Dawn broke over the Grand Continental Diverter not with the dramatic fury of a storm, but with the quiet, golden tiredness of a saved world.
The howling north wind had died away during the third watch. That left the high air cold, crystal-clear, and clear. Across the vast mirror of the Inland Sea, the first rays of level sunlight struck the water. That turned the dark gray flood into an expanse of beaten copper and rose-colored glass.
Along the two-mile low roof wall of the dam, the three hundred workers sat along the granite coping stones, their boots dangling over the dry drainage gutters.
They were filthy. Their faces were blackened with bituminous coal smoke, yellow shale clay, and dried river silt. Their wool coats were stiff with dried spray, their mittens torn at the thumbs, their leather aprons scored by the sharp edges of moving wire rope. But they sat with the relaxed, unmoving stance of men who have looked into the mouth of the deep pit. Then they pushed it back with their own shoulders.
Down the center of the crest, four camp kettles were boiling over open coke fire bowls. It filled the crisp mountain air with the rich, smoky scent of chicory tea, boiling salt pork, and dried winter savory. Loaves of dark rye bread, baked hard as timber in the valley ovens, were being split with butcher knives and distributed from wicker hampers by the younger apprentices.
