Page:Patches (1928).pdf/258

 This would not have mattered especially to them had it not been for the fact that the spring before a small irrigation company, comprising a dozen farmers eight miles down the creek on the flat open country, had built a dam on Crooked Creek just below the holdings of the ranch. While it was some four miles from the ranch fences, yet it was just outside the unfenced land that the ranch people grazed in the winter time. Even when the water was of normal height this artificial lake set back for a quarter of a mile upon one of the ranch's best meadows, but at the time of high water it flooded nearly half a mile.

The head cow-puncher had sent Larry and Patches down to reconnoiter and to see if conditions were as bad as had been reported to him. Larry had made his way along the southeastern bank of the creek and had climbed the bluffs on that side nearest the dam. He was standing on the very crest of the hilltop looking at the beautiful artificial lake which stretched away up the valley for nearly a mile. This lake was also half a mile wide in some places and quite deep, so it will be seen that the flimsily constructed concrete and boulder dam held back a considerable body of water.

The dam had been hastily constructed by the farmers without very much engineering skill. They had not even copied the cunning of the beaver who curves his dam upstream in the middle in order to distribute the