CHAPTER XVI.
THE HAND OF THE ENEMY When in the bunkhouse the next morning Sanderson informed Barney Owen of what had occurred during the night, the latter looked fixedly at Sanderson.
"So she didn't take it hard," he said.
"Was you expectin' her to?
For a brother that she hadn't seen in a dozen years--an' which she knows in her secret heart wasn't any good ?" retorted Sanderson.

"Shootin' your face off in Okar--or anywhere else--don't go any more," added Sanderson.

"She's pretendin', publicly, that I'm her brother." "I'm through talking," declared Owen.
"Or livin'.

It's one or the other," warned Sanderson.
Sanderson took the seven thousand dollars that Mary gave him, rode to Lazette--a town fifty miles eastward from the basin---and deposited the money in a bank there.

Then he rode eastward still farther and in another town discovered a young engineer with a grievance against his employers.
The result of this discovery was that on the following morning the young engineer and Sanderson journeyed westward to the basin, arriving at the Double A late in the afternoon of the next day.
On the edge of the plateau after the engineer and, Sanderson had spent three or four days prowling through the basin and the gorge, the engineer spoke convincingly: "It's the easiest thing in the world! A big flume to the point I showed you, a big main ditch and several laterals will do the trick.
I'm with you to the finish!" Sanderson smiled at the engineer's glowing enthusiasm and told him of the opposition he would meet in developing the project.
"There'll be a heap of schemin', an' mebbe shootin', Williams," Sanderson told him.