Alton of Somasco. Harold Bindloss
hotel. A mixed company of bush ranchers, free prospectors, axemen, and miners lounged outside it in picturesque disarray, and high above rose a dim white line of never-melting snow.
"Well," said Alton, "it's time this circus was over, anyway, and if Carter will take my bid I'll clinch that deal with you. Have the pack and seizings handy, Charley."
The rancher nodded, and Alton got a tighter grip on the bridle. Then the Cayuse rose upright with fore-hoofs lifted, and the man's arm was drawn back to strike. The hoofs came down harmlessly, but the fist got home, and for a moment or two there was a swaying and plunging of man and beast amidst the hurled-up snow. Then the Cayuse was borne backwards until the vicinity of the hotel verandah left no room for kicking, and another man hastily flung a rope round the bundles he piled upon its back. He was also tolerably capable, and in another minute the struggle was over. The Cayuse's attitude expressed indignant astonishment, while Alton stood up breathless, with his knuckles bleeding.
"I'll trouble you for that dollar, and I'll keep him now," he said.
"Can you wait until I come down next week, Carter?"
"Oh, yes," said the rancher. "Your promise is good enough for a year or two."
The speaker was a sinewy bushman in curiously patched overalls with a bronzed and honest face, and he turned aside with a little gesture of dislike, when a man of a very different stamp pushed by him. The latter wore a black felt hat and a great fur-lined coat, while his face was pale and fleshy and his eyes were cunning. His appearance suggested prosperity and a life of indulgence in the cities, and when he stopped in front of Alton the latter would have lost little by any comparison between the pair. The pose of his sinewy figure and the clear brownness of his skin spoke of arduous labour, sound sleep, and the vigour that comes from a healthful occupation. The steady directness of his gaze and quiet immobility of his face also conveyed an indefinite suggestion of power and endurance, and there was a curious grace in his movements when he turned courteously towards the stranger.
"You soon fixed him, packer," said the city man.
Alton laughed. "The boys mostly call me rancher," said he. "Still, it don't count for much, and I do some packing occasionally."
"That's all right," said the stranger sharply, for there was something in Alton's answer which made him inclined to assert his dignity. "Everybody seems to be a rancher hereaway, and you mayn't be too proud to put through a job for me."
Alton nodded, and glanced at the speaker questioningly.
"No. If it would fit in," he said.
"I'm Hallam," said the other man. "Hallam and Vose, of the Tyee mineral claim. They've been fooling things up yonder, big pump's given out, and I've a few hundred pounds of engine fixings back at the railroad I want brought in by to-morrow."
Alton glanced at the pack-beasts waiting unloaded outside the store, and shook his head. "I'm sorry I can't trade with you," he said. "You see, I've promised another man to pack up some stores for him."
Hallam made a gesture of impatience. "Then you can let him wait," he said. "This deal will pay you better. You can put your own price on it."
Alton's eyelids came down a little, and the stranger seemed to find his glance disconcerting. "You don't seem to understand. I promised the other man to bring up his things," he said.
"Well," said Hallam, "come along into the shanty yonder, and have a drink with me. We may fix up some way of getting over the difficulty."
"Sorry!" said Alton with a suspicious quietness. "I don't drink much, anyway, and then only with the boys who know me."
"Hey!" said Hallam. "You are talking like a condemned Englishman."
"I can't help that," said Alton. "I am a Canadian, but if you want another reason, it wouldn't suit me to drink with you, anyway. You see, you didn't do the square thing with one or two friends of mine who worked on the Tyee."
He turned on his heel, and Hallam, who was a man of some importance in the cities, gasped with astonishment and indignation.
"What is that fellow?" he said.
The man laughed, and answered him in the bushman's slowest drawl. "You don't know much, or you wouldn't ask," said he. "He's Alton of Somasco, but if he lives long enough he will be one of the biggest men in this country."
Hallam said nothing, but there was a curious look in his face which puzzled the rancher. It suggested that he had heard of Alton, and something more.
Meanwhile Alton entered the store, where the man who kept it pointed to a litter of packages strewn about the floor and sundry bags upon the counter.
"That's Townshead's lot, and those are Thomson's things," he said, and turned aside to listen to a rancher who came in smiling.
Alton took up a big cotton bag marked Townshead, tossed it aloft and caught it, and then shook his head dubiously. "That's rather too light for ten pounds. You want to try her on the scales again," he said.
The storekeeper, who was also a magistrate, grinned good-humouredly. "It's good enough for the money, anyway," said he. "But what's the matter with the Tyee dollars, Harry, that you wouldn't do Hallam's packing?"
Alton glanced at him gravely. "I think not," said he. "Put another pound or two into her, and I'll pay you on your invoice for the last lot you sent me. Otherwise I'm going to whittle down that bill considerably. You see Townshead is too shaky to come down, and he can't live on nothing."
"And the Lord knows when he'll pay you," said the storekeeper. "It's a good twelve months since he sent a dollar to me."
Alton laughed a little. "I can wait," he said. "Fill that bag up again. Get hold of the truck, Charley."
Charles Seaforth, who was apparently younger, and certainly a trifle more fastidious about his attire than his comrade, shouldered a flour bag, and twenty minutes later he and Alton tramped out of the settlement with three loaded beasts splashing and floundering in front of them. It was almost dark now, though a line of snow still glimmered white and cold high up beyond the trees until the trail plunged into the blackness of the forest. Then the lights of the settlement were blotted out behind them, the hum of voices ceased, and they were alone in the primeval silence of the bush. The thud and splash of tired hoofs only served to emphasize it, the thin jingle of steel or creak of pack-rope was swallowed up and lost, for the great dim forest seemed to mock at anything man could do to disturb its pristine serenity. It had shrouded all that valley, where no biting gale ever blew, from the beginning, majestic in its solitary grandeur and eternally green. Pine and hemlock, balsam and cedar, had followed in due succession others that had grown to the fulness of their stature only in centuries, and their healing essence, which brings sound sleep to man's jaded body and tranquillity to his mind, had doubtless risen like incense when all was made very good.
Now Alton loved the wilderness, partly because he had been born in it, and because he had a large share of the spirit of his race. He had also seen the cities, and they did not greatly please him, though he had watched their inhabitants curiously and been taught a good deal about them by what he read in books, which to the wonder of his associates he would spend hardly-earned dollars upon. It was more curious that he understood all he read, and sometimes more than the writer apparently did, for Alton was not only the son of a clever man, but had seen Nature in her primitive nakedness and the human passions that usually lie beneath the surface, for man reverts a little and the veneer of his civilization wears through in the silent bush.
Thus he plodded on contentedly on his twelve-mile march, with the snow and the mire beneath it reaching now and then to his knee, until his companion stopped beside a little bark shanty and lighted a lantern.
"Thomson's dumping-place already," he said, pulling a burst cotton bag out of the sack of sundries upon the Cayuse pony's back. "Some of it has got out, and Jimmy was always particular about the weight of his sugar. Well, the rest of it must be in the bottom somewhere, and if you'll hold the sack up I'll shake it into my hat."
Alton's hat was capacious, and