Thurston of Orchard Valley

"I must," answered Geoffrey, restraining an intense longing to stay since she desired it, but loyal to his master's charge. "I believe your father is recovering, and it is his especial wish. I can do nothing, and he needs only quiet."

Helen said nothing further. She began to chafe her father's hand, while Thurston went back, pale and grim, to the head of the long table.

"Mr. Savine was seized by a passing faintness, but is recovering," he said. "Nevertheless, he may not be able to return, and, as I am interested with him in the drainage scheme he has appointed me his deputy. Therefore, in brief answer to your questions, I would say that if either of us lives you shall have good oat fields instead of swamp grass and muskeg. It is a solemn promise – we intend to redeem it."

"I want to ask just two questions," announced a sun-bronzed man, in picturesque jacket of fringed deerskin. "Who are the – we; and how are you going to build dykes strong enough to stand the river when the lake's full of melting snow and sends the water down roaring under a twenty-foot head?"

The speaker had touched the one weak spot in Savine's scheme, but Geoffrey rose to the occasion, and there was a wondering hush when he said, "In answer to the first question – Julius Savine and I are the 'we.' Secondly, we will, if necessary, obliterate the lake. It can be done."

The boldness of the answer from a comparatively unknown man held the listeners still, until there were further questions and finally, amid acclamation, one of the party said:

"Then it's a bargain, and we'll back you solid through thick and thin. Isn't that so, gentlemen? If the opposition try to make legal trouble, as the holders of the cleared land likely to be affected we've got the strongest pull. We came here doubting; you have convinced us."

"I hardly think you will regret it," Geoffrey assured them. "Now, as I must see to Mr. Savine, you will excuse me."

Savine lay breathing heavily when Geoffrey rejoined him, but he demanded what had happened, and nodded approval when told. Then Geoffrey withdrew, beckoning to Helen, who rose and followed him.

"This is no time for useless recrimination, or I would ask how you could leave one who has been a generous friend, helpless and suffering," the girl said reproachfully. "My father is evidently seriously ill, and you are the only person I can turn to, for the hotel manager tells me there is no doctor within miles of us. So in my distress I must stoop to ask you, for his sake, what I can do?"

"Will you believe not only that I sympathize, but that I would gladly have given all I possess to save you from this shock?" Thurston began, but Helen cut him short by an impatient wave of the hand, and stood close beside him with distress and displeasure in her eyes.

"All that is outside the question – what can we do?" she asked imploringly.

"Only one thing," answered Geoffrey. "Bring up the best doctor in Vancouver by special train. I'm going now to hold up the fast freight. Gather your courage. I will be back soon after daylight with skilled assistance."

He went out before the girl could answer, and, comforted, Helen hurried back to her father's side. Whatever his failings might be, Thurston was at least a man to depend upon when there was need of action.

There was a little platform near the hotel where trains might be flagged for the benefit of passengers, but the office was locked. Thurston, who knew that shortly a freight train would pass, broke in the window, borrowed a lantern, lighted it, and hurried up the track which here wound round a curve through the forest and over a trestle. It is not pleasant to cross a lofty trestle bridge on foot in broad daylight, for one must step from sleeper to sleeper over wide spaces with empty air beneath, and, as the ties are just wide enough to carry the single pair of rails, it would mean death to meet a train. Geoffrey nevertheless pressed on fast, the light of the blinking lantern dazzling his eyes and rendering it more difficult to judge the distances between the ties – until he halted for breath a moment in the center of the bridge. White mist and the roar of hurrying water rose out of the chasm beneath, but another sound broke through the noise of the swift stream. Geoffrey hear the vibratory rattle of freight cars racing down the valley, and he went on again at a reckless run, leaping across black gulfs of shadow.

The sound had gained in volume when he reached firm earth and ran swiftly towards the end of the curve, from which, down a long declivity, the engineer could see his lantern. Panting, he held the light aloft as a great fan-shaped blaze of radiance came flaming like a comet down the track.

Soon he could dimly discern the shape of two huge mountain engines, while the rails trembled beside him, and a wall of rock flung back the din of whirring wheels. The fast freight had started from the head of Atlantic navigation at Montreal, and would not stop until the huge cars rolled alongside the Empress liner at Vancouver, for part of their burden was being hurried West from England around half the world to China and the East again. The track led down-grade, and the engineers, who had nursed the great machines up the long climb to the summit, were now racing them down hill.

Waving the lantern Geoffrey stood with a foot on one of the rails and every sense intent, until the first engine's cow-catcher was almost upon him. Then he leaped for his life and stood half-blinded amid whirling ballast and a rushing wind, as, veiled in thick dust, the great box cars clanged by. He was savage with dismay, for it seemed that the engineer had not seen his signal; then his heart bounded, a shrill hoot from two whistles was followed by the screaming of brakes. When he came up with the standing train at the end of the trestle, one engineer, leaning down from the rail of the cab, said:

"I saw your light away back, but was too busy trying to stop without smashing something to answer. Say, has the trestle caved in, or what in the name of thunder is holding us up?"

"The trestle is all right," answered Geoffrey, climbing into the cab. "I held you up, and I'm going on with you to bring out a doctor to my partner, who is dangerously ill."

The engineer's comments were indignant and sulphurous, while the big fireman turned back his shirt sleeves as if preparing to chastise the man rash enough to interfere with express freight traffic. Geoffrey, reaching for a shovel, said:

"When we get there, I'll go with you to your superintendent at Vancouver; but, if either of you try to put me off or to call assistance, I'll make good use of this. I tell you it's a question of life and death, and two at least of your directors are good friends of the man I want to help. They wouldn't thank you for destroying his last chance. Meantime you're wasting precious moments. Start the train."

"Hold fast!" commanded the grizzled engineer, opening the throttle. "When she's under way, I'll talk to you, and unless you satisfy me, by the time we reach Vancouver there won't be much of you left for the police to take charge of."

Then the two locomotives started the long cars on their inter-ocean race again.

CHAPTER XII

GEOFFREY TESTS HIS FATE

It was a lowering afternoon in the Fall, when Thurston and Julius Savine stood talking together upon a spray-drenched ledge in the depths of a British Columbian cañon. On the crest of the smooth-scarped hillside, which stretched back from the sheer face of rock far overhead, stood what looked like a tiny fretwork in ebony, and consisted of two-hundred-foot conifers. Here and there a clamorous torrent had worn out a gully, and, with Thurston's assistance, Savine had accomplished the descent of one of the less precipitous. Elsewhere the rocks had been rubbed into smooth walls, between which the river had fretted out its channel during countless ages. The water was coming down in a mad green flood, for the higher snows had melted fast under the autumn sun, and the clay beneath the glaciers had stained it. Foam licked the ledges, a roaring white wake streamed behind each boulder's ugly head, and the whole gloomy cañon rang with the thunder of a rapid, whose filmy stream whirled in the chilly breeze.

Savine gazed at the rapid and the whirlpool that fed it, distinguishing the roar of scoring gravel and grind of broken rock from its vibratory booming, and though he was a daring man, his heart almost failed him.

"It looks ugly, horribly ugly, and I doubt if another man in the Dominion would have suggested tackling the river here, but you are right," he admitted. "Human judgment has its limits, and the constant bursts have proved that no dykes which wouldn't ruin me in the building could stand high-water pressure long. If you don't mind, Thurston, we'll move farther from the edge. I've been a little shaky since that last attack."

"The climb down was awkward, but you have looked better lately," declared Geoffrey and Savine sighed.

"I guess my best days are done, and that is one reason why I wish to end up with a big success," he said. "I got a plain warning from the Vancouver doctor you brought me in that morning. You managed it smartly."

"I was lucky," said Thurston, laughing. "At first, I expected to be ignominiously locked up after the engineer and fireman had torn my clothes off me. But we did not climb down here to talk of that."

"No!" and Savine looked straight at his companion. "This is a great scheme, Thurston, the biggest I have ever undertaken. There will be room for scores of ranches, herds of cattle, wheat fields and orchards, if we can put it through – and we have just got to put it through. Those confounded dykes have drained me heavily, and they'll keep right on costing money. Still, even to me, it looks almost beyond the power of mortal man to deepen the channel here. The risk will figure high in money, but higher in human life. You feel quite certain you can do it?"

"Yes!" asserted Geoffrey. "I believe I can – in winter, when the frost binds the glaciers and the waters shrink. Once it is done, and the only hard rock barrier that holds the water up removed, the river will scour its own way through the alluvial deposits. I have asked a long price, but the work will be difficult."

Savine nodded. He knew that it would be a task almost fit for demi-gods or giants to cut down the bed of what was a furious torrent, thick with grinding débris and scoring ice, and that only very strong bold men could grapple with the angry waters, amid blinding snow or under the bitter frost of the inland ranges in winter time.

"The price is not too heavy, but I don't accept your terms," Savine said. "Hold on until I have finished and then begin your talking. I'll offer you a minor partnership in my business instead. Take time, and keep your answer until I explain things in my offices, in case you find the terms onerous; but there are many men in this country who would be glad of the chance you're getting."

Geoffrey stood up, his lean brown face twitching. He walked twice along the slippery ledge, and then halted before Savine. "I will accept them whatever they are on one condition, which I hardly dare hope you will approve," he replied. "That is, regarding the partnership, for in any case, holding to my first suggestion, you can count on my best help down here. I don't forget that I owe you a heavy debt of gratitude, sir, though, as you know, I have had several good offers latterly."

Savine, who had been abstractedly watching the mad rush of the stream, looked up as he inquired:

"What is the condition? You seem unusually diffident to-day, Thurston."

"It is a great thing I am going to ask." Geoffrey, standing on the treacherous ledge above the thundering river, scarcely looked like a suppliant as he put his fate to the test. "It is your permission to ask Miss Savine to marry me when the time seems opportune. It would not be surprising if you laughed at me, but even then I should only wait the more patiently. This is not a new ambition, for one day when I first came, a poor man, into this country I set my heart upon it, and working ever since to realize it, I have, so far at least as worldly prospects go, lessened the distance between us."

Savine, who betrayed no surprise, was silent for a little while. Then he answered quietly:

"I am, according to popular opinion, anything but a poor man, and though those dykes have bled me, such a match would, as you suggest, be unequal from a financial point of view, unless Helen marries against my wishes. Then she should marry without a dollar. Does that influence you?"

Thurston spread out his hands with a contemptuous gesture, which his quiet earnestness redeemed from being theatrical.

"For my own sake I should prefer it so. Dollars! How far would anyone count dollars in comparison with Miss Savine? But I do not fear being able to earn all she needs. When the time seems opportune the inequality may be less."

"It is possible," continued Savine. "One notices that the man who knows exactly what he wants and doesn't fool his time away over other things not infrequently gets it. You have not really surprised me. Now – and I want a straight answer – why did you leave the Old Country?"

"For several reasons. I lost my money mining. The lady whom I should have married, according to arrangements made for us, tired of me. It is a somewhat painful story, but I was bound up in the mine, and there were, no doubt, ample excuses for her. We were both of us almost too young to know our own minds when we fell in with our relatives' wishes, and, though I hardly care to say so, it was perhaps well we found out our mistake in time."

"All!" said Savine. "Were there no openings for a live man in the Old Country, and have you told me all?"

"I could not find any place for a man in my position," Geoffrey let the words fall slowly. "I come of a reckless, hard-living family, and I feared that some of their failings might repeat themselves in me. I had my warnings. Had I stayed over there, a disappointed man, they might have mastered me, and so, when there was nothing to keep me, I turned my back – and ran. Out here any man who hungers for it can find quite sufficient healthful excitement for his needs, and excitement is as wine to me. These, I know, seem very curious qualifications for a son-in-law, but it seemed just to tell you. Need I explain further?"

"No," answered Savine, whose face had grown serious. "Thanks for your honesty. I guess I know the weaknesses you mean – the greatest of them is whiskey. I've had scores of brilliant men it has driven out from Europe to shovel dirt for me. It's not good news, Thurston. How long have you made head against your inherited failings?"

"Since I could understand things clearly," was the steady answer. "I feared only what might happen, and would never have spoken had I not felt that this country had helped me to break the entail, and set me free. You know all, sir, and to my disadvantage I have put it before you tersely, but there is another aspect."