and
pictures of the Madonna, yes, all. But now I must go."

"But Menocal would be very angry," said the man, with a shake of his
head.

Bryant bade them good-night and departed. He went up the muddy road
through the wet darkness to the camp. Domination of the native mind by
Menocal appeared too strong for him to break.

But to his surprise next morning the Mexican came driving his team
into the camp. Lee sent him to Pat Carrigan, who gave him a scraper
and set him to work on the ditch. Toward noon the engineer encountered
him moving dirt from the deepening excavation; the sight had an
amusing feature. The man, Pedro Saurez, laboured in his own field
building the canal at about the spot where he had warned Bryant away
when surveying.

When Saurez beheld Lee, he grinned and removed the cigarette from his
lips.

"It will be a fine ditch, this," was his remark.

CHAPTER XIII

Work on the canal section near the river advanced without incident
until, one morning early in November, the plows unexpectedly uncovered
a forty-foot-wide body of granite just beneath the surface. This
particular difficulty was not serious, and was the contractor's; but
Pat Carrigan was no more pleased than any other contractor would have
been at finding rock, even a small amount, when he had figured his
excavation costs on a dirt basis.

"That wipes out a piece of my profits," he remarked to Bryant, after a
first profane explosion. "I'll send out for some dynamite and shoot
it. If it wasn't for damned troubles like this, I'd been a retired man
and fat and rich long ago. Don't grin, you heartless blackguard!
You'll have miseries of your own before we're done."

Pat Carrigan was a true prophet. A blow of fatal nature, indeed, was
preparing at the moment and fell within a week. From the state
engineer Lee received a letter advising him that an application for
use of the water appropriated to Perro Creek ranch had been made by a
man of the name of Rodriguez, of Rosita, under an old statute long
forgotten. This law was mandatory upon the Land and Water Board. It
required the latter to cancel rights and to reappropriate water
elsewhere to the amount in excess of what a canal actually carried, or
what a canal had failed to carry for five successive years if it were
not shown within ninety days after a filing for reappropriation that
the said canal had been enlarged to a capacity to carry the original
appropriation, and proof given of t