"There's four bits wasted," she sighed, "to say nothing of the trouble I had packing that candy to you--you ungrateful old devil." With which unladylike remark she dismissed him from her mind as a possible ally.
At the ranch, the boys were enthusiastically blistering palms and stiffening the muscles of their backs, turning the water away from the ditches that crossed the disputed tracts so that the trespassers there should have none in which to pan gold--or to pretend that they were panning gold.

Since the whole ranch was irrigated by springs running out here and there from under the bluff, and all the ditches ran to meadow and orchard and patches of small fruit, and since the springs could not well be stopped from flowing, the thing was not to be done in a minute.
And since there were four boys with decided ideas upon the subject--ideas which harmonized only in the fundamental desire to harry the interlopers, the thing was not to be done without much time being wasted in fruitless argument.
Wally insisted upon running the water all into a sandy hollow where much of it would seep away and a lake would do no harm, the main objection to that being that it required digging at least a hundred yards of new ditch, mostly through rocky soil.
Jack wanted to close all the headgates and just let the water go where it wanted to--which was easy enough, but ineffective, because most of it found its way into the ditches farther down the slope.
Gene and Clark did not much care how the thing was done--so long as it was done their way.

At least, that is what they said.
It was Good Indian who at length settled the matter.

There were five springs altogether; he proposed that each one make himself responsible for a certain spring, and see to it that no water reached the jumpers.
"And I don't care a tinker's dam how you do it," he said.

"Drink it all, if you want to.