go over things with you. Your first day's work, the
better part of it, will be to listen while I talk."

Conniston unsaddled and tied his horse in the little shed, coming back
into the office with his roll of clothes. Garton swung about upon his
stool and pointed out the room at the back of the house which was to
serve for the present as the sleeping-room for both men. There were
two cots along opposite walls, a chair, and no other furniture.
Conniston threw down his things upon the cot which Garton called to
him was to be his, and came back into the office. Pulling a stool up
to the table alongside of Garton, he began his first day's work for
the reclamation project.

CHAPTER XII

Tommy Garton spoke swiftly, clearly, concisely, explaining those
essentials of the work in hand which Conniston must grasp at the
beginning. Filled with an ardor no whit less than Mr. Crawford's,
there seemed to be no single detail which he did not have at his
fingers' ends.

Taking from the drawer of his table a map which bore his own name in
the corner, he pointed out just where their source of water was, and
just how it was to be brought down from the mountains into the
"valley." He indicated where the work was being pushed now. He showed
where the big dam had already been thrown across a steep-walled, rocky
canon; how, when the time came, a second dam (this purely a diversion
weir) was to be constructed across a neighboring canon, higher up in
the mountains, deflecting the waters which poured down through it into
the lower dam, and from it turning them into the main canal at the
upper end of Rattlesnake Valley. He pointed out, five miles to the
north of these two big dams, the place where a third was to be flung
across yet another canon, imprisoning a smaller creek and turning it
toward the southwest to join the overflow of the others in the main
canal. He ran over blue-print after blue-print, to show the type of
construction work being done. He explained where there was leveling
called for, where the canal must be turned aside.

"We'd bring her straight through, and d--n the little knolls," he
cried, banging his fist down upon his table in sudden vehemence, "but
there is a time-limit on this thing, Conniston. And we've got to get
water here, right here in Valley City, when the last day is up. Not
twenty-four hours late, either. No, not twenty-four minutes!"

He ran the back of his hand across his moist forehead, and sat st