IX
HETTY FINDS A WAY
The day's work was over, and once more the white mists were streaming athwart the pines when Ingleby lay somewhat moodily outside the tent that he and Leger occupied on the hillside above the Green River. Just there the stream swirled, smeared with froth and spume, through a tremendous hollow above which the mountains lifted high their crenellated ramparts of ice and never-melting snow. Still, though usually termed one, that gorge was not a cañon in the strict sense of the word, for a sturdy climber could scale one side of it through the shadow of the clinging pines, and there was room for a precarious trail, the one road to civilization, between the hillside and the thundering river.
Farther back, the valley opened out, and up and down it were scattered the Green River diggings. From its inner end an Indian trail, which as yet only one or two white men had ever trodden, led on to the still richer wilderness that stretched back to the Yukon. Above the tent stood a primitive erection of logs roofed with split cedar and hemlock bark which served at once as store and Hetty's dwelling. She was busy inside it then, for Ingleby could hear the rattle of cooking utensils and listened appreciatively, for he was as hungry as usual, although dispirited. His limbs ached from a long day's strenuous toil, and the stain of the soil was on his threadbare jean. He and Leger had spent a good many weeks now upon a placer claim, and the result of their labours was a few grains of gold.
He rose, however, when Hetty came out of the shanty and stood looking down into the misty valley. She was immaculately neat, as she generally was, even in that desolation divided by a many days' journey from the nearest dry-goods store and where the only approach to a laundry was an empty coal-oil can, and she turned to Ingleby with a little smile in her eyes. Hetty had her sorrows, and the life she led would probably have been insupportable to most women reared in an English town, but she had long been accustomed to turn a cheerful face upon a very hard world, and Ingleby, though he did not know exactly why, felt glad that she was there. There are women who produce this effect on those they live among, and they are seldom the most brilliant ones. Still, he did not speak, for Hetty Leger was not a young woman who on all occasions demanded attention.
"No sign of Tom!" she said.
"No," said Ingleby. "I only hope he brings something with him, and hasn't lost the flies again. I gave a man who went out a dollar each for them, and I couldn't get another if I offered ten. The plain hooks I got in Vancouver are no use either when there apparently isn't a worm in the country."
Hetty smiled, though there were reasons why a trout fly was worth a good deal to them, and one of them became apparent when she glanced at the empty spider laid beside the fire, which burned clear and red between two small logs laid parallel to each other and about a foot apart.
"If he doesn't you'll have to put up with bread and dried apples. The pork's done," she said.
It was, perhaps, not the kind of conversation one would have expected from a man at an impressionable age and a distinctly pretty girl, especially when they stood alone in such a scene of wild grandeur as few men's eyes have looked upon, but Hetty did not appear to consider it in any way out of place. Indeed, though there had been a time when she had accepted Ingleby's compliments with a smile and even became a trifle venturesome in her badinage, there had been a difference since they left England, and while Ingleby did not realize exactly what that difference was he felt that it was there. Hetty Leger had not enjoyed any of the training which is, usually, at least, bestowed upon young women of higher station; but she had discovered early that, as she expressed it, there is no use in crying for the moon, and she had a certain pride. It was also a wholesome one and untainted by petulance or mortified vanity.
"I don't think," she said reflectively, "I would worry too much about those flies."