“We’ll finish this ditch on time even if hell freezes over,” he said, slowly.  “I’m not going to be beaten at this late day.”

He continued to sit gazing at the frosted panes and harkening to the roaring blasts.  On the floor and in the chairs the blanketed men slept heavily.  Pat fed the fire anew.  But through the cracks of the walls the cold sifted more and more intense, while along the edges of the boards there formed thick fringes of glistening frost.

CHAPTER XXIX

For four days the bitter cold and fierce wind held the camps in thrall, then the latter blew itself out.  The cold, however, still endured though the sun shone.  When one looked forth from camp, all that could be seen was a snowbound earth; mesa and mountains were as white and silent as some polar region; nothing moved; nothing seemed to live out yonder.  It was like a dazzling, frigid, extinct world.

The main mesa road was blocked and telephone wires were down.  What went on outside the limits of the camp’s snow-drifted horizon its dwellers knew not—­nor for the moment cared.  Work was the only thought.  With hastily constructed snow-plows roads had been broken among the tents and shacks as soon as the weather allowed, and afterward broad paths made to the working ground.  The section of undug canal was now scraped bare.  There, sheltered by tents and warmed by sagebrush fires, men bored in the iron-like earth powder-holes in rows that exactly aligned the canal.  On the morning of the fifth day a first stretch of fifty yards was blown out, whereupon teams and scrapers were rushed into the ragged cavity to deepen and clear the ditch before the soil froze anew.  This was at the north end.  In the afternoon one hundred yards at the south end went up in a blast and crews from the main camp fell upon this area.

That night the sky clouded over again.  All the next day snow came down steadily.  The workmen played cards in the mess tents and waited.  Carrigan busied himself at accounts and waited.  Bryant waited, with impatience and anxiety gnawing at his heart.  There were six hundred yards and more unexcavated, and but three days of his time remained.

The snow ceased at nightfall and work was instantly resumed by aid of the torches; again the desperate scraping of snow, bundled men at fires and sheltered by windbreaks, the drilling of holes in the frozen ground, the reliefs every two hours, the thawing of nipped fingers and toes and noses.  All night hot food and boiling coffee were served at intervals to the cold and hungry labourers.  At nine o’clock next morning two hundred yards of dirt went spraying into the air, with the subsequent struggle in the long hole:  fresnos bearing forth what earth was loose and what the plows broke out; the horses, blinded by the glare of snow, staggering forward under curse and lash; the men toiling in a sort of grim fury.  A maximum of effort finished one hundred and fifty yards more by eleven o’clock.  Carrigan ordered all work to stop until nine next morning.