hat immediate work must be done
on the water system. It was late and there were no lights at any of
the little ranch shacks over the fields.

Chandler's place was dark like the rest. They were sleeping. Their
notice would not come until to-morrow or next day. He would not wake
them. Anyway to-night he had forgotten his fiddle, but he grimly
remembered his gun.

He drove through the Red Butte Ranch without stopping. He could
scarcely bear even to look to the right or left at those long rich rows
of dark green cotton.

Turning off the main road south toward the Dillenbeck canal, something
unusual stirred in Bob's consciousness. At first he could not think
what was the matter; but directly he got it--the car was running
differently. This road across a patch of the desert was usually so
bumpy one had to hold himself down. To-night the car ran smoothly.
The road had been worked--was being worked now--for a quarter of a mile
ahead he heard an engine and made out some sort of road-dragging outfit.

The simplest way in the world to make a road across a sandy desert, or
to work one that has been used, is to take two telephone poles, fasten
them the same distance apart as automobile wheels, hitch on an engine,
and drag them lengthwise along the road. This not only grinds down the
uneven bumps but packs the sand into a smooth, firm bed for the
machine's wheels.

That was what they were doing here. Bob stayed back and watched. He
did not want to overtake them. The road-breaking outfit crossed the
canal directly and headed south by east off into the desert. Bob
stopped his machine on the plank bridge, and watched them pull away
into the night. Then he gave a long, speculative whistle.

"I wonder," he said, "what philanthropist is abroad in the land at one
o'clock in the morning?"

Rogeen left his machine and followed on foot along the bank of the
canal for two miles. The water was flowing freely. There was no sign
of immediate need for dredging. Some of the small ranches were getting
water to-night. He was glad of that. The Red Butte had finished
watering its five-thousand-acre crop a week ago. It would be three
days before they would need to begin again.

He went back to his machine and drove clear up to the intake from the
Valley Irrigation Company's canal. The water was running smoothly all
the way. The ditches seemed open, and in fair shape. Some work was
needed of course every day; but there wa