“Or an open cut,” hinted Denver. “Leave it to me–I can do it and make money, to boot.”
“Well, you’re hired, then!” cried Drusilla with a rush of enthusiasm, “but you have to go to work to-morrow.”
“Well–ll,” qualified Denver, “I wanted to look over my strike and finish sacking that ore. Wouldn’t the next day do just as well?”
“No, it wouldn’t,” she replied. “You can give me an answer, right now.”
“Well, I’ll go you!” said Denver and Old Bunker grunted and regarded them with a wry, knowing smile.
128CHAPTER XV
A NIGHT FOR LOVE
There was music that evening in the Bunker Hill mansion but Denver Russell sat sulking in his cave with no company but an inquisitive pack-rat. He regretted now his curt refusal to join the Hills at supper, for Drusilla was singing gloriously; but a man without pride is a despicable creature and Old Bunk had tried to insult him. So he went to bed and early in the morning, while the shadow of Apache Leap still lay like a blanket across the plain, he set out to fulfill his contract. Across one shoulder he hung a huge canteen of water, on the other a sack of powder and fuse; and, to top off his burden, he carried a long steel churn-drill and a spoon for scooping out the muck.
The discovery hole of Bunker’s Number Two claim was just up the creek from his own and, after looking it over, Denver climbed up the bank and measured off six feet from the edge. Then, raising the steel bar, he struck it into the ground, churning it rhythmically up and down; and as the hole rapidly deepened he spooned it out and poured in a little more water. It was the same uninteresting work that he had seen men do when they were 129digging a railroad cut; and the object was the same, to shoot down the dirt with the minimum of labor and powder. But with Denver it became a work of art, a test of his muscle and skill, and at each downward thrust he bent from the hips and struck with a deep-chested “Huh!”
An hour passed by, and half the length of the drill was buried at the end of the stroke; and then, as he paused to wipe the sweat from his eyes, Denver saw that his activities were being noted. Drusilla was looking on from the trail below, and apparently with the greatest interest. She was dressed in a corduroy suit, with a broad sombrero against the sun; and as she came up the slope she leapt from rock to rock in a heavy pair of boys’ high boots. There was nothing of the singer about her now, nor of the filmy-clad barefooted dancer; the jagged edge of old Pinal would permit of nothing so effeminate. Yet, over the rocks as on the smooth trails, she had a grace that was all her own, for those hillsides had been her home.