slow and they had consumed an hour and a half on their
return. The torches were burning along the canal, appearing at a
distance like winter fireflies, but the crews of workmen had gone to
supper. Bryant and Morgan, when they drove down the street in camp,
could hear them at their meal in the glowing mess tents--a subdued
hubbub of plates and knives and voices.

Half an hour later they were pouring forth toward the horse tents,
while the engineers were making their way along the torch-lit path to
the stretch of undug canal.

"We'll allow fifteen minutes for them to get the teams out, then
shoot," Carrigan said to Lee, as they moved along. "All the shots are
in and double-fused. Doesn't appear to be any wind behind this snow."

The air, though cold, was still. The flakes were not yet falling
heavily and they lay on the hard crust of snow as light as silk fluff.
What might be coming down in another hour from the darkness overhead,
however, could not be foretold, while if both a gale and a great fall
of snow occurred the labour of the night would be increased a
hundred-fold.

Bryant's anxiety was no longer on account of the time limit fixed by
the Land and Water Board. He knew that since the revelations made in
the sheriff's office the claimant Rodriguez would never press his
case, even were the canal never completed. But he had the keen desire
of a tired man to clean up the job and be done, and a pride in keeping
faith with himself in accomplishing what he had sworn he should do,
build the project in ninety days. He would never have it said by any
one that he had failed in that. By Gretzinger, for example. Ruth in
particular! She believed that he had already failed when she wrote her
letter.

By the end of the quarter of an hour prescribed by Carrigan teams and
workmen were coming along the snowy road in a long line. From the
north camp also a string of animals in pairs was advancing by light of
the torches. A warning shout sounded from the ditch section. Men
retreated. Then a roaring boom burst upon the night, with other
thunderous reports following in rapid succession, until it seemed that
the mined earth cascading upward in the darkness was the bombardment
of scores of cannon. The flames of the torches and the falling snow
tossed and whirled at the percussion of air. Showers of clay rained
upon the earth. Vibrations jarred the ground.

Then the companies of horses and men, fastening upon scrapers,
hastened int