Harding of Allenwood

"If we lose on what we have broken already, how shall we economize by plowing more?"

"It sounds logical; but can't you save labor and reduce the average expense by working on a large scale?"

"Perhaps. But it needs capital."

"A few new horses and bigger plows wouldn't cost very much. We are spending a good deal of money on other things that are not directly useful."

Mowbray looked at her with an ironical smile and Beatrice felt confused. She remembered that she had staunchly defended her father's conservative attitude to Harding, and now she was persuading him to abandon it.

"This is a new line for you to take," he said. "I should like to know what has suggested it. Has Mrs. Broadwood converted you, or have you been talking to the Americans?"

"I meet Mr. Harding now and then, and he generally talks about farming."

"I suppose you can't avoid the fellow altogether, but politeness is all that is required. He has a habit of exaggerating the importance of things, and he can only look at them from his point of view."

Beatrice felt guilty. Her father had not forbidden her speaking to the man; he trusted her to remember what was due to her station. She could imagine his anger were he to suspect that she had allowed Harding to make love to her.

"Kenwyne and Broadwood seem to agree with him," she urged.

"They're rank pessimists; you mustn't listen to them. Try to be as economical as you can; but leave these matters alone. You don't understand them."

She went to her room, feeling downcast. She had failed to influence him, but it was partly her fault that she had been unable to do so. She had wasted her time in idle amusements, and now she must take the consequences. Nobody except Harding would listen when she wished to talk about things that mattered. She felt ashamed of her ignorance and of her utter helplessness. But perhaps she might learn; she would ask Hester Harding to teach her.

CHAPTER XVIII

COVERING HIS TRAIL

It was bitterly cold in the log-walled room at the back of the settlement store where Gerald Mowbray sat by the red-hot stove. His deerskin jacket and moccasins were much the worse for wear, and his face was thin and darkened by the glare of the snow. For the past month he had been traveling with a survey party through the rugged forest-belt of Northern Ontario, living in the open in Arctic weather, until the expedition had fallen back on the lonely settlement to get fresh supplies.

All round the rude log-shacks, small, ragged pines, battered by the wind, and blackened here and there by fire, rose from the deep snow that softened the harsh contour of the rocky wilderness. This is one of the coldest parts of Canada. The conifers that roll across it are generally too small for milling, and its penetration is remarkably difficult, but a silver vein accounted for the presence of a few hard-bitten miners. Occasionally they ran some risk of starving when fresh snow delayed the transport of provisions, and it was only at irregular intervals that a mail reached them. An Indian mail-carrier had, however, arrived shortly before the survey party, and Gerald had a letter in his hand, and a Montreal newspaper lay beside him. The letter troubled him. He was thankful to be left alone for a few minutes, for he had much to think about.

Hardship and fatigue had no attractions for him, but he had grown tired of the monotony of his life at the Grange, and as qualified surveyors were not plentiful in the wilds, the authorities had been glad to obtain the services of an engineer officer. Though he was only an assistant, the pay was good, and he had thought it wise to place himself out of his creditors' reach. Unfortunately, some of the more persistent had learned where he had gone, and the letter contained a curt demand for the settlement of an account. Gerald could not pay it, but the newspaper brought a ray of hope. He had speculated with part of the money his father had once given him to pay his debts, and the mining shares he bought had turned out worthless. Now, however, they were unexpectedly going up; it seemed that the company had at last tapped a vein of promising ore. If he could hold out, he might be able to liquidate his most pressing debts. But this creditor's demand was peremptory and he could not see how he was to gain time. He wished the men whose harsh voices reached him from the store would stop talking. They were rough choppers, of whose society he had grown very tired; and the taciturn surveyor was not a much better companion.

The surveyor came in before Gerald found a solution of his difficulties. He was a big, gaunt man. Throwing off his ragged furs he sat down in a broken chair and lighted his pipe.

"Thermometer's at minus fifty, but we must pull out at sun-up," he remarked. "Now, as I have to run my corner-line as ordered and the grub we've been able to get won't last long, I can't take all the boys and hunt for that belt of farming land."

"Supposititious, isn't it?" Gerald suggested. "We've seen nothing to indicate there being any soil up here that one could get a plowshare into. Still, the authorities have rather liberal ideas of what could be called cultivatable land."

"That's so," the surveyor agreed. "Where I was raised they used to say that a bushman can get a crop wherever he can fire the seed among the rocks with a shotgun. Anyway, the breeds and the Indians talk about a good strip of alluvial bottom, and we've got to find out something about it before we go back."

"It will be difficult to haul the stores and camp truck if you divide the gang."

"Sure; but here's my plan." The surveyor opened a rather sketchy map. "I take the sleds and follow the two sides of the triangle. I'll give you the base, and two packers. Marching light, by compass, you'll join me where the base-line meets the side; but you'll do no prospecting survey unless you strike the alluvial bottom."

"What about provisions?"

"You can carry enough to see you through; the cache I made in advance is within a few marches of where we meet."

It was not a task that appealed to Gerald. It would be necessary to cross a trackless wilderness which only a few of the Hudson Bay half-breeds knew anything about. He must sleep in the snow with an insufficient camp outfit, and live on cut-down rations, with the risk of starving if anything delayed him, because the weight he could transport without a sledge was limited.

He would have refused to undertake the journey only that a half-formed plan flashed into his mind.

"Suppose I miss you?" he suggested.

"Well," said the surveyor dryly, "that might mean trouble. You should get there first; but I can't stop long if you're late, because we've got to make the railroad while the grub holds out. Anyhow, I could leave you rations for two or three marches in a cache, and by hustling you should catch up."

Gerald agreed to this, and soon afterward he went to sleep on the floor. It was early in the evening, but he knew that the next eight or nine days' work would try him hard.

It was dark when the storekeeper wakened him, and after a hasty breakfast he went out with the surveyor. Dawn was breaking, and there was an ashy grayness in the east, but the sky was barred with clouds. The black pines were slowly growing into shape against the faint glimmer of the snow. The cold was piercing and Gerald shivered while the surveyor gave him a few last directions; then he slung his heavy pack upon his shoulders and set off down the unpaved street. There were lights in the log shacks and once or twice somebody greeted him, but after a few minutes the settlement faded behind and he and his companions were alone among the tangled firs. No sound but the crunch of snow beneath their big shoes broke the heavy silence; the small trees, slanting drunkenly, were dim and indistinct, and the solitude was impressive.

Gerald's lips were firmly set as he pushed ahead. Theoretically, his task was simple; he had only to keep a fixed course and he must cut the surveyor's line of march, but in practise there were difficulties. It is not easy to travel straight in a rugged country where one is continually forced aside by natural obstacles; nor can one correctly allow for all the divergences. This, however, was not what troubled Gerald, for the plan he had worked out since the previous night did not include his meeting the surveyor. It was the smallness of the quantity of provisions his party could transport that he was anxious about, because he meant to make a much longer march than his superior had directed.

His companions were strong, stolid bushmen, whose business it was to carry the provisions and camp outfit. They knew nothing about trigonometry; but they were at home in the wilds, and Gerald was glad the weather threatened to prove cloudy. He did not want them to check his course by the sun. Properly, it was northwest; and he marched in that direction until it was unlikely that anybody from the settlement would strike his trail; then he headed two points farther west, and, seeing that the packers made no remark, presently diverged another point.

Traveling was comparatively easy all day. Wind and fire had thinned the bush, cleaning out dead trees and undergrowth, and the snow lay smooth upon the outcropping rock. Here and there they struck a frozen creek which offered a level road, and when dark came they had made an excellent march. Gerald was glad of this, because all the food he could save now would be badly needed before the journey was finished. For all that, he felt anxious as he sat beside the camp-fire after his frugal supper.

A bank of snow kept off the stinging wind; there was, fortunately, no lack of fuel, and, sitting close to the pile of snapping branches, the men were fairly warm; but the dark pines were wailing mournfully and thick gloom encroached upon the narrow ring of light. The eddying smoke leaped out of it and vanished with startling suddenness. Gerald's shoulders ached from the weight of his pack, and the back of one leg was sore. He must be careful of it, because he had a long way to go, and men were sometimes lamed by snowshoe trouble.

The two packers sat, for the most part, smoking silently. Gerald now and then gave them a pleasant word, but he did not wish their relations to become friendly, as it was not advisable that they should ask him questions about the march. Indeed, he shrank from thinking of it as he listened to the savage wind in the pine-tops and glanced at the surrounding darkness. The wilderness is daunting in winter, even to those who know it best; but Gerald with his gambler's instincts was willing to take a risk. If he went home with the surveyor, ruin awaited him.

For a time he sat drowsily enjoying the rest and warmth, and then, lying down on a layer of spruce-twigs, he went to sleep. But the cold wakened him. One of the packers got up, grumbling, and threw more branches on the fire, and Gerald went to sleep again.

Starting shortly before daylight, they were met by blinding snow, but they struggled on all day across a rocky elevation. The snow clogged their eyelashes and lashed their tingling cheeks until the pain was nearly unbearable; still, that was better than feeling them sink into dangerous insensibility. They must go on while progress was possible. The loss of a day or two might prove fatal, and there was a chance of their getting worse weather.

It overtook them two days later when they sat shivering in camp with the snow flying past their heads and an icy blizzard snapping rotten branches from the buffeted trees. Twigs hurtled about their ears; the woods was filled with a roar like the sea; the smoke was blinding to lee of the fire, and its heat could hardly reach them a yard to windward. Gerald drank a quart of nearly boiling black tea, but he could not keep warm. There was no feeling in his feet, and his hands were too numbed to button his ragged coat, which had fallen open. When he tried to smoke, his pipe was frozen, and as he crouched beneath the snow-bank he wondered dully whether he should change his plans and face the worst his creditors could do.

By altering his course northerly when he resumed the march he might still strike the surveyor's line, but after another day or two it would be too late. Still, he thought of his father's fury and the shares that were bound to rise. If he were disowned, he must fall back upon surveying for a livelihood. It was unthinkable that he should spend the winter in the icy wilds, and the summer in portaging canoes over rocky hills and dragging the measuring chain through mosquito haunted bush. He could not see how he was to avoid exposure when Davies claimed his loan; but something might turn up, and he was sanguine enough to be content if he could put off the day of reckoning.

The blizzard continued the next morning and no one could leave camp; indeed, Gerald imagined that death would have struck down the strongest of them in an hour. But the wind fell at night, and when dawn broke they set out again in Arctic frost. One could make good progress in the calm air, though the glitter was blinding when the sun climbed the cloudless sky as they followed a winding stream. Then a lake offered a smooth path, and they had made a good march when dark fell.

In the night it grew cloudy and the temperature rose, and when they started at daybreak they were hindered by loose, fresh snow. At noon they stopped exhausted after covering a few miles; and the next day the going was not much better, for they were forced to flounder through a tangle of blown-down trees. It was only here and there that the pines and spruces could find sufficient moisture among the rocks, and they died and fell across each other in a dry summer.

On the seventh day after leaving the settlement the three men plodded wearily through thin forest as the gloomy evening closed in. Their shoulders were sore from the pack-straps, the backs of their legs ached with swinging the big snowshoes, and all were hungry and moody. Provisions were getting low, and they had been compelled to cut down rations. Now the cold was Arctic, and a lowering, steel-gray sky showed between the whitened tops of the trees. The packers had been anxiously looking for blaze-marks all afternoon; and Gerald, knowing they would not find them, felt his courage sink. He was numb with cold, and he dully wondered whether he had taken too great a risk.

Presently one of the men, who had been searching some distance to the right, joined his comrade. They spoke together and then turned back to meet Gerald.

"Say, boss, isn't it time we struck the boys' tracks?" one asked.

"Yes," said Gerald, recognizing that much depended on how he handled the situation. "We should have picked them up this morning."

The men were silent for a moment.

"Looks as if we'd got off our line," one of them then said resolutely. "How were you heading?"

"Northwest, magnetic."

"No, sir. You were a piece to the west of that."