Smith had seen nothing of Miss Richlander during the day of the Stanton plottings, partly because there was a forenoon meeting of the High Line stockholders called for the purpose of electing him secretary and treasurer in fact of the company, and partly because the major portion of the afternoon was spent in conference with Williams at the dam.
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?"