in the little ones.  He’s got all the water supply grabbed and is makin’ a fortune from that alone.  He runs the store, the post-office, and the stage line.  He’s got the freight contracts and the beef contracts.  He’s got brains.  Only one weak point about him—­he’ll underestimate us.  We got brains too.  Zurich knows that, but he don’t quite believe it.  That’s our chance.”

“Just what will you ask my cousin to do?  And when shall I go?”

“Day before to-morrow.  You hike back to Cobre and hit the road for all points East, I’ll go over to the Gavilan to be counted—­take this dynamite and stuff, and make a bluff at workin’, keeping my ears open and my mouth not.  Pledge cousin to come see when we wire for him—­as soon as we get possession.  If he finds the sight satisfactory, we’ll organize a company, you and me keepin’ control.  We’ll give ’em forty per cent for a million cash in the treasury.  I want nine percent for my Tucson friends, who’ll put up a little preliminary cash and help us with the first fightin’, if any.  Make your dicker on that basis; take no less.  If your cousin can’t swing it, we’ll go elsewhere.

“Tell him our proposition would be a gracious gift at two millions, undeveloped; but we’re not selling.  Tell him there’ll be a million needed for development before there’ll be a dollar of return.  There’s no water; just enough to do assessment work on, and that to be hauled twenty-five miles from those little rock tanks at Cabeza Prieta.  Deep drillin’ may get water—­I hope so.  But that will take time and money.  There’ll have to be a seventy-five-mile spur of railroad built, anyway, leaving the main line somewhere about Mohawk:  we’d just as well count on hauling water from the Gila the first year.  Them tanks will about run a ten-man gang a month after each rain, countin’ in the team that does the hauling.

“Tell him one claim, six hundred feet by fifteen hundred, will pretty near cover our hill; but we’ll stake two for margin.  We don’t want any more; but we’ll have to locate a town site or something, to be sure of our right of way for our railroad.  Every foot of these hills will be staked out by some one, eventually.  If any of these outside claims turns out to be any good, so much the better.  But there can’t be the usual rush very well—­’cause there ain’t enough water.  We’ll have to locate the tanks and keep a guard there; we’ll have to pull off a franchise for our little jerkwater railroad.

“We got to build a wagon road to Mohawk, set six-horse teams to hauling water, and other teams to hauling water to stations along the road for the teams that haul water for us.  All this at once; it’s going to be some complicated.

“That’s the lay:  Development work; appropriation for honest men in the first camp; another for lawyers; patentin’ three claims; haul water seventy-five miles, no road, and part of that through sand; minin’ machinery; build a railroad; smelter, maybe—­if some one would kindly find coal.