And as Blackton pointed out the mountain she unknotted the veil under her chin and let it drop back over her shoulders, so that the last light of the day fell richly in the trembling curls and thick coils of her hair.
"And that is my reward," said John Aldous, but he whispered it to himself.
They had stopped close to a huge flat rock, and on this rock men were at work fitting wires to a little boxlike thing that had a white button-lever.
Paul Blackton pointed to this, and his face was flushed with excitement.
"That's the little thing that's going to blow it up, Miss Gray--the touch of your finger on that little white button.

Do you see that black base of the mountain yonder ?--right there where you can see men moving about?
It's half a mile from here, and the 'coyote' is there, dug into the wall of it." The tremble of enthusiasm was in his voice as he went on, pointing with his long arm: "Think of it! We're spending a hundred thousand dollars going through that rock that people who travel on the Grand Trunk Pacific in the future will be saved seven minutes in their journey from coast to coast! We're spending a hundred thousand there, and millions along the line, that we may have the smoothest roadbed in the world when we're done, and the quickest route from sea to sea.

It looks like waste, but it isn't.

It's science! It's the fight of competition! It's the determination behind the forces--the determination to make this road the greatest road in the world! Listen!" The gloom was thickening swiftly.

The black mountain was fading slowly away, and up out of that gloom came now ghostly and far-reaching voices of men booming faintly through giant megaphones.
"_Clear away! Clear away! Clear away!_" they said, and the valley and the mountain-sides caught up the echoes, until it seemed that a hundred voices were crying out the warning.