He had had shrewd legal talent seeking a deadly weapon for him among the musty statutes, with which he could deal the irrigation project a _coup de grace_.

And as the import of the letter penetrated Bryant's brain, his heart seemed to turn to ice.

Ninety days--finish dam and canal in ninety days! As well fix a limit of ninety hours! Finally he rushed off to Pat Carrigan superintending scraper work and dragged him aside.
"For God's sake, read that, Pat!" he cried.

"Read what the Land and Water Board are going to do.

They're going to cut the heart right out of us! Kill the project! All for a law nobody ever heard of! Read it!" Pat knit his brows and slowly extracted the meaning from the state engineer's formal, involved announcement.