"Why not?" was the curt demand.

"Because of their impermanence—their dependence upon a market which will quit definitely when the dam is completed. What you are suggesting predicates a good, busy little city in this valley, behind the dam—since there is no other feasible place for it—and it would be strictly a city of numbered days. When the dam is completed and the spillway gates are closed, the Niqoyastcàdje and everything in it will go down under two hundred feet of water."

"The—what?" queried Miss Cortwright, lowering the glass with which she had been following the progress of the two riders down the Buckskin trail from the high-pitched mine on Chigringo.

"The Niqoyastcàdje—'Place-where-they-came-up,'" said Brouillard, elucidating for her. "That is the Navajo name for this valley. The Indians have a legend that this is the spot where their tribal ancestors came up from the underworld. Our map makers shortened it to 'Niquoia' and the cow-men of the Buckskin foot-hills have cut that to 'Nick-wire.'"

This bit of explanatory place lore was entirely lost upon Mr. J. Wesley Cortwright. He was chewing the ends of his short mustaches and scowling thoughtfully out upon the possible site of the future industrial city of the plain.

"Say, Brouillard," he cut in, "you get me the right to build that power dam, and give me the contracts for what material you'd rather buy than make, and I'll be switched if I don't take a shot at this drowning proposition myself. I tell you, it looks pretty good to me. What do you say?"

"I'll say what I said a few minutes ago," laughed the young chief of construction—"that I'm only a hired man. You'll have to go a good few rounds higher up on the authority ladder to close a deal like that. I'm not sure it wouldn't require an act of Congress."

"Well, by George, we might get even that if we have to," was the optimistic assertion. "You think about it."

"I guess it isn't my think," said Brouillard, still inclined to take the retired pork packer's suggestion as the mere ravings of a money-mad promoter. "As the government engineer in charge of this work, I couldn't afford to be identified even as a friendly intermediary in any such scheme as the one you are proposing."

"Of course, I suppose not," agreed the would-be promoter, sucking his under lip in a way ominously familiar to his antagonists in the wheat pit. Then he glanced at his watch 

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