I
venture to say that in this present instance your company could better
have afforded almost any other material for those trestle-bents. That
slope will make you pay high for its stripping before you can grow
another forest to check the flood wash."

"Of course it will; that says itself, now that you have pointed it out,"
Ballard agreed. "Luckily, the present plans of the company don't call
for much flume timber; I say 'luckily,' because I don't like to do
violence to my convictions, when I'm happy enough to have any."

Bigelow's grave smile came and went like the momentary glow from some
inner light of prescience.

"Unless I am greatly mistaken, you are a man of very strong convictions,
Mr. Ballard," he ventured to say.

"Think so? I don't know. A fair knowledge of my trade, a few opinions,
and a certain pig-headed stubbornness that doesn't know when it is
beaten: shake these up together and you have the compound which has
misled you. I'm afraid I don't often wait for convincement--of the
purely philosophical brand."

They were riding together down the line of the northern lateral canal,
with Bourke Fitzpatrick's new headquarters in the field for the
prospective night's bivouac. The contractor's camp, a disorderly blot of
shanties and well-weathered tents on the fair grass-land landscape, came
in sight just as the sun was sinking below the Elks, and Ballard
quickened the pace.

"You'll be ready to quit for the day when we get in, won't you?" he said
to Bigelow, when the broncos came neck and neck in the scurry for the
hay racks.

"Oh, I'm fit enough, by now," was the ready rejoinder. "It was only the
first day that got on my nerves."

There was a rough-and-ready welcome awaiting the chief engineer and his
guest when they drew rein before Fitzpatrick's commissary; and a supper
of the void-filling sort was quickly set before them in the back room of
the contractor's quarters. But there was trouble in the air. Ballard saw
that Fitzpatrick was cruelly hampered by the presence of Bigelow; and
when the meal was finished he gave the contractor his chance in the
privacy of the little cramped pay-office.

"What is it, Bourke?" he asked, when the closed door cut them off from
the Forest Service man.

Fitzpatrick was shaking his head. "It's a blood feud now, Mr. Ballard.
Gallagher's gang--all Irishmen--went up against four of the colonel's
men early this morning. The b'ys took shelter in the ditch, and the
cow-pun