It was with a thrill of pride that the girl realized all that he had done for her, and yet for a few seconds she almost shrank from the responsibility as high above the waiting men the stood with slender fingers tightening upon the key. The issues of what must follow its turning would be momentous, for it flashed upon her that the tiny combination of copper and silver might, with equal chance, open the way to a golden future or let in overwhelming disaster upon all she loved. Then the doubt appeared an injustice to Geoffrey Thurston and those who had followed him through frost and flood and whirling snow, and, with a color on her forehead, and a light in her eyes, she pressed home the key.
Then there was bustle and hurry. Julius Savine raised his hand, and Tom from Mattawa whirled high the unfurled flag. Somebody beat upon an iron sheet invisible below and the strip of beach in the depths of the cañon became alive with running men. Next followed a deep stillness intensified by the clamor of the river which would never raise the same wild harmonies again, for the slender hand of a woman had bound it fast henceforward under man's dominion. The hush was ended suddenly. For a second the great hollow seemed filled with tongues of flame; then, while thick smoke quenched them and crag and boulder crumbled to fragments, a stunning detonation rang from rock to rock and rolled upwards into the frozen silence of untrodden hills. Huge masses which eddied and whirled, filling the gorge with the crash of their descent leaped out of the vapor; there was a ceaseless shock and patter of smaller fragments, and then, while long reverberations rolled among the hills, the roar of the tortured river drowned the mingled din. Rising, tremendous in its last revolt, its majestic diapason was deepened by the boom of grinding rock and the detonation of boulders reduced to powder. The draught caused by the water's passage fanned the smoke away, and the blue vapor, curling higher, drifted past the staging, so that Helen could only dimly see a great muddy wave foam down the cañon, bursting here and there into gigantic upheavals of spray. She watched it, held silent, awe-stricken, by the sound and sight.
At last Mattawa Tom appeared again, and his voice was faintly audible through the dying clamors as he waved his hands: "Juss gorgeous. Gone way better than the best we hoped," he hailed.
His comrades heard and answered. They were not mere hirelings toiling for a daily wage, but men who had a stake in that region's future, and would share its prosperity, and, had it been otherwise, they were human still. Toiling long with stubborn patience, often in imminent peril of life and limb; winning ground as it were by inches, and sometimes barely holding what they had won; fulfilling their race's destiny to subdue and people the waste places of the earth with the faith which, when aided by modern science, is greater than the mountains' immobility, they too rejoiced fervently over the consummation of the struggle. Twice a roar that was scarcely articulate filled the cañon, and then, growing into the expression of definite thought, it flung upward their leader's name.
Helen listened, breathless, intoxicated as by wine. Julius Savine stood upright with no trace of weakness in his attitude. Then suddenly he seemed to shrink together, and, with the power gone out of him, caught at the rails as he turned to his daughter.
"We have won! It is Geoffrey's doing, and my last task is done," he spoke in a voice that sounded faint and far-away. "Fast horses and bold riders I can trust you, too, are waiting. Tell him!"
Helen noticed a strange wistfulness in her father's glance, but she asked no question and turned to Thomas Savine. "I leave him in your charge. I will go," she said.
That afternoon passed very slowly for Geoffrey. He lay near a window, which he insisted should be opened, glancing alternately at his watch and the trail that wound down the hillside as the minutes crept by. He was hardly civil to the doctor, and almost abrupt with Mrs. Savine, who, knowing his anxiety, straightway forgave him.
"You tell me I must avoid excitement and await the news with composure. For heaven's sake, man, be reasonable. You might as well recommend your next moribund victim to get up and take exercise," he grumbled to the physician.
But the longest afternoon passes at length, and when the sunset glories flamed in the western sky, and the great peaks put on fading splendors of saffron and crimson, three black moving objects became visible on a hill-crest bare of the climbing firs. Geoffrey watched them with straining eyes, and it was a wonderful picture that he looked upon—black gorge, darkening forest, drifting haze in the hollows, and unearthly splendors above; but he regarded it only as a fit setting for the slight figure in the foreground that swayed to the stride of a galloping horse. He was not surprised—it seemed perfectly appropriate that Helen should bring him the news—though his fingers trembled and his lips twitched.