Alton of Somasco. Harold Bindloss
The man had a few inches of springy wood which bent and heaved beneath him to stand upon, but the great blade descended exactly where the last chip had lain, and when it hissed aloft again that of the silent axeman dropped into the notch it made. Deringham knew a little about a good many things, including sword-play, and he realized as he watched the whirl and flash of blades, precision of effort, and exactitude of time, that this was an example of man's mastery over the trenchant steel.
Presently the man with the saw rose and touched his shoulder. "I fancy we had better draw aside a little," he said. "She will come down in another minute just here."
Now Deringham had seen trees wedged over and drawn down by ropes in England, and wondered a little when the man pointed to the spot where he was standing.
"If you don't resent the question, how do you know?" he said.
The other man laughed a little. "Harry told me, and he's seldom more than a foot out," he said.
There was a groaning of fibres as Deringham drew aside, but the two figures on the springy planks still smote and swung, until simultaneously they flung the axes down and, sprang. Then the great fir quivered a little, toppled, lurched, and fell, and the hillside resounded to the thud it made. It also smote the trembling soil just where the man with the saw had indicated. Then Alton signed to his assistant, and strode away with the axe on his shoulder towards another tree. The saw-sharpener laughed a little as he sat down again.
"Now you have had your say it would be better if you waited until after supper," he said. "You see, one thing at one time is quite enough for Harry, and he really isn't in the least uncivil when you understand him. Still, it's no use trying to make him listen when he doesn't want to."
"That," said Deringham dryly, "was always one of the characteristics of his family. You are presumably an Englishman?"
The other man laughed a little. "Yes," he said, "I'm Charles Seaforth, better known to the boys here as the Honourable Charley, though I have no especial right to the title, and am fortunate in holding a small share in the Somasco ranch, which I owe to my partner's generosity."
"Do I understand that he gave it you?" said Deringham.
Seaforth nodded. "You would be near the mark if you came to that conclusion."
"And is Mr. Alton in the habit of making similar presents?" said
Deringham.
Seaforth glanced towards the sinewy figure with the glinting axe, and smiled again. "That," he said quietly, "is one of the most generous men in the Dominion of Canada, but I should not care to be the man who attempted to take advantage of him."
Deringham said nothing further, though he was sensible of a slight uneasiness, and presently went back to the house to rejoin his daughter, while the dusk was creeping across the valley when the men from the sawmill and clearing came home, and Deringham led his daughter out when he heard Alton's voice in the verandah. The latter and his partner were together, and the girl at first felt a slight sense of relief as her glance fell upon Seaforth, who stood with his wide hat in his hand. He was, for that country, somewhat fastidious in dress, his eyes were mildly humorous, and his face was pleasant, while he had not as yet wholly lost the stamp of the graceful idler he had brought with him from England.
"This," said Deringham with the faintest trace of irony, "is our kinsman, Mr. Henry Alton of Carnaby. You have seen him already. My daughter Alice, Mr. Alton!"
The girl stood still a moment, and glanced at Seaforth, whom she could not recollect having seen before, with something that suggested not altogether unpleased surprise in her face. His appearance and attitude disarmed her, but as she was about to speak to him the other man moved so that the fading light fell full upon him. He stood, tall and almost statuesque in his torn overalls, with the misty pines rolling up the hillside behind him, and a big axe in his hand—a type, it seemed to her, of Western barbarity—and a red spot, faint but perceptible, rose into her cheeks as he bent his head. Then she came near forgetting what was due to both of them in her astonishment and anger.
"You!" she said.
"Yes," said the axeman gravely. "Still, your father made a little mistake. I'm Alton of Somasco."
Then he turned and moved forward with a gesture that was almost courtly. "You are very welcome to this poor house of mine," he said.
CHAPTER VI
MISS DERINGHAM MAKES FRIENDS
The Homeric supper was over, and Miss Deringham, who, sitting next to Alton at the head of the long table, had watched the stalwart axeman feed with sensations divided between disgust and wonder, was talking to Seaforth on the verandah, when her father sat by a window of the room his kinsman called his own. There were survey maps, tassels of oats, and a great Wapiti head upon the wall, while Alton himself lay almost full length in a deerhide chair. The window was open wide, and the vista of lake, pine-shrouded hillside, and snow, framed by its log casing, steeped in nocturnal harmonies of silver and blue. Out of the stillness came the scent of balsam, and the sighing of a little breeze amidst the pines.
Deringham held a good cigar, and there was a cup of coffee beside him, while he was not wholly sorry that they sat in darkness. He had realized that Alton of Somasco was by no means a fool, and waited his questions with some anxiety. The rancher, however, had apparently no present intention of asking any.
"So they've been wondering when I am coming over," he said reflectively. "I don't know that I'll come at all." Deringham looked down at his cigar to cover his astonishment. "But you are an Alton of Carnaby," he said.
"Yes," said Alton slowly. "But that is one of the things I want to forget. You see they drove my father out because he had the grit to marry the woman who loved him instead of another one who had the money, but you know all that?"
Deringham nodded, and Alton's face showed grim in the moonlight as he continued: "But what you don't know is how he fought his way uphill in this country, and what my mother suffered helping him. Oh, yes, I can remember her well, gentle, brave, and patient as she was, and know what it must have cost her to camp down alone in the bush, and fight through the hard winter in the ice and snow. Well, she was too good for this world, and she just faded out of it before the good time came. I think they must have a special place for women of her kind in the other one."
Deringham only nodded again, because this type of man was new to him, and he had learned to keep silent when in doubt; but Alton's big right hand closed into a fist.
"And now, when I have Somasco, the man who had not a dollar for his only son leaves me Carnaby," he said. "There. Look out and see. Timber, lake and clearing, cattle, mills, and crops, the finest ranch in the district. My father commenced it, and I have finished. The Almighty made him a man, and he wouldn't sell his birthright to loaf his days away, overfed, at Carnaby."
Alton dropped his cigar, and laughed a little. "Well, I'm talking like a fool again. There are times when I can't help it. It's a way of mine."
Deringham sat still smoking, and thinking rapidly. He had never had dealings with a man of this description before, but while he surmised that Alton of Somasco might under some conditions prove himself a headstrong fool, it was evident that there were limits to his folly. The man's handiwork spoke for him, and his energy and intentness had not escaped Deringham's attentions, while the occasional utterances that might have appeared bombastic coming from other men were redeemed in his case by the tone of naive sincerity and imperious ring. Deringham was becoming conscious of a vague respect for and fear of his companion.
"We are apparently no nearer the answer to my question," he said at length.
"No," said Alton, smiling. "This thing will take some thinking over.
Carnaby isn't exactly what you call a rich property?"
"It