Who first bestowed upon Weir that name is not known. But it was not misapplied. Cold steel he had proved himself to be a score of times in critical moments when other men would have broken: in pushing bridges over mountain chasms, in mine disasters, in strikes, in almost hopeless fights against bandits in Mexico. And it was this ability to handle difficulties that had brought about the decision of the directors of the company to put him in charge, as the man best qualified, at San Mateo, where the situation was unsatisfactory, costly, baffling. Since his arrival a week before he had been consulting with Magney, studying maps and blue-prints, examining the work and analyzing general conditions. What had been accomplished had been well done; he had no criticism to offer on that score. It was the delay; the work was considerably behind schedule, which of course meant excessive cost; and this had undermined the spirit of the enterprise. In a dozen places, in a dozen ways, Magney, his predecessor, had been hampered, checked, defeated--and the main contributing cause was poor workmen, inefficient work. On that sore Weir's skillful finger fell at once. Standing there before the low office building he watched Magney depart. He, Steele Weir, had now taken over full charge of the camp and assumed full responsibility for the project's failure or success. His eye passed beyond the distant automobile to the town of San Mateo--a new town for him, but a town like many he had seen in the southwest and in Mexico. And aside from its connection with the construction work, it held a fascinating interest, a profound interest for the man, the interest that any spot would which has at a distance cast a black and sinister shadow over one's life. San Mateo--the name lay like a smoldering coal in his breast! At length he turned and strode down the hillside to the dam site in the canyon. The time had come to shut his hand about the work and let his hold be felt. He located the superintendent directing the pouring of concrete in the frames of the dam core, Atkinson, a man of fifty with a stubby gray mustache, a wind-bitten face and a tall angular frame. When Weir joined him he was observing with speculative eyes the indolent movements of a group of Mexican laborers. "Those _hombres_ don't appear to be breaking any speed records, I see," Weir remarked, quietly. "Humph," Atkinson grunted. "What do they think this is? A rest cure?" The superintendent's silence suddenly gave way. "I ought to land on 'em with an ax-handle and put the fear of God in their lazy souls," he exclaimed, bitterly. "Well, do it." "What!" "Do it."