into one of
two big tubs as they passed by the tent, their knives and forks into
another, and went quietly and promptly to work. Each man had his duty
and went about it without waiting to be told. They filled buckets at
the water-barrels and watered their horses; they harnessed and hitched
up to plows and scrapers; half a dozen of them hitched four horses to
each of six of the wagons whose barrels had been emptied, and swung
out across the plain toward the Half Moon for more water.

Truxton beckoned to Conniston and led him toward the south. And
suddenly, coming about the foot of a little knoll, Conniston had his
first glimpse of the main canal.

Here it was a great ditch, ten feet deep, thirty feet wide, its banks
sloping, the earth which had been dragged out of it by the scrapers
piled high upon each side in long mounds, like dikes. Truxton stood
staring at it, his eyes frowning, his jaw set and stern.

"There she is, Conniston. A simple enough thing to look at, but so is
the business end of a mule. This thing is goin' to make the Old Man a
thousand times over--or it's goin' to break him in two like a rotten
stick."

The workmen were coming up, driving their teams with dragging
trace-chains to be hitched to the scrapers and big plows standing
where they had quit work the night before. Truxton, tugging
thoughtfully at his grizzled mustache, watched them a moment as they
"hooked up" and dropped, one behind another, into a long, slow-moving
procession, the great shovel-like scrapers scooping up ton after ton
of the soft earth, dragging it up the slope where the end of the ditch
was, wheeling and dumping it along the edge of the excavation, turning
again, again going back down into the cut to scoop up other tons of
dirt, again to climb the incline to deposit it upon the bank. Here
Conniston counted forty-nine teams and forty-nine drivers. One man--it
was the big Englishman with the scarred lip and cheek and the
unsheathed knife--was standing ten feet away from the edge of the
ditch, his great bare arms folded, watching.

"That's one of your foremen," Truxton said, his eyes following
Conniston's. "Ben, his name is. He knows his business, too. He'll take
care of this gang for you while you come along with me. I'll show you
your other shift."

They followed a line marked by the survey stakes for a quarter of a
mile past the camp. Here another fifty men were at work; and here,
where the top of the sand had already bee