Casey Dunne carried an atmosphere of outdoors. From the deep tan of his neck, against which the white of his collar lay in startling contrast, to the slender, sinewy brown hands, he bore token of wind and sun and activity in the open. His clothes were new, excellent in fit and material; but, though he did not wear them awkwardly, one gathered the impression that he was accustomed to easier, more informal garments. His manner was entirely self-confident, and betrayed neither awe nor embarrassment. Which gave York an unfavourable impression to start with.
"Take a chair, Mr. Dunne," he said. "I can give you five minutes or ten. Not more. What can I do for you?"
"I may have to ask you to stretch that time limit a little," said Dunne, smiling as if York were an old friend. "Let me start at the beginning, and then I won't have to go back. I live down on the Coldstream, on the line of the old Prairie Southern, which you acquired a couple of years ago. With it you got their land grant. Your land department, after looking the Coldstream blocks over, decided to irrigate and sell these lands; and they undertook a main ditch and a system of ditches, and they are selling the lands at the present time."
"I know all this," said York impatiently. "Carrol runs our land department, and he deals with these matters. He's the man you want to see."
"He referred me to you," said Dunne. "I know this is ancient history, but I'm cleaning up as I go along. You will get your water for these lands from the Coldstream. I and others own property there, and we get our water from the river below your intake. Are you aware that your ditch system is capable of carrying, and that the lands you are selling with a guarantee of an adequate water supply will require, almost the entire normal flow of the Coldstream?"
"I have understood from our land department"—York chose his words carefully—"that the river contains ample water to irrigate our lands."
"Which, I need scarcely point out, is not an answer to my question," Dunne commented quietly.
"But which," York countered, "is all that I am concerned with, Mr. Dunne."
The railway man and the younger, bronzed out-of-doors man eyed each other in silence while one might count ten. In the last words the railway's policy had been laid down, an issue defined, a challenge given.
Casey Dunne's eyes narrowed a little, and his mouth tightened. He spoke very quietly, but it was the exercised quiet of self-restraint:
"I had hoped that you would not take that ground, Mr. York. Let me show you how this concerns myself and others. Take my own case: I have a ranch down there; I have my water record. I have gone on working the ranch, making improvements from year to year, and every dollar I could scrape up I put into more land. I wasn't speculating. I can gamble with any man when I have to; but this wasn't gambling. There was the land, and there was the water. The increase of value was merely a question of time. Others bought as I bought. We put our money and our years of work into lands along the Coldstream. Our whole stake is there. I want you to appreciate that—to get our viewpoint—because with us this isn't a question of greater or less profit, but a question of existence itself. If you take away our water our lands are worthless, and we go broke. I can't put it any plainer than that."
"And without water," said York, "the railway's lands are worthless—or so I am told. The unfortunate feature, according to what you say, seems to be that there is not water enough for you and for us. Therefore each must stand upon his legal rights."
"You raise the point," said Dunne. "It is a question of legal and moral right against what I think—and I don't want to be offensive—but what I think is an attempt to read into a clause of an old charter a meaning which it was never intended to carry."
York's eyebrows drew down. "The clause in the Prairie Southern's charter to which I presume you refer is perfectly clear. It states that the railway company may take from the Coldstream or any other running stream 'sufficient water for its own purposes.' Those are the exact words of the charter. It saves existing rights, but there were none then existing. Therefore the railway's right is first, and all water records are subject to it. The charter further empowers the company to improve, buy, sell, and deal in land. These, then, are purposes of the company, according to its charter, and for these purposes it may construct and maintain all necessary works. Could anything be clearer? We acquired every right that Prairie Southern possessed. The rights were in existence when you bought your land. Therefore I do not think you should complain when we exercise them, even though they may affect you to some extent."
"I follow your argument," Dunne observed, "but the words 'sufficient water for its own purposes' were never intended to mean that the railway should take the whole river."
"What do you think they meant?"
"What any sensible man would think. You may take sufficient water to run your trains, to fill your tanks, to use in any way in connection with your business of transportation, and nobody will object to that; but when you undertake to divert a whole river to irrigate lands in order to sell them, you go too far. That is the business of a real-estate company, and not of a railway company."
Cromwell York, who had obtained the unanimous opinions of three eminent corporation counsel upon that very point, smiled tolerantly.
"You are not a lawyer, Mr. Dunne?"
"No."
"Nor am I. But I have had this clause passed upon, and I tell you that we are quite within our rights. The charter covers the case completely, according to the best legal opinion."
"But nobody thought of irrigation when this charter was granted," objected Dunne. "The land was supposed to be worthless. That was why Prairie Southern got such a large land grant. You know that."
"That has nothing to do with the case. Let us stick to the point. What, so far, have you to complain of?"
"This," said Dunne shortly. "You have a charter which you say entitles you to all the water in the river. You are constructing ditches sufficient to carry it all; you are constructing a dam to divert it all; and you are selling land to an acreage which, if cultivated, will require it all. You admit your intentions. When that dam is built and those ditches are filled our ranches must go dry. It spells our ruin. We are living on sufferance. And yet you ask us what we have to complain of!"
"I need scarcely assure you," said York, "that unless and until we require the water it will not be taken."
"Not nearly good enough," Dunne returned. "We can't work and improve our ranches with that hanging over us. Such an assurance is of no practical value."
"It is all I can give you."
Casey Dunne nodded as one who sees things turning out as he expected. "Then naturally we shall be forced to fight you."
"As you like," said York indifferently. "You will lose, that's all. I can't do any more for you. It is my duty to my shareholders to increase the value of those lands if I can do so legally."
"I wish I could get your viewpoint," said Casey Dunne, and for the first time his voice lost a shade of its calm and began to vibrate with anger. "I'd like to know just how much it differs from a claim jumper's or a burglar's. You know as well as I do that you have no earthly right to take that water. You know you are taking advantage of the careless wording of an old charter. You know that it means the utter ruin of men who went into a God-forsaken land without a dollar, and took a brown, parched wilderness by the throat, and fought it to a standstill—men who backed their faith in the country with years of toil and privation, who made the trails and dug the ditches, and proved the land. And you have the colossal nerve to set a little additional dividend on watered stock against the homes of those men—old, some of them, now—and the rights of their wives and children to the fruits of their work!"
The railway man surveyed him with quiet amusement. To him this resembled the vicarious indignation of a very young country lawyer at a client's wrongs.
"Are you," he asked, with quiet sarcasm, "one of those who made the trails and dug the ditches and endured the privations? If so, they seem to have agreed with you."
Casey