“Well,” he declared, “in one way they’re an insignificant crowd. Very little to look at; and this cañon’s big. Still, I guess they’re somehow going through with the thing. It seems to me”––and he nodded to her with sudden recognition of her part in the project––“it was a pretty idea of Nasmyth’s when he asked you to start them at it.”
Laura remembered that the leader of the men had 238 once said that he belonged to her. She smiled, and raised the hand that held the firing key.
“Boys,” she said, “it’s a big thing you have undertaken––not the getting of the money, but the beating of the river, and the raising of tall oats and orchards where only the sour swamp-grasses grew.” She turned and for a moment looked into Nasmyth’s eyes, as she added simply: “Good luck to you.”
She dropped her hand upon the little box, and in another moment or two a rent opened in the smooth-worn stretch of rock above the fall. Out of it there shot a blaze of light that seemed to grow in brilliance with incredible swiftness, until it spread itself apart in a dazzling corruscation. Then the roar of the river was drowned in the detonation, and long clouds of smoke whirled up. Through the smoke rose showers of stones and masses of leaping rock that smote with a jarring crash upon the walls of the cañon. After that came a great splashing that died away suddenly, and there was only the hoarse roar of the river pouring through the newly opened gap. Laura turned and handed the box to Nasmyth.
“Now,” she said, “I have done my part, and I am only sorry that it is such a trifling one.”
Nasmyth looked at her with a gleam in his eyes.
He answered softly: “You are behind it all. It is due to you that I am making some attempt to use the little power in my possession, instead of letting it melt away.”