Came a time when Rawley felt fit enough for work; and this investigation of the wild, improbable scheme of the Cramers would be work, with every faculty of the engineer on the alert for his clients. For the others he would not have attempted the thing he contemplated. He would have told them, more or less politely but nevertheless firmly, that the whole thing was out of his line and that he could not assume the responsibility. But for his Uncle Peter and for Nevada he would do the best that was in him. Old Jess and Young Jess still looked at him with suspicious eyes, but they made no comment when he set off one morning with Peter to look over their work. They followed sullenly along the trail, ready, Rawley thought, to turn at the slightest indication of treachery and pitch him over the edge of the cliff--if they could--as Old Jess had naïvely suggested to Peter. Back to the tunnel Peter led him,--and within it. It was smaller than the usual mine tunnel, and fifty feet back from the portal two crosscuts ran parallel with the face of the cliff for a distance of fifty feet in either direction. In the hard rock, working with hand drills, the excavations had been made at the expense of infinite labor, Rawley could see. No car or track was there for removing the muck, which had been taken out in a wheelbarrow. At the face of the tunnel, a winze had been sunk fifty feet, and from this two other crosscuts extended, apparently directly beneath the upper ones. Rawley saw it all, riding down the winze in the bucket, since he had but one arm of any use. With Uncle Peter at the windlass he felt perfectly secure--though he would have refused the descent with one of the others, so great was his distrust of the Cramers, father and son. When he returned, Peter conducted him down the stairway hewn into the cliff, and into the big launch. “This is something we don’t let the world know about,” he remarked. “From Nelson we pack in supplies that any ordinary miner’s family would need--if they were just scratching a living out of their claims. You saw how we do it--with burros. Fifteen years ago we began to work on that stairway and landing. It was a long, hard job. But I knew that we were going to need some private way of getting supplies and material in for the dam. Now, we can slip down to Needles and get a boat-load and get back without these people around here knowing it. Early morning, just at peep of day, is the time I choose for running in here. On the far side of the river, none of the El Dorado prospectors would be apt to notice; and if they did, they would think I was on my way farther north. Now, I’m going to take you across the canyon.”