“And in five years the wood will have rotted and then concrete will have to be put in after all,” Lee interrupted.  “More than that, the water will undercut wooden drops, then rip the devil out of the canal along the ridge, making the cost of rebuilding ten times what it is now and very likely causing a water shortage in the middle of an irrigating season so that the farmers’ crops will be a dead loss.  Fine!  I suppose you didn’t allow yourself to think that far.”

“Why should I?” Gretzinger retorted.  “It’s not our business to figure on all the calamities that may occur in the next fifty years, or the next ten, or the next five.  We build the canal, then it’s up to the farmers to keep it in shape after we turn it over to them.  If anything happens, that’s their lookout and the lookout of the engineer in charge.”

The two had come to a halt just out of earshot of the runabout.  Bryant could discover on the speaker’s face no other expression than a fixed intent to maintain his view.

“Leaving out the injustice of such a course——­”

“Injustice, nothing!” the New Yorker derided.  “This is cold business.  The project must be built as cheaply as possible in order to give the investors the largest return.  My father is one of them, and when he puts money into a thing he wants all out of it that’s coming to him.  So do his associates.”

“Let me finish what I started to say,” Lee remarked.  “Aside from what purchasers of land under this canal scheme have the right to expect, and what they would suffer from a disaster, it hits our own pockets in the end.  Poor construction always turns out to be expensive construction.  Aside from the initial cash payments from buyers, all we have from them will be notes—­mortgage notes that can be paid only by crops from the land.  The water insures these crops.  Let the canal system go smash, and where are these notes?  Nowhere.  I don’t propose to lose fifty or sixty thousand dollars for a short-sighted gain of ten.”

Gretzinger laughed, then tapped the other’s shoulder with a forefinger.

“Do you imagine for a minute we’ll keep the paper?” he inquired.  “Well, I should say not!  We’ll discount it ten, and if necessary twenty, per cent. to make a quick clean-up and be out.  A mortgage company in the East will attend to that part of the business.  These mortgages run for ten years; you certainly don’t think we’ll sit around that long waiting for our money and profits.  The discount will make the paper attractive to small investors, among whom it will be peddled and who want long-time securities.  And you’ll profit from that along with the rest of us; we couldn’t leave you out if we wished.”

“No, you can’t leave me out of your calculations,” said Bryant, grimly.

“You see now, I hope, why it’s to your interest as well as ours to make the change I suggest,” Gretzinger continued.  “It will equal the amount of the discount.  In a year or so we’ll all be out from under with bonds and stock liquidated dollar for dollar.  In other words, with our profits in cash in the bank instead of in notes.”