He laughed harshly as he went on: "Well, that's partly why we're going to set our mark on this canon, if it's only to make it clear that we're not quite played out yet. You'll ram that hole full of your strongest powder, Derrick."

Nasmyth turned and waved his hand to a man at the foot of the gully.

"Bring me down the magazine!" he ordered. "We're going to split that rock before supper."

The man, who disappeared, came back again with an iron box, and for the next few minutes Nasmyth, who scrambled about the rocks above the fall, taking a coil of thin wire with him, was busy. When he rejoined his companions, he led them a little further down the canon until he pointed to a shelf of rock from which they had a clear view of the fall. A handful of men had clambered down the gully, and now they stood in a cl.u.s.ter upon the strip of shingle. Nasmyth indicated them with a wave of his hand before he held a little wooden box with bra.s.s pegs projecting from it up to Laura.

"It's the first big charge we have fired, and they seem to feel it's something of an event," he said. "In one way, it's a declaration of war we're making, and there is a good deal against us. You fit this plug into the socket when you're ready."

"You mean me to fire the charge?" inquired Laura.

"Yes," answered Nasmyth quietly. "It's fitting that you should be the one to set us at our work. If it hadn't been for you, I should certainly not have taken this thing up, and now I want to feel that you are anxious for our success."

A faint flush of colour crept into Laura Waynefleet's face. For one thing, Nasmyth's marriage to the dark-eyed girl whom Gordon had described to her depended on the success of this venture, and that was a fact which had its effect on her. Still, she felt, the scheme would have greater results than that, and, turning gravely, she glanced at the men who had gathered upon the shingle. They looked very little and feeble as they cl.u.s.tered together, in face of that almost overwhelming manifestation of the great primeval forces against which they had pitted themselves in the bottom of the tremendous rift. It seemed curious that they did not shrink from the roar of the river which rang about them in sonorous tones, and then, as she looked across the mad rush of the rapid and the spray-shrouded fall to the stupendous walls of rock that shut them in, the thing they had undertaken seemed almost impossible. Wheeler appeared to guess her thoughts, for he smiled as he pointed to the duck-clad figures.

"Well," he declared, "in one way they're an insignificant crowd. Very little to look at; and this canon's big. Still, I guess they're somehow going through with the thing. It seems to me"--and he nodded to her with sudden recognition of her part in the project--"it was a pretty idea of Nasmyth's when he asked you to start them at it."

Laura remembered that the leader of the men had once said that he belonged to her. She smiled, and raised the hand that held the firing key.

"Boys," she said, "it's a big thing you have undertaken--not the getting of the money, but the beating of the river, and the raising of tall oats and orchards where only the sour swamp-gra.s.ses grew." She turned and for a moment looked into Nasmyth's eyes, as she added simply: "Good luck to you."

She dropped her hand upon the little box, and in another moment or two a rent opened in the smooth-worn stretch of rock above the fall. Out of it there shot a blaze of light that seemed to grow in brilliance with incredible swiftness, until it spread itself apart in a dazzling corruscation. Then the roar of the river was drowned in the detonation, and long clouds of smoke whirled up. Through the smoke rose showers of stones and ma.s.ses of leaping rock that smote with a jarring crash upon the walls of the canon. After that came a great splashing that died away suddenly, and there was only the hoa.r.s.e roar of the river pouring through the newly opened gap. Laura turned and handed the box to Nasmyth.

"Now," she said, "I have done my part, and I am only sorry that it is such a trifling one."

Nasmyth looked at her with a gleam in his eyes.

He answered softly: "You are behind it all. It is due to you that I am making some attempt to use the little power in my possession, instead of letting it melt away."

CHAPTER XXIII

THE DERRICK

A bitter frost had crept down from the snow-clad heights that shut the canon in, and the roar of the river had fallen to a lower tone, when Nasmyth stood one morning shivering close by the door of his rude log shanty at the foot of the gully. The faint grey light was growing slightly clearer, and he could see the cl.u.s.tering spruces, in the hollow, gleam spectrally where their dark ma.s.ses were streaked with delicate silver filigree. Across the river there was a dull glimmer from the wall of rock, which the freezing spray had covered with a gla.s.sy crust. Though it had not been long exposed to the nipping morning air, Nasmyth felt his damp deer-hide jacket slowly stiffening, and the edge of the sleeves, which had been wet through the day before, commenced to rasp his raw and swollen wrists.

He stood still for a minute or two listening to the river and stretching himself wearily, for his back and shoulders ached, and there was a distressful stiffness in most of his joints that had resulted from exposure, in spray-drenched clothing, to the stinging frost. This, however, did not greatly trouble him, since he had long realized that physical discomfort must be disregarded if the work was to be carried on. Men, for the most part, toil strenuously in that wild land. Indeed, it is only by the tensest effort of which flesh and blood are capable that the wilderness is broken to man's domination, for throughout much of it costly mechanical appliances have not as yet displaced well-hardened muscle.

In most cases the Bushman who buys a forest ranch has scarcely any money left when he has made the purchase. He finds the land covered with two-hundred-feet firs, which must be felled, and sawn up, and rolled into piles for burning by his own hand, and only those who have handled trees of that kind can form any clear conception of the labour such work entails. It is a long time before the strip of cleared land will yield a scanty sustenance, and in the meanwhile the Bushman must, every now and then, hire himself out track-grading on the railroads or chopping trails to obtain the money that keeps him in tea and pork and flour. As a rule, he expects nothing else, and there are times when he does not get quite enough work. Men reared in this fashion grow hard and tireless, and Nasmyth had been called upon to lead a band of them.

He had contrived to do it, so far, but it was not astonishing that the toil had left a mark on him.

He heard the drifting ice-cake crackle, as it leapt the fall, and the sharp crash of it upon the boulders in the rapid. It jarred on the duller roar of the river in intermittent detonations as each heavy ma.s.s swept down. There was, however, no other sound, and seizing a hammer, he struck a suspended iron sheet until a voice fell across the pines from the shadowy gully.

"Guess we'll be down soon as it's light enough," it said.

Then another voice rose from the shanty.

"The boys won't see to make a start for half an hour," it said. "I don't know any reason why you shouldn't shut the door and come right in. Breakfast's ready."

Nasmyth turned and went into the shanty, conscious that it would cost him an effort to get out of it again. A stove snapped and crackled in the one room, which was cosily warm. Gordon and Waynefleet sat before the two big empty cases that served for table, and Mattawa was ladling pork on to their plates from a blackened frying-pan, Nasmyth sat down and ate hastily, while the light from the lamp hanging beneath the roof-beams fell upon his face, which was gaunt and roughened by the sting of bitter spray and frost. His hands were raw and cracked.

"I want to get that rock-dump hove out of the pool before it's dark,"

he said. "One can't see to crawl over those ice-crusted rocks by firelight."

Gordon glanced at Mattawa, who grinned. "Well," said Mattawa, "it was only yesterday when I fell in, and I figured Charly was going right under the fall the day before. Oh, yes, I guess we'd better get the thing through while it's light."

"I have felt inclined to wonder if it wouldn't be advisable to suspend operations if this frost continues," said Waynefleet reflectively.

"Our charter lays it down that the work is to be carried on continuously," answered Gordon. "Still, on due notice being given, it permits a stoppage of not exceeding one month, owing to stress of weather or insuperable natural difficulties. As a matter of fact, even with the fire going, it's practically impossible to keep the frost out of the stone."

Nasmyth looked up sharply. "The work goes on. There will be no stoppage of any kind. We can't afford it. The thing already has cost us two or three times as much as I had antic.i.p.ated."

Gordon looked amused, though he said nothing further. Nasmyth was up against it, with his back to the wall, but that fact had roused all the resolution there was in him, and he had shown no sign of flinching. It was evident that he must fight or fail ignominiously, and he had grown grimmer and more determined as each fresh obstacle presented itself while the strenuous weeks rolled on. There was silence for a few minutes, and then Mattawa grinned at Waynefleet.

"I guess you've got to keep that rock from freezing, and the fire was kind of low when I last looked out," he remarked.

With a frown of resignation Waynefleet rose wearily and went out, for it was his part to keep a great fire going day and night. This was one of the few things he could do, and, though it entailed a good deal of st.u.r.dy labour with the axe, he had, somewhat to his comrades'

astonishment, accomplished it reasonably well. In another minute or two Nasmyth followed him, and when the rest of the men came clattering down from the shanty, higher up the gully, they set to work.

There was just light enough to see by, and no more, for, though the frost was bitter, heavy snow-clouds hung about the hills. Shingle and boulders were covered with frozen spray, and long spears of ice stretched out into the pool below the fall. Now and then a block of ice drove athwart them with a detonating crackle. The pool was lower than it had been in summer, and the stream frothed in angry eddies in the midst of it, where shattered ma.s.ses of rock rent by the blasting charges lay as they had fallen. It was essential that the rock should be cleared away, and a great redwood log with a rounded foot let into a socket swung by wire rope guys above the pool. Another wire rope with a pair of iron claws at the end of it ran over a block at the head of the log to the winch below, and the primitive derrick and its fittings had cost Nasmyth a great deal of money, as well as a week's arduous labour.

They swung the apparatus over the pile of submerged rock, and, when the claws fell with a splash, they hove at the winch, two of them at each handle, until a ma.s.s of stone rose from the stream. Then one guy was slackened, and another hauled upon, until the rock swung over the shingle across the river, where they let it fall. Part of the growing pile would be used to build the road by which they brought supplies down the gully.

In itself the work was arduous enough, since four men alone could toil at the winch, and some of the ma.s.ses they raised were ponderous.

Indeed, there was scarcely room for four persons on the shelf hewn out above the tail of the pool, and the narrow strip of stone was slippery with ice. Fine spray that froze on all it touched whirled about the workers, and every now and then a heavy fragment that slipped from the claws fell with a great splash. Nasmyth's wrists grew raw from the rasp of the hide jacket, and wide cracks opened in his fingers.

"I remember it as cold as this only once before," he said. "It was during the few days I spent between the logging camp and Waynefleet's ranch."

Mattawa, who hove on the same handle, grinned. "Well," he said, "this is a tolerable sample of blame hard weather while it lasts, but we get months of it back East. Still, I guess we don't work then. No, sir, unless we're chopping, we sit tight round the stove."

Mattawa was right in this. Excepting the loggers and the Northwest Police, men do not work in the open at that temperature back East, nor would they attempt it on the Pacific Slope were the cold continuous.

In the western half of British Columbia, however, long periods of severe weather are rare. It is a variable zone, swept now and then by damp, warm breezes, and men tell of sheltered valleys where flowers blow the year round, though very few of those who ramble up and down the Mountain Province ever chance upon them. But there are times when the devastating cold of the Polar regions descends upon the lonely ranges, as it had done upon the frost-bound canon.

Those who toiled with Nasmyth were hardened men, and they held on with cracked hands clenched on the winch-handles, or they splashed through the icy shallows with the water in their boots, until, a little before their dinner-hour, when three of them stood straining by Nasmyth's side beneath the derrick as a ma.s.s of rock rose slowly to the surface of the pool. Mattawa glanced at this weight dubiously, and then up at the wire guy that gleamed with frozen spray high above his head.

"I guess we've dropped on to a big one this time," he said. "She's going to be heavier when we heave her clear of the river."

This, of course, was correct, and it was clear to Nasmyth that it was only by a strenuous effort that his comrades were raising the stone then. Still, it must be lifted, and he tightened his grasp upon the handle.

"Heave! Lift her out!" he said.

The veins rose swollen on their foreheads, and they gasped as they obeyed him, but as the stone rose dripping there was an ominous creaking overhead.

"Guess she's drawing the anchor-bolts," cried one. "We'll fetch the whole thing down. Shall I let her run?"