ow-workers in a redoubtable achievement.

Carrigan and Bryant were among the last to go. To the latter there was
in the fact of completion a sense of unreality. As he took a final
view of the ditch before setting out for camp, events raced through
his mind--his coming, his first labours, the confused interplay of his
life with those of the Menocals, McDonnell, Gretzinger, Carrigan,
Imogene, Ruth, and Louise; the months of incessant toil; of
brain-racking and body-wearing endeavour to force the canal forward;
of unresting strife with frost and snow and earth, of being under a
pitiless hammer. He could not easily realize that he was now free of
all this.

"I have an empty feeling," he remarked to Carrigan.

"One always has a 'let-down' after a hard job," was Pat's sage
rejoinder. "You'll feel restless for maybe a week now."

They went from the spot up the snowy road and turned in at Pat's shack
for a smoke. Late as it was, neither felt the need of sleep as yet.

"Well, it's a comfort to know that we don't have to plug again at that
ground in the morning," Lee remarked, with a sigh of satisfaction. He
had his feet on the table, his body relaxed, and his pipe going.

"Yeah. The only disappointment I have," Pat said, "is not having
lifted the bonds and stocks out of Gretzinger. If we hadn't been so
pressed for time, we might have played him a little till he took the
hook. I don't like his kind at all."

Bryant laughed.

"Why, he's the best friend I have," he exclaimed. "What do you think
he did for me?"

"Well, what? Besides trying to shake you down?"

"Pat, he carried off and married my girl."

The contractor lowered his feet, placed his hands upon his knees, and
gazed at Bryant, with brows down-drawn and under lip up-thrust.

"That good-for-nothing Ruth what's-her-name?" he demanded. In all the
months of their association it was the first time he had ever spoken
of her to Bryant.

"Ruth Gardner, yes."

Carrigan rose, gave Lee a long and solemn look, then went to a trunk
in the corner of the room. This he unlocked and opened. From its
interior he produced a black bottle.

"I don't take a drink very often," he announced, coming forward and
setting the bottle on the table, "but this is one of the times. We'll
take one to celebrate your luck."

CHAPTER XXXII

About the middle of the next afternoon Lee Bryant was riding southward
from camp on the main mesa trail. The road was difficult and his hors