Sewell spent that night at the outpost, but not in the same room with Hobson, and when he had breakfasted tolerably well Slavin came in.
"Your horse is waiting, and you will start at once—for wherever you like so long as it's outside my boundaries, though I may as well mention that every officer in the district will be warned against you," he said. "If you feel yourself aggrieved you can, of course, complain to Victoria."
Sewell made no protest. When he knew it would be useless he seldom did, and Slavin, who handed him several days' provisions, waited until he swung himself into the saddle.
"It wouldn't be wise to push your luck too hard by coming back," he said.
Sewell smiled from the saddle, and rode away. He knew that the seed was sown and need only be left to spring and ripen, though he would have felt easier had he been sure that Slavin did not know it, too. Eshelby could be trusted to stimulate the growth of the crop, but he had already grasped the capabilities of the quiet police officer, who, it was evident, was a very different kind of man.
XI
INGLEBY VENTURES A REMONSTRANCE
It was late in the afternoon when Ingleby, who led two jaded pack-horses, limped into the Green River cañon. His long boots, which were caked with the mire of leagues of travel, galled him cruelly; every joint was aching; and it was only by an effort he kept himself on his feet at all. It had rained most of the way from the distant settlement where he had been for the flour Hetty had asked for, and during the last week he had slept by snatches amidst the dripping fern while the pitiless deluge thrashed the fir trunks that indifferently sheltered him. The few strips of natural prairie in the valleys had turned to treacherous swamps, where he sank to the knee, and every few miles there was a furious torrent to be forded perilously.
Had he been called on to make that journey under such conditions when fresh from England he would probably never have reached the cañon, but strenuous toil with pick and shovel and the simple life of the wilderness had hardened him, and endued him with the strength of will which holds the worn-out body in due subjection. Man's capacity for endurance is, as even the hard-handed bushman knows, moral as well as physical; but Ingleby was making his last effort when he reached the great rift between the hills.
The river roared close beneath him, swirling among its boulders, stained green with the clay of a great glacier, and overhead the sombre pines were blurred by mist and rain. No laden beast could scale the slope they clung to, and a treacherous bank of gravel on which a man could scarcely keep his footing dropped to the river just outside the slushy trail. Ingleby sank ankle-deep in mire at every step, but he held on doggedly with a hand on the leading horse's bridle and the rain on his face, for Leger's camp was not very far away, and he feared that if he rested now his worn-out limbs might fail him when he came to start again.