she
was on her pony and riding hard toward the camping place and Ralph.
Through scrubby sage and cedar, stumbling in burrows, shying at stinging
cactus, her horse was driving madly on. Her thoughts were all on finding
Ralph; but mingling with these, were the beady eyes of the alert
Mexicans, and the silenced waters of the Sangre de Cristo. These had a
meaning for her now.

From the summit of a low ridge, she saw below her the camp of the party
for which she was so eagerly watching. One tall figure she singled out
and kept her eyes upon him. He turned. She could almost see his
questioning eyes as he strode out from his companions. He was near
enough to hear her cry--

"Oh, Ralph! The dam! The dam! Elijah is at the dam!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Winston asked no questions. Whatever else there might be to learn, could
be learned at the dam with no waste of precious time. As to what time
meant, Winston was fully alive. As to what effect the constant, lonely
ferment over real or fancied wrongs would have upon a morbidly sensitive
mind, he took no moment to forecast. He knew the ruin that could be
wrought; for he knew the strength and the weakness of the dam; and he
knew Elijah. The thought that Elijah could be driven to wreck the
crowning work of years of struggle, seemed to him monstrous, but he knew
that it was possible; and he knew Elijah. He knew also the sinister
conditions in the note to Mellin. He knew that they were harmless now;
but Elijah did not know.

Winston could count upon his men and they followed his lead. He was
eager, anxious; but neither eagerness nor anxiety prevented the calm
judgment which spared his horse while pushing it to the limit; and his
men followed his lead.

As he flew past the intake gates of the canal he noted that they were
closed. This fact pointed to the worst. As he rode through the canyon he
noted the silence, the oily threads of water sliding between the
boulders; these facts made suspicion certainty. The worst had happened
or was on the way.

As he came near the dam, he did not need the sight of the thin,
wrinkling veil that was sliding over the crest, and, in ever increasing
volume, was plunging into the depths below, to tell him what had
happened. As he sprang from his horse, he did not need to see the
tangled mass of earth and timber that choked the waste weir to the brim,
nor did he need to see the closed gates and the broken wheels that
forbade the hope of openi