Then, next morning, he walked six miles and called on Madge and Mrs. Mundy.
The camp of the Mundys was on a lowland flat, covered sparsely with bull pines. Because of the big shots that were being fired day by day the tents were nearly a quarter of a mile from the work. The task of Shanty Madge and her mother was, as California Bill Fox had proclaimed, enormous. It consisted for the most part of a long tunnel through the bowels of a rounded hill, which jutted out obstinately into the deep cañon that the right-of-way was trying to follow. The hill had been without a name until the coming of the construction men, but now it was known as the Hill of Springs.
Its top was composed of grainy soil and shattered rottenstone, and in this porous formation frequent springs bubbled up. Some of them were mud springs, and spurted up blue batter to a height of several feet. Others spouted soda-and-magnesia water. But all were inconsiderately moist.
This moisture leaked into the tunnel all the time, and made the operations there damp and difficult and a constant aid to rheumatism. But the worst of it was that Madge feared the entire top of the hill might slide into the tunnel at any unexpected moment, and the work went ahead cautiously and with the slowness that caution calls for. And Shanty Madge was worried.
She met Joshua at the door of the tent in which she and her mother lived. A cluster of lofty pines stood about it, and it was screened and had a floor of tongue-and-groove. It was white and clean, and the few furnishings within were tastefully arranged. In the mountain camp, it was a little oasis in canvas, touched by the magic hand of woman, which leaves its delicate imprint wherever it is reached forth to make a habitation.
Mrs. Mundy was graying a little, but she was as wholesome and serene as ever. As when he was a boy, she talked with Joshua in a sincere manner and listened to him with that courteous, undivided attention which puts one at his ease and is the topmost pinnacle of good breeding. Joshua did not mean to intimate such a thing, but he said something that morning that proved his puzzlement over Mrs. Mundy’s devotion to a man of the stamp of Bloodmop. And, showing no offense, she explained it simply:
“Why, when I was eighteen the man just swept me off my feet with his irresistible love-making, and after I’d surrendered he kept me off my feet with his everlasting goodness.”
Madge, trim and neat in her olive-drab shirt and bellows breeches, sat by and listened to her mother and Joshua talk. She seemed to hear everything that was being said and to be drawing as many conclusions as if she were engaging in the conversation, but her clear brown eyes were faraway and dreamy. She looked almost boyish as she sat there, hands thrust into trousers pockets, her slim, rounded legs crossed and stretched out before her.
“And now,” said Elizabeth Mundy, “tell me how you and your friends the stars are getting on.”
At once Madge’s eyes lost their dreaminess, and she looked at Joshua alertly, patently interested in what his reply would be.