Chapter 7

As the summer wore on, we continued our shooting practice and we got good enough that even I was satisfied.

It was time now for me to start work on the dam. I was sure that I wanted a concrete dam, or at least a concrete core. I was not ready to trust an all-earthen dam to hold indefinitely. It might last one, two, or even five years, but I wanted more than that. Maybe I was too conservative, but I had heard of too many all-earthen dams collapsing. I thought in this case I just couldn't be too conservative; not when I was helping to preserve a dream!

The river ducked underground before it left the York Ranch, so there was no one downstream who would be inconvenienced by us damming the river.

The first thing we needed was an idea of how much water we had to store and where we could put it. We were going to have a tremendous surface area for evaporation and for ground absorption, so we I had to figure on a lot of loss. Anyway, I needed to take a close look at the valley we planned to flood. I invited Sarah to join me for my survey, so we rode out with a picnic lunch and a couple of extra canteens of water.

I did not take long to reach the near cliff and we rode along it from the waterfall for about five miles. At this point, the cliff had shrunk to about twenty feet. I could not tell if the land at the top of the cliff had dropped or the valley had risen, but this looked like the practical limit of our lake, which I had already started calling Lake Sarah. We rode a little further and found a way down to the valley. We rode across the valley to the river. Here we stopped and had our lunch. It was a beautiful area and I hated to lose it under water, but we really had no choice.

We forded the river without too much trouble, crossed the rest of the valley, and found our way up the the other cliff. As we made our way back toward the waterfall, I examined the cliff structure and could not see any real difference from the other side. At least, this would give us a symmetrical problem, which could cut the design work nearly in half. OK, this cursory look showed that we had a chance, now for the hard part.

The next day, we rode into Julesburg to find a surveyor. The best we could do was bring James Smithers in from Golden, which would require that we put him up at the ranch. This was not a real problem, so we sent a telegram describing the job and asking if he was interested. We asked him to wire back in two days about his interest and when he could do the job if he took it. We ate lunch and returned to the ranch.

As a rough estimate, I figured that we could trap 100 million cubic feet of water in the valley. That would irrigate a lot of land, but not as much as we had hoped, since we wouldn't be able to use of it. That would be about 50 square miles at a little less than 1 inch deep, unless I missed a decimal point, somewhere. Of course, water would be running in while we were pumping it out, just not as fast. The river was flowing at about 50 feet per minute, was about 40 feet wide, and about 2 feet deep. That came to 4000 cubic feet per minute. At that rate, it would take a little over 17 days to fill the lake. At a guess, it might take six months to a year to fill the lake the first time, allowing for evaporation and absorption. Well, we'll just have to wait on the survey.

Meanwhile, I asked Sarah to dig through her father's files to find anything he had on the dam and lake. She did not find much of any technical details, but she did find some writings on his hopes and wishes for the project. She also found that he was planning to form a corporation to exploit Lake Sarah. He would use the corporation to finance what we had started calling the James York Dam and pay the stockholders from the profits gained by selling the water. As it turned out, he had been heading to the lawyer's office to finalize the paperwork to form the corporation on the day he was murdered (I found this very suspicious, but couldn't think of anything specific).

Two days after sending the telegram to James Smithers, we had Bill send a messenger into Julesburg to check for a reply. The message was there, so he picked it up. The messenger also checked the gun shop to find out if there was any word on when the shotguns and pistols would arrive.

We anxiously opened the telegram when it arrived: Smithers would love to take the job and he would be available in about five weeks. He would let us know exactly when to expect him. His fee was reasonable so we wired right back that we would welcome him with open arms.

The shotguns and pistols should be delivered in about one week, so we had that to look forward to, also.

I thought that this was a good time to look for a supply of concrete. We would have to haul it in to our work site and mix it there. We would also have to locate a supply of aggregate; we might even have to make our own. At least we would not be hurting for a supply of water. It turned out that we would have to get our concrete from a long distance away. There was a distributer in El Paso who could ship by train to Golden; we would have to bring it the rest of the way by wagon. We spent a week looking around before we found a source of aggregate on the ranch. We would have to screen it, but it was suitable. Now that those two problems were solved, we were ready to try out our new guns.

I took my new .45 pistols out to the range and found that I liked them better than the .44-40. I was not reluctant to retire the old, but faithful, guns for the new beauties. They had stopping power, they were accurate, and they were loud! What more could I ask for?

As soon as work schedules could be rearranged, Bill showed up with the six new York Dragoons recruits. All seven were issued the new shotguns and the training began. Bill, of course, acted as the sergeant and I was the officer. The first part of the training consisted of going through the simple formations I wanted them to practice. They were all expert horsemen, so I only needed to explain what I wanted and they really only needed to practice reacting to command. I wanted them to charge all abreast spaced about ten feet apart, and to charge one behind the other about ten feet apart. This sounds easy, but just try it. If you have never done it, it does take practice. I told Bill to drill them and when he was satisfied, to call me and I would give my opinion.

I had had the saddler make up a saddle scabbard for my shotgun some time earlier, so he knew what to do, and he had seven more scabbards ready by the time the shotguns arrived. We issued the scabbards with the shotguns and had the men practice the maneuvers with the shotguns in place on the saddles.

When I discovered how much I liked my new pistols, I ordered seven more for use by the York Dragoons. These would be issued as soon as they arrived. Our saddler was making the seven cross-draw holsters so that they would be ready.

When Bill said that the men had mastered the two charging styles I wanted, I watched and agreed that they were ready for the next stage of training. I then showed them how I had been practicing shooting to the right and to the left while using different hands. I explained why I wanted them to learn this, and then left Bill to drill them on this. Again, he was to let me know when they had learned well enough. I then retired to pester the surveyor when he arrived.

Smithers (call me Jim) finally arrived on the day agreed upon, and Sarah and I both made a point of greeting him. He was shown to his room and allowed to rest until supper. He was also pleased to get a bath before eating what he announced to Carmelita to be "one of the finest meals I have ever had!"

After breakfast the next morning, I showed Jim the room we had picked for his office, but told him it could be changed if he preferred another. After that, Jim, Sarah, and I rode out to show him the river valley we wanted surveyed. We rode around a while and then returned to the ranch. I asked him how many helpers he would need and he said three. One would actually be his "rod man" who would hold the measuring pole which Jim sighted on and the other two would be general fetch and carriers. I got Bill to assign the helpers and Jim proceeded to train them. This training took only that afternoon, and Jim said that he would be ready to start the next morning.

"The surveyor has arrived. We must act soon."

"Calm down! We still have time. That new boyfriend has complicated things, some. It was bad luck for him to be the engineer they needed. We may need to get rid of him as well as Sarah."

"Let's push to kill her!"

"You are right, there. Sarah must be eliminated as soon as possible."

"I'm thinking of ways we can drive off some of her workers, too."

"An excellent idea! Get to it!"

Jim left for the valley on horseback; his crew rode in the work wagon. The plan was for Jim to "shoot elevations" along both cliffs and along the near side of the river. Once he had these elevations plotted, we could select the best place for the dam. If we needed to, at that point we could call in a geologist to advise us on how far we needed to dig down before starting the dam.

We were in luck in several respects. There were many nearby parallel valleys which could be used for additional reservoirs if we dug channels to them, and the nearest valley could probably serve as the diversion route for the river while we were working on the James York Dam. Several of these valleys were more like huge sink holes which would need little in the way of a dam. This would make expansion easier and cheaper.

The first day, Jim spent most of his time looking for the higher and lower places on the near cliff and getting a good general idea of a route. Tomorrow, he would start taking actual measurements. Since there was no surveying bench mark in reasonable range, he settled for relative elevations. This would certainly be good enough for our purposes.