They certainly did not, and they hesitated a moment until Nasmyth suddenly moved forward.
“We came here to look at the fall, and I’m going on,” he said.
They went with him, stumbling over the shingle, and now and then floundering among the boulders, with the stream that frothed about their thighs almost dragging their feet from under them. Each of them gasped with sincere relief when he scrambled out of the whirling pool. They reached a strip of uncovered rock that stretched across part of the wider hollow above the fall, and stood there drenched and shivering for several minutes, scarcely caring to speak as they gazed at the channel which the stream had cut through the midst of it. Wheeler dropped his hand on Nasmyth’s shoulder.
“Well,” he said––and Nasmyth could just hear him through the roar of the fall––“it seems to me the thing could be done if you have nerve enough. Still, I guess if they let you have the whole valley afterwards, you’d deserve it.” Then he seemed to laugh. “I’ll make my share one thousand five hundred dollars. In the meanwhile, if you have no objections, we’ll get back again.”
CHAPTER XII
WISBECH MAKES INQUIRIES
A little pale sunshine shone down into the opening between the great cedar trunks when Laura Waynefleet walked out of the shadowy Bush. The trail from the settlement dipped into the hollow of a splashing creek, just in front of her, and a yoke of oxen, which trailed along a rude jumper-sled, plodded at her side. The sled was loaded with a big sack of flour and a smaller one of sugar, among other sundries which a rancher who lived farther back along the trail had brought up from the settlement in his waggon. Waynefleet’s hired man was busy that morning, and as her stores were running out, Laura had gone for the goods herself. Other women from the cities have had to accustom themselves to driving a span of oxen along those forest trails.
The beasts descended cautiously, for the slope was steep, and Laura was half-way down it when she saw that a man, who sat on the little log bridge, was watching her. He was clearly a stranger, and, when she led the oxen on to the bridge, tapping the brawny neck of one with a long stick, he turned to her.