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“Waynefleet’s a blamed old thief, as everybody knows,” he said. “Him being what he is, I guess you couldn’t blame his daughter–––”
Nasmyth, whom they had not noticed yet, could not quite hear what followed; but when somebody flung a sharp, incredulous question at the speaker, he stood fast in the doorway, with one hand clenched.
“Well,” said the man, with a suggestive grin, “what I mean’s quite plain. Is there any other girl, round this settlement who’d make up to that dam-builder as she’s doing, and slip quietly into his shanty alone?”
Nasmyth never learned what grievance against Waynefleet or his daughter had prompted this virulence, nor did it appear to matter. There was just sufficient foundation for the man’s insinuation to render it perilous if it was once permitted to pass unchallenged, and Nasmyth realized that any attempt to handle the affair delicately was not likely to be successful. He was afterwards greatly astonished that he could think clearly and impose a certain command upon himself; but he understood exactly what it was most advisable for him to do, and he set about it with a curious cold quietness which served his purpose well.
There was a gasp of astonishment from one of the group as he stepped forward into the light and looked with steady eyes at the man who had spoken.
“Jake,” he said, “you are a d––– liar.”
It was what the others had expected, and they rose and stood back a little from the pair, watching expectantly; for they recognized that the affair was serious, and, though Nasmyth had their sympathy, an impartial attitude was the correct one now. Jake was tall and lean and muscular; but perhaps the dam-builder’s quietness disconcerted him, or his bitterness had only extended to the rancher.
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“Now,” Jake growled, “you light out of this. I don’t know that I’ve anything against––you.”
Nasmyth had his back to the door, and he did not see the grizzled Mattawa, who was supposed to be one of the strongest choppers about the settlement, standing a little behind him, and watching him and Jake attentively. Still, one of the others did, and made a sign to Mattawa that any support he might feel disposed to offer his employer would not be tolerated in the meanwhile. Nasmyth, however, realized that there was only one course open to him, and he drew back one hand as he met the uneasy eyes of the man in front of him.
“You are going to back down on what you said?” he asked, with incisive quietness.
“Not a d––– word,” the other man assured him.
“Then,” said Nasmyth, “you must take the consequences.”
He swung forward on his left foot, and there was a thud as his scarred knuckles landed heavily in the middle of the detractor’s face. He struck with an unexpected swiftness and all the force that was in him, for he had learned that the rules of the trial by combat are by no means so hard and fast in British Columbia as they are in England. As a matter of fact, it is not very frequently resorted to there; but when men do fight, their one object is to disable their opponents as soon as possible and by any means available.
Jake reeled backwards a pace or two, and the spectators said afterwards there was no reason why Nasmyth should have permitted him to recover himself, as he did. Two axes which the carpenters had been using stood against the wall, and Jake caught up the nearest of them. He swung the gleaming blade high, while the blood trickled from his cut lips and the swollen veins rose on his forehead. This, however, was going further than the others considered admissible, and there was a protesting83shout, while one sturdy fellow cautiously slid along the wall to get in behind the man who had the axe.
Still, for a second or two, which might have proved fatal to him, Nasmyth had only his own resources to depend upon, and he did the one thing that was possible. The Canadian axe-haft is long, and he sprang straight in at the man. As he did so, the big blade came down, and flashed by a hand’s breadth behind his shoulders. He felt a burning pain on the outside of his thigh, but that did not seem to matter, and he was clutching at his opponent’s throat when he was bodily flung aside. Then, as he fell against the log wall, he had a momentary glimpse of Jake bent backwards in Mattawa’s arms. There was a brief floundering scuffle as the two men reeled towards the black opening in the wall, and after that a splash in the darkness outside, and Mattawa stepped back into the room alone.
“The d––– hog is in the flume,” he said.
That did not appear to trouble any of the others. The sluice was not deep, and, though it was certainly running hard, it was scarcely likely that a stalwart Bushman would suffer greatly from being washed along it.
“Guess it will cool him off,” said one of them. “If it doesn’t, and he comes back to make a fuss, we’ll heave him in again.”
Then they turned and looked at Nasmyth, who sat down somewhat limply on a cider keg. The blood, which was running down his leg, made a little pool at his feet. Mattawa, who crossed over to him, asked for a knife, and when a man produced one, he slit Nasmyth’s trousers up to the hip. Then he nodded.
“Boys,” he said, “one of you will slip out kind of quiet and bring Mr. Gordon along. Two more of you will stand in the door there and not let anybody in.”
They obeyed him, and Mattawa looked down at Nasmyth again.
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“I guess the thing’s not serious,” he commented.
“Well,” said Nasmyth ruefully, “in one way, I think it is. You see, store clothes are dear, and this is the only pair of trousers I’ve got.”
There was a little laugh from the others, and he knew he had done wisely, when they clumsily expressed their satisfaction at his escape. He had, at least, discredited Jake, and it was evident that if the man made any more assertions of a similar nature, which was very unlikely, no one would listen to them.
In the meanwhile, nobody else seemed to be aware that anything unusual was going on. All had happened in a minute or two, and the clanging of the fiddle and the patter of the dancers’ feet had drowned any sound that rose from the dynamo-room. Nasmyth had not long to wait before Gordon stepped in and quietly set about his surgical work, after someone had dipped up a little water from the sluice.
“Yes,” said Gordon, “it’s quite a nice clean slice, and I guess it’s not going to trouble you much, though you won’t walk very far for a week or two. As soon as we can get you to the dam, I’ll put a proper dressing on.” Then he looked up sharply. “In the meanwhile, I don’t quite see how you cut yourself like that.”
“As a matter of fact, I didn’t,” said Nasmyth, with evident reluctance. “I suppose you will have to be told.” He looked round at the others. “Boys, I particularly don’t want this thing to go any further.”
He related what had happened, and one of the men stood up. “I wouldn’t worry over that,” he replied. “We’re not going to talk, and if Jake does, one of us will pound a little sense into him. Now I’ll slip out and get Highton’s team.”
After that they gave Nasmyth some cider, and a few minutes later he limped out through the opening in the wall and across the plank they laid above the sluice to85the waiting waggon. It was not far to the dam, and before very long Gordon was back again at the mill. It naturally happened, though he was anxious to avoid her, that Laura Waynefleet was the first person who accosted him.
“Have you seen Mr. Nasmyth?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” said Gordon. “I saw him a little while ago. You are wanting him?”
Laura laughed. “I believed I promised him another dance. It’s a little curious he hasn’t come for it.”
“In one way it’s deplorably bad taste.”
The girl was quick to notice that his gaze was not quite frank, and he winced when for a moment she laid her hand upon his arm, for he saw the veiled anxiety in her eyes.
“Something has been going on,” she said. “You don’t want to tell me where Mr. Nasmyth is.”
“He has just gone back to the dam. He got hurt––a trifling cut––nothing more than that. Still, I insisted on tying it up.”
“Ah,” cried Laura sharply, “you evidently don’t wish me to know how he got it!”
“It is just what I don’t mean to do. Any way, it’s not worth while troubling about. Nasmyth’s injury isn’t in the least serious.”
“It doesn’t seem to strike you that I could ask him myself.”
Gordon would have liked to warn her to keep away from the dam, but he did not see how it could be done unless he offered some reason, and that was a thing he shrank from.
“Oh, yes,” he said, “you certainly could.” Then he glanced down at her hands. “Those are unusually pretty gloves you have on.”
His answer was, as it happened, almost as injudicious as he could have rendered it, since it left the girl determined86to sift the matter thoroughly. She, however, only smiled just then.
“I think there isn’t a nicer pair of gloves in Canada than these,” she said.
Gordon took himself away, wondering what she could have meant by that; and Laura waited until next day, when, although there was, as usual, a good deal to be done about the ranch, she went down to find out what was the matter with Nasmyth.
The injured man was sitting in his shanty, with his foot upon a chair, but he rose when she came in, and stood leaning rather hard upon the table.
“It is very kind of you to come,” he said, taking her hand. He made shift to limp to the door, whence he called for Mattawa.
“Bring those two chairs out, Tom, and put them in the sun,” he said.
The old axeman shook his head severely. “You sit right down again. What in the name of wonder are you on your legs for, any way?” he asked. Then he saw Laura, and made a little gesture of resignation. “Well, I guess it will have to be done.”
The sudden change in his attitude was naturally not lost upon the girl, but she kept her astonishment to herself, and waited until Mattawa had made Nasmyth as comfortable as possible. Then she turned to him.
“I am very sorry you are hurt,” she said. “I understand it was an axe cut. How did it happen?”
Nasmyth appeared to reflect. “Well,” he answered, “I suppose I was a little careless––in fact, I must have been. You see, some of the building gang had left their axes in the dynamo-room.”
“That,” said Laura dryly, “certainly accounts for the axe being there. I’m not sure it goes very much further.”
“It really wasn’t very much of a cut.” Nasmyth’s87desire to escape from the topic was a trifle too plain, as he added, “Isn’t it nice out here?”
It occurred to Laura that it was uncomfortably cold, for there was a nip of frost in the air, though the sun hung coppery red above the sombre pines.
“I almost fancied you were not overjoyed to see me,” she remarked.
Nasmyth appeared momentarily embarrassed, but his expression suddenly changed, and Laura felt a faint thrill when he laid his hand upon her arm.
“That,” he said, “is a fancy you must never entertain again.”
In one respect Laura was fully satisfied, and, though there was still a great deal upon which she meant to be enlightened, she talked about other matters for almost half an hour, and then rose with a little shiver.
“I must get back to the settlement, where I have left the team,” she said, and glanced down at him for a moment with solicitude in her eyes. “You will be very careful.”
Nasmyth let her go, but he did not know that she signed to Mattawa, who was then busy hewing out a big redwood log. The axeman strolled after her into the Bush, and then stopped to look hard at her as he uttered an inquiring, “Well?”
“Tom,” said the girl, “can’t you understand that it would be very much wiser if somebody told me exactly how Mr. Nasmyth got hurt?”
The axeman nodded. “Yes,” he admitted, with a wink, “that’s just how it strikes me, and I’m going to. The boss has no more arms and legs than he’s a use for anyway.”
Laura gazed at him in bewilderment, but the man’s expression was perfectly grave. “Now,” he added, “I guess one can talk straight sense to you, and the fact is I can’t have you coming round here again. Just listen88about two minutes, and I’ll try to make the thing clear to you.”
He did so with a certain graphic force that she had not expected from him, and the colour crept into her cheeks. Then, to Mattawa’s astonishment, she smiled.
“Thank you,” she said simply. “But the other man?”
“Well,” replied Mattawa, “if he goes round talking, somebody will ’most pound the life out of him.”
Then he swung round abruptly, for he was shrewd, and had his primitive notions of delicacy; and Laura went on through the stillness of the Bush, with a curious softness in her eyes. Mattawa had been terse, and, in some respects, his observations had not been tactful, but nobody could have impressed her more in Nasmyth’s favour. Indeed, at the moment, she scarcely remembered how the aspersions Jake had made might affect herself. As it happened, she met Gordon near the settlement, and he stopped a moment. He had come upon her suddenly, and had looked at her with a suggestive steadiness, but she smiled.
“Yes,” she said, “I have been to the dam. After the way in which you made it evident that you didn’t want me to go there, it was, perhaps, no more than you could have expected.”
“Ah!” rejoined Gordon, with a look of anxiety, “you probably got hold of Mattawa. Well, after all, I guess he has done the wise thing.” Then after a pause he observed, “There is very little the matter with your courage.”
“I fancy,” observed Laura half wistfully, “that is, in several respects, fortunate.”
Then she went on again, and though Gordon felt exceedingly compassionate, he frowned and closed one hand.
“It’s a sure thing I’ll have to tell Waynefleet what kind of a man he is,” he said.
89CHAPTER IXGORDON SPEAKS HIS MIND
It was a nipping morning, and the clearing outside the ranch was flecked with patches of frozen snow, when Waynefleet sat shivering in a hide chair beside the stove. The broken viands upon the table in front of him suggested that he had just made a tolerable breakfast, but his pose was expressive of limp resignation, and one could have fancied from the look in his thin face that he was feeling very sorry for himself. Self-pity, in fact, was rather a habit of his, and, perhaps, because of it, he had usually very little pity to spare for anybody else. He looked up when, flushed and gasping, his daughter came in with two heavy pails of water. She shivered visibly.
“It would be a favour if you would shut that door as soon as you can,” said Waynefleet. “As I fancy I have mentioned, this cold goes right through me. It occurred to me that you might have come in a little earlier to see if I was getting my breakfast properly.”
Laura, who glanced at the table, thought that he had acquitted himself reasonably well, but she refrained from pointing out the fact, and, after shutting the door, crossed the room to her store-cupboard, and took out a can of fruit which she had set aside for another purpose. Waynefleet watched her open it and made a little sign of impatience.
“You are very clumsy this morning,” he said.
The girl’s hands were wet and stiff with cold, but she quietly laid another plate upon the table before she answered him.
“Charly is busy in the slashing, and I don’t want to take him away, but there are those logs in the wet patch90that ought to be hauled out now the ground is hard,” she said. “I suppose you don’t feel equal to doing it to-day?”
“No,” said Waynefleet with querulous incisiveness, “it is quite out of the question. Do I look like a man who could reasonably be expected to undertake anything of that kind just now?”
It occurred to Laura that he did not look as if there was very much the matter with him, and she stood still a minute considering. As Gordon had said, it was she who managed the ranch, and she recognized that it was desirable that the trees in question should be dragged out of the soft ground while the frost lasted. Still, there was the baking and washing, and it would be late at night before she could accomplish half she wished to do, if she undertook the task in question. While she thought over it her father spoke again.
“I wish you would sit down,” he said. “I feel I must have quietness, and your restless habits jar upon me horribly.”
That decided her, and slipping into her own room, she put on an old blanket coat, and went out quietly. She walked through the orchard to the little log stable where the working oxen stood, and, after patting the patient beasts, shackled a heavy chain to the yoke she laid upon their brawny necks. Then, picking up a handspike, she led them out, and for an hour walked beside them, tapping them with a long pointed stick, while they dragged the big logs out of the swamp. Now and then it taxed all her strength to lift the thinner end of a log on the chain-sling with a handspike, but she contrived to do it until at length one heavier than the others proved too much for her. She could hear the ringing of the hired man’s axe across the clearing, but there was a great deal for him to do, and, taking up the handspike again, she strained at it.
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She heard footsteps behind her, and she straightened herself suddenly. She turned and saw Gordon watching her with a curious smile. Tall and straight and supple, with a ruddy, half-guilty glow on her face, she stood near the middle of the little gap in the Bush, the big dappled oxen close at her side. The wintry sunlight, which struck upon her, tinted the old blanket dress a shining ochre, and the loose tress of red-gold hair, which had escaped from beneath her little fur cap, struck a dominant tone of glowing colour among the pale reds and russets of the fir-trunks and withered fern.
Gordon shook his head reproachfully. “Sit down a minute or two, and I’ll heave that log on to the sling,” he said. “This is not the kind of thing you ought to be doing.”
Laura, who was glad of the excuse, sat down on one of the logs, while the man leaned against a fir and gravely regarded her.
“The work must be done by somebody, and my father is apparently not very well again,” she explained. “Charly has his hands full in the slashing. We must get it cleaned up, if it is to be ploughed this spring.”
“Nasmyth contrived to look after all these things. Why didn’t you keep him? The man didn’t want to go away.”
The colour deepened in Laura’s face, and Gordon, who saw it, made a sign of comprehension. “Well,” he added, “I suppose that wasn’t a thing one could expect you to tell me, though I don’t quite see why you shouldn’t think of yourself now and then. You know it wasn’t on your own account you sent him away.”
“How does this concern you?” she asked.
Gordon flung one hand out. “Ah,” he said, “how does it concern me?” Then he seemed to lay a restraint upon himself. “Well, it does in one sense, anyway. After all, I am a doctor, and a friend of yours, and I’m92going to warn you against attempting things women weren’t meant to do. If that doesn’t prove efficacious, I’ll say a word or two to Nasmyth, and you’ll have him back here again. It’s a sure thing your father would be glad to get him.”
“If you do, I shall never forgive you,” warned Laura, with a flash in her eyes.
She was sorry she had spoken so plainly when she saw that Gordon winced. She had guessed more or less correctly what the man felt for her, and she had no wish to pain him. Except for that, however, the admission she had made did not greatly matter, since she fancied that he was quite aware why she had sent Nasmyth away. Gordon changed the subject abruptly.
“There are very few of those blanket dresses this side of the Rockies,” he said. “You probably got it back East.”
The girl’s eyes had a wistful look as she answered: “We spent our first winter in Montreal, and we had some friends who were very kind to us. I like to look back upon those first few months in Canada.”
Gordon nodded. “Oh, yes,” he replied. “I know––sleigh-rides, snowshoe meets, skating-rinks, toboggan-slides. Quite as lively as a London season, and considerably more invigorating; I guess you’ve been through that, too. In one way it’s a pity you didn’t stay in Montreal.”
He saw her sudden embarrassment, and fancied that she could have stayed there, if she had wished to do so, but he felt that he must speak frankly, and he shook his head severely.
“Do you never think of your own advantage at all?” he inquired. “Have you none of the ambitions that most women seem to have?”
“Aren’t you forgetting?” Laura asked with sudden quietness. “My father found it would not be advisable for him to settle in Montreal––for the same reason that93afterwards led us to leave Victoria––and we went West. Perhaps he could have faced the trouble and lived it down, but I could not leave him alone.”
Gordon sat silent a moment or two. He knew, though she very rarely mentioned it, how heavy was the burden that had been laid upon her, and he was divided between a great pity for her and anger against her father. Then he rose slowly to his feet.
“Miss Waynefleet,” he said, “if I have said anything that hurt you, I’m sorry, but there are times when I must talk. I feel I have to. In the meanwhile I’ll heave those logs up on a skid so that you can slip the chain round them.”
For the next half-hour he exerted himself savagely, and when at last he dropped the handspike, his face was damp with perspiration. He smiled grimly when Laura, who had hauled one or two of the logs away, came back tapping the plodding oxen.
“Now,” he said, “I’m going in to see your father. Custer happened to tell me he was feeling low again, and it’s going to afford me a good deal of pleasure to prescribe for him.”
He swung off his wide hat, and, when he turned away, Laura wondered with a few misgivings what had brought the little snap into his eyes. Three or four minutes later he entered the house, where Waynefleet lay beside the stove with a cigar in his hand.
“I ran across Custer at the settlement, and I came along to see how you were keeping,” said Gordon.
Waynefleet held out a cigar-box. “Make yourself comfortable,” he answered hospitably. “We’ll have dinner a little earlier than usual.”
The sight of the label on the box came near rousing Gordon to an outbreak of indignation. “I’m not going to stay,” he declared. “It seems to me Miss Waynefleet has about enough to do already.”
He saw Waynefleet raise his eyebrows, and he added:94“I guess it’s not worth while troubling to point out that it’s not my affair. Now, if you’ll get ahead with your symptoms.”
Waynefleet looked hard at him for a moment. The older man was not accustomed to being addressed in that brusque fashion, and it jarred upon him, but, as a matter of fact, he was not feeling well, and, as he not infrequently pointed out, he had discovered that one had to put up with many unpleasant things in that barbarous country. He described his symptoms feelingly, and was rather indignant when Gordon expressed neither astonishment nor sympathy.
“That’s all right,” said Gordon. “The thing’s quite plain––especially the general lassitude you complain of. The trouble is that if you don’t make an effort it’s going to become chronic.”
Again Waynefleet looked at him in astonishment, for Gordon’s tone was very suggestive.
“Yes,” added the medical adviser, “it’s a complaint a good many men, who haven’t been raised to work, are afflicted with. Well, I’ll mix you up a tonic, and you’ll drive down for it yourself. The thing won’t be half as efficacious if you send the hired man. Then you’ll set to every morning soon as breakfast’s over, and do a couple of hours’ smart chopping for a week. By that time you’ll find it easy, and you can go on an hour or two in the afternoon. Nobody round here will recognize you, if you keep it up for the next three months.”
Waynefleet’s thin face grew red, but Gordon’s imperturbable demeanour restrained him from betraying his indignation.
“You don’t understand that I couldn’t swing an axe for five minutes together,” he objected.
“The trouble,” answered Gordon, “is that you don’t want to.”
Waynefleet made an attempt to rise, but his companion95laid a hand upon his arm and pressed him down again.
“You were anxious for my advice, and now I’m going to prescribe,” Gordon continued. “Two hours’ steady chopping every day, to be raised by degrees to six. Then I’d let up on smoking cigars of that kind, and practise a little more self-denial in one or two other respects. You could make things easier for Miss Waynefleet with the money you save.”
He rose with a laugh. “Well, I’m going. All you have to do is to carry out my suggestions, and you may still make yourself and your ranch a credit to the district. In the meanwhile, this place would be considerably improved by a little ventilation.”
He went out, and left Waynefleet gazing in indignant astonishment at the door he carefully fixed open. It seemed to Waynefleet almost incredible that such words should have been spoken to him, and the suggestion that at the cost of a painful effort he should endeavour to make himself a credit to that barbarous neighbourhood rankled most of all. He had felt, hitherto, that he had conferred a favour on the community by settling there. He lay still until his daughter came in and glanced at him inquiringly.
“You have seen Mr. Gordon?” she queried.
“I have,” answered Waynefleet with fine disdain. “You will understand that if he comes back here, he must be kept away from me. The man is utterly devoid of refinement or consideration.”
In the meanwhile Gordon was riding, circumspectly, down the rutted trail, and it was an hour later when he dismounted at the shanty of Nasmyth’s workmen, and shared a meal with the gang employed on the dam. After that he sat with Nasmyth, who still limped a little, in the hut, from which, as the door stood open, they could see the men stream up into the Bush and out along the96dam. The dam now stood high above the water-level, for the frost had bound fast the feeding snow upon the peaks above, though the stream roared and frothed through the two big sluice-gates. By-and-by, the ringing of axes and the clink of drills broke through the sound of the rushing waters. Gordon, who stretched himself out on a deer-hide lounge, smiled at Nasmyth as he lighted his pipe.
“I’ve been talking a little sense to Waynefleet this morning. I felt I had to, though I’m afraid it’s not going to be any use,” he announced.
“Whether you were warranted or not is, of course, another matter,” said Nasmyth. “Perhaps you were, if you did it on Miss Waynefleet’s account. Anyway, I don’t altogether understand why you should be sure it will have no effect.”
Gordon looked at him with a grin. “Well,” he remarked oracularly, “it’s easy to acquire an inflated notion of one’s own importance, though it’s quite often a little difficult to keep it. Something’s very apt to come along and prick you, and you collapse flat when it lets the inflation out. In some cases one never quite gets one’s self-sufficiency back. The scar the prick made is always there, but it’s different with Waynefleet. He is made of self-closing jelly, and when you take the knife out the gap shuts up again. It’s quite hard to fancy it was ever there.”
Nasmyth nodded gravely, for there was an elusive something in his comrade’s tone that roused his sympathy.
“Gordon,” he said, “is it quite impossible for you to go back East again?”
Gordon leaned back in his chair, and glanced out across the toiling men upon the dam, at the frothing river and rugged hillside, with a look of longing in his eyes.
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“In one way it is, but I want you to understand,” he replied. “I might begin again in some desolate little town––but I aimed higher––and was once very nearly getting there. As it is, if I made my mark, the thing I did would be remembered against me. We’ll let it go. As a surgeon of any account I’m done for.”
“Still, it’s a tolerably big country, and folks forget. You might, at least, go so far, and that would, after all, give you a good deal––a competence, the right to marry.”
Gordon laughed, but his voice was harsh.
“This is one of the days on which I must talk. I feel like that, now and then,” he said. Then he looked at Nasmyth hard. “Well, I’ve seen the one woman I could marry, and it’s certain that, if I dare make her the offer, she would never marry me.”
“Ah,” said Nasmyth, “you seem quite sure of that?”
“Quite,” declared Gordon, and there was, for a moment or two, an almost uncomfortable silence in the shanty.
Then he made a little forceful gesture as he turned to his companion again.
“Well,” he said, “after all, what does it count for? Is it man’s one and only business to marry somebody? Of course, we have folks back East, who seem to act on that belief, and in your country half of them appear to spend their time and energies philandering.”
“I don’t think it’s half,” said Nasmyth dryly.
“It’s not a point of any importance, and we’ll let it go. Anyway, it seems perilously easy for a man who gets the woman he sets his mind upon to sink into a fireside hog in the civilized world. Now and then, when things go wrong with folks of that kind, they come out here, and nobody has any use for them. What can you do with the man who gets sick the first time he sleeps in the rain, and can’t do without his dinner? Oh, I98know all about the preservation of the species, but west of the Great Lakes we’ve no room for any species that isn’t tough and fit.”
He broke off for a moment. “After all, this is the single man’s country, and––we––know that it demands from him the best that he was given, from the grimmest toil of his body to the keenest effort of his brain. Marriage is a detail––an incident; we’re here to fight, to grapple with the wilderness, and to break it in, and that burden wasn’t laid upon us only for the good of ourselves. When we’ve flung our trestles over the rivers, and blown room for the steel track out of the cañon’s side, the oat-fields and the orchards creep up the valleys, and the men from the cities set up their mills. Prospector, track-layer, chopper, follow in sequence here, and then we’re ready to hold out our hands to the thousands you’ve no use or food for back yonder. I’m not sure it matters that the men who do the work don’t often share the results of it. We bury them beside our bridge trestles and under tons of shattered rock, and, perhaps, when their time comes, some of them aren’t sorry to have done with it. Anyway, they’ve stood up to man’s primeval task.”
He rose with another half-deprecatory laugh, but his eyes snapped. “You don’t talk like that in your country––it would hurt some of you––but if we spread ourselves now and then, you can look round and see the things we do.” Then he touched Nasmyth’s shoulder. “Oh, yes, you understand––for somebody has taught you––and by-and-by, you’re going to feel the thing getting hold of you.”
He moved towards the doorway, but turned as he reached it. “Talking’s cheap, and I have several dozen blamed big firs to saw up, as well as Waynefleet’s tonic to mix. He’ll come along for it when that prick I gave him commences to heal.”
99CHAPTER XTHE CALLING CAÑON
There were four wet and weary men in the Siwash canoe that Nasmyth, who crouched astern, had just shot across the whirling pool with the back feathering stroke of his paddle which is so difficult to acquire. Tom from Mattawa, grasping a dripping pole, stood up in the bow. Gordon and Wheeler, the pulp-mill manager, knelt in the middle of the boat. Wheeler’s hands were blistered from gripping the paddle-haft, and his knees were raw, where he had pressed them against the bottom of the craft to obtain a purchase. It was several years since he had undertaken any severe manual labour, though he was by no means unused to it, and he was cramped and aching in every limb. He had plied pole or paddle for eight hours, during which his companions had painfully propelled the craft a few miles into the cañon. He gasped with relief when Mattawa ran the bow of the canoe in upon the shingle, and then rose and stretched himself wearily. The four men stepped ashore. Curiously they looked about them, for they had had little opportunity for observation. Those who undertake to pole a canoe up the rapids of a river on the Pacific slope usually find it advisable to confine their attention strictly to the business in hand.
Immediately in front of them the river roared and seethed amid giant boulders, which rose out of a tumultuous rush of foam, but while it was clearly beyond the power of flesh and blood to drive the canoe up against the current, a strip of shingle, also strewn with boulders and broken by ledges of dripping rock, divided the water from the wall of the cañon. The cañon, a tremendous100slope of rock with its dark crest overhanging them, ran up high above their heads; but they could see the pines clinging to the hillside which rose from the edge of the other wall across the river, so steep that it appeared impossible to find a foothold upon it.
The four men were down in the bottom of a great rift in the hills, and, though it would be day above for at least two hours, the light was faint in the hollow and dimmed by drifting mist. It was a spot from which a man new to that wild country might well have shrunk, and the roar of water rang through it in tremendous, nerve-taxing pulsations. Nasmyth and his companions, however, had gone there with no particular purpose––merely for relaxation––though it had cost them hours of arduous labour, and the journey had been a more or less hazardous one. Wheeler, the pulp-mill manager, was waiting for his machinery, and, Nasmyth had finished the dam. When they planned the journey for pleasure, Mattawa and Gordon had gone with them ostensibly on a shooting trip. There are game laws, which set forth when and where a man may shoot, and how many heads he is entitled to, but it must be admitted that the Bush-rancher seldom concerns himself greatly about them. When he fancies a change of diet, he goes out and kills a deer. Still, though all the party had rifles no one would have cared very much if they had not come across anything to shoot at.
Now and then a vague unrest comes upon the Bushman, and he sets off for the wilderness, and stays there while his provisions hold out. He usually calls it prospecting, but as a rule he comes back with his garments rent to tatters, and no record of any mineral claim or timber rights, but once more contentedly he goes on with his task. It may be a reawakening of forgotten instincts, half-conscious lust of adventure, or a mere desire for change, that impels him to make the journey, but it is101at least an impulse with which most men who toil in those forests are well acquainted.
Nasmyth and Mattawa pulled the canoe out, and when they sat down and lighted their pipes, Wheeler grinned as he drew up his duck trousers and surveyed his knees, which were raw and bleeding. Then he held up one of his hands that his comrades might notice the blisters upon it. He was a little, wiry man with dark eyes, which had a snap in them.
“Well,” he observed, “we’re here, and I guess any man with sense enough to prefer whole bones to broken ones would wonder why we are. It’s most twelve years since I used to head off into the Bush this way in Washington.”
Gordon glanced at him with a twinkle in his eyes. “Now,” he observed, “you’ve hit the reason the first time. When you’ve done it once, you’ll do it again. You have to. Perhaps it’s Nature’s protest against your axiom that man’s chief business is dollar-making. Still, I’m admitting that this is a blamed curious place for Nasmyth to figure on killing a wapiti in. Say, are you going to sleep here to-night, Derrick?”
It was very evident that none of the big wapiti––elks, as the Bushman incorrectly calls them––could have reached that spot, but Nasmyth laughed.
“I felt I’d like to see the fall––I don’t know why,” he said. “It’s scarcely another mile, and I’ve been up almost that far with an Indian before. There’s a ravine with young spruce in it where we could sleep.”
“Then,” announced Wheeler resolutely, “we’re starting right now. When I pole a canoe up a place of this kind I want to see where I’m going. I once went down a big rapid with the canoe-bottom up in front of me in the dark, and one journey of that kind is quite enough.”
They dumped out their camp gear, and took hold of the canoe, a beautifully modelled, fragile thing, hollowed102out of a cedar log, and for the next half-hour hauled it laboriously over some sixty yards of boulders and pushed it, walking waist-deep, across rock-strewn pools. Then they went back for their wet tent, axes, rifles, blankets, and a bag of flour, and when they had reloaded the canoe, they took up the poles again. It was the hardest kind of work, and demanded strength and skill, for a very small blunder would have meant wreck upon some froth-lapped boulder, or an upset into the fierce white rush of the river, but at length they reached a deep whirling pool, round which long smears of white froth swung in wild gyrations. The smooth rock rose out of the pool without even a cranny one could slip a hand into, and the river fell tumultuously over a ledge into the head of it. The water swept out of a veil of thin white mist, and the great rift rang with a bewildering din. One felt that the vast primeval forces were omnipotent there. As the men looked about them with the spray on their wet faces and the white mist streaming by, Mattawa, who stood up forward, dropped suddenly into the bottom of the canoe.
“In poles,” he said. “Paddle! Get a move on her!” Nasmyth, who felt his pole dip into empty water, flung it in and grabbed his paddle, for the craft shot forward suddenly with the swing of the eddy towards the fall. He did not know whether the stream would sweep them under it, but he was not desirous of affording it the opportunity. For perhaps a minute they exerted themselves furiously, gasping as they strained aching arms and backs, and meanwhile, in spite of them, beneath the towering fall of rock, the canoe slid on toward the fall. It also drew a little nearer to the middle of the pool, where there was a curious bevelled hollow, round which the white foam spun. It seemed to Nasmyth that the stream went bodily down.
“Paddle,” said Mattawa hoarsely. “Heave her clear of it.”
103
They drove furiously between the white-streaked shoot of the fall and that horribly suggestive whirling; then, as they went back towards the outrush from the pool, they made another desperate, gasping effort. For several moments it seemed that they must be swept back again, and then they gained a little, and, with a few more strokes, reached the edge of the rapid. They let the canoe drive down the rapid while the boulders flashed by them, for there was the same desire in all of them, and that was to get as far as possible away from that horrible pool. At last Mattawa, standing up forward, poled the canoe in where a deep ravine rent the dark rock’s side, and the party went ashore, wet and gasping. Wheeler looked back up the gorge and solemnly shook his head.
“If you want to see any more of it, you’ve got to do it alone. I’ve had enough,” he declared. “A man who runs a pulp-mill has no use for paddling under that kind of fall. I’m not going back again.”
Mattawa and Gordon set the tent up in the hollow of the ravine, while Wheeler hewed off spruce branches with which to make the beds; but Nasmyth did nothing to assist any of them. Thinking hard, he sat on a boulder, with his unlighted pipe in his hand. The throbbing roar of water rang about him; and it was then that the great project crept into his mind. It was rapidly growing dark in the bottom of the great rift, but he could still see the dim white flashing of the fall and the vast wall of rock and rugged hillside that ran up in shadowy grandeur, high above his head, and as he gazed at it all he felt his heart throb fast. He was conscious of a curious thrill as he watched and listened to that clash of stupendous forces. The river had spent countless ages cutting out that channel, hurling down mighty boulders and stream-driven shingle upon the living rock; but it was, it seemed to him, within man’s power to alter it in a few arduous months. He104sat very still, astonished at the daring of his own conception, until Wheeler strolled up to him.
“How much does the river drop at the fall?” he asked.
“About eight feet in the fall itself,” answered Wheeler. “Seems to me it falls much more in the rush above. Still, I can’t say I noticed it particularly––I had something else to think about.”
“It’s a short rapid,” remarked Nasmyth reflectively. “There is, no doubt, a great deal of the hardest kind of rock under it, which is, in one or two respects, unfortunate. I suppose you don’t know very much about geology?”
“I don’t,” confessed the pulp-miller. “Machines are my specialty.”
“Well,” said Nasmyth, “I’m afraid I don’t either, and I believe one or two of these cañons have puzzled wiser folks than I. You see, the general notion is that the rivers made them, but it doesn’t seem quite reasonable to imagine a river tilting at a solid range and splitting it through the middle. In fact, it seems to me that some of the cañons were there already, and the rivers just ran into them. One or two Indians have come down from the valley close to the fall, and they told me the river was quite deep there. The rock just holds it up at the fall. It’s a natural dam––a dyke, I think they call it.”
“I don’t quite understand what all this is leading to,” observed Wheeler.
Nasmyth laughed, though there was, as his companion noticed, a curious look in his eyes. “I’ll try to make it clearer when we get into the valley. We’re going there to-morrow.”
It was almost dark now, and they went back together to the little fire that burned redly among the spruces in the ravine. There Mattawa and Gordon had a simple105supper ready. The others stretched themselves out, rolled in their blankets, soon after they had eaten, but Nasmyth lay propped up on one elbow, wide awake, listening to the roar of water until well into the night. The stream drowned the faint rustling of the spruces in a great dominant note, and he set his lips as he recognized its depth of tone and volume. He had once more determined to pit all his strength of mind and body against the river. Still, he went to sleep at last, and awakening some time after it was dawn on the heights above, roused his comrades. When breakfast was over he started with them up the ravine to cross the range.
It was afternoon before they accomplished the climb, though the height was not great and a ravine pierced the crest, and they had rent most of their clothes to tatters when they scrambled down the slope into the valley. Those pine-shrouded hillsides are strewn with mighty fallen trees, amid which the tangled underbrush grows tall and rank, and, where the pines are less thickly spaced, there are usually matted groves of willows, if the soil is damp. They pitched camp on the edge of the valley, and Gordon and Nasmyth prepared supper, while Wheeler cut firewood and Mattawa went out to prospect for the tracks of feeding deer. The axeman came back to say there were no signs of any wapiti, though the little Bush deer were evidently about, and it was decided to try for one that night with the pitlight, a mode of shooting now and then adopted when the deer are shy.
They ate their supper, and afterwards lay down with their blankets rolled about them, for it grew very cold as darkness crept up the valley. Like most of the other valleys, this one was walled in by steep-sided, pine-shrouded hills; but in this case there were no trees in the bottom of it, which, while very narrow, appeared several miles long. It was also nearly level, and the river wound through it in deep, still bends. There are106not many valleys in that country in which heavy timber fails to grow, and those within reach of a market have been seized upon; for all ranch produce is in excellent demand, and the clearing of virgin forest is a singularly arduous task. In fact, there was only one reason why this strip of natural prairie had not already been claimed. Most of it was swamp. Nasmyth, who was quieter than usual, watched the filmy mist creep about it as the soft darkness rolled down the hillsides.
Gordon rose and hooked a pitlight into his hat. This pitlight consists simply of a little open miner’s-lamp, which has fixed beneath it a shield cut out of any convenient meat-can. The lamp is filled with seal oil. Once a man has fastened it upon his head, the light is cut off from his person, so that he stands invisible, and the little flame appears unsupported. Deer of any kind are endued with an inquisitiveness which frequently leads to their destruction, and when they notice the twinkling light flitting through the air they approach it to ascertain the reason for such an unusual thing. Then the rancher shoots, as soon as their shining eyes become visible.
The party divided. Gordon and Nasmyth, who kept near each other, fell over several rotting trees, and into what appeared to be crumbling drains. They floundered knee-deep through withered timothy, which is not a natural grass. For an hour or two nobody saw any deer. Then Gordon, who was cautiously skirting another drain, closed in on Nasmyth until he touched his comrade. Nasmyth heard a crackling rustle among the withered grass. Gordon made a little abrupt movement.
“If we both blaze off, we double the odds on our getting it,” he said.
Nasmyth only just heard him, for his heart was beating with excitement; but as he stood knee-deep in the grass, with both hands ready to pitch the heavy rifle up, it seemed to him that Mattawa could not have been correct107when he said that there were only the Bush deer about. Judging by the noise it was making, the approaching beast, he thought, must be as big as a wapiti. Then he saw two pale spots of light, which seemed curiously high above the ground.
“I’m shooting,” he said, and in another moment the butt was into his shoulder.
He felt the jar of it, but, as usual in such cases, he heard no detonation, though the pale flash from Gordon’s rifle was almost in his eyes. He, however, heard the thud of the heavy bullet, and a moment or two later, a floundering amidst the grass.
“That can’t be a Bush deer!” he cried.
“It sounds ’way more like an elephant,” said Gordon, with a gasp.
They ran forward until they stopped a few yards short of something very big and shadowy that was still struggling in the grass. Gordon cautiously crept up a little nearer.
“Those aren’t deer’s horns, anyway,” he announced. “Plug it quick. The blamed thing’s getting up.”
Nasmyth flung the rifle up to his shoulder, and twice jerked a fresh cartridge into the chamber, but this time there was silence when the crash of the heavy Marlin died away among the woods. They crept forward a little further circumspectly, until Gordon stopped again with a gasp of consternation.
“Well,” he said, “I guess it couldn’t be either a Bush deer or a wapiti.”
They were still standing there when their comrades came running up, and Mattawa, who took down his light, broke into a great hoarse laugh.
“A steer!” he said, and pointed to a mark on the hide. “One of Custer’s stock. Guess he’ll charge you quite a few dollars for killing it.”
Nasmyth smiled somewhat ruefully, for he was by108no means burdened with wealth, but he was, after all, not greatly astonished. Few of the small ranchers can feed their stock entirely on their little patches of cleared land, and it is not an unusual thing for most of the herd to run almost wild in the Bush. Now and then, the cattle acquire a somewhat perilous fondness for wrecking road-makers’ and prospectors’ tents, which explains why a steer occasionally fails to be found and some little community of axemen is provided with more fresh meat than can well be consumed.
“I’m afraid it’s rather more than likely I’ll have to pay a good price,” said Nasmyth. “Do you feel anxious for any more shooting to-night, Wheeler?”
“No,” said the pulp-miller, with a grin, as he surveyed his bemired clothes. “Guess it’s going to prove expensive, and I’ve had ’most enough. I don’t feel like poling that canoe any farther up-river, either. What’s the matter with camping right where we are until we eat the steer?”
There was, however, as Mattawa pointed out, a good deal to be done before they could make their first meal off the beast, and none of them quite relished the task, especially as they had only an axe and a couple of moderately long knives. Still, it was done, and when they carried a portion of the meat out of the swamp, and had gone down to wash in the icy river, they went wearily back to their tent among the firs.