“Time to eat,” he said, picking up his hat.  “Coming, Mr. Conniston?”

“And you?” Conniston asked of Garton.

“Oh, me!” laughed Garton.  “I don’t travel that far.  Not until my new legs come.  I had trouble with ’em,” he explained.  “Had to send ’em back to Chicago.  I’m hoping,” with a whimsical smile, “that they don’t get sidetracked with the rest of our stuff on the P. C. & W. Go with Billy, Conniston.  He’ll show you where to eat.”

He whirled about on his stool, squirmed suddenly over on his stomach, and lowered himself to the floor.  Swinging the leathern-capped stumps of his legs between his hands, which he placed palm down on the floor, as a man may swing his body between crutches, he moved with short, quick jerks into the room where the two cots were.  Conniston turned away abruptly.

With Billy Jordan he went nearly to the end of the short street before they came to a rude lunch-counter, set under a canvas awning, where a thin, nervous little man and his fat, stolid wife set canned goods and coffee before them.  Billy produced a yellow ticket to be punched, Conniston paid his two bits, and they strolled back to the office.  When Conniston suggested that they take something to Garton, Billy told him that a boy took him his meals.

There was so much to be got over that day, Conniston was so eager to learn what details he could, Tommy Garton so eager to impart them, that it was scarcely half-past twelve when the two men were back at the long table going over maps and blue-prints.  There were no interruptions.  An imprisoned house-fly buzzed monotonously and sullenly against a pane of glass, his drone fitting into the heavy silence on the face of the hot desert so that it became a part of it.

At four o’clock a handful of ragged children, barefooted, bronzed of legs and hands and faces, scampered by on their noisy way home from school.  A pretty young woman in neat walking-habit and big white straw hat followed the children, smiling in through the open door at Garton, noting Conniston with a flash of big brown eyes and quickly dropping lids.  Billy, in seeming carelessness, had wandered to the door when the children passed, and stepped outside, chatting with her for five or ten minutes.

“Miss Jocelyn,” Garton told him.  “Bat Truxton’s daughter, and the village schoolmistress.  Billy thinks he’s rather hard hit, I fancy.”

“I’ve heard of her,” Conniston replied, frowning at the map he was holding flat on the table.  “Dam Number Two is the one which is completed, isn’t it?  And Number Three is the smaller auxiliary dam?  How about Number One, which seems to be the most important of the lot?  When do we go to work on that?”

Garton chuckled.  “You’re going to be as bad as I am, Conniston!  Can’t even stop to look at a pretty girl?  The Lord knows they’re scarce enough out here, too.  Yes, Dam Number One is the important one of the lot.  It will be the biggest, the hardest, and most expensive to build, and it will control the water-supply which is going to save our bacon.”