There, across the white space, in a thin, angular hand, was written: “To Walter Trask, from his Sister Ethel. Christmas, 1911.”

For a minute Nash stared at the writing, his thoughts galloping far away—far beyond the miles of mountain ranges, beyond the limitless stretch of prairie, where, for the moment, he lived over again that black hour in the bunk house. Mentally he recalled the shouts, the questioning voices, the sharp crack of a revolver fired in the closed room. Then the mêlée of fists—the still, deathlike face of the man on the floor——

Nash drew in a deep breath and passed a quick hand across his eyes. “What a small world it is, after all!” he reflected. This little volume, picked from the pocket of an unfortunate, had belonged to Walter Trask. What strange trick of Destiny had willed it here, in Nash’s hands?

He closed the book and placed it among the others. “I wonder,” he said aloud, staring ahead of him with unseeing eyes, “how it is all to end? There’s a little rhyme somewhere—Kipling’s, too—that reads: ‘The sins men do, two by two, come back to them one by one.’”

He got into bed that night with a solemn resolution to banish forever the past from his thoughts. The things that had happened were buried, and all the post-mortem examinations ever devised would not help matters.

Here he was to-day, with a shoulder to the wheel, his quota of strength helping, with the thousand others, to push to completion this wonderful aqueduct that the City of Angels might be supplied with cold, crystal-clear water from the realms of eternal snow. The immensity and daring of the project thrilled him; day by day it grew; day by day he gloried in the thought that he was to contribute a mite toward the great achievement.

CHAPTER VII.
GETTING ACQUAINTED.

Nash accepted his new responsibilities in a manner that won him instant favor, not alone from his superiors, but from the men under him—the motley siftings of many races. And in turn Nash interested himself in their welfare. Knowing that as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, so he knew that a body of men, striving for one end, must, work collectively and without friction to reach that goal.

In the beginning, he determined upon a certain amount of work to be completed in a daily shift. He took the men into his confidence—made them feel a part of his responsibility—encouraged them to strike a record and never fall short of it. Nor was it an easy victory, this final whipping into line—with kindness and consideration instead of the usual oaths and doubled fists—of the passive Hindus, the silent, stolid-faced Japs, the crafty, catlike Mexicans, and the cheerful, singing Italians. But it was accomplished, and in time Nash became known as possessing the best working crew on the length of the aqueduct.