were a hobo after my chickens, or trying to bluff me into a
free meal this morning. If you'd asked straight for it, I'd have given
it you."

Geoffrey hesitated, divided between an inclination to laugh or to
assault the rancher, who perhaps guessed his thoughts, for,
dismounting, he said:

"If you're so mighty thin-skinned what are you doing here? Why don't
you British dukes stop right back in your own country where folks touch
their hats to you? Let me on to that lever."

For at least twenty minutes, the two men tugged and panted. Then
Bransome, the rancher, said:

"The blame thing's either part of the out-crop or wedged fast there
forever, and I've no more time to spare. Say, Graham's a hard man, and
has been playing it low on you. What's the matter with turning his
contract up and going over to fill oat bags for me?"

"Thank, but having given my word to move that rock, I'm going to stay
here until I do it," answered Geoffrey; and Bransome, nodding to him,
rode on towards the ranch.

When he reached it Bransome said to Jean Graham in the hearing of Miss
Savine:

"The old man has taken in yonder guileless stranger who has put two
good dollars' worth of work into that job already, and the rock's
rather faster than it was before."

"Did he say Mr. Graham hired him?" asked Helen, and she drew her own
inference when Bransome answered:

"Why, no! I put it that way, and he didn't contradict me."

It was afternoon when Thurston realized at last that even considerable
faith in one's self is not sufficient, unaided, to move huge boulders.
He felt faint and hungry, but the pride of the Insular Briton
restrained him from begging for a meal. His own dislike to acknowledge
defeat also prompted him to decide that where weary muscles failed,
mechanical power might succeed, and he determined to tramp back a
league to the settlement in the hope of perhaps obtaining a drill and
some giant powder on credit. He had not studied mining theoretically
as well as in a costly practical school for nothing.

It was a rough trail to the settlement. The red dust lay thick upon it
and the afternoon sun was hot. When at last, powdered all over with
dust and very weary, Thurston came in sight of the little wooden store,
he noticed Bransome's horse fastened outside it. He did not see the
rancher, who sat on an empty box behind a sugar hogshead inside the
counter.

"I want two sticks of giant powder, a fathom or two of fuse, a