The Gold Trail Part 2

"And mine!"

"And yours," admitted Weston. "As I said, I'm particularly sorry.

Still, if you will let me have the bag afterward I can, perhaps, mend the lock. You see, I a.s.sisted a general jobbing mechanic."

Ida Stirling flashed a quick glance at him. He had certainly a pleasant voice, and his manner was whimsically deferential.

"Why didn't you stay with him?" she asked. "Mending plows and wagons must have been easier than track-grading."

Weston's eyes twinkled.

"He said I made him tired; and the fact is I mended a clock. That is, I tried--it was rather a good one when I got hold of it."

The girl laughed, and the laugh set them on good terms with each other. Then she said:

"That load is far too heavy for you to climb over these boulders with when you have an injured foot. You can give me the valise, at least."

"No," said Weston, resolutely, "this is a good deal easier than shoveling gravel, as well as pleasanter; and the foot really doesn't trouble me very much. Besides, if I hadn't cut it, Ca.s.sidy wouldn't have sent me here."

He was, however, mistaken in supposing that the construction foreman had been influenced only by a desire to get rid of a man who was to some extent incapacitated. As a matter of fact, Miss Stirling, who had been rather pleased with the part he had played two days ago, had, when her father insisted on her taking a white man as well as the Indians, given Ca.s.sidy instructions that he should be sent. Still, she naturally did not mention this, and indeed said nothing of any account while they went on to the canoes.

It was slacker water above the rapid; and all afternoon they slid slowly up on deep, winding reaches of the still, green river.

Sometimes it flashed under dazzling suns.h.i.+ne, but at least as often they moved through the dim shadow of towering pines that rolled, rank on rank, somber and stately, up the steep hillside, while high above them all rose tremendous ramparts of eternal snow. Then, as the sun dipped behind the great mountain wall, the clean, aromatic fragrance of pine and fir and cedar crept into the cooling air, and a stillness so deep that it became almost oppressive descended upon the lonely valley. The splash of pole or paddle broke through it with a startling distinctness, and the faint gurgle at the bows became curiously intensified. The pines grew slower, blacker and more solemn; filmy trails of mist crawled out from among the hollows of the hills; and the still air was charged with an elixir-like quality when Weston ran his canoe ash.o.r.e.

While he and the Indians set about erecting a couple of tents, he saw Miss Kinnaird standing near him and gazing up across the misty pines toward the green transparency that still hung above the blue-white gleam of snow.

"This," she said to Miss Stirling, "is really wonderful. One can't get hold of it at once. It's tremendous."

The smallest of the pines rose two hundred feet above her; and they ran up until they dwindled to insignificance far aloft at the foot of a great scarp of rock that rose beyond them for a thousand feet or so and then gave place in turn to climbing fields of snow.

The girl, who was an artist, drew in her breath.

"Switzerland and Norway. It's like them both--and yet it grips you harder than either," she added. "I suppose it's because there are no hotels, or steamers. Probably very few white people have ever been here before."

"I really don't think many have," said Ida Stirling.

Then Miss Kinnaird laughed softly as she glanced at her attire.

"I must take off these fripperies. They're out of key," she said. "One ought to wear deerskins, or something of that kind here."

Weston heard nothing further, and remembered that, after all, the girl's sentiments were no concern of his. It was his business to prepare the supper and wait on the party; and he set about it.

Darkness had descended upon the valley when he laid the plates of indurated ware on a strip of clean white s.h.i.+ngle, and then drawing back a few yards sat down beneath the first of the pines in case they needed anything further. A fire blazed and crackled between two small logs felled for the purpose and rolled close together, and its flickering light fell upon him and those who sat at supper, except at times when it faded suddenly and the shadows closed in again. He was then attired picturesquely in a fringed deerskin jacket dressed by some of the Blackfeet across the Rockies. Kinnaird, who had once or twice glanced in his direction, gazed hard at him.

"Have you ever been in India?" he asked.

"No, sir," said Weston in a formal manner, though "sir" is not often used deferentially in western Canada.

Kinnaird appeared thoughtful.

"Well," he said, "I can't help thinking that I have come across you somewhere before. I have a good memory for faces, and yours is familiar."

"I have never seen you until to-day," said Weston. "I don't remember your name, either."

"The curious thing," persisted Kinnaird, "is that while I can't quite locate you I am almost sure I am right. What makes me feel more certain is that, though you were younger then, you have grown into the man I should have expected you to." Then he laughed. "Anyway, it's clear that you don't remember me."

He turned to the others, and Miss Kinnaird asked for more coffee, after which Weston, who brought it, sat still again to wait until he could take away the plates. It was evident that his presence placed no restraint on the conversation. At length he became suddenly intent.

Kinnaird was contrasting Canada and England for Miss Stirling's benefit.

"Of course," he said, "we have nothing like this, but in the north, at least, we have odd bits of rugged grandeur where the wildness of the hills about one is emphasized by the green fertility of the valleys. There is a typical place where we spent a few months last year that I should like you to see. If you come back with us, as you half promised, we will take you there."

Weston leaned forward a little, for he had still a curious tenderness for the land of the fells and dales in which he had been born. He did not know that Ida Stirling, who had watched him closely when Kinnaird addressed him, had now fixed her eyes on him again. The latter turned to her as he proceeded.

"The old house," he said, "would make a picture in itself with its little stone-ribbed windows, and the much older square tower and curtain wall that form one wing. There is a terraced garden in front, and a stream comes frothing out of a wooded ghyll at the foot of it."

Weston started, for there was no doubt that the house Kinnaird described was the one in which he had been born. As it happened, the firelight fell upon his intent face as he waited for the answer, when Miss Stirling, who had missed his start, asked a question:

"The people who owned it were friends of yours?"

"No," said Kinnaird, "I never saw them. I took the place through an agency for the rough shooting and as a change from London. They had to let it and live in a neighboring town. The result of slack management and agricultural depression, I believe."

Weston set his lips. He had written home once rejecting a proposition made him, and his people had afterward apparently forgotten him. He had made up his mind that he would not trouble them again, at least while he toiled as a track-grader or a hired man; but now, when it seemed that trouble had come upon them, he regretted many things.

Kinnaird signed to him that he might take away the plates, and he gathered them up, scarcely conscious of what he was doing, and then stumbled and dropped the pile of them. Though made of indurated fiber, they fell with a startling clatter, and Kinnaird looked at him sharply as he picked them up; but in another few moments he had vanished beyond the range of the firelight into the shadows of the bush.

Ida Stirling had, however, noticed enough to arouse a young woman's curiosity, especially as there was a suggestion of romance in it, and before she went to sleep she thought a good deal about the man she had never seen until two days ago.

CHAPTER III

THE MODEL

The morning broke clear and still across the scented bush, and Miss Kinnaird and Ida Stirling, who had been awakened early by the wonderful freshness in the mountain air, strolled some distance out of camp. For a time they wandered through shadowy aisles between the tremendous trunks, breathing in sweet resinous odors, and then, soon after the first sunrays came slanting across a mountain shoulder, they came out upon a head of rock above the river. A hemlock had fallen athwart it, and they sat down where they could look out upon a majestic panorama of towering rock and snow.

Arabella Kinnaird gazed at it intently when she had shaken some of the dew from the frills and folds of her rather bedraggled skirt.

"It will never be quite the same again," she observed, evidently in reference to the latter, and then waved one hand as though to indicate the panorama, for she was usually voluble and disconnected in her conversation. "This, as I said last night, is wonderful--in fact, it almost oppresses one. It makes one feel so little, and I'm not sure that I like that, though no doubt it does one good."

Her companion smiled.

"Aren't you going to paint it?" she asked.

Miss Kinnaird pursed up her face, which was a trick she had.

"Oh," she said, "I don't know. After all, portraiture is my specialty, and this silent grandeur is a little beyond my interpretation."

She paused, and added the next few words in an authoritative manner, as though she had a truth of some consequence to deliver: