Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/32

14 on the rock. I've been to the foot of the cliffs and not even a mountain goat could get up there from this side, much less a horse. And they say the other is just as steep. Imagination, Red."

Jackson shook his head.

"But we both saw it, or thought we saw it. An' my eyesight 's sure one of my strong points. No, sir, it was a gel, on a hawse. I saw the mane lift in the wind. A gel on Ghost Mountain, sure as I'm sittin' here." He continued to gaze until the sky darkened and the range became only a dusky bulk that blotted out the stars. Sheridan smoked on in content, busy with his own visions. He had dismissed the image of the girl on horseback as a fantasy and he was pondering over what he was going to do in the morning.

Lake of the Woods was to supply Chico Mesa, at least a large part of it, with water. Sheridan held a half section in his own right. He had bought up relinquishments. His plan conceived the raising of high-bred beef-cattle on a big scale, fattening them on alfalfa grown under irrigation, producing first-quality beef, firm and larded with fat, commanding a top price.

The lake was fed with springs and its supply seemed sufficient, to his amateur engineering. It would need no dam; it could be siphoned by suction pumps to flumes, covered to prevent evaporation, or to pipes, leading down to the mesa by way of a box-canyon he had discovered that ran from his holding deep into the foothills. It would take money, more money than he knew any way of commanding