Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 87, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1910 — GLEANINGS AND GOSSIP. THE TREASURE OF THE STREAM. [ARTICLE]

GLEANINGS AND GOSSIP.

THE TREASURE OF THE STREAM.

The two men faced one another outside the stone offices of the Land Co.; the one stout, overdressed, flushed with prosperity; the other, hat in hand, as one who pleads. “My good man, you’re wasting my, time,’’ said the president of the company affably. He could afford to be affable. “I can’t help it if you’ve no water on your farm. Take my price two hundred and fifty—and it isn’t worth the fifty alone —or stay here , and rot.” The lands —irrigated lands, they called them, with fine irony—had been first settled by miners, who had come here attracted by marvelous stories of a lost gold mine. They had laboriously scraped the thin illuvial from the banks of the stream and then departed. Afterward the settlers came. Homesteads sprang up beside the stream which made all the land fertile tor seven miles on either side of it. But they were outwitted by capitalists from the east. John Bascom had seen, with the eye of an expert, the marvelous possibilities of the dry soil two miles eastward, where once the river had been, before the courses of the stream changed. He had acquired rights on the hillside and begun to build the great dam which was to divert the river into its ancient bed and irrigate thousands of acres now nothing but a sandy desert. Meanwhile the settlers, finding their water supply gradually diminishing, had one by one sold out to the Land Co., till only Gregson and his wife remained. It was not Bascom’s intention .to divert the entire stream. He calculated, by leaving the end of the dam open, he could divide the flow, and thus acquire possession of two tracts of fertile soil., one along either tributary. But first he must frighten Gregson away. Thus it was that, as the dam crew to completion, the river shrank daily until it was nothing but a rivulet. “God help us, Mary, we’ll have to go,” Gregson muttered, staring out over his parched acres. “Ten years—i homestead built and prosperity fac,ing us —and now’’— It had been worth twelve thousand the preceding year. Now the desert had crept in, and where the broad river had been a man could wade across. The stream had been diverted and the Land Co. was growing rich. “Well, Gregson are you ready to move?” asked Bascom pleasantly the following week, as he rode by. “Curce you, no,” Gi eyson cried'tru him, “I’ll rot first. You'll never get this place—never. ‘ Wait till next month,’’ said Bas;cm pleasantly. Well, there was nothing tut to omplete the dam and shut off ths satire stream. It would cost a cool hcr.sand to tear down the masonry again, but Gregson’s farm was worth 12 times that —would be worth forty ihousand when properly divided up nto settler’s lots. So, in due course cf time, Gregson and his wife were left high and dry upon the face oi the desert. Gregson drew his last penny from tire bank. He had S2OO left in the world, beside his worthless homestead. It was too little to take them east, even. “We’ll fight him while we are alive,’,’ said his wife. “Do you remember what that traveling surveyor said two years ago, that there might be an underground stream? Sink a well, dear.” ' , “By God, I will'” creid Gregson. It cost all that he had to run down to reck level and board the sides against the sand. And. when this was done, there was no water. “Gregscn, I’ll give you seventy-five ’or your house, to use for lumber.” said Bascom. ‘Come; I’ll make it a couple of hundred, sq that you can get away. Don’t be a fool, man. Think of your wife. You’ve get to go; a mouse couldn’t earn a living here. Or, I’ll sell you five lots in the company's land, fifty down and five a month.” ________ And Gregson flung back his defiance at him and still remained'. Now they had only food for a week remaining. They scooped up water for drinking out of the wet sand with difficulty. And even that, failed them. “We’ve got to go,” said Gregson at last. “But we'll leave them nothing. Let us fill in the well, at any rate, before we leave.’’ . For three days they worked incessantly, shoveling sand from the bed of the stream and filling up the well. On the fourth day Gregson tripped iu the excavation and sat up with a cry, holding his foot. He had stubbed it against a boulder. His wife ran up to him. She saw his face freeze suddenly; saw his features distorted, heard the laugh of a madman come from his throat. He pointed into the sand. Round him lay boulders, each of them veined with jagged stripes of a dull yellow, sparkling in the sunlight. “What is it?'” cried bis wife, fearfully. “Gold,’’ answered Gregson solemnly, “It means that we’ve found tha lost mine, my dear.’’ —Harold Carter.