Then he waved his
hand to the Lark, and the Lark shouted a command which set fifty idle
men to work before the echoes of his voice had died away between the
rocky walls of the canon.
The materials he should require--the lumber for the great flume which
was to turn the water from the weir into the cut which was to be made
across the spine of the ridge separating Deep Creek from the wider
canon through which Indian Creek shot down upon the uplands of the
Half Moon, the kegs of giant powder, the horses and implements--he had
brought with him or had conveyed hither yesterday from Crawfordsville.
He knew that in a very few days now the main canal would be completed,
stretching like a mammoth serpent over the five miles of rolling
hills through which it twisted intricately to avoid rocky ridges and
knolls to follow natural hollows; that when at last Dam Number One
should be an actuality of stone and mortar, with the water rising high
above the flood-gates through which he could send it hissing and
boiling into the flume, the way was open to shake his victorious fist
in the face of nature itself, to drive water across thirty miles of
desert and into the heart of Rattlesnake Valley.
Upon one thing Conniston had set his heart before he had been
twenty-four hours in Bat Truxton's shoes. He would forget the date
which had been marked in red numerals since his first talk with Tommy
Garton; he would not think once of the first day of October.
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