y.

It was Bigelow's time to speak, but something restrained him, and the
contractor's inquiry died a natural death when Ballard gathered the
reins and pointed the way to the southward hills.

By nine o'clock the two riders were among the foothills of the southern
Elks, and the chief engineer of the Arcadia Company was making a very
practical use of his guest. Bigelow was an authority on watersheds,
stream-basins, the conservation of moisture by forested slopes, and
kindred subjects of vital importance to the construction chief of an
irrigation scheme; and the talk held steadily to the technical problems,
with the Forestry expert as the lecturer.

Only once was there a break and a lapse into the humanities. It was when
the horses had climbed one of the bald hills from the summit of which
the great valley, with its dottings of camps and its streaking of canal
gradings, was spread out map-like beneath them. On the distant river
road, progressing by perspective inches toward the lower end of the
valley, trotted a mixed mob of horsemen, something more than doubling in
numbers the sheriff's posse that had ridden over the same road in the
opposite direction the previous evening.

"Beckwith with his game-bag?" queried Bigelow, gravely; and Ballard
said: "I guess so," and immediately switched the talk back to the
watershed technicalities.

It was within an hour of the grading-camp supper-time when the two
investigators of moisture-beds and auxiliary reservoirs rode into
Fitzpatrick's headquarters and found a surprise awaiting them. The
Castle 'Cadia runabout was drawn up before the commissary; and young
Blacklock, in cap and gloves and dust-coat, was tinkering with the
motor.

"The same to you, gentlemen," he said, jocosely, when he took his head
out of the bonnet. "I was just getting ready to go and chase you some
more. We've been waiting a solid hour, I should say."

"'We'?" questioned Ballard.

"Yes; Miss Elsa and I. We've been hunting you in every place a set of
rubber tires wouldn't balk at, all afternoon. Say; you don't happen to
have an extra spark-plug about your clothes, either of you, do you? One
of these is cracked in the porcelain, and she skips like a dog on three
legs."

Ballard ignored the motor disability completely.

"You brought Miss Craigmiles here? Where is she now?" he demanded.

The collegian laughed.

"She's in the grand _salon_, and Fitzpatrick the gallant is making her a
cup of commissar