hem now_, there was a fighting chance. But if
he must wait another week before they came--

To-day the telephone line had been completed to Valley City. All day
he had looked forward to a talk with Argyl. Now he swept by the little
office without lifting his head. He could not talk with her; he could
not talk with Tommy Garton even. They would know soon enough, and they
would know from other lips than his.

That night he slept little, but sat staring at the stars, searching
stubbornly to find his lost hope, struggling over and over to see the
way. And all that he could see was a long, dry, ugly cut in the
desert, a vain, foolish, stupid thing; Mr. Crawford a ruined, broken
man; Argyl smitten with sorrow and disappointment; himself the
vanquished leader of a mad campaign; Oliver Swinnerton and his
servitors flushed with victory. Still he fought to find the way, and
shut his lips tight together, and strove to shut from his mind the
pictures which his insistent fancy painted there. And when morning
came and he walked to the dam which was taking form, pale, worn with
the fatigue of the night after the fatigue of the day, he snapped out
his orders half viciously, and watched with a hard smile while his
handful of men resumed their mammoth task.

"Take it from me"--the Lark was regarding him curiously--"you better
go git some sleep, or it's goin' to be a redwood box for yours."

The sun had just pushed a shining edge of its burning disk over the
mountain-tops when Conniston suddenly cried out like a man awaking
from the clutch of a frightful nightmare, and pointed with shaking
finger to the road winding up the canon.

"What's up, 'bo?" asked the Lark, swinging upon him.

"I don't know," Conniston said, harshly. "I--guess I'm just seeing
things. Look!"

A wagon had crept around a turn in the road, and its long bed was
close packed with the forms of men standing upright, their hands upon
the back of the high seat or upon one another's shoulders to steady
themselves as the wagon pitched and lurched over the ill-defined road.
Around the bend another wagon, similarly loaded with a human freight
which taxed the strength of four puffing horses, came into view. And
behind that another and another--

"Am I seeing things?" snapped Conniston, his hand biting into the
Lark's shoulder. "What is that?"

"Them," grunted the Lark, wriggling like an eel in Conniston's grip,
"is your five hundred new guys, or I'm a liar! An' fergit