Chapter 12

CONFIDENCE MISPLACED

There was sliding mist in the Somasco valley, and the pines were dripping when Alton and Miss Deringham stood upon a slippery ledge above the river. Just there it came down frothing into a deep, black pool, swung round it white-streaked, and swept on with a hoarse murmur into the gloom of the bush again. A wall of fissured rock overhung the pool on the farther side, and a fallen pine wetted with the spray stretched across the outflow and rested on one jagged pinnacle. A wet wind which drove the vapours before it called up wild music from the cedars that loomed through them on the side of the hill.

"I'd cast across the rush at the head of the pool and let the fly come down," said Alton. "There's generally a big trout lying in the eddy behind the boulder."

The girl nodded, and the line sweeping back towards the pines behind her went forward again. It fell lightly amidst the frothing rush, and Alton smiled approval as he watched the rod point follow it downstream towards a foam-licked rock. It swung to and fro a moment, then slid on again towards the still black stretch behind the stone, tightened there suddenly, and ran, tense and straight, upstream again, while the reel clacked and rattled.

"A big one," said Alton quietly. "Check the winch a little, and keep the butt down. He can't face the rapid, and you'll lose him unless you can keep a strain on when he turns again."

The girl flung herself backwards, with eyes dilated and a warmth in her cheeks, the rod bending above her, and the line ripping its way towards the welter at the head of the pool. There it curved inwards a trifle, and Alton shouted, "Reel!"

There was a quick rattle, something broke the water with a silvery flash, and the line was shooting downstream again.

"Let him go, unless he makes for the fir yonder," said Alton quietly.

For the space of several minutes the line swept up and down the pool, and Miss Deringham watched it almost breathlessly with fingers on the reel. Then it swept straight towards the fallen fir.

"Stop him!" said Alton. "It's a good trace. Keep the butt down."

The rod bent further, a big silvery body rushed clear of the water and went down again, while next moment the line stopped and quivered as it rasped against the fallen fir. Miss Deringham turned to her companion with a gesture of consternation.

"Oh!" she said breathlessly. "It has gone."

"I don't know," said Alton, "That trace is a good deal thicker than what you use in England. I'll see if I can get him. Keep your thumb on the reel."

He took up a net, and clambering along the ledge sprang lightly upon the log. It was sharply rounded, the bark was wet, and the way along it obstructed by the stake-like ends of torn-off limbs, but the man crawled forward foot by foot with the swift whirl of current close beneath him. Then he knelt where the tree dipped almost level with the flood, and grasping the line with one hand swept the net in and out amidst the broken-off branches, while the girl watching him fancied she could see a bright flash between the splashes. Presently he rose again shaking his head, with nothing in the net.

"Give me a yard or two when I shout," he said.

Grasping a branch with one hand he lay down on the log, and lowered himself until arm and shoulder were in the river. Then he sank still further until his head was under too, and the girl shivered a little. It seemed to her that it would be difficult for even a good swimmer to extricate himself from the tangle of snapped-off branches between the log and the bottom of the river. Still, the clinging foot and arm were visible above the rush of frothing water. Then more of the man came into sight again, there was a half-smothered shout, and she loosed the reel, while in another moment or two Alton swung himself up dripping with part of one hand apparently thrust into a great flapping fish's head. With the back of it pressed gainst his knee he drew the head towards him, and the long silvery body became still, while the man stood up smiling.

"Fingers were made before nets, but I wasn't quite sure of him all the time," he said.

Miss Deringham, who was flushed and breathless, felt very gracious towards her companion just then. It was, she realized, a somewhat perilous thing he had done to please her, and this was gratifying in itself, while the knowledge that he had postponed several affairs which demanded his attention was more flattering still. He was also, in such surroundings, almost admirable as he stood before her bareheaded and dripping, the river frothing at his feet and the sliding mists behind him. Deerskin jacket and stained and faded jean, lean, sinewy figure, and bronzed face were all in keeping with the spirit of the scene. Then a voice came out of the bush.

"Hallo, Harry! Are you anywhere around?" it said.

Alton answered, and Miss Deringham felt distinctly displeased. She had been about to say something delicately apposite, and now Seaforth, whose company she could have dispensed with, stood on the bank above them, apparently quietly amused.

"You seem to be enjoying yourself, Harry," he said.

"Well," said Alton a trifle curtly, "you didn't come keeyowling through the bush like a prairie coyote to tell me that?"

"No," said Seaforth, with a sudden change in his voice which Miss Deringham noticed. "There's a man in from the settlement, and Hallam's selling Townshead up to-day according to his tale."

Alton scrambled swiftly along the log. "Just one question, Charley. Quite sure nobody came here with any message for me about it that you forgot?" he said.

Seaforth made a little gesture of impatience, and there was a trace of anger in his tone. "It is scarcely likely I should have forgotten that," he said.

Then he glanced at Miss Deringham, and was slightly bewildered by what he saw in her face. Seaforth had once or twice admired the girl's serenity in somewhat difficult surroundings, but there was now a suggestion of fear in her eyes, and she seemed to avoid Alton's gaze. It, however, passed in a moment, and she turned towards the rancher tranquilly.

"I wonder how far I am to blame," she said. "A man came here a day or two ago, and apparently endeavoured to tell me something. He was, however, unintelligible, and I fancy somebody had been giving him whisky."

"Mounted?" said Alton. "What kind of horse?"

Miss Deringham considered for a moment, and then possibly deciding that Alton would have no difficulty in ascertaining elsewhere, told him. "Tom!" he said grimly. "Well, I'll talk to him. You'll take Miss Deringham home, Charley, and then come on to Townshead's after me."

He swung away into the bush next moment, and Seaforth followed him more slowly with Miss Deringham. Neither of them spoke, but though the man's thoughts were busy with other affairs, he noticed that his companion glanced at him covertly. "The girl could have told us something more," he said to himself, and put a stern check on his impatience as he kept pace with her.

When they came out into the clearing they heard the thud of hoofs, and saw a mounted man send a horse at the tall split fence. The slip-rails were up, and the fence was unusually well put together, but there was a crash as the top bar flew apart, and presently the thud of hoofs grew fainter down the fir-shadowed trail. Miss Deringham now appeared quite serene again.

"Has he ridden off wet through as he was?" she said.

"I expect so," said Seaforth dryly. "Harry does not usually let trifles of that kind worry him, nor do I think there are many men who would have ridden at that fence."

Alice Deringham said nothing, but though she smiled Seaforth fancied that she was not pleased. Her thoughts were, however, of small importance to him, and he hastened fuming with impatience towards the stables.

It was some time later when Nellie Townshead stood by a window of her father's ranch. Jean-clad stock breeders and axemen hung about the clearing, and a little knot of men from the cities stood apart from them. A wagon, implements out of repair, old sets of harness, axes, saws, and shovels were littered about the front of the house, and there were two or three horses and a few poor cattle in the corral. The ranchers spoke slowly to one another, and their faces were sombre, but Hallam, who stood amidst the other men, was smiling over a big cigar. The girl clenched her hands as she watched him, and then turning her head looked down the valley.

"I fancy I hear hoofs. He told me he would come," she said, but Townshead, who sat apathetically in the old leather chair, shook his head.

"He has, of course, forgotten if he did," he said.

"No," said the girl with a trace of harshness in her voice. "Mr. Alton never forgets a promise. That must be the drumming of hoofs. Can you hear nothing?"

"The river," said Townshead despondently. "He will be too late directly. They are putting up the ranch."

Confidence and dismay seemed to struggle together in the face of the girl, but the former rose uppermost, for she clung fast to hope.

"There! Oh, why can they not stop talking? That is something now," she said.

"No," said Townshead. "Only the wind in the firs."

The girl leaned forward a little, drawing in her breath as she stared down the valley. The voices drowned the sound she fancied she had heard, and the colour came and went in her face when she caught one of them. "The thing's no better than robbery. Why isn't Harry Alton or his partner here?"

Nellie Townshead had asked herself the same question over and over again that day when rancher and axemen in somewhat embarrassed fashion tendered her their sympathy. What she expected from him she did not quite know, but she had a curious confidence in Alton, and at least as much in his comrade, and felt that even if the scheme her father had alluded to was not feasible there would be something they could do. Then she drew back from the window and sat down, with a little shiver as the harsh voice of the auctioneer rose from the clearing. She caught disjointed words and sentences.

"Don't need tell you what the place is worth. You have seen the boundaries. Richest soil in the Dominion. Grow anything. Now if I was a rancher. Well, I'm waiting for your offer."

He apparently waited some little time, and then a laugh that expressed bitterness in place of merriment followed the voice of one of the men from the cities.

"Put two hundred dollars on to it," said somebody, and there was another laugh, which the girl, recognizing the voice, understood; for it was known that the bidder had probably not ten dollars in his possession and was in debt at the store. The fact that this man whom she had scarcely spoken to should endeavour to help her while her friends at Somasco did nothing also brought a little flash of anger to her eyes. Then she told herself that there was time yet, and they would come.

The voices rose again more rapidly. "Fifty more. Another to me. Oh, what's the use of fooling. One hundred better. Twenty again to me."

Miss Townshead glanced at her father. "They'll stop presently," said he. "The place stands at a third of its value, but it would cripple most of them to pay for it if they got it now. The man from Vancouver who goes up by twenties will get it at half of what it cost me, and I don't think you need watch for rancher Alton."

Still Nellie Townshead did not quite give up hope. The bidding was only beginning, and there was time yet. She had been taught to look beneath the surface in Western Canada, and had cherished a curious respect for rancher Alton. The girl was young still, and he stood for her as a romantic ideal of the new manhood that was to grow to greatness in the wildest province of the Dominion, while now and then she fancied she saw something in his comrade's face which roused her pity and stirred her to sympathy. That, having made it unasked, the former should slight a promise of the kind appeared incomprehensible and she felt that if he did so her faith in the type he served as an example of would fall with him. There was also pressing need of some one to look to for guidance in her time of necessity, because Townshead was not the man to grapple with any difficulty, and most of his neighbours knew little or nothing about the cities.

"Father," she said, "in case the purchaser turns us out where shall we go to-night? The stage does not go in to the railroad until a week to-day, and do you think there will be anything left over to keep us for a little in Vancouver?"

Townshead glanced at her querulously. "Somebody will take us in," said he. "I should have fancied, my dear, that you would have seen I am sufficiently distressed and unwell to-day without having to anticipate further difficulties. There will, I hope, be a balance. What is the bidding now?"

The girl listened, but for a few moments there was a significant silence, and her heart sank when a single voice rose. One or two others joined in, and there was silence again until the auctioneer repeated the offer. Then she turned quivering towards her father.

"You heard him?" she said.

Townshead groaned despondently, "I am afraid the prospect of a balance is very small," he said.

Again there was a stillness in the clearing, until the auctioneer's voice rose raucously expostulating. "It is really preposterous, gentlemen," he said. "I'm giving the place away."

"Well, I'll go ten better," said somebody, and the girl held her breath,

"Twenty!" said another man, and there was a laugh.

"Then that takes me. You can have the ranch."

The voice of the auctioneer rose again. "Nobody to follow him? Your last chance, gentlemen. He's getting it for nothing. Too late in a moment. Going--going."

Nellie Townshead closed her hands and turned her head away, then sprang up quivering with the revulsion from despair to hope. Through the silence she heard a faint drumming down the valley.

"He is coming. Stop them, father," she said.

Nobody else apparently heard the sound. The eyes of all in the clearing were fixed upon the auctioneer, and while Townshead rose from his chair he brought down his hand.

"It's yours, sir," he said, "I'll take your cheque, or you can fill this contract in if you're bidding for the smaller lots."

Nellie Townshead grew white in face as she glanced towards her father. Townshead stood still, gripping the back of his chair.

"We are homeless now," he said.

It was five minutes before the girl looked out again, and then in spite of every effort her eyes grew hazy, but it was a long time before she forgot the scene, for the groups of bronzed men in jean, cattle, clearing, and the tall firs behind them burned themselves into her memory. Hallam stood smiling close by the auctioneer's table with a cigar in his hand, and another man from the cities was apparently replacing a roll of paper dollars in his wallet. That impressed her even more than the sympathetic faces turned towards the house, for it was a token that the sale was irrevocably completed. Then the group split up as a man rode at a gallop straight towards the table. He was breathless, the horse was smoking, and there were red smears upon its flanks as well as flecks of spume. He swung himself from the saddle, and there followed the sound of an altercation while a noisy group surged about the table. It opened up again, and rancher Alton walked out, pale and grim of face, alone.

"You should have come sooner, Harry," said somebody.

The rancher turned, the group closed in again, and the girl did not see Alton stride up to a big man, and laying a hand upon his shoulder swing him round. "Tom," he said with a curious quietness, "there was a message you did not give me, you drunken hog."

The man shook his grasp off, glanced at him bewilderedly, and then while the bronze grew a little darker in his face doubled a great fist.

"If I take a little more than is good for me now and then, that's my lookout," he said. "Now I don't want any trouble with you, Harry, but I'll not take that talk from any man."

Alton's face was almost grey and his eyes partly closed, but there was a steely glint in them as he said, "Did you bring me the message Miss Townshead gave you?"

"I did the next thing," said the man. "When I couldn't find you I gave it to the lady. She promised to tell you."

"Tom," said Alton slowly, "you are worse than a drunken hog, you are----"

A man stepped in front of him before the word was spoken, while another pinioned the culprit's arm.

"We've no use for that kind of talk and the fuss that follows it," said the first one. "Anyway, if Tom mixed things up it was my fault and Dobey's for giving him the whisky. We'd sold some stock well and we rushed him in. Well, now, if you still feel you must work it off on somebody you've got to tackle Dobey and me!"

Alton let his hands drop. "Do you know what you have done?" said he.

"It wasn't very much, anyway," said the other man. "Tom didn't want to come in; told us he'd a message for you. But we made him, and were sorry after, because when he got started he left us very little whisky."

Alton glanced at him a moment, and the man grew embarrassed under his gaze. Then he smiled wryly. "And this is what you have brought Townshead and his daughter to, and there is more behind. What you have made of me counts for little after that," he said.

Some time had passed when he walked quietly into the house. Nellie Townshead rose as he entered and stood looking at him very white in face.

"I wonder if you will believe what I have to tell you, Miss Townshead," he commenced, and stopped when the rancher turned towards him,

"My daughter has, I think, been taught that it is unwise to place much confidence in any one," he said.

Alton glanced at the girl, and stood silent a moment when she made a little gesture of agreement. "I am afraid appearances are against me," he said.

"Yes," said the girl. "So are the facts."

"Well," said Alton grimly, "the latter are of the most importance, but I think you should hear me."

"There is," said Miss Townshead, "no reason why I should. You made me a promise--why I do not know, any more than I do why I allowed you--but I was very anxious just then. No doubt you spoke on impulse, and afterwards regretted it."

"My daughter was a trifle injudicious," said Townshead.

Alton made a last endeavour. "I know what you must think of me, and it hurts," he said. "Still, that is a little thing."

The girl checked him by a gesture, and the man stopped with his meaning unexpressed. "You have made as much evident," she said.

Alton turned towards her father. "I'm afraid the suggestion I wished to make would be out of place just now," he said. "Still, I had ridden over in the hope that you and Miss Townshead would stay with us at Somasco while you decided on your next step."

"We have to thank you for your offer, but your surmise is correct," said Townshead.

Alton said nothing further, but went out into the clearing and stood apart from the rest while the auctioneer disposed of the household effects, until a little cabinet was offered, when he moved up to the table and bid savagely. Hallam for some reason bid against him, and only stopped when he had quadrupled its value. Alton flung down a roll of dollar bills and then turned to a man close by. "Will you take that in to Miss Townshead, and not tell her who bought it?" he said. "It was her mother's, and I believe she values it."

"I'll do my best," said the other man dryly. "Still, I'm not good at fixing up a story, and Miss Nellie's not a fool."

"Well," said Alton simply, "there's another thing. Where is Townshead going?"

The rancher smiled a little. "He's coming home with me. Susie's driving over with the wagon."

Alton nodded. "Now you needn't be touchy, but we've fruit and things at Somasco you haven't got," said he. "Well, I want you to come round with the wagon."

The rancher straightened himself a trifle. "My place isn't Somasco, but it will be a mean day when I can't feed my friends," said he.

Alton laughed softly. "I don't care ten cents about your feelings, Jack," he said. "The girl and the old man might like the things, and there's no reason they should know where you got them."

The other man also laughed. "You ride straight home, Harry, before you make it worse," said he. "One might figure that you'd mixed things up enough already."

Alton turned away, and found Seaforth awaiting him. They mounted, and Alton rode in silence until when they were climbing out of the valley he said, "I wonder, Charley, if there's a man in the Dominion who feels as mean as I do."

Seaforth smiled curiously, and there was bitterness in his voice which Alton was too disturbed to notice. "I think there is," he said. "You haven't asked what kept me, but you will see if you look at the horse's knees. It's a little difficult to understand why he must get his foot in a hole to-day."

It was late that night when they reached Somasco, but Alton found Miss Deringham upon the verandah, and she glanced at him with very pretty sympathy. Still, Seaforth fancied that she seemed a trifle anxious.

"Have you seen the man who brought the message?" she said.

"I have," said Alton. "You were right, of course. He'd had too much whisky."

The girl appeared, so Seaforth fancied, curiously relieved. "I was almost afraid you might think I was in some respects to blame," she said.

"No," said Alton simply, "That was one of the things I couldn't do. It was right out of the question."

He went in, and the warm colour crept into Miss Deringham's face as she presently followed him.