Jeff looked at the group he had separated out to join his road gang. They were the usual—worthless cowboys, busted-up laborers, and kids who still had a lot to learn about the hardness of the world.

“How'd you like the army?”

“Fine. Wasn't a need for scouts anymore. They cut me loose. I would have stayed on if I could.”

“You ever been foreman of anything?”

“No.”

“Well, figure it out as you go. Between the army and prison, you been told what to do enough in your life that I guess you'll get the hang of telling others without much trouble.

“All right, then, Tom Sisson, army scout. This is your crew. I want to have them here at sunup tomorrow. We'll load into the truck and drive where I need to go. When we can't go no further, we get out and start building a road.” He turned to the men. “This here's Tom Sisson. He's foreman. You do what he tells you to do, and you got some steady work. You don't do it, you got a long fucking walk back home.”

They scraped a road from near Klondyke up to the top of Rattlesnake Mesa, cutting it along the edges of the mesas there until they reached the peak by scraping it with a mule team and by busting up the rocks by hand, rolling them out of the way when they could, blasting them with dynamite when they couldn't. The rhyolite of the mesa and canyon was soft and flaky. Breaking it off wasn't difficult, and they made good progress, reaching from Klondyke to the entrance to Rattlesnake Creek at the bottom of a steep hill in less than two months.

Once in Rattlesnake Canyon, they did less hammering and scraping and more felling trees and pushing rocks out of their way. It was easier work, and it was cooler in the canyon, and the water of Rattlesnake Creek was cold and clear. There were abundant pools where the men could swim and bathe to rid themselves of the day and its dust.

Jeff and Sisson got along fine. Sisson did his work, making steady progress through the canyon. His men seemed to like him, and while a couple of the kids and a few of the drunks quit early on, the rest of the crew stayed. Sisson insisted that the men be paid every Friday. Jeff would have preferred paying them every other week to get some Saturday and Sunday work out of them. Men paid on Friday headed to Klondyke or Safford and were lost for the weekend. Sisson argued that men who could have a couple of nights to themselves worked better during the week. He demanded that the men return to camp Sunday night to be ready for work on Monday morning, and mostly they did.