among the staff one
evening before Weir's arrival when they were discussing the advent of
the new chief.

"What was that name you fellows were saying Weir was called by?" he
asked.

The boy straightened up.

"'Cold Steel'--'Cold Steel' Weir. Anyway that's what Fergueson says,"
was the answer. "I never heard it before myself. His first name's
Steele, you know, and he looks cold enough to be ice when he's asking
questions about things, boring into a fellow with his eyes. But he's
up against a hard game here."

"Maybe. But a man doesn't get a name like that for just parting his
hair nice," Atkinson remarked. "He told me to stretch 'em"--a horny
thumb jerked towards the workmen--"and you'll see some real work
hereabouts for the rest of the afternoon."

"And to-morrow will be Sunday three days ahead of time."

"Sure."

"What then?"

"You know as much about that as I do. Make your own guess." With which
the speaker started off.

The morrow was "Sunday" with a vengeance. The majority of the laborers
demanded their pay checks the minute work ceased at the end of the
afternoon; Atkinson tightened orders, and by noon next day the last of
the Mexicans had quit. The fires in the stationary engines were
banked; the concrete mixers did not revolve; the conveyers were still;
the dam site wore an air of abandonment. In headquarters the engineers
worked over tracings or notes; and in the commissary store the
half-dozen white foremen gathered to smoke and yarn. That was the
extent of the activity.

Two days passed. After dinner Weir held a terse long-distance
telephone conversation, the only incident of the second day; and it
was overheard by no one. On the fourth day this was repeated. At dawn
of the fifth he despatched all of the foremen, enginemen and engineers
with wagons to Bowenville; and about the middle of the afternoon,
accompanied by his assistant, Meyers, and Atkinson, he sped in the
manager's car down the river for San Mateo, two miles below the camp.

Of the town Steele Weir had had but a glimpse as he flashed through on
his way to the dam the morning of his arrival twelve days earlier. It
had but a single main street, from which littered side streets and
alleys ran off between mud walls of houses. The county court house sat
among cottonwood trees in an open space. A few pretentious dwellings,
homes of white men and the well-to-do Mexicans, arose among long low
adobe structures that were as brown and characte