"So was I," said Don. Brian thought he looked a little out-of-sorts.
"It narrows down to two things," said Brian, fishing in his pocket for some forks and spoons. "Either we must acquire another blanket or two or get a job and sleep under cover until—"
The boy's imploring eyes upset him. Brian turned a charred sausage and sighed. There was his problem, he knew: Don and his future. And they were barely twenty miles away from his uncle's farm.
"Remember the mountain quarry somewhere over there to the west?" he asked. "Suppose we hike over there in the morning and see if they need some brawny arms to help 'em crush stone. Seems to me there were a lot of shacks up back of it on the mountain. We could live in one of them."
"Yes."
"What's the matter?"
"Oh," said Don with an effort, "I'm a little blue. I suppose it's the fall."
They tramped west in the morning and climbed a winding road. The quarry lay ahead in the rocky wall of a mountain.
"Lord, what an out-of-the world spot!" exclaimed Brian in dismay. "Don, you thought we were getting too close to your uncle's farm but nobody'd find us here. I suspect they have to build shacks to keep the men contented. That basin of stone looks as if it had been gouged out of the mountainside by the hand of a giant."
A drill-runner was shouting to a man with a red flag as Brian climbed into the pit. The flagman waved him back. A second later a dull blast shook the quarry, earth and stone crumbled out of a fissure in the cliff ahead, and the suspended labor of men awaiting the Titan aid of inanimate force, turned to noise and bustle.