"Oh, certainly; any time," said Ballard, coming to the surface. Notwithstanding, on the short walk up to the waiting buckboards he sank into the sea of perplexity again. Elsa's moods had always puzzled him. If they were not real, as he often suspected, they were artistically perfect imitations; and he was never quite sure that he could distinguish between the real and the simulated.
As at the present moment: the light-hearted young woman walking beside him up the steep canyon path was the very opposite of the sorely tried and anxious one who had twice let him see the effects of the anxiety, however carefully she concealed the cause.
The perplexed wonder was still making him half abstracted when he put himself in the way to help her into one of the homeward-headed vehicles. They were a little in advance of the others, and when she faced him to say good-bye, he saw her eyes. Behind the smile in them the troubled shadows were still lurking; and when the heartening word was on his lips they looked past him, dilating suddenly with a great horror.
"Look!" she cried, pointing back to the dam; and when he wheeled he saw that they were all looking; standing agape as if they had been shown the Medusa's head. The third great stone had been swung out over the dam, and, little by little, with jerkings that made the wire cables snap and sing, the grappling-hooks were losing their hold in mid-air. The yells of the workmen imperilled rose sharply above the thunder of the river, and the man at the winding-drums seemed to have lost his nerve and his head.
Young Blacklock, who was taking an engineering course in college, turned and ran back down the path, shouting like a madman. Ballard made a megaphone of his hands and bellowed an order to the unnerved hoister engineer. "Lower away! Drop it, you blockhead!" he shouted; but the command came too late. With a final jerk the slipping hooks gave way, and the three-ton cube of granite dropped like a huge projectile, striking the stonework of the dam with a crash like an explosion of dynamite.
Dosia Van Bryck's shriek was ringing in Ballard's ears, and the look of frozen horror on Elsa's face was before his eyes, when he dashed down the steep trail at Blacklock's heels. Happily, there was no one killed; no one seriously hurt. On the dam-head Fitzpatrick was climbing to a point of vantage to shout the news to the yard men clustering thickly on the edge of the cliff above, and Ballard went only far enough to make sure that there had been no loss of life. Then he turned and hastened back to the halted buckboards.
"Thank God, it's only a money loss, this time!" he announced. "The hooks held long enough to give the men time to get out of the way."
"There was no one hurt? Are you sure there was no one hurt?" panted Mrs. Van Bryck, fanning herself vigorously.
"No one at all. I'm awfully sorry we had to give you such a shock for your leave-taking, but accidents will happen, now and then. You will excuse me if I go at once? There is work to be done."
"H'm—ha! One moment, Mr. Ballard," rasped the major, swelling up like a man on the verge of apoplexy. But Mrs. Van Bryck was not to be set aside.