the power and all the lighting used on the ranch. Then it sub-
irrigates lower levels, flows in here to the fish ponds, and runs out
and irrigates miles of alfalfa farther on. And, believe me, if by that
time it hadn't reached the flat of the Sacramento, I'd be pumping out
the drainage for more irrigation."

"Man, man," Graham laughed, "you could make a poem on the wonder of
water. I've met fire-worshipers, but you're the first real water-
worshiper I've ever encountered. And you're no desert-dweller, either.
You live in a land of water--pardon the bull--but, as I was saying..."

Graham never completed his thought. From the right, not far away, came
the unmistakable ring of shod hoofs on concrete, followed by a mighty
splash and an outburst of women's cries and laughter. Quickly the
cries turned to alarm, accompanied by the sounds of a prodigious
splashing and floundering as of some huge, drowning beast. Dick bent
his head and leaped his horse through the lilacs, Graham, on Altadena,
followed at his heels. They emerged in a blaze of sunshine, on an open
space among the trees, and Graham came upon as unexpected a picture as
he had ever chanced upon in his life.

Tree-surrounded, the heart of the open space was a tank, four-sided of
concrete. The upper end of the tank, full width, was a broad spillway,
sheened with an inch of smooth-slipping water. The sides were
perpendicular. The lower end, roughly corrugated, sloped out gently to
solid footing. Here, in distress that was consternation, and in fear
that was panic, excitedly bobbed up and down a cowboy in bearskin
chaps, vacuously repeating the exclamation, "Oh God! Oh God!"--the
first division of it rising in inflection, the second division
inflected fallingly with despair. On the edge of the farther side,