July passed.

Followed August, with days likewise hot and unvarying except for a scarcely appreciable retardation of dawn.

Perro Creek now showed no water at all in its shallow bed; the garden planted by the Stevensons was long dried up; the sagebrush was dustier than ever; and Bryant and Dave were hauling in a barrel on a sledge water for their use from a pool in the canon.
From daybreak until about eight o'clock in the morning the engineer and his assistant worked on the canal line.

Bryant had run a fictitious survey along the mountain side, staking it out conspicuously for any one to see, to the first of the fenced claims of the Mexican homesteaders, where it ended as if blocked; but his real line on the mesa remained unstaked.
To the low ridge, or spur of ground, projecting from the mountain's base at a point half a mile south of his right of way through the fields, where the canal began its sweep out upon the plain, he gave considerable time.

The fall of this at first was sharp, and concrete drops would have to be constructed at intervals for a distance of a mile or so in order to lower the water.