The colour crept into his daughter's cheeks again. "They would in any case belong to the Crown," she said. "Can you not believe that the man who packed our provisions in through flooded fords and snow would do anything out of generosity?"
She turned away and left him, and Townshead puckered his face dubiously. "I should find it very difficult, and the care of a daughter is a heavy responsibility," he said. Miss Townshead did not return for some little while, but stood above the cedar washing-board scarcely seeing the dishes that once or twice almost slipped from her hand. There was, her father had told her, one man who could help them in the only way in which assistance could be accepted, and she felt sure he would. If rancher Alton failed to keep his word she felt it would be very difficult to believe in the honour of his sex again.
CHAPTER XI
CONFIDENCE MISPLACED
There was sliding mist in the Somasco valley, and the pines were dripping when Alton and Miss Deringham stood upon a slippery ledge above the river. Just there it came down frothing into a deep, black pool, swung round it white-streaked, and swept on with a hoarse murmur into the gloom of the bush again. A wall of fissured rock overhung the pool on the farther side, and a fallen pine wetted with the spray stretched across the outflow and rested on one jagged pinnacle. A wet wind which drove the vapours before it called up wild music from the cedars that loomed through them on the side of the hill.
"I'd cast across the rush at the head of the pool and let the fly come down," said Alton. "There's generally a big trout lying in the eddy behind the boulder."
The girl nodded, and the line sweeping back towards the pines behind her went forward again. It fell lightly amidst the frothing rush, and Alton smiled approval as he watched the rod point follow it downstream towards a foam-licked rock. It swung to and fro a moment, then slid on again towards the still black stretch behind the stone, tightened there suddenly, and ran, tense and straight, upstream again, while the reel clacked and rattled.
"A big one," said Alton quietly. "Check the winch a little, and keep the butt down. He can't face the rapid, and you'll lose him unless you can keep a strain on when he turns again."
The girl flung herself backwards, with eyes dilated and a warmth in her cheeks, the rod bending above her, and the line ripping its way towards the welter at the head of the pool. There it curved inwards a trifle, and Alton shouted, "Reel!"
There was a quick rattle, something broke the water with a silvery flash, and the line was shooting downstream again.