109CHAPTER XITHE GREAT IDEA
The night was cold, and a frost-laden wind set the fir branches sighing as Nasmyth and his comrades sat about a snapping fire. The red light flickered upon their faces, and then grew dim again, leaving their blurred figures indistinct amid the smoke that diffused pungent, aromatic odours as it streamed by and vanished between the towering tree-trunks.
The four men were of widely different type and training, though it was characteristic of the country that they sat and talked together on terms of perfect equality. Two of them were exiles, by fault and misfortune, from their natural environment. One had forced himself upwards by daring and mechanical genius into a station to which, in one sense, he did not belong, and Mattawa, the chopper, alone, pursued the occupation which had always been familiar to him. Still, it was as comrades that they lived together in the wilderness, and, what was more, had they come across one another afterwards in the cities, they would have resumed their intercourse on exactly the same footing. After all, they were, in essentials, very much the same, and, when that is the case, the barriers men raise between themselves do not count for much in the West, at least. Wheeler, the pulp-mill builder, who had once sold oranges on the railroad cars, led up to a conversation that gave Nasmyth an opportunity for which he had been waiting.
“You and Mattawa are about through with that slashing contract,” he said. “You will not net a great pile of money out of it, I suppose?”
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“My share is about thirty,” answered Nasmyth, with a little laugh. “My partner draws a few dollars more. He got in a week when the big log that rolled on my cut leg lamed me. I seem to have a particularly unfortunate habit of hurting myself. Are you going back to Ontario when we get that money, Mattawa?”
“No,” the big axeman replied slowly; “anyway, not yet, though I was thinking of it. The ticket costs too much. They’ve been shoving up their Eastern rates.”
“You ought to have a few dollars in hand,” remarked Nasmyth, who was quite aware that this was not exactly his business. “Are you going to start a ranch?”
Mattawa appeared to smile. “I have one half cleared back in Ontario.”
“Then what d’you come out here for?” Gordon broke in.
“To give the boy a show. He’s quite smart, and we were figuring we might make a doctor or a surveyor of him. That costs money, and wages are ’way higher here than they are back East.”
It was a simple statement, made very quietly by a simple man, but it appealed forcibly to those who heard it, for they could understand what lay behind it. Love of change or adventure, it was evident, had nothing to do with sending the grizzled Mattawa out to the forests of the West. He had, as he said, merely come there that his son might be afforded opportunities that he had never had, and this was characteristic, for it is not often that the second generation stays on the land. Though teamsters and choppers to the manner born are busy here and there, the Canadian prairie is to a large extent broken and the forest driven back by young men from the Eastern cities and by exiled Englishmen. Their life is a grim one, and when they marry they do not desire their children to continue it. Yet, they do not often marry, since the wilderness, in most cases, would crush the wives they would111choose. The men toil on alone, facing flood, and drought, and frost, and some hate the silence of the winter nights during which they sit beside the stove.
“Then,” inquired Wheeler, “who runs the ranch?”
“The wife and the boy. That is, when the boy’s not chopping or ploughing for somebody.”
There were reasons why Nasmyth was stirred by what he had heard, and with his pipe he pointed to Mattawa, as the flickering firelight fell upon the old axeman’s face.
“That,” he said, “is the man who didn’t want his wages when I offered them to him, though he knew it was quite likely he would never get them afterwards unless I built the dam. He’d been working for me two or three months then, in the flooded river, most of the while. Now, is there any sense in that kind of man?”
Mattawa appeared disconcerted, and his hard face flushed. “Well,” he explained, “I felt I had to see you through.” He hesitated for a moment with a gesture which seemed deprecatory of his point of view. “It seemed up to me.”
“You’ve heard him,” said Gordon dryly. “He’s from the desolate Bush back East, and nobody has taught him to express himself clearly. The men of that kind are handiest with the axe and drill, but it has always seemed to me that the nations are going to sit round and listen when they get up and speak their mind some day.”
He saw the smile in Nasmyth’s eyes, and turned to Wheeler, who was from the State of Washington. “It’s a solid fact that you, at least, can understand. It’s not so very long since your folks headed West across the Ohio, and it’s open to anyone to see what you have done.” Then he flung his hand out towards the east. “They fancy back yonder we’re still in the leading-strings, and it doesn’t seem to strike them that we’re growing big and strong.”
It was characteristic that Wheeler did not grin, as112Nasmyth certainly did. What Gordon had said was, no doubt, a trifle flamboyant, but it expressed the views of others in the West, and after all it was more or less warranted. Mattawa, however, gazed at them both as if such matters were beyond him, and Wheeler, who turned to Nasmyth, changed the subject.
“Well,” he said, “what are you going to strike next?”
Nasmyth took out his pipe, and carefully filled it before he answered, for he knew that his time had come, and he desired greatly to carry his comrades along with him.
“I have,” he said quietly, “a notion in my mind, or, anyway, the germ of one, for the thing will want some worrying out. It’s quite a serious undertaking. To begin with, I’ll ask Gordon who cut these drains we’ve been falling into, and what he did it for?”
“An Englishman,” Gordon answered. “Nobody knew much about him. He was probably an exile, too. Anyway, he saw this valley, and it seemed to strike him that he could make a ranch in it.”
“Why should he fix on this particular valley?”
“The thing’s plain enough. How many years does a man usually spend chopping a clearing out of the Bush? Isn’t there a demand for anything that you can eat from our miners and the men on our railroads and in our mills? Why do we bring carloads of provisions in? Can’t you get hold of the fact that a man can start ranching right away on natural prairie, if he can once get the water out of it?”
“Oh, yes,” assented Nasmyth. “The point is that one has to get the water out of it. I would like Mattawa and Wheeler to notice it. You can go on.”
“Well,” said Gordon, “that man pitched right in, and spent most of two years cutting four-foot trenches through and dyking up the swamp. He went on every day from sun-up to dark, but every time the floods came they beat113him. When he walked over the range to the settlement, the boys noticed he was getting kind of worn and thin, but there was clean grit in that man. He’d taken hold of the contract, and he stayed with it. Then one day a prospector went into the valley after a big freshet and came across his wrecked shanty. The river had got him.”
Wheeler nodded gravely. “It seems to me this country was made by men like that,” he commented. “They’re the kind they ought to put up monuments to.”
There was silence for a moment or two after that, except for the sighing of the wind among the firs and the hoarse murmur that came up, softened by the distance, from the cañon. It was not an unusual story, but it appealed to those who heard it, for they had fought with rock and river and physical weariness, and they could understand the grim patience and unflinching valour of the long struggle that had resulted, as such struggles sometimes do, only in defeat. Still, the men who take those tasks in hand seldom capitulate. Gordon glanced at Nasmyth.
“Now,” he said, “if you have anything to say, you can get it out.”
Nasmyth raised himself on one elbow. “That Englishman put up a good fight, but he didn’t start quite right,” he said. “I want to point out that, in my opinion, the river has evidently just run into the cañon. It’s slow and deep until you reach the fall, where it’s merely held up by the ridge of rock the rapid runs across. Well, we’ll call the change of level twelve to sixteen feet, and, as Gordon has suggested, a big strip of natural prairie is apt to make a particularly desirable property, once you run the water out of it. You can get rid of a lot of water when you have a fall of sixteen feet.”
“How are you going to get it?” asked Wheeler.
“By cutting the strip of rock that holds the river up at the fall. I think one could do it with giant-powder.”
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Again there was silence for a few moments, and Nasmyth looked at his comrades quietly, with the firelight on his face and a gleam in his eyes. They sat still and stared at him, for the daring simplicity of his conception won their admiration. Mattawa slowly straightened himself.
“It’s a great idea,” he declared. “Seen something quite like it in Ontario; I guess it can be done.” He turned to Nasmyth. “You can count me in.”
Wheeler made a sign of concurrence. “It seems to me that Mattawa is right. In a general way, I’m quite open to take a share in the thing, but there’s a point you have to consider. Most of the work could be done only at low water, and a man might spend several years on it.”
“Well?” said Nasmyth simply.
Wheeler waved his hand. “Oh,” he said, “you’re like that other Englishman, but you want to look at this thing from a business point of view. Now, as you know, the men who do the toughest work on this Pacific slope are usually the ones who get the least for it. Well, if you run the river down, you’ll dry out the whole valley, and you’ll have every man with a fancy for ranching jumping in, or some d––– land agency’s dummies grabbing every rod of it. It’s Crown land. Anybody can locate a ranch on it.”
“You have to buy the land,” said Nasmyth. “You can’t pre-empt it here.”
“How does that count?” Wheeler persisted. “If you started clearing a Bush ranch, you’d spend considerably more.”
Nasmyth smiled. “I fancy our views coincide. The point is that the Crown agents charge the usual figure for land that doesn’t require making, which is not the case in this particular valley. Well, before I cut the first hole with the drill, they will either have to sell me115all I can take up on special terms, or make me a grant for the work I do.”
Gordon laughed. “Are you going to hammer your view of the matter into the Crown authorities? Did you ever hear of anyone who got them to sanction a proposition that was out of the usual run?”
“Well,” said Nasmyth, “I’m going to try. If they won’t hear reason, I’ll start a syndicate round the settlement.”
Wheeler, leaning forward, dropped a hand on his shoulder. “Count on me for a thousand dollars when you want the money.” He turned and looked at Gordon. “It’s your call.”
“I’ll raise the same amount,” said Gordon, “though I’ll have to put a mortgage on the ranch.”
Mattawa made a little diffident gesture. “A hundred––it’s the most I can do––but there’s the boy,” he said.
Nasmyth smiled in a curious way, for he knew this offer was, after all, a much more liberal one than those the others had made.
“You,” he said severely, “will be on wages. Yet, if we put the thing through, you will certainly get your share.”
He looked round at the other two, and after they had expressed their approval, they discussed the project until far into the night, and finally decided to recross the range, and look at the fall again, early next morning. It happened, however, that Mattawa, who went down to the river for water, soon after sunrise, found a Siwash canoe neatly covered with cedar branches. This was not an astonishing thing, since the Indians, who come up the rivers in the salmon season, often hew out a canoe on the spot where they require it, and leave it there until they have occasion to use it again. After considering the matter at breakfast, the four men decided to go down the cañon. They knew that one or two Indians were supposed116to have made the hazardous trip, but that appeared sufficient, for they were all accustomed to handling a canoe, and an extra hazard or two is not often a great deterrent to men who have toiled in the Bush.
They had a few misgivings when the hills closed about them as they slipped into the shadowy entrance of the cañon. No ray of sunlight ever streamed down there, and the great hollow was dim and cold and filled with a thin white mist, though a nipping wind flowed through it. For a mile or two the hillsides, which rose precipitously above them, were sprinkled here and there with climbing pines, that on their far summits cut, faintly green, against a little patch of blue. By-and-by, however, the canoe left these slopes behind, and drifted into a narrow rift between stupendous walls of rock, though there was a narrow strip of shingle strewn with whitened driftwood between the side of the cañon and the river. Then this disappeared, and there was only the sliding water and the smooth rock, while the patch of sky seemed no more than a narrow riband of blue very high above.
Fortunately, the river flowed smoothly between its barriers of stone, and, sounding with two poles lashed together, the men got no bottom, and as the river swept them on, they began to wonder uneasily how they were to get back upstream. Once, indeed, Wheeler suggested something of the kind, but none of the others answered him, and he went on with his paddling.
At last a deep, pulsating roar that had been steadily growing louder, swelled suddenly into a bewildering din, and Mattawa shouted as they shot round a bend. There was a whirling haze of spray into which the white rush of a rapid led close in front of them, and for the next minute they paddled circumspectly. Then Mattawa ran the canoe in between two boulders at the head of the rapid, and they got out and stood almost knee-deep in the cold water. The whirling haze of spray which rose117and sank was rent now and then as the cold breeze swept more strongly down the cañon, and it became evident that the rapid was a very short one. The walls of rock stood further apart at this point, and there was a strip of thinly-covered shingle and boulders between the fierce white rush of the flood and the worn stone. Mattawa grinned as the others looked at him.
“I’m staying here to hang on to the canoe,” he said. “Guess you don’t feel quite like going down that fall.”
They certainly did not, and they hesitated a moment until Nasmyth suddenly moved forward.
“We came here to look at the fall, and I’m going on,” he said.
They went with him, stumbling over the shingle, and now and then floundering among the boulders, with the stream that frothed about their thighs almost dragging their feet from under them. Each of them gasped with sincere relief when he scrambled out of the whirling pool. They reached a strip of uncovered rock that stretched across part of the wider hollow above the fall, and stood there drenched and shivering for several minutes, scarcely caring to speak as they gazed at the channel which the stream had cut through the midst of it. Wheeler dropped his hand on Nasmyth’s shoulder.
“Well,” he said––and Nasmyth could just hear him through the roar of the fall––“it seems to me the thing could be done if you have nerve enough. Still, I guess if they let you have the whole valley afterwards, you’d deserve it.” Then he seemed to laugh. “I’ll make my share one thousand five hundred dollars. In the meanwhile, if you have no objections, we’ll get back again.”
118CHAPTER XIIWISBECH MAKES INQUIRIES
A little pale sunshine shone down into the opening between the great cedar trunks when Laura Waynefleet walked out of the shadowy Bush. The trail from the settlement dipped into the hollow of a splashing creek, just in front of her, and a yoke of oxen, which trailed along a rude jumper-sled, plodded at her side. The sled was loaded with a big sack of flour and a smaller one of sugar, among other sundries which a rancher who lived farther back along the trail had brought up from the settlement in his waggon. Waynefleet’s hired man was busy that morning, and as her stores were running out, Laura had gone for the goods herself. Other women from the cities have had to accustom themselves to driving a span of oxen along those forest trails.
The beasts descended cautiously, for the slope was steep, and Laura was half-way down it when she saw that a man, who sat on the little log bridge, was watching her. He was clearly a stranger, and, when she led the oxen on to the bridge, tapping the brawny neck of one with a long stick, he turned to her.
“Can you tell me if Waynefleet’s ranch is near here?” he asked.
Laura glanced at him sharply, for there was no doubt that he was English, and she wondered, with a faint uneasiness, what his business was. In the meanwhile the big, slowly-moving beasts had stopped and stood still, blowing through their nostrils and regarding the stranger with mild, contemplative eyes. One of them turned its head towards the girl inquiringly, and the man laughed.
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“One could almost fancy they wondered what I was doing here,” he remarked.
“The ranch is about a mile in front of you,” said Laura in answer to his question. “You are going there?”
“I am,” said the man. “I want to see Miss Waynefleet. They told me to ask for her at the store.”
Laura looked at him again with some astonishment.
He was a little man, apparently about fifty, plainly dressed in what appeared to be English clothing. Nothing in his appearance suggested that he was a person of any importance, or, indeed, of much education, but she liked the way in which he had laughed when the ox had turned towards her.
“Then,” she replied, “as that is my name, you need not go any further.”
The man made a little bow. “Mine’s Wisbech, and I belong to the Birmingham district, England,” he explained. “I walked over from the settlement to make a few inquiries about a relative of mine called Derrick Nasmyth. They told me at the store that you would probably know where he is, and what he is doing.”
Laura was conscious of a certain resentment against the loquacious storekeeper. It was disconcerting to feel that it was generally recognized that she was acquainted with Nasmyth’s affairs, especially as she realized that the fact might appear significant to his English relative. It would scarcely be advisable, she decided, to ask the stranger to walk on to dinner at the ranch, since such an invitation would probably strengthen any misconceptions he might have formed.
“Mr. Nasmyth is expecting you?” she asked.
“No,” said Wisbech––and a little twinkle, which she found vaguely reassuring, crept into his eyes––“I don’t think he is. In all probability he thinks I am still in England. Perhaps, I had better tell you that I am going to Japan and home by India. It’s a trip a good many120English people make since the C.P.R. put their new Empress steamers on, and I merely stopped over at Victoria, thinking I would see Derrick. He is, as perhaps I mentioned, a nephew of mine.”
There was a certain frankness and something whimsical in his manner which pleased the girl.
“You have walked from the settlement?” she asked.
“I have,” answered Wisbech. “It is rather a long time since I have walked as much, and I found it quite far enough. A man is bringing a horse up to take me back, but I am by no means at home in the saddle. That”––and he laughed––“is, I suppose, as great an admission in this country as I have once or twice found it to be at home.”
Laura fancied she understood exactly what he meant. Most of her own male friends in England were accustomed to both horses and guns, and this man certainly did not bear the unmistakable stamp that was upon his nephew.
“Then my father and I would be pleased if you will call at the ranch and have dinner with us,” she said, and continued a trifle hastily: “Anyone who has business at a ranch is always expected to wait until the next meal is over.”
Wisbech, who declared that it was evidently a hospitable land, and that he would be very pleased, went on with her; but he asked her nothing about Nasmyth as they walked beside the plodding oxen. Instead, he appeared interested in ranching, and Laura, who found herself talking to him freely and naturally, supplied him with considerable information, though she imagined once or twice that he was unobtrusively watching her. He also talked to Waynefleet and the hired man, when they had dinner together at the ranch, and it was not until the two men had gone back to their work that he referred to the object he had in hand.
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“I understand that my nephew spent some time here,” he said.
Laura admitted that this was the case, and when he made further inquiries, related briefly how Nasmyth had first reached the ranch. She saw the man’s face grow intent, as he listened, and there was a puzzling look in his eyes, which he fixed upon her.
“So you took him in and nursed him,” he said. “I wonder if I might ask why you did it? He had no claim on you.”
“Most of our neighbours would have done the same,” Laura answered.
“That hardly affects the case. I presume he was practically penniless?”
“I wonder why you should seem so sure of that. As a matter of fact, he had rather more than thirty dollars in his possession when he set out from the logging camp, but on the journey he lost the belt he kept the money in.”
A queer light crept into Wisbech’s eyes. “That is just the kind of thing one would expect Derrick Nasmyth to do. You see, as I pointed out, he is my nephew.”
“You would not have lost that belt?”
Wisbech laughed. “No,” he said, “I certainly would not. What I meant to suggest was that I am naturally more or less acquainted with Derrick Nasmyth’s habits. In fact, I may admit I was a little astonished to hear he had contrived to accumulate those thirty dollars.”
Laura did not know exactly why she felt impelled to tell him about the building of the dam, but she did so, and made rather a stirring story of it. She was, at least, determined that the man should realize that his nephew had ability, and it is possible that she told him a little more than she had intended, for Wisbech was shrewd. Then it suddenly flashed upon her that he had deliberately tricked her into setting forth his nephew’s122strong points, and was pleased that she had made the most of them.
“The dam seems to have been rather an undertaking, and I am glad he contrived to carry it through successfully,” he commented. Then he looked at her with a twinkle in his eyes. “I do not know yet where he got the idea from.”
The girl flushed. This was, she felt, regrettable, but she could not help it, for the man’s keenness was disconcerting, and she was, also, a little indignant with him. She had recognized that Derrick Nasmyth’s character had its defects, but she was by no means prepared to admit it to his relatives.
“Then it didn’t occur to you that an idea of that kind was likely to appeal to your nephew?” she said.
“No,” declared Wisbech, “to be candid, it didn’t.” He smiled again. “After all, I don’t think we need trouble about that point, especially as it seems he has acquitted himself very well. I, however, can’t help feeling it was in some respects fortunate that he fell into your hands.”
Laura was usually composed, but he saw her face harden, for she was angry at his insistence. “It is evident,” he went on, “that he would not have had the opportunity of building the dam unless you had nursed him back to health and taken him into your employment.”
“It was my father who asked him to stay on at the ranch.”
“I am not sure that the correction has any very great significance. One would feel tempted to believe that your father is, to some extent, in the habit of doing what you suggest.”
Laura sat still a moment or two. She was certainly angry with the stranger, and yet, in spite of that fact, she felt that she liked him. There was a candour in his manner which pleased her, as his good-humoured shrewdness did, though she would have preferred not to have123the shrewdness exercised upon herself. It may be that he guessed what she was thinking, for he smiled.
“Miss Waynefleet,” he said, “I almost fancy we should make excellent friends, but there is a point on which I should like you to enlighten me. Why did you take the trouble to make me understand that you were doing nothing unusual when you asked me to dinner?”
Laura laughed. “Well,” she said, “if one must be accurate, I do not exactly know. I may have been a little unwise in endeavouring to impress it on you. Why did you consider it worth while to explain you had very seldom been in the saddle?”
Wisbech’s manner became confidential. “It’s a fact that has counted against me now and then. Besides, I think you noticed my accent––it’s distinctly provincial, and not like yours or Derrick’s––as soon as I told you I was a relative of his. You see, I know my station. In fact, I’m almost aggressively proud of it.” He spread out his hands in a forceful fashion. “It’s a useful one.”
He reached out, and, to the girl’s surprise, took up a bowl from the table, and appeared to weigh it in his hands. It was made of the indurated fibre which is frequently to be met with in the Bush ranches.
“This,” he said, “is, I suppose, the kind of thing they are going to turn out at that wood-pulp mill. You have probably observed the thickness of it?”
“I believe it is, though they are going to make paper stock, too.”
“Well,” pursued Wisbech; “it may meet the requirements of the country, but it is a very crude and inartistic production. I may say that it is my business to make enamelled ware. The Wisbech bowls and cups and basins are justly celebrated––light and dainty, and turned out to resemble marble, granite, or the most artistic china. They will withstand any heat you can subject them to, and practically last for ever.”
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He broke off for a moment with a chuckle. “I can’t detach myself from my business as some people seem to fancy one ought to do. After all, it is only by marriage that Derrick Nasmyth is my nephew.” His manner became grave again. “I married his mother’s sister––very much against the wishes of the rest of the family. As Derrick has lived some time here, the latter fact will probably not astonish you.”
Laura said nothing, though she understood exactly what he meant. She was becoming more sure that she liked the man, but she realized that she might not have done so had she met him before she came out to Canada, where she had learned to recognize the essential points in character. There were certainly respects in which his manner would once have jarred upon her.
Her expression was reassuring when he turned to her again.
“I was a retail chemist in a little pottery town when I discovered the properties of one or two innocuous fluxes, and how to make a certain leadless glaze,” he said. “Probably you do not know that there were few more unhealthy occupations than the glazing of certain kinds of pottery. I was also fortunate enough to make a good deal of money out of my discovery, and as I extended its use, I eventually started a big enamelling works of my own. After that I married; but the Nasmyths never quite forgave me my little idiosyncrasies and some of my views. They dropped me when my wife died. She”––his face softened curiously––“was in many ways very different from the rest of them.”
He broke off, and when he sat silent a moment or two Laura felt a curious sympathy for him.
“Won’t you go on?” she said.
“We had no children,” said the man. “My own folks were dead, but I contrived to see Derrick now and then. My wife had been very fond of him, and I liked the lad. Once or twice when I went up to London he insisted on125making a fuss over me––took me to his chambers and his club, though I believe I was in several ways not exactly a credit to him.”
Laura liked the little twinkle that crept back into his eyes. It suggested the genial toleration of a man with a nature big enough to overlook many trifles he might have resented.
“Well,” he continued, “his father died suddenly, and, when it became evident that his estate was deplorably involved, Derrick went out to Canada. None of his fastidious relatives seemed inclined to hold out a hand to him. Perhaps this was not very astonishing, but I was a little hurt that he did not afford me the opportunity. In one way, however, the lad was right. He was willing to stand on his own feet. There was pluck in him.”
He made an expressive gesture. “Now I’m anxious to hear where he is and what he is doing.”
Laura was stirred by what he had said. She had imagination, and could fill in many of the points Wisbech had only hinted at. Nevertheless, she was not quite pleased to recognize that he seemed to consider her as much concerned about his nephew as he was himself.
“He is”––she tried to speak in an indifferent tone––“He is at present engaged in building a difficult trestle bridge on a railroad. It is not the kind of work any man, who shrank from hazardous exertion, would delight in; but I believe there is a reason why the terms offered were a special inducement. He has a new project in his mind, though I do not know a great deal about it.”
“I think you might tell me what you do know.”
Laura did so, though she had never been in the cañon. The man listened attentively.
“Well,” he said, “I fancy I can promise that he shall, at least, have an opportunity of putting that project through. You haven’t, however, told me where the railroad bridge is.”
The girl made him understand how he could most126easily reach it, and, while she was explaining the various roads he must follow, there was a beat of hoofs outside. Wisbech rose and held out his hand.
“I expect that is the man with my horse, and I’m afraid I have kept you talking a very long while.” He pressed her hand as he half apologized. “I wonder if you will permit me to come back again some time?”
Laura said it would afford her and her father pleasure, and she did not smile when he went out and scrambled awkwardly into his saddle. The man who had brought the horse up grinned broadly as he watched Wisbech jolt across the clearing.
“I guess that man’s not going to make the settlement on that horse. He rides ’most like a bag of flour,” he remarked, with evident enjoyment of the stranger’s poor horsemanship.
127CHAPTER XIIION THE TRESTLE
It was with difficulty that Wisbech reached the railroad track upon which Laura Waynefleet had told him Nasmyth was occupied. From the winding waggon-road, he was forced to scramble down several hundred feet through tangled undergrowth, and over great fallen logs. Then he had to walk along the ties, which were spaced most inconveniently apart, neither far enough for a long stride nor close enough for a short one. It is, in fact, unless one is accustomed to it, a particularly wearying thing to walk any distance along a Western railroad track; since local ticket rates are usually high on the Pacific slope, and roads of any other kind are not always available, the smaller ranchers and other impecunious travellers frequently tramp miles upon the ties.
Wisbech, however, had not very far to go, and, though it entailed an occasional stumble, he endeavoured to look about him. He was progressing along the side of the wonderful Fraser gorge, which is the great channel clearly provided by Nature for the commerce of the mountain province, and he was impressed by the spectacle upon which he gazed. In front of him rose great rocky ramparts, with here and there a snow-tipped peak cutting coldly white against the glaring blue. Beneath these the climbing pines rolled down in battalions to the brink of a vast hollow, in the black depths of which the river roared far below. Wisps of gauzy mist clung to the hillside, and out of them the track came winding down, a sinuous gleaming riband that links the nations with a band of128steel. There were, as he knew, fleet steamers ready at either end of it, in Vancouver Inlet, and at Montreal, two thousand four hundred odd miles away, for this was the all-British route round half the world from London to Yokohama and Hong-Kong.
That fact had its effect on Wisbech as he plodded painfully along the ties. He had Democratic notions, but he was an Imperialist, too, which was, perhaps, after all, not surprising, for he knew something of England’s great dependencies. There are a good many men with similar views in the Dominion, and they have certainly lived up to them. Men undoubtedly work for money in Western Canada, but one has only to listen to their conversation in saloon and shanty to recognize the clean pride in their manhood, and their faith in the destiny of the land to which they belong. They have also proved their faith by pitting their unshrinking courage and splendid physical strength against savage Nature, and, among their other achievements, that track blown out of the living rock, flung over roaring rivers, and driven through eternal snow, supplies a significant hint of what they can bear and do. They buried mangled men in roaring cañon and by giddy trestle, but the rails crept always on.
Wisbech came to the brink of a gorge which rent the steep hillside. He could not tell how deep it was, but it made him dizzy to look down upon the streak of frothing water far below. The gorge was spanned by the usual Western trestle bridge, an openwork fabric of timber just wide enough to carry the single track rising out of the chasm on tapering piers that looked ethereally fragile in that wilderness of towering trees and tremendous slopes of rock. The chunk of axes and ringing of hammers jarred through the roar of the stream, and he could see men clinging in mid-air to little stages slung about the piers, and moving among the pines below. A man in a ragged duck suit strode by him with an axe on his shoulder,129and Wisbech half-diffidently ventured to inquire if he could tell where Derrick Nasmyth could be found. The man, who paid no attention to him, stopped close by, and shouted to some of his comrades below.
“You ought to get that beam fixed before the fast freight comes through, boys. There’s no sign of her yet,” he called in a loud voice.
Somebody answered him, and the man turned to Wisbech.
“Now, sir,” he replied tardily, “you were asking for Nasmyth?”
Wisbech said he wished to see Derrick Nasmyth, and the man nodded.
“Well,” said he, “you’ll have to wait a few minutes, I guess he’s busy. There’s a log they want to put into the trestle before the train comes along. It’s not his particular business, but we’re rather anxious to get through with our contract.”
“Ah,” returned Wisbech, “then I fancy I know who you must be. In fact, I’m rather glad I came across you. You are evidently the man who looked after my nephew when he was ill, and from what Miss Waynefleet told me, Derrick owes you a good deal.”
Gordon looked at Wisbech with a little smile, as he recalled what Nasmyth had said about the man who had sent him the draft.
“Well,” he remarked, as he pointed to the hillside, “it would be quite hard to fancy there was very much the matter with him now.”
Wisbech agreed with Gordon when he saw a man, who was running hard, beside four brawny oxen that were hauling a great dressed fir-log by a chain. They came from an opening between the pines, and rushed along the rude trail, which had a few skids across it. The trail led downhill just there, and man and oxen went down the slope furiously in the attempt to keep ahead of the big130log that jolted over the skids behind them. Wisbech had never seen cattle of any kind progress in that fashion before, but he naturally did not know that the Bush-bred ox can travel at a headlong pace up and down hills and amidst thickets a man would cautiously climb or painfully crawl through. As they approached the level at the foot of the slope, the man who drove them ran back, and slipping his handspike under it, swung the butt of the log round an obstacle. Wisbech gazed at his nephew with astonishment when Nasmyth came up with the beasts again. His battered wide hat was shapeless, his duck trousers were badly rent, and the blue shirt, which was all he wore above the waist, hung open half-way down his breast. He was flushed and gasping, but the men upon the trestle were evidently urging him to fresh exertion.
“Oh, hit her hard!” shouted one of them; and a comrade clinging to a beam high above the river broke in: “We’re waiting. Get a hump on. Bring her right along.”
It was evident that Nasmyth was already doing all that reasonably could have been expected of him, and in another moment or two, four more men, who ran out of the Bush, fell upon the log with handspikes, as the beasts came to a long upward slope. They went up it savagely, and Wisbech was conscious of a growing amazement as he watched the floundering oxen and gasping men.
“Do you always work––like this?” he asked.
Gordon laughed. “Well,” he answered, “it isn’t the bosses’ fault when we don’t. As it happens, however, a good many of us are putting a contract through, and the boys want to get that beam fixed before the fast freight comes along. If they don’t, it’s quite likely she’ll shake it loose or pitch some of them off the bridge. It has stood a few years, and wants stiffening.”
“A few years!” said Wisbech. “There are bridges in England that have existed since the first railways were131built. I believe they don’t require any great stiffening yet.”
“Oh, yes,” said Gordon. “It’s quite what one would expect. We do things differently. We heave our rails down and fill up the country with miners and farmers while you’d be worrying over your parliamentary bills. We strengthen our track as we go along, and we’ll have iron bridges over every river just as soon as they’re wanted.”
Wisbech smiled. It seemed to him that these men would probably get exactly what they set their minds upon in spite of every obstacle.
“Why don’t they stop the train while they get the beam into place?” he inquired.
“Nothing short of a big landslip is allowed to hold that fast freight up,” Gordon replied. “It’s up to every divisional superintendent between here and Winnipeg to rush her along as fast as possible. Half the cars are billed through to the Empress liner that goes out to-morrow.”
In the meanwhile the men and oxen had conveyed the big log up the slope, and, while Nasmyth drove the beasts back along the skidded track, it swung out over the chasm at the end of a rope. Men leaning out from fragile stages clutched at and guided it, and when one of them shouted, Nasmyth cast the chain to which the rope was fastened loose from his oxen. Then little lithe figures crawled out along the beams of the trestle, and there was a ringing of hammers. Gordon, who gazed up the track, swung his arm up in warning.
“You’ve got to hump yourselves, boys,” he admonished.
The faint hoot of a whistle came ringing across the pines, and a little puff of white smoke broke out far up the track from among their sombre masses. It grew rapidly larger, and the clang of the hammers quickened, while Wisbech watched the white trail that swept along132the steep hillside until there was a sudden shouting. Then he turned and saw his nephew running across the bridge.
“Somebody has forgotten a bolt or a big spike,” said Gordon.
Wisbech felt inclined to hold his breath as he watched Nasmyth climb down the face of the trestle, but in another minute or two he was clambering up again with several other men behind him. There was another hoot of the whistle, and, as Wisbech glanced up the track, a great locomotive broke out from among the pines. It was veiled in whirling dust and flying fragments of ballast, and smoke that was grey instead of white, for the track led down-grade, and the engineer had throttled the steam. The engine was a huge one, built for mountain hauling, and the freight cars that lurched out of the forest behind it were huger still. Wisbech could see them rock, and the roar which they made and which the pines flung back grew deafening. Most of the cars had been coupled up in the yards at Montreal, and were covered thick with the dust that had whirled about them along two thousand four hundred miles of track, and they were still speeding on through the forests of the West, as they had done through those of far-off Ontario.
It seemed to Wisbech as he gazed at the cars that they ran pigmy freight trains in the land he came from, and he was conscious of something that had a curious stirring effect on him in the clang and clatter of that giant rolling stock, as the engineer hurled his great train furiously down-grade. It was man’s defiance of the wilderness, a symbol of his domination over all the great material forces of the world. The engineer, who glanced out once from his dust-swept cab, held them bound and subject in the hollow of the grimy hand he clenched upon the throttle. With a deafening roar, the great train leapt across the trestle, which seemed to rock and reel under it,133and plunged once more into the forest. A whistle sounded––a greeting to the men upon the bridge––and then the uproar died away in a long diminuendo among the sombre pines.
It was in most respects a fortuitous moment for Wisbech’s nephew to meet him, and the older man smiled as Nasmyth strode along the track to grasp his outstretched hand.
“I’m glad to see you, Derrick,” said Wisbech, who drew back a pace and looked at his nephew critically.
“You have changed since I last shook hands with you in London, my lad,” he continued. “You didn’t wear blue duck, and you hadn’t hands of that kind then.”
Nasmyth glanced at his scarred fingers and broken nails.
“I’ve been up against it, as they say here, since those days,” he replied.
“And it has done you a world of good!”
Nasmyth laughed. “Well,” he said, “perhaps it has. Any way, that’s not a point we need worry over just now. Where have you sprung from?”
Wisbech told him, and added that there were many things he would like to talk about, whereupon Nasmyth smiled in a deprecatory manner.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait an hour or two,” he said. “You see, there are several more big logs ready for hauling down, and I have to keep the boys supplied. I’ll be at liberty after supper, and you can’t get back to-night. In the meanwhile you might like to walk along to where we’re getting the logs out.”
Wisbech went with him and Gordon, and was impressed when he saw how they and the oxen handled the giant trunks. He, however, kept his thoughts to himself, and, quietly smoking, sat on a redwood log, a little, unobtrusive, grey-clad figure, until Gordon, who had disappeared during the last hour, announced that supper was ready.134Then Wisbech followed Nasmyth and Gordon to their quarters, which they had fashioned out of canvas, a few sheets of corrugated iron, and strips of bark, for, as their work was on the hillside, they lived apart from the regular railroad gang. The little hut was rudely comfortable, and the meal Gordon set out was creditably cooked. Wisbech liked the resinous scent of the wood smoke that hung about the spot, and the faint aromatic odour of the pine-twig beds and roofing-bark. When the meal was over, they sat a while beneath the hanging-lamp, smoking and discussing general topics, until Nasmyth indicated the canvas walls of the hut and the beds of spruce twigs with a wave of his hand.
“You will excuse your quarters. They’re rather primitive,” he said.
Wisbech’s eyes twinkled. “I almost think I shall feel as much at home as I did when you last entertained me at your club, and I’m not sure that I don’t like your new friends best,” he said. “The others were a trifle patronizing, though, perhaps, they didn’t mean to be. In fact, it was rather a plucky thing you did that day.”
A faint flush crept into Nasmyth’s bronzed face, but Wisbech smiled reassuringly as he glanced about the hut.
“The question is what all this is leading to,” he observed with inquiry in his tone.
Gordon rose. “I’ll go along and talk to the boys,” he announced. “I won’t be back for an hour or two.”
Nasmyth glanced at Wisbech before he turned to his comrade.
“I would sooner you stayed where you are,” he said. Then he answered Wisbech. “In the first place, if we are reasonably fortunate, it should lead to the acquisition of about a couple of hundred dollars.”
“Still,” said Wisbech, “that will not go very far. What will be the next thing when you have got the money?”