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Show WAT R, Till 3j J.ALLAN DUNN A tfjp AUTHOR. "AMAN TO HIS MATE". L MX A "RIMROCK TRAIL JJf BlM'V ... r DOOD. MEAD CO. STL W.N.U. SER-VICE. -?&J$' fe mind, I'll put 'ein in the shack. No pockets handy that won't mush "em." He disappeared In the shack and came out again bearing a bundle. "I'd like to even up with you on them," he said. "How about an ex-hibishun? ex-hibishun? The power's in me." The suggestion had come as Caleb would have wished it. spontaneously, from the man himself. "That will be bully," he answered simply. "I should like very much to see you in action." The Welshman led the way to the top of the gravel. "Choose your place," he said. "I've a notion there's water most anywhere here. The rod'll prove it. Pick one of the rods," he went on. with the air of a conjurer asking for the choice of "any card in the deck." "They're hazel," he said. "Some say hazel's a magic wood, but the magic ain't In the rod, It's in me. Willer'll do, or peach, but I like hazel. Now, where d'ye say?" Caleb chose a spot clear of sagebrush. sage-brush. It was almost a circle and he stood on the edge of it, a strange tingling tin-gling in his veins. The spare figure of the Welshman, looking up to the stars, the rod that Caleb had chosen in his hands, breast high, a fork to He relaxed and the rod Ml to tin .'round. lie stooped and picked It up. lie rubbed his eyes as one awakening from a speil. "Them's all fresh rods In the bundle," bun-dle," he said. "I cut 'em the day before be-fore yesterday. Look where she forks. We'll try her ag'en. The power's strong. Then you can tackle It." "Me?' Caleb's surprise was ue-forced. ue-forced. "Aye, you might have the power. You're sympathetic, ennyway. Let's walk out a bit farther. Away from the crick. It don't make no difference where. There's a water table under , us. This end of the valley ain't so much a sink as a cistern." Caleb's heart pounded at this confirmation con-firmation jt his belief. He was In a curious state of excitation. But he yaid nothing. They tried again a quarter quar-ter of a mile away. The same phenomenon phe-nomenon occurred with so much greater emphasis that the forks crossed eacli other. No juggling with hands apart could have managed this. "Try It," said Evans, wiping sweat from his .forehead. "Twice is enough for me. That last was a twister. Did ye say you had another cigar with ye? I left ail mine in the shack. Now then choose yore twig. We know there's water here. If you've got the power it'll show. Don't be in a hurry. Don't think of nothiu'. Make yore , mind a blank. Hold It level fingers up so !" lie arranged Caleb's hands to his liking with his own bony, clammy fingers fin-gers and stepped hack. Caleb stood alone, fixing his eyes on the glow of the dowser's cigar in a species of hypnosis, hyp-nosis, waiting, trying to eliminate all thought. In this lie succeeded. Motionless, he waited, gazing at the spark of fire and the dark pillar of the Welshman's body. The spark seemed to grow ' larger larger and then he felt, simultaneously si-multaneously a distinct tremor run up Iii s forearms, a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, a quiver of diaphragmatic ganglia. The rod twitched. He gripped the forks hard harder. They began to vibrate. The tremor increased in his wrists. The forks strangely seemed to be a part of him, sensitive, alive. Then there seemed to be a tug at the end of the stem, like the swift strike of a fish at the lure. And the straight stem bent as he might have bent his finger, in a pointer, straight to water. He had no doubt of it now. The thing had happened to himself. It was marvelous as It was mysterious, this sense of power. And he thrilled to it. It was an indorsement of his title as Water-Bearer, surely an augury au-gury of success. It 'filled him, not witli pride, but with reverence for his gift. "Glory be!" cried the dowser. "You've got It, pardner. You've got the power. By gosh, you'll be takin' my job from me," he added with a short laugh that ended in a cough. "I'll see that you are no loser by it," said Caleb, smiling back. And he meant the promise. For now he was certain of the fulfillment of his idea, much as yet remained to be proven and accomplished. The hunch was born, for lie had in his hand the key that would unlock for him the secret of the Sink. With the power was it his birthright, a gift from Aquarius, glittering on the hilly horizon? he could, working at night, cover the whole area of the lower valley and exploit, without boring, the extent of the water table. Under the gravel iay, he was convinced none the less by the occult manner of its determination determina-tion water for the thousands who would make Golden mighty among cities water for incoming families, "Can You See Plain?" He Asked in a Whisper. THE POWER SYNOPSIS. Idly fishing Hermanns Her-manns creek, In California, Caleb - Warner, civil engineer and a New Enrlander, is witness of the end of a coyote pulled down by two wolfhounds, urged on by a girl rider. Admiring the hounds, he introduces himself, and learns her name is Clinton. With western west-ern hospitality she invites him to the ranch to meet her father. At the Clinton home Warner learns his new friend's name is Betty. He is welcomed by her father, Southern Civil war veteran and owner of Hermanos valley. He tells them something of his ambitions am-bitions and his feeling that he is destined to be a "Water-Bearer." In the town of Golden Warner shares an apartment with his old Columbia college chum, Ted Baxter, Bax-ter, carefree and somewhat dissipated dissi-pated youth, only child of his widowed mother, who controls the family fortune. At a club luncheon Baxter introduces Caleb to Wilbur Cox, leading business man and president of the water company which supplies the needs of Golden. He gives Cox an Inkling of his ambitions, and Cox, impressed, invites him to dinner that night. During dinner Cox asks Caleb to call at his office next day. He does so and Cox arranges a meeting between Caleb and Hinckley, the water company's chief engineer. Baxter tells Caleb he Is In difficulties with a girl, Mary Morgan, Cox's stenographer, who insists he must marry her. With Hinckley, Caleb looks over the water company's com-pany's source of supply, the Crystal springs, in Hermanos valley. Prospecting in Hermanos valley, Caleb meets a man, Evans, who boasts of his ability, through "divining rods," to locate water without boring. Caleb comes upon a picnic party, the festivities festivi-ties being in honor of Betty Clinton's Clin-ton's birthday, and is welcomed. Betty tells him Hermanos valley, containing the burial places of three generations of Clintons, is sacred for all time. Caleb, with Carmen Wilson and Betty, are threatened by a bull. Warner bravely protects the girls, and Is himself rescued by Padllla, Clinton's man, CHAPTER VII Continued 10 He believed that the lower end of the plain, the portion that the diviner termed the Sink, was composed of gravel, retained in clay but without the clay .capping. In it was held the sunken waters of the five creeks, the same water that furnished the wells of the territory north of the creek. And this water should hold the same level, if his theory was correct. It should lie some forty feet below the surface tn normal times less during the storm-water season. It would be absolutely pure filtered through the gravel. If this was true and he believed be-lieved it was he had found a water mine, a mine with an Inexhaustible, ever renewed commodity, that was as commercial as any mineral that, conveyed con-veyed to Golden, meant the assured progress of that city. lie knew that the city of Berlin, at enormous expense, had manufactured beds of gravel for the filtering of its civic supply, but here at hand he had the filter built by nature, a cistern waiting to be tapped. And this had laid unsuspected under the very noses of Cox and his engineers, and the water wa-ter experts of Oakville. He had to proceed cautiously. It was imperative to cloak his Intentions and his methods. If he made the discovery, dis-covery, it was his, fo engineer and to sell. lie could not bore in Ihe Sink to prove out his hope that clay bottomed bot-tomed all the gravel and held the water. wa-ter. He meant to use the diviner for that, keeping him in ignorance of what the experiments might mean. He stocked himself willi cigars, and after supper crossed the bridge and walked along the creek and up the road to the pit. There was a wisp of smoke coming from the rusty pipe and a light burning back of the solitary soli-tary window. A smell of crude cookery, blent of cheap coffee and half-cured bacon, tinctured with the acrid odor of beans burned In a pot, came out through the door, which opened part way to Caleb's knock, disclosing the lean figure of the Welshman silhouetted silhou-etted against lamplight. "Who's there?" asked Evans. "The fisherman. Don't you remember? remem-ber? You told me about your divining divin-ing the other day." The Welshman opened the door wider and peered curiously at Caleb in the broader ray of light. Then he stepped outside. "Kind of stuffy inside the shack," he said. "A great night. Look at them stars. Ah !" He took the cigar Caleb proffered and puffed it to a glow, exhaling the 6moke with a gratified sigh. "I brought a few along. " sad Caleb, "thinking you might like them. I've got Dlcnty." The othev hold out his hand for th Drown rolls eagerly. "That's kind of ye. If you don't each hand, the fingers uppermost; took on something of the dignity of a Druid priest about to perform a mystic rite. "Can you see plain?" he asked in a whisper. "I'm going to walk to'ard ye. Watch the stem of the rod." 11C 1,,C1C1, 11 IU Hit lllll 11.11111 Ml his arms, stalking slowly, the twig horizontal, right-angled, midway of his thighs. His eyes glittered, upturned up-turned to the sky. Suddenly he stopped and Caleb held his breath, gazing intently at the rod. It seemed to twitch surely. It vibrated vi-brated up and down. Caleb, watching watch-ing closely, half fearing he might uncover un-cover a trick yet wishing to do so if trickery was forward, could detect no flexing of the bony wrists. The fingers fin-gers were rigid. So lightly did Evans grip the forks that his knuckles showed like ivory knobs against the darker skin. Then he gave a sigh and the end of the rod tipped violently downwards. Caleb caught the distinct creak of bending, twisting wood in the silence that followed the sigh. The dowser stood braced, rigid, while the twig, Its end a frantic pointer, seemed as suddenly imbued wiili life as Moses' rod. Motion ceased as he stood within with-in ten feet of Caleb, so close that the latter plainly saw the pulses beating violently in Evans' wrists, the veins prominent as cords. And Hie stem of the rod pointed steadily downward at an angle of more than 45 degrees from the horizontally held forks. "Dig there, bore there forty feet," murmured the dowser, speaking like a medium in trance, "and you'll find water." for factories, for fields and gardens, for civic use ! A mammoth cistern ready to be tapped. Before he left him, to walk back to the hotel, exultant, Caleb got some worth-while information from Evans. He had the name of the man who owned most if not all of the Sink. The land was valueless for farming. Tt could he acquired cheaply. That was an important factor. Even at the low price, the' big acreage would mean an amount far beyond Caleb's compass. com-pass. That end of it, with the other big expenses, he must leave to Cox for financing. But the secret was his. He found a small parcel awaiting him at the hotel that had come by Hie evening mail. On it was the return address of Golden's best jeweler. He opened it and took from a lied of cotton cot-ton wool a jade pendant. On it was engraved in intaglio the zodiac sign of Pisces. Two fishes joined by a ribbon. He had ordered It on his re-iurn re-iurn from El Xido after the picnic. He intended it as a belated birthday gift to Betty Clinton. Well, Caleb has found his water wa-ter all right. Now what will he do with it? (TO BE CONTINUED ) |