When they were alone together after they had eaten their breakfast, Cherry summoned all her courage and began her story. Anne stopped her before she had spoken a dozen words.
"You're not tellin' me a thing I don't know," she said. "Didn't I say I was here to keep Bill McCartney from playin' the damn fool? Well, he'll do that in spite of me—but I'm not goin' to let him make as big a fool of others as he has of me. Let's go and look at the horses."
Early that afternoon King arrived, and Anne went back to town with him. Cherry stood on the trail at the end of the pathway leading from the cabin, and watched them until they were out of sight. She was on the point of turning back again to the cabin when she caught sight of her father coming towards her.
"Well, girl," said Keith McBain when he had joined her, "the work's over. We begin moving the outfit to-morrow."
Cherry had been expecting the announcement every day for the past week, but when it actually came at last it found her sad in the thought of leaving the spot where all that had ever mattered much in her life—save the death of her mother—had occurred.
"I can get ready any time, father," she replied. "But—I'll hate to leave my trees—and my cabin—and my hills."
The old man looked down at his daughter and smiled. Then he put his arm about her and the two went off down the pathway together.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The next day Keith McBain's men began to break up the old camp. By night the first wagons were loaded and ready for the trail in the morning. McBain's decision to store his outfit in The Town rather than take it to the end-of-the-steel, met with the men's approval. It meant a shorter haul, and it meant a foregathering of the men from farther up the line, including Rubble's gang, as a sort of final wind-up of the season's activities. In three days there was nothing left of the old camp, except a few walls and foundations—and the little log cabin in the shelter of the tamaracs. Keith McBain had acceded to his daughter's wish to remain "just another day," and had allowed his men, under the supervision of McCartney and Gabe Smith, to go ahead and complete the task of putting the outfit under cover and preparing winter shelter for the horses.
When Cherry and her father arrived just a day after the last freight team, the place had already begun to take on a holiday appearance. They were met by Hugh Hurley, who took them at once to his cottage, where he insisted upon their staying until McBain could have a cabin of his own erected. Leaving Cherry with Mrs. Hurley, Old Silent went out to see what had been accomplished by his men. Scarcely an hour's work had been done, under either old Gabe or McCartney, towards storing the equipment, and half the men were already showing the effects of frequent visits to Cheney's. Gabe was the first to meet McBain when he arrived, and at once he confessed that scarcely a thing had been accomplished. The old contractor laid his plans carefully and with quiet deliberation. He had a long talk with Hugh Hurley, and together the two visited King Howden in his shack on the ridge, where the three talked late into the night.