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.After a couple of weeks he stopped long enough to make a hurried trip to Hardup, a little town forty miles farther up in the hills.In the little bank there he exchanged his gold harvest for coin of the realm, and he was well satisfied with the result.It was not a fortune, nor was he likely to find one in the hills.But he bought a team, wagon, and harness with the money, and he had enough left over for a two-months' grubstake and plenty of Durham and papers and a few magazines.That left him just enough silver to pay Rattler's bill at the livery stable.Nothing startling, but still not bad—that wolf-den find.He had a lot of trouble getting his wagon to his claim, but by judicious driving and the liberal use of a log-chain for a rough lock, he managed to land the whole outfit in the little flat before the cabin without any mishap.After that he settled down to work the thing systematically.One day he would pan the sandy gravel, and the next day he would rest his back digging post-holes or something comparatively easy.He worked from daybreak until it was too dark to see, and he never left his claim except when he went to wash gold up in the gulch.The world moved on, and he neither knew nor cared how it moved; for the time being his world had narrowed amazingly.If Billy Louise had not been down there in that other world, he would scarcely have given it a thought, so absorbed was he in the delightful task of putting a good, solid foundation under his favorite air-castle.That fascinated him, held him to his work in spite of his hunger to see her and talk with her and watch the changing lights in her eyes and the fleeting expressions of her face.Some day he hoped he would have her with him always.He put it stronger than that: Some day he would have her with him, there in that little valley he had chosen; riding with him over those hills that smiled and seemed to stand there waiting for their invasions, with the echoes ready to fling back his exultant voice when he called to her or sang for her or laughed at her; ready to imitate enviously her voice when she laughed back at him.He wanted that day to come soon, and so with days and hours and minutes he became a miser and would not spend them in the luxury of a visit to her.It seemed to him that his longing for her measured itself by the enormous appetite he had for work, that summer.Week followed week as he followed that thin, fluctuating streak of pay gravel along the ledge.Sometimes it was rich enough to set the pulse pounding in his temples; sometimes it was so poor that he was disgusted to the point of abandoning the work.But every day he worked, it yielded him something—though there was a week when he averaged about fifty cents a day and lived with a scowl on his face—and he kept at it.He went out in June and bought a mower and rake and then spent precious days getting them into his valley.There was no road, you see, and he was compelled to haul them in a wagon, through country where nature never meant four wheels to pass.He hired a man for a month—one of those migratory individuals who works for a week or a month in one place and then wanders on till his money is spent—and he drove that man as relentlessly as he drove himself.Together they accomplished much, while the goldpan lay hidden under a buck brush and Ward's waking moments were filled with an uneasy sense of wasted time.Still, it was for the good of his ranch and his cattle and his air-castle that he toiled in the gulch, and it was necessary that he should put up what hay he could.There would be calves to feed next winter, he hoped; and when the hardest storms came, his horse would need a little.The rest of the stock would have to rustle; and that was why he had chosen this nook among the hills, where the wind would sweep the high slopes bare of snow, and the gulches would give shelter with their heavy thickets of quaking aspens and willow and alder.He was thankful when the creek bottom was shaved clean of grass, and the stack beside his corral was of a satisfying length and height.The summer had been kind to the grass-growth, and his hay crop was larger than he had expected
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