Good story.
Reminds me of some of the old stories from Nebraska during the cattle craze days.
We have an annual spring occasion called ‘Ditchin’ in which anybody with shares on the irrigation ditch comes out with a well sharpened shovel and cleans the ditch from one end of the valley to the other. About three miles. There are usually fifteen or twenty of us. I always take the occasion to ask a few questions about the history of the ditch.
The stories about water and water thievery always come up. Any outsider that doesn’t follow the water rules has occasionally ended up the same way as that guy in Kanab.