A. M. Chisholm, Desert Conquest, or Precious Waters (1913)

Here’s a curious western novel from Canadian writer Arthur Murray Chisholm (1872-1960). It was first serialized as Precious Waters in The Popular Magazine starting November 1, 1912, and then published in book form the following year, with illustrations by Clarence Rowe and a new title, Desert Conquest, or Precious Waters.

This is one of those westerns without cowboys, but it has nearly every other element that goes with the genre. It begins, in fact, with a train robbery that is actually a “cute meet” between its two central characters, Casey Dunne (the guy) and Clyde Burnaby (the girl). Don’t ask me where you get Clyde for a girl’s name.

The plot. While love eventually unites these two in promised matrimony by the end of the novel, the real conflict involves a railroad and a settlement of dry-land ranchers. The ranchers rely on a limited supply of river water to irrigate their crops. The railroad is building a dam to divert the river onto its own lands, for development and sale to new settlers.

Illustration by Clarence Rowe

Though this will make the ranchers’ lands as good as worthless, the railroad’s scheme is indifferent to their welfare and callously legal. Never mind any assumed water rights of those who came there first. The railroad can keep any threatened litigation in the courts for as long as it takes, until the ranchers go broke.

An engineer, Farwell, who hasn’t the least concern for the consequences, is assigned to the job of building the dam. In short order, he finds himself up against the armed resistance of the ranchers. The dam is dynamited while it’s still under construction, then the new system of ditches and flumes is sabotaged.

The two antagonists are the honest, hard-working Dunne and the company man Farwell, who efficiently serves the interests of his employer no matter what. They are equally dedicated, but Farwell is all work and no play. He’s married to the railroad – that is, until he meets Sheila McCrae, the spunky daughter of one of the ranchers. Though it doesn’t weaken his resolve to do his job, meeting her loosens his grip on his single-minded devotion to his career.

It takes almost the full length of the novel to resolve the conflict between the railroad and the ranchers. Although there is bloodshed and violence, the ranchers manage to win a bloodless victory. The way that happens has more to do with high finance and insider trading than is usual in the western novel.