CHAPTER XXII
NASMYTH SETS TO WORK
It was a scorching afternoon on the heights above, where rocky slope and climbing firs ran far up towards the blue heavens under a blazing sun, but it was dim and cool in the misty depths of the cañon. There was eternal shadow in that tremendous rift, and a savage desolation rolled away from it; but on this afternoon the sounds of human activity rang along its dusky walls. The dull thud of axes fell from a gully that rent the mountain-side, and now and then a mass of shattered rock came crashing down, while the sharp clinking of the drills broke intermittently through the hoarse roar of the fall. Wet with the spray of the fall, Nasmyth, stripped to blue shirt and old duck trousers, stood swinging a heavy hammer, which he brought down upon the head of the steel bar that his companion held so many times a minute with rhythmic precision. Though they changed round now and then, he had done much the same thing since early morning, and his back and arms ached almost intolerably; but still the great hammer whirled about his head, and while he gasped with the effort, came down with a heavy jar upon the drill. So intent was he that he did not notice the three figures scrambling along the narrow log-work staging pinned against the rocky side above the fall, until his companion flung a word at him. Turning with a start, he dropped his hammer.
He saw Gordon hold out a hand to Laura Waynefleet, who sprang down from the staging upon the strip of smooth-worn stone that stretched out from the wall of 229 the cañon above the fall. Wheeler was a few paces behind them. Nasmyth looked around for his jacket, and, remembering that he had left it in the gully, he moved forward to shake hands with his visitors.
“I scarcely expected to see any of you here. You must have had a hard scramble,” he said.
Gordon waved his hand. “You don’t say you’re pleased, though after the trouble we’ve taken, it’s a sure thing that you ought to be,” he declared. “Anyway, I’m not going back up that gully until I’ve had supper. Wheeler’s held up because his folks haven’t sent him some machines, and I came along to see if I’d forgotten how to hold a drill. I don’t quite know what Miss Waynefleet came for.”
Laura laughed good-humouredly. “Oh,” she said, “I have my excuse. My father is at Victoria, and I have been staying with Mrs. Potter for a day or two. She lent me a cayuse to ride over to Fenton’s ranch, and the trail there leads close by the head of the gully.”
Mattawa looked up at Gordon with a grin. “If you want to do some drilling, you can start right now,” he remarked. “Guess Nasmyth doesn’t know he has a back on him.”
Gordon took up the hammer, and, when Wheeler went back to the gully to inquire whether one of the men at work there would undertake some timber-squaring he wanted done at the mill, Laura Waynefleet and Nasmyth were left together. It was wetter than was comfortable near the fall, and, scrambling back across the staging, they sat down among the boulders near the foot of the rapid that swirled out of the pool. Nasmyth looked at Laura, who smiled.
“I am afraid I have taken you away from your work, and I haven’t Gordon’s excuse,” she said. “He, at least, is able to drill.”