Nasmyth stood silent, and Mrs. Acton, who surveyed him again with thoughtful eyes, was not surprised that he should have appealed to the girl's imagination. The man was of a fine lean symmetry, and straight of limb. The stamp of a clean life was on him, showing itself in the brightness of his eyes and his clear bronzed skin, while he had, as Wisbech had said, the classical Nasmyth features. These things, as Mrs. Acton admitted, counted for something, while the faint lines upon his face, and the suggestive hardness that now and then crept into it, were, she decided, likely to excite a young woman's curiosity.

"Well," she said, "I feel myself considerably to blame, and I may admit that I had at first intended to make my husband get rid of you. I really don't know why I didn't. You can make what you like of that."

Nasmyth bowed with a deferential smile, and she laughed.

"Still," she said, "you must go away. Violet must be free to change her mind, and, after all, it's consoling to reflect that she has not seen so very much of you yet. In one way, it would please me if she did. It would free me of a rather heavy responsibility."

She stopped a moment, and looked at him with softening eyes. "Go and run the water out of that valley, or do anything else that will make a mark," she advised.

Nasmyth's face was set as he replied: "If the thing is in any way possible, it shall be done. I think I will go into Victoria again to-day."

He turned away and left her, and it was an hour later when she came upon Violet sitting alone in a shady walk beneath the pines. She looked at the girl severely.

"If I had been quite sure of what was going on, I should have sent that young man away," she remarked. "As it is, I am very glad that he is going to Victoria."

Violet slipped an arm about Mrs. Acton's neck and kissed her shyly. "You would never have been so cruel, and now you are going to be my friend," she said. "I don't want him to go back to that horrible canyon."

Mrs. Acton smiled. "I almost feel that I could shake both of you, but I suppose I shall have to marshal my forces on your behalf."

She set about her plans that evening, when she invaded Acton's smoking-room, and her husband listened to her with a little dry smile.

"I guess this is about the first time I have ever known you to do a real foolish thing," he observed.

"Well," said Mrs. Acton, "it is, perhaps, to my credit that I have done one now. Anyway, I like the man."

Acton nodded. "Oh, yes;" he agreed, "that's quite comprehensible. There's a good deal of tone about him, but except with women that's not a thing that counts in this country. It's the bulldog grip and grit that goes farthest here—anyway, when a man has no money behind him."

"You wouldn't consider Nasmyth a weak man?"

"Not in one way. When he's right up against it, he'll stiffen himself and fight, but when the strain slackens a little his kind are apt to let go too easily."

This, as a matter of fact, was more or less correct, but Mrs. Acton's intention was not to discuss Nasmyth's character, and she smiled at her husband.

"Well," she announced; "I expect you to take a hand in the thing."

Acton's gesture was expressive of resignation. "I guessed it. However, it seems to me that young man has quite enough friends to give him a shove here and there already. To begin with, there's Wisbech."

"What would Wisbech do?"

"Not much." And Acton smiled understandingly. "He means to let his nephew feel his own feet. He's a sensible man. Then there's that man Gordon from the Bush, and it seems I'm to do my share, too. Guess if I was Nasmyth, I'd say 'thank you,' and go right ahead without listening to one among the crowd of us."

"That," Mrs. Acton said, "isn't quite the question. I think I pointed out what I expect from you."

Acton's eyes twinkled. "You did," he assured her. "I'll try to set things in train the first time I go down to the city."

This was somewhat vague, but Mrs. Acton was satisfied. Nevertheless, she said nothing to Nasmyth on the subject, and next afternoon he left Bonavista for Victoria. A day or two later he called by appointment at the office of a certain land exploitation agency, and found Hutton waiting for him. Hutton, who sat with his elbows on the table, pointed to a chair.

"You have taken my view of the thing?" he said in a questioning tone. "If you'll sit down a minute, I'll call my clerk in, and he'll get the papers ready."

Nasmyth smiled. "I don't think you need trouble to do that just yet. You see, I haven't the least intention of closing with your offer."

It is just possible that Hutton had expected this, but, in any case, he betrayed no astonishment. He leaned forward, regarding his visitor with an almost expressionless face.

"Then," he returned, "I'll hear your proposition."

"What do you think of the one I had the pleasure of making you some time ago?" Nasmyth inquired.

"Quite out of the question."

Nasmyth smiled. "That," he remarked, "is in one sense a pity, as I couldn't repeat it to-day. If we are to do business together, I should have to ask you for a considerably larger share of the profit. In fact, I was wondering if you could see your way to offer half as much again."

Hutton gazed at him with sardonic amusement. "Oh," he replied, "has somebody left you a fortune, or are they going to run a railroad through that valley?"

Nasmyth sat silent a moment or two, and it happened that his easy indifference served him tolerably well. Had he been a keener man, the anxiety to get about his work in the canyon, of which he was certainly sensible, might have led to his undoing; but he was not one who often erred through undue precipitancy. The waiting fight was, perhaps, the one for which he was particularly adapted. If anything, he was rather too much addicted to holding out his hand, and he realized that it behooves the man without capital to be particularly wary in his negotiations with the one in possession of money. His recent interview with Violet Hamilton also had a stirring effect on him, and now he sat quietly prepared to hold his own.

"No," he declared, "there has been no particular change in my affairs. I have only been thinking things over, and it seems to me I ought to get the terms I mentioned."

"Then you had better try. It won't be from any of the accredited land agencies."

Nasmyth noticed the faint ring in his companion's voice. This, it seemed to him, was not bluff. The man, he believed, meant what he said.

"You seem quite sure of it," he observed.

As a matter of fact, Hutton was, but he felt annoyed with himself.

"Well," he said, "I naturally know what they would think of any proposition like the one you made me. Anyway, as I suggested, all you have to do is to try them."

Again Nasmyth, conscious that his companion was unobtrusively watching him, sat silent a moment or two. He knew that if he broke with Hutton he might have considerable difficulty in raising the money he required from any corporation interested in such matters in that city; but he had also another plan in his mind. He was far from sure that the scheme would prove successful, and it was at least certain that it would cost him a good deal of trouble to carry it out.

"Then I don't think I need keep you any longer," he told Hutton after a long pause. "I'll leave the thing over for a day or two, and you can send across to my hotel if you wish to discuss it again."

He rose and reached out for his hat, and Hutton, who watched him cross the room, was once or twice on the point of calling him back. Hutton did not speak, however, since he fancied that Nasmyth would presently return of his own accord—which was an expectation that proved unwarranted.

The office was on the second floor of a big stone building, and, as he descended the stairway, Nasmyth fancied he caught sight of Martial in the entrance-hall. Before he could be quite sure, the man turned down a corridor, and Nasmyth, who did not trouble himself about the matter, went out into the street. He was not altogether satisfied that he had done wisely, but he meant, at least, to wait until events should prove him wrong.

A few minutes later, Martial strolled into the office where Hutton sat, and smiled at him suggestively. He was also, as Acton had once told Nasmyth, interested in the land exploitation business, and it was evident that Hutton had expected him.

"Nasmyth has been here," Martial observed; "I saw him on the stairway. I suppose you got hold of him?"

Hutton's gesture was forcibly expressive of annoyance. "As a matter of fact, I didn't," he confessed. "The man's either considerably smarter than I gave him credit for being, or a thick-headed, obstinate fool. The one's as hard to handle as the other. I don't know which he is, and it doesn't greatly matter. The result's the same."

"I guess it's the latter;" and Martial laughed. "Well, since you can't come to terms, have you any notion what his programme is?"

"It's not a sure thing that he has one. Anyway, he didn't mention it. We'll let him wait a day or two. It's quite likely he'll try the Charters people."

Both of them smiled, for it was then not an unusual thing for the men interested in such affairs to put their heads together and take a joint hand in any deal that seemed to warrant it, and when they did so, the results were not, as a rule, encouraging to the outsider.

Martial looked at his comrade suggestively.

"I had a talk with Charters yesterday," he said. "He told me that if there was anything in it, he didn't expect us to let the thing go."

Hutton thought for a moment. "One could sell quite a few ranches in the valley; but it's going to cost considerable to run the water out, and I can't quite put my hand on anybody I'd feel like trusting with the work in the canyon. It's going to be difficult. Besides, Nasmyth has what you might call a first option on the land. Nobody else seems to want it, and the Crown people have evidently given way on a point or two. It's a sure thing they'd make no concession if we show our hands." He broke off for a moment, and flung a quick glance at his visitor. "You don't like the man?"

"I don't," said Martial—"that's a solid fact. Still, it's not going to count for much. This"—and he waved his hand—"is a matter of business."

He sat still for a moment or two, with a curious look in his face; for he had called at the hotel Acton's party had visited on the night that he had endeavoured to crawl unobserved on board the Tillicum. He had no difficulty in discovering that Mrs. Acton and Miss Hamilton had spent the night there, which made it evident that the girl could not have been on board the steamer. He had, however, not made the inquiries until business took him to the hotel several weeks afterwards, and Acton's manner, when they met in the city, convinced him that the schooner men had been communicative. On thinking the matter over, it became clear that Nasmyth and the skipper had played a trick on him; and, since it had cost him Mrs. Acton's good-will, without which he could not approach Miss Hamilton, he cherished a bitter grievance against Nasmyth.

"Well," he inquired, "in case he tries to raise the money elsewhere, what do you suggest?"

"I guess we'll let him try," answered Hutton. "He's not going to raise much when things are humming and every man with capital is putting it into mines and mills. Besides, the work in the canyon's evidently a big undertaking, and it's going to run into a long bill for labour. A thing of that kind usually costs four times as much as the man who starts it figures. Well, we'll leave him to it, and when his money runs out we'll chip in."

Martial laughed. "That's very much my notion. Let him do the work, and then jump in and put up our dummies to locate all the land he can't take hold of. Once we get a ranch or two recorded, there would be a dozen ways we could get a grip on him. Between us and Charters, we ought to break him."

They smiled at each other, but in a moment or two Hutton looked thoughtful again.

"You want to understand," he said, "it's not my business to break Nasmyth. It's the money I'm out for. In fact, if there's an easier way than the one I suggested, I'm going to take it; and with that in view, I'll send up a man or two I can rely on to investigate."

"If they get crawling round that canyon and up and down the valley, it will set the blame settlers talking. We want the thing run quietly," Martial cautioned.

"I guess it can be done," replied Hutton. "They'll go camping out for pleasure. In fact, to make the thing more like it, I'll send them fishing." Martial rose. "Anyway," he said, "I'll leave it with you in the meanwhile."



CHAPTER XXI

THE MEN OF THE BUSH

A cool shadow fell upon the descending trail that wound in among the towering firs, and Nasmyth checked his jaded horse as he entered on the last league of his long ride from the railroad. The red dust had settled thick upon his city clothes, and for the first time he found the restraint of them irksome. The band of his new hat had tightened unpleasantly about his forehead, and in scrambling up the side of the last high ridge which he had crossed, one neatly-fitting boot had galled his foot, while he smiled with somewhat sinister amusement as he felt the grip of the tight jacket on his shoulders. These were, as he recognized, petty troubles, and he was rather astonished that he should resent them, as he certainly did. He remembered that a little while before he had made no complaint against the restraints of civilization, and had, indeed, begun to shrink from the prospect of going back to the untrammelled life of the wilderness.

But, as he straightened himself in his saddle and gazed down the deep valley through which the trail twisted, he felt the shrinking melt away. After all, there was something in the wilderness that appealed to him. There was vigour in the clean smell of it, and the little breeze that fanned his face was laden with the scent of the firs. The trees rolled away before him in sombre battalions that dwindled far up the rocky sides of the enfolding hills, and here and there a flood of sunlight that struck in through the openings fell in streams of burning gold upon their tremendous trunks. Beyond them the rugged heights rose, mass on mass, against the western sky.

He rode into the shadow, and, though he thought of her, it was curious that Violet Hamilton seemed to become less real to him as he pushed on down the valley. He vaguely felt that he could not carry her with him into the wilderness. She was a part of the civilization upon which he had once more, for a time at least, turned his back, and he could not fit her into the environment of that wild and rugged land. Indeed, he remembered with a compassionate tenderness how she had shrunk from it and clung to him—a forlorn, bedraggled object, in her tattered dress—the day they floundered through the dripping Bush, and he subconsciously braced himself for conflict as he thought of it. The sooner his work was over, the sooner he could go back to her; but there was, as he remembered, a great deal to be accomplished first.

Wrapped in thought as he was, he was surprised when he saw a faint blue cloud of wood-smoke trailing out athwart the sombre firs in the hollow beneath him. Then two figures became visible, moving upwards along the strip of trail, and he drove the jaded horse forward as he recognized them. He lost sight of them for a few minutes as he turned aside to avoid a swampy spot, but when he had left it behind they were close ahead in the middle of the trail, and it was with a thrill of pleasure that he swung himself stiffly from the saddle.

With a smile on his bronzed face, Gordon stood looking at him. Gordon was dressed in soil-stained garments of old blue duck, with a patch cut from a cotton flour-bag on one of them. Laura Waynefleet stood a little nearer, and there was also a welcome in her eyes. Nasmyth noticed how curiously at home she seemed amidst that tremendous colonnade of towering trunks. He shook hands with her, but it was Gordon who spoke first.

"You have come back to us. We have been expecting you," he said. "After all, store clothes and three well-laid meals a day are apt to pall on one."

Nasmyth turned to Laura. "I should like to point out that this is the man who urged me to go," he said. "One can't count on him."

"Oh, yes," admitted Gordon, "I certainly did urge you, but I guess I knew what the result would be. It was the surest way of quieting you. Anyway, you don't seem sorry to be back again?"

Nasmyth glanced at Laura.

"No," he said; "in some respects I'm very glad."

He became suddenly self-conscious as he saw Gordon's significant smile. It suggested that he had, perhaps, made too great an admission, and he wondered for the first time, with a certain uneasiness, whether Gordon had mentioned Miss Hamilton to Laura, and, if that was the case, what Miss Waynefleet thought about the subject.

Laura talked to him in her old friendly fashion as they walked on towards the settlement, until Gordon broke in.

"I've called the boys together, as you suggested, and fixed up the meeting for to-night," he said. "They'll be ready to give you a hearing, after supper, in the hotel."

Laura left them on the outskirts of the settlement, and Gordon, stopping a moment, looked hard at Nasmyth.

"I suppose you pledged yourself to that girl at Bonavista before you came away?" he said.

"I did," Nasmyth admitted.

Gordon was silent for a moment or two. "Of course, I partly expected it," he observed. "In fact, when I was talking to Miss Waynefleet about you, I ventured to predict something of the kind."

The two men looked at each other for a moment, and then Nasmyth smiled.

"You haven't anything else to say," he suggested.

"No," answered Gordon,—"at least, nothing that's very material. Anyway, until we're through with the business we have on hand, you'll have to put that girl right out of your mind."

They went on towards the little wooden hotel, and Nasmyth felt unusually thoughtful as he walked beside his jaded horse. He recognized that his comrade's last observation was more or less warranted, and it was to some extent a relief to him when they reached the veranda stairway and Gordon led the horse away toward the stables.

It was rather more than an hour later when a specially invited company of men who had, as they said, a stake in the district assembled in the big general room of the hotel. There was about a dozen of them, men of different birth and upbringing, though all had the same quiet brown faces and steadiness of gaze. For the most part, they were dressed in duck, though Waynefleet and the hotel-keeper wore city clothes. The room was barely furnished, and panelled roughly with cedar-boards; but it had wide casements, from which those who sat in it could look out upon a strip of frothing river and the sombre forest that rolled up the rocky hills. The windows were wide open, and the smell of wood-smoke and the resinous odours of the firs flowed in. A look of expectancy crept into the men's faces, and the murmur of their conversation suddenly fell away, when Nasmyth sat down at the head of the long table with Gordon at one side of him.

"Boys," said Nasmyth, "one or two of you know why Gordon asked you here to meet me, but I had better roughly explain my project before I go any further. I'll ask you to give me your close attention for the next three or four minutes."

When he stopped speaking there was a very suggestive silence for a moment. Those who heard him had not the quick temperament of the men of the Western cities. They lived in the stillness of the Bush, and thought before they undertook anything, though, when they moved, it was usually to some purpose. One of the men stood up with a deprecatory gesture.

"Well," he declared, "it's a great idea. Boys, wouldn't you call us blame fools for not thinking of it before?"

He sat down suddenly, before anybody answered him, and the men were still again until another of them rose.

"Nasmyth's not quite through yet," he said. "We'll ask him to go ahead."

Gordon leaned forward, and touched his comrade's arm.

"Pitch it to them strong. You're getting hold," he whispered encouragingly.

For another five minutes Nasmyth spoke as he felt that he had never spoken before. He was intent and strung up, and he knew that a great deal depended upon the effect he could make. He had failed with the men of the cities, who wanted all the profit. He felt sure that he would henceforward have one or two of them against him, and it was clear that he must either abandon his project or win over these hard-handed men of the Bush. With them behind him, there was, he felt, little that he need shrink from attempting. A ring crept into his voice as he went on, for he knew that he was getting hold as he saw their lips set and the resolute expression of their eyes. They were men who, by strenuous toil, wrung a bare living out of the forest, and now there was laid before them a scheme that in its sheer daring seized upon their attention.

"Boys," Nasmyth concluded, "I am in your hands. This thing is too big for me to go into alone. Still, it's due to you to say that, while I meant to give you an option of standing in, it seemed to me it would simplify the thing if I raised most of the money before I came to you. Money is usually scarce in the Bush."

"That's a fact," agreed the shrewd-faced hotel-keeper, who also conducted the store. "Anyway, when you have to trade with folks who take twelve months to square up their bills in."

Nobody seemed to heed him, and Nasmyth added:

"Well, I found I couldn't do it—that is, if I wanted to keep anything for myself. I want you to come in, and as soon as I hear you're ready to give it your attention, I'll lay a proposition before you."

He sat looking at them, in a state of tense anxiety, until one of them rose to his feet.

"I guess you can count upon every one of us," he announced.

A reassuring murmur ran along the double row of men, and Nasmyth felt a thrill of exultation.

"Thank you, boys," he said with evident gratitude. "Now, there are difficulties to be grappled with. To begin with, the Crown authorities would sooner have leased the valley to me, and it was some time before they decided that as a special concession they would sell it in six hundred and forty acre lots at the lowest figure for first-class lands. The lots are to be laid off in rectangular blocks, and as the valley is narrow and winding, that takes in a proportion of heavy timber on the hill bench, and will not include quite a strip of natural prairie, which remains with the Crown. The cost of the land alone runs close on twenty thousand dollars, of which, one way or another, I can raise about eight thousand."

He looked at Wheeler, who sat near the lower end of the table, and he nodded.

"My offer stands," he said.

"You want another twelve thousand dollars," said the hotel-keeper dubiously. "It's quite a pile of money."

There was a little laughter from the men. "Well," said one of them, "I guess we can raise it somehow among us, but it's going to be a pull."

"Then," said Nasmyth, "we have provided for the cost of the land, but before we lower the fall and cut the drainage trenches in the valley we will run up a big bill—that is, if we hire hands. My notion is that we undertake the work ourselves, and credit every man with his share in it to count as a mortgage on the whole land that belongs to us."

Waynefleet stood up and waved his hand. "I want to point out that this is very vague," he objected. "The question will arise where the labour is to be applied. It would, for instance, be scarcely judicious to give a man a claim on everybody else for draining his own land."

He would have said more, but that Tom of Mattawa laid a hard hand on his shoulder and jerked him back into his chair.

"Now," Tom admonished, "you just sit down. When Nasmyth takes this thing in hand he'll put it through quite straight. What you'd do in a month wouldn't count for five dollars, anyway."

Everybody laughed, and Wheeler spoke again. "We'll get over that trouble by cutting so many big trenches only for the general benefit. In the meanwhile Mr. Nasmyth said something about trustees."

"I did," said Nasmyth. "The Crown will sell in rectangular six hundred and forty acre blocks. My proposition is that we take them up in three separate names. You have to understand that the man who registers in the Crown deed is legal owner."

"Then we're sure of two of them," declared the hotel-keeper. "Nasmyth takes the first block, and Wheeler the other."

Wheeler laughed. "I guess I stand out. As a United States citizen, I'm not sure I'm eligible to record Crown lands. Still, since Nasmyth and I are putting up a good many of the dollars, I'll nominate Gordon."

As one man they decided on that, but there appeared to be a difficulty about the third trustee until Nasmyth turned to them.

"As you don't seem sure about him, I would like to suggest Mr. Waynefleet, boys," he said. "He is a man who has an extensive acquaintance with business and legal affairs."

There was dead silence for several moments, and the men looked at one another uneasily. It was evident that the suggestion was unwelcome to most of them, and Nasmyth was quite aware that he was doing an unpopular thing. In the meanwhile dusk had crept up the valley, and the room was growing dim. Perhaps Waynefleet could not see his companions' faces very well, but it is also possible that, had he been able to do so, he would not have troubled himself about the hesitation in most of them. There are men of his kind who appear incapable of recognizing the fact that they are not regarded with general favour.

Finally one of the men spoke. "Seeing that the scheme is Nasmyth's, I guess it's only reasonable to fall in with his views as far as we can," he said. "We'll fix on Waynefleet."

There was a murmur of very dubious agreement, and Waynefleet, who stood up, smiled on the assembly patronizingly. His manner suggested that he was about to confer a favour.

"Our friend was warranted in mentioning that I have been accustomed to handling affairs of a somewhat similar nature, but of considerably greater magnitude," he said. "I have pleasure in placing what abilities I possess at your disposal, gentlemen."

Though it was growing dark, Nasmyth saw the amused light in Gordon's eyes. "I'm with you in this," said Gordon. "Still, I scarcely figured the boys would have stood him."

They discussed the scheme at length, and when the assembly broke up, Waynefleet approached the table where Gordon, Nasmyth and Wheeler sat under a big lamp.

"There is a point I did not mention at the time. It seemed to me it was one that could, perhaps, be arranged," said Waynefleet. "It is, of course, usual for a director of any kind to hold a certain financial interest in the scheme."

He looked at Nasmyth, and made a significant gesture. "Unfortunately there are not at the moment more than a very few dollars at my disposal. The fact, you will recognize, is likely to hamper my efforts in an administrative capacity."

"Precisely!" said Nasmyth. "It is a matter I have provided for. You will be placed in possession of a holding of the size the others fixed upon as convenient when the blocks are divided off."

"No larger?"

"No," answered Nasmyth; "I am afraid you will have to be content with that."

Waynefleet went out, and Gordon turned to Nasmyth. "It's going to cost you something," he said. "You can't charge it on the scheme. I'll divide it with you."

There was a slight restraint in Nasmyth's manner. "I'm afraid I can't permit it. It will be charged against my claim. Considering everything, it was a thing I felt I had to do."

Then Wheeler, who had been quietly watching them, broke in.

"What did you put that image up for, anyway?" he asked.

Gordon smiled in a significant fashion. "It's our friend's affair, and I guess he's not going to tell you why he did it. Still, in one sense, I 'most think it was up to him."

Wheeler let the matter drop, and in a few more minutes they went out, and Nasmyth and Gordon turned into the trail that led to Gordon's ranch.



CHAPTER XXII

NASMYTH SETS TO WORK

It was a scorching afternoon on the heights above, where rocky slope and climbing firs ran far up towards the blue heavens under a blazing sun, but it was dim and cool in the misty depths of the canyon. There was eternal shadow in that tremendous rift, and a savage desolation rolled away from it; but on this afternoon the sounds of human activity rang along its dusky walls. The dull thud of axes fell from a gully that rent the mountain-side, and now and then a mass of shattered rock came crashing down, while the sharp clinking of the drills broke intermittently through the hoarse roar of the fall. Wet with the spray of the fall, Nasmyth, stripped to blue shirt and old duck trousers, stood swinging a heavy hammer, which he brought down upon the head of the steel bar that his companion held so many times a minute with rhythmic precision. Though they changed round now and then, he had done much the same thing since early morning, and his back and arms ached almost intolerably; but still the great hammer whirled about his head, and while he gasped with the effort, came down with a heavy jar upon the drill. So intent was he that he did not notice the three figures scrambling along the narrow log-work staging pinned against the rocky side above the fall, until his companion flung a word at him. Turning with a start, he dropped his hammer.

He saw Gordon hold out a hand to Laura Waynefleet, who sprang down from the staging upon the strip of smooth-worn stone that stretched out from the wall of the canyon above the fall. Wheeler was a few paces behind them. Nasmyth looked around for his jacket, and, remembering that he had left it in the gully, he moved forward to shake hands with his visitors.

"I scarcely expected to see any of you here. You must have had a hard scramble," he said.

Gordon waved his hand. "You don't say you're pleased, though after the trouble we've taken, it's a sure thing that you ought to be," he declared. "Anyway, I'm not going back up that gully until I've had supper. Wheeler's held up because his folks haven't sent him some machines, and I came along to see if I'd forgotten how to hold a drill. I don't quite know what Miss Waynefleet came for."

Laura laughed good-humouredly. "Oh," she said, "I have my excuse. My father is at Victoria, and I have been staying with Mrs. Potter for a day or two. She lent me a cayuse to ride over to Fenton's ranch, and the trail there leads close by the head of the gully."

Mattawa looked up at Gordon with a grin. "If you want to do some drilling, you can start right now," he remarked. "Guess Nasmyth doesn't know he has a back on him."

Gordon took up the hammer, and, when Wheeler went back to the gully to inquire whether one of the men at work there would undertake some timber-squaring he wanted done at the mill, Laura Waynefleet and Nasmyth were left together. It was wetter than was comfortable near the fall, and, scrambling back across the staging, they sat down among the boulders near the foot of the rapid that swirled out of the pool. Nasmyth looked at Laura, who smiled.

"I am afraid I have taken you away from your work, and I haven't Gordon's excuse," she said. "He, at least, is able to drill."

Nasmyth laughed. "I observe that Tom seems very careful of his hands," he returned. "As to the other matter, I am very glad you did come. After all, drilling isn't exactly a luxurious occupation; and while, as Tom remarked, I'm a little uncertain about my back, I'm quite sure I'm in possession of a pair of arms, because they ache abominably. Besides"—and his gaze was whimsically reproachful—"do you really think any excuse is needed for coming to see me?"

"In any case, I have one; there is something I want to say. You see, I have not come across you since the meeting at the settlement."

"I suppose you object to your father taking any share in our crazy venture?"

A faint flicker of colour crept into Laura's cheek. "You know I don't," she replied. "It is the one thing I could have wished for him; indeed, I shall be thankful if he takes a sustaining interest in the scheme, as he seems disposed to do. It will be of benefit to him in many ways. He grows moody and discontented at the ranch."

She broke off for a moment, and her voice had changed when she went on again. "There is one point that troubles me—you provided my father with the money to take his share in the venture."

"No," explained Nasmyth; "I think I can say that I didn't. I have merely set apart for him so many acres of swamp and virgin forest. He will have to earn his title to them by assisting in what we may call the administration, as well as by physical labour."

Laura looked at Nasmyth with quiet eyes. "Would you or Gordon consider it a good bargain to part with a single acre for all the advice he can offer you?" she asked.

Nasmyth sat silent a moment, gravely regarding her. There was a little more colour in her face, but her composure and her fearless honesty appealed to him. She was attired very plainly in a print dress, made, as he knew, by her own fingers. The gown had somehow escaped serious damage in the scramble down the gully. It harmonized with the pale-tinted stone, and it seemed to him that its wearer fitted curiously into her surroundings. He had noticed this often before, and it had occurred to him that she had acquired something of the strength and unchangeableness of the wilderness. Perhaps she had, though it is also possible that the quiet steadfastness had been born in her, and perfected slowly under stress and strain.

"Well," Nasmyth broke out impulsively, "if it had been you to whom we made that block over, I could have abdicated with confidence and have left it all to you."

Laura smiled, and Nasmyth became sensible that his face had grown a deeper red.

"Whatever made you say that?" she asked.

"I don't quite know." Nasmyth's manner was deprecatory. "After all, it's hardly fair to hold a man accountable for everything he may chance to say. Anyway, I think I meant it."

Something in his voice suggested that he was of the same mind still, but Laura glanced at him again.

"Aren't we getting away from the subject?" she queried. "The land you made over to my father must have cost you something. It is a thing I rather shrink from mentioning, but have you any expectation of ever getting the money back?"

Nasmyth did not exactly understand, until a considerable time afterwards, why he was so deeply stirred by what she had said, and he was quite mistaken in fancying that it was merely her courage that touched his heart. In the meanwhile, he was clearly sensible of at least a great pity for her.

"Well," he told her, "we can look at things openly, and not try to persuade ourselves that they're something else. I think that is one of the things that you have taught me. Now, suppose I haven't any expectation of the kind you mention. How does that count? Didn't you take me in when you found me lying in the snow? Isn't it practically certain that I owe my life to you? Admitting all that, is there any reason why you shouldn't permit me to offer you a trifling favour, not for your own sake, but your father's?"

He broke off for a moment with a forceful gesture. "I might, no doubt, have suppressed all this and made some conventional answer, but, you see, one has to be honest with you. Can you persuade yourself that I don't know what you have to bear at the ranch, and how your father's moody discontent must burden you? Isn't it clear that if he takes an interest in this project and forgets to worry about his little troubles, it will make life easier for both of you?"

Laura looked at him curiously. "After all, it is my life. Why should you be so anxious to make it easier?"

The question troubled Nasmyth. It seemed to go beyond the reason he had offered her a moment or two earlier. Indeed, it flashed upon him that the fact that he certainly owed a good deal to her was not in itself quite sufficient to account for the anxiety he felt.

"Well," he answered, "if the grounds I mentioned don't appear to warrant my doing what I did, I can't at the moment think of anything more convincing. It's one consolation that you couldn't upset the little arrangement now, if you wanted to. Your father's going into the thing headlong."

Somewhat to his astonishment the girl appeared embarrassed as she glanced away from him. It was a moment or two before she looked around again.

"Ah!" she exclaimed, "I don't want to upset it. He has not been so well and contented for several years. It has lifted him out of his moodiness." Then she leaned a little toward him. "I dare not refuse this favour from you."

Nasmyth was puzzled by a vague something in her manner.

"I certainly can't see why you should want to; but we'll talk of something else," he replied. "As you have noticed, I have set to work, though I expect it will be winter before we make any very great impression."

Laura glanced up the gloomy canyon, which was filled with the river's clammy, drifting mist. "Winter," she said, "will be terrible here. Then you are not going back to the coast or Victoria for some time?"

"Certainly not, if I can help it."

Nasmyth spoke without reflection, but he felt what he said, and it was a moment before he realized that he might have expressed himself less decisively. He saw the smile on Laura's lips.

"So you have heard?" he asked. "There was, of course, no reason why Gordon shouldn't have told you. It was a thing I had meant to do myself, only, as it happened, I haven't seen you. After that last speech of mine, I must explain that I feel there is a certain obligation on me to stay away. Miss Hamilton, as a matter of fact, is not engaged to me. Nothing can be settled until I carry out this project successfully."

Laura Waynefleet's face was very quiet, and he sat silent a moment or two, wondering somewhat uneasily what she was thinking. He was also slightly surprised at himself, for he realized that, after all, he had found it considerably easier to stay away than he had expected. Indeed, during the last few weeks, when every moment of his time had been occupied, he had thought of nothing except the work before him. It occurred to him for the first time that it was curious that he had been able to do so.

"You see," he made haste to explain, "in the meanwhile I must endeavour to put everything except this scheme out of my mind."

Again he was troubled by Laura Waynefleet's little smile.

"Yes," she said; "in one way, no doubt, that would be the wisest course. I'm not sure, however, that everybody would have sufficient strength of will."

Nasmyth said nothing further for a while, but—though he was probably not aware of this—his face grew thoughtful as he gazed at the river until his companion spoke again.

"Was it Miss Hamilton's wish that you should make your mark first?" she inquired.

"No," answered Nasmyth decisively; "I want you to understand that it was mine. She merely concurred in it."

He changed the subject abruptly. "Tell me about yourself."

"There is so little to tell. One day is so much like another with me, only I have been rather busier than usual lately. My father has had to cut down expenses. We have no hired man."

Nasmyth set his lips and half-consciously closed one hand. It seemed to him an almost intolerable thing that this girl should waste her youth and sweetness dragging out a life of unremitting toil in the lone Bush. Still, while her father lived, there was nothing else she could look forward to, and he could imagine how the long colourless years would roll away with her, while she lost her freshness and grew hard and worn with petty cares and labour that needed a stronger arm than hers. She might grow discontented, he fancied, and perhaps a trifle bitter, though he could not imagine her becoming querulous.

As yet there was a great patience in her steady eyes. Then it became evident that she guessed what he was thinking.

"Sometimes I feel the prospect in front of me is not a very attractive one," she responded in answer to his thoughts. "Still, one can get over that by not regarding it as a prospect at all. It simplifies the thing when one takes it day by day."

She smiled at him. "Derrick, you have done wisely. I think you need a sustaining purpose and a woman to work for."

Nasmyth's face paled. "Yes," he agreed dryly; "it is, perhaps, rather a significant admission, but I really think I do."

It was a relief to both of them that Wheeler came floundering along the shingle just then with a box and a coil of wire in his hand.

"I've brought you a little present, Nasmyth," he announced. "Firing by fuse is going to be uncertain when there's so much spray about, and I sent down for this electric fixing. We can charge it for you at any time at the mill. Have you put in any giant-powder yet?"

Nasmyth said they had not fired a heavy charge about the fall, but that there were several holes ready for filling, and Wheeler's eyes twinkled.

"I'm quite anxious to try this little toy," he said. "When I was young, a rancher gave me an old played-out shot-gun, and I was out at sun-up next morning to shoot something. That's the kind of being a man is, Miss Waynefleet. Put any kind of bottled-up power in his hands, and he feels he must get up and make a bang with it. After all, I guess it's fortunate that he does."

"Are all men like that?" Laura asked with a strange undertone in her voice.

"Most of them," said Wheeler, with an air of reflection. "Of course, you do run across one here and there who would put the bottled power carefully away for fear that, when it went off, it might hurt him or somebody. The trouble is that when a man of that kind at last makes up his mind to use it he's quite likely to find that the power has gradually leaked out of the bottle. Power's a very curious thing. If you don't use it, it has a way of evaporating."

Gordon had joined them in the meanwhile, and Laura looked at him.

"You agree with that?" she asked.

Gordon's smile was suggestively grim. "Oh, yes," he said. "I guess our friend now and then says some rather forceful things. Anyway, he has hit it with this one. For instance, there was that little matter of the man who was sick at his mill. A surgeon with nerve and hands could have fixed him up. We"—and he made an expressive gesture—"packed him out to Victoria."

He laughed harshly as he went on: "Well, that's partly why we're going to set our mark on this canyon, if it's only to make it clear that we're not quite played out yet. You'll ram that hole full of your strongest powder, Derrick."

Nasmyth turned and waved his hand to a man at the foot of the gully.

"Bring me down the magazine!" he ordered. "We're going to split that rock before supper."

The man, who disappeared, came back again with an iron box, and for the next few minutes Nasmyth, who scrambled about the rocks above the fall, taking a coil of thin wire with him, was busy. When he rejoined his companions, he led them a little further down the canyon until he pointed to a shelf of rock from which they had a clear view of the fall. A handful of men had clambered down the gully, and now they stood in a cluster upon the strip of shingle. Nasmyth indicated them with a wave of his hand before he held a little wooden box with brass pegs projecting from it up to Laura.

"It's the first big charge we have fired, and they seem to feel it's something of an event," he said. "In one way, it's a declaration of war we're making, and there is a good deal against us. You fit this plug into the socket when you're ready."

"You mean me to fire the charge?" inquired Laura.

"Yes," answered Nasmyth quietly. "It's fitting that you should be the one to set us at our work. If it hadn't been for you, I should certainly not have taken this thing up, and now I want to feel that you are anxious for our success."

A faint flush of colour crept into Laura Waynefleet's face. For one thing, Nasmyth's marriage to the dark-eyed girl whom Gordon had described to her depended on the success of this venture, and that was a fact which had its effect on her. Still, she felt, the scheme would have greater results than that, and, turning gravely, she glanced at the men who had gathered upon the shingle. They looked very little and feeble as they clustered together, in face of that almost overwhelming manifestation of the great primeval forces against which they had pitted themselves in the bottom of the tremendous rift. It seemed curious that they did not shrink from the roar of the river which rang about them in sonorous tones, and then, as she looked across the mad rush of the rapid and the spray-shrouded fall to the stupendous walls of rock that shut them in, the thing they had undertaken seemed almost impossible. Wheeler appeared to guess her thoughts, for he smiled as he pointed to the duck-clad figures.

"Well," he declared, "in one way they're an insignificant crowd. Very little to look at; and this canyon's big. Still, I guess they're somehow going through with the thing. It seems to me"—and he nodded to her with sudden recognition of her part in the project—"it was a pretty idea of Nasmyth's when he asked you to start them at it."

Laura remembered that the leader of the men had once said that he belonged to her. She smiled, and raised the hand that held the firing key.

"Boys," she said, "it's a big thing you have undertaken—not the getting of the money, but the beating of the river, and the raising of tall oats and orchards where only the sour swamp-grasses grew." She turned and for a moment looked into Nasmyth's eyes, as she added simply: "Good luck to you."

She dropped her hand upon the little box, and in another moment or two a rent opened in the smooth-worn stretch of rock above the fall. Out of it there shot a blaze of light that seemed to grow in brilliance with incredible swiftness, until it spread itself apart in a dazzling corruscation. Then the roar of the river was drowned in the detonation, and long clouds of smoke whirled up. Through the smoke rose showers of stones and masses of leaping rock that smote with a jarring crash upon the walls of the canyon. After that came a great splashing that died away suddenly, and there was only the hoarse roar of the river pouring through the newly opened gap. Laura turned and handed the box to Nasmyth.

"Now," she said, "I have done my part, and I am only sorry that it is such a trifling one."

Nasmyth looked at her with a gleam in his eyes.

He answered softly: "You are behind it all. It is due to you that I am making some attempt to use the little power in my possession, instead of letting it melt away."



CHAPTER XXIII

THE DERRICK

A bitter frost had crept down from the snow-clad heights that shut the canyon in, and the roar of the river had fallen to a lower tone, when Nasmyth stood one morning shivering close by the door of his rude log shanty at the foot of the gully. The faint grey light was growing slightly clearer, and he could see the clustering spruces, in the hollow, gleam spectrally where their dark masses were streaked with delicate silver filigree. Across the river there was a dull glimmer from the wall of rock, which the freezing spray had covered with a glassy crust. Though it had not been long exposed to the nipping morning air, Nasmyth felt his damp deer-hide jacket slowly stiffening, and the edge of the sleeves, which had been wet through the day before, commenced to rasp his raw and swollen wrists.

He stood still for a minute or two listening to the river and stretching himself wearily, for his back and shoulders ached, and there was a distressful stiffness in most of his joints that had resulted from exposure, in spray-drenched clothing, to the stinging frost. This, however, did not greatly trouble him, since he had long realized that physical discomfort must be disregarded if the work was to be carried on. Men, for the most part, toil strenuously in that wild land. Indeed, it is only by the tensest effort of which flesh and blood are capable that the wilderness is broken to man's domination, for throughout much of it costly mechanical appliances have not as yet displaced well-hardened muscle.

In most cases the Bushman who buys a forest ranch has scarcely any money left when he has made the purchase. He finds the land covered with two-hundred-feet firs, which must be felled, and sawn up, and rolled into piles for burning by his own hand, and only those who have handled trees of that kind can form any clear conception of the labour such work entails. It is a long time before the strip of cleared land will yield a scanty sustenance, and in the meanwhile the Bushman must, every now and then, hire himself out track-grading on the railroads or chopping trails to obtain the money that keeps him in tea and pork and flour. As a rule, he expects nothing else, and there are times when he does not get quite enough work. Men reared in this fashion grow hard and tireless, and Nasmyth had been called upon to lead a band of them. He had contrived to do it, so far, but it was not astonishing that the toil had left a mark on him.

He heard the drifting ice-cake crackle, as it leapt the fall, and the sharp crash of it upon the boulders in the rapid. It jarred on the duller roar of the river in intermittent detonations as each heavy mass swept down. There was, however, no other sound, and seizing a hammer, he struck a suspended iron sheet until a voice fell across the pines from the shadowy gully.

"Guess we'll be down soon as it's light enough," it said.

Then another voice rose from the shanty.

"The boys won't see to make a start for half an hour," it said. "I don't know any reason why you shouldn't shut the door and come right in. Breakfast's ready."

Nasmyth turned and went into the shanty, conscious that it would cost him an effort to get out of it again. A stove snapped and crackled in the one room, which was cosily warm. Gordon and Waynefleet sat before the two big empty cases that served for table, and Mattawa was ladling pork on to their plates from a blackened frying-pan, Nasmyth sat down and ate hastily, while the light from the lamp hanging beneath the roof-beams fell upon his face, which was gaunt and roughened by the sting of bitter spray and frost. His hands were raw and cracked.

"I want to get that rock-dump hove out of the pool before it's dark," he said. "One can't see to crawl over those ice-crusted rocks by firelight."

Gordon glanced at Mattawa, who grinned. "Well," said Mattawa, "it was only yesterday when I fell in, and I figured Charly was going right under the fall the day before. Oh, yes, I guess we'd better get the thing through while it's light."

"I have felt inclined to wonder if it wouldn't be advisable to suspend operations if this frost continues," said Waynefleet reflectively.

"Our charter lays it down that the work is to be carried on continuously," answered Gordon. "Still, on due notice being given, it permits a stoppage of not exceeding one month, owing to stress of weather or insuperable natural difficulties. As a matter of fact, even with the fire going, it's practically impossible to keep the frost out of the stone."

Nasmyth looked up sharply. "The work goes on. There will be no stoppage of any kind. We can't afford it. The thing already has cost us two or three times as much as I had anticipated."

Gordon looked amused, though he said nothing further. Nasmyth was up against it, with his back to the wall, but that fact had roused all the resolution there was in him, and he had shown no sign of flinching. It was evident that he must fight or fail ignominiously, and he had grown grimmer and more determined as each fresh obstacle presented itself while the strenuous weeks rolled on. There was silence for a few minutes, and then Mattawa grinned at Waynefleet.

"I guess you've got to keep that rock from freezing, and the fire was kind of low when I last looked out," he remarked.

With a frown of resignation Waynefleet rose wearily and went out, for it was his part to keep a great fire going day and night. This was one of the few things he could do, and, though it entailed a good deal of sturdy labour with the axe, he had, somewhat to his comrades' astonishment, accomplished it reasonably well. In another minute or two Nasmyth followed him, and when the rest of the men came clattering down from the shanty, higher up the gully, they set to work.

There was just light enough to see by, and no more, for, though the frost was bitter, heavy snow-clouds hung about the hills. Shingle and boulders were covered with frozen spray, and long spears of ice stretched out into the pool below the fall. Now and then a block of ice drove athwart them with a detonating crackle. The pool was lower than it had been in summer, and the stream frothed in angry eddies in the midst of it, where shattered masses of rock rent by the blasting charges lay as they had fallen. It was essential that the rock should be cleared away, and a great redwood log with a rounded foot let into a socket swung by wire rope guys above the pool. Another wire rope with a pair of iron claws at the end of it ran over a block at the head of the log to the winch below, and the primitive derrick and its fittings had cost Nasmyth a great deal of money, as well as a week's arduous labour.

They swung the apparatus over the pile of submerged rock, and, when the claws fell with a splash, they hove at the winch, two of them at each handle, until a mass of stone rose from the stream. Then one guy was slackened, and another hauled upon, until the rock swung over the shingle across the river, where they let it fall. Part of the growing pile would be used to build the road by which they brought supplies down the gully.

In itself the work was arduous enough, since four men alone could toil at the winch, and some of the masses they raised were ponderous. Indeed, there was scarcely room for four persons on the shelf hewn out above the tail of the pool, and the narrow strip of stone was slippery with ice. Fine spray that froze on all it touched whirled about the workers, and every now and then a heavy fragment that slipped from the claws fell with a great splash. Nasmyth's wrists grew raw from the rasp of the hide jacket, and wide cracks opened in his fingers.

"I remember it as cold as this only once before," he said. "It was during the few days I spent between the logging camp and Waynefleet's ranch."

Mattawa, who hove on the same handle, grinned. "Well," he said, "this is a tolerable sample of blame hard weather while it lasts, but we get months of it back East. Still, I guess we don't work then. No, sir, unless we're chopping, we sit tight round the stove."

Mattawa was right in this. Excepting the loggers and the Northwest Police, men do not work in the open at that temperature back East, nor would they attempt it on the Pacific Slope were the cold continuous. In the western half of British Columbia, however, long periods of severe weather are rare. It is a variable zone, swept now and then by damp, warm breezes, and men tell of sheltered valleys where flowers blow the year round, though very few of those who ramble up and down the Mountain Province ever chance upon them. But there are times when the devastating cold of the Polar regions descends upon the lonely ranges, as it had done upon the frost-bound canyon.

Those who toiled with Nasmyth were hardened men, and they held on with cracked hands clenched on the winch-handles, or they splashed through the icy shallows with the water in their boots, until, a little before their dinner-hour, when three of them stood straining by Nasmyth's side beneath the derrick as a mass of rock rose slowly to the surface of the pool. Mattawa glanced at this weight dubiously, and then up at the wire guy that gleamed with frozen spray high above his head.

"I guess we've dropped on to a big one this time," he said. "She's going to be heavier when we heave her clear of the river."

This, of course, was correct, and it was clear to Nasmyth that it was only by a strenuous effort that his comrades were raising the stone then. Still, it must be lifted, and he tightened his grasp upon the handle.

"Heave! Lift her out!" he said.

The veins rose swollen on their foreheads, and they gasped as they obeyed him, but as the stone rose dripping there was an ominous creaking overhead.

"Guess she's drawing the anchor-bolts," cried one. "We'll fetch the whole thing down. Shall I let her run?"

Nasmyth flung a sharp glance at the big iron holdfast sunk in the rock above. There would, he knew, be trouble if that or the wire guy gave way, but it was only at some hazard that anything could be done in the canyon.

"Hold on!" he said hoarsely. "Slack that guy, and let her swing."

There was a clink and jar as the clutch took the weight off them; a wire rope set up a harsh rasping, and as Gordon jerked a guiding-line across the river, the great boom swung, trailing the heavy stone just above the water. Then the ominous creak grew sharper, and one of them shouted.

"Jump!" he said. "She's going!"

Two of them sprang on the instant into the pool, and washed out with the crackling ice-cake into the rapid at the tail of it. It was precisely what most men who could swim would have done, but Nasmyth stayed, and Mattawa stayed with him. Nasmyth did not think very clearly, but he remembered subconsciously what the construction of that derrick had cost him. There was a lever which would release the load and let it run. He had his hand on it when he turned to his companion.

"Strip that handle, Tom," he said.

The iron crank that would have hurled him into the river as its span fell with a rattle, and that was one peril gone; but the lever he grasped was difficult to move, and his hands were stiff and numb. Still he persisted, and Mattawa watched him, because there was only room for one, until there was a crash above them, and the tilted top of the great boom came down. Mattawa, flattened against the rock side, held his breath as the mass of timber rushed towards the pool, and next moment saw that Nasmyth was no longer standing on the shelf. Nasmyth lay partly beneath the shattered winch, and his face was grey, except for a red scar down one side of it. His eyes, however, were open, and Mattawa gasped with relief when he heard the injured man speak.

"It cleared my body. I'm fast by the hand," said Nasmyth.

Three or four minutes had slipped by before the rest scrambled upon the ledge with handspikes, and then it cost them a determined effort before they moved the redwood log an inch or two. Gordon, kneeling by Nasmyth's side, drew the crushed arm from under it. Nasmyth raised himself on one elbow, and lifted a red and pulpy hand that hung from the wrist. With an effort that set his face awry, he straightened it.

"I can move it," he said. "I don't know how it got under the thing, or what hit me in the face."

"It doesn't matter, either," said Gordon quietly. "Can you get up?"

Nasmyth blinked at him. "Of course," he answered. "As a general thing, I walk with my legs. They're not hurt."

Nasmyth staggered to his feet, and, while Gordon grasped his shoulder, floundered over the log staging laid athwart the fall and back to the shanty. Gordon was busy with him there for some time. After the crushed hand had been bound up Gordon flung the door open and spoke to the men outside.

"It's only his hand, and there's nothing broken," he announced. "You can get your dinner. We'll see about heaving the derrick up when you've eaten."

He went back and filled Nasmyth's pipe.

"I expect it hurts," he said.

Nasmyth nodded. "Yes," he replied, "quite enough."

"Well," said Gordon, "I don't know that it's any consolation, but if you expose it at this temperature, it's going to hurt you considerably more. You can't do anything worth while with one hand, and that the one you don't generally use, either. There's a rip upon your face that may give you trouble, too. I'm going to pack you out to-morrow."

"The difficulty is that I'm not disposed to go."

"Your wishes are not going to be consulted. If there's no other way, I'll appeal to the boys. I'd let you stay if you were a reasonable man, and would lie quiet beside the stove until that hand got better; but since it's quite clear that nobody could keep you there, you're starting to-morrow for Waynefleet's ranch."

Gordon turned to Waynefleet. "We'll lay you off for a week. There's a little business waiting at the settlement, anyway, and you can see about getting the new tools and provisions in."

Waynefleet's face was expressive of a vast relief. The few bitter weeks spent in the canyon had taken a good deal of the keenness he had once displayed out of him.

"I certainly think the arrangement suggested is a very desirable one," he agreed "I am quite sure that Miss Waynefleet will have much pleasure in looking after Nasmyth."

Gordon turned to Nasmyth. "Now," he said, "you can protest just as much as you like, but still, as you'll start to-morrow if we have to tie you on to the pack-horse, it's not going to be very much use. You can nurse your hand for a week, and then go on to Victoria and see if you can pick up a boring-machine of the kind we want cheap."

Nasmyth, who was aware that the machine must be purchased before very long, submitted with the best grace he could, and, though his hand was painful, he contrived to sleep most of the afternoon. Now that he was disabled and could not work, he began to feel the strain. He set out with Waynefleet at sunrise next morning, and they passed the day scrambling over the divide, and winding in and out among withered fern and thickets as they descended a rocky valley. Here and there they found an easier pathway on the snow-sheeted reaches of a frozen stream, and only left it to plunge once more into the undergrowth when the ice crackled under them. They had a pack-horse with them, for now and then one of the men made a laborious journey to the settlement for provisions, and in places a fallen tree had been chopped through or a thicket partly hewn away. That, however, did little to relieve the difficulties of the march, for the trail was rudimentary, and the first two leagues of it would probably have severely taxed the strength of a vigorous man unaccustomed to the Bush.

But they pushed on, Waynefleet riding when it was possible, while Nasmyth plodded beside the horse's head, until a cloud of whirling snow broke upon them as they floundered through a belt of thinner Bush. The snow wrapped them in its filmy folds, gathering thick upon their garments and filling their eyes, and Nasmyth grew anxious as the daylight suddenly died out. They were in a valley, out of which they could not very well wander without knowing it, and they stumbled on, smashing into thickets and swerving round fallen trees, until they struck a clearer trail, and it was with relief that Nasmyth saw a tall split-rail fence close in front of him. He threw a strip of it down, and then turned to Waynefleet when he dimly made out a blink of light in the whirling haze of snow.

"If you will go in and tell Miss Waynefleet, I'll try to put the horse up," he said.

Waynefleet swung himself down stiffly and vanished into the snow. He was half frozen, and it did not occur to him that Nasmyth had only one hand with which to loose the harness. It is also possible that he would have made no protest if it had.

Nasmyth reached the stable, and contrived to find and to light the lantern, but he discovered that it would be difficult to do anything more. His sound hand was numbed. His fingers would not bend, and the buckles of the harness held, in spite of his efforts, but he persisted. The struggle he was waging in the canyon had stirred him curiously, and each fresh obstacle roused him to a half-savage determination. Though the action sent a thrill of pain through him, he laid his bound-up hand upon the headstall, and set his lips as he tore at a buckle. He felt that if the thing cost him hours of effort he would not be beaten.

He had, however, let his hand fall back into the bandage that hung from his neck, when the door opened and Laura Waynefleet came in. She saw him leaning against the side of the stall, with a greyness in his face, which had an angry red scar down one side of it, and her eyes shone with compassion.

"Sit down," she said. "I will do that."

Nasmyth, who straightened himself, shook his head. "I can manage it if you will loose the buckles," he said. "One feels a little awkward with only one hand."

They did it together, and then Nasmyth sat down, with his face drawn and lined. Laura stood still a moment or two with the lantern in her hand.

"The snow must be deep on the divide, and it is a very rough trail. I suppose you walked all the way?" she said.

Nasmyth contrived to smile. "As it happens, I am used to it."

There was a flash of indignation in the girl's eyes, for she had, after all, a spice of temper, and she was naturally acquainted with her father's character. Her anger had, however, disappeared next moment.

"You are looking ill," she remarked anxiously.

Nasmyth glanced down at the bandage. "I've been working rather hard of late, and this hand is painful." He made a deprecatory gesture. "I don't know what excuse to offer for troubling you. Gordon insisted on sending me."

"You fancy I require one from you?"

Nasmyth looked at her with heavy eyes. "No," he answered, "it is evident that you don't. After all, perhaps I shouldn't have wished to make any excuse. It seems only natural that when I get hurt, or find myself in any trouble, I should come to you."

He did not see the colour that crept into her face, for his perceptions were not clear then; but he rose with an effort, and together they went back to the house through the snow. There Nasmyth changed his clothes for the dry garments he had brought in a valise strapped to the pack-saddle, and an hour after supper he fell quietly asleep in his chair. Then Laura turned to her father.

"You let him walk all the way when he is worn-out and hurt!" she said accusingly.

Waynefleet waved his hand. "He insisted on it; and I would like to point out that there is nothing very much the matter with him. We have all been working very hard at the canyon; in fact, I quite fail to understand why you should be so much more concerned about him than you evidently are about me. I am, however, quite aware that there would be no use in my showing that I resented it."

Laura said nothing further. She felt that silence was wiser, for, after all, her patience now and then almost failed her.



CHAPTER XXIV

REALITIES

Though there was bitter frost in the ranges, it had but lightly touched the sheltered forests that shut in Bonavista. The snow seldom lay long there, and only a few wisps of it gleamed beneath the northern edge of the pines. Mrs. Acton, as usual, had gathered a number of guests about her, and Violet Hamilton sat talking with one of them in the great drawing-room one evening. The room was brilliantly lighted, and the soft radiance gleamed upon the polished parquetry floor, on which rugs of costly skins were scattered. A fire of snapping pine-logs blazed in the big English hearth, and a faint aromatic fragrance crept into the room.

Miss Hamilton leaned back in a softly padded lounge that was obviously only made for two, and a pleasant-faced, brown-eyed young Englishman, who had no particular business in that country, but had gone there merely for amusement, sat at the other end of it, regarding her with a smile.

"After all," he said reflectively, "I really don't think I'm very sorry the snow drove us down from our shooting camp in the ranges."

Violet laughed. She had met the man before he went into the mountains, and he had been at Bonavista for a week or two now.

"It was too cold for you up there?" she queried.

"It was," answered the man, "at least, it was certainly too cold for Jardine, who came out with me. He got one of his feet nipped sitting out one night with the rifle on a high ledge in the snow, and when I left him in Vancouver the doctor told him it would be a month before he could wear a boot again."

He laughed. "I have a shrewd suspicion that one has to get hardened to that kind of thing, and, surely, this is considerably nicer."

"This," repeated Violet, who fancied she understood what he meant, "is very much the same thing as you are accustomed to in London, except that the houses are, no doubt, more luxuriously furnished, and the company is more brilliant and entertaining."

"You would not expect me to make any admission of that kind?" and the man looked at her reproachfully. "In any case, it wouldn't be warranted."

"Then," said Violet, "I must have some very erroneous notions of your English mansions."

The man smiled. "Ah!" he said, "I was referring to the company."

He had expressed himself in a similar fashion once or twice before, but Violet did not resent it. She admitted that she rather liked him, and she did not know that, although he had been a week or two at Bonavista, he had only intended to stay there a few days. It had naturally occurred to Mrs. Acton that there might be a certain significance in this, but she was misled by the open manner in which another young woman had annexed him.

There were other guests in the room, and among them was a little bald-headed man, whom Violet had heard had philanthropic tendencies, and was connected with some emigration scheme. This man was talking to Acton. He spoke in a didactic manner, tapping one hand with his gold-rimmed spectacles, and appeared quite content that the rest should hear him.

"There is no doubt that this country offers us a great field," he said. "In fact, I have already made arrangements for settling a number of deserving families on the land. What I am particularly pleased with is the manner in which the man who makes his home here is brought into close contact with Nature. The effect of this cannot fail to be what one might term recuperative. There is a vitality to be drawn from the soil, and I have of late been urging the manifold advantages of the simple life upon those who are interesting themselves in these subjects with me."

Violet glanced at her companion, and saw the amusement in his eyes.

"Do you all talk like that in England?" she inquired.

The man raised his hand reproachfully. "I'm afraid some of us talk a good deal of rubbish now and then. Still, as a matter of fact, we don't round up our sentences in that precise fashion, as he does. Just now we're rather fragmentary. Of course, he's right to some extent. I'm fond of the simple life—that is, for a month or so, when I know that a two days' ride will land me in a civilized hotel. The trouble is that most of the folks who recommend it would certainly go all to bits in a few weeks after they tried it personally. Can you fancy our friend yonder chopping tremendous trees, or walking up to his knees in snow twelve hours with a flour-bag on his back?"

Violet certainly could not. The man was full-fleshed, plethoric, and heavy of foot, and he spoke with a throaty gasp.

"The tilling of the soil," he went on, apparently addressing anybody who cared to listen, "is man's natural task, and I think Nature's beneficent influences are felt to their fullest extent in the primeval stillness of these wonderful Western woods."

Violet's companion looked up at her with a smile.

"The primeval stillness sounds rather nice, only it isn't still except you go up into the snow upon the peaks," he said. "In most of the other places my trail led through you can hear the rivers, and they make noise enough for anything. Now, there's a man yonder I haven't seen before, who, I fancy, could tell us something about it if he liked. His face suggests that he knows. I mean the one talking to Mrs. Acton."

Violet followed his glance, and saw a man standing beside Mrs. Acton near the great English hearth; but his face was turned away from her, and it was a moment or two before he looked round. Then she started, and the blood crept into her cheeks as she met Nasmyth's gaze.

He had changed since she last saw him—changed, she felt, in an almost disconcerting fashion. He wore plain city clothes, and they hung about him with a suggestive slackness. His face was darkened and roughened by exposure to the winter winds; it had grown sharp and stern, and there was a disfiguring red scar down one side of it. His eyes were keen and intent, and there was a look in them that she did not remember having noticed before, while he seemed to have lost his careless gracefulness of manner. Even his step seemed different as he moved towards her. It was, though neither exactly understood why, a difficult moment for both of them when he stopped close by her side, and it was made no easier by the fact that they were not alone. Violet turned to her companion, who rose.

"Mr. Carshalton, from the Old Country," she said. "This is Mr. Nasmyth."

Carshalton nodded. "Glad to meet you. Won't you sit down?" he said. "As it happens, I had just pointed you out to Miss Hamilton. We were talking about the wilderness—or, to be more precise, the great primeval stillness. I ventured to suggest that you could tell us something about it."

Nasmyth smiled significantly. "Well," he replied, "I have certainly spent a few months in the wilderness. That is one of the results."

He meant to indicate the hand that hung by his side in a thick, soft glove by the gesture he made, but it was the other one that Violet and Carshalton glanced at. It was scarred and battered, and had opened in raw red cracks under the frost.

"Ah!" said Carshalton, "I think I was quite warranted in assuring Miss Hamilton that it was a good deal nicer here. You see, I was up in the ranges for a week or two. I had to come down with my comrade, who sat out one night in the snow. The primeval stillness didn't agree with him."

He met Violet's eyes, and next moment glanced across the room.

"I don't think I've spoken to Mr. Acton this evening," he said. "We'll have a talk about the wilderness by-and-by, Mr. Nasmyth."

He strolled away, and Nasmyth sat down by Violet's side.

"I fancied the man meant to stay," he remarked.

Violet leaned back in the lounge, and looked at him a moment or two silently. Her thoughts were confused, and she was uneasy. In the first place, she almost wished it had not been so easy to make Carshalton understand that she wished him to go away; for the fact that she had been able to do so by merely looking at him suggested that there was at least a certain confidence between them, and she was unwilling to admit that such was the case. That, however, was only a minor point. While Carshalton had spoken of the simple life, and admitted that a few weeks of it was quite enough for him, she had thought with a certain tenderness of the man who had spent months of strenuous toil in the misty depths of the canyon. She was glad of this, and felt a slight compunction over the fact that she had seldom thought of him of late. Still, when she saw him bearing the marks of those months of effort on his body and in his worn face, she was sensible that she shrank from him, as she had once done from the dreary, dripping wilderness. This was disconcerting, but she could not drive out the feeling. His worn face vaguely troubled her, and she was sorry for him, but she would not have liked to touch his scarred and roughened hands. She glanced at the injured hand inquiringly.

"It is almost well again. It was crushed beneath a mass of timber," he told her briefly.

Conscious that the meeting so far left a good deal to be desired, Violet sat still a moment. It certainly had not afforded her the pleasure she might reasonably have expected, and she subconsciously resented the fact. There was also, as she noticed, a suggestion of uneasiness in the man's scarred face.

"I have been in Victoria a few days," he explained. "There was a machine I had to buy, and one or two other matters had to be attended to. Then I got a letter forwarded from Waynefleet's ranch, from which it appeared that Mr. Acton wished to see me."

A faint sparkle crept into Violet Hamilton's eyes. "It is evident," she observed, "that we both find it a little difficult to say the right thing."

"I'm afraid I am now and then a little remiss in that respect. Still, how have I offended?"

Violet contrived to smile. "I'm not sure it was particularly judicious of you to explain so fully what brought you here. Couldn't you have left me to suggest another reason that would have been a little more satisfactory?"

Nasmyth laughed. "My dear, you know I have been longing to see you."

"Ah!" exclaimed Violet, "I am not altogether sure. Indeed, I could almost fancy that you have been thinking of nothing beyond what you are doing in that horrible canyon."

Nasmyth raised his hand in protest, though Violet was quick to notice the uneasiness in his face; but now the worn look in it roused her pity.

"Well," she said, "you can show how anxious you were by staying here at least a week. I want you to stay. Besides, you must for another reason—you are looking almost ill."

There was, for the first time, a softness in her voice that stirred the man, but the uneasiness that had troubled him did not disappear. Indeed, it seemed to grow stronger as he glanced about the room, which was furnished artistically, and flooded with light. Mrs. Acton's guests were of the station to which he had belonged, and he would once have found the sound of their voices and their light laughter pleasant. These, however, were things that no longer appealed to him, and he was conscious of a feverish impatience to get back to his work again in the misty canyon.

"I'm afraid," he replied gravely, "it will be out of the question for me to stay just now. There is so much to do at the canyon; and I think you know why I am so anxious to carry the work through."

The girl looked at him in a curious fashion, and though she was probably not aware of it, there was doubt in her eyes. For the moment she was troubled with a sense of comprehension, and she could not be quite sure whether it was only on her account that he was so determined to carry out the project.

"Well," she told him, "I know that Mr. Acton and your uncle are anxious to see you. In fact, I believe they have some suggestions to put before you, and though I do not know exactly what it is, I imagine that you need not go back to the Bush if you will do what they wish." She broke off and glanced at him wistfully. "Derrick, you won't decide rashly. I don't want you to stay away from me."

Nasmyth smiled reassuringly; but one of Violet's companions approached them just then, and when she leaned upon the back of the lounge and spoke to the girl, Nasmyth rose. He crossed the room, and a few minutes later, in the big cedar hall, came upon a man connected with the Crown land agency. There was an open fire in the hall, and the man, who sat down by it, offered Nasmyth a cigar.

"Mrs. Acton will excuse us for a few minutes," the Stranger remarked. "You are evidently fresh from the Bush. How are you getting on there?"

Nasmyth told him, and the man looked thoughtful.

"You don't hold all the valley," the man said. "I wonder if you know that folks are taking an interest in the land that's still unrecorded?"

"I don't," said Nasmyth. "It's mostly heavy timber that would cost a deal to clear. Any way, as we couldn't take up any more than we hold, it doesn't appear to affect me at all."

"Well," returned his companion, "that's a point I'm not quite sure about. You only hold a provisional charter to lower the river. There's only one unworked holding near the valley, and, as you couldn't injure anybody's property, we permitted you to go ahead. Still, if any parties supplied us with a sufficient reason for withdrawing that permission, we might have to listen to them." He broke off for a moment and waved his hand. "Of course, I'm not speaking officially. I'm merely giving you a hint that may be useful. Some persons might take up that land with the object of putting the screw on you. You see, it would be possible to get over any difficulty they might raise by buying them out."

Nasmyth's lips closed firmly. He was quite aware that, in view of the state of his finances, the course suggested was not one that he could adopt.

"What kind of people are they?" he inquired.

His companion laughed in an ominous fashion. "Small ranchers, though it's just possible that there may be some of the big men connected with the land business behind them. The big promoters occasionally prefer to act through a dummy. Our object is, of course, to get men who will cultivate the land, and keep it out of the hands of anyone who merely wants to hold it. Now, while I'm far from sure my superiors would be pleased to hear I'd said so much to you, there's one piece of advice I can offer." He leaned forward and looked at Nasmyth confidentially. "Get that work through as soon as you can. Once you lower the level of the river, nobody could compel you to put it back again. Any man who wanted land would have to buy it as it was."

"A man who wished to start a ranch would naturally prefer it with the water run out of it."

"Precisely!" argued Nasmyth's informant. "That is why you got the charter. Still, I wasn't contemplating the man who merely wished to ranch."

His smile suggested that he intended to say no more upon that subject, and when he turned and glanced through the doorway into the lighted room, Nasmyth saw that he was looking at Violet Hamilton. Nasmyth also noticed that Carshalton was once more seated beside the girl.

"I rather like that Englishman," declared the stranger. "Acton apparently gets on with him, too. He seems to have been here some time. In fact, while it's nobody else's business, I've been inclined to wonder what Miss Hamilton thinks of him."

Nasmyth made no reply, but the observation slightly troubled him. A little later Acton crossed the hall.

"If you can give us a few minutes, your uncle and I have something to put before you," he said. "I'll go along with you to my room."



CHAPTER XXV

NASMYTH DECIDES

A shaded lamp stood on the table of Acton's room, and, as Nasmyth entered, he saw Wisbech, whom he had not met since his arrival, sitting just inside the light of it in a lounge-chair. He strode forward and shook hands with his uncle.

"Until I got your letter I almost fancied you were in Japan," he said.

Wisbech smiled at him. "I shall probably start very shortly. In fact, I never expected to stay here half so long as I have done, but I found a good deal to interest me in this country, and it's twenty years since I have been away from business for more than a week or two. The works were mine until very recently, but there are times now when I'm not altogether sorry I'm merely a director of the company."

Acton laid a handful of cigars on the table, and drew out a chair for Nasmyth.

"Well," he replied reflectively, "there is a good deal in this country that would interest a sensible man, but I'm not sure that's exactly what has kept Mr. Wisbech so long in Victoria. I've a point or two to mention later, but I'll let him speak first. It's his affair."

Nasmyth sat down, and he did not immediately notice that while Acton had placed his chair where the light struck full upon his face, Wisbech sat a little farther back in the shadow cast by the shade of the lamp. After a moment Acton sought the dimmer part of the room. Wisbech turned to Nasmyth.

"I understand that you expect to marry Miss Hamilton by-and-by," he said. "No doubt you have thought over the question of what you're going to keep a wife on?"

"I admit that it's one that has caused me a good deal of anxiety;" and Nasmyth leaned forward, with his elbows on the table. "Still, it hasn't troubled me quite so much of late. If I succeed with the scheme I have in hand, it will bring me money enough to make a start with a larger venture of the kind, or to enable me to undertake ranching on a reasonably extensive scale. When the land is ready for cultivation, and you haven't to face the initial cost of getting rid of heavy timber, the business is a profitable one."

"It is possible that Miss Hamilton would not care to live at even a tolerably extensive ranch. She has been accustomed to comfort of every kind and cheerful society, and there can't be very much of either in the Bush; while, if you undertake any further work of the kind you suggest, it would be a few years before you made your mark. Now, I'm not sure it would be reasonable to expect a young woman like Miss Hamilton to wait indefinitely."

Nasmyth flushed a little. "I think," he replied, "that is a question which concerns Miss Hamilton and me alone."

Acton leaned forward in his chair. "Mrs. Acton seems to fancy it concerns her, too. In fact, that's one reason why I wrote to you. Well, I'm going to lay before you a business proposition. You have probably heard of the Hecla Mineral Exploitation concern? It's run by two friends of mine, who have made a great deal of money out of their claims. They're getting elderly, and are open to take in a younger man—a man of education, who has some acquaintance with the work that's done in the Bush. He must take hold now, and hold stock in the concern. Here's the last letter they wrote me."

He passed it across to Nasmyth, whose face grew eager, and then suddenly hardened again. The concern in question was, as he had heard, one of excellent repute, and supposed to be carrying on a profitable mining business.

"It's out of the question that I should raise the capital," he said.

"The money can be raised," Wisbech broke in quietly. "I'll buy that stock for you, and, if you insist on it, you can treat it as a loan."

Nasmyth sat very still for a moment or two, and slowly closed one hard hand. He had never expected such an offer from Wisbech, and he recognized that it would free him of all his difficulties if he accepted it. There was, however, an obstacle in the way.