On this morning in spring an eagle slanted down the sky on wide, still wings; the ice broke up and tinkled in Little Cub Creek in the cañon; the orange and yellow shoots of the willows swelled out toward catkins; and Rosie washed her clothes contentedly, secure in the knowledge that there was no “then”; while over in his hole in the side of Old Baldy Jim broke up her world with quick excited blows of a short-handled miner’s pick. She was hanging out the clothes on the squawberry bushes at the back when she heard the impatient crash of his elk hide boots. She went quickly through the house and stopped in the front door at sight of him. When he swung up his heavy bag of samples for a signal, she knew. Knew before she heard his whoop. And when it cut across the stillness like the whistle of a locomotive it struck her cold. It chilled the core of her spirit, as an icy wind loosed in the tropics would chill a naked native. “Struck it, by thunder! Two hundred dollars to the ton, if it’s worth a cent! An’ the vein as plain as a layer ’o choc’late in a cake!” He fell into a chair on the porch. Rosie stood and stared at him. The one thing he knew was ore. He had the kind of knowledge that men had been willing to pay for when he’d sell it. His “then” had come. The realization went through her consciousness in widening rings. Whatever else it meant, it meant the end of this; the beginning of uncertainty. He caught her in his arms and swept her into the cabin and danced her about until the place shook. “Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I say you’d ride in your own auto yet? It had to come, old lady, it jest nacherally had to come!” He gave her a hug and turned her loose. “I knowed it,” he said solemnly. “I’ve allus knowed it. Away down deep in there--” he tapped his breast--“I’ve had a hunch.” He flung himself into a chair and looked at her hard. “‘Ain’t you glad?” he said suddenly. She was like a boat that has luffed into the wind. For a moment her mental sails hung flapping. Then they filled and strained and she set out before this new cold breeze. She told him as best she could that she was glad. “To look at you a feller might think you was kinder sorry like,” he said quizzically. “What’s the matter?” “I was thinkin’ a little about how happy we’d been right here--just you and me and the house you made yourself.” “’Twarn’t a patch on what it’s gonna be,” he said, and jumped up and was off with his samples to the assayer’s in Gray Dome. He stepped strongly, as a young man does. Half the stoop was gone from his shoulders.