"I'm a-goin' to see," he muttered sullenly, turning toward the cañon. "Damn their blastin'! Forrester said it was a good trade. He'd ought to know."
A little later, Melissa started on her much dreamed of visit to the camp. She had on her shoes now, and a comfortable sense of the propriety of her appearance induced by this fact, and an excess of starch in the skirt of her pink calico dress, brought a little flush of expectation to her cheek. She had even looked longingly at her best hat in its glory of green and purple millinery, and nothing but the absence of any excuse to offer her mother and sister for such lavish personal adornment had saved her from this final touch to the pathetic discord of her attire.
The silk handkerchief was in her pocket, properly "done up" and wrapped in a bit of newspaper, and she had rehearsed her part in the dialogue that a flattered imagination assured her must ensue upon its presentation until she felt it hardly possible that she could blunder.
"Somehow you don't feel so bashful when you're all dressed up," she reflected, contemplating the angular obtrusiveness of her drapery with the satisfaction that fills the soul of the average débutante. "You feel so kind o' sheepish when you're barefooted and your dress is all slimpsy."
Poor Melissa! how could she know that yesterday, in all the limp forlornness that had made her hang her head when Sterling spoke to her, she had been a part of the beauty of the cañon, while to-day, in all her pink and rigid glory, she was a garish spot of discordant color in the landscape? How, indeed, do any of us know that we are not at our worst in our most triumphant moments?
The camp was well-nigh deserted, that morning. Poindexter had gone to Santa Elena to consult his employer, and most of the workmen had preferred the convivial joys of the Mexican saloon at San Gabriel to the stillness of the cañon. Sterling had written a few letters after breakfast, and then, taking his rifle from the rack, sauntered along the little path that led from the camp to the tunnel. The Chinese cook was dexterously slipping the feathers from a clammy fowl at the door of the kitchen tent.
"Hello, John," the young man called cheerfully. "What for you cook chicken? I go catchee venison for dinner."
The Chinaman smiled indulgently. Evidently the deer hunts of the past had not been brilliantly successful.
"I fly one lit' chicken," he said composedly. "He no velly big. By 'm by you bling labbit, I fly him too."
"Rabbit!" laughed back the hunter contemptuously, breaking his rifle and peering into the breech to see that it was loaded. "I'll not waste a cartridge on a rabbit, John."