“It is more than that, Miss Breen,” he replied. “I don’t know where there is a greater undertaking on the face of the earth than this one. Why, every time I ride here and look over that lengthening line of conduit, I feel like shouting to the very heavens. And to think that my city is doing it all!”
She turned curiously, moved by his tone. “You—you’re a Los Angeles man?”
“To the core!” he answered. “Do you blame me for being proud? How many cities would dare even to dream of such a marvelous waterway? Oh, out here in the West, Miss Breen, men are doing the impossible!” In a calmer voice, he added: “This will be the longest aqueduct in the world—two hundred and fifty miles. Think of it! It will carry ten times as much water as all the aqueducts of Rome combined.”
The girl did not answer, but her gaze was riveted upon the winding, glistening length of concrete far below.
“We’re bringing the snow waters of the great Sierra Nevada Mountains across the Mohave Desert,” he continued, “across the deep cañons, through many tunnels, and finally beneath the Sierra Madre range. And a city of three hundred thousand people voted a bond issue of twenty-five millions to accomplish this feat of daring.”
“It must be a great satisfaction to a man to know that his brain and his hands are helping this dream of a city to become a reality,” Miss Breen remarked, after a pause.
“Yes,” said Nash. “We forget it is work. Wasn’t it Kipling who said the highest pleasure that could come to a man was in the realization of a task well done?”
“‘Each for the joy of the working,’” the girl quoted softly. “I think that’s the verse.”
For a little time they were silent, wrapped in their own thoughts. The girl was idly fingering her pony’s mane; Nash was watching the white plumes of steam that arose from the big dredges, far in the distance. Then he swept his eyes to an opposite part of the valley.
“Over there,” he said quietly, but with a touch of pride, “I’m starting a ‘coyote.’”