Here was a second dam-site, and not until he had studied
both long and carefully, with a keen eye to advantage and
disadvantage, did he give the word to begin work.
If it were only a question of a site, with time not an element to
success, he would have chosen as Truxton had done and without a
second's doubt. Had he had only to consider the building of a dam
across Deep Creek in the shortest possible time, he would have chosen
the site at the Jaws. But the thing which he wanted now was the
largest possible dam in the shortest possible time. There was a pocket
above the Jaws, but it was shorter, narrower. And above it the
creek-bed plunged downward, at times broken into perpendicular
waterfalls, until, yonder at a sharp bend, the water as it now frothed
through its narrow, rocky canon was on a level with the top of the
Jaws. He needed to take out water in vast quantities, countless
millions of gallons of it, to turn into the ditches thirty miles away
across the dry desert.
"The one question," he told himself, as he stood upon a boulder whence
he could overlook the two sites, "is, can I get the dam finished where
Bat Truxton planned it--get it done in time?"
And in the end he told himself that if the five hundred men came he
could have his dam completed in time; and that if the five hundred men
did not come the whole task before him was hopeless.
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