Daughters of the Dominion: A Story of the Canadian Frontier

CHAPTER XXVI A Woman of Business CHAPTER XXVI A Woman of Business NELL was very happy, and prospering beyond her wildest dreams. Fortunately for her the early part of the winter was exceptionally mild and open, so that mining operations went busily forward, and she had no lack of customers nightly to consume the food which she spent her days in cooking. The great burden of maintaining the family rested almost entirely upon her, for Mrs. Lorimer was so ill that most of Gertrude’s time was taken up in nursing and caring for the poor invalid. Patsey was away all day at Bratley, except on Saturdays, when he was chopping and hauling wood, or on Sundays, when he took Teddy and Flossie over to the Settlement in the wood-truck, to attend the Sunday School which was held there in the tin-roofed mission hall by the smelter works. Despite her hard work, and the drudgery of her days, Nell carried a bright face all the time, feeling herself supremely blessed in having so many depending on her, so many to love, and to love her in return. She possessed, too, the happy knack of finding employment for everyone, so Teddy, aged five, and little Abe, the baby, both had their accustomed tasks, which they performed with a zest and energy worthy of great undertakings. Abe was two years and a half old now, a fine sturdy youngster, who loved nothing better than movement of some kind, so he and Teddy between them dragged wood into the kitchen from the wood shed, with much snorting and hissing, in imitation of the engines arriving and starting at the depot. Both of the small boys yielded Nell a whole-hearted devotion, and followed her about nearly all day long. But it was Flossie’s love which was the most precious to Nell, and had her life been twice as hard, she would still have felt herself amply repaid in the affection she received from her adopted family. Dr. Russell came regularly once a week to see Mrs. Lorimer, who grew rather worse than better as the weeks went on. Mrs. Nichols had been to see them once, but she was ailing herself, and not able to get out much. When Christmas had passed, and the new year had begun, a heavy snow fell, and lay for three weeks. Then came a check in Nell’s business, so many of her customers took holiday, and went off to the towns until the weather broke again. She was rather glad of the slack time, since it gave her a breathing spell, and enabled her to do many things which were so impossible when in full tide of work. Sometimes she sighed a little ruefully over her inability to find more time for reading, and told herself that she would soon forget what little she had learned before. But in reality she was making great strides in all sorts of knowledge, and learning some of the deep lessons of life, which no books could have taught her. The loft where she and Flossie slept was almost as bare, although more weather-tight than the one in which she had slept at the Lone House. But Nell had put her bed near the pipe of the kitchen stove, which came up through the loft, and so she and Flossie were comfortably warm even in the bitterest weather. One use Nell made of her spare time was to rearrange her premises for the greater convenience of her work. She got Sam Peters to make her a big store cupboard, which was placed in one corner of the kitchen, and saved her endless runs into the sitting-room, where formerly she had been obliged to keep her groceries, tubs of lard, and that sort of thing. Then she made a great stock of marmalade, for the huckleberry jam was almost gone, and her store of apples, which had been brought from Lorimer’s Clearing, was dwindling fast. The wood shed was getting empty too, for although Patsey worked hard all day Saturday, he could not in one day supply the drain of seven. So, drawing a pair of old woollen stockings over her shoes, Nell sallied out to the clear crisp cold of the winter afternoons, armed with an axe, a saw, and an old box on runners which did duty for a sledge, and enjoyed blissful hours in chopping and sawing among the dead wood on the slope behind the house. “Nell, dear, you have all the drudgery; it is too bad! I would come and help, only I can’t leave mother,” Gertrude said, on the first afternoon when Nell returned, flushed and sparkling, from her labours in the snow. “It isn’t drudgery, it is a real holiday, only I wish the children could enjoy it too,” Nell answered wistfully, for the two little boys and Flossie had bad colds, and were not able to stir out of doors. “I’m afraid I should not think it such a treat as you do,” said Gertrude, shivering a little. She was looking pale and thin, while there were dark rings round her eyes, brought there by overmuch confinement in a sick-room. “Then it is a very good thing that I am the one who is free to go. I had been feeling rather mean, because I was having all the fun, but this, of course, restores the balance,” laughed Nell, as she divested herself of her outdoor garments. Every day for a week she went wood-hauling in the afternoons. Then a thaw set in, her customers came back, and the old rush began. One evening, when February was well on its way, a member of the Syndicate dropped in late to buy his supper, and then remained to talk. He was an elderly man, who should have been rich enough by this time to have ceased living such a toilsome life, only the trouble was that although he could earn as much money as any man, he could not save it. This individual went by the name of Ike, and Nell could never discover that he had any other. She always called him Mr. Ike, a circumstance which appeared to afford him great amusement. But she had long since found that “With what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again,” was as true in the simple things of life as in the great issues of the soul; and because she always treated her customers with a ceremonious civility, she invariably received from them a similar courtesy in return. “Good evening, Miss Hamblyn,” said the miner, lifting his cap with a flourish when he entered the room, then dropping it back on his head with a weary air as he subsided on to the bench near the door. “Good evening, Mr. Ike. Have you been taking a holiday?” she asked; for she had not seen Ike, who was one of her most regular customers, for nearly a fortnight. “Yes; and I’ve been quite a considerable way too. Had a run down to Vancouver City, and spent ten days or more loafing round hearing the news.” “You must have found the city pretty lively after Camp’s Gulch,” remarked Nell, as she ladled a pint of soup into the miner’s tin can. “It was a sight too lively for me. I suppose I must be getting old and rusty, for I find I ain’t half nimble enough to keep up with city folks nowadays,” he answered, rather gruffly; by which she understood that he had been gambling, and had probably lost almost all the cash he had taken with him, and had returned with empty pockets. “You would not find it so cold in Vancouver City as here among the hills?” she asked. “It was cold enough. A sharper spell of winter weather than we often get in these parts,” he answered. Then, suddenly remembering an item of news which might interest her, he lifted his head and became talkative. “I heard a little about a friend of yours away down in the city,” he said, with a short gruff laugh. “A friend of mine? But I don’t know anyone in Vancouver City,” she said, in surprise, then suddenly shivered, thinking that he might be referring to Doss Umpey. “Not by sight, perhaps, for I don’t think you saw him, not that time when you had most to do with him, leastwise.” And Ike paused to relieve his feelings with a rumbling laugh. “What do you mean?” demanded Nell, in a bewildered tone. “I mean that I happened on news of Dick Brunsen, and he’s dead,” said Ike, stating the fact rather as if it were good news than otherwise. But Nell turned ghastly white, and seized hold of the table to keep herself from falling, while she echoed faintly⁠— “Dead? How?” “I HEARD A LITTLE ABOUT A FRIEND OF YOURS AWAY DOWN IN THE CITY,” HE SAID. Ike was sampling his soup, so failed to notice her agitation. Taking a deep draught from the tin can, he then wiped his lips on his jacket sleeve, and proceeded to answer her questions. “Oh, he died real game. I always said he was a lad of parts, only the trouble was he’d got such a lot of misdirected energy that it was bound to get him into trouble sooner or later. He’d got two pals, one was his father, the veriest old hypocrite that ever drew breath, and the other was a chap they called Doss Umpey, a pretty good match for Brunsen senior by all accounts. A long time ago, when I was a young man, they two and an Irishman named Logan were up to no end of law-breaking, smuggling across the border, setting up coaches, and all that sort of thing; then Logan got pinched, and the other two turned virtuous, or pretended to.” Nell nodded. So much of Doss Umpey’s past she already knew from Mrs. Nichols, but she was wondering what fresh revelations were to be made by Ike, or what he would say if she were to tell him that she had lived so long at the Lone House with the old man, believing him to be really her grandfather, and not merely the stepfather of her mother. Ike had paused for another draught of soup; when it was swallowed he went on with his story. “It seems that when we lifted Master Dick out of that Chinaman’s coffin, where you’d chained him up so secure, and he had paid back that little lump of dollars out of which he had cheated us, he and the two old chaps tracked off to Nelson, and worked there for awhile, with the eyes of the police on them all the time. Then suddenly they disappeared, and when next they were heard of, it was at Skeena, and they were giving it out that they had struck it rich on the shores of the Babine Lake, an uncertain number of miles from Skeena, and in a district pretty thickly sprinkled with Tacla Indians.” “But Skeena is very cold, isn’t it?” asked Nell, thinking how Doss Umpey used to grumble about the cold during the long winters on Blue Bird Ridge. “Rayther nippy, but it doesn’t count for much if you’ve wintered at Klondike, as I have,” replied Ike, taking another pull at the soup, which nearly emptied the can. Nell shivered. She had the feeling of wanting to pull the information out of him, but Ike was not the sort of man to be hurried over any story he had to tell, so she was forced to wait patiently, and let him go his own way. “There was a man stopping at Carter’s⁠—⁠he was working at Cate’s shipyard just then, but he had been in Skeena a month before, and had left the day after the thing happened,” went on Ike. “What happened?” asked Nell, with a little stamp of her foot, for his slowness of narration thoroughly exasperated her. “The way young Dick pegged out game, of course. The three of them had been showing round a couple of nuggets, and talking big about the bucketfuls of the same stuff that might be picked up for the asking on a little stream that emptied into the Babine Lake, and, of course, they pretty soon got a crowd together to go with them, every man armed, for the Tacla Indians are an awkward lot to deal with. So they started, and were three days out from Skeena when trouble began, for a rumour went round that the nuggets hadn’t been found on the Babine at all, but had been stolen from a man what had brought them down from Juneau, and taken too much liquor on board at Skeena to be able to look after his own property. The crowd was a pretty rough one, and they pretty soon made the three stand out.” “What is that?” asked Nell, faintly. Ike gave another rumbling laugh. “It about amounts to standing up to be shot at. The old men hadn’t got much fight left in them, but young Dick wasn’t made like that, and they say he fought like ten men rolled in one, and knocked the crowd over in so many places all at once, that at last they just bowled him over in self-defence, as you may say.” “Do you mean he was shot?” asked Nell, in a horrified whisper. “That is what it amounts to, I suppose, though I never heard anyone give it a name. In fact, it might prove extremely awkward for some of that crowd, if it could be proved which of them had let off their revolvers on that occasion. Law is law in Canada, you know; and the police are about as smart as they make ’em, but they haven’t got eyes in the back of their heads, and they can’t be in fifty different places at once, so accidents do occur once in a while,” said Ike, with a big sigh; after which he finished his soup, and decided to have another pint to take away with him. “Were they all killed?” asked Nell, whose very teeth were chattering. Ike shook his head. “There was no particulars come through regarding the old’uns. But the worst of it was that the story about gold on the Babine was true, as the crowd found when they got there, only the Indians was there too, and had their eyes skinned. So that of the thirty or forty what went, only five came back to Skeena.” Nell covered her face with her hands, and sobbed from sheer horror, and sympathy with the poor victim of such a tragic fate. She had no especial pity for the crowd so nearly wiped out by Tacla Indians, for their end had in it a sort of retributive justice which appealed to her ideas of fitness. “There now, don’t you take on about a fellow being wiped out as was born to be hanged, and only missed his destiny by a fluke, as you may say.” There was considerable consternation in Ike’s tone, and he gazed at her with so much concern that she must have laughed at his lugubrious expression had her mood not been so far removed from merriment just then. “It is such a dreadful story!” she gasped, her voice broken and unsteady. “There are worse things happening in the world every day. Mind you, if the fellow had not cheated people before, they would not have been so likely to think he was cheating them then,” said Ike, rising to his feet, and laying some money on the kitchen table, which served Nell as a counter. She opened the stout leather bag which hung from her waist to give him change, while words from Holy Writ beat themselves out in her brain, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” “Now, don’t you go a-crying yourself blind over Dick Brunsen, because, as I said before, he wasn’t worth it,” said Ike, as he took his change and prepared to depart. Nell shook her head in a dubious fashion, which might have been translated in several ways, but she made no other remark, save a polite good evening; and Ike went away pondering on the soft-heartedness of girls in general, and of this one in particular, who could sob over the end of a low-down cheat like young Dick Brunsen. Nell shed a good many tears during the next few days over that story of wilderness tragedy, and there was no doubt at all in her own mind that Doss Umpey and the elder Brunsen must have shared the fate of young Dick; or at any rate had they escaped being shot as he was, most probably they fell victims to the Indians later. She said no word to Gertrude about the incident. There had never been any inducement to speak much of her past to the Lorimers. Since she could say so little in praise of Doss Umpey, she had carefully refrained from speaking of him at all to anyone, except Mrs. Nichols, who already knew more about him than Nell did herself. Just now, too, Gertrude had enough sorrow of her own to bear, for Dr. Russell had spoken plainly of Mrs. Lorimer’s condition, and said that a few weeks would probably end the poor woman’s sufferings. He was very kind to them, doing everything in his power for the comfort of the invalid; but he could not lift or lessen the strain of Gertrude’s life, and Nell often looked at her in fear and trembling, wondering what they would do if she broke down. Then, one day, just when it seemed the strain was as great as it could be, Mrs. Nichols came up from Bratley and announced that she had come on a good long visit, because she felt that she needed change of air and scene. Nothing could have been more opportune than her coming, and if the doctor was at the bottom of it, neither he nor Mrs. Nichols ever mentioned the fact. So the days wore on. Each week the sun shone with more strength; the sap rose in the forests, and the millions of leaf buds grew and swelled in token that summer was coming. Meanwhile Nell toiled steadily for her adopted family, so content with the love that was her daily and hourly reward, as never to guess or to speculate concerning the future, and what it might bring her. CHAPTER XXVII An Early Customer IT was the last day of June, and the promise for July was for fine weather and sunshine. Camp’s Gulch was in a state of bustle and activity, which bespoke great business activity. There was a row of ugly little huts for miners on the side of the depot farthest from the Settlement road. Some of the miners had their wives and children with them now, and this increase of population necessitated a school-house here as well as at the Settlement. So a wooden shed, brown and unpainted, with a shingled roof, had been hastily run up, and Gertrude had applied for and obtained the post of teacher. She had fortunately taken her certificate at Nine Springs, before becoming a telegraph operator, so there had been no difficulty regarding her fitness for the post, and as she was on the spot, everyone regarded her as the most suitable for the position. Mrs. Lorimer had slipped out of life during the first days of March. Her sufferings had been so great that those who watched her could feel only thankfulness that the hour of her release had come. Her children mourned her truly, but in the months of her helplessness they had learned to do without her, and so they could not be said to miss her as much as if she had been cut down in rude health. With the coming of more women to Camp’s Gulch, some parts of Nell’s business had grown less, for where men had their wives to keep house for them, they did not need to go and buy cooked food. But she had made up the lack with other things, until her little kitchen had come to look like a regular store. On that last day of June, Nell had an inspiration, and, according to her wont, she acted upon it promptly. “Do you know, Gertrude, I am disposed to think we might take a summer boarder, perhaps two, if they were willing to share one room,” she said, as they sat resting in low chairs out in the garden, after the day’s work was done. “Is it necessary, dear? You have such heaps to do already,” Gertrude said, a little doubtfully, for Nell worked so hard that it scarcely seemed possible she could do more. “It would be very pleasant to have a city-dweller with us for a few weeks, and might save us from becoming too hopelessly countryfied,” Nell answered, with a laugh; then added in a more serious tone, “The fact is, I heard of one to-day, and that is what made me decide, all in a great hurry, that a summer boarder is the one thing needed to make my happiness complete.” “But where would you put the individual to sleep, Nell?” asked Flossie, who lay in a hammock stretched between the wall of the house and a straight young cedar, which by a happy chance had escaped the destruction when the ground was cleared. “I fear we should have to turn Gertrude out. But if we offered her the hospitality of our loft, perhaps she wouldn’t mind very much,” Nell replied, with a low laugh. Her mood was very happy to-night, and the others quickly caught the infection of her good spirits. “Oh, I love to sleep in the loft, only I hope you won’t put my bed close to the stove-pipe, if the weather is very warm. But where did you hear of your boarder, Nell?” “Mrs. Peters came over this afternoon while you were in school. She had just had a letter from a lady living in Victoria, over in Vancouver, a Miss Alfreton, who wanted to know if she could be accommodated at Camp’s Gulch, because she said that her nephew, who was here last summer, had told her it was the loveliest place on earth.” “Poor lady, how disappointed she will be!” murmured Gertrude, thinking of the bare little school-house and the ugly houses of the miners. “The trees and the hills are beautiful, anyway,” broke in Flossie, in a tone of protest, not choosing to hear Camp’s Gulch despised even by insinuation. “And the view from my kitchen window is not to be surpassed, of that I am positive,” said Nell, with a laugh. “Miss Alfreton may or may not be accompanied by her sister. Now, shall we take them or not?” “Would they board with us?” asked Gertrude, doubtfully still. “They must. I for one shall not consent to give up our only sitting-room and take my meals in the wood-shed. Besides, I fear there is so much of the Yankee independence about me still, that I should not choose to have people here who wished to eat at a separate table, because we were not fine enough in our manners, or sufficiently solid in our finances, to eat with them,” Nell replied, with a toss of her head. Gertrude’s brow cleared. “Oh, if they are to come on terms of equality, just paying for their board, that is a different matter. It is sinful to be so proud, especially when one is poor, but I just hated the thought of people lodging in the house, and having to be waited on by you, poor overworked dear!” “I’m not overworked, so dismiss the idea at once and for ever,” said Nell, with a wave of her hand. “But if we could make a little money in that way this summer, we should be able to get Patsey into that school for electrical engineers next fall, without any more trouble, and once he is there, I am confident he will make his own way all right.” “You are always thinking of us, Nell, never of yourself!” exclaimed Gertrude. And now there was almost a reproachful inflection in her voice, as if unselfishness were a matter for regret. “Well, you need not be so ready to remind me that I am only adopted, and not the real thing,” said Nell, with a strained laugh as she rose hastily and went indoors, saying that there was something in the kitchen which she must do before bedtime. “There, now you have hurt her feelings,” said Flossie, in low-voiced reproach. “I did not mean to,” said Gertrude, humbly. “But it fairly frightens me sometimes to think of how much we owe to Nell that we can never, never pay. Why, to one dollar that I earn, she earns or saves ten, and she works twice as hard as I do every day in the week.” “I know all that,” replied Flossie, with a contented laugh. “But there is another side to it, what Dr. Russell calls the other point of view, and that is that, while there is only one Nell to love us, there are five of us to love Nell, and that, as she reckons wealth, makes the balance even.” “I wonder very often how we could ever have got through last winter without her,” Gertrude said, with a little sigh, as her thoughts went back to those days of pain and strain, when Nell had been the only breadwinner. “I suppose we could not possibly have done without her, and that was why God sent her to us,” said Flossie, with such a thrill of confidence in her tones that Gertrude was comforted in spite of herself. “Dear old Nell, she does deserve to be happy!” she murmured. “Nell is happy, except for a slight pang now and then when you drop out allusions to her being only our adopted sister. The rest of us never hurt her in that way, because we never remember about her not being our own sister, unless some one reminds us. I’m going indoors now to see what she is doing, and if I find her weeping in the back entry, I shall come out and pinch you for having made her cry,” said Flossie, with a laugh, as she slipped out of her hammock and stole softly into the unlighted house to discover what Nell was doing. Gertrude sat on in the gloaming, thinking her own thoughts and smiling over them. She was very tired with her day’s work, and rest was welcome. It was pleasant, too, to have a brief space in which to sit with folded hands while visions of the future stretched before her, tinted with a rosy light of happiness. Back in the sad days of last winter Dr. Russell had asked her to let him share the burdens which had descended upon her, and although she would not let him do it then, it had brought comfort and happiness to her to know that he cared enough to be willing to take her and her family too. But it was only common prudence to wait, for the doctor was earning little more than sufficed to keep Sonny and himself in food and clothes, although the increase of population in the neighbourhood would doubtless bring him more patients in course of time. Gertrude could not stand alone and organize a career as Nell had done, she was formed on such entirely different lines. But she possessed a fund of enduring patience, and could bear great burdens if only she had some one to take the initiative for her. Her thoughts to-night, resolved into plain speech, meant that if Patsey could be got into the school of electrical engineers next fall, it would clear the way considerably for herself and the doctor. Teddy and little Abe would require little more than food and clothes for some years to come, and could be brought up easily with Sonny Russell, for boys, like colts and calves, always do better in groups than singly, while Flossie belonged so entirely to Nell that no one would dream of parting them. “Are you coming to bed to-night, or do you intend staying out there?” asked the brisk voice of Nell from the door, and then Gertrude’s dream visions fled, leaving her in the world of actualities once more. “What a pity it is to be obliged to go to bed on a night like this,” she said regretfully, as she paused on the threshold. “It would be a still greater pity if we could get no chance for sleep and forgetfulness, before the work of to-morrow began,” said practical Nell. “Come in and shut the door, Gertrude; you look just like a ghost.” “I feel like one,” Gertrude answered dreamily. Then she said abruptly, “I have got a sensation about me that change is impending, and that we shall somehow be different to-morrow.” “That follows as a matter of course, and to-morrow is always in advance of to-day. But I am too sleepy for moralizing, so let us go to bed,” Nell said, with a shiver, as she drew Gertrude in, and bolted the door. Patsey and the two boys were already in bed and asleep. The three girls made haste to be ready for slumber also, and soon sleep and darkness held the little household in a profound hush until the coming of dawn. Nell was early astir next morning. She made it a rule always to get her housework done before the cooking for the day began, and as she had mapped out an extra amount of housework for this particular morning, it behoved her to be up early to get it out of the way. If Miss Alfreton were really coming, the room she would occupy must be scrubbed out, and put into fresh order for her arrival, so as soon as Gertrude could be persuaded out of bed Nell attacked the task with tremendous energy, turned almost all of the furniture out of doors into the cool shade thrown by the cedar, then scrubbed the floor and the wooden walls until the little chamber was redolent of cleanliness. Her housewifely instincts were very strong, and every part of her small domain must be as spotless as her hands could make it. By the time the cleaning was done she had to start work in the kitchen, and was hard at work getting her first batch of pies baked, when a small boy of uncertain age appeared at the open door of the kitchen, and stood there as if not sure about entering. He was a complete stranger to Nell, who knew most of the people, old and young, in the neighbourhood. He might have been merely nine or ten, judging by his size; or if one reckoned his age from the expression of his face, he would at once have been taken for fifteen or sixteen. “Come in,” said Nell, pleasantly; then, seeing that he still hesitated, she asked, “What do you want?” “I want a pie if you please, ma’am,” he said, with a true Yankee drawl. “But they are not made yet. At least they are not baked,” said Nell, as she stooped to put another tin filled with pies into the oven, and shut the door, after having carefully tested the heat with her bare elbow, which was the only thermometer she possessed. “How long to wait?” demanded the boy, in a laconic fashion. “Half an hour, more or less. Where do you come from?” inquired Nell, turning from the oven to the table, and starting on a fresh batch of pies, her quick fingers turning, twisting, and moulding with an ease and skill delightful to witness, or at least the boy appeared to think so, as he crept into the room, and stood by the table, watching her operations with a look of absorbed interest. At the question, he shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, as if hesitating about his answer; then, lifting his head with a defiant jerk, he replied⁠— “From Goat’s Gulch.” “Goat’s Gulch?” repeated Nell, wondering why the name seemed so familiar, and at the same time brought with it such disagreeable sensations. Then suddenly she started, remembering that it was the place from which the man unknown had said that he brought the Chinaman’s coffin on that eventful evening in last September. “That is a long way from here, isn’t it?” she asked. “Yes, about six or seven miles, perhaps, and such a road!” said the boy, rolling up his eyes until only the whites showed, as if to express its badness. “Did you come all that way, just to buy a pie?” asked Nell, in surprise. He nodded, then became more explicit. “I’ve got to take two, one for myself, don’t you see, for dad said I shouldn’t be picking and pulling at the one for old Doss if I’d got one of my own.” Nell’s hand trembled suddenly, and there was a great clattering among the crockery which she was handling, but her tone was quite steady when she asked⁠— “Who is old Doss?” “Oh, he’s our lodger, and he’s been sick a good while back. Off his feed he is too, and so thin you could pretty nearly count every bone in his body. So dad he said I was to come over and buy him a pie from the cook-shop close to Camp’s Gulch depot, and as there ain’t no other cook-shop than this, I guess I’ve hit the place right plump in the middle of the bulls-eye,” the boy said, with great complacency. “But pies are not good for sick folk; they should have broths, and jellies, eggs, gruel, and that sort of thing,” expostulated Nell, in a shocked tone, for the thought of giving new pastry to an invalid did appear rather dreadful to her. “Dad ’as made him broth and gruel, but he just tastes it and turns his head away, as if he hadn’t any relish for it. Then dad thought of your pies, and said he guessed the sight and smell of one of them would make old Doss eat, if anything could.” Nell had grown very white; it had not taken her long to decide that probably the old man of whom the boy spoke was her grandfather, and she with equal quickness made up her mind what was her duty concerning him. “I think I should like to come and see your sick man. How can I find my way from the Settlement to Goat’s Gulch?” she asked. “You don’t want to go to the Settlement at all; there’s a nearer way over the hills. But you’d never find out where we lived, not alone,” said the boy, with a chuckle. “Why not?” she asked. “Because we live in a cart⁠—⁠me, and dad, and old Doss, and if we didn’t want our location spied upon, why we should just move on round the next corner, don’t you see,” the boy answered, with another chuckle. “But you can’t live in the cart in winter,” objected Nell. “We did last winter, and the winter before too. We backed the cart under a bluff, made a platform with a bit of sheet iron across the shafts, lifted the stove up on to that, and was just as cosy as chipmunks, I can tell you,” said the boy, who was eagerly eyeing Nell’s cooking operations. “As you say I couldn’t find this place where you live without help, will you let me walk back with you, because I want to see your sick man?” she asked, rather anxiously. The boy stared at her in undisguised amazement. “Do you mean you are wanting to tramp all the way to Goat’s Gulch, just to see whether old Doss is fit to eat one of your pies?” he demanded. “I should not like him to have one unless he is fit for it,” Nell said, with a smile. “But if you are willing to let me go with you and will do an errand for me first, I will give you a nice pie to eat when the errand is done, and a big glass of lemonade to drink with it.” “I’ll take you, though I ain’t, so to speak, much given to walking out with young ladies. What is the errand?” He smacked his lips appreciatively as he looked at the pies; then stuffed his hands deeper in his pockets as he waited to know what was really required of him. Nell scribbled a few words on a piece of paper, and asked him to carry it across to Mrs. Peters, the station-master’s wife, and wait for an answer. When the boy had gone on his errand she hurried to get her morning’s baking done, and to arrange matters so that she could leave for a few hours. The answer sent back by Mrs. Peters was brief and to the point, for she had simply turned Nell’s piece of paper over, and written on the other side in very big letters, “I’ll be there.” Nell put a big pie on a plate, poured out a glass of lemonade, and bade the boy sit down on the doorstep to eat his lunch. “I shall be ready in just one hour,” she said. “So get a good rest, for I am a fast walker, and I shall expect you to keep up with me.” The boy grinned as his sharp teeth closed on the first mouthful of that toothsome pie, but he was too busily occupied to discuss the question of his walking powers just then. Never had Nell found an hour slip by at a quicker rate than this. There was the baking to finish, the kitchen to clear up, dinner to get ready for Gertrude and the children, and the furniture to restore to the room she had so carefully cleaned in the early morning. But all the time she was darting to and fro in her endeavours to compress the work of two hours into one, there kept ringing in her mind Gertrude’s words of yesterday, “We shall somehow be different to-morrow.” “If it is really granfer, I must not let him slip out of sight again, poor old man,” she murmured to herself. “I must take care of him somehow. Perhaps Joey and Mrs. Trip could board him; but I shall know better when I have seen him⁠—⁠poor granfer!” CHAPTER XXVIII Doss Umpey’s Excuses GOAT’S GULCH was a narrow valley, or deep slit in the hills, much higher up than Camp’s Gulch or the Settlement, and so inaccessible that Nell was continually wondering as she toiled up the rocky slopes, how the cart in which the boy and the two men made their home, had been brought to such a place. Trees there were in plenty, some growing out from the crevices in big rock-boulders, others struggling for root-hold on jutting shelves, where the soil was thin and poor. Of level ground there was absolutely none. It was all uphill, or it was down, or strewn with boulders so big that they looked like mountains in miniature. Even the inexperienced eyes of Nell could see how rich in ores of iron and copper some of this rugged ground was, but she did not know that in places veins of silver ran in and out among the other ores. It would have been a fearsome place to get lost in, for there was no road or trail of any kind, and one gloomy valley only led to another of the same description. “Is it much farther?” asked Nell, who was so tired that she felt ready to drop, while the buzzing at her ear had recommenced in a most uncomfortable fashion, as it invariably did whenever she was overdone. “Just round the corner of the next block,” said the boy, with a chuckle, as he pointed to a towering mass of rock as big as a Winnipeg sky-scraper, which had a ragged fringe of trees growing at the top and extending down one side. Now at last a faint trail showed, which deepened into a well-worn path, when at last the corner was turned. Then Nell saw, standing in a sunny angle of the rock, an old tilted cart, thatched over the top and down the most exposed side with rushes, and so she knew the end of the journey was reached at last. “Go and see if he is awake; tell him some one has come to see him,” she said brusquely, as she sat down to wait on a log of wood which stood near the cooking place, while a queer feeling of faintness attacked her. The boy nodded, then quickly disappeared into the cart, while Nell sat with her eyes shut, trying to master her uncomfortable sensations. In a couple of minutes the boy emerged, calling out, “Come along, miss, he’s wide awake, and spoiling for a pie!” This last he said with a chuckle of mischief, because he believed that Nell had walked all the way from Camp’s Gulch just to see if the sick man were in a fit condition to eat pies. She rose to her feet with an effort, and carrying the little basket of soup, eggs, and custard which she had brought with her, climbed up as the boy had done, and entered the cart. Considering the small space at their disposal, the owners of that peculiar abode had done their very best with it. One side had two shelves or bunks, while on the other was a seat that served as sitting-room. On the lower shelf lay a wasted figure wrapped in an old coat and a tattered red blanket. At the first sight of the bleached, yellow face Nell gave a start of dismay. “Poor granfer, do you feel very bad?” she murmured, stooping forward so that her face could be plainly seen by the wasted figure on the shelf. “Nell, is it you?” he asked, in feeble surprise, staring at her as if he could not believe the evidence of his sunken eyes. “Yes, it is Nell,” she said, with a nervous laugh that ended in something like a sob. Perhaps he was thinking of their last meeting and his fierce brutality, for the surprise still lingered on his face as he asked⁠— “What made you come?” “The boy⁠—⁠Joe, he said his name was⁠—⁠told me that their lodger was sick; he came to buy a pie, you know, and when he said the lodger’s name was Doss, I thought it must be you, only——” but she broke off abruptly. “Only what?” he demanded suspiciously, for, judged from the standpoint of how he himself would have behaved under the circumstances, Nell’s coming was wholly inexplicable. “Only I thought that you were dead, wiped out by the Skeena crowd, or the Tacla Indians,” she said, unconsciously quoting from Ike. “You heard of that, did you? Well, I wished then, as I’ve wished a good many times since, that they had finished me off, for I should have been spared a good many hours of suffering; but I suppose it wasn’t to be,” he said, with a groan. Nell watched him with a great pity in her heart. “I made you a small custard; can you eat a little?” she asked, coaxingly, producing a basin and a teaspoon from the basket, which had weighed so heavy during the long hot walk over the hills. “Food sort of turns me sick,” he said, in feeble protest. But by gentle persuasion she induced him to swallow a few spoonfuls. “Have you had a doctor?” she asked, with a quick thought to Dr. Russell. “No; I guess all the doctors in the world could not put me on my feet again,” he answered, listlessly. “But medicine might ease you a little,” she said, looking at the hard wooden shelf on which he was lying, and thinking how he must suffer from hardship and privation. “It don’t matter so much now the weather is warm, and I sleep a good bit,” he replied, in a dull tone. “If you have been ill long, how have you managed to live?” she asked, wondering if it were starvation which had helped to bring him to such a pass. “It’s real curious, but it’s true, I’ve just been kept alive the last few months by a fluke, as you may say, a mistake that you made a goodish bit ago,” he replied. “What do you mean?” she asked, in great surprise. She would have believed his mind to be wandering but for the sanity in his eyes. “Do you remember sending a letter with thirty dollars and a picture in it to young Dick Brunsen, back in last summer?” he asked. A hot colour surged over Nell’s face, and a dizzy sensation seized her, but gripping the hard wood of the seat until it hurt her hand, she kept herself steady enough to answer calmly⁠— “Yes, I remember.” “Well, it’s that thirty dollars what kept me from starving, but there ain’t much of it left now,” he answered. “But I don’t understand. You said I had made a mistake; what did you mean?” she demanded. “You thought young Dick Brunsen was the man what I took to Button End that time when I didn’t come back?” he asked. But she replied with another question, “Was he not?” “Bless you, no; and the two were no more alike than chalk is like cheese. Young Dick was always seeing if he couldn’t do somebody out of something, and live by scheming instead of work. But the other one, the man that I took to Button End on Blossom, he was as straight-laced as a parson, and he read me a reg’lar moral lecture, all the way to Joe Lipton’s, on how I wasn’t treating you fair by keeping you on Blue Bird Ridge, with no advantages except fresh air. But he paid me well, so I ain’t going to complain about him, nor yet to say that I didn’t deserve the lecture,” Doss Umpey remarked, with another groan, as he gave himself a twist round on the wooden shelf, in the vain hope of finding a more comfortable spot for his aching bones. “Did the other one, this man Dick Brunsen, I mean, give you the money that I sent to him?” asked Nell. And now there was such a flood of gladness in her heart, that her weariness was momentarily forgotten, and her eyes were shining like two stars. The man whom she had succoured at the Lone House had been, according to Doss Umpey, straight-laced as a parson, and so her instincts had been right; she had felt that he was a good man as well as a kind one, and it had been absolute torture to her when circumstances seemed to point to his being a rogue. “Dick wouldn’t have given away that money nor yet spent it to save himself from starvation, I believe,” said Doss Umpey, with a chuckle. “He was a desperately superstitious fellow, and he’d got an idea that money sent to him like that by a mistake would bring him luck, so he always used to carry the case with him in a belt round his waist. His father and I used to laugh at him about it, but it didn’t make no difference. They didn’t know who had sent the money; but I did directly, only I wasn’t going to let on to them that I knew anything about it. But I’d seen you on the depot at Bratley, that day when we went through to Roseneath, so it didn’t take long to figure things out that you had sent the money, because you’d somehow got mixed up into thinking that young Dick was the party that had to be taken in and done for.” “So they never knew who sent it?” asked Nell, drawing a long breath of relief. “Not they! But we was dreadful hard up after that business of trying to clear out the big shed at the depot, and we had to lie low too, for between the police and the Syndicate it was rather warm for us. Then old Brunsen won a lot of money at poker, and we cleared out while we’d got the chance. We meant to go to Klondike, but we hadn’t got enough money, and it was the wrong time of the year; so we pulled up at Skeena, and looked about to see how we could make things last out until the spring. Then one day, as luck would have it, young Dick was prospecting round a bit, and he came upon a poor fellow who was dying from some wounds he’d had from getting mixed up with Indians. This chap had some nuggets in his pocket what he’d picked up in the Babine country, and he asked Dick to send them to his sweetheart in Quebec.” “Have a little more custard, then lie quiet awhile; so much talking cannot be good for you,” said Nell, anxiously, for the old man’s appearance rather frightened her. “Oh, I’m glad to talk, if it’s only to myself; it sort of whiles away the time,” said the old man; but he consented to swallow the custard, which was so much better than anything he had tasted through the weary months of his sickness. Then he went on with his story as if eager to get it told, “The poor chap pegged out when he had finished telling Dick about the gold in the Babine country, and Dick he came back to us in high feather, saying that our fortunes were made at last. And so for a time it seemed as if they were going to be; but there’s mostly something awkward turns up just as you think you’ve got to plain sailing, and somehow the crowd we had got to help us got hold of the wrong end of the story of the man with the nuggets. Then came trouble, for they were as ugly a lot as I had ever had to do with. They set upon us like a pack of wolves, and we should have been wiped out in about five minutes if it hadn’t been for Dick. He fought like ten men, and we might have pulled through even then, only one coward of a fellow shot him from behind, and so he died.” The old man’s voice broke in an irrepressible sob; but Nell’s face was white and stern. She was thinking to herself that the way of transgressors is hard, for if Dick Brunsen had only told the truth about how he had come to know of the find of gold in the Babine country, his life need not have been forfeit, and so her pity for him dwindled and died, there seemed no limit to his meanness, so really he deserved the fate which had come to him. “How did you escape?” she asked. “The crowd made tracks in no time at all, when they saw that Dick was dead, for no one could say how near the mounted police might be, and law is law in Canada, I can tell you. Old Brunsen had got hurt in the head, sort of knocked silly, so he was no good. We couldn’t take the body back to the town, for we were three days out, and the crowd had made off with all the horses and mules that we had had loaded with provisions, tents, and diggers’ outfits. So, while old Brunsen lay on the ground moaning, I dug a grave for poor Dick; only, before I dragged him into it, I took off his belt with the thirty dollars in it that you sent, and I’ve had to make it last ever since, for I’ve sort of been too sick to earn anything.” “What became of old Brunsen?” Nell asked. “He was sort of struck silly, I think, with that blow on the head, for he didn’t come to his senses, and next morning, when I woke, meaning to start back for the town, he was missing. I spent all that day and part of the next looking for him, and at last I came on his trail, only to find that he must have pitched over a bluff in the dark, for he was lying stone dead at the bottom with a broken neck. I buried him where I found him, just as I had buried Dick, then I sat down and felt pretty sick.” “Poor granfer!” exclaimed Nell, and then she stroked his withered face with gentle fingers, trying to forget all his unkindness and brutality, remembering only that he was poor, sick, and aged, an object of compassion to anyone whose heart held a spark of tenderness. Then, after a little pause, she asked, “What did you do after that?” “I don’t know. I suppose I must have got to Port Simpson somehow, for I seem to remember having been there, and I know I got to Vancouver City by boat, for I was dreadful sick and ill. But it seems as if there have been holes knocked in my memory in places; I can remember parts, but not the whole. It was at New Westminster that I fell in with Fred Higgins and the boy Joe, and I’ve lived along with them ever since. I lent him some money when he was hard up, and he’s been sort of kind to me ever since,” Doss Umpey said feebly. Then he dropped to sleep without any warning, and Nell sat silently watching him, noting the grey shadow which had gathered in the hollows of his eyes, and wondering how best she could bring help and comfort to soothe his dying hours. He awoke as suddenly as he had gone to sleep, seeming so bright and alert from the brief rest, that Nell began to think she must be mistaken, and that he could not be so low down as she had imagined. “Had a nap, have I? It’s real curious how I go to sleep all of a sudden; but it’s comforting too, and passes the time wonderful.” “Granfer, do you think you could be moved? I’ve got a house now, at least, I live with the Lorimers, and we could nurse you until you are better,” said Nell, seeing that to care for the sick man was her duty, and deciding that the plan of having summer boarders must be held over, at least, for a time. “No; I don’t want to be moved. I’m as comfortable here as I should be anywhere, and I don’t want no bother,” he said weakly. “But it is such a long way for me to come every day, and if I had you at home I could look after you so much better,” she said coaxingly. “I should only die on the way. I know what that road is, and the shaking is more than I could stand. Besides, I don’t want the police coming poking round, asking questions by the dozen, and they’d be sure to do that, if I came down to the Settlement.” “I don’t live at the Settlement, but at the depot,” said Nell, quickly. “It’s all the same, and I ain’t coming down there not to please nobody,” he said, setting his weak jaw into obstinate lines. “Granfer, what sort of hold was it that Mr. Brunsen had over you, that you didn’t come back to the Lone House that time, but left me to get on as best I could with that horrid Mrs. Gunnage?” asked Nell. The old man winced visibly, stirring uneasily on his hard shelf. “That’s an old story now, and too long for the telling, seeing that I’m tired,” he answered. But Nell meant to know if possible. “Was it anything about that old business between you and Logan and Mr. Brunsen?” she asked. He gave a little start of surprise, and wriggled again. “How did you know about that?” he demanded. “Some one told me, and then I found a letter in your pocket from Mr. Brunsen, ordering you to pay him some money or he would expose you,” she said, not choosing to tell him that she had found some of Brunsen’s writing in her mother’s box also. Doss Umpey wriggled, and his voice took on a protesting whine. “The fact is, Brunsen thought I knew where Logan’s hoard was, but I didn’t, though I guessed it should be on Blue Bird Ridge somewhere, because his old mother lived there so long. I used to pay Brunsen money to keep quiet, because he’d got black-and-white evidence against me over a bit of business what happened a good few years before you were born. I’d got no money to pay, and I was obliged to raise a few dollars on the bits of things in your mother’s box. After that I couldn’t pay interest on the mortgage Joe Gunnage held on the Lone House, so he foreclosed, and I went to Brunsen to explain matters a bit, only to find that he’d just been made a fraudulent bankrupt, and had got to clear in a hurry. So we went together.” “Leaving me to manage as best I could,” said Nell, bitterly. “Well, you did a sight better for yourself than I could have done for you, so there’s no need to cast that up at me,” he said, with another wriggle. “I promised to send you some money if I had any to send, or if I knew where you were. But luck has been against me all the time. Think of the years I lived at the Lone House, a pokin’ and pryin’ round to find the things Logan had most likely buried there, yet never came across anything. But directly Joe Gunnage gets there, and begins to dig for a root-cellar, he turns up a whole lot of things, and instead of keeping quiet about them, he must needs go flying with the whole story to the police, stirring up no end of mud. I’ve had to keep pretty quiet ever since, I can tell you, though there wasn’t a shred of evidence against me, and I was as innercent as a babe about them things, for if I had known where they were I should have dug them up and sold them a long time ago.” Nell shivered, and, leaning closer, said gently, “Don’t talk like that, granfer. You are old and feeble now, and perhaps there is not much more life left for you.” “A good thing too,” he burst in. “I’ve had about enough of it, one way and another, and I’m that tired, it is as much as I can do to lie here without lifting a finger.” “Poor granfer!” she murmured, and a mist of tears came into her eyes as she realized how little she could do for him. “Can you give me a little money, Nell?” he asked presently, with the whine coming into his voice again. She shook her head. “I will see that you don’t want for food, and I’ll send a doctor to you; but I haven’t much money to spare, granfer.” “Well, you’ll come again and see me, won’t you? Real interesting it has been, having you drop in for a chat to-day. Fred said he’d send Joe down to a food-shop as there was at Camp’s Gulch, just to get me a bit of something tasty, but I hadn’t no idea as you were there still, and would come to see me.” “I must go now. I’ve been here such a long while, and I have got to walk back, but I will come again to-morrow or the day after, if I can,” she said, wondering how she would manage to find her way home unaided. “I gave you good advice, Nell, when I told you to get over the border,” he said, with a feeble laugh, when she bade him good-bye. “I’ve always tried to do my duty by you, and I should have sent you some money if I hadn’t wanted it myself.”

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