s a strong man armed.

As the engineer stood in the office, swiftly measuring the imminent
menace of which he had just been told, calculating the meager
instruments of defense at hand, his mind sweeping up all the salient
aspects, features, advantages and disadvantages of the situation, he
seized on the one weak spot in the attacking party's plan. At that
spot he would strike.

So giving Johnson and Madden the order to take charge of the little
handful of guards, he had plunged out into the night.

The men from the bunk-house were already running toward the office,
before the door of which the rancher gathered them together to make
sure of their arms and ammunition. All told, when Martinez and Pollock
presently came from the store with guns, the little party numbered
eleven.

"Is this all there are of us?" Dr. Hosmer asked.

"We are worth all that crowd that's coming," Johnson exclaimed, taking
a spare gun Martinez had brought him.

"Did Weir send the rest of the engineers down to that house? I
understood so."

"That's where they are, I reckon."

Dr. Hosmer considered for a minute.

"I can be there in five minutes in my car. The road is on the north
side of the stream, as is this camp: the gang that's heading here to
blow things up is coming up from the south, so it will not block the
way. Men could be here in twenty minutes from down yonder by
running."

"A good suggestion, doctor," Pollock said. "It may take you a bit
longer to find and tell them what's occurring, but even so they may
return in time. Fifty, or even twenty, might give us enough
assistance to beat off the attack."

"There comes the moon," said the man who had been at the spring. "They
must be near now."

Far in the east the moon was stealing above the horizon. Under its
light the mesa took form out of the darkness--the level sagebrush
plain criss-crossed by willow-lined ditches and checkered by small
Mexican fields, the winding shimmering Burntwood River with its border
of cottonwoods, the narrow road, the distant town of San Mateo, a
vague blot of shadow picked out by tiny specks of light.

The mountains too now reared in view, silent, silvered, majestic,
towering about the camp on the lower base. One could see, as the moon
swam higher, the low long buildings of the camp clustered on the
hillside above the canyon, in the bottom of which was the dashing
stream and the bone-white core of the dam.

"Look down yonder on the other side!"