C.
& W. what I know they will complete what you have done and inform Mr.
Oliver Swinnerton that they can have no further dealings whatever
with a criminal of his type."
Conniston shook hands with him warmly.
"Thank you. But you are going to have no points to strain. We are
going to have water, plenty of water, in Rattlesnake Valley before the
first day of October."
Conniston left them and ran to join his men at the Jaws. Never had he
heard of a dam to match the one he saw growing under his eyes. There
was no time for scientific perfection of work; here and now was only a
crying need for an obstruction, any kind of an obstruction which would
withstand the great and growing pressure of water, which would drive
it up to the banks, which would turn it into the flume which was being
made for it even as the dam grew. Trees were lopped down, great, tall
pines, their branches shorn off with flashing ax-blades, the trunks
cut into logs upon which many men laid hold.
In the bed of the creek between the Jaws the logs were laid as one
lays logs to build him a log house. Sand and gravel and rock went
rattling and hissing into the log-surrounded spaces, piled high and
higher, with the water backing angrily up against it. Boulders were
rolled down from the mountain-side, hurled into the bottom of the
canon by blasts of giant powder and dynamite, gripped with rapidly
adjusted log-chains, and dragged to their places by straining horses.
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