Nevertheless, Faith held a fondness for it, principally sentimental. Occasionally she rode over to see that all was in order. She had an idea that, if the Mackay ranch was cut up, they might live there, and she had a wish, of which she had not yet spoken to her husband, to spend a week or two there alone with him before the winter. And so one day she paid a visit to her property.
Though the day was warm the interior struck chill. She threw the doors open and raised the blinds, letting in the air and sun. Then, taking a book, she moved a rocker to the front veranda, and basked in the sun. For a time she admired the mountains sharply defined, gulch, shoulder and summit, in the clear air, but speedily she became lost in her own thoughts.
A sudden, thudding detonation broke her reverie and brought her upright in her chair. It rumbled into the hills, caught by the rocks, flung across gorges and back in a maze of echoes, diminishing and dying in the far ranges. For a startled instant she wondered what it could be, and then she knew that it was powder—a blast.
The shot seemed near, not more than a mile distant. It was either on her land or very near it, in the vicinity of the foot of the round mountain which projected from the foot of the range. While she puzzled, another shot came. Yes, undoubtedly that was where it was. But who could be using powder on her property?
She made up her mind to find out what was going on. She locked the doors, and mounting her pony took as straight a line as she could in the direction of the blasts.
There were no more shots, but she rode on, and presently came to what seemed to be a new trail leading upward beside the shoulder of the round hill aforesaid. Her pony scrambled up the rough going, walled on either side by brush. Then she emerged upon a bench a few acres in extent, above which the hill rose steeply. There stood a couple of tents. The brush had been cut away, and earth and stones stripped from the mountain side, leaving a new, raw wound. Fragments of gray country rock, split and driven by the force which had ripped them loose, lay around. By the face thus exposed half a dozen men were at work. Closer at hand two men conversed. As she pulled up her pony they saw her.
For a moment they stared at her. She rode forward.
"I—I hope I'm not in the way," she began, feeling the words inadequate. "I was down at the ranch and heard the blasts. I am Miss—I mean I am Mrs. Mackay." She was not yet accustomed to the latter designation.
"My name is Garland," said the younger of the two. "This is Mr. Poole."
Mr. Poole murmured unintelligibly. Then both waited. A hammer man began to strike. The measured clang punctuated the stillness.