“Then,” he said, “they were all against him, and I think Jake—I mean the big chopper—would have forced the stuff down his throat. It was horribly burnt. There are,” and he hesitated, “things one really has to do.”
His companion nodded. She liked his diffidence, which, while very evident, was wholly genuine, and the faint color in his face gave him an appearance of boyish candor.
“Even when the odds against you are quite steep?” she said. “In the case we are discussing the result was no doubt that bruise on your face.” Then she changed the subject. “If he was a famous mineralogist, why is he cooking in a railroad camp?”
“Everybody knows,” said Weston. “The usual trouble—whisky.”
The girl made a little gesture of comprehension that had in it also a hint of disgust, and then seeing that he would say nothing further until she gave him a lead she spoke again.
“What brought you out here?” she inquired.
Weston had been asked the same question several times before, and had never answered it. In fact, he did not know why he did so now.
“I quarreled with my people. In one respect, anyway, I don’t regret it. It’s rather a beautiful country.”
He sat, with his wide hat tilted back and the sun on his face, looking out upon the blue lake between the towering pines. Their shadows floated in it, and tremendous slopes of rock ran up toward the gleaming snow on the farther side. The bush lay very silent under the scorching sun, and it was filled with the heavy odors of the firs, in which there was a clogging, honey-like sweetness.
“It’s a little difficult to understand why you seem to be content with track-grading. One would fancy it to be unusually hard work,” said the girl.