Part 12 (1/2)

”You don't understand that I couldn't swing an axe for five minutes together,” he objected.

”The trouble,” answered Gordon, ”is that you don't want to.”

Waynefleet made an attempt to rise, but his companion laid a hand upon his arm and pressed him down again.

”You were anxious for my advice, and now I'm going to prescribe,”

Gordon continued. ”Two hours' steady chopping every day, to be raised by degrees to six. Then I'd let up on smoking cigars of that kind, and practise a little more self-denial in one or two other respects. You could make things easier for Miss Waynefleet with the money you save.”

He rose with a laugh. ”Well, I'm going. All you have to do is to carry out my suggestions, and you may still make yourself and your ranch a credit to the district. In the meanwhile, this place would be considerably improved by a little ventilation.”

He went out, and left Waynefleet gazing in indignant astonishment at the door he carefully fixed open. It seemed to Waynefleet almost incredible that such words should have been spoken to him, and the suggestion that at the cost of a painful effort he should endeavour to make himself a credit to that barbarous neighbourhood rankled most of all. He had felt, hitherto, that he had conferred a favour on the community by settling there. He lay still until his daughter came in and glanced at him inquiringly.

”You have seen Mr. Gordon?” she queried.

”I have,” answered Waynefleet with fine disdain. ”You will understand that if he comes back here, he must be kept away from me. The man is utterly devoid of refinement or consideration.”

In the meanwhile Gordon was riding, circ.u.mspectly, down the rutted trail, and it was an hour later when he dismounted at the shanty of Nasmyth's workmen, and shared a meal with the gang employed on the dam. After that he sat with Nasmyth, who still limped a little, in the hut, from which, as the door stood open, they could see the men stream up into the Bush and out along the dam. The dam now stood high above the water-level, for the frost had bound fast the feeding snow upon the peaks above, though the stream roared and frothed through the two big sluice-gates. By-and-by, the ringing of axes and the clink of drills broke through the sound of the rus.h.i.+ng waters. Gordon, who stretched himself out on a deer-hide lounge, smiled at Nasmyth as he lighted his pipe.

”I've been talking a little sense to Waynefleet this morning. I felt I had to, though I'm afraid it's not going to be any use,” he announced.

”Whether you were warranted or not is, of course, another matter,”

said Nasmyth. ”Perhaps you were, if you did it on Miss Waynefleet's account. Anyway, I don't altogether understand why you should be sure it will have no effect.”

Gordon looked at him with a grin. ”Well,” he remarked oracularly, ”it's easy to acquire an inflated notion of one's own importance, though it's quite often a little difficult to keep it. Something's very apt to come along and p.r.i.c.k you, and you collapse flat when it lets the inflation out. In some cases one never quite gets one's self-sufficiency back. The scar the p.r.i.c.k made is always there, but it's different with Waynefleet. He is made of self-closing jelly, and when you take the knife out the gap shuts up again. It's quite hard to fancy it was ever there.”

Nasmyth nodded gravely, for there was an elusive something in his comrade's tone that roused his sympathy.

”Gordon,” he said, ”is it quite impossible for you to go back East again?”

Gordon leaned back in his chair, and glanced out across the toiling men upon the dam, at the frothing river and rugged hillside, with a look of longing in his eyes.

”In one way it is, but I want you to understand,” he replied. ”I might begin again in some desolate little town--but I aimed higher--and was once very nearly getting there. As it is, if I made my mark, the thing I did would be remembered against me. We'll let it go. As a surgeon of any account I'm done for.”

”Still, it's a tolerably big country, and folks forget. You might, at least, go so far, and that would, after all, give you a good deal--a competence, the right to marry.”

Gordon laughed, but his voice was harsh.

”This is one of the days on which I must talk. I feel like that, now and then,” he said. Then he looked at Nasmyth hard. ”Well, I've seen the one woman I could marry, and it's certain that, if I dare make her the offer, she would never marry me.”

”Ah,” said Nasmyth, ”you seem quite sure of that?”

”Quite,” declared Gordon, and there was, for a moment or two, an almost uncomfortable silence in the shanty.

Then he made a little forceful gesture as he turned to his companion again.

”Well,” he said, ”after all, what does it count for? Is it man's one and only business to marry somebody? Of course, we have folks back East, who seem to act on that belief, and in your country half of them appear to spend their time and energies philandering.”

”I don't think it's half,” said Nasmyth dryly.

”It's not a point of any importance, and we'll let it go. Anyway, it seems perilously easy for a man who gets the woman he sets his mind upon to sink into a fireside hog in the civilized world. Now and then, when things go wrong with folks of that kind, they come out here, and n.o.body has any use for them. What can you do with the man who gets sick the first time he sleeps in the rain, and can't do without his dinner? Oh, I know all about the preservation of the species, but west of the Great Lakes we've no room for any species that isn't tough and fit.”