"Not yet, not yet. But they're skilled miners. 'N when they git hard up, a couple on 'em put in a month's work for some skalliwag 'company' or other, 'n so they keep agoin'. The three married ones ain't up there at all."
"So you've got seven sons?"
"Yes; seven boys, all told. We lost a girl," he added, with an indefinable change in his voice. "Her name was Loretty."
With that, Loretty's father passed up the path and disappeared within the house.
"Nice old chap," Wakefield thought, as he walked on, past the little houses with the presumable mortgages on them. "Nice of him to go on caring for Loretty after he had lost her."
He wondered whether, after all, he had better make such a point of forgetting about Dorothy! Up there on the red hilltop, hobnobbing with the yellow cactus, he had resolved never to think of her again; but down here among human habitations, fresh from the good human intercourse of the last ten minutes, he did not feel so sure about it. He thought that, on the whole, it might be as well to decide that question later. Meanwhile, here was the street-commissioner's door, and here was a decision that must be come to on the spot.
Harry Wakefield always looked back upon the day when he first pried a big rock off its base, as a turning-point in his career; a move that put the game in his own hands. The sensation was different from what he had anticipated. He had fancied that he was about to engage in a single-handed struggle, but no sooner had his grip closed upon the crowbar, no sooner had he felt the mass of rock yield to its pressure, than he found that he was not working single-handed. On the contrary, he had the feeling of having got right down among the forces of nature and of finding them ranged on his side. It was gravitation that gave the rock its weight, but, look there! how some other law, which he did not know the name of, dwelt in the resisting strength of the iron, worked in the action of his muscles. His legs trembled, as he braced himself to the effort; the veins of his neck throbbed hard; but the muscles of his arms and chest held firm as the crowbar they guided, and slowly, reluctantly, sullenly, the rock went over on its side. He dropped the crowbar from his stiffening grasp and drew himself up, flinging his shoulders back and panting deep and strong.
It was between six and seven o'clock in the morning, a radiant June morning, which seemed alive with pleasant things. As he stood with his head thrown back, taking a good draught of the delicious mountain air, a bluebird shot, like a bit of the sky, in and out among the solemn pines and delicate aspens. He looked down on the tangle of blossoming vines and bushes that latticed the borders of the brook, which came dashing down from the cañon, still rioting on its way. The water would soon have another cause for clamor, in the big stone that had so long cumbered the road. He should presently have the fun of rolling it over the bank and seeing it settle with a splash in the bed of the stream where it belonged by rights. After that there was a fallen tree to be tackled, a couple of rods farther on, and then he should take a rest with his shovel and fill in some holes near by.
