It all looked so easy. It was as if the dirt were very soft, and not the striker very strong. Nevertheless, fourteen hours a day of this, varied occasionally by cutting timbers and carrying them by hand to the tunnel--some of them a weight enough for a horse, others not adequate, "just as they came" being careless Jim's motto--told even on his engines. They had a certain mark on the canyon side--a wild-cat's hole it was--and when the sun threw the shadow of the western wall upon the mark, the day's work was finished. Ches used to watch this with attention. "Yer move along all right till yer gits half way up, den yer jus' crawls, yer ol' beggar!" was his standing remark on the progress of the shadow. Still, he always gave good measurement. Toward the last of the month Jim grew an interest in their clock. "Where's the blame thing now, Ches?" would come hollowly out of the tunnel. "Three more cars away, Jim,--jus' tippin' the white rock." Then the cheery shout of "All over!" and the worker stepping out into the fresh air, soft and cool in the twilight, hooking the sweat from his forehead, and wishing that supper would cook itself. Sometimes the wild-cat looked down upon them from his eyrie. "Ches," said weary Jim, "if that lad thinks at all, he must think we're awful fools." "He wouldn't be so tur'ble off his guess, neider," replied the equally weary Ches. After supper, however, the world seemed different. There was Jones's Hill--(a man of large ideas, was Jones, to call that mass of rock a hill)--shining red-hot in the last light against a topaz or turquoise sky, and the gulch that ran up to it in a mystery of dark green gloom offering up an evening prayer of indescribable odors--those appeals to a life in former spheres which no other sense remembers; the ceaseless roar of the wind in the pines, so steady that it formed a background for other sounds almost as good as silence itself; the evening pipe, and the talk of what had been done and what was to be done--all these made amends. And then the sleeping--such sleeping! And waking up in the morning in the exact attitude one went to sleep the night before! Sleep that washed out all the former day's fatigue, and started them as eager as hounds for that of the new day. That is, within limits, for, when a man overworks as continually as Jim had done, no paradise sleep nor balsam air can turn him right perpetually. And for that reason the claim declared a holiday, consisting of a hunting trip. It was a curious hunting trip. Not one "bang!" went the clean and polished rifle. They stalked four deer, crawling on their bellies, quivering with the chase, rounding behind rocks. Then when the game was within range, up went the rifle, Jim squinted along the sights--then dropped it. "What's der matter?" whispered Ches. He had been waiting for a long time to hear the gun go off. "They seem to be having a pretty good time by themselves there, Ches."