plant?—wood I take it?" he surmised; and then: "Oh, I forgot; you say you have coal."

"Yes; there is coal, of a sort; good enough for the cement kilns. But we sha'n't burn it for power. Neither shall we burn the timber, which can be put to much better use in building and in false- and form-work. There are no finer lumber forests this side of the Sierras. For power we shall utilize the river. There is another small canyon at the head of the valley where a temporary dam can be built which will deliver power enough to run anything—an entire manufacturing city, if we had one."

Mr. Cortwright made a clucking noise with his tongue and blew his cheeks out like a swimmer gasping for breath.

"Julius Cæsar!" he exploded. "You stand there and tell me calmly that the government has all these resources coopered up here in a barrel?—that nobody is going to get a chance to make any money out of them? It's a crime, Mr. Brouillard; that's just what it is—a crime!"

"No; I didn't say that. The resources 

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