Bryant folded his map and restored it to his pocket, while the Mexican went away to his house.

That day the engineer worked until darkness shut down.  At three o’clock next morning he routed his young assistant out of bed and by dawn they were in the fields again.  Knowing that the Menocals had set about impeding and if possible altogether obstructing him, he proposed to be done, as quickly as careful surveying allowed, with the fenced part of the hillside where plausible controversies could be invented.

Toward the end of the second day he had progressed into the last tract of owned ground.  He breathed more freely.  In his statement to the Mexican concerning the right of way he had been exactly right; and he was following to a dot the original course taken by the early ditch.  He could have improved upon this section of the canal by another survey, but that would have involved him in a host of troubles, very likely unsolvable ones, in securing title to another strip of ground across the fields.  Without question Menocal’s influence would prevent the owners from selling, even if Bryant had the money with which to buy a second right of way, which he had not.  Dollar for dollar it would be cheaper in the long run to use the old line.  Well, Dave was already across the last fence with his rod; they would soon be working entirely on government land; and with that, it did not matter for the present what the Mexican landowners thought or did.

Bryant had walked fifty yards or so away from his transit to call something to Dave, when the crack of a rifle sounded from the hillside and a bullet whined near by.  The engineer pivoted about.  Another shot followed, and he beheld a spurt of dust close by his instrument.  The hidden rifleman was not seeking to murder him, but to destroy his tools.

There were no more shots and he resumed work.  Later on, as he neared the fence and was establishing his last points within the field, a horseman with a gray moustache came galloping up along the stretch of barb wire.  He nodded, inquired if the engineer was named Bryant, and announced that he had half a dozen injunctions to serve.

“I expected something like this; glad you didn’t arrive any sooner,” Lee remarked.

“Well, I was away from town, or I’d have been here by noon,” the horseman, an American, stated.  “The injunctions cover all these places between here and the river.  You and any one you hire must keep off the tracts specified until the cases come up before the judge.”

“All right, sheriff.  Wait till I take a last squint or two and I’ll vacate.”

The horseman idly watched the engineer make his final measurements, then when Bryant had lifted his tripod over the wire and told his assistant Dave they would call it a day and stop, he dismounted and sat down for a smoke with the man on whom he had served his papers.

“Looks as if you’ve stirred up some interest in your doings,” he remarked, expelling a thread of smoke.  “All the Mexicans from here down to Rosita are gabbling about your canal.  Don’t seem pleased with you.”