From behind his tree McCann saw the sputtering fuse disappear. The next instant the rock seemed to bulge, splitting in radiation as it did so, and then the smoke belched forth in a canopy, filled with fragments of quartz. Following the miner, he found a jagged opening in the rock. Then they sharpened their drills at the forge and went at it again. By night they had fired two more blasts, and had made a start toward a shaft. After the third, Bob, the miner, said, glancing at the West: “That’ll do, Irish.” They _caçhed_ the tools, caught up the water-bucket, and swung rapidly down the trail. Bob was ahead, slouching along with the mountaineer’s peculiar gait, which seems so lazy, and yet which gets over the ground so fast. In a very few moments he reached the gulch below, plunging from the bare, rock-strewn hillside under the pines to the lush grasses and cool saplings of the cañon bed, as from a desert to a garden. He looked around to say something. McCann was gone. “Well, I’m damned!” he ejaculated, and yelled loudly. After a moment’s pause, from far down the opposite slope came a faint whoop. Bob sat down on a fallen tree, and waited philosophically, shouting at intervals. In a little while the Irishman came charging frantically up the gulch, tearing along through the vines and bushes at full speed, so terrified that he passed within ten feet of Bob without seeing him. The latter watched him surge by with an odd little twinkle in his eye. Then suddenly he shouted again. Pat slowed up, looked about for a moment vacantly, and then his rugged Hibernian face broke into a multitude of jolly wrinkles. “Arrah, it’s yerself, darlin,” he said; “Oi thought it’s Pat McCann as is goin’ t’ slape wid th’ mountain lines this night!” “You stick t’ me,” was Bob’s only comment. After a short climb the men reached the camp on a knoll overlooking two confluent gulches. There was the superintendent’s office, the cook-house, the bunkhouse, the blacksmith’s shop, the stables, and the corral--all of logs. Supper was served at sundown. The men filed in, took off their coats, and sat down without a word. As each one finished eating, he arose, put on his coat again, and sauntered outside, filling his pipe as he went. Finally the whole gang was gathered at the bunk-house, smoking, telling laconic stories, or playing cribbage--the great American game in the mountains.