“Yes,” he said. “Sure I am.” For an instant the blood surged to his head. The pretty eyes, the sweet face were so near, so very near to his. But slowly it receded, and, as the girl passed below the rail, McLagan drew a deep breath. He turned abruptly. His gaze was down the deck where the shadow had been. Then he glanced at the sky. The next moment he passed over the ship’s rail and followed the girl.
CHAPTER XV
The Man from the Hills
THE labour of it was tremendous. The sturdy ponies were a-lather with sweat in the pleasant warmth of the summer day. Their burden ordinarily was sufficiently light. A rattling, aged buckboard driven by the man they had known for nearly five years. It contained no outfit, no burden of any sort but the reckless teamster who had literally made the trail by his own many journeys between his home and the city of Beacon Glory. But it was the final stage of the journey. A heart-bursting haul up an incline steeper than one in four.
At the summit were rest and feed in plenty. Unlike other men in the region using horse labour, McLagan cared for his ponies better than he would care for himself. He worked them to the limit if need be, but his care of them was the same. In his undemonstrative, unsentimental fashion he loved his shaggy, stocky Alaskan ponies, and saw to it that they knew it in the fashion they understood.
Already the crowning plateau of his home was in view through the gaunt arms of the tattered forest trees with which the track was lined. A hundred yards or so more and the labour of it would be over, and the ardent creatures would snuff the ocean breeze in their gushing nostrils. The man’s whip lay gently playing over the ponies’ backs, urgent for their last ounce of effort. He was leaning forward on the hard sprung seat as though to spare them weight. It was an instinctive attitude that was of no real help. It was the attitude of a man accustomed to the saddle.
McLagan was more urgent for his home just now than usual. He had gone into Beacon to meet the message he expected from his partners and employers. But that had been excuse. He had, in reality, made the journey for Claire Carver and her mother. On their return from the wreck in the bay they had discovered the girl’s mother in a state of panic. The automobile had been put completely out of action by the terrible road over which it had passed. Not a single one of its tires was standing up. The mother was helpless. The girl was in little better case. And McLagan did what he could in the way of repair. But it was quite useless. The outer covers were wrecked, and incapable of containing the inner tubes.
In the end McLagan was able to impress on them sufficiently the immediate necessity of himself making a visit to Beacon. He assured them that he had long since planned it. That his business was pressing. And the good luck of it was that his buckboard would just carry the three of them, if they did not mind being somewhat packed into the seat and badly jolted. They had by no means minded. And the older woman sighed her relief as they planned to have a man sent out with new tires to fetch in the derelict automobile.
“You know, Claire, girl,” she had said, in her downright fashion, which no improvement in her fortunes had been able to modify, “them automobiles is liable to set folks thinkin’ you’re all sorts of a dame ridin’ around in ’em. But give me a team of decent mountain-bred plugs, with a bunch of grain inside ’em. Maybe they ain’t a blue streak of lightnin’, but they’ll mostly get you there an’ haul you back, which it’s a God’s truth is a thing you can only guess about with one of these oil cans. Ivor’s wise. Maybe his business depends on his bein’ there to do it. So he gambles on these dandy four-legged creatures.”