CHAPTER XV
LEVELS AND SLANTS
At sunrise the next morning Blake screwed his level on its tripod and set up the instrument about a hundred yards away from the ranch house. Ashton held the level rod for him on a spike driven into the foot of the nearest post of the front porch. Blake called the spike a bench-mark. For convenience of determining the relative heights of the points along his lines of levels, he designated this first “bench” in his fieldbook as “elevation 1,000.”
From the porch he ran the line of level “readings” up the slope to the top of the divide between Plum Creek and Dry Fork and from there towards the waterhole on Dry Fork. At noon Isobel and Mrs. Blake drove out to them in the buckboard, bringing a hot meal in an improvised fireless-cooker.
“And we came West to rough-it!” groaned Blake, his eyes twinkling.
“You can camp at the waterhole where Lafe did, and I’ll send Kid out for that bobcat,” suggested the girl. “You could roast him, hair and all.”
“What! roast Gowan?” protested Blake. “Let 177 me tell you, Miss Chuckie––you and my wife and Ashton may like him that much, but I don’t!”
“You need not worry, Mr. Tenderfoot,” the girl flashed back at him. “Whenever it comes to a hot time, Kid always gets in the first fire, without waiting to be told.”
“Don’t I know it?” exclaimed Ashton. “Maybe you haven’t noticed this hole in my hat, Mrs. Blake. He put a bullet through it.”
“But it’s right over your temple, Lafayette!” replied Mrs. Blake.