“Senor Holmes he say: ’The canal
will go here where the stakes are set.’
Senor Burk say: ‘No, you shall go that other
way.’ ’But that will leave the power
house away eight miles and the elevation it is not
the same,’ say Senor Holmes. Senor Burk
say: ’Power house is Mr. Worth’s
not our. This way is good for us.’
’Senor Holmes no like it. He is very mad,’
say my friend. He say: ‘I will not
do it.’ Then Senor Burk say: ’All
right, you lose your job. Greenfield say it must
go there; it is an order.’ Then they go
’way and my friend he tell me ’cause he
think maybe it is no good for power house. I think
maybe so Senor Worth like to know.”
The next morning Jefferson Worth called upon the Manager
of The King’s Basin Land and Irrigation Company.
“Mr. Burk, I understand that you are changing
the line of your Central Canal.”
“We are.”
“But my contract with your Company must be considered.”
“We have already considered it, Mr. Worth.
It relates only to the delivery of a certain amount
of water into your canal. There is nothing in
it that binds us to build our canal on the line
surveyed.”
GATHERING OF OMINOUS FORCES.
Kingston was a boiling, seething, steaming volcano
of hot wrath, burning indignation and fiery protest.
Kingston cursed, raved, stormed and resoluted, then
stormed, raved and resoluted some more. Kingston
was tricked, betrayed, cheated, defrauded, insulted
and mocked. And the unspeakable villain, the
sordid wretch, the miserable gamester who had ruined
Kingston was Jefferson Worth.
It is unknown to this day who first brought the news
that all work on the railroad for a distance of seven
miles out from Kingston was stopped and that the camps
with their entire outfits had disappeared, leaving
the scenes of their stirring activity as still and
lifeless as if they had never existed. Next it
was known that from Deep Well southward the construction
train was still pushing its way into the Basin and
that the work ahead of the train went on.
Then, while Kingston was wondering, questioning, discussing,
the word went quickly around that the grading crews
were setting up their camps twelve miles east of the
Company town and that a line of stakes led one way
to the town of Barba and the other way in the direction
to meet the construction train working out from the
junction with the S. & C. at Deep Well.
Then the startled people grasped the truth of the
appalling situation and awoke from their dream.
In the line of the railroad survey that had led to
Kingston as straight as you could draw a string, there
was now a curve seven miles away, the tangent of which
would carry it twelve miles east of the Company town
and straight into Barba.
