hould 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 clustered 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 canyon'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-grasses 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 masses of leaping rock that smote with a
jarring crash upon th