Alice Deringham had tasted of the best that England had to offer in the shape of sport and scenery, art and music, and had grown a little tired of it all; while, when her father had announced his intention of crossing the Canadian Dominion, partly on an affair of business and partly for the benefit of his health, she had gladly accompanied him in the hope of seeing something new. Deringham was a promoter and director of English companies, but his daughter having the fine disdain for anything connected with finance which occasionally characterizes those who have never felt the lack of money, asked him a few questions concerning one object of his journey. She only knew that the Carnaby estate, which would in the usual course have reverted to her, had been unexpectedly willed to the son of a man its late owner had disinherited, on conditions. The man, it appeared, was dead, and Deringham desired to see whether any understanding or compromise could be arrived at with the one son he had left behind in Western Canada.
To become the mistress of Carnaby Hall would have pleased Alice Deringham, but, as she had already realized there was no great hope of that, she had prepared to enjoy her Canadian journey. It had, however, fallen short of her expectations. Ontario reminded her of southern Scotland, and there was nothing to impress one who had seen the Highlands when the cars ran into the confusion of rock and forest, lake and river, along the Superior shore. Winnipeg in no way appealed to her, and she grew weary as they swept out past straggling wooden towns into the grass lands of the West.
The towns rose stark from the prairie in unsoftened ugliness, and there was nothing to stir the imagination in the great waste of sun-bleached grass. Day by day, while the dust whirled by them, and the gaunt telegraph posts came up out of the far horizon and sank into the east, they raced across the wide levels. The red dawns burned behind them, the sunsets flamed ahead, and still there was only dust and grass, chequered here and there with bands of stubble, while driving grit and ugliness were the salient features of the little stations they stopped at.
Miss Deringham had read enough to learn that pistol and bandolier had long gone out of fashion in Western Canada, where, indeed, they had rarely formed a necessary portion of the plainsman's attire, but she had expected a little vivid colour and dash of romance. The stock-riders she saw at the station were, however, for the most part dress in faded jean, and many of them appeared to speak excellent English, while the wheat-growers rode soberly in dusty and dilapidated wagons. Still the romance was there, though in place of the swashbuckling cavalier she found only quiet, slowly-spoken men, with patience most plainly stamped upon their sun-darkened faces. Their hands were hard with the grip of the bridle and plough-stilt in place of the rifle, and the struggle they waged was a slow and grim one against frost and drought and adverse seasons.
There was, however, a transformation when she awoke one morning and found the Rockies had been left behind, and they were roaring down through the passes of British Columbia. This was a new, and apparently unfinished, world, a land of tremendous mountains, leagues of forests, such as her imagination had never pictured, and untrodden heights of never-melting snow. Glacier, blue lake, river droning through shadowy canons, rushed by, and the glamour of it crept into the heart of the girl, until as they swept down into the valley with a river two thousand feet below, she felt she was at last in touch with something strange and new.
Presently the hoot of the whistle came ringing up the pass, wheels screamed discordantly, and the pines below flitted towards them a trifle more slowly. Then, as they swung rocking round the face of a crag and a cluster of wooden buildings rose to view, Deringham came out upon the platform. He was a tall, slightly-built man, with a pallid face and keen but slightly shifty eyes, and bore the unmistakable stamp of the Englishman.
"That must be our alighting-place, and I am not sure how we are to get on," he said. "It is, I understand, a long way to Somasco, and when we get there I really do not know whether we shall find any accommodation suitable for you. It might have been better if you had gone on to our friends, the Fords, at Vancouver."
Alice Deringham laughed a little. "I don't think you need worry. Mr. Alton will, no doubt, take us in," she said. "A little primitive barbarity would not be unpleasant as a novelty."
A trace of something very like anger crept into Deringham's eyes. It was not very perceptible, for he seldom showed much of what he felt, but his daughter noticed it. "It is somewhat unfortunate that we shall probably have to avail ourselves of the young man's hospitality," he said. "You understand, my dear, that he is a kinsman of your own, and, unless he can be persuaded to relinquish his claim, the owner of Carnaby. Still, I have hopes of coming to terms with him. The charges upon the land are very burdensome."
Alice Deringham's face grew a trifle scornful. "You will do your best," she said. "The thought of one of these half-civilized axemen living at Carnaby is almost distressful to me. In fact, I feel a curious dislike to the man even before I have seen him."