"When I reached there, I heard a dog whining." Bryant stiffened. "I left my dog Mike behind," said he. "The sound was really more like a moaning," she went on. "At first I could see nothing, but when I looked everywhere I found that it came from one of the three cottonwood trees. Somebody had hurt him, and the poor creature was suffering terribly. I--I can hardly tell what had been done to him!" And she shuddered. "Mike! They've killed my dog Mike!" "They nailed him to a cottonwood tree. A nail through each leg. A nail through his throat. Nails through his body. They had crucified him. And, oh, his pitiful eyes!" Lee Bryant stood perfectly still and quiet. Dave was frozen and horrified. Both gazed fixedly across the mesa to where the cottonwoods could be seen. "Is Mike alive yet?" Bryant asked presently, in an unsteady voice. "No; not now. I found a piece of iron and hammered the nails free. Then I lifted him down and carried him to the creek and washed his wounds. But he died. I see his eyes yet, looking up at me." For a little she was overcome. Then she resumed, "When he was dead, I carried him up to your door, for I knew you must have loved him." Bryant glanced up at her. "Mike would know you were a friend," he said. She nodded and reined Dick about. Leading the other horse, she rode away through the sunshine that burnished the mesa. CHAPTER VIII July passed. Followed August, with days likewise hot and unvarying except for a scarcely appreciable retardation of dawn. Perro Creek now showed no water at all in its shallow bed; the garden planted by the Stevensons was long dried up; the sagebrush was dustier than ever; and Bryant and Dave were hauling in a barrel on a sledge water for their use from a pool in the canon. From daybreak until about eight o'clock in the morning the engineer and his assistant worked on the canal line. Bryant had run a fictitious survey along the mountain side, staking it out conspicuously for any one to see, to the first of the fenced claims of the Mexican homesteaders, where it ended as if blocked; but his real line on the mesa remained unstaked. To the low ridge, or spur of ground, projecting from the mountain's base at a point half a mile south of his right of way through the fields, where the canal began its sweep out upon the plain, he gave considerable time. The fall of this at first was sharp, and concrete drops would have to be constructed at intervals for a distance of a mile or so in order to lower the water. When this section was left behind, he advanced rapidly along the line, for the surface of the gentle crescent swell was smooth, its grade fairly regular, and its contour fixed by nature. Essential points he marked by stones, with merely their surfaces exposed, so that if noticed they would be considered scattered pieces of rock from the hills. At the proper time they would constitute guides for later staking.