“Yes, and Jasper Ewold was so simple!  Well, what I told him was strategy—­strategy of which I think father would approve.  When you have a big object in view the end must justify the means.  Look at the situation!  Two hundred thousand acres of land waiting on water to be the most fertile in the world!  Why, when I rode up the valley the first time and saw what could be done, I was amazed to think that such an opportunity should be lying around loose.  Little Rivers was so out of the way that other promoters had overlooked it, and everybody had sort of taken it for granted that Jasper Ewold and his water users’ association really had legal possession.  It was my chance.  I thought big.  That dam should be mine.  I had the money I had made in Goldfield, but it was not enough for my purpose.

“Where should I turn for outside capital that would not demand a majority interest in the project?  I concluded that it was time father did something for me in return for giving up the store.  Besides this call of justice I had another influence with him.  I was sure that when he told my mother that you knew the truth he was making a statement that suited his purpose.  I was sure that you knew nothing of my story and that father did not want you to know it.  I was ready to tell if he did not meet my demands.

“Well, you know how he can talk when he wants to gain a point.  I fancy that I talked as well as father when I showed him how that dam would pay for itself in five years in tolls and twenty per cent on the capital after that; when I showed him how a population ten times that of his store would have to take their water from me; when I showed him all the side issues of profit from town sites and the increase of values of the big holdings which Leddy’s men would take up for me.  You ought to have seen his eyes glow.  He could not withstand his pride in me.  ’You have the gift, the one gift!’ he said.  I told him yes, it was in the blood; and I struck while the iron was hot.  I got an outright sum from him; and he could not resist a chance to share all that profit when capital was to be had in New York for three or four per cent.  He went in as silent partner, as I was in the saloon at Goldfield; as a partner with a minority interest.”

John Prather paused to laugh to himself over his victory, while the movement of palm on palm was rapid and prolonged.

“Our arrangement amounted to the commercial division of territory for the family, which I had suggested,” he went on with appreciative irony.  “You and he were to have the east side of the Mississippi and I was to have the west, and you were never to know my story.  Publicly, father and I were strangers and quits, and we came to this agreement in the room of a down-town hotel.

“The day before I started West I simply had to have a look through the store—­the store that I loved and that I had to lose.  Yes, the store is far more to my taste than this rough western life.  Naturally, as my existence was to be kept a secret from you, when you followed me to the elevator and tried to get acquainted I couldn’t have it.”