Once out and fighting the current, Rawley saw at once why it was that the Colorado was not considered a navigable river. There were no rapids in the canyon, properly speaking. But the pent volume of water rushed through like a dignified mill race, and it was only Peter’s skill and the power of the motor that landed them across the canyon. Here, a small eddy, with a break in the bold, granite wall, made a fair landing. Peter tied the launch securely and led the way up a steep trail from the water’s edge to a natural shelf, where another tunnel with crosscuts was being run. As far as the contour of the cliffs would permit, the workings here were identical with those on the home shore, except that they were not finished. They had just completed the winze. “We can’t work over here except when the weather and the river are favorable,” Peter explained. “And Old Jess kept us at the gold diggings until we balked. He’d got that one idea so firmly fixed in his mind that he wouldn’t let up when he had his million. He seemed to think a few months’ work would put the dam in, and it was next to impossible to pry him away from the gold grubbing. When we finally struck and refused to put in another shift in the mine, he yielded the point. Now he’s in a fever to get this done. He’ll sit and watch the river by the hour, just as you saw him that night he came down on us. Gloats and grudges by turns, I suppose. He doesn’t realize what a job it is--blowing enough rock into the canyon to dam the river.” “I wonder if you do, yourself!” Rawley remarked laconically and led the way out. “I want to study these cliffs a bit from the outside. I’ve seen enough of your underground work.” He spent two hours sitting on first one jutting rock pinnacle and then another, studying the cliffs and making sketchy diagrams and notes. A splendid dream, surely; but a dream wellnigh impossible, as he saw it. That evening after supper, he sent word to Peter that he was ready to talk to him and would prefer to have the Cramers present. Wherefore Peter brought them over to the cabin; Old Jess vulture-like and grim, and fairly bristling with suspicion, Young Jess surly, but wanting to know what was going on between Peter and this stranger. Rawley dragged chairs out to the porch and laid a diagram sketch on the small table beside him. “I want to say first, to all of you,” he began gravely, “that I don’t approve of the scheme from any point of view. Peter says that is because I think by rule; because the thing has never been done, and I therefore have nothing to work from. However that may be, I warn you at the start that I don’t like it. I don’t believe you can dam the river in the way you are going at it. It’s a cinch you will have to alter your plans in certain ways, if you are to have any hope whatever of accomplishing the feat.