ink.
The single-jack dropped from the hand of Gregg, and his frown relaxed.

When he stretched his arms, the cramps of labor unkinked and let the
warm blood flow, swiftly, and in the pleasure of it he closed his eyes
and drew a luxurious breath. He stepped from the door with his, head
high and his heart lighter, and when his hobnailed shoe clinked on the
fallen hammer he kicked it spinning from his path. That act brought a
smile into his eyes, and he sauntered to the edge of the little plateau
and looked down into the wide chasm of the Asper Valley.

Blue shadows washed across it, though morning shone around Gregg on the
height, and his glance dropped in a two-thousand-foot plunge to a single
yellow eye that winked through the darkness, a light in the trapper's
cabin. But the dawn was falling swiftly now, and while Gregg lingered
the blue grew thin, purple-tinted, and then dark, slender points pricked
up, which he knew to be the pines. Last of all, he caught the sheen of
grass.

Around him pressed a perfect silence, the quiet of night holding over
into the day, yet he cast a glance behind him as he heard a voice.
Indeed, he felt that some one approached him, some one for whom he had
been waiting, yet it was a sad expectancy, and more like homesickness
than anything he knew.

"Aw, hell," said Vic Gregg, "it's spring."

A deep-throated echo boomed back at him, and the sound went down the
gulch, three times repeated.

"Spring," repeated Gregg more softly, as if he feared to rouse that
echo, "damned if it ain't!"

He shrugged his shoulders and turned resolutely towards the lean-to,
picking up the discarded hammer on the way. By instinct he caught it
at exactly the right balance for his strength and arm, and the handle,
polished by his grip, played with an oiled, frictionless movement
against the callouses of his palm. From the many hours of drilling,
fingers crooked, he could only straighten them by a painful effort. A
bad hand for cards, he decided gloomily, and still frowning over this he
reached the door. There he paused in instant repugnance, for the place
was strange to him.

In thought and wish he was even now galloping Grey Molly over the grass
along the Asper, and he had to wrench himself into the mood of the
patient miner. There lay his blankets, rumpled, brown with dirt, and
he shivered at sight of them; the night had been cold. Before he fell
asleep, he had flung the magazine into the corner and now the