Brooke looked hard at him, and then leaned back in his chair, and laughed when he saw that he was perfectly serious.
X.
THE FLUME BUILDER.
It was a hot afternoon, and a long trail of ethereal mist lay motionless athwart the gleaming snow above, when Brooke stood dripping with perspiration in the shadow of a towering pine. The red dust was thick upon him, and his coarse blue shirt, which was badly torn, fell open at the neck as he turned his head and looked down fixedly into the winding valley. A lake flashed like a mirror among the trees below, save where the slumbering shadows pointed downwards into its crystal depths, but the strip of hillside the forest had been hewn back from was scarred and torn with raw gashes, and the dull thumping of the stamp-heads that crushed the gold-bearing quartz jarred discordantly through the song of the river. Mounds of débris, fire-blackened fir stumps, and piles of half-burnt branches cumbered the little clearing, round which the towering redwoods uplifted their stately spires, and the acrid fumes of smoke and giant powder drifted through their drowsy fragrance.
The blotch of man's crude handiwork marred the pristine beauty of the wilderness; but it had its significance, and pointed to what was to come when the plough had followed the axe and drill, and cornfields and orchards should creep up the hillsides where now the solemn pines looked down upon the desecrated valley. Brooke, however, was very naturally not concerned with this just then. He was engaged in building a flume, or wooden conduit to bring down water to the mine, and was intently watching two little trails of faint blue smoke with a thin red sparkle in the midst of them which crept up a dark rock's side.
He had no interest whatever in the task when he undertook it, but a somewhat astonishing and unexpected thing had happened, for by degrees the work took hold of him. He was not by nature a lounger, and was endued with a certain pertinacity, which had, however, only led him into difficulties hitherto, or he would probably never have come out to Canada. Thus it came about that when he found the building of the flume taxed all his ingenuity, as well as his physical strength, he became sensible of a wholly unanticipated pleasure in the necessary effort, and had almost forgotten the purpose which brought him there.
"How long did you cut those fuses to burn?" he said to Jimmy, who, though by no means fond of physical exertion, had come up to assist him from the ranch.
The latter glanced at the two trails of smoke, which a handful of men, snugly ensconced behind convenient trees, were also watching.
"I guessed it at four minutes," he said. "They're 'bout half-way through now. Still, I can't see nothing of the third one."
"No," said Brooke. "Nor can I. That loosely-spun kind snuffs out occasionally. Quite sure they're not more than half-way through?"