oceeded to meditate.

"Awhile back I sent for some more dynamite," he stated, breaking the
silence. "Didn't say anything to you about it at the time. It was
there in the commissary tent under a stack of cases of peaches and
bags of coffee. If this Alvarez had got his oil on that canvas and a
fire going, there sure would have been some fire-works. You would have
had a reservoir blown right in the middle of your project, I'm
thinking."

"What in the name of heaven do you want with dynamite!"

"Well, my boy, there's a lot of ground that can't be dug, but I never
saw any that nitro wouldn't move. What I got is dirt-blowing dynamite,
the kind powder companies sell for making drainage ditches and blowing
stumps and so on. I didn't know whether I should have to use it, but I
always like to have a trick up my sleeve. Powder is ordinarily too
expensive to employ when fresnos can work, yet it's just the thing in
a pinch. We're in an emergency now. If it should set in and snow right
along, with one storm on top of another, as may happen after so long a
mild season, powder even may not help us out. These last eight hundred
yards are going to make us weep before we're through, I'm guessing.
But just the same, I'm counting on this dynamite. It can't blow like
this forever, and the minute it quits we'll grab hold."

Lee twisted about to look at a window. The particles of snow were
biting at the glass relentlessly, while the howl of the gale told only
too plainly how the drifts were being heaped on the dark mesa.

"We'll finish this ditch on time even if hell freezes over," he said,
slowly. "I'm not going to be beaten at this late day."

He continued to sit gazing at the frosted panes and harkening to the
roaring blasts. On the floor and in the chairs the blanketed men slept
heavily. Pat fed the fire anew. But through the cracks of the walls
the cold sifted more and more intense, while along the edges of the
boards there formed thick fringes of glistening frost.

CHAPTER XXIX

For four days the bitter cold and fierce wind held the camps in
thrall, then the latter blew itself out. The cold, however, still
endured though the sun shone. When one looked forth from camp, all
that could be seen was a snowbound earth; mesa and mountains were as
white and silent as some polar region; nothing moved; nothing seemed
to live out yonder. It was like a dazzling, frigid, extinct world.

The main mesa road was blocked and telephone w