CHAPTER XII
THE UNEXPECTED
On the first opportunity we paid off the most pressing of our creditors, and continued our labor with greater cheerfulness, working double tides when there was moonlight, scooping out the line along the sides of the coulée, though we lost more than I cared to calculate on every yard of it. As we did so the days grew shorter and shorter, and often in the mornings there was a keen frost in the air. It was a losing game, but we had given our bond and played it out stubbornly, while Johnston, who worked as hard as either now, cheered us with witty anecdote and quaint philosophy after each especially disappointing day. Then one evening when the surveyor sat with us, as he did occasionally, a man approached the tent.
“There’s a curious critter hunting round for you,” he said, “looks most like a low-down played-out Britisher. He’s wanting Contractor Lorimer, and won’t lie down until he finds him.”
“Adam Lee of Stoney Clough for a dollar; I’ve been expecting him,” said Harry, with a low whistle. “You needn’t go, surveyor. Have you been fascinating any more young damsels, Ralph? Larry, will you be kind enough to show his reverence in.”
The man grinned as he went out, and presently Lee stood before us. He looked a little stronger than when I last saw him, but there was trouble in his face, and, when I explained to the rest who he was, he sat down and commenced 129 his story. Life is generally hard to such as he, and living close packed together in the hive of a swarming town, with their few joys and many sorrows open for every eye to see, they lose the grace of reticence.
“I set up a stitching shop in a shed against Tom Fletcher’s house,” he said. “There were none of my kin left in the wide world but Minnie, and, if I wasn’t a burden, I wanted to live near her. They brought me saddles and harness to sew, and I earned a little, but I was main anxious for Thomas Fletcher. The lust of strong drink was in him, and he had sinful fits of temper, raging like one demented when I told him to cast out the devil. ‘I’ll cast out thee an’ thy preaching into perdition,’ he said. Then Minnie must tell me if I was too good for her husband, and only making trouble, they did not want me there, and I saw that sometimes Tom Fletcher scowled with angry eyes at her after I had spoken to him faithfully. So, because it is an ill thing to cause strife between man and wife, I left my daughter—and I had come half across the world to find her. They told me there were lots of men and horses working on the new railway, and I wondered if there was anything I could do that would keep me. They said Ralph Lorimer was a big contractor—an’ there was doubt between us, but I have forgiven thee.”
“Very kind of you, I’m sure!” said Harry. “The question is, however, what can you do?” and the old man answered eagerly:
“Anything, if it’s saddles or harness or mending shoes. I can cut things in hardwood and sharpen saws too, and I’ll work for a trial for nothing but my keep.”
I looked down at him compassionately, for he was old and broken in spirit, and would plainly starve if turned adrift on the prairie, while as I did so the surveyor broke in: 130