The Foreigner Part 44

"Good afternoon! Am I right in thinking that this is the engineer's camp, for which a load of oats was ordered this morning?" Jack French was standing, hat in hand, looking his admiration and perplexity, for Kalman had not told him anything of this girl.

"Yes, this is the camp. At least, I heard Mr. Harris say he expected a load of oats; but," she added in slight confusion, "it was from another man, a young man, the man, I mean, who was here this morning."

"Confusion, indeed!" came a m.u.f.fled voice from the closed tent.

Jack French glanced quickly around, but saw no one.

"Oh," said Miss Marjorie, struggling with her laughter, "it's my Aunt; she was much alarmed this morning. You see, the wolf and the dogs ran right into her tent. It was terrible."

"Terrible, indeed," said Jack French, with grave politeness.

"I could only get the most incoherent account of the whole matter.

I hope your Aunt was not hurt."

"Hurt, indeed!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed a m.u.f.fled voice. "It was nearer killed, I was."

Upon this, Miss Marjorie ran to the tent door. "Aunt," she cried, lifting up the flap, "you might as well come out and meet Mr.--"

"French, Jack French, as I am known in this free country."

"My Aunt, Miss Menzies."

"Very happy to meet you, madam." Jack's bow was so inexpressibly elegant that Aunt Janet found herself adopting her most gracious, Glasgow society manner.

French was profuse in his apologies and sympathetic regrets, as he gravely listened to Aunt Janet's excited account of her warm adventure. The perfect gravity and the profuse sympathy with which he heard the tale won Aunt Janet's heart, and she privately decided that here, at last, she had found in this wild and terrible country a man in whom she could entirely confide.

Under Miss Marjorie's direction, French unloaded his oats, the girl pouring forth the while a stream of observations, exclamations, and interrogations upon all subjects imaginable, and with such an abandonment of good fellowship that French, for the first time in twenty years, found himself offering hospitality to a party in which ladies were to be found. Miss Menzies accepted the invitation with eager alacrity.

"Oh! it will be lovely, won't it, Aunt Janet? We have not yet seen a real ranch, and besides," she added, "we have no money to pay for our oats."

"That matters not at all," said French; "but if your Aunt will condescend to grace with her presence my poor bachelor's hall, we shall be most grateful."

Aunt Janet was quite captivated, and before she knew it, she had accepted the invitation for the party.

"Oh, good!" cried Miss Marjorie in ecstasy; "we shall come to-morrow, Mr. French."

And with this news French drove back to the ranch, to the disgust of old Mackenzie, who dreaded "women folks," and to Kalman's alternating delight and dismay. That short visit had established between the young girl and Jack French a warm and abiding friendship that in a more conventional atmosphere it would have taken years to develop. To her French realized at once all her ideals of what a Western rancher should be, and to French the frank, fresh innocence of her unspoiled heart appealed with irresistible force. They had discovered each other in that single hour.

CHAPTER XVI

HOW KALMAN FOUND HIS MINE

The girl's enthusiasm for her new-found friend was such that the whole party decided to accept his invitation. And so they did, spending a full day and night on the ranch, exploring, under French's guidance, the beauty spots, and investigating with the greatest interest, especially on Miss Marjorie's part, the farming operations, over which Kalman was presiding.

That young man, in dumb and abashed confusion of face, strictly avoided the party, appearing only at meals. There, while he made a brave show, he was torn between the conflicting emotions of admiration of the easy nonchalance and self-possession with which Jack played the host, and of furious rage at the air of proprietorship which Mr. Edgar Penny showed towards Miss Marjorie.

Gladly would he have crushed into a shapeless pulp the ruddy, chubby face of that young man. Kalman found himself at times with his eyes fixed upon the very spot where his fingers itched to grip that thick-set neck, but in spite of these pa.s.sing moments of fury, the whole world was new to him. The blue of the sky, the shimmer of the lake, the golden yellow of the poplars, all things in earth and heaven, were shining with a new glory. For him the day's work had no weariness. He no longer trod the solid ground, but through paths of airy bliss his soul marched to the strains of celestial music.

Poor Kalman! When on that fateful morning upon his virgin soul there dawned the vision of the maid, the hour of fate struck for him. That most ancient and most divine of frenzies smote him.

He was deliciously, madly in love, though he knew it not. It is something to his credit, however, that he allowed the maiden to depart without giving visible token of this divine frenzy raging within his breast, unless it were that in the blue of his eyes there came a deeper blue, and that under the tan of his cheek a pallor crept. But when on their going the girl suddenly turned in her saddle and, waving her hand, cried, "Good-by, Kalman," the pallor fled, chased from his cheek by a hot rush of Slavic blood as he turned to answer, "Good-by." He held his hat high in a farewell salutation, as he had seen Jack do, and then in another moment she was gone, and with her all the glory of that golden autumn day.

To Kalman it seemed as if months or years must have pa.s.sed since he first saw her by her Aunt's tent on that eventful morning. To take up the ordinary routine was impossible to him. That very night, rolling up his blankets and grub for three days, and strapping on to his saddle an axe and a shovel, Kalman rode off down the Night Hawk Creek, telling Mackenzie gruffly, as he called his dogs to follow, that he purposed digging out a coyote's den that he knew lay somewhere between the lake and the Creek mouth.

The afternoon of the second day found him far down the Creek, where it plunged headlong into the black ravine below, not having discovered his wolf den and not much caring whether he should or not; for as he rode through the thick scrub he seemed to see dancing before him in the glancing beams that rained down through the yellow poplar leaves a maiden's face with saucy brown eyes that laughed at him and lured him and flouted him all at once.

At the edge of the steep descent he held up his broncho. He had never been down this way before. The sides of the ravine pitched sharply into a narrow gorge through which the Night Hawk brawled its way to the Saskatchewan two miles farther down.

"We'll scramble down here, Jacob," he said to his broncho,--so named by Brown, for that he had "supplanted" in Kalman's affection his first pony, the pinto.

He dismounted, drew the reins over the broncho's head, and began the descent, followed by his horse, slipping, sliding, hanging on now by trees and now by jutting rocks. By the edge of what had once been a small landslip, he clutched a poplar tree to save himself from going over; but the tree came away with him, and horse and man slid and rolled down the slope, bringing with them a great ma.s.s of earth and stone. Unhappily, Jacob in his descent rolled over upon the boy's leg. There was a snap, a twinge of sharp pain, and boy and horse lay half imbedded in the loose earth. Kalman seized a stick that lay near at hand.

"Get up, Jacob, you brute!" he cried, giving him a sharp blow.

Jacob responded with a mighty plunge and struggled free, making it possible for Kalman to extricate himself. He was relieved to discover that he could stand on his feet and could walk, but only with extreme pain. Upon examination he could find no sign of broken bones. He took a large handkerchief from his neck, bound it tightly about his foot and ankle.

"I say, Jacob, we're well out of that," he said, looking up at the great cave that had been excavated by the landslip. "Quite a hole, eh? A great place to sleep in. Lots of spruce about, too. We'll just camp here for the night. I guess I'll have to let those coyotes go this trip. This beastly foot of mine won't let me dig much. h.e.l.lo!" he continued, "that's a mighty queer rock. I'll just take a look at that hole."

He struggled up over the debris and entered the cave. Through the earth there showed a glistening seam slanting across one side and ending in a broken ledge.

"By Jove!" he cried, copying Jack French in his habit of speech as in other habits, "that looks like the coal we used to find along the Winnipeg tracks."

He broke off a piece of the black seam. It crumbled in his hands.

"I guess not," he said; "but we'll get the shovel at it."

Forgetting for the time the pain of his foot, he scrambled down over the soft earth, got his shovel, and was soon hard at work excavating the seam. Soon he had a very considerable pile lying at the front of the cave.

"Now we'll soon see," he cried.

He hurriedly gathered some dry wood, heaped the black stuff upon it, lighted it, and sat down to wait the issue. Wild hopes were throbbing at his heart. He knew enough of the value of coal to realize the importance of the discovery. If it should prove to be coal, what a splendid thing it would be for Jack and for him!

How much they would be able to do for Mrs. French and for his sister Irma! Amid his dreams a new face mingled, a face with saucy brown eyes, but on that face he refused to allow himself the rapture of looking. He dared not, at least not yet. Keenly he watched the fire. Was it taking hold of the black lumps?

The flames were dying down. The wood had nearly burned itself out.

The black lumps were charred and dead, and with their dying died his hopes.

He glanced out upon the ravine. Large soft flakes of snow were falling lazily through the trees.

"I'll get my blankets and grub under cover, and get some more wood for the night. It's going to be cold."

He heaped the remains of the wood he had gathered upon the fire, and with great difficulty, for his foot was growing more and more painful with every move, he set about gathering wood, of which there was abundance near at hand, and making himself snug for the night. He brought up a pail of water from the Creek, and tethered his broncho where there was a bunch of gra.s.s at the bottom of the ravine. Before he had finished these operations the ground was white with snow, and the wind was beginning to sigh ominously through the trees.

"Going to be a blizzard, sure," he said. "But let her blow. We're all right in here. h.e.l.lo! where are those dogs? After the wolves, I'll be bound. They'll come back when they're ready."

With every moment the snow came down more thickly, and the wind grew toward a gale.

"If it's going to be a storm, I'd better lay in some more wood."