about eight o'clock in the morning
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 cañon . 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 .