CHAPTER X
SAVINE'S CONFIDENCE
Despite his employer's invitation Thurston did not return to High Maples at the end of the week. The rock-cutting engrossed all his attention, and he was conscious that it might be desirable to allow Miss Savine's indignation to cool. He had thought of her often since the day that she gave him the dollar, and, at first still smarting under the memory of another woman's treachery, had tried to analyze his feelings regarding her. The result was not very definite, though he decided that he had never really loved Millicent, and was very certain now that she had wasted little affection upon him. One evening at Graham's ranch when they had stood silently together under the early stars, he had become suddenly conscious of the all-important fact, that his life would be empty without Helen Savine, and that of all the women whom he had met she alone could guide and raise him towards a higher plane.
It was characteristic of Geoffrey Thurston that the determination to win her in spite of every barrier of wealth and rank came with the revelation, and that, at the same time counting the cost, he realized that he must first bid boldly for a name and station, and with all patience bide his time. A more cold-blooded man might have abandoned the quest as hopeless at the first, and one more impulsive might have ruined his chances by rashness, but Geoffrey united the characteristics of the reckless Thurstons with his mother's cool North Country canniness.
It therefore happened that Savine, irritated by a journalistic reference to the tardiness of that season's road-making, went down to see how the work entrusted to Geoffrey was progressing. He was accompanied by his daughter, who desired to visit the wife of a prosperous rancher. It was towards noon of a hot day when they alighted from their horses in the mouth of a gorge that wound inland from the margin of a lake. No breath of wind ruffled the steely surface of the lake. White boulder and somber fir branch slept motionless, reflected in the crystal depths of the water, and lines of great black cedars, that kept watch from the ridge above, stood mute beneath the sun.
As they picked their path carefully through the débris littering an ugly rent in the rock, where perspiring men were toiling hard with pick and drill, they came upon Thurston before he was aware of them. Geoffrey stood with a heavy hammer in his hand critically surveying a somewhat seedy man who was just then offering his services. Savine, who had a sense of humor, was interested in the scene, and said to his daughter: "Thurston's busy. We'll just wait until he's through with that fellow."
Geoffrey, being ignorant of their presence, decided that the applicant, who said that he was an Englishman, and used to estimating quantities, would be of little service; but he seldom refused to assist a stranger in distress.
"I do all the draughting and figuring work myself," he said. "However, if you are hard up you can earn two dollars a day wheeling broken rock until you find something better."
The man turned away, apparently not delighted at the prospect of wheeling rock, and Geoffrey faced about to greet the spectators.
"I don't fancy you'll get much work out of that fellow," observed Savine.