ifornia, from Wisconsin to
Texas. Already along the hillside a yellow gash was deepening from the
dam site through the fenced fields where ran the right of way; while
in the Pinas, low at this season, the traverse section of the river
bed had been cleaned out and the base of the dam was building of
stones and brush.

Late on a certain afternoon Ruth Gardner and Imogene Martin stood
waiting by a gray runabout at the edge of the camp. A storm was
sweeping up the Ventisquero Range from the south, one of the autumn
storms that marked the change of seasons, enveloping, as it advanced,
the gray peaks one after another in its fog and trailing over the mesa
gauzy brown streamers of rain. In the west the sun still shone
unobscured, but with its light failing to a chill saffron glare as the
cloud expanded over the sky.

Bryant and another man, a newcomer in the last few days, an engineer
from the East representing the bondholders, were walking toward the
girl from the dam. As the men walked, they engaged in rather spirited
argument.

"You'd better hurry, you two," Ruth called. "Don't you see that rain
coming? Imo and I want to reach home, Mr. Gretzinger, without being
soaked."

Bryant's companion waved an assuring hand without ceasing his rapid
and forceful statement addressed to his fellow. Half a head shorter
than Lee, he was of stockier build, a man somewhere near thirty-five
or six years of age, with hair tinged with gray above his ears. Both
in manner and speech he exhibited by turns superficial gayety, latent
cynicism, and an egregious assumption. When Lee had introduced him to
the young ladies at Sarita Creek, he had made himself at home in three
minutes. He had the latest witticisms of restaurants and theatres, the
newest stories, the most recent slang; his clothes were of the
autumn's extreme mode; he was intelligent if frankly materialistic;
and he interested, amused, and diverted the two girls. From his gay
and airy talk they gathered that he had been married and divorced,
that the West might have the scenery but New York had the bright
lights; that money could buy anything from food to fame; and that
"movies" were a bore. To the girls he was like a breath from the
metropolis itself, that hard, throbbing, restless, glaring, convivial,
avid, fascinating city in which is centred everything of wealth and
misery, everything intense and abnormal, and everything to satisfy the
desires. But the effect upon the girls was