Though Lee Bryant, during his colloquy with Menocal, had spoken confidently of his ability to obtain money wherewith to construct a canal system linking the Pinas River and the Perro Creek ranch, he had no definite promise of funds from any source. Nor would the project be ripe for financing before he had completed his surveys and made his cost estimates.

He had become interested in the undertaking in this way. Staying over night with the Stevensons by chance a month previous, a stranger, his speculation was aroused when through questions about the ranch he learned of the unused Pinas River water right, a right valid but apparently impracticable. Was it indeed impracticable? Would the cost of bringing water to the land be, after all, prohibitive? In fact, had a competent engineer ever gone into the matter? He doubted it. The history of the property, so far as he could glean from Stevenson, disclosed on the part of no one any serious effort ever to develop the ranch. In the beginning Menocal had probably had some faint notion of carrying out the scheme, but if so, had afterward abandoned the enterprise. The tract of five thousand acres of land had originally been a small Mexican grant; it lay in the midst of government land; and when Menocal came into possession of the ranch, some conception of utilizing water from the Pinas must have inspired him to acquire the appropriation of one hundred and twenty-five second feet. Well, the land, theoretically at any rate, had water; and if water actually could be delivered, an extraordinary value would accrue to the now nearly worthless tract. It was a problem for engineers; it was one of the possibilities that if seized might be converted into a fact. Bryant was an engineer, and he was just then foot-loose.

From the worried ranchman, Stevenson, who appeared glad to talk of his affairs to someone, he learned that the man was both dissatisfied with the country and straitened in circumstances. Bryant judged that his host would consider any offer which would enable him to realize something on the ranch and to depart; so that particular aspect of the matter if undertaken, namely, securing title to the land and water right, seemed favourable. If no insurmountable obstacle stood in the way of building a dam and a canal, arising from construction elements, it assuredly looked as if money was to be made out of the project.

With his mind kindling to the idea Bryant rode northward next morning along the base of the mountains, studying the hillsides where a canal naturally should run, all the way up to the Pinas River. Afterward he reconnoitered the mesa, hitting at last on a slight elevation, hardly to be called a ridge, that projected from a hillside a mile below Bartolo and curved in a gentle crescent for about three miles from the range of mountains down the mesa, again bending in toward the hills close to the north line of the Perro Creek ranch.

Next, he absented himself for a week at the state capital, where he industriously studied the water and land records pertaining to the district. When he returned, he brought with him a surveying instrument and a boy for helper. He pitched a tent out of sight in a hollow at the foot of a hill, worked early and late running his lines, establishing a dam site, and surveying the river bottom near the mouth of Pinas Ca?on, and remained practically unseen except by a few incurious Mexicans. His instrument proved the correctness of his conclusion regarding the crescent-shaped elevation as a practical grade for a canal, which though necessitating a longer course would nevertheless immensely lessen the time, expense, and difficulties of digging when compared with a line along the mountains' flanks with its danger of washouts and earth slides. Nor did he stop there. He made rapid but reliable topographical measurements, on a general scale, of the mesa for five miles out from the mountains, between Bartolo and Perro Creek, locating among other things a large depression in the plain, three miles southwest of the town, which might by diking be converted into a flood water reservoir. Then he folded his tent and again disappeared for a week. When, finally, he rode to Stevenson's ranch house that hot July afternoon and made a trade for the five thousand acres of land, he was the possessor of considerably more knowledge of the locality and its possibilities than any one would have guessed.

And now he was owner of the ranch and committed to the enterprise.

A few days after Bryant's visit to Bartolo Stevenson disposed of his sheep to Graham, the owner of the large ranch on Diamond Creek, loaded his household goods, except the stove and some of the furniture which the engineer bought, and with his wife and boy drove away in his sheep wagon for Kennard and for the new farm in Nebraska. Bryant's own effects-trunk, bedding, provisions, surveying instruments, draughting-board, and the like, came up from the railroad town by wagon, and with them the fourteen-year-old lad, Dave Morris, a gangling, long-legged boy extremely dependable and extraordinarily serious, who had carried rod for the engineer during the week of preliminary surveying.

The man and boy now attacked the canal line in earnest, with Bryant intent on establishing its course, location, and displacement exactly, so that he could make necessary blueprints and compile construction estimates. It was while they were working along the first mile of the line, where it ran from the Pinas River along the base of a hill to the low ridge that bore out upon the mesa, that they received their first interruption. The worst and most expensive part of the canal to build would be this section, and the engineer was therefore taking especial care in its surveying; near the river the line traversed several fenced tracts of ground extending part way up the hillside, fields owned by natives; and it was one of these Mexicans who slouched forward to the spot where Bryant and Dave worked and ordered them to get out of his field.

Bryant straightened up from sighting through his transit, and asked, "What's on your mind? What's disturbing your brain, hombre?"

"You get off," was the unkempt fellow's answer.

"Why?"

"You can't come on my ranch; get off."

The engineer pulled a map from his hip pocket-a copy made from one filed in the land commissioner's office thirty years previous. He spread it open before the Mexican.

"See this? Here is Bartolo, here is the river, here is your field," he said, pointing with a finger. "Now look at that line; it runs across this field right where we stand. That's the Perro Creek Canal, extending down to Perro Creek."

The man stared at the earth under his feet.

"No, I see no canal," he stated, now looking right and left as if to make sure. "There is no canal."

"Yes, there is. But it needs cleaning badly. I'm surveying its banks again and then I shall clean out the dirt. You can see that it needs cleaning, because you can scarcely see it at all. Menocal, the banker, didn't take very good care of the canal after he built it; that's the trouble. Hello, does that surprise you? Yes, Mr. Menocal got the water right and dug the ditch in the first place; and he also secured a right of way across these fields, sixty feet wide, by buying it from whoever owned the ground at that time, and the right of way is certified to the state. Now, I own Perro Creek ranch and the Perro Creek canal and likewise the right of way. So you see, José, or whatever your name is, we're standing on my ground and not yours; I could even make you take down your fence where it crosses my right of way."

The Mexican blinked stupidly.

"I was born here; my father was born here; my grandfather lived here," he said. "There have been little ditches, many of them, but never a big canal in this field. You must get off."

"No; you're mistaken. Go see Mr. Menocal and he will set you right."

"I saw Charlie Menocal, who said to drive strangers off."

"Well, Charlie had best keep his fingers out of this dish, or he may find it full of pepper, and you tell him so next time you talk with him."

Bryant folded his map and restored it to his pocket, while the Mexican went away to his house.

That day the engineer worked until darkness shut down. At three o'clock next morning he routed his young assistant out of bed and by dawn they were in the fields again. Knowing that the Menocals had set about impeding and if possible altogether obstructing him, he proposed to be done, as quickly as careful surveying allowed, with the fenced part of the hillside where plausible controversies could be invented.

Toward the end of the second day he had progressed into the last tract of owned ground. He breathed more freely. In his statement to the Mexican concerning the right of way he had been exactly right; and he was following to a dot the original course taken by the early ditch. He could have improved upon this section of the canal by another survey, but that would have involved him in a host of troubles, very likely unsolvable ones, in securing title to another strip of ground across the fields. Without question Menocal's influence would prevent the owners from selling, even if Bryant had the money with which to buy a second right of way, which he had not. Dollar for dollar it would be cheaper in the long run to use the old line. Well, Dave was already across the last fence with his rod; they would soon be working entirely on government land; and with that, it did not matter for the present what the Mexican landowners thought or did.

Bryant had walked fifty yards or so away from his transit to call something to Dave, when the crack of a rifle sounded from the hillside and a bullet whined near by. The engineer pivoted about. Another shot followed, and he beheld a spurt of dust close by his instrument. The hidden rifleman was not seeking to murder him, but to destroy his tools.

There were no more shots and he resumed work. Later on, as he neared the fence and was establishing his last points within the field, a horseman with a gray moustache came galloping up along the stretch of barb wire. He nodded, inquired if the engineer was named Bryant, and announced that he had half a dozen injunctions to serve.

"I expected something like this; glad you didn't arrive any sooner," Lee remarked.

"Well, I was away from town, or I'd have been here by noon," the horseman, an American, stated. "The injunctions cover all these places between here and the river. You and any one you hire must keep off the tracts specified until the cases come up before the judge."

"All right, sheriff. Wait till I take a last squint or two and I'll vacate."

The horseman idly watched the engineer make his final measurements, then when Bryant had lifted his tripod over the wire and told his assistant Dave they would call it a day and stop, he dismounted and sat down for a smoke with the man on whom he had served his papers.

"Looks as if you've stirred up some interest in your doings," he remarked, expelling a thread of smoke. "All the Mexicans from here down to Rosita are gabbling about your canal. Don't seem pleased with you."

"There's one who doesn't, in any case," was the response. "He took a couple of shots at my instrument a while ago from up yonder in the sagebrush when I had stepped aside for a moment."

The sheriff gazed at the hillside.

"A few hombres around here will bear watching," said he. For a little he meditated, then went on, "You're a white man and so am I; they don't like our colour any too well, at bottom. I s'pose you know that."

"Yes. But they needn't express their feelings with rifles. As far as these injunctions are concerned, they'll be dismissed eventually, for there's no question about my right of way through here. Menocal secured it himself and it's all a matter of record-the deeds, the certificate to the state, and the rest."

"Menocal got it, you say?"

"Nobody else. Some time or other he must have expected to water Perro Creek ranch, which he owned until he sold it to Stevenson."

"I knew he had that place," said the visitor, "but I didn't know it carried a water right from the Pinas. Where does this move of yours hit Menocal?"

"In his ranches down the river; he's been using this water for them," Bryant explained. "I suppose it's been taken for granted by nearly everyone that the water belonged to those farms down there, but it doesn't."

"How much water in this right?"

"Hundred and twenty-five second feet."

"Whew! That takes a chunk out of the Pinas. And I presume that by this time Menocal knows what you're doing?"

"Oh, yes; I told him. He doesn't like it, of course."

The sheriff turned for a full view of Bryant's face. In respect to features the two men were not unlike: both had the same thin curving nose and level eyes and cut of jaw.

"Well, let me say as between man and man," the elder spoke, "that Menocal won't let you take away that much water from him if he can help it. And I'll drop you some more news, in addition: several Mexicans are going to file on homesteads or desert claims along the base of the hills south of here, scattered along like and running part way up the mountain sides. I don't know where your canal to Perro Creek will go, but if its line follows the foot of the range, as may be likely, it might happen to find those claims in the way."

"Any idea in your mind where those fellows may locate their filings?"

"No; I can't say definitely. Shouldn't be surprised if they began stringing them along a couple of miles south of here till they reached Perro Creek."

Bryant gazed at the flank of the mountain. The gentle ridge where his ditch line left the hillside was but half a mile away. Beyond that the Mexicans could file to their hearts' content, for they would be left on one side by the canal. But in all this he perceived Menocal's cunning hand.

"Much obliged to you, sheriff," said he. "I'll see if I can't find some way to satisfy those chaps when the time comes."

His visitor rose and put foot in stirrup.

"If any of these Mexicans grow ugly, let me know," he remarked. "I'll tell them where to head in. Drop in at my office at the courthouse when you're in town; Winship's my name. I brought these notices over myself in order to look at you, for they were saying you are a trouble-maker, but that's what these natives frequently state when they want to fix an alibi for themselves before they start something. I'll see if I can learn anything of the fellow who was up yonder shooting. These hombres are altogether too free with firearms, anyway. Better feed that lad there with you a few more meals a day; looks as if he could use them."

Bryant laughed.

"Dave's a little lean, but he's all there. Looks don't count, do they, partner?"

"I do the best I can," Dave responded, solemnly.

"Not at meal-time, I reckon," the sheriff said. "Feed up and get fat. A kid like you has no business having so many joints and bones sticking out."

"I been through a hard winter last winter, and this spring, too, till Mr. Bryant picked me up."

"How's that?" the horseman inquired.

"My mother died at Kennard. I didn't get on very well after that; not much there for a boy to work at. And I hadn't any folks."

"Hump. What's your last name?"

"Morris."

"Any relation to Jack Morris?"

"He was my father."

The sheriff nodded. "Knew him well; he died four years ago. And your mother died last winter? Little woman, I recall."

"Little, but a lot better than plenty of bigger ones I know of," Dave asserted, stoutly. "She died of pneumonia."

"Boy, I've held you on my knee when you were about as high as my hand. But I guess you don't remember that, and I'm mighty sorry to learn your mother's gone. Dave-is that your name? Well, now, Dave, fight your grub harder from now on."

The speaker gathered his reins, nodded, and rode away along the barb wire fence.

* * *