Her tone was quiet, but it was decisive, and Nasmyth, whose face flushed darkly, let his hand fall back to his side. Then she rose, and turned to him.
“If we are to be friends, this must never happen again,” she added.
Then they went down the hillside and back to the settlement, where Nasmyth harnessed the team, which the rancher who lived near occasionally placed at Waynefleet’s disposal, to a dilapidated waggon. When she gathered the reins up, Laura smiled down on him.
“After all,” she reminded him, “you will remember that I expect you to do me credit.”
She drove away, and Nasmyth walked back to his camp beside the dam, where the men were awaiting the six o’clock supper. He leaned upon a pine-stump, looking at them gravely, when he had called them together.
“Boys,” he said, “the river, as you know, has wiped out most of the dam. Now, it was a tight fit for me to finance the thing, and I don’t get any further payment until the stone-work’s graded to a certain level. Well, if you leave me now, I’ve just enough money in hand to square off with each of you. You see, if you go you’re sure of your pay. If you stay, most of the money will go to settle the storekeeper’s and the powder bills, and should we fail again, you’ll have thrown your time away. I’d like you to understand the thing; but whether you stay or not, I’m holding on.”
There was silence for half a minute, and then the men, gathering into little groups, whispered to one another, until Mattawa stood forward.
“All you have to do is to go straight ahead. We’re coming along with you solid––every blame one of us,” he said.
A red flush crept into Nasmyth’s face.