little she was overcome. Then she resumed, "When he was dead, I
carried him up to your door, for I knew you must have loved him."

Bryant glanced up at her.

"Mike would know you were a friend," he said.

She nodded and reined Dick about. Leading the other horse, she rode
away through the sunshine that burnished the mesa.




CHAPTER VIII


July passed. Followed August, with days likewise hot and unvarying
except for a scarcely appreciable retardation of dawn. Perro Creek now
showed no water at all in its shallow bed; the garden planted by the
Stevensons was long dried up; the sagebrush was dustier than ever; and
Bryant and Dave were hauling in a barrel on a sledge water for their
use from a pool in the cañon.

From daybreak until about eight o'clock in the morning the engineer
and his assistant worked on the canal line. Bryant had run a
fictitious survey along the mountain side, staking it out
conspicuously for any one to see, to the first of the fenced claims of
the Mexican homesteaders, where it ended as if blocked; but his real
line on the mesa remained unstaked.