its time.

"What you didn't do to Carson and his gang was good and plenty, wasn't
it, Breckenridge?" was his grinning comment, when they had been over the
interval work on the dam together, and were smoking an afternoon peace
pipe on the porch of the adobe office. "It's the joke of the camp. I
tried to keep it dark, but the enginemen bleated about it like a pair of
sheep, of course."

"Assume that I have some glimmerings of a sense of humour, and let it go
at that," growled Ballard; adding; "I'm glad the hoodoo has let up on
you long enough to give this outfit a chance to be amused--even at a
poor joke on me."

"It has," said Bromley. "We haven't had a shock or a shudder since you
went down-valley. And I've been wondering why."

"Forget it," suggested the chief, shortly. "Call it safely dead and
buried, and don't dig it up again. We have grief enough without it."

Bromley grinned again.

"Meaning that this cow-boy cattle-thief tangle in the lower valley has
made you _persona non grata_ at Castle 'Cadia? You're off; 'way off. You
don't know Colonel Adam. So far from holding malice, he has been down
here twice to thank you for stopping the Carson raid. And that reminds
me: there's a Castle 'Cadia note in your mail-box--came down by the
hands of one of the little Japs this afternoon." And he went in to get
it.

It proved to be another dinner bidding for the chief engineer, to be
accepted informally whenever he had time to spare. It was written and
signed by the daughter, but she said that she spoke both for her father
and herself when she urged him to come soon.

"You'll go?" queried Bromley, when Ballard had passed the faintly
perfumed bit of note-paper across the arm's-reach between the two
lazy-chairs.

"You know I'll go," was the half morose answer.

Bromley's smile was perfunctory.

"Of course you will," he assented. "To-night?"

"As well one time as another. Won't you go along?"

"Miss Elsa's invitation does not include me," was the gentle reminder.

"Bosh! You've had the open door, first, last, and all the time, haven't
you?"

"Of course. I was only joking. But it isn't good for both of us to be
off the job at the same time. I'll stay and keep on intimidating the
hoodoo."

There was a material train coming in from Alta Vista, and when its
long-drawn chime woke the canyon echoes, they both left the mesa and
went down to the railroad yard. It was an hour later, and Ballard was
changing his clothe