 Ranger Bill, warrior of the woodland, struggling against extreme odds, traveling dangerous trails, fighting the many enemies of nature. This is the job of the guardian of the forest, Ranger Bill. Pouring rain, freezing cold, blistering heat, snow, floods, bears, rattlesnakes, mountain lions. Yes, all this in exchange for the satisfaction and pride of a job well done. Hi there, this is Ranger Bill. Say, did you ever stop to think about water? Nowadays, when we want water, all we do is go turn on a tap in the sink or turn on the hose, and there we are. Water's fun, too, fun to swim in or go canoeing on. But did you ever stop to think that man can't live without water? You have plenty of it, but in places like old Palestine, for example, where Jesus lived, water was very scarce. And out here in our own great west, water is often hard to find, too. Today, I want to tell you about a very strange adventure we had, one that proved to me that even a forest ranger like myself can't, well, just doesn't know everything. I call it, the river that wasn't there. Fred Martin, I declare, are you going to stay out there all day working on those irrigation ditches? No, just got the last one, banked and ready for the night. Hey, do you know any bride around here anywhere who might have a glass of lemonade all ready for a husband? I do just happen to know a bride like that, and here it is. Ah, it tastes good after a hard day's work out in the sun. And it feels good to sit down, too. You poor man. You're not going to have to work all night, too, are you friend? No, no. A couple of hours, most likely. All I've got to do is go down to the river and open the sluice gates. That lets the water into the little irrigation ditches. All those little ditches. It took you more than five whole months to dig them. It'll be worth it, Martha. More and worth it as soon as you see our crops coming up. Lettuce, mostly. There's always a good market for that, and beans, and, well, you know, you help plant it all. But I still don't see why you have to run that water in at night. It's too hot in the daytime. The sun's too hot and no rain out here in this part of the west. I see. My, Fred, just think. All our savings out there in those brown fields. Ah, wait till the green begins to show. Won't be long now. No, I guess not. Everything depends on our river, doesn't it, Fred? Our river. It's not very deep and not very wide, but it's our river. I wonder why it has such a funny name. A name? When I bought this land and built this homestead and dug those ditches and planted that lettuce, I never even knew the river had a name. Well, I've always just called it the river and let it go with that. It does have a name, though. What is it? An old Indian woman told me they call it Rio Perdido. Rio Perdido? What does that mean? The Lost River. Gonzalez. Senor. How long have you been Mayor Domo of this ranch? Oh, many years, senor. More than I can count. Very easy. I worked here when Zupade, your father, was here. And each year we grow. You and I and the ranch. More cattle, more money. Gracious. I'll Rio. What? I say in Spanish, thanks to the river. Thanks to our river, we grow bigger. Ah, right, right. We thought our river, we wouldn't... Why, we wouldn't even be here. The cattle wouldn't be here. Nothing would be here except desert. Ah, sí, senor. How did you get the tally from the foreman? Sí, senor. How many head of cattle this year? Oh, more than ever before, senor. 800 head. 800 big ones, senor. Ah, the best yet. Gonzalez, if we get all those steers to Abilene, I'll get you the best silver-mounted saddle you ever saw. Ah, thank you, senor. We get them there for certain. How long has we got our river? Our river. Oh, plenty of fun. Uh, me, mujer, she tell me, senor Martin, he call our river his river. Well, it ain't. Anyway, we should worry about that miserable homesteader. The West ain't no place to grow lettuce and parsnips. Next thing you know, he'll be growing sweet peas and pansies. He can not grow lettuce. We can not grow steel without the river. Our river, river always there, no dry up. Make us rich. Now, rich is right. And besides, we're upstream from Martin and his crazy little farm upstream. You know what that means, don't you? Sure thing, senor boss. We can get water first, us first, senor Martin second. We got the Agua Fresco, Viva El Rio Perdido. You comprehend those Spanish words, senor? Yes, Lost River. I wonder how it ever got a name like that. Lost River. Hey, what you got there, Henry? A book. I know it's a book. I've seen more books than my dad. You can take a stick at it. I didn't know you liked to read that much. I didn't say I read all those books. I said I saw them. I don't hold too much book learning. Don't you want to know what this book is? What's that? Oh, come to think of it, I did ask you that, didn't I? Yeah, what is it? You've had your nose stuck in that book for most a week, seems like. It's powerfully interesting. What's the name onto it? Elementary Principles of Geology. Elementary Principles of Geology? Geology. What's that? Something to do with geography? Not exactly. Well, in a way, sort of. But it's mostly about rocks and rock formations and how mountains get to be mountains. Quartz and shale and mica and granite. Whoa, whoa, they're back up on my tear, going too fast for me. What's the name of that stuff again? Geology. See, is there anything about cowboys and Indians in that their book? Uh-uh. Don't reckon I'll read it then. Hey, what are you reading it for? Well, we were studying geology at school and I got interested. So I got this book out of the library. What are you reading it for? You even collect rocks or something? No, it's just, well, interesting, that's all. But what good will it ever do ya? You're gonna be a range, you're not a geologist. So why study that there great, big, thick, heavy book on geology? Well, you can't tell. Knowing something about geology might come in handy sometime. It's a good thing to know something about it. But I think everybody should know something about elementary principles of geology. Well, this is the time and here we are at the first sluice gate. Would you like to pull it open? I've read all sweet of you. Wait a minute. Martha, we've worked and prayed for this moment for months, for years actually. Let's bow our heads. Dear Lord, we thank you for our little farm. Our dream come true. Bless us now as we turn on the water, open the sluice gates, and turn the river water into our irrigation ditches for the first time. We ask you to bless our work here. Amen. All right, Martha, open the first gate. Do you know how to turn that big round handle? I think I do. You sure have to turn it a lot of times. Yeah, don't fall in the water. I won't. It's only about two feet deep in the deepest part anyway. There, the wooden gate is lifting up now. There, there's our water, dear. Yes, yes, I see. That's funny. Is something wrong? I don't think so. Well, at least I'm not sure. But water, there ought to be a lot more water than that coming through the gate, a whole lot more. Are you sure you opened it all the way in? Yes, I'm sure. Well, let's get the other gates open. Funny thing, I'm sure there ought to be a lot more water than that. There's a lot more. Senor Boss? Yes. Let's go and take a look at stairs. Okay. You won't be seeing stairs, though. You'll be seeing that silver-modded saddle. That's right. Senor Boss, this saddle, is she silver-plated or solid silver? Oh, solid silver. After we get those stairs to market and sold. Well, I wait. Hey. What, hey? And those stairs seem like they're farther off than usual. Well, we almost be the morning sun or something. It just seems like we're walking farther from the ranch house to the pens than we usually... We're almost there any house, Senor. Yeah. Here, help me with this gate, Gonzalez. See. You know what? Now, move your pretty bunch of stairs, Senor Boss. Hide, shine, pretty in the sun. Yeah, they are healthy. That's a true fact. Plenty of water is what makes the difference. Oh, see? No plenty of water. Steer, she died, prompt, or plenty quick, I think. You think right. Well, there they are. Finest little herd in the west. A four-legged bankroll. Move your denero, see? Yeah, we, uh... Hey. K.S.? Mud. I hate to get mud in my boots. I never recall seeing mud here before. Not me, either. Where's all this mud come from? Some of us has done the river had gone down some. That never happened before. Steer, she cannot drink river all up. Too much water. Well, of course not. I guess I'm just imagining things. What could happen to a river? Lock it! How much further we got to get to go if we're going? Oh, maybe a mile or two? Maybe three. Oh, you see? Henry, let's sit down and smell. All right. What you carrying around in that bag? Rocks? Rocks? Well, you gather up a bag full of rocks. I'm making a collection. That's for geology. I'm writing a composition of geology for my term paper. But when you learn all this stuff, what good will it do you? Oh, I don't know. Like I told you before. It might come in handy sometimes, don't be? Hell, all right. I heard along with you. Now, give me that bag. I'll tote it for a spell. Only there's just one thing. What's that? Where's it when you decided to collect something that instead of collecting rocks, you decided to collect feathers? Man, you're walking so fast. You're almost running. I can hardly keep up with you. I'm sorry. It's because I'm worried, I guess. Well, we're going to the riverbank. Yes, Martha. You see that pole sticking out there in the water? About four feet from shore? Well, yes. Did you put it there? Yep. But what for? Come with me. Walk right into the river? Why, Fred, I'll get wet. Have you gone crazy? Yeah, maybe I have. Slip off your shoes. I want you to check something with me. So come on. The water's only about a foot deep. Well, yes. Certainly, Fred. Well, take my hand. Now, take a look at that stick now, Martha. I put it here yesterday. You see that notch, Mark? Yes, I see it. Looks like you made it with your knife. Well, it's just about eight inches above the level of the water. Uh-huh. I wanted you to come down here and tell me what I saw and couldn't believe. Martha, I stuck that stick in here yesterday on purpose and made that notch with my knife exactly even with the water. Martha, in the last 24 hours, our river has dropped at least eight inches. But the irrigation ditches, the lettuce, are fine. I know. Without water. Without water, we're finished. Finished before we've ever begun. Speak up, and it better be good. You'll be a sorry Mayor Tomo. Yes, Senor Boss. Senor Boss. Wake me up out of a siesta and drag me down to the river bank in a broiling sun. You're going local? No, no, Senor Boss. Senor that rock, this rock, this big rock here. What about? Senor, you stand on this rock when you fish. Of course I do. Half a years. Keep my feet dry. I see. Look here, I think you are local. Did you bring me all the way out here just to talk about fishing? No, no, no, no, Senor Boss. This rock, she is always right at the edge of the water, no? Why, sure. Senor, look. The water, she is not here anymore. Not by fishing rock. The water, she's gone way down over there. Oh, real. She gets smaller. The gates are bone dry in the irrigation ditch, too. The river isn't there? What are we going to do for you? You've got to think. Drink this coffee. I don't want any. Longhorn Larabee. What about him? You know him. He has the cattle ranch up river from us. And he's brought his whole herd in off the range to fatten them up for market. Has them in big pens by the river. Do you suppose? I suppose nothing. I'm going to find out right now. Fred, what are you going to do? I'm paying a call on Mr. Longhorn Larabee. But your rifle, Fred, don't take your rifle. Now, what's the herd count this morning? Over the night we lose six, seven steer, maybe eight. Not too much agua now. Not much big river now. Steers all want to drink same time. Crowd, push-off. Some get knocked down. Can all get drink water. So, so we lose. Every day lose more this way. Consoles say, Hasta luego. Say goodbye to Silver Mountain Sadler. Now, the river has got small for sure. It weren't much of a river to begin with. And now it ain't much more than a crick. I can't figure it. How many head did we lose, all told? Maybe five team. Maybe twenty. That's the bad driest spill, I guess, that's all. We'll start shipping to Ambulane before too long anyway. Another couple weeks. Yes, Verdad. Oh, senior boss. We have the company. Looks like that simple-minded homesteader. Now, let us grow her. Let us grow her with a rifle. Yeah. Get the shotgun off the wand. Go stand just behind the door, out of sight. If it begins to look like trouble, you know what to do. See you, senior boss. Yeah, come on in. Howdy. Been dear, honey. Mr. Larraby, I'll get to the point quick. You know I started homesteading down the river, planning to grow lettuce, run a truck garden. The West ain't no place for green-stuff farmers. The West is for cattle. With modern irrigation planning, I could grow anything. Anything as long as I have water. Well, what's alien? You got water? No. Now this morning when we got up, our river was gone. Vanished. Just not there. So all them cute little ditches you dug don't mean nothing. That's a good one. So your river's gone, huh? Where'd it go to? The river you call yours flows past my place first, you know? I still got my part of it. That's the point, Mr. Larraby. I think those cattle viewers all collected here in one spot. Just what do you think, tenderfoot? I think they've used up all the water. In just a few days, without water, my whole crop will die, and I'll be ruined. I'm concerned with your crop. I ain't starting about what happens to you. Mr. Larraby, I'm desperate. I want you to open all those gates in your cattle pens and run the steers back out onto the range. And if I don't, Mr. Martin, I have this rifle here, and I'll... And you ain't not going to fire him, please, Mr. Martin, because I have very big gun pointed straight into your back. Please, put your rifle on table. Please, Mr. Martin. Go on home, and thank you, Lucky Stars. I didn't have my Mayor Domer shoot you. I don't like homesteaders, and I don't like irrigation farmers. And most of all, I don't like any man who thinks he can grow lettuce. Now, get out! And I understand, Mr. Martin, over the years I've had occasion to study many thousands of reports, and I've never even heard of cattle actually drinking up a whole river. It's not possible. But our river is gone. You refer to your river. Have you looked at it between your place and Larraby? Yes, I drove alongside of it the whole way between my farm and his ranch. Larraby hasn't built a dam or cut a new channel to swing the river away from your land? No. After it leaves his place, it just gets shallower and shallower and narrower and narrower, and then it just peters out. Mr. Jefferson, those cattle are drinking all that water. No, that's just not so. Oh, isn't it, huh? Well, what is wrong then? You're the forest ranger. You're supposed to know everything. Nobody knows everything, Mr. Martin. Well, I know one thing. I'm ruined. That's what. And I know another thing. I used to believe in God until this happened. And now I don't. You folks looking for me? Oh, in a way, Henry, you got Mr. Larraby a chair, will you? Right. Call me Longhorn. I was way out in the North 40 running up a few strays when I seen your fancy dude out of an airplane flying around my place. I wanted to fly straight up and down. The helicopter? Yeah, that's what I said. So I drove on into town. Figured you might want to pull over some. Why? Kind of that helpless, lettuce farmer Martin. I'm more interested in that river you and he share. Mr. Martin thinks your cattle are... Well, he's off his head. Perhaps. He's losing his farm, you know. He's at the end of his rope. Told me he threatened you with a gun. Ah, forget it. Lick, Mr. Jefferson. My steers ain't drinking up that river and you know it. I got water in my place. Not much, not like before. The old river has fell off, but my steers got water. Martin's ditches are empty. Who cares about his ditches and say, for all we know maybe them ditches are to blame. I'm setting the laws of nature. Shoving a river where it was never intended to go and just where did the river go? I don't know yet. You don't know? That's rich. Mr. Forrest Ranger don't know. Well, I don't know either. And I don't care. As long as my steers can get water, that's all that matters. The patron, the senior boss. Gonzalez, what do you want? Stand out there, stand through the window. Senior boss, you listen, the steers. Are you sure I hear the steers? They ball like that all the time when they're not in the range. Their sound is music, money music. You listen good, senior boss. Huh? They are bell-ring kind of loud. Maybe they got spooked by a coyote. Maybe a wolf. Let's get down there. Senior, you look where I look. Now I'm looking. I'm looking at the river. It's gone. It's dried up. A river. It's gone. So we're done. Finished, Martha. With no water in our, our whole crop will die in two or three days. This is the end of everything. Listen to them cattle ball. They're thirsty. They can't last more than two or three days. There ain't no water I can drive them to. I'm a goner. Without water, them cattle die. It's that Larrabee, him and his cattle. It was his steers that drank all our water. That's where our river went. Well, I'll fix him. I'll get Larrabee. Them ditches. Them crazy ditches. What's done this? Draining away my water from my river. That shipless homesteader and his digging and draining. Martin, I'll fix his wagon. Fran, if you love me, if you ever loved me, listen to me now. Please do what I ask. Let's go to the forest ranger office. Let's get ranger Bill. Senor boss, listen to your old mayor domo, your amigo, and don't do these bad things. We go by Los Federalistas. Please, we go see L.O. Ranger Bill. A homesteader has just as much right to come out here. Man, what a time, please. We've got to act more sensibly. There, that's better. Do you realize we've been talking here all night long and we haven't gotten anywhere? I try to establish that in my opinion this tragedy isn't your fault, Mr. Larrabee, and neither is it your fault, Mr. Martin. Well, then it must be. Watering cattle and controlled irrigation can't make a river disappear. What did then? I simply don't know. If those steers and that lettuce doesn't have water in a few hours, no, I... We're both finished. But where did that river go? And can we get it back? Bill, Mr. Larrabee, Mr. Martin, I'm just going to high school and I feel funny talking like this, but I think I know where the river went and I think I know how we might get it back. We're listening, Henry. Go ahead. Well, I've been reading a lot about geology. Geology is a science of rocks sort of. Well, I read that sometimes a river, a river that has always been just a right river. A long time, last year, a farm in my ranch followed this lost river. There she is, dry as ever. Yeah, I still can't understand what this is. Oh, that river kept backing up. First it dried up at the farm, then upstream at the ranch. We've got to find out where... We found it. There's the river. You see it over there? Wait. It runs right down into the ground, sinks right out of sight. Right. Hop out, everybody. We've got to work fast. Don't go with that box, Longhorn. It ain't heavy. Don't stumble, that's all. No. Now then, Henry explained that sometimes a river will suddenly just disappear. Some fault in the rock formation of the river bed, maybe a tiny shift in the earth's surface, maybe just gradual erosion, but it's enough to make the river disappear, to flow into a subterranean channel. Go underground. Yes. Then sometimes, not always, and not for sure, if you can shift that rock formation, shake the river bed so it settles, you can close up the underground opening. And get the river back. With this here dynamite I'm carrying? No. Dynamite explodes upward. We want something that explodes down. That's compound sea. Our army engineer has developed it not too long ago. It has to be detonated, not ignited. That means you have to hit it. That's what I'm carrying. Yep. Hand it over. I have it all ready to go. I'm going to carry this out and set it right down in the bed of the stream, right where the water disappears into the ground. Then I'll attach this long flexible wire to the detonating mechanism, and then come back here and crouch down behind this ledge with the rest of you. All clear? Well, what do we do now? Press your faces right down into the dirt. Say, Henry, this is your idea. Why don't you like to pull the wire and detonate the compound sea? All right, Bill. I'll count. One, two, three, fire. A river. A river. It's back. Oh, thank God. Thank God. It is the river. The steers and the lettuce. And us, we're all saved. We thank God too. That's right, Henry. We're all saved. So the river did come back, and the lettuce and the steers were saved. But more important things than that happened when the explosion returned the river to us. Poor, bewildered Fred Martin regained the faith he almost lost and heart-bitten old Longhorn thought about God for the first time. And it wasn't I but Henry, whose knowledge saved the situation. We found the river that wasn't there. Thanks to him. Well, see you next week for more adventure with...