"No," said Sewell, with a momentary trace of embarrassment. "There are a good many reasons why it wouldn't be convenient."
"I should like to hear one or two of them," said Leger bluntly.
Sewell managed to think of several reasons, but none of them appeared altogether satisfactory when his comrades considered them. It was, however, evident that he was determined on not sending to Westerhouse, and they had to be content, though Leger looked very grave when the conference broke up.
"One could almost have fancied that Sewell had lost his nerve, and if I could send Hetty out of the valley it would be a big weight off my mind," he said.
The same thought had occurred to Ingleby, and it troubled him again that night as he kept his watch behind the tree, for he could not altogether understand the tense anxiety he felt about Hetty. She had scarcely been out of his thoughts since the night she fainted at the bakery, which, considering that he was in love with Grace Coulthurst, appeared an almost unnatural thing. There was no doubt that he was in love with the commissioner's daughter, he assured himself. All his hopes and projects for the future were built upon the fact; but he was commencing to realize vaguely that she appealed, for the most part, to his intellect, while he felt for Hetty a curious, unreasoning tenderness which was quite apart from admiration of her or her qualities. He puzzled over it that night, sitting still while the men slept about him under the stars, and then gave it up as beyond solution when one of them relieved him.
In the meanwhile Trooper Grieve had found the gorge through the barrier-range, and was pushing on through dim fir forests and over snowy hillsides for Westerhouse. Esmond lay half-insensible in the outpost, for fever and dangerous inflammation had supervened; but nobody told the American where the lieutenant was going when he fell from the tree or anything about Trooper Grieve. There was thus no apparent change in the state of affairs until one night, when every man who could be spared was away at the settlement, a stranger worn with travel was brought in by two miners. Sewell was standing with the others about the fire behind the tree, and Ingleby saw the colour sink from his face when it was told them that the stranger was from Westerhouse.
"You have got to do something right away," said the visitor. "Slavin's coming in with every trooper he can raise. He went round the way the trooper came, and I pushed on by the trail Sewell told us of to get in ahead of him. A few of the boys are coming along behind me."
There was a murmur of astonishment and consternation, and then a somewhat impressive silence, which Leger broke.
"You mean that one of the Green River troopers reached Westerhouse?" he said.
"That's just what I do mean. Your man sent him."