“You look like it.” Gordon smiled. “As it happened, 40 I saw Miss Waynefleet crossing the clearing. It occurs to me that she may have said something that set you thinking.”
“I wonder,” said Nasmyth reflectively, “what made you fancy that?”
Gordon regarded him with a little twinkle in his eyes. “Well,” he replied, “I have the honour of Miss Waynefleet’s acquaintance, and have some little knowledge of her habits.”
Men make friends with one another quickly in the Western forests, and Nasmyth had acquired a curious confidence in his companion, in spite of the story Gordon had told him. As the result of this he related part, at least, of what the girl had said. Gordon nodded.
“It’s quite likely you’ll get that contract if you apply for it. The folks about the settlement haven’t sent an offer in,” he said. “The notion is naturally Miss Waynefleet’s. It’s the kind of thing that would appeal to her, and, in a way, it’s fortunate you have fallen into her hands. She’s one of the protesters.”
“The protesters?”
“Yes,” answered Gordon; “I can’t think of a better name for them, though it doesn’t exactly convey all I mean. To make the thing a little clearer, we’ll take the other kind––in this country they’re best typified by the Indians. The Siwash found it a wilderness, and made the most of it as such. They took their toll of the salmon, and fed their ponies on the natural prairie grass. If we’d left it to them for centuries it would have remained a wilderness. We came, and found Nature omnipotent, but we challenged her––drove the steel road down the great cañon to bring us provisions in, dyked the swamp meadows, ploughed up the forest, and rent the hills. We made our protest, and, quite often, it was no more than that, for the rivers were too strong for us, 41 and the Bush crept back upon our little clearings. Still, we never let go, and it’s becoming evident that we have done more than hold our own.”
He paused, and laughed in a deprecatory fashion before he went on again. “Now and then I have an outbreak of this kind,” he added lightly. “The thing would make an epic, but, if one could write it, it wouldn’t be worth while. The protest that counts in this land is made with the axe and drill.”
The outbreak was comprehensible, for it must be remembered that the average Westerner, either by birth or adoption, is seldom a reticent man. He is, in fact, usually characterized by a daring optimism, and not infrequently filled to overflowing with the clean pride of achievement. One can hear this new-world enthusiasm bubble over on public platforms and at brilliant functions, as well as in second-rate saloons, but it is most forcibly expressed where men toil waist-deep in icy water building dyke and dam, or blast their waggon roads out of the side of the gloomy cañons. Their handiwork is not always beautiful, but one wonders to see what they have made of that great desolation.
Nasmyth lay still among the wineberries, for a minute or two, and, though a cold green transparency had replaced the fires of sunset behind the tall trunks now, and the trout were splashing furiously in the pool, he forgot all about the rod beside him as he pondered over a question which had often occurred to him.