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By Root 1501 0

about the capacity in which he was acting, though the public face he presented was very different. With his letter of introduction from Lippincott and an armload of freshly minted Reclamation maps, he strode into the government land office in Independence, claiming to represent the Service on a matter of vital importance to the Owens Valley Project. For the first three days, however, his investigations had nothing to do with the hydroelectric plans. Poring over land deeds in the office’s files—deeds to which he might have had no access as a private citizen—Eaton jotted down a wealth of information on ownership, water rights, stream flows—things Los Angeles had to know if and when it decided to move on the Owens Valley’s water. Handsome and charming, Eaton even managed to get the land office employees to help him, unaware that the information they were digging out had nothing to do with the matter that had allegedly brought Eaton there. When he finally had what he felt he needed, he turned to the official matter at hand.

The problem of the conflicting power-license applications was straightforward; there could only be one resolution. One of the two power companies, the Owens River Water and Power Company, held water rights senior to those of its competitor, the Nevada Power Mining and Milling Company. Its rights even predated those of the Reclamation Service, and if it was refused its application it might cause the Service some real legal embarrassment. In addition, its plan of development was far more compatible with the Reclamation project than the Nevada company’s; Jacob Clausen had taken a cursory look at both and decided that the Nevada company’s project could reduce the Long Valley reservoir to a glorified mudflat during the peak summer irrigation season, when water was needed most. To Clausen, the applications were hardly worth a second look, and he couldn’t understand why Lippincott had even bothered to hire someone to review them so carefully. The Owens River company deserved a conditional go-ahead, the Nevada company decidedly did not. But Clausen was far too naive to understand the complexity of such matters: One of the founders of, and partners in, the Nevada Power Mining and Milling Company was a rancher named Thomas B. Rickey.

Eaton’s baffling recommendation in favor of the Nevada Power Mining and Milling Company threw Clausen into a state of apoplexy. When Lippincott formally endorsed his judgment a few weeks later, Clausen finally understood that something was terribly wrong, but how wrong even he could not fathom. On the 6th of March, exactly three days after Lippincott had hired Eaton as his personal representative in the matter of the power company applications, the city of Los Angeles had quietly hired its own consultant to prepare a report on the options it had in its search for water. The report had taken only a couple of weeks to prepare—most of the information was in Mulholland’s office, and the conclusion was foregone anyway—and the consultant had received an absurdly grandiose commission of $2,500, more than half his annual salary. It was not so much a commission as a bribe. The money, however, was well spent: the name of the consultant was Joseph B. Lippincott.

One other person besides Jacob Clausen had begun to follow the comings and goings of Eaton, Lippincott, and Mulholland with more than detached interest—Wilfred Watterson, the president of the Inyo County Bank. Wilfred and his brother, Mark, were the most popular citizens in the Owens Valley. Their family had founded the bank, and Wilfred and Mark, when still in their twenties, became president and treasurer. Both were attractive young men, but Wilfred in particular was strikingly handsome. He had clean-cut, perfect features, an absolutely even gaze, and the erect, confident air of a nineteenth-century optimist. In his elegant clothes, Wilfred could have passed easily for Bat Masterson instead of a small-town banker. The lending policies of the Inyo County Bank were as much of an aberration as its owners. The Wattersons rarely refused a