at present. He was loath to go back east and form a company, he wanted the project, and its profit, to be all his own. And he had brought Jackson up here to camp so that he could make a preliminary survey in the morning. While he waited for the money he could work out the problem. At present he was raising cattle enough to show a slight profit, but they were not the fat steers he wanted to produce, that the market demanded.
Sheridan felt that he had found his bit to do in the question of increased production of staples, the betterment of quality. He liked the life, he was beginning to understand the work, he thought on a big scale, and he wanted action in like quantity. One success might lead to another in the reclamation of these semi-deserts by individual enterprise, the building up of a self-respecting owners' community. He was not going to be a hog about the water; once he secured rights and put through the project, he hoped to be a pioneer if not a promoter of similar affairs. He had an altruistic streak in him. It struck him that the proper uses of natural sources in such locations by the land-owners would come to mean an almost ideal Socialism. Opportunity for all, coupled to recognition of enterprise. It was all a bit vague at present but he fancied it would work out satisfactorily and the gradual evolution of it was delightful thinking. His main picture was not so hazy. It showed Chico Mesa as a great cattle-producing country, sending out the best, prosperous, progressive, self-supporting, profits invested for the good of the actual owners, not collected as dividends
