Part 20 (1/2)

”I've ever so much on hand,” he said. ”Send Tom.”

Hetty made a little authoritative gesture. ”Tom couldn't hit a deer to save his life, and my boys are expected to do what they're told. You will take him, Mr. Sewell, and if you let him come back to the claim in less than a week I'll be vexed with you.”

Ingleby, who knew that Hetty could be persistent, permitted Sewell to arrange the expedition; and when the latter retired shortly afterwards, Tomlinson, who had said very little, looked up.

”You like that man?” he asked.

”Of course!” said Hetty. ”If I hadn't I wouldn't have had him here.”

Tomlinson said nothing further, but Hetty laughed when he glanced inquiringly at Ingleby.

”You needn't ask Walter. There are two people he believes in before anybody else, and Mr. Sewell's one of them.”

”And I guess I know who the other is,” said Tomlinson, who was a trifle tactless now and then.

Hetty looked at him instead of at Ingleby.

”No,” she said reflectively, ”I don't think you do. It doesn't matter who she is, anyway, and you haven't told me what you think of Mr.

Sewell.”

Tomlinson, who watched her with steady eyes, sat silent a moment as though ruminating over something he could not quite understand. Then he said, ”The man has grit. Still, I haven't much use for his notion of going round trailing out trouble.”

”It isn't difficult to find it,” said Ingleby.

”Well,” said Tomlinson, ”I'm not going to light out when it comes along my way; but I guess I'll wait until it does, like a sensible man, and just now I have no use for any. Our folks in Oregon are poor, and if my luck holds out there's an old woman who's had 'bout as much trouble as she can bear going to have an easy time the rest of her life.”

He stopped a moment and rose leisurely to his feet. ”Well, I'll go along now. I guess Sewell means well. Good night.”

He turned away, and when he lumbered into the shadow of the pines Leger smiled at Ingleby.

”It seems to me that Tomlinson's recommendation didn't go very far,” he said.

Ingleby laughed, a trifle scornfully. ”Did you expect anything else?

When a man who could have made himself almost anything he wished gives himself up to a life of privation for the good of his fellows, it's a little gained when men of Tomlinson's description are willing to admit that he probably has good intentions.”

He retired to sleep shortly afterwards, for he and Leger commenced their labours at sunrise every day. A week later, towards dusk one evening, he and Sewell stopped near the edge of a deep ravine some distance from their camp in the ranges.

The torrent which had worn it out moaned far down in the shadow below, and the sombre firs rolled up to the edge of it two hundred yards away.

Thickets of tall fern and salmon-berry hung over the brink, and for a score of yards or so a slope of soil and gravel sprinkled with tufts of juniper and dwarf firs ran down steeper than a roof. Then it broke off abruptly, and from where they stood Ingleby could not see the bottom of the gulf beneath, though he knew that the depth of such canons is often several hundred feet. They had left their camp that morning, and one small black-tail deer, which Sewell had shot, was all they had to show for a day of strenuous labour.

”No way of getting across there,” said Sewell as he flung himself down at the foot of a cedar. ”It's a little unfortunate, too, because from what Tomlinson said it's a good bear country on the opposite side. One deer won't last very long even if we can manage to dry it, and there are parts of the black bear that are a good deal nicer than you might suppose.”

”Have you ever tried them?” asked Ingleby.

Sewell laughed. ”I have. In fact, I lived on black bear for rather longer than I cared about when I was up in the ranges once before. It's not unlike pork. I mean the kind the Canadian usually keeps for home consumption.”

That a man, who could probably get nothing else, should have lived on bear meat is, of course, not necessarily any great recommendation, but the fact tended to increase Ingleby's respect for his companion. There was, it seemed, very little that Sewell had not done or borne for the cause of the Democracy, and Ingleby had already indued him with the qualities of Garibaldi. Other men, older and shrewder than he was, are, however, occasionally addicted to idealization; and Sewell could certainly ride and shoot as well as he could rouse the hopes and pa.s.sions of the mult.i.tude--which was a good deal. Ingleby, who could do neither, had the Englishman's appreciation of physical capability, and it had once or twice been a grief to him to discover that other exponents of the opinions Sewell held were flabby, soft-fleshed men whose appearance warranted the belief that the adoption of the simple laborious life they lauded would promptly make an end of them.

The hard and wiry Sewell, who, while he preached his gospel, earned his bread by bodily toil, a man of comely presence and finished courtesy, Spartanly temperate in everything but speech, with unquestioned physical as well as moral courage, approached in his opinion the Paulinian ideal.