The Greater Power. Harold Bindloss
from the long outer garment he flung off. He was a young man, with a bronzed face and keen grey eyes, and he had swung the axe, as one could see by his lithe carriage and the hardness of his hands, but there was something professional in his manner as he stooped down, regarding Nasmyth closely while he gripped the stranger’s wrist. Then he turned to the girl.
“He’s very sick,” Gordon said. “Guess you have no objections to my putting him in your father’s bunk. First, we’ll warm the blankets.”
The girl rose to help him, and––for she was strong––they stripped off most of Nasmyth’s garments and lifted him into the bunk in the next room. Then Gordon sent her for the blankets, and, when he had wrapped them round Nasmyth, he sat down and looked at her.
“Pneumonia,” he said. “Anyway, in the meanwhile, I’ll figure on it as that, though there’s what one might call a general physical collapse as well. Where did he come from?”
“I don’t know,” said the girl.
“Your father won’t be back for a week?”
“It’s scarcely likely.”
The man appeared to reflect for a moment or two. Then he made a little expressive gesture.
“Well,” he said, “it’s up to us to do what we can. First thing’s a poultice. I’ll show you how to fix it; but while we’re here, I guess we might as well run through his things.”
“Is that needful?” and the girl glanced at Nasmyth compassionately.
“Well,” said the man with an air of reflection, “it might be. This thing’s quick. Leaves you or wipes you out right away. There’s very little strength in him.”
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He turned out the pockets of Nasmyth’s clothes, which were, however, empty of anything that might disclose his identity.
“Not a scrap of paper, not a dollar; but I guess that wasn’t always the case with him––you can see it by his face,” he said. Then he laughed. “He’s probably like a good many more of us––not very anxious to let folks know where he came from.”
The girl, though he did not notice it, winced at this; but next moment he touched her shoulder.
“Get some water on,” he said. “After we’ve made the poultice, I’ll take charge of him. We may get Mrs. Custer round in the morning.”
The girl merely smiled and went out with him. She was aware that it was in some respects an unusual thing which she was doing, but that did not greatly trouble her. They are not very conventional people in that country.
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CHAPTER III
WAYNEFLEET’S RANCH
Though he afterwards endeavoured to recall them, Nasmyth had never more than a faint and shadowy recollection of the next few days. During most of the time, he fancied he was back in England, and the girl he had left there seemed to be hovering about him. Now and then, she would lay gentle hands upon him, and her soothing touch would send him off to sleep again; but there was a puzzling change in her appearance. He remembered her as slight in figure––sylph-like he had sometimes called her––fastidious and dainty, and always artistically dressed. Now, however, she seemed to have grown taller, stronger, more reserved, and, as he vaguely realized, more capable, while her garments were of a different and coarser fashion. What was still more curious, she did not seem to recognize her name, though he addressed her by it now and then. He pondered over the matter drowsily once or twice, and then ceased to trouble himself about it. There were several other things that appeared at least as incomprehensible.
After a long time, however, his senses came back to him, and one evening, as he lay languidly looking about him in his rude wooden bunk, he endeavoured to recall what had passed since he left the loggers’ camp. The little room was comfortably warm, and a plain tin lamp burned upon what was evidently a home-made table. There was nothing, except a rifle, upon the rough log walls, and nothing upon the floor, which was, as usual, rudely laid with split boards, for dressed lumber is costly in the Bush. Looking through the open door into the 23 general living-room, which was also lighted, he could see a red twinkle beneath the register of the stove, beside which a woman was sitting sewing. She was a hard-featured, homely person in coarsely fashioned garments, which did not seem to fit her well, and Nasmyth felt slightly disconcerted when he glanced at her, for she was not the woman whom he had expected to see. Then his glance rested on a man, who had also figured in his uncertain memories, and now sat not far away from him. The man, who was young, was dressed in plain blue duck, and, though Nasmyth noticed that his hands were hard, and that he had broken nails, there was something in his bronzed face that suggested mental capacity.
“I suppose,” the sick man said, “you are the doctor who has evidently taken care of me?”
He was not quite himself yet, and he spoke clean colloquial English, without any trace of the Western accentuation he usually considered it advisable to adopt, though, as a matter of fact, the accent usually heard on the Pacific slope is not unduly marked. The other man naturally noticed it, and laughed somewhat curiously.
“I have some knowledge of medicine and surgery,” Gordon answered. “Now and then I make use of it, though I don’t, as a rule, get a fee.” Then he looked rather hard at Nasmyth. “Quite a few of us find it advisable to let our professions go when we come to this country.”
Nasmyth nodded, for this was a thing he had discovered already. Many of the comrades he had made there were outcasts––men outside the pale––and they were excellent comrades, too.
“Well,” he said, “I have evidently been very sick. How did I get here? I don’t seem to remember.”
“Miss Waynefleet found you lying in the snow in the clearing.”
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“Ah!” said Nasmyth––“a tall girl with a quiet voice, big brown eyes, and splendid hair?”
Gordon smiled. “Well,” he said, “that’s quite like her.”
“Where is she now?” asked Nasmyth; and though he was very feeble still, there was a certain expectancy in his manner.
“In the barn, I believe. The working oxen have to be fed. It’s very probable that you will see her in the next half-hour. As to your other question––you were very sick indeed––pneumonia. Once or twice it seemed a sure thing that you’d slip through our fingers. Where were you coming from when you struck the clearing?”
Nasmyth, who had no reason for reticence, and found his mind rapidly growing clearer, briefly related what had led him to set out on his journey through the Bush, and his companion nodded.
“It’s very much as I expected,” he said. “They paid you off before you left that logging camp?”
“They did,” said Nasmyth, who was pleased to recall the fact. “I had thirty-two dollars in my belt.”
His companion looked at him steadily. “When you came here you hadn’t a belt on. There was not a dollar in your pockets, either.”
This was naturally a blow to Nasmyth. He realized that it would probably be several weeks at least before he was strong enough to work again, and he had evidently been a charge upon these strangers for some little time. Still, he did not for a moment connect any of them with the disappearance of his belt. He was too well acquainted with the character of the men who are hewing the clearings out of the great forests of the Pacific slope. As