She glanced at him, but his brown face was inscrutable, although his mouth was firm.

His quietness jarred; she felt angry and disappointed, as if she had been robbed of something.
For all that, she thrilled as she watched the faint sparkle of the fuse.
She had won the first battle more easily than she had thought, and had now begun the next stage of the struggle.

She sprang from a pioneering stock and knew that the shot she fired would break the daunting silence of the woods for good.

If she failed to develop the mine somebody else would succeed.

The lonely hollow would soon be covered with tents and shacks; men's voices and the rattle of machines would drown the soft splash of the creek.