The predicted cold weather came, bringing winter in earnest. The frost went deeper into the ground and construction grew slower, but the days continued fine and without gales, those fierce and implacable winds that sometimes rage over the frozen mesa hours at a time under a dull, saffron sun, sharp as knives, shrieking like demons, and driving man and beast to cover. They had not yet been unleashed. Night work was begun, amid a flare of gasolene torches that gave a weird aspect to the plain. The yellow lights; the moving, shadowy forms of the workmen and horses; the cries and shouts--all made a scene gnome-like in character. Frost gleamed upon the earth in a silvery sheen under the torches' smoky flames. The headquarters building and the mess tents now glowed from dusk until dawn. Fires where workmen could warm their cheeks and hands were burning continually, fed from the great piles of wood brought from the mountains. And so by day and by night, without halt and despite cold, the restless life was maintained and the toil kept going and the hard furrow driven ahead. With the approach of Christmas the advance of the project was marked. The dam was nearing completion, with its long, gently inclined, upstream face constructed of smooth cobbles--a slope up which any vast and sudden rush of cloudburst water would slide unchecked to the crest and harmlessly pass over. All of the drops, as well as the head-gate and flood weirs, were finished, standing as if hewn out of solid white stone. The miners had blasted out a channel through the reef of rock, and gone. From the dam the canal section all along the hillside and following the ridge, from drop to drop, and out to a point on the mesa a mile beyond, was excavated, a great clean ditch; while from Perro Creek the canal ran northward for six miles to the main camp, curving in the great arc that constituted its line. Three and a half miles, and complements, constructed at one end; six miles at the other. Between, five miles of unbroken mesa. Seven weeks remained for the small camp working down from the north and the great camp pushing from the south to dig through those miles and meet--seven weeks; but in the most bitter season of the year. It seemed that it was with infinitely greater effort that the two sections of the canals were forced ahead each day. The surface of the ground was like stone, only by repeated attempts pierced by plows and torn apart; while the subsoil immediately froze if left unworked. The weaker labourers began to break: the scrawny Mexicans, the debilitated white men, the drifters and the dissatisfied; and they left the camps. These the labour agencies found it harder and harder to replace as the cold weather persisted, so that the force showed a considerable diminishment.