Chapter 11

THE GREAT IDEA

The night was cold, and a frost-laden wind set the fir branches sighing as Nasmyth and his comrades sat about a snapping fire. The red light flickered upon their faces, and then grew dim again, leaving their blurred figures indistinct amid the smoke that diffused pungent, aromatic odours as it streamed by and vanished between the towering tree-trunks.

The four men were of widely different type and training, though it was characteristic of the country that they sat and talked together on terms of perfect equality. Two of them were exiles, by fault and misfortune, from their natural environment. One had forced himself upwards by daring and mechanical genius into a station to which, in one sense, he did not belong, and Mattawa, the chopper, alone, pursued the occupation which had always been familiar to him. Still, it was as comrades that they lived together in the wilderness, and, what was more, had they come across one another afterwards in the cities, they would have resumed their intercourse on exactly the same footing. After all, they were, in essentials, very much the same, and, when that is the case, the barriers men raise between themselves do not count for much in the West, at least. Wheeler, the pulp-mill builder, who had once sold oranges on the railroad cars, led up to a conversation that gave Nasmyth an opportunity for which he had been waiting.

"You and Mattawa are about through with that slashing contract," he said. "You will not net a great pile of money out of it, I suppose?"

"My share is about thirty," answered Nasmyth, with a little laugh. "My partner draws a few dollars more. He got in a week when the big log that rolled on my cut leg lamed me. I seem to have a particularly unfortunate habit of hurting myself. Are you going back to Ontario when we get that money, Mattawa?"

"No," the big axeman replied slowly; "anyway, not yet, though I was thinking of it. The ticket costs too much. They've been shoving up their Eastern rates."

"You ought to have a few dollars in hand," remarked Nasmyth, who was quite aware that this was not exactly his business. "Are you going to start a ranch?"

Mattawa appeared to smile. "I have one half cleared back in Ontario."

"Then what d'you come out here for?" Gordon broke in.

"To give the boy a show. He's quite smart, and we were figuring we might make a doctor or a surveyor of him. That costs money, and wages are 'way higher here than they are back East."

It was a simple statement, made very quietly by a simple man, but it appealed forcibly to those who heard it, for they could understand what lay behind it. Love of change or adventure, it was evident, had nothing to do with sending the grizzled Mattawa out to the forests of the West. He had, as he said, merely come there that his son might be afforded opportunities that he had never had, and this was characteristic, for it is not often that the second generation stays on the land. Though teamsters and choppers to the manner born are busy here and there, the Canadian prairie is to a large extent broken and the forest driven back by young men from the Eastern cities and by exiled Englishmen. Their life is a grim one, and when they marry they do not desire their children to continue it. Yet, they do not often marry, since the wilderness, in most cases, would crush the wives they would choose. The men toil on alone, facing flood, and drought, and frost, and some hate the silence of the winter nights during which they sit beside the stove.

"Then," inquired Wheeler, "who runs the ranch?"

"The wife and the boy. That is, when the boy's not chopping or ploughing for somebody."

There were reasons why Nasmyth was stirred by what he had heard, and with his pipe he pointed to Mattawa, as the flickering firelight fell upon the old axeman's face.

"That," he said, "is the man who didn't want his wages when I offered them to him, though he knew it was quite likely he would never get them afterwards unless I built the dam. He'd been working for me two or three months then, in the flooded river, most of the while. Now, is there any sense in that kind of man?"

Mattawa appeared disconcerted, and his hard face flushed. "Well," he explained, "I felt I had to see you through." He hesitated for a moment with a gesture which seemed deprecatory of his point of view. "It seemed up to me."

"You've heard him," said Gordon dryly. "He's from the desolate Bush back East, and nobody has taught him to express himself clearly. The men of that kind are handiest with the axe and drill, but it has always seemed to me that the nations are going to sit round and listen when they get up and speak their mind some day."

He saw the smile in Nasmyth's eyes, and turned to Wheeler, who was from the State of Washington. "It's a solid fact that you, at least, can understand. It's not so very long since your folks headed West across the Ohio, and it's open to anyone to see what you have done." Then he flung his hand out towards the east. "They fancy back yonder we're still in the leading-strings, and it doesn't seem to strike them that we're growing big and strong."

It was characteristic that Wheeler did not grin, as Nasmyth certainly