ut his neck, and returned to the table where Charlie
Menocal waited.

"I will go up yonder in a few days, senor," he stated. "There are
girls there, are there not?"

* * * * *

One day a week later, after Bryant and Dave had returned to Kennard,
and after numerous conferences with Mr. McDonnell, his attorney and an
engineer called in for consultation, Lee exclaimed to his companion,
"We win. McDonnell will take hold of it. Bully for him!" And he went
about clearing up the odds and ends of business at a great rate.

Moreover, McDonnell believed he could dispose of the bonds within a
fortnight, by the middle of September. That would enable Bryant to
make good headway with the dam on the Pinas River while the water was
low and before cold weather set in. The attorney would look after the
incorporation of the company and the stock and bond issues. Lee could
at once engage a staff of assistant engineers and arrange to let the
building contract. In the matter of the canal line, he had received
ample assurance from members of the Land and Water Board at Santa Fe
that the changes he asked would be granted. Everything was propitious,
everything exactly as he would wish.

"Out of those town duds, Dave," he exclaimed. "You can't be a sport
any longer. Back to Perro Creek for us and your new spotted pony. And
it's high time, too, for I saw you making eyes at that girl with
yellow hair and angel blue eyes, whose mamma----"

"You never did!" Dave yelled, crimson with ire.

CHAPTER XII

October. And the last golden leaves twirling down from cottonwood and
aspen and mountain maple; the lofty brown peaks fresh powdered with
snow; the air dazzling, keen, heady like wine; frost a-sparkle of
mornings on stone, fence-post, roof, with a rainbow coruscation of
diamonds; clear, high moons; marvellous, moonlit nights.

It was the middle of the month. Three weeks previous, with the bonds
sold and the injunction suits dismissed, the contractor employed had
unloaded his outfit at Kennard, moved up the Pinas River, raised in a
day his camp at the mouth of the canon above Bartolo, and begun his
task. This man, Pat Carrigan, had been in Bryant's mind from the
first: a Pueblo contractor of Irish extraction, born in a railroad
camp, trained on a dump, and now grizzled and aging but unequalled in
handling men, in keeping them satisfied, in moving dirt. In his time
he had turned off jobs from Maine to Cal