Alton of Somasco

CHAPTER III-2

The teamster, who made no answer, shook the reins, and they went lurching over a horrible trail down the valley, while Miss Deringham delightedly breathed in the scent of the cedars and felt the lash of snow-chilled wind bring the blood to her face. She, however, wished that the bundle of straw which served as seat would not move about so much, and fancied her father would have been more comfortable had he not been menaced by a jolting piece of machinery. Their progress was rudely interrupted presently, for the teamster standing upright reined the horses in on their haunches, and the girl saw a line of loaded ponies straggling up the winding trail. One of the men who plodded behind them glanced at the driver of the wagon with an ironical grin, and Miss Deringham saw a warmer colour creep into the sun-darkened cheek. This was, she fancied, a man with a temper.

"Now," he said, and then stopped suddenly. The other man's grin became more pronounced. "You can start in," he said. "We're not bashful."

The teamster said nothing, but a faint twinkle replaced the anger in his eye, when as they started again Miss Deringham glanced at him questioningly. "That," he said, "wasn't quite fair to me. They knew I couldn't talk back, you see."

Miss Deringham laughed, and when an hour or two later he pulled the horses up beside a lake and made one or two alterations to enhance her comfort, glanced at him again.

"Did you come out here from England?" said she.

The man's face grew a trifle grim. "No," he said gravely. "Whatever could have made you think that of me?"

There were reasons why the girl could not explain, and the man stretched out an arm with a little proud gesture that became him curiously. "I am a Canadian first and last," said he. "Isn't this country good enough for anybody?"

Miss Deringham was forced to admit that it apparently was. A blue lake gleaming steely blue in the sunlight stretched away before them between the towering firs, and beyond it lay an entrancing vision of great white peaks.

"You do not like England, then?" said she.

The teamster smiled a little. "That," he said, "is not a fair question to ask me. You and your father live there, don't you?"

Miss Deringham felt that she had trespassed, but was astonished that this teamster should have wit enough to silence her with a compliment. She also decided that he should not have the opportunity again.

They went on, winding along steep hillsides, splashing through sparkling rivers, and lurching through the dim shadow of the bush, until when the saffron sunset flamed along the peaks they came to the head of a long declivity. On the one hand the snow towered in awful white purity, on the other scattered firs sloped sharply down into a hollow until they were lost in the fleecy vapours that streamed athwart them. "Sit tight," said the teamster. "It's eight miles to Hobart's ranch, and there's no time to lose if we're going to get in there to-night."

He shook the reins, and the girl clutched the side of the wagon as she felt the lash of the wind and noticed how the firs rushed past. It was jolting horribly, and she was relieved when as the trail grew steeper she saw the man tightening his grip on the reins and heard the grating of the brake. It ceased suddenly, one of the horses stumbled, then flung up its head, and they were going down faster than ever, while the man had flung his shoulders back and was dragging at the reins. It dawned upon Miss Deringham that something had gone wrong and the team were running away.

There was now only white mist beneath them and the roar of water. Trees came whirling up out of it, rock and bush swept past, while now and then the wheels hung almost over the edge of the declivity, and the girl could look down upon the sombre firs in the haze below. After one glance, however, she felt that it would not be well for her to do so. Suddenly one of the horses stumbled again, and the teamster flung her father the reins. "Get hold," he said. "Line's in the trace-hook."

He was over the front of the wagon next moment, and the girl gasped as she saw him crawl out with an arm across the back of one of the galloping horses and his knees on the pole. It looked horribly dangerous, and probably was, for the wagon was lurching furiously down the declivity. Then he leaned out and downwards over the horse, clawing at something desperately, and Miss Deringham would have shut her eyes if she could have done so. In place of it she stared fascinated at the clinging figure while the trees flashed past, until it was evident that the man had accomplished his task. How he got back she did not know, but he was once more on the driving-seat when his voice reached her breathlessly.

"Get a good hold. I'm going to put them at the hill when I can," he said.

They swept on until the hillside sloped more gently on the one hand, and the teamster flung, himself backwards, dragging at the reins. The wagon, tilting, swung partly round, then there was a horrible lurching, and the lathered beasts were floundering up a slope, smashing down the undergrowth and fern, until the vehicle stopped suddenly with a crash. The man sprang down and Miss Deringham and her father lost no time in following him, while when at last the team stood still trembling, he crawled out from under the wagon and turned to them.

"That brake never was much good," he said. "One of the beasts stumbling jerked the line into the hook there, and the fore-wheel beam gave out when we struck the tree. I'm most afraid we'll have to stop right here tonight!"

"But that, as you will realize, is quite impossible," said Deringham, glancing towards his daughter.

The man nodded. "It looks that way now, but you wait until I've fixed things up," said he. "Then if you feel like walking eight miles I'll go on with you."

The girl noticed the swift orderliness of all he did as she watched him take out the horses and tether them, tear down armfuls of cedar-twigs, and then pack them between some flour-bag's and the side of the wagon, over which he stretched a strip of waterproof sheeting. Then he made a fire, disappeared into the mist, and coming back with the kettle, strode into the bush again. In the meanwhile Deringham, looking into the wagon, pointed to the twigs.

"Do you think you could sleep there?" he said.

The girl glanced at the twigs. They looked soft and springy, and had a pleasant aromatic fragrance, while the covering sheet was thick.

"I know I could not walk eight miles," she said. "Where has our accomplished companion gone to?"

Deringham laughed. "To look for something for supper in the bush, I believe," he said. "I also fancy if there is anything eatable in the vicinity he will find it."

The snows above had lost their brilliancy, and it was dark below, when the teamster returned with several fine trout which he skewered upon a barberry stem. He also brought a deerhide bag from the wagon, and presently announced that supper was ready, while Alice Deringham, who long afterwards remembered that meal, enjoyed it considerably more than she would have believed herself capable of doing a few days earlier. She had travelled far in search of something new, and this was the first time she had tasted the biting green tea with the reek of the smoke about it from a blackened pannikin. Grindstone bread baked in a hole in the ground was also a novelty, and the crumbling flakes of salmon smoked by some Siwash Indian a delicacy, while she wondered if it was only the keen mountain air which made the flesh of the big trout so good, or whether it owed anything to skilful cookery.

There was also, by way of background, the glow of the fire flickering athwart the great columnar trunks which ran up into the dimness above her, and the cold glimmer of the snows with a pale star beyond them when the red flame sank, while the hoarse roar of an unseen river emphasized the silence. At first she felt there was something unreal and theatrical about it all. The light that blazed up and died, awful serenity of the snow, and the vast impenetrable shadows filled with profound silence, seemed all part of a fervidly-imagined spectacle; but as the silence deepened and gained upon her the position was reversed, and she seemed to feel that this was the reality, the environment man was created for, and she, wrapped in the tinsel of civilization, out of place in the primeval wilderness. Her father, immaculate as ever in his travelling tweeds, with his lean, pallid face, also jarred upon the picture, and Harry the teamster, bronzed by frost and sun, with the stain of the soil upon him, alone a part of its harmonies. They seemed no longer harsh and barbaric, but vast and subtle, and she felt she must go back to the simplicity she had laid aside before she could grasp their meaning.

It was the man who first broke the silence. "I was wondering if you would like a cigar, sir?" he said.

Deringham glanced at the Indian-wrought case, which was singularly artistic, somewhat dubiously, but remembering that something was due to their host, drew a cigar out and lighted it. He said nothing for a minute, and then turned to the teamster.

"Wherever did you get cigars of that kind from? They are far better than any I could find in Winnipeg," he said.

Miss Deringham noticed the man's eyes close a trifle, and fancied that very little would call the steely sparkle she had seen when the pack-ponies blocked the trail into them.

"Well," he said quietly, "a friend of mine sent them me, and I believe they came from Cuba. We don't raise cigars of any kind in British Columbia."

Miss Deringham saw her father's face, and felt quietly amused. He could, she knew, assume a manner which went far to carry him smoothly through discontented share-holders' meetings, but it seemed that the men who dwelt in the wilderness were at least as exigent as those who dwelt in London. Deringham, however, glanced at the speaker.

"The least said is often the soonest mended, but if you think——" he said.

The teamster laughed. "It should come from me, but the fact is I was worrying about that wagon and forgot," he said. "Now, if there is anything I can tell you about this country."

"I wonder," said Alice Deringham, "whether you know Mr. Alton of

Somasco."

"Oh, yes," said the man, with a little smile.

"You have worked for him possibly?" said the girl.

Harry the teamster nodded. "Considerably harder than I ever did for anybody else," he said.

The next question required some consideration, and he appeared to ruminate over it. "You mean what kind of man he is?" he said. "Well, he's not very much to look at, and there are a good many things he don't know."

"So I should have fancied," said the girl, more to herself than the listener, and wondered whether it was an effect of the firelight or the curious twinkle had once more flashed into his eyes. "You do not seem to like him?" she said.

The man looked into the fire. "The trouble is I know how mean he is," he said.

"Mean?" said the girl. "That is niggardly?"

"No," said Harry; "I don't think he's niggardly. It's another word for low down in this country. You see he has always had to work hard for a living, and never had time to teach himself the nice little ways you folks have in England. He's just a big rough rancher who has fought pretty toughly for his own hand, and that's apt to take the gentleness out of a man, and make him what you would call coarse and brutal."

The girl seemed to shiver. "Is there nothing to say on the other side?" she said.

"Well," said the teamster reflectively, "I think he means well, and never took more than his right from any man, while there are people who would as soon have his word as its value in dollar bills."

"You seem to know him suspiciously well," said Miss Deringham sharply.

"I do," said Harry simply, as he stood up. "Anyway, as well as most people. You know where I fixed your bed up, sir, when you want to turn in. There's nothing in this bush, miss, that would hurt you."

He stepped back into the shadows, and the camp seemed lonely without him, while as the girl shivered in the cold wind, Deringham glanced at her curiously.

"Well?" he said.

Then the red crept into his daughter's cheeks and a sparkle Into her eyes. "It will take a very long time to get used to. I could almost hate the man," she said,

"It is hard to lose one's inheritance," said Deringham dryly.

The flush grew a trifle plainer in his daughter's cheek. "It is not the value of the land," she said. "But think of such a man, a brutal, cattle-driving boor, ruling at Carnaby where my mother lived."

"Still," said Deringham, "the value is not inconsiderable, and Carnaby would have been yours some day."

The girl made a gesture of impatience. "That is not my complaint," she said. "I could have let it pass without bitterness to an Englishman who would have lived in it in accordance with the traditions of his race, but this man——"

"Will no doubt cut down the timber, open the fireclay pits, and desecrate the park with brickworks," he said. "That is, unless he has convivial proclivities, and, finding himself ostracized, fills Carnaby with turf and billiard-room blacklegs."

The girl ground her heel viciously into the mould. "Have you any reason for going into these details?" she said.

Deringham watched her closely. "I only wished you to understand the position, and to remember that you and I are both to some extent at the mercy of our rancher kinsman," he said.

He left her presently to seek the couch the teamster had prepared for him, and Miss Deringham retired to the wagon. She found the bed of cedar-twigs comfortable, but it was some time before she slept and dreamed that a stranger dressed in coarse blue jean was holding high revel in the Carnaby she loved. She was awakened by the howl of a wolf, and lay still shivering, until she saw the tall, dusky figure of the Canadian approach the fire and stand there as if on guard with the red light upon him. Then with a curious sense of security she went to sleep again.