homesteads and town sites in the Buckskin. The big thing is right here. I tell you, I can smell money in this valley of yours—scads of it."

Brouillard laughed. "It is only the fragrance of future Reclamation-Service appropriations," he suggested. "There will be a good bit of money spent here before the Buckskin Desert gets its maiden wetting."

"I don't mean that at all," was the impatient rejoinder. "Let me show you: you are going to have a population of some sort, if it's only the population that your big job will bring here. That's the basis. Then you're going to need material by the train load, not the raw stuff, which you say is right here on the ground, but the manufactured article—cement, lumber, and steel. You can ship this material in over the range at prices that will be pretty nearly prohibitory, or, as you suggest, it can be manufactured right here on the spot."

"The cement and the lumber can be produced here, but not the steel," Brouillard corrected.

"That's where you're off," snapped the millionaire. "There are fine ore beds in the Hophras and a pretty good quality of coking coal. Ten or twelve miles of a narrow-gauge railroad would dump the pig metal into the upper end of your valley, and there you are. With a small reduction plant you could tell the big steel people to go hang."

Brouillard admitted the postulate without prejudice to a keen and growing wonder. How did it happen that this Chicago money king had taken the trouble to inform himself so accurately in regard to the natural resources of the Niquoia region? Had he not expressly declared that the object of the desert automobile trip was mere tourist curiosity? Given a little time, the engineer would have cornered the inquiry, making it yield some sort of a reasonable answer; but Mr. Cortwright was galloping on again.

"There you are, then, with the three prime requisites in raw material: cement stock, timber, and pig metal. Fuel you've got, you say, and if it isn't good enough, your dummy railroad can supply you from the Hophra mines. Best of all, you've got power to burn—and that's the key to any manufacturing proposition. Well and good. Now, you know, and I know, that the government doesn't care to go into the manufacturing business when it can help it. Isn't that so?"

"Unquestionably. But this is a case of can't-help-it," Brouillard argued. "You couldn't begin to interest private capital in any of these industries you speak of."

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