noon
A more cold-blooded man might have abandoned the quest as hopeless at the first , and one more impulsive might have ruined his chances by rashness , but Geoffrey united the characteristics of the reckless Thurstons with his mother 's cool North Country canniness . It therefore happened that Savine , irritated by a journalistic reference to the tardiness of that season 's road-making , went down to see how the work entrusted to Geoffrey was progressing . He was accompanied by his daughter , who desired to visit the wife of a prosperous rancher . It was towards noon of a hot day when they alighted from their horses in the mouth of a gorge that wound inland from the margin of a lake . No breath of wind ruffled the steely surface of the lake . White boulder and somber fir branch slept motionless , reflected in the crystal depths of the water , and lines of great black cedars , that kept watch from the ridge above , stood mute beneath the sun . As they picked their path carefully through the débris littering an ugly rent in the rock , where perspiring men were toiling hard with pick and drill , they came upon Thurston before he was aware of them .