“The difficulty is that I’m not disposed to go.”
“Your wishes are not going to be consulted. If there’s no other way, I’ll appeal to the boys. I’d let you stay if you were a reasonable man, and would lie quiet beside the stove until that hand got better; but since it’s quite clear that nobody could keep you there, you’re starting to-morrow for Waynefleet’s ranch.”
Gordon turned to Waynefleet. “We’ll lay you off for a week. There’s a little business waiting at the settlement, anyway, and you can see about getting the new tools and provisions in.”
Waynefleet’s face was expressive of a vast relief. The 247 few bitter weeks spent in the cañon had taken a good deal of the keenness he had once displayed out of him.
“I certainly think the arrangement suggested is a very desirable one,” he agreed “I am quite sure that Miss Waynefleet will have much pleasure in looking after Nasmyth.”
Gordon turned to Nasmyth. “Now,” he said, “you can protest just as much as you like, but still, as you’ll start to-morrow if we have to tie you on to the pack-horse, it’s not going to be very much use. You can nurse your hand for a week, and then go on to Victoria and see if you can pick up a boring-machine of the kind we want cheap.”
Nasmyth, who was aware that the machine must be purchased before very long, submitted with the best grace he could, and, though his hand was painful, he contrived to sleep most of the afternoon. Now that he was disabled and could not work, he began to feel the strain. He set out with Waynefleet at sunrise next morning, and they passed the day scrambling over the divide, and winding in and out among withered fern and thickets as they descended a rocky valley. Here and there they found an easier pathway on the snow-sheeted reaches of a frozen stream, and only left it to plunge once more into the undergrowth when the ice crackled under them. They had a pack-horse with them, for now and then one of the men made a laborious journey to the settlement for provisions, and in places a fallen tree had been chopped through or a thicket partly hewn away. That, however, did little to relieve the difficulties of the march, for the trail was rudimentary, and the first two leagues of it would probably have severely taxed the strength of a vigorous man unaccustomed to the Bush.
But they pushed on, Waynefleet riding when it was possible, while Nasmyth plodded beside the horse’s head, until a cloud of whirling snow broke upon them as they 248 floundered through a belt of thinner Bush. The snow wrapped them in its filmy folds, gathering thick upon their garments and filling their eyes, and Nasmyth grew anxious as the daylight suddenly died out. They were in a valley, out of which they could not very well wander without knowing it, and they stumbled on, smashing into thickets and swerving round fallen trees, until they struck a clearer trail, and it was with relief that Nasmyth saw a tall split-rail fence close in front of him. He threw a strip of it down, and then turned to Waynefleet when he dimly made out a blink of light in the whirling haze of snow.
“If you will go in and tell Miss Waynefleet, I’ll try to put the horse up,” he said.
Waynefleet swung himself down stiffly and vanished into the snow. He was half frozen, and it did not occur to him that Nasmyth had only one hand with which to loose the harness. It is also possible that he would have made no protest if it had.