his arm all the way to
the mountain that was to be blown up, and he told himself that he was a
fool if he were not supremely happy. The wagon stopped, and he helped her
out again, her warm little hand again close in his own, and when she looked
at him he was the cool, smiling John Aldous of old, so cool, and strong,
and unemotional that he saw surprise in her eyes first, and then that
gentle, gathering glow that came when she was proud of him, and pleased
with him. And as Blackton pointed out the mountain she unknotted the veil
under her chin and let it drop back over her shoulders, so that the last
light of the day fell richly in the trembling curls and thick coils of her
hair.

"And that is my reward," said John Aldous, but he whispered it to himself.

They had stopped close to a huge flat rock, and on this rock men were at
work fitting wires to a little boxlike thing that had a white button-lever.
Paul Blackton pointed to this, and his face was flushed with excitement.

"That's the little thing that's going to blow it up, Miss Gray--the touch
of your finger on that little white button. Do you see that black base of
the mountain yonder?--right there where you can see men moving about? It's
half a mile from here, and the 'coyote' is there, dug into the wall of
it."

The tremble of enthusiasm was in his voice as he went on, pointing with his
long arm: "Think of it! We're spending a hundred thousand dollars going
through that rock that people who travel on the Grand Trunk Pacific in the
future will be saved seven minutes in their journey from coast to coast!
We're spending a hundred thousand there, and millions along the line, that
we may have the smoothest roadbed in the world when we're done, and the
quickest route from sea to sea. It looks like waste, but it isn't. It's
science! It's the fight of competition! It's the determination behind the
forces--the determination to make this road the greatest road in the world!
Listen!"

The gloom was thickening swiftly. The black mountain was fading slowly
away, and up out of that gloom came now ghostly and far-reaching voices of
men booming faintly through giant megaphones.

"_Clear away! Clear away! Clear away!_" they said, and the valley and the
mountain-sides caught up the echoes, until it seemed that a hundred voices
were crying out the warning. Then fell a strange and weird silence, and the
echoes faded away like the voices of dying men, and all was still save the