Part 30 (1/2)

”I don't want to go, Hetty, but it can't be helped,” he said. ”Of course, I'll come back often in the evenings.”

Hetty did not move out of the shadow, and though Ingleby did not seem to notice it there was a curious hardness in her voice.

”Well,” she said quietly, ”I suppose you know best.”

Ingleby turned away, and shook himself in a fas.h.i.+on that suggested relief as he swung down the trail. He had left a good deal behind him, and it was a hard thing he had done, much harder, in fact, than he had ever antic.i.p.ated; but he could not live on the bounty of a girl. For all that, he shrank from the loneliness of the life before him, and his fancy would dwell upon the evenings he had spent with Hetty and Leger beside the crackling fire. Hetty was by no means clever--at least, in some respects; but he did not expect her to be so, and where she was there was also cheerfulness and tranquillity. Now the bush in front of him seemed very black and lonely.

He had scarcely disappeared when Hetty, rising slowly, crumpled a strip of paper in her hand and flung it into the fire. As it happened, it fell upon the side of one of the logs a little distance from the hottest blaze, and Leger made a little instinctive movement, and then sat still again.

”I suppose you realize what that is?” he said.

”Yes,” said Hetty, whose face showed flushed in the flickering light, ”it is a five-dollar bill.”

Leger looked at her sharply, and then laughed. ”Well,” he said, ”I suppose you can afford it--and, after all, I'm not sure it isn't the best thing you could do with it.”

Hetty said nothing but went into the shanty, and it was next morning before Leger, who looked very thoughtful as he sat beside the fire, saw any more of her. He had already realized that the possession of a pretty sister is a responsibility.

For a week or two afterwards Ingleby alternately a.s.sisted Tomlinson in the building of a flume and worked on his claim, but it was, perhaps, fortunate that he had now shaken off the fierce impatience which had driven him to overtax his strength when hope was strong in him. Indeed, of late a curious la.s.situde had crept upon him, though he still toiled on; and it was only the fact that provisions were a consideration which induced him to accompany Sewell and Tomlinson on an expedition to look for a black-tail deer.

Tomlinson brought a tent with him, and Ingleby and Sewell were sitting outside it one evening when Trooper Probyn and the corporal came up leading a laden horse. Horses were very little use for riding in that country, but there were trails they could with some difficulty be led along, and the few strips of natural prairie afforded them a precarious sustenance. There was also no other means of transport except the miner's back. The corporal bade Probyn pull the beast up beside the tent and loosed the pack-lariat.

”You can get up when we've hove the traps off, and see if the Indian's there,” he said. ”If he is, bring him along. I guess we'll make nothing by pus.h.i.+ng on to-night.”

Trooper Probyn, swinging himself into the saddle, scrambled up the hillside, which was comparatively clear of undergrowth just there, while the corporal sat down beside the fire.

”We've had supper. You don't mind our camping here?” he asked.

Sewell, who lay, pipe in hand, upon a bundle of withered fern, raised his head.

”There's room in the tent. It's a fair-sized one,” he said. ”You're going on into the ranges?”

The corporal looked at him meditatively. ”Right through to the Westerhouse Gully, if we can get there. It appears a blame rough country; but Captain Esmond has a notion that a trail could be made this way, and from Westerhouse one could make the Yukon. It's part of his business to see what can be done to open up communication.”

Sewell turned and glanced towards the snow which stretched in a great white rampart across the valley. Beneath it a tremendous wall of rock dropped to the pines below, which crawled round the crests and up the gullies of a desolation of jumbled crags. Dark forest streaked by filmy mist filled the devious hollows at their feet.

”You are right about the country. I should imagine it to be a particularly rough one,” he said.

”Well,” said the corporal, ”it seems quite certain the Indians used to go through after the deer and salmon; and it's believed that one or two white men have made Westerhouse that way, too.”

He stopped a moment, and glanced at Sewell. ”You were away somewhere quite a while, weren't you?”

Sewell laughed, and Ingleby, who watched them both, wondered whether the corporal knew that he was one of the few white men who had traversed the defiles of the divide.

”I was,” he said. ”Still, you see, it really isn't any other person's business where I go to.”

The corporal nodded with dry good-humour. ”I guess it wasn't Westerhouse, anyway,” he said. ”I'm not sure we'll get there, though an Indian came along to the outpost who figured he could take us.”

Ingleby glanced at Sewell with a little smile. The corporal's belief in the capabilities of the police was admirable, and more or less warranted, for the wardens of the Northwest are hard-riding men; but he was, after all, from the prairie, and horses are very little used in the Green River country. Ingleby, however, fancied he was not quite certain that communication had not been already effected with the Westerhouse Gully. Sewell, who apparently understood Ingleby's glance, said nothing.

”There are only two of you here?” asked the corporal.