"Yes, I do. I'm sure of it."
"Why didn't she tell me then?" Winston burst out.
"Well, women are queer creatures." Uncle Sid spoke meditatively. "They see more sides to a man than we do, an' when he's down, they stay by him closer. I sometimes think that Helen knows more about 'Lige than we do; anyway, she's mighty suspicious of him, but she's goin' to give him every chance to get up, an' at the same time she's lookin' out that no one gets hurt when he's flappin' his heels around, tryin' to make his feet. What are you doin' to shut off any deviltry?"
"I've put on extra watchmen, day and night, and I've got men out hunting Elijah."
"I guess that's all that you can do."
Winston meditated long over Helen's warning and Uncle Sid's explanation of her conduct. The idea of Elijah's trying to injure the dam finally seemed too monstrous to be entertained. It occurred to him to remain at the dam and not trust to watchmen; but this was impossible. He had other pressing duties demanding him. Nothing could happen this night; the next would be spent at the mouth of the cañon. The day following he would send some of his young assistants in place of the Mexicans.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The sun had long since sunk beneath the sheen of the ocean and one by one the distant stars pricked sharp and clear through the azure veil that made the world a unit in the depths of space. From their spanless heights, moonlight and starlight plunged like hissing shafts of water and, like shafts of water falling on the softly resisting air, broke in diffused mantles that half concealed and half revealed the softened contours of the slumbering world. The gently falling radiance disclosed no detail of the swelling plains below, yet each tumid roll, crowned with its aureole of lustrous light voiced with tongueless words an everlasting peace.
Winston was busy until far into the night. There was a strange sense of oppression as he passed from point to point of the now completed dam. The machinery that had for so long a time been pulsing with life, was now stilled. There were no banked fires under the boilers, to speak of rest for the labor of the morrow, for the labor was completed. In the laborer's camp, the men were packing their few belongings for an early start in the morning. Some were busy touching up the machines for their long rest. These were not to be dismantled at once, but were to wait a more convenient time. The lanterns of the men twinkled through clumps of mountain pine where the shadows lay thick and deep; then faded to a dim point in the white moonlight. The occasional clink of a hammer, and the voices of the men drifted across the water, softened by distance. It was funereal, after all! And he had looked forward to these very sounds with an impatient thrill. Now it was all completed. The last stone of the dam had been laid, from the dam to the terminal canal every gate had been put in, every trestle had been built, every tunnel had been driven. Tomorrow, with the men, he would go over every foot of the canal for a final inspection. If this was satisfactory, and he knew it would be, in two days the gates would be opened and the water turned into the canal.