For five blissful days there was much of hunting, fishing and exploring of the charming neighborhood by the Carters and Brevoorts. Douglass and McVey expended their time and energies mostly on the development of the claims. But the covering of slide-rock was very thick and the vein persistently eluded them. Probe and strip where they would nothing but country-rock rewarded their efforts. Carter and Brevoort were inclined to a kindly expressed skepticism as to the existence of the lode, and even Red's optimistic faith in Douglass's good judgment was waning. The women alone, for some occult reason, gave him cheering encouragement, Grace in particular expressing her conviction of his ultimate success.
But up to the day preceding their intended departure nothing had materialized to vindicate his expenditure of time and money. On the morning of that day he had gone up alone to the shallow tunnel which he was driving into the hillside near the top of the ridge, intending to blast down a wide shelf of rock in the face of the adit in order to "square up" his work and leave everything in ship-shape for the next season's new operations.
He was using dynamite, the rock being very hard; and as this explosive exerts its force most powerfully against the object of most resistance, with an especial tendency to blow downward, he had merely placed a couple of the cartridge sticks with detonaters and fuses attached on the top of the shelf, covering them slightly with loose sand, depending on the well-defined cleavage of the rock to accomplish his purpose. As it happened to be the last of both powder and fuse supply on the claim, he did not trim off the fuse as short as usual; it was about four times the ordinary length, but as fuse is the least expensive item in such work he was unusually extravagant in this single instance.
It is singular upon what strange things the pivot of fate and fortune turns. Had he been ordinarily economical of that fuse these annals would end grewsomely with this chapter. For, as he lighted the fuse and walked leisurely out of the short tunnel, directing his steps toward a sheltering abutment of the ledge which assured protection from the flying fragments loosened by the explosion of the heavy charge, Grace Carter slowly sauntered into view on the other side of the tunnel mouth, her hands full of some mountain blooms which she had gathered on the opposite slope of the ridge.