The work of construction had now reached its most critical stage, and Williams was driving it strenuously. Each twenty-four hours, with the recurring night rise from the melting snows, the torrenting river reached a higher water-mark, and three times in as many weeks the engineer had changed from a quick-setting cement to a still quicker, time-saving and a swift piling-up of the great dike wall being now the prime necessities. Returning from the dam site quite late in the evening, Smith spent a hard-working hour or more at his desk in the Kinzie Building offices; and it was here that Starbuck found him. "What?" said the new secretary, looking up from his work when Starbuck's wiry figure loomed in the doorway, "I thought you were once more a family man, and had cut out the night prowling." Starbuck jack-knifed himself comfortably in a chair. "I was. But the little girl's run away again; gone with her sister--Maxwell's wife, you know--to Denver to get her teeth fixed; and I'm foot-loose. Been butting in a little on your game, this evening, just to be doing. How's tricks with you, now?" "We're strictly in the fight," declared Smith enthusiastically. "We closed the deal to-day for the last half-mile of the main ditch right of way, which puts us up on the mesa slope above the Escalante Grant. If they knock us out now, they'll have to do it with dynamite." "Yes," said the ex-cow-man, thoughtfully; "with dynamite." Then: "How is Williams getting along?" "Fine! The water is crawling up on him a little every night, but with no accidents, he'll be able to hold the flood rise when it comes. The only thing that worries me now is the time limit." "The time limit?" echoed Starbuck. "What's that?" "It's the handicap we inherit from the original company. Certain State rights to the water were conveyed in the old charter, on condition that the project should be completed, or at least be far enough along to turn water into the ditches, by a given date. This time limit, which carries over from Timanyoni Ditch to Timanyoni High Line, expires next week. We're petitioning for an extension, but if we don't get it we shall still be able to back the water up so that it will flow into the lower level of ditches by next Thursday; that is, barring accidents." "Yes; with no accidents," mused Starbuck. "Can't get shut of the 'if,' no way nor shape, can we? So that's why the Stanton people have been fighting so wolfishly for delay, is it? Wanted to make the High Line lose its charter? John, this is a wicked, wicked world, and I can sympathize with the little kiddie who said he was going out in the garden to eat worms." Then he switched abruptly. "Where did you corral all those good looks you took to the opera-house last night, John?" Smith's laugh was strictly perfunctory. "That was Miss Verda Richlander, an old friend of mine from back home. She is out here with her father, and the father has gone up into the Topaz country to buy him a gold brick."