"No. It's just a little lie told for my father … the only thing I have ever done for him!"
Drennen came suddenly about the table, both of his strong hands out.
"When a man is very young he judges sweepingly, he condemns bitterly. Now … why, now I don't give a damn what you've done or why!" His voice went hoarse, his hands shook and into the hard eyes of David Drennen, eyes grown unbelievably soft now, the tears stood. "If only you hadn't shut me out that way … God! I've missed you, Dad!"
The old man made no answer as his hand grew like rock about his son's. A smile ineffably sweet touched his lips and shone in his eyes. The years had been hard, merciless years to him as they had been to David Drennen. But for a moment the past was forgotten, this brief fragment of time standing supreme in the two lives. At last, in the silence, there fell upon them that little awkwardness which comes to such men when for a second they have let their souls stand naked in their eyes. Almost at the same instant each man sought his pipe, filling it with restless fingers.
"My boy," said the man whose name had been Marshall Sothern through so many weary years that it was now more his name than any other, "there is the tale to tell … sometime. I can't do it now. One of these days … this has been the only dream I've dreamed since I saw you last, in Manhattan, David … you and I are going to pack off into the mountains. We're going alone, David, and we're going far; so far that the smoke of our little camp fire will be for our eyes and nostrils alone. Then I can tell you my story. And … David …"
"Yes, Dad?"
"That forty thousand … You are a gentleman, David! That was like you. I … I thank you, my boy!"
Drennen's face, through a rush of emotions, reddened. Reddened for an unreasoning, inexplicable shame no less than for a proud sort of joy that at last he had been able to do some small thing for John Harper Drennen, his old hero.
Again there fell a silence, a little awkward. The two men, with so much to say to each other, found a thousand thoughts stopping the rush of words to be spoken. Drennen realised what his father had had in mind, or rather in that keenly sensitive, intuitive thing which is not mind but soul, when he had spoken of the two of them taking together a trail which must lead them for many days into the solitudes before they could talk to each other of the matters which counted. Something not quite shyness but akin to it was upon them both; it was a relief when the telephone of Sothern's desk rang.
It was Marc Lemarc asking for Drennen. He had hired men, bought tools and dynamite, ordered machinery from the nearest city where machinery was to be had, had spoken to a competent engineer about taking charge of the work to be done. He was quite ready to return to MacLeod's Settlement.