"This is easy," he said. "Nothing broken--just a screw loose. Have you been monkeying with the parts, to see how they work?"
"No; I don't care a hang how they work. What gets me is that they didn't work!"
"Queer, then, how this screw got loose," said Blake as he tightened it with the blade of his pocket knife. "It sets tight enough. Of course it might have come from the factory a bit loose, and jarred out with the firing; but neither seems probable."
"Yes.--Seems to me someone _must_ have loosened this screw."
"What's the difference how it happened, if it will not happen again?" irritably replied Ashton. "Guess this bacon is fried enough. Let's eat."
Blake recoupled the rifle, emptied the magazine, tested the mechanism, refilled the magazine, and joined his ravenous companion in his ill-cooked meal.
Immediately after eating, Ashton flung himself down in the tent. A few minutes later Blake crept in beside him and struck a match. The young man had already fallen into the deep slumber of utter physical and mental relaxation. Blake went outside and listened to the wailing of the coyotes. Difficult as it was to determine the direction of their mournful cries, he at last satisfied himself that they were circling entirely around the camp.
A watchdog could not have indicated with greater certainty that there was no other wild beast or any human being lurking near the waterhole. Blake crept back into the tent and was soon fast asleep beside his companion.
Early to bed, early to rise. The two men were up at dawn. During the night the coyotes had sneaked into the camp. But Blake had fastened the food in the chuck-box and slung everything gnawable up in the branches out of reach of the sly thieves.
At sunrise the two started out on their day's work, Ashton carrying his rifle and canteen and the level rod, Blake with the level and a bag containing their lunch and a two-quart sirup-can of water.
"We'll run a new line from the dike bench, around the hill and across the valley the way we rode out yesterday," said the engineer, as they climbed the slope above the waterhole. "That will give us a check by cross-tying to the line of the creek levels where it runs into the gulch."
"Can't you trust to the accuracy of your own work?" asked Ashton with evident intent to mortify.