"Oh, I'll let you down easy, Lee. That wasn't worrying me any," was the rejoinder. "I was just thinking——" But his words broke off there, and he again gave his attention to the cigar wrapper that persisted in coming loose.
Bryant continued his gloomy cogitation. The muscles of his cheeks moved in hard lumps beneath his fists as if he were champing some resistant substance. Over his eyes his lids from time to time drooped sleepily. But all at once he leaped up.
"If I but had something I could take hold of, Pat!" he exclaimed. "Something I could lay hands on and move, like that bed of rock you uncovered! So I could go ahead! A law is so damned immaterial that one has nothing to work against. It leaves a man nowhere, helpless. It lifts him off the ground and holds him kicking futilely in the air. Just that. By God, I'm desperate enough to try anything—to try building the ditch—try whipping Menocal even under this moth-eaten law he's dug up!"
Pat shut one eye against the smoke curling into it.
"I was speculating a little along the same line," said he, slowly.
"But twelve miles of ditch in ninety days! The whole mesa line! We'd be crazy to think of it. Let's talk of something else."
Lee's mouth, nevertheless, was twitching, while gleams like light came and went on his face.
"I always had a weakness for the bad bets," said Pat.
"But twelve miles of ditch!"
"And the nights freezing harder every week," the old contractor added.