Laura was annoyed. She wanted to feel Deering was her antagonist and had exploited Frank's trust. The trouble was, she could not altogether do so, but she dared not admit that Stannard shared his guilt and perhaps his reward. To chastise Deering, so to speak, exculpated her father.
"He is certainly muscular, and rather gross," she remarked.
"He's flesh and blood. I doubt if you quite get us yet. In the West, we haven't cultivated out rude emotions; we like a fellow who plunges at an obstacle, sweats and laughs, and sometimes gets mad. We're up against savage Nature and our job is a man's first job, to satisfy human needs. Well, you know my father; he's a pretty good Western type. When he started in, his food was frugal and his clothes were overalls. Now he's moving forests, and architects come to study the office block he built; but if things go wrong in the woods, his superintendents know he can use their talk and handle a cant-pole. His power springs from the primitive streak."
"We'll let it go," said Laura, and indicated the long rows of pines melting into the gloom. "Dark now comes soon."
"Before long the frost will come and in the mountains the cold is pretty fierce. On Puget Sound the soft Chinook blows and the white Olympians stand between you and the winds from the Rockies. The old man's keen for me to bring you back. What about our starting?"
Laura blushed, for she had agreed to marry Dillon soon, but she said, "My father cannot go yet. So long as Jimmy is in the mountains and the warden cannot tell his story, I think he will remain in Canada. Perhaps he ought to remain."
"Oh, well; you can reckon on Mr. Stannard's taking the proper line," Dillon agreed rather moodily. "You feel the thing's mechanical. Mr. Stannard is like that."
"Mechanical?" said Laura, lifting her brows.
"His taking the proper line's mechanical. He doesn't bother about it. In the West, his correctness is somehow exotic."
"If my father is exotic, I expect I am exotic."