dull, heavy; he had not closed them during the
previous night. He wore the mud-caked lace boots and stained khaki, as
did Carrigan, in which he had departed from camp.

"Well, we haven't quit breathing yet," Pat remarked, licking the
wrapper on the cigar he was about to light.

Lee sat silent for several minutes.

"Anyway, I'll see you don't lose, Pat," he said. "You can figure out
what profit you would have made on your contract if the ditch had been
built and I'll pay you that. Then you can call off your crew."

"Oh, I'll let you down easy, Lee. That wasn't worrying me any," was
the rejoinder. "I was just thinking----" But his words broke off
there, and he again gave his attention to the cigar wrapper that
persisted in coming loose.

Bryant continued his gloomy cogitation. The muscles of his cheeks
moved in hard lumps beneath his fists as if he were champing some
resistant substance. Over his eyes his lids from time to time drooped
sleepily. But all at once he leaped up.

"If I but had something I could take hold of, Pat!" he exclaimed.
"Something I could lay hands on and move, like that bed of rock you
uncovered! So I could go ahead! A law is so damned immaterial that one
has nothing to work against. It leaves a man nowhere, helpless. It
lifts him off the ground and holds him kicking futilely in the air.
Just that. By God, I'm desperate enough to try anything--to try
building the ditch--try whipping Menocal even under this moth-eaten
law he's dug up!"

Pat shut one eye against the smoke curling into it.

"I was speculating a little along the same line," said he, slowly.

"But twelve miles of ditch in ninety days! The whole mesa line! We'd
be crazy to think of it. Let's talk of something else."

Lee's mouth, nevertheless, was twitching, while gleams like light came
and went on his face.

"I always had a weakness for the bad bets," said Pat.

"But twelve miles of ditch!"

"And the nights freezing harder every week," the old contractor added.

"And the days short."

"Yes, and nerve shorter yet," said Pat.

The remark was airily given, but the inference was plain. Lee took a
step aside and stood staring across the capitol grounds, with brows
knit, with lips compressed, the prey of struggling hopes and doubts.

"Pat," he said, turning.

"Well?"

"Do you think we could do it?"

"God knows; I don't. But we could give the job an awful whirl," the
contractor stated.

"The thing looks impossible, pr