To his left, still several miles away, was Valley City.  He swung his horse toward the camp, which as yet was scarcely more than a man’s dream of a town, and rode on at a swift gallop.  Now more than ever he saw what some of the difficulties were in front of the handful of men scarring the breast of this Western Sahara.  For a moment he could see the houses before him, even down to their doorsteps, and a moment later only the roofs peered at him over the crest of a gently swelling rise.  Here the water, when it was brought this far, must be swung in a wide sweep to right or left, or else many days, perhaps many weeks, must be sacrificed to the leveling of a great sand-pile.  He began to wonder if there was enough water in the mountains for so mammoth a project; if what of the precious fluid could be taken from the creeks and springs would not be drunk up by the thirsty sands as though it had been scattered carelessly by the spoonfuls, as a blotter drinks drops of ink.  He even began to wonder uneasily if Lonesome Pete had been right when he had said that another name for such an attempt at reclamation was simple “damn foolishness.”  The water had not come yet; it was still running in its time-worn courses down the mountain-sides; but something else was being drunk up daily by the parched gullet of the dry country.  And that something else was Mr. Crawford’s money.  His fortune was no doubt very large; it must run into many figures before Rattlesnake Valley grew green with fertility.

He came at last into the little town, passed the cottage where he had worked with Argyl, and drew up before a four-roomed, rough, unpainted building, with a sign over the door saying, “GENERAL OFFICE CRAWFORD RECLAMATION COMPANY.”  Swinging down from his horse, which he left with reins upon the ground, he went in at the open door.  Within there were bare walls, bare floor, and three or four cheap chairs.  Under the windows looking to the south there ran a long, high table, covered with papers and blue-prints.  Another long table ran across the middle of the room.  At it, facing him, perched upon a high stool, a young man, a pencil behind each ear, his sleeves rolled up, was working over some papers.  In one corner of the same room another young fellow, hardly more than a boy—­eighteen or nineteen, perhaps—­was ticking away busily at a typewriter.

The man in shirt-sleeves working at the second long table looked up as Conniston came in.  He was a pale, not over-strong—­looking chap, somewhere about Conniston’s own age, his short-cropped yellow hair pushed straight back from a high forehead, his lips and eyes good-humored and at the same time touched vaguely with a tender wistfulness.  Conniston imagined immediately that this was Garton, Bat Truxton’s helper.

“You’re Mr. Garton?” he said, voicing his impression as he came forward.

“No one else,” Garton answered him, pleasantly.  “Tom Garton at your service.  And you’re Conniston from the Half Moon?”