XV.
SAXTON GAINS HIS POINT.
Brooke was very wet and physically weary, which in part accounted for his dejected state of mind, when he led his jaded horse up the last few rods of climbing trail that crossed the big divide. It had just ceased raining, and the slippery rock ran water, while a cold wind, which set him shivering, shook a doleful wailing out of the scattered pines. One of them had fallen, and, stopping beside it, he looped the bridle round a broken branch, and sat down to rest and think, for the difficulties of the way had occupied his attention during a long day's journey, and, since he expected to meet Saxton in another hour, he had food for reflection.
It was not a cheerful prospect he looked down upon, and that evening the desolation of the surroundings reacted upon him. The gleaming snow was smothered now in banks of dingy mist, and below him there rolled away a dreary waste of pines, whose ragged spires rose out of the drifting vapors rent and twisted by the ceaseless winds. It was, in words he had not infrequently heard applied to it, a hard country he must spend his years of exile in, and of late nothing had gone well with him.
Since he had last seen Saxton, he had lived in a state of tension, waiting for the time when circumstances should render the carrying out of their purpose feasible, and yet clinging to a faint hope that he might, by some unknown means, still be relieved of the necessity of persisting in a course that was becoming more odious every day. The dam was almost completed, but it was with dismay he had counted the cost of it, and twice the steel rope had torn up stays and columns, and hurled them into the cañon, while he would, he knew, be fortunate if he secured a profit of a couple of hundred dollars as the result of several months of perilous labor. Prosperity, it was very evident, was not to be achieved in that fashion. He had also seen very little of Barbara Heathcote for some time, and she had been to him as a mental stimulant, of which he felt the loss, while now his prospects seemed as dreary as the dripping waste he stared across with heavy eyes. All this, as it happened, bore directly upon his errand, for it once more brought home the fact that a man without dollars could expect very little in that country, while there was, it seemed, only one way of obtaining them open to him. It was true that he shrank from availing himself of it, but that did not, after all, greatly affect the case, and he endeavored to review the situation dispassionately.
He had decided that he was warranted in recovering the six thousand dollars by any means available, and it was evidently folly to take into account the anger and contempt of a girl who could, of course, be nothing to him. Her station placed that out of the question, since it would, so far as he could see, be a very long time indeed before he could secure even the most modest competence, and he felt that there was a still greater distinction between them morally; but, in spite of this, he realized that the girl's approbation was the one thing he clung to. He could scarcely nerve himself to fling it away, and yet it seemed, in the light of reason, a very indifferent requital for a life of struggle and poverty. She had, he told himself, merely taken a passing interest in him, and once she met a man of her own station fortunate enough to gain her regard, was scarcely likely even to remember him.
Then he rose with a little hardening of his lips, and, flinging himself wearily into the saddle, strove to shake off his thoughts as the jaded horse floundered down into the valley. They were both too weary to attempt to pick their way, and went down, sliding and slipping, with the gravel rattling away from under them, until they reached the thicker timber, and smashed recklessly through thickets of giant fern and salmon berry. Now and then a drooping branch struck Brooke as he passed, but he scarcely noticed it, and rode on, swaying in his saddle, while great drops of moisture splashed upon his grim, wet face. It was sunrise when he had ridden out from the Canopus mine, with his horse's head turned towards the settlement, and dark was closing down when at last he dropped, aching all over, from the saddle at the door of Saxton's shanty at the Elktail mine. The latter, who opened it, smiled at him somewhat drily, and was by no means effusive in his greeting.
"I wasn't quite sure the message I sent you from Vancouver would fetch you, though I made it tolerably straight," he said.
"You certainly did," said Brooke. "In fact, I don't know that you could have made it more unlikely to bring me here. Still, what put the fancy that I might disregard it into your head?"
Saxton looked at him curiously. "Well," he said, with an air of reflection, "you seemed to be quite at home in several senses, and making the most of it there. There are folks who would consider that girl with the big eyes pretty."