They went out.  Winship came to life and crossing the room dragged the outlaw Mexican to his feet, then pushed him over the floor and into the hall on his way to the cells in the basement.  Morgan pulled on his hat.  Bryant glanced at the paper ashes on the floor, then did likewise.  It was time to get back to camp.

CHAPTER XXXI

The first snowflakes of another storm were beginning to flutter down by the time the two men reached camp, and dusk had set in.  On the drifted road from Bartolo, over which but few wagons had passed, travel was slow and they had consumed an hour and a half on their return.  The torches were burning along the canal, appearing at a distance like winter fireflies, but the crews of workmen had gone to supper.  Bryant and Morgan, when they drove down the street in camp, could hear them at their meal in the glowing mess tents—­a subdued hubbub of plates and knives and voices.

Half an hour later they were pouring forth toward the horse tents, while the engineers were making their way along the torch-lit path to the stretch of undug canal.

“We’ll allow fifteen minutes for them to get the teams out, then shoot,” Carrigan said to Lee, as they moved along.  “All the shots are in and double-fused.  Doesn’t appear to be any wind behind this snow.”

The air, though cold, was still.  The flakes were not yet falling heavily and they lay on the hard crust of snow as light as silk fluff.  What might be coming down in another hour from the darkness overhead, however, could not be foretold, while if both a gale and a great fall of snow occurred the labour of the night would be increased a hundred-fold.

Bryant’s anxiety was no longer on account of the time limit fixed by the Land and Water Board.  He knew that since the revelations made in the sheriff’s office the claimant Rodriguez would never press his case, even were the canal never completed.  But he had the keen desire of a tired man to clean up the job and be done, and a pride in keeping faith with himself in accomplishing what he had sworn he should do, build the project in ninety days.  He would never have it said by any one that he had failed in that.  By Gretzinger, for example.  Ruth in particular!  She believed that he had already failed when she wrote her letter.

By the end of the quarter of an hour prescribed by Carrigan teams and workmen were coming along the snowy road in a long line.  From the north camp also a string of animals in pairs was advancing by light of the torches.  A warning shout sounded from the ditch section.  Men retreated.  Then a roaring boom burst upon the night, with other thunderous reports following in rapid succession, until it seemed that the mined earth cascading upward in the darkness was the bombardment of scores of cannon.  The flames of the torches and the falling snow tossed and whirled at the percussion of air.  Showers of clay rained upon the earth.  Vibrations jarred the ground.