lard was feeling less peaceable when he rode on to the next camp, and
as he made the round of the northern outposts the fighting strain which
had come down to him from his pioneer ancestors began to assert itself
in spite of his efforts to control it. At every stopping-place
Fitzpatrick's complaint was amplified. Depredations had followed each
other with increasing frequency since Macpherson's death; and once, when
one of the subcontractors had been provoked into resistance, arms had
been used and a free fight had ensued.

Turning the matter over in his mind in growing indignation, Ballard had
determined, by the time he had made the complete round of the outlying
camps, upon the course he should pursue. "I'll run a sheriff's posse in
here and clean up the entire outfit; that's about what I'll do!" he was
saying wrathfully to himself as he galloped eastward on the stage trail
late in the afternoon of the final day. "The Lord knows I don't want to
make a blood-feud of it, but if they will have it----"

The interruption was a little object-lesson illustrating the grievances
of the contractors. Roughly paralleling the stage trail ran the line of
the proposed southern lateral canal, marked by its double row of
location stakes. At a turn in the road Ballard came suddenly upon what
appeared to be an impromptu game of polo.

Flap-hatted herdsmen in shaggy overalls, and swinging long clubs in lieu
of polo sticks, were riding in curious zigzags over the canal course,
and bending for a drive at each right and left swerve of their wiry
little mounts. It took the Kentuckian a full minute to master the
intricacies of the game. Then he saw what was doing. The location stakes
for the ditch boundaries were set opposite and alternate, and the object
of the dodging riders was to determine which of them could club the
greatest number of stakes out of the ground without missing a blow or
drawing rein.

Ballard singled out the leader, a handsome, well-built _caballero_, with
the face, figure, and saddle-seat of the Cid, and rode into the thick of
things, red wrath to the fore.

"Hi! you there!" he shouted. "Is your name Manuel?"

"_Si, Senor_," was the mild reply; and the cavalier took off his
bullion-corded sombrero and bowed to the saddle-horn.

"Well, mine is Ballard, and I am the chief engineer for the Arcadia
Company."

"Ha! Senor Ballar', I am ver' much delight to meet you."

"Never mind that; the pleasure isn't mutual, by a