Delilah of the Snows Part 30

"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 fashion 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 pushing 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.

"No," said Ingleby. "Tomlinson is with us. He went out this afternoon to look for a deer, and should be back any minute now."

The corporal looked thoughtful. "I'm not quite sure we'd have camped here if I'd known that," he said. "Still, if you can keep your man in hand, I guess I can answer for the trooper."

Ingleby fancied they could promise this, and for a while nothing more was said. Darkness crept up the valley, though there was still a saffron light on the towering snow, and the peaks that lay in shadow cut with a cold, blue whiteness against a wondrous green transparency. Then the dew began to settle, calling up the drowsy odours of the pines, and an impressive stillness pervaded the mountain solitude. It grew colder rapidly, and Ingleby, who rose and flung fresh branches on the fire, stood looking towards the west, a spare black figure, with outline clean-cut as a cameo against the flickering light, when the sharp ringing of a rifle came suddenly down the valley. It rang from rock to rock, as the hillsides flung it back, and died away among the dimness of the pines.

"Tomlinson!" said Sewell. "I fancy he has got that deer. There's scarcely wood enough to keep the fire in until morning, Walter. If you don't want to light another for breakfast, hadn't you better cut some more?"

Ingleby, who took up an axe, moved back into the bush, and the silence was broken by a rhythmic thudding that vibrated among the shadowy trunks, which was unfortunate, because it tended to confuse the corporal's hearing. He was an opinionated man, and a good deal depended upon his being able to correctly locate a sound just then. He would, however, probably have done so, had his attention not been fixed upon the tobacco he was shredding. A minute or two had pa.s.sed when the crash of a rifle came down the valley again, and he laughed.

"I guess your man didn't get that deer right off," he said.

Sewell smiled, and waited until Ingleby came back with an armful of wood.

"Our friend suggests that Tomlinson has been throwing cartridges away,"

he said.

"Well," said Ingleby, "it's a thing he very seldom does, and I feel almost sure the last shot came from a different direction, and was farther off. Probably Trooper Probyn fired at something in the bush."

It was an unfortunate suggestion, for the corporal, who had spent a good many years on the lonely levels of the prairie, was, with some reason, proud of his fine sense of hearing, and it by no means pleased him that a young man new to the wilderness should presume to throw the least doubt upon his ability to locate a rifle shot. This naturally confirmed him in his belief in the correctness of his opinion.

"It was Tomlinson who fired twice," he said. "I guess Probyn knows better than to blaze away Government ammunition without permission."

Ingleby said nothing. The point was, or so it appeared to him, of no importance; and the three, drawing in closer to the fire, sat smoking in silence while the pale stars came out above the pines. At last there was a tramp of feet, and Tomlinson strode out of the shadows carrying a deer with its forelegs drawn over his shoulders. He threw it down, and stood flushed and gasping, with the firelight on his face. Ingleby fancied he did not see the corporal, who could, however, see him.

"I suppose you didn't meet Trooper Probyn?" asked Sewell.

Tomlinson started a little, and there was for a moment a curious look in his face, which did not escape the corporal's attention.

"No," he said shortly. "I don't know that I want to. What is he doing here?"

"He went out to meet an Indian who's to show us a trail across the divide," said the corporal. "Rode out 'most an hour ago. He'd keep the range side."

"Then, as I came down the south fork of the creek, I wouldn't have met him, anyway," said Tomlinson promptly. He stood still a moment, and then turned to Ingleby. "Hang that deer up, Walter. I'll have supper, if it's ready."

Sewell set food and a can of green tea before him, and he ate in silence until Ingleby glanced at him.

"Did you get that deer a little while ago?" he said.

"No. It was two hours since, anyway."

"Still, we heard you shooting."

Tomlinson, who was an excellent shot, and somewhat proud of the fact, laughed in a slightly embarra.s.sed fashion.

"Well," he said, "I guess you may have done so, but I didn't get the deer. It was in the fern, and the light was going. I just got the one shot, and it was too dark to follow up the trail."