Part 5 (1/2)

”No,” said Nasmyth. ”Any way, that is scarcely an answer. What keeps Waynefleet here? One wouldn't fancy he likes living in the Bush.”

”It's a little curious that you haven't heard. Anyway, somebody is bound to tell you. Waynefleet had to get out of the Old Country. Some trouble about trust-money. He came out to Victoria and set up in the land agency business, but it was his misfortune that he couldn't keep out of politics. There are folks like that. When they can't handle their own affairs, they're anxious to manage those of the community.

Somebody found out the story and flung it in his face. The man hadn't the grit in him to live it down; he struck up into the Bush and bought the half-cleared ranch.”

For the next minute or two Nasmyth gazed straight in front of him with a very thoughtful face, for he had now a vague recollection of hearing or reading of the affair in which his employer had played a discreditable part. He had already decided that he was not in love with Laura Waynefleet--in fact, it was perhaps significant that he had done so more than once, but he had a warm regard for the girl who had saved his life, and, after all, his ideas were not quite so liberal as he fancied they had become in the Western forest. It was a trifle disconcerting to discover that she was the daughter of a swindler.

”It hurts?” inquired Gordon dryly.

Nasmyth rose. ”To be frank,” he admitted, ”it does. Still, though the subject's a rather delicate one, I don't want you to misunderstand me.

After all, Miss Waynefleet is not in the least responsible for anything her father may have done.”

”That,” said Gordon, ”is a sure thing. Well, I must be hitting the trail home. Aren't you going to try for some of those trout in the pool?”

”No,” answered Nasmyth, and his smile was a trifle grim; ”I don't think I am.”

He watched Gordon stride away through the undergrowth, and then, in the creeping dusk, went slowly back to the ranch. Waynefleet was out when he reached it, but Laura was sitting sewing by the lamp, and she looked at him sharply when he came in. He was unpleasantly conscious that the light was on his face. Then the girl laid down her sewing and turned fully towards him.

”I saw Mr. Gordon cross the clearing. He has told you why we are living here?” she said.

”I think,” said Nasmyth, with a slowness that was very expressive, ”it was not done out of unkindness.”

”Oh, no,” and Laura smiled in a rather curious fas.h.i.+on, ”he had probably quite another motive.” Then she leaned forward a little, looking at him steadily. ”I knew that he would tell you.”

Nasmyth stood still, with his forehead deeply furrowed, and an unusual gravity in his eyes. The girl's courage and serenity appealed to him, and he was conscious that his heart was beating rapidly. He said nothing, for a moment or two, and afterwards remembered how still the little room was, and how the sweet, resinous scent of the firs flowed in through the open window. Then he made a vague gesture.

”There is, perhaps, a good deal one could say; but I fancy most of it would savour of impertinence,” he said. ”After all, the thing doesn't affect you in any way.”

Laura glanced down at her hands, and Nasmyth guessed what she was thinking, for they were hard, and work-roughened. The toil that her hands showed was, as he realized, only a part of her burden.

”I think it affects me a very great deal,” she declared slowly.

Then a curious compa.s.sion for her troubled the man. She was young and very comely, and it was, he felt, cruelly hard on her that, bearing her father's shame, she must lead a life of hard labour at that desolate ranch. He felt an almost uncontrollable desire to comfort her, and to take her cares upon himself, but that was out of the question, since he was merely a ranch-hand, a Bush-chopper, who owed even the food he ate and the clothes he wore to her. There is, as he realized then, after all, very little one can do to lighten another's load, but in that moment the half-formed aspirations that she had called into existence in his mind expanded suddenly. There was, he felt, no reason why he should not acquire money and influence, once he made the effort.

”Miss Waynefleet,” he said haltingly, ”I can only offer you my sincere sympathy. Still”--and perhaps he did not recognize how clear the connection of ideas was--”I am going down to see about that dam-building contract to-morrow.”

Then Laura smiled, and took up her sewing again. Her burden, as she realized, was hers alone, but she knew that this man would no longer drift. She had called up his latent capacities, and he would prove his manhood.

CHAPTER V

THE FLOOD

The autumn afternoon was oppressively hot when Gordon, floundering among the whitened driftwood piled along the river-bank, came upon Nasmyth, who lay upon a slope of rock, with his hands, which were badly bruised, clenched upon a drill. Another man, who stood upon a plank inserted into a crevice, swung a hammer, and its ponderous head came ringing down upon the drill, which Nasmyth jerked round at every stroke, so many times to the minute, with rhythmic regularity. As Nasmyth was apparently too busily engaged just then to trouble about him, Gordon sat down on a big log, and taking out his pipe, looked about him when he had lighted it.

The river had made a gap for itself in the great forest that filled the valley, and the sombre firs that rose in serried ranks upon its farther bank rolled back up the hillside, streaked here and there with a little thin white mist. A mile or so away, and lower down the valley, there was an opening in their shadowy ma.s.ses, out of which rose the ringing of hammers and a long trail of smoke, for workmen from the cities were building the new wood-pulp mill there. In the foreground the river swirled by, frothing at flood level, for a week's fierce suns.h.i.+ne had succeeded a month of torrential rain, and the snow high up on a distant peak was melting fast.

n.o.body about the little settlement at the head of the deep inlet had seen the water quite so high at that season, and Gordon noticed how it frothed and boiled about the row of stone-backed piles that stretched out from either bank. As he listened to the hoa.r.s.e roar of the pent-up torrent, he understood what that partly completed dam must have cost Nasmyth. After a little time Nasmyth rose, and, stepping on the plank, wearily straightened his back.

”We're down far enough,” he announced. ”Let me have the two sticks of giant-powder, and then tell the boys to jump for cover.”