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