her face, engaged
in thought, experiencing a contentment in merely being in her
presence.

"This will be another of those days," he at length remarked, in a
musing tone.

His words aroused her from her own reflections.

"One for winter as well as for summer," she said, raising her look.
"Did I seem to be dreaming when you spoke? I was doing scarcely that;
my mind was lulled; the quiet--the twilight--Christmas Day--they bring
a soothing mood."

"Something that in a world of money, money can't buy," Lee said. He
appeared about to make a further remark, but failed to do so. His
thoughts, however, had gone off somewhere, Louise observed. Then he
inquired in a matter-of-fact way: "When will you ride up to camp
again?"

"Not until it grows warmer. Twelve miles or more is rather too far for
a canter on a sharp day."

He cast his eyes about at the strings of evergreen and the suspended
red bells and holly wreaths.

"I'll run down again, if I may, before the holidays are over," said
he. "If only for another look at those things. They give a fellow a
pull--out of the ditch, so to speak." And he rose.

"Come, by all means," Louise replied, with a nod.

CHAPTER XXII

A week of twenty-below-zero weather opened the month of January and
halted work on the mesa. At that time four miles of canal remained to
be dug. Bryant and Pat Carrigan sat by the stove in Lee's shack and
waited, as the whole camp waited, for the thermometer to rise. On one
of these mornings, when Dave had gone across the street to the
engineers' building, Lee informed the contractor that company funds
were not far from exhausted and related his talk with Gretzinger
before the latter's departure for New York.

"So he would squeeze you out," Pat remarked. "What you might expect
from him, nothing more! I've had the notion for some time that your
cash was getting low, from the way the money has gone."

"I've spent five thousand on engineering, medical, and general
accounts," Lee stated, "twenty thousand on concrete work, and paid you
forty thousand. I've fifteen thousand left from the sale of bonds and
a personal loan I obtained from McDonnell. That will pay for about two
weeks' work. And I think we've made every dollar go as far as it would
under the circumstances."

"My word for that."

"It's this little trick of Menocal's that's burning up good coin.
Sixty thousand would have built the project ordinarily; my estimates
were correct enough.