Go see Mr.Menocal and he will set you right." "I saw Charlie Menocal, who said to drive strangers off." "Well, Charlie had best keep his fingers out of this dish, or he may find it full of pepper, and you tell him so next time you talk with him." 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.