He grew worn and haggard. Dark shadows emphasized the hollows of the tortured eyes. So irritable was his temper that at a word it flashed to explosion. By disposition he was not one to pass on to subordinates the acerbity that was a residue of the storm that was shaking him. A sense of justice had always been strong in him. Fifty times a day he clamped his teeth to keep back the biting phrase. In general he succeeded, but malingerers found him a hard taskmaster. They appealed to Merrick and got small comfort from him. The new cement foreman was getting the work done both rapidly and well. That was all the chief engineer asked of him. The details could be arranged by Jones as he pleased. The nights were the worst. During the day he had the work to occupy his mind, but when darkness fell over the hills its shadows crept over his soul. He could not sleep. Sometimes he borrowed technical books from Merrick and tried to bury himself in study. More often he tramped till physical exhaustion drove him back to his cot to stare up sleeplessly at the canvas roof of his tent. Suffering wears itself out at last. There came a time when the edge of the craving grew less keen, when its attack was less frequent. In the pure, untempered air of the hills the cement gang foreman came to sounder health. His appetite increased with his physical stamina. One day it struck him with a little shock of surprise that he had not had one of his racking headaches for two weeks. He began to sleep better, though there were still nights when he had to tramp the hills in self-defense. Inevitably during those days the foreman found himself studying the project upon which Merrick had staked his reputation. As an engineer he took off his hat to the efficiency with which his chief got results. Merrick was a driver, but he was more than that. He had the fighting spirit that lifts from defeat to victory. Good engineers had said it was not feasible to water the Flat Tops by means of ditches carrying water from the drainage area above. Justin Merrick had not accepted their verdict. He had made his own surveys and meant to demonstrate that they were wrong. He knew that a certain group of cattlemen, under the leadership of old Jake Prowers, were watching him sullenly. They believed, from the surveys made by Government engineers, that the grade made it impossible to bring water from the dam through Elk Creek Cañon to the mesa below. Yet Merrick knew, too, that they were uneasy. It was on the cards that the Reclamation Service experts might be wrong in their surveys. If Prowers discovered that they were, Justin felt sure he would move to ruthless and dynamic action. The big dam was practically finished. Merrick kept a night guard over it and the tools. Sometimes, after supper, he strolled down to look it over and think out under the quiet stars the problems of supplies or canal construction. It was on such a night visit that he came face to face with the new concrete work foreman.