SECOND THOUGHTS
It was getting dusk when Wheeler swung himself from the saddle near the head of the gully and, with the bridle of the jaded horse in his hand, stood still a few moments looking about him. A wonderful green transparency still shone high up above the peaks, whose jagged edges cut into it sharply with the cold blue-white gleam of snow, but upon the lower slopes there was a balmy softness in the air, which was heavy with the odours of fir and cedar. Summer was breaking suddenly upon the mountain-land, but Wheeler, who had crossed the divide in bright sunshine, was sensible of a certain shrinking as he glanced down into the depths of the cañon. A chilly mist streamed up out of it, and the great rift looked black and grim and forbidding.
Wheeler noticed a dusky figure beneath the firs, and, moving towards it, came upon a man with a pipe in his hand, sitting upon a fallen tree. In view of the strenuous activity that was the rule in the cañon, such leisure was unusual.
“Well,” he remarked, “you don’t seem busy, any way.”
The man grinned. “I’m looking out,” he replied. “Guess I’ve had my eye on you for the last few minutes, and a stranger wouldn’t have got quite so far. You haven’t got any papers from the courts on you?”
“No,” said Wheeler, who noticed that there was a rifle lying near the man, “I haven’t. Still, if I’d looked like a lawyer or a court officer–––”
“Then,” asserted the man, “it’s a sure thing you wouldn’t have got in. The boys have enough giant-powder 310 rammed into the heading to lift the bottom right out of the cañon two minutes after any suspicious stranger comes along.”
Wheeler laughed, for it was evident to him that Nasmyth had been taking precautions, and, turning away, he led his horse down the gully. It grew colder as he proceeded, and a chilly breeze swept the white mist about him. The trees, that shook big drops of moisture down on him, were wailing, but he could hear them only faintly through the clamour of the fall. He left the horse with a man he came upon lower down, and, reaching the shingle at the water’s edge, saw the great derrick swing black athwart the glare of a big fire. The smoke whirled about the dark rock wall, and here and there dusky figures were toiling knee-deep amid the white froth of the rapid. The figures emerged from the blackness and vanished into it again, as the flickering radiance rose and fell. Scrambling to the ledge above the fall, Wheeler found two men standing near the mouth of the heading, which was just level with the pool.
“Where’s Nasmyth, boys?” he inquired.
“Inside,” answered one of the men. “Guess he’s wedging up the heading. If you want him, you’d better crawl right in.”