Then he turned to Ingleby, and laid a hand on his shoulder. "It might be worse," he said.
"Yes," answered Ingleby, who laughed a little, though it cost him an effort, "considerably. The man who has what is evidently a very good living in his hands really doesn't deserve very much sympathy. Still, you see, I twice threw away what looked like a fortune. Any one would find the reflection apt to worry him."
They went away and left him sitting on a blackened cedar stump in the desolate clearing. The clink of the shovels no longer rose from beyond the sombre trees, and there was deep stillness in the hollow. The gaps in the forest grew duskier, and a peak across the valley flung a cold blue shadow athwart the gleaming snow. The dew was settling heavily; but Ingleby sat still, grave in face, seeing nothing, until he rose with a little resolute shake of his shoulders and, slipping down from the stump, took up his axe.
He had twice thrown away a fortune, and with it, for a time, at least, the prospect of realizing a very precious hope; but fortunes are now and then retrieved suddenly in that country; and, in any case, a man who would work must eat.
XXII
ALISON'S SAULT
Some weeks had passed since Ingleby took over Tomlinson's claim, when one lowering evening Grace Coulthurst pulled up her cayuse pony in the depths of the Green River valley. Leaden cloud had veiled the peaks since early morning, and now the pines were wailing dolefully beneath a bitter breeze. A little dust of snow, fine and dry as flour, whirled about her, and the trail was hard as adamant beneath her pony's feet. The beast pricked its ears and stamped impatiently, for it had been bred in the wilderness and knew what was coming.
Grace, whose fingers were growing stiff, relaxed her grasp on the bridle, and looked about her observantly, but without uneasiness. She was some distance from home, and daylight was dying out unusually early, while few horses unaccustomed to the mountains could have scrambled over either of the trails. There were two of them, foot-wide tracks which climbed up and down steep hollows and twisted round great fallen trees, and she had stopped at the forking, though there was, she knew, very little to choose between them.
The bush was a little thinner just there, but she could see nothing beyond dim colonnades of towering trunks that were rapidly fading into the gloom. The cold was nipping, and she shivered when the breeze dropped a moment. The silence was startling, and she felt it almost a relief when a low crescendo murmur like the sound of distant surf rose from the pines as the wind awoke again. Then a puff of powdery snow stung her tingling cheeks, and she shook the bridle and turned the cayuse into the lower trail.
She had ridden to the mines at the head of the valley early in the afternoon, while her father walked by her stirrup, which, considering the nature of the trail, he had no difficulty in doing. Indeed, he had led, and now and then dragged, the horse up parts of it. There had, as not infrequently happened, been a dispute concerning the boundaries of a placer claim, and the commissioner had gone over to adjudicate. He was not a brilliant man, but he showed no one favour, and the whimsically expressed decisions which he apparently blundered upon gave general satisfaction and are still remembered in the Green River valley. It was also characteristic of him that he had saved more than one difficult situation, in which a logical exposition of the mining laws would probably have been unavailing, by a little free badinage.