Lemuel Fogg believed that it is better to bend before the storm than to be broken by it. The government at Washington had heard from the farming settlers and irrigationists of the West. Many states had spoken that winter, and their voice had been as one. The agricultural element, feeble and scorned at first, was becoming a power. Congress, heeding its voice, was beginning to devise ways and means by which vast areas of public land hitherto thought fit only for grazing, if for that, could be watered by irrigation. Even the East, long hostile because it did not want more rich Western lands opened to compete with Eastern agriculture, held modified opinions. The order of the land department for the removal of the illegal fences on the public domain was to be enforced, and the fences had begun to come down. Seeing the hand of fate, Fogg and Davison had sold some of their cattle, were contracting their grazing area, and had begun to take thought of other things.
"We'll go with the tide," said Fogg, whom Davison followed in most things pertaining to matters of business, for Fogg's success had been phenomenal. "What do we care whether it's cattle or something else, if we can get money out of it? Never buck against the government; it's too strong, and you'll get into trouble. We'll turn farmer; we'll irrigate."
So Fogg and Davison were increasing their already considerable holdings of land in Paradise Valley, by purchases from settlers and from the mortgage companies. It was reported that in some places ranchmen secured land by inducing their cowboys to settle on quarter-sections and so obtain title from the government. Fogg and Davison would not do that. Not because they were too scrupulous, but because they were too wise. It would be an unpleasant thing to be haled into court for land swindling by the government agents who were ordering down the fences.
While thus securing the land, they had quietly obtained a controlling interest in the irrigating canal which the settlers had constructed. It was owned by a stock company; and before the farmers knew what was occurring it was to all intents and purposes in the possession of Davison and Fogg.
"It begins to look as though you were right, Justin, and that I was wrong, up there in Denver," said Fogg, sliding his fingers along his watch chain and beaming on Justin. "I couldn't see it then, but it really looks it; anyway, your side seems to be winning out, and I didn't think it could."