"But Menocal would be very angry," said the man, with a shake of his head.
Bryant bade them good-night and departed. He went up the muddy road through the wet darkness to the camp. Domination of the native mind by Menocal appeared too strong for him to break.
But to his surprise next morning the Mexican came driving his team into the camp. Lee sent him to Pat Carrigan, who gave him a scraper and set him to work on the ditch. Toward noon the engineer encountered him moving dirt from the deepening excavation; the sight had an amusing feature. The man, Pedro Saurez, laboured in his own field building the canal at about the spot where he had warned Bryant away when surveying.
When Saurez beheld Lee, he grinned and removed the cigarette from his lips.
"It will be a fine ditch, this," was his remark.
CHAPTER XIII[ToC]
Work on the canal section near the river advanced without incident until, one morning early in November, the plows unexpectedly uncovered a forty-foot-wide body of granite just beneath the surface. This particular difficulty was not serious, and was the contractor's; but Pat Carrigan was no more pleased than any other contractor would have been at finding rock, even a small amount, when he had figured his excavation costs on a dirt basis.