Of all the state's officers he was supremest in his
department, not even excepting the Governor. Broad, general land laws
he followed, it was true, but he had a wide latitude in particular
ramifications. Rather than law, what he followed was Rulings:
Office Rulings and precedents. In the complicated and new questions
that were being engendered by the state's development the
Commissioner's ruling was rarely appealed from. Even the courts
sustained it when its equity was apparent.
The Commissioner stepped to the door and spoke to a clerk in the other
room--spoke as he always did, as if he were addressing a prince of
the blood:
"Mr. Weldon, will you be kind enough to ask Mr. Ashe, the state
school-land appraiser, to please come to my office as soon as
convenient?"
Ashe came quickly from the big table where he was arranging his
reports.
"Mr. Ashe," said the Commissioner, "you worked along the Chiquito
River, in Salado County, during your last trip, I believe. Do you
remember anything of the Elias Denny three-league survey?"
"Yes, sir, I do," the blunt, breezy, surveyor answered. "I crossed it
on my way to Block H, on the north side of it. The road runs with the
Chiquito River, along the valley. The Denny survey fronts three miles
on the Chiquito.
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