It was the big central taproot which baffled them.
They had hewed easily through the great side roots,
large as branches, covered with soft brown bark; they
had dug down and cut through the forest of tender
small roots below; but when they had passed the main
body of the stump and worked under it, they found
that their hole around the trunk was not large enough
in diameter to enable them to reach to the taproot
and cut through it. They could only reach it feebly
with the hatchet, fraying it, but there was no chance
for a free swing to sever the tough wood. Instead
of widening the hole at once, they kept laboring at
the root, working the stump back and forth, as though
they hoped to crystallize that stubborn taproot and
snap it like a wire. Still it held and defied
them. They laid hold of it together and tugged
with a grunt; something tore beneath that effort, but
the stump held, and upward progress ceased.
They stopped, too tired for profanity, and gazed down
the mountainside after the manner of baffled men,
who look far off from the thing that troubles them.
They could tell by the trees that it was a high altitude.
There were no cottonwoods, though the cottonwoods will
follow a stream for more than a mile above sea level.
Far below them a pale mist obscured the beautiful
silver spruce which had reached their upward limit.
Around the cabin marched a scattering of the balsam
fir. They were nine thousand feet above the sea,
at least. Still higher up the sallow forest of
lodgepole pines began; and above these, beyond the
timberline, rose the bald summit itself.
They were big men, framed for such a country, defying
the roughness with a roughness of their own—these
stalwart sons of old Bill Campbell. Both Harry
and Joe Campbell were fully six feet tall, with mighty
bones and sinews and work-toughened muscles to justify
their stature. Behind them stood their home,
a shack better suited for the housing of cattle than
of men. But such leather-skinned men as these
were more tender to their horses than to themselves.
They slept and ate in the shack, but they lived in
the wind and the sun.
Although they had looked down the stern slopes to
the lower Rockies, they did not see the girl who followed
the loosely winding trail. She was partly sheltered
by the firs and came out just above them. They
began moiling at the stump again, sweating, cursing,
and the girl halted her horse near by. The profanity
did not distress her. She was so accustomed to
it that the words had lost all edge and point for
her; but her freckled face stirred to a smile of pleasure
at the sight of their strength, as they alternately
smote at the taproot and then strove in creaking,
grunting unison to work it loose.
They remained so long oblivious of her presence that
at length she called, “Why don’t you dig
a bigger hole, boys?”
