t was time to be up and
off, seeking Whitaker.

A sausage burst its casing with an appetizing sizzle and leaped, it
seemed of its own accord, into suicidal embers. Brian rescued it with
a stick and looked up. Don had come back with the wood.

"It's fall," said Brian. "The wind's full of it to-night. Last night
I was cold."

"So was I," said Don. Brian thought he looked a little out-of-sorts.

"It narrows down to two things," said Brian, fishing in his pocket for
some forks and spoons. "Either we must acquire another blanket or two
or get a job and sleep under cover until--"

The boy's imploring eyes upset him. Brian turned a charred sausage and
sighed. There was his problem, he knew: Don and his future. And they
were barely twenty miles away from his uncle's farm.

"Remember the mountain quarry somewhere over there to the west?" he
asked. "Suppose we hike over there in the morning and see if they need
some brawny arms to help 'em crush stone. Seems to me there were a lot
of shacks up back of it on the mountain. We could live in one of them."

"Yes."

"What's the matter?"

"Oh," said Don with an effort, "I'm a little blue. I suppose it's the
fall."

They tramped west in the morning and climbed a winding road. The
quarry lay ahead in the rocky wall of a mountain.

"Lord, what an out-of-the world spot!" exclaimed Brian in dismay.
"Don, you thought we were getting too close to your uncle's farm but
nobody'd find us here. I suspect they have to build shacks to keep the
men contented. That basin of stone looks as if it had been gouged out
of the mountainside by the hand of a giant."

A drill-runner was shouting to a man with a red flag as Brian climbed
into the pit. The flagman waved him back. A second later a dull blast
shook the quarry, earth and stone crumbled out of a fissure in the
cliff ahead, and the suspended labor of men awaiting the Titan aid of
inanimate force, turned to noise and bustle.

"Hum!" said Brian, glinting, "mostly dago labor. Well, that doesn't
need to worry us, does it? You stay here, Don, while I find the boss."

Don obeyed. Derricks hung above the cars upon the spur track. Farther
back a screen revolved and sorted stone. Men were feeding the crusher
and men were busy at the drills but the boy's eyes, with an instinct
for adventure, followed a man who drove a mule-cart along an
overhanging ledge above the pit. The task held for him a fearful
fascination.

"N