"I guess so."
"I can tell distance and time all right today. Do you see what you're up against?" Ralph pointed to the towering San Bernardinos. "It's horseback from here and we ought to be there by three o'clock anyway."
At the mouth of the cañon, Ralph explained the dam that was being built across the river and the heavy gates that were being put in.
"You see we let the water come from the reservoir as far as this, in its natural bed. If anything should happen along the canal we can shut off the water at this point first. Later, we could shut it off at the reservoir."
Uncle Sid asked a few questions, then they began to climb the steep mountains. They passed loaded pack-mules going up and empty trains coming down the trail. In places the trail was a narrow shelf along the face of a nearly perpendicular cliff. Below them ran the river in its narrow gorge, above them gleamed a slender strip of sky cut into ragged edges by towering cliffs. Just as the trail climbed to the edge of the cañon it seemed to end against a smooth wall of granite. A sharp turn to the left, and Uncle Sid could not repress an exclamation of awed delight at the scene before him. The trail led out upon a broad terrace. Two hundred feet below, a treeless valley wound out and in among rounded tree-clad domes of granite. Here and there, on either side, stately spires of naked rock thrust up into the sky, the bare brown of their sides striped with bands of dazzling white.
The dam was to be situated between two granite bluffs at the head of the cañon. The masonry gatehouses were already the height of the proposed dam. The gates themselves were closed and the valley was a great lake. The sight was great, awe-inspiring yet peaceful.
"What do you think of it?"
"Who thought of this?" Uncle Sid glanced at Ralph with shrewd eyes.
"It thought itself." Ralph answered evasively. "We are really only doing here what nature herself did and then undid. You can see that this valley was once a great natural lake. The Sangre de Cristo cut through the cañon and drained the lake. Now we are putting in a dam and restoring it."
Uncle Sid did not take his eyes from Ralph's impassive face.