Hawaii - James Michener [361]
"Artesian water don't happen everywhere," Overpeck replied.
"Suppose there isn't any on my land in Hawaii?"
"My job is to guess where it is," Overpeck answered. "And I guess it's under your land."
"Why?"
"That's what I was explaining with the pillows and the newspapers," he said.
"I think we better go back to the hotel," Whip said. "But wait a minute. How did you get the well down there?"
"A special rig I invented."
"How far down did you go?"
"Hundred and eighty feet."
"You want to sell the rig?"
"Nope."
"I didn't think so." The two men returned to the ferry, and as Whip studied the cold and windy hills of San Francisco, imagining them to be Hawaii, he became increasingly excited, but when little Mr. Overpeck assured him that a layer of cap rock must have imprisoned enormous stores of sweet water under the sloping flatlands of Oahu, Whip could feel actual perspiration break out on his
forehead.
"What kind of deal can we make, Overpeck?" he asked bluntly.
"You're sweating, son. If I find water, I'm handing you millions of dollars, ain't I?"
"You are."
"I'm a gambler, Mr. Hoxworth. What I want is the land next to yours."
"How much?"
"You pay for getting the rig over there. You give me three dollars a day. And you buy, before we start, one thousand acres of land. If we get water, I buy it from you for what you paid. If we don't, you keep it."
"Are the chances good?"
"There's one way we can test my theory without spending a cent."
"How?"
"Think a minute. If there really is a pool of inexhaustible water hiding under your land, the overflow has got to be escaping somewhere. Logically, it's running away under the sea level, but some of it must be seeping out over the upmost edge of the cap rock. Go out to your land. Tell people you're going to raise cattle. Walk along the upper areas until you find a spring. Calculate how high above sea level you are, and then walk back and forth along that elevation. If you find half a dozen more springs, it's not even a gamble, Mr. Hoxworth. Because then you know the water's hiding down below you."
"You come out and check," Whip suggested.
"People might guess. Then land values go up."
Whip reflected on this shrewd observation and made a quick decision. "Buy yourself a good bull. Bring him to the islands with you and we'll announce that you're going to help me raise cattle. Then everybody'll feel sorry for me, because lots of people have gone bust trying that on the barren lands. Takes twenty of our acres to support one cow, and nobody makes money."
Three weeks later little Mr. Overpeck arrived in Honolulu with a bull and announced to the Honolulu Mail that he was going to advise Mr. Whipple Hoxworth in the raising of cattle on the latter's big ranch west of the city. He led his bull out to the vast, arid, useless acres, and as soon as he got there he told Whip, "Buy that land over there for me." And Whip did, for practically nothing, and the next day he concluded that he had been victimized by the shrewd little man, for they tramped both Whip's acres and Overpeck's, and there were no springs.
"Why the hell did you bother me with your nonsense?" the young man railed.
"I didn't expect any springs today," Overpeck said calmly. "But I know where they'll crop out after the next big storm up in the mountains," and sure enough, three days after the rain clouds left, along the line that Overpeck had predicted, he and Whip discovered sure evidences of seepage. They stood on the hillside looking down over the bleak and barren acres, Whip's four thousand and Over-peck's one, and the little man said, "We're standing on a gold mine, Mr. Hoxworth. I'm mortally certain there's water below. Buy up all the land you can afford."
Eight weeks later the little