.

THE BITE OF MEMORY.
The heavy boom of a dynamite blast rolled across the fiat to the hills that flung it back in a tardy echo like a spent ball of sound.

A blob of blue smoke curled out of a hole the size of a hogshead in a steep bank overhung with alders.

Outside, the wind caught the smoke and carried streamers of it away to play with.

A startled bluejay, on a limb high up on the bank, lifted his slaty crest and teetered forward, clinging with his toe nails to the branch while he scolded down at the men who had scared him so.