Now Bob remembered and pieced together the whole. Baker had been
bragging that he intended to pay nothing to the Government for his water
power. Bob could almost remember the very words. "'They've swiped about
everything in sight for these pestiferous reserves,'" he murmured to
himself, "'but they encourage the honest prospector.... Oldham's got the
whole matter ... '" and so on, in the unfolding of the very scheme by
which these acres had been acquired. "Near headwaters," he had said; and
that statement, combined with the fact that nothing had occurred to stir
indistinct memories, had kept Bob in the dark. At the time "near
headwaters" had meant to him the tract of yellow pine near the head of
Sycamore Creek. So he had dismissed the matter. Now he saw clearly that
a liberal construction could very well name the Basin as the headwaters
of the drainage system from which Sycamore Creek drew, if not its
source, at least its main volume of water. He exclaimed aloud in disgust
at his stupidity; which, nevertheless, as all students of psychology
know, typified a very common though curious phenomenon in the mental
world.
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