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Title: North of Fifty-Three


Author: Bertrand W. Sinclair



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NORTH OF FIFTY-THREE

by

BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR

Author of
The Land of Frozen Suns, Etc.

With Illustrations by Anton Otto Fischer







[Frontispiece: "Oh!" she gasped. "Why--it's gold!"]




New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers
Copyright, 1914,
by Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved.




CONTENTS


CHAPTERS

      I.  WHICH INTRODUCES A LADY AND TWO GENTLEMEN
     II.  HEART, HAND--AND POCKETBOOK
    III.  "I DO GIVE AND BEQUEATH"
     IV.  AN EXPLANATION DEMANDED
      V.  THE WAY OF THE WORLD AT LARGE
     VI.  CARIBOO MEADOWS
    VII.  A DIFFERENT SORT OF MAN
   VIII.  IN DEEP WATER
     IX.  THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT
      X.  A LITTLE PERSONAL HISTORY
     XI.  WINTER--AND A TRUCE
    XII.  THE FIRES OF SPRING
   XIII.  THE OUT TRAIL
    XIV.  THE DRONE OF THE HIVE
     XV.  AN ENDING AND A BEGINNING
    XVI.  A BRIEF TIME OF PLANNING
   XVII.  EN ROUTE
  XVIII.  THE WINTERING PLACE
    XIX.  FOUR WALLS AND A ROOF
     XX.  BOREAS CHANTS HIS LAY
    XXI.  JACK FROST WITHDRAWS
   XXII.  THE STRIKE
  XXIII.  THE STRESS OF THE TRAIL
   XXIV.  NEIGHBORS
    XXV.  THE DOLLAR CHASERS
   XXVI.  A BUSINESS PROPOSITION
  XXVII.  A BUSINESS JOURNEY
 XXVIII.  THE BOMB
   XXIX.  THE NOTE DISCORDANT
    XXX.  THE AFTERMATH
   XXXI.  A LETTER FROM BILL
  XXXII.  THE SPUR
 XXXIII.  HOME AGAIN
  XXXIV.  AFTER MANY DAYS




List of Illustrations


   "Oh!" she gasped. "Why--it's gold!" . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

   Roaring Bill Wagstaff stood within five feet of her, resting one
   hand on the muzzle of his grounded rifle

   "Hurt?  No," he murmured; "I'm just plain scared."

   Bill stood before the fireplace, his shaggy fur cap pushed far
   back on his head




NORTH OF FIFTY-THREE


CHAPTER I

WHICH INTRODUCES A LADY AND TWO GENTLEMEN

Dressed in a plain white shirt waist and an equally plain black cloth
skirt, Miss Hazel Weir, on week days, was merely a unit in the office
force of Harrington & Bush, implement manufacturers.  Neither in
personality nor in garb would a casual glance have differentiated her
from the other female units, occupied at various desks.  A close
observer might have noticed that she was a bit younger than the others,
possessed of a clear skin and large eyes that seemed to hold all the
shades between purple and gray--eyes, moreover, that had not yet begun
to weaken from long application to clerical work.  A business office is
no place for a woman to parade her personal charms.  The measure of her
worth there is simply the measure of her efficiency at her machine or
ledgers.  So that if any member of the firm had been asked what sort of
a girl Miss Hazel Weir might be, he would probably have replied--and
with utmost truth--that Miss Weir was a capable stenographer.

But when Saturday evening released Miss Hazel Weir from the plain brick
office building, she became, until she donned her working clothes at
seven A. M. Monday morning, quite a different sort of a person.  In
other words, she chucked the plain shirt waist and the plain skirt into
the discard, got into such a dress as a normal girl of twenty-two
delights to put on, and devoted a half hour or so to "doing" her hair.
Which naturally effected a more or less complete transformation, a
transformation that was subjective as well as purely objective.  For
Miss Weir then became an entity at which few persons of either sex
failed to take a second glance.

Upon a certain Saturday night Miss Weir came home from an informal
little party escorted by a young man.  They stopped at the front gate.

"I'll be here at ten sharp," said he.  "And you get a good beauty sleep
to-night, Hazel.  That confounded office!  I hate to think of you
drudging away at it.  I wish we were ready to--"

"Oh, bother the office!" she replied lightly.  "I don't think of it out
of office hours.  Anyway, I don't mind.  It doesn't tire me.  I _will_
be ready at ten _this_ time.  Good night, dear."

"Good night, Hazie," he whispered.  "Here's a kiss to dream on."

Miss Weir broke away from him laughingly, ran along the path, and up
the steps, kissed her finger-tips to the lingering figure by the gate,
and went in.

"Bed," she soliloquized, "is the place for me right quickly if I'm
going to be up and dressed and have that lunch ready by ten o'clock.  I
wish I weren't such a sleepyhead--or else that I weren't a 'pore
wurrkin' gurl.'"

At which last conceit she laughed softly.  Because, for a "pore
wurrkin' gurl," Miss Weir was fairly well content with her lot.  She
had no one dependent on her--a state of affairs which, if it
occasionally leads to loneliness, has its compensations.  Her salary as
a stenographer amply covered her living expenses, and even permitted
her to put by a few dollars monthly.  She had grown up in Granville.
She had her own circle of friends.  So that she was comfortable, even
happy, in the present--and Jack Barrow proposed to settle the problem
of her future; with youth's optimism, they two considered it already
settled.  Six months more, and there was to be a wedding, a
three-weeks' honeymoon, and a final settling down in a little cottage
on the West Side; everybody in Granville who amounted to anything lived
on the West Side.  Then she would have nothing to do but make the home
nest cozy, while Jack kept pace with a real-estate business that was
growing beyond his most sanguine expectations.

She threw her light wraps over the back of a chair, and, standing
before her dresser, took the multitude of pins out of her hair and
tumbled it, a cloudy black mass, about her shoulders.  Occupying the
center of the dresser, in a leaning silver frame, stood a picture of
Jack Barrow.  She stood looking at it a minute, smiling absently.  It
was spring, and her landlady's daughter had set a bunch of wild flowers
in a jar beside the picture.  Hazel picked out a daisy and plucked away
the petals one by one.

"He loves me--he loves me not--he loves me--"  Her lips formed the
words inaudibly, as countless lips have formed them in love's history,
and the last petal fluttered away at "not."

She smiled.

"I wonder if that's an omen?" she murmured.  "Pshaw!  What a silly
idea!  I'm going to bed.  Good night, Johnny boy."

She kissed her finger-tips to him again across the rooftops all grimed
with a winter's soot, and within fifteen minutes Miss Weir was sound
asleep.


She gave the lie, for once, to the saying that a woman is never ready
at the appointed time by being on the steps a full ten minutes before
Jack Barrow appeared.  They walked to the corner and caught a car, and
in the span of half an hour got off at Granville Park.

The city fathers, hampered in days gone by with lack of municipal
funds, had left the two-hundred-acre square of the park pretty much as
nature made it; that is to say, there was no ornate parking, no attempt
at landscape gardening.  Ancient maples spread their crooked arms
untrimmed, standing in haphazard groves.  Wherever the greensward
nourished, there grew pink-tipped daisies and kindred flowers of the
wild.  It was gutted in the middle with a ravine, the lower end of
which, dammed by an earth embankment, formed a lake with the inevitable
swans and other water-fowl.  But, barring the lake and a wide drive
that looped and twined through the timber, Granville Park was a bit of
the old Ontario woodland, and as such afforded a pleasant place to loaf
in the summer months.  It was full of secluded nooks, dear to the
hearts of young couples.  And upon a Sunday the carriages of the
wealthy affected the smooth drive.

When Jack Barrow and Hazel had finished their lunch under the trees, in
company with a little group of their acquaintances, Hazel gathered
scraps of bread and cake into a paper bag.

Barrow whispered to her: "Let's go down and feed the swans.  I'd just
as soon be away from the crowd."

She nodded assent, and they departed hastily lest some of the others
should volunteer their company.  It took but a short time to reach the
pond.  They found a log close to the water's edge, and, taking a seat
there, tossed morsels to the birds and chattered to each other.

"Look," said Barrow suddenly; "that's us ten years from now."

A carriage passed slowly, a solemn, liveried coachman on the box, a
handsome, smooth-shaven man of thirty-five and a richly gowned woman
leaning back and looking out over the pond with bored eyes.  And that
last, the half-cynical, half-contemptuous expression on the two faces,
impressed Hazel Weir far more than the showy equipage, the outward
manifestation of wealth.

"I hope not," she returned impulsively.

"Hope not!" Barrow echoed.  "Those people are worth a barrel of money.
Wouldn't you like your own carriage, and servants, and income enough to
have everything you wanted?"

"Of course," Hazel answered.  "But they don't look as if they really
enjoyed it."

"Fiddlesticks!" Barrow smilingly retorted.  "Everybody enjoys luxury."

"Well, one should," Hazel admitted.  But she still held to the
impression that the couple passing got no such pleasure out of their
material possessions as Jack seemed to think.  It was merely an
intuitive divination.  She could not have found any basis from which to
argue the point.  But she was very sure that she would not have changed
places with the woman in the carriage, and her hand stole out and gave
his a shy little squeeze.

"Look," she murmured; "here's another of the plutocrats.  One of my
esteemed employers, if you please.  You'll notice that he's walking and
looking at things just like us ordinary, everyday mortals."

Barrow glanced past her, and saw a rather tall, middle-aged man, his
hair tinged with gray, a fine-looking man, dressed with exceeding
nicety, even to a flower in his coat lapel, walking slowly along the
path that bordered the pond.  He stopped a few yards beyond them, and
stood idly glancing over the smooth stretch of water, his gloved hands
resting on the knob of a silver-mounted cane.

Presently his gaze wandered to them, and the cool, well-bred stare
gradually gave way to a slightly puzzled expression.  He moved a step
or two and seated himself on a bench.  Miss Weir became aware that he
was looking at her most of the time as she sat casting the bits of
bread to the swans and ducks.  It made her self-conscious.  She did not
know why she should be of any particular interest.

"Let's walk around a little," she suggested.  The last of the crumbs
were gone.

"All right," Barrow assented.  "Let's go up the ravine."

They left the log.  Their course up the ravine took them directly past
the gentleman on the bench.  And when they came abreast of him, he rose
and lifted his hat at the very slight inclination of Miss Weir's head.

"How do you do, Miss Weir?" said he.  "Quite a pleasant afternoon."

To the best of Hazel's knowledge, Mr. Andrew Bush was little given to
friendly recognition of his employees, particularly in public.  But he
seemed inclined to be talkative; and, as she caught a slightly
inquiring glance at her escort, she made the necessary introduction.
So for a minute or two the three of them stood there exchanging polite
banalities.  Then Mr. Bush bowed and passed on.

"He's one of the biggest guns in Granville, they say," Jack observed.
"I wouldn't mind having some of his business to handle.  He started
with nothing, too, according to all accounts.  Now, that's what I call
success."

"Oh, yes, in a business way he's a success," Hazel responded.  "But
he's awfully curt most of the time around the office.  I wonder what
made him thaw out so to-day?"

And that question recurred to her mind again in the evening, when Jack
had gone home and she was sitting in her own room.  She wheeled her
chair around and took a steady look at herself in the mirror.  A woman
may never admit extreme plainness of feature, and she may deprecate her
own fairness, if she be possessed of fairness, but she seldom has any
illusions about one or the other.  She knows.  Hazel Weir knew that she
was far above the average in point of looks.  If she had never taken
stock of herself before, the reflection facing her now was sufficient
to leave no room for doubt on the score of beauty.  Her skin was
smooth, delicate in texture, and as delicately tinted.  The tan pongee
dress she wore set off her dark hair and expressive, bluish-gray eyes.

She was smiling at herself just as she had been smiling at Jack Barrow
while they sat on the log and fed the swans.  And she made an amiable
grin at the reflection in the glass.  But even though Miss Weir was
twenty-two and far from unsophisticated, it did not strike her that the
transition of herself from a demure, business-like office person in
sober black and white to a radiant creature with the potent influences
of love and spring brightening her eyes and lending a veiled caress to
her every supple movement, satisfactorily accounted for the sudden
friendliness of Mr. Andrew Bush.




CHAPTER II

HEART, HAND--AND POCKETBOOK

Miss Weir was unprepared for what subsequently transpired as a result
of that casual encounter with the managing partner of the firm.  By the
time she went to work on Monday morning she had almost forgotten the
meeting in Granville Park.  And she was only reminded of it when, at
nine o'clock, Mr. Andrew Bush walked through the office, greeting the
force with his usual curt nod and inclusive "good morning" before he
disappeared behind the ground-glass door lettered "Private."  With the
weekday he had apparently resumed his business manner.

Hazel's work consisted largely of dictation from the shipping manager,
letters relating to outgoing consignments of implements.  She was rapid
and efficient, and, having reached the zenith of salary paid for such
work, she expected to continue in the same routine until she left
Harrington & Bush for good.

It was, therefore, something of a surprise to be called into the office
of the managing partner on Tuesday afternoon.  Bush's private
stenographer sat at her machine in one corner.

Mr. Bush turned from his desk at Hazel's entrance.

"Miss Weir," he said, "I wish you to take some letters."

Hazel went back for her notebook, wondering mildly why she should be
called upon to shoulder a part of Nelly Morrison's work, and a trifle
dubious at the prospect of facing the rapid-fire dictation Mr. Bush was
said to inflict upon his stenographer now and then.  She had the
confidence of long practice, however, and knew that she was equal to
anything in reason that he might give her.

When she was seated, Bush took up a sheaf of letters, and dictated
replies.  Though rapid, his enunciation was perfectly clear, and Hazel
found herself getting his words with greater ease than she had expected.

"That's all, Miss Weir," he said, when he reached the last letter.
"Bring those in for verification and signature as soon as you can get
them done."

In the course of time she completed the letters and took them back.
Bush glanced over each, and appended his signature.

"That's all, Miss Weir," he said politely.  "Thank you."

And Hazel went back to her machine, wondering why she had been
requested to do those letters when Nelly Morrison had nothing better to
do than sit picking at her type faces with a toothpick.

She learned the significance of it the next morning, however, when the
office boy told her that she was wanted by Mr. Bush.  This time when
she entered Nelly Morrison's place was vacant.  Bush was going through
his mail.  He waved her to a chair.

"Just a minute," he said.

Presently he wheeled from the desk and regarded her with disconcerting
frankness--as if he were appraising her, point by point, so to speak.

"My--ah--dictation to you yesterday was in the nature of a try-out,
Miss Weir," he finally volunteered.  "Miss Morrison has asked to be
transferred to our Midland branch.  Mr. Allan recommended you.  You are
a native of Granville, I understand?"

"Yes," Hazel answered, wondering what that had to do with the position
Nelly Morrison had vacated.

"In that case you will not likely be desirous of leaving suddenly," he
went on.  "The work will not be hard, but I must have some one
dependable and discreet, and careful to avoid errors.  I think you will
manage it very nicely if you--ah--have no objection to giving up the
more general work of the office for this.  The salary will be
considerably more."

"If you consider that my work will be satisfactory," Miss Weir began.

"I don't think there's any doubt on that score.  You have a good record
in the office," he interrupted smilingly, and Hazel observed that he
could be a very agreeable and pleasant-speaking gentleman when he
chose--a manner not altogether in keeping with her former knowledge of
him--and she had been with the firm nearly two years.  "Now, let us get
to work and clean up this correspondence."

Thus her new duties began.  There was an air of quiet in the private
office, a greater luxury of appointment, which suited Miss Hazel Weir
to a nicety.  The work was no more difficult than she had been
accustomed to doing--a trifle less in volume, and more exacting in
attention to detail, and necessarily more confidential, for Mr. Andrew
Bush had his finger-tips on the pulsing heart of a big business.

Hazel met Nelly Morrison the next day while on her way home to lunch.

"Well, how goes the new job?" quoth Miss Morrison.

"All right so far," Hazel smiled.  "Mr. Bush said you were going to
Midland."

"Leaving for there in the morning," said Nelly.  "I've been wanting to
go for a month, but Mr. Bush objected to breaking in a new girl--until
just the other day.  I'm sort of sorry to go, too, and I don't suppose
I'll have nearly so good a place.  For one thing, I'll not get so much
salary as I had with Mr. Bush.  But mamma's living in Midland, and two
of my brothers work there.  I'd much rather live at home than room and
live in a trunk.  I can have a better time even on less a week."

"Well, I hope you get along nicely," Hazel proffered.

"Oh, I will.  Leave that to me," Miss Morrison laughed.  "By the way,
what do you think of Mr. Bush, anyway?  But of course you haven't had
much to do with him yet.  You'll find him awfully nice and polite, but,
my, he can be cutting when he gets irritated!  I've known him to do
some awfully mean things in a business way.  I wouldn't want to get him
down on me.  I think he'd hold a grudge forever."

They walked together until Hazel turned into the street which led to
her boarding place.  Nelly Morrison chattered principally of Mr. Bush.
No matter what subject she opened up, she came back to discussion of
her employer.  Hazed gathered that she had found him rather exacting,
and also that she was inclined to resent his curt manner.  Withal,
Hazel knew Nelly Morrison to be a first-class stenographer, and found
herself wondering how long it would take the managing partner to find
occasion for raking _her_ over the coals.

As the days passed, she began to wonder whether Miss Morrison had been
quite correct in her summing up of Mr. Andrew Bush.  She was not a
great deal in his company, for unless attending to the details of
business Mr. Bush kept himself in a smaller office opening out of the
one where she worked.  Occasionally the odor of cigar smoke escaped
therefrom, and in that inner sanctum he received his most important
callers.  Whenever he was in Miss Weir's presence, however, he
manifested none of the disagreeable characteristics that Nelly Morrison
had ascribed to him.

The size of the check which Hazel received in her weekly envelope was
increased far beyond her expectations.  Nelly Morrison had drawn twenty
dollars a week.  Miss Hazel Weir drew twenty-five--a substantial
increase over what she had received in the shipping department.  And
while she wondered a trifle at the voluntary raising of her salary, it
served to make her anxious to competently fill the new position, so
long as she worked for wages.  With that extra money there were plenty
of little things she could get for the home she and Jack Barrow had
planned.

Things moved along in routine channels for two months or more before
Hazel became actively aware that a subtle change was growing manifest
in the ordinary manner of Mr. Andrew Bush.  She shrugged her shoulders
at the idea at first.  But she was a woman; moreover, a woman of
intelligence, her perceptive faculties naturally keen.

The first symptom was flowers, dainty bouquets of which began to appear
on his desk.  Coincident with this, Mr. Bush evinced an inclination to
drift into talk on subjects nowise related to business.  Hazel accepted
the tribute to her sex reluctantly, giving him no encouragement to
overstep the normal bounds of cordiality.  She was absolutely sure of
herself and of her love for Jack Barrow.  Furthermore, Mr. Andrew Bush,
though well preserved, was drawing close to fifty--and she was
twenty-two.  That in itself reassured her.  If he had been thirty, Miss
Weir might have felt herself upon dubious ground.  He admired her as a
woman.  She began to realize that.  And no woman ever blames a man for
paying her that compliment, no matter what she may say to the contrary.
Particularly when he does not seek to annoy her by his admiration.

So long as Mr. Bush confined himself to affable conversation, to sundry
gifts of hothouse flowers, and only allowed his feelings outlet in
certain telltale glances when he thought she could not see.  Hazel felt
disinclined to fly from what was at worst a possibility.

Thus the third month of her tenure drifted by, and beyond the telltale
glances aforesaid, Mr. Bush remained tentatively friendly and nothing
more.  Hazel spent her Sundays as she had spent them for a year
past--with Jack Barrow; sometimes rambling afoot in the country or in
the park, sometimes indulging in the luxury of a hired buggy for a
drive.  Usually they went alone; occasionally with a party of young
people like themselves.

But Mr. Bush took her breath away at a time and in a manner totally
unexpected.  He finished dictating a batch of letters one afternoon,
and sat tapping on his desk with a pencil.  Hazel waited a second or
two, expecting him to continue, her eyes on her notes, and at the
unbroken silence she looked up, to find him staring fixedly at her.
There was no mistaking the expression on his face.  Hazel flushed and
shrank back involuntarily.  She had hoped to avoid that.  It could not
be anything but unpleasant.

She had small chance to indulge in reflection, for at her first
self-conscious move he reached swiftly and caught her hand.

"Hazel," he said bluntly, "will you marry me?"

Miss Weir gasped.  Coming without warning, it dumfounded her.  And
while her first natural impulse was to answer a blunt "No," she was
flustered, and so took refuge behind a show of dignity.

"Mr. Bush!" she protested, and tried to release her hand.

But Mr. Bush had no intention of allowing her to do that.

"I'm in deadly earnest," he said.  "I've loved you ever since that
Sunday I saw you in the park feeding the swans.  I want you to be my
wife.  Will you?"

"I'm awfully sorry," Hazel stammered.  She was just the least bit
frightened.  The man who stared at her with burning eyes and spoke to
her in a voice that quivered with emotion was so different from the
calm, repressed individual she had known as her employer.  "Why,
you're----"  The thing that was uppermost in her mind, and what she
came near saying, was: "You're old enough to be my father."  And beside
him there instantly flashed a vision of Jack Barrow.  Of course it was
absurd--even though she appreciated the honor.  But she did not finish
the sentence that way.  "I don't--oh, it's simply impossible.  I
couldn't think of such a thing."

"Why not?" he asked.  "I love you.  You know that--you can see it,
can't you?"  He leaned a little nearer, and forced her to meet his
gaze.  "I can make you happy; I can make you love me.  I can give you
all that a woman could ask."

"Yes, but--"

He interrupted her quickly.  "Perhaps I've surprised and confused you
by my impulsiveness," he continued.  "But I've had no chance to meet
you socially.  Sitting here in the office, seeing you day after day,
I've had to hold myself in check.  And a man only does that so long,
and no longer.  Perhaps right now you don't feel as I do, but I can
teach you to feel that way.  I can give you everything--money, social
position, everything that's worth having--and love.  I'm not an
empty-headed boy.  I can make you love me."

"You couldn't," Hazel answered flatly.  There was a note of dominance
in that last statement that jarred on her.  Mr. Bush was too sure of
his powers.  "And I have no desire to experiment with my feelings as
you suggest--not for all the wealth and social position in the world.
I would have to love a man to think of marrying him--and I do.  But you
aren't the man.  I appreciate the compliment of your offer, and I'm
sorry to hurt you, but I can't marry you."

He released her hand.  Miss Weir found herself suddenly shaky.  Not
that she was afraid, or had any cause for fear, but the nervous tension
somehow relaxed when she finished speaking so frankly.

His face clouded.  "You are engaged?"

"Yes."

He got up and stood over her.  "To some self-centered cub--some puny
egotist in his twenties, who'll make you a slave to his needs and
whims, and discard you for another woman when you've worn out your
youth and beauty," he cried.  "But you won't marry him.  I won't let
you!"

Miss Weir rose.  "I think I shall go home," she said steadily.

"You shall do nothing of the sort!  There is no sense in your running
away from me and giving rise to gossip--which will hurt yourself only."

"I am not running away, but I can't stay here and listen to such things
from you.  It's impossible, under the circumstances, for me to continue
working here, so I may as well go now."

Bush stepped past her and snapped the latch on the office door.  "I
shan't permit it," he said passionately.  "Girl, you don't seem to
realize what this means to me.  I want you--and I'm going to have you!"

"Please don't be melodramatic, Mr. Bush."

"Melodramatic!  If it is melodrama for a man to show a little genuine
feeling, I'm guilty.  But I was never more in earnest in my life.  I
want a chance to win you.  I value you above any woman I have ever met.
Most women that--"

"Most women would jump at the chance," Hazel interrupted.  "Well, I'm
not most women.  I don't consider myself as a marketable commodity, nor
my looks as an aid to driving a good bargain in a matrimonial way.  I
simply don't care for you as you would want me to--and I'm very sure I
never would.  And, seeing that you do feel that way, it's better that
we shouldn't be thrown together as we are here.  That's why I'm going."

"That is to say, you'll resign because I've told you I care for you and
proposed marriage?" he remarked.

"Exactly.  It's the only thing to do under the circumstances."

"Give me a chance to show you that I can make you happy," he pleaded.
"Don't leave.  Stay here where I can at least see you and speak to you.
I won't annoy you.  And you can't tell.  After you get over this
surprise you might find yourself liking me better."

"That's just the trouble," Hazel pointed out.  "If I were here you
would be bringing this subject up in spite of yourself.  And that can
only cause pain.  I can't stay."

"I think you had better reconsider that," he said; and a peculiar--an
ugly--light crept into his eyes, "unless you desire to lay yourself
open to being the most-talked-of young woman in this town, where you
were born, where all your friends live.  Many disagreeable things might
result."

"That sounds like a threat, Mr. Bush.  What do you mean?"

"I mean just what I say.  I will admit that mine is, perhaps, a selfish
passion.  If you insist on making me suffer, I shall do as much for
you.  I believe in paying all debts in full, even with high interest.
There are two characteristics of mine which may not have come to your
attention: I never stop struggling for what I want.  And I never
forgive or forget an injury or an insult."

"Well?"  Hazel was beginning to see a side of Mr. Andrew Bush hitherto
unsuspected.

"Well?" he repeated.  "If you drive me to it, you will find yourself
drawing the finger of gossip.  Also, you will find yourself unable to
secure a position in Granville.  Also, you may find yourself losing
the--er--regard of this--ah--fortunate individual upon whom you have
bestowed your affections; but you'll never lose mine," he burst out
wildly.  "When you get done butting your head against the wall that
will mysteriously rise in your way, I'll be waiting for you.  That's
how I love.  I've never failed in anything I ever undertook, and I
don't care how I fight, fair or foul, so that I win."

"This isn't the fifteenth century," Hazel let her indignation flare,
"and I'm not at all afraid of any of the things you mention.  Even if
you could possibly bring these things about, it would only make me
despise you, which I'm in a fair way to do now.  Even if I weren't
engaged, I'd never think of marrying a man old enough to be my
father--a man whose years haven't given him a sense of either dignity
or decency.  Wealth and social position don't modify gray hairs and
advancing age.  Your threats are an insult.  This isn't the stone age.
Even if it were," she concluded cuttingly, "you'd stand a poor chance
of winning a woman against a man like--well--"  She shrugged her
shoulders, but she was thinking of Jack Barrow's broad shoulders, and
the easy way he went up a flight of stairs, three steps at a time.
"Well, any _young_ man."

With that thrust, Miss Hazel Weir turned to the rack where hung her hat
and coat.  She was thoroughly angry, and her employment in that office
ended then and there so far as she was concerned.

Bush caught her by the shoulders before she took a second step.

"Gray hairs and advancing age!" he said.  "So I strike you as
approaching senility, do I?  I'll show you whether I'm the worn-out
specimen you seem to think I am.  Do you think I'll give you up just
because I've made you angry?  Why, I love you the more for it; it only
makes me the more determined to win you."

"You can't.  I dislike you more every second.  Take your hands off me,
please.  Be a gentleman--if you can."

For answer he caught her up close to him, and there was no sign of
decadent force in the grip of his arms.  He kissed her; and Hazel, in
blind rage, freed one arm, and struck at him man fashion, her hand
doubled into a small fist.  By the grace of chance, the blow landed on
his nose.  There was force enough behind it to draw blood.  He stood
back and fumbled for his handkerchief.  Something that sounded like an
oath escaped him.

Hazel stared, aghast, astounded.  She was not at all sorry; she was
perhaps a trifle ashamed.  It seemed unwomanly to strike.  But the
humor of the thing appealed to her most strongly of all.  In spite of
herself, she smiled as she reached once more for her hat.  And this
time Mr. Bush did not attempt to restrain her.

She breathed a sigh of relief when she had gained the street, and she
did not in the least care if her departure during business hours
excited any curiosity in the main office.  Moreover, she was doubly
glad to be away from Bush.  The expression on his face as he drew back
and stanched his bleeding nose had momentarily chilled her.

"He looked perfectly devilish," she told herself.  "My, I loathe that
man!  He _is_ dangerous.  Marry him?  The idea!"

She knew that she must have cut him deeply in a man's tenderest
spot--his self-esteem.  But just how well she had gauged the look and
possibilities of Mr. Andrew Bush, Hazel scarcely realized.

"I won't tell Jack," she reflected.  "He'd probably want to thrash him.
And that _would_ stir up a lot of horrid talk.  Dear me, that's one
experience I don't want repeated.  I wonder if he made court to his
first wife in that high-handed, love-me-or-I'll-beat-you-to-death
fashion?"

She laughed when she caught herself scrubbing vigorously with her
handkerchief at the place where his lips had touched her cheek.  She
was primitive enough in her instincts to feel a trifle glad of having
retaliated in what her training compelled her to consider a "perfectly
hoydenish" manner.  But she could not deny that it had proved
wonderfully effective.




CHAPTER III

"I DO GIVE AND BEQUEATH"

When Jack Barrow called again, which happened to be that very evening,
Hazel told him simply that she had left Harrington & Bush, without
entering into any explanation except the general one that she had found
it impossible to get on with Mr. Bush in her new position.  And Jack,
being more concerned with her than with her work, gave the matter scant
consideration.

This was on a Friday.  The next forenoon Hazel went downtown.  When she
returned, a little before eleven, the maid of all work was putting the
last touches to her room.  The girl pointed to an oblong package on a
chair.

"That came for you a little while ago, Miss Weir," she said.  "Mr.
Bush's carriage brought it."

"Mr. Bush's carriage!" Hazel echoed.

"Yes'm.  Regular swell turnout, with a footman in brown livery.  My,
you could see the girls peeking all along the square when it stopped at
our door.  It quite flustered the missus."

The girl lingered a second, curiosity writ large on her countenance.
Plainly she wished to discover what Miss Hazel Weir would be getting in
a package that was delivered in so aristocratic a manner.  But Hazel
was in no mood to gratify any one's curiosity.  She was angry at the
presumption of Mr. Andrew Bush.  It was an excellent way of subjecting
her to remark.  And it did not soothe her to recollect that he had
threatened that very thing.

She drew off her gloves, and, laying aside her hat, picked up a
newspaper, and began to read.  The girl, with no excuse for lingering,
reluctantly gathered up her broom and dustpan, and departed.  When she
was gone, and not till then, Miss Weir investigated the parcel.

Roses--two dozen long-stemmed La Frances--filled the room with their
delicate odor when she removed the pasteboard cover.  And set edgewise
among the stems she found his card.  Miss Weir turned up her small nose.

"I wonder if he sends these as a sort of peace offering?" she snorted.
"I wonder if a few hours of reflection has made him realize just how
exceedingly caddish he acted?  Well, Mr. Bush, I'll return your
unwelcome gift--though they are beautiful flowers."

And she did forthwith, squandering forty cents on a messenger boy to
deliver them to Mr. Bush at his office.  She wished him to labor under
no misapprehension as to her attitude.

The next day--Sunday--she spent with Jack Barrow on a visit to his
cousin in a near-by town.  They parted, as was their custom, at the
door.  It was still early in the evening--eight-thirty, or
thereabout--and Hazel went into the parlor on the first floor.  Mr.
Stout and one of her boarders sat there chatting, and at Hazel's
entrance the landlady greeted her with a startling bit of news:

"Evenin', Miss Weir.  'Ave you 'eard about Mr. Bush, pore gentleman?"
Mrs. Stout was very English.

"Mr. Bush?  No.  What about him?"  Hazel resented Mr. Bush, his name,
and his affairs being brought to her attention at every turn.  She
desired nothing so much since that scene in the office as to ignore his
existence.

"'E was 'urt shockin' bad this awft'noon," Mrs. Stout related.  "Out
'orseback ridin', and 'is 'orse ran away with 'im, and fell on 'im.
Fell all of a 'eap, they say.  Terrible--terrible!  The pore man isn't
expected to live.  'Is back's broke, they say.  W'at a pity!  Shockin'
accident, indeed."

Miss Weir voiced perfunctory sympathy, as was expected of her, seeing
that she was an employee of the firm--or had been lately.  But close
upon that she escaped to her own room.  She did not relish sitting
there discussing Mr. Andrew Bush.  Hazel lacked nothing of womanly
sympathy, but he had forfeited that from her.

Nevertheless she kept thinking of him long after she went to bed.  She
was not at all vindictive, and his misfortune, the fact--if the report
were true--that he was facing his end, stirred her pity.  She could
guess that he would suffer more than some men; he would rebel bitterly
against anything savoring of extinction.  And she reflected that his
love for her was very likely gone by the board now that he was elected
to go the way of all flesh.

The report of his injury was verified in the morning papers.  By
evening it had pretty well passed out of Hazel's mind.  She had more
pleasant concerns.  Jack Barrow dropped in about six-thirty to ask if
she wanted to go with him to a concert during the week.  They were
sitting in the parlor, by a front window, chattering to each other, but
not so engrossed that they failed to notice a carriage drawn by two
splendid grays pull up at the front gate.  The footman, in brown
livery, got down and came to the door.  Hazel knew the carriage.  She
had seen Mr. Andrew Bush abroad in it many a time.  She wondered if
there was some further annoyance in store for her, and frowned at the
prospect.

She heard Mrs. Stout answer the bell in person.  There was a low mumble
of voices.  Then the landlady appeared in the parlor doorway, the
footman behind her.

"This is the lady." Mrs. Stout indicated Hazel.  "A message for you,
Miss Weir."

The liveried person bowed and extended an envelope.  "I was instructed
to deliver this to you personally," he said, and lingered as if he
looked for further instructions.

Hazel looked at the envelope.  She could not understand why, under the
circumstances, any message should come to her through such a medium.
But there was her name inscribed.  She glanced up.  Mrs. Stout gazed
past the footman with an air of frank anticipation.  Jack also was
looking.  But the landlady caught Hazel's glance and backed out the
door, and Hazel opened the letter.

The note was brief and to the point:


MISS WEIR: Mr. Bush, being seriously injured and unable to write, bids
me say that he is very anxious to see you.  He sends his carriage to
convey you here.  His physicians fear that he will not survive the
night, hence he begs of you to come.  Very truly,

ETHEL B. WATSON, Nurse in Waiting.


"The idea!  Of course I won't!  I wouldn't think of such a thing!"
Hazel exclaimed.

"Just a second," she said to the footman.

Over on the parlor mantel lay some sheets of paper and envelopes.  She
borrowed a pencil from Barrow and scribbled a brief refusal.  The
footman departed with her answer.  Hazel turned to find Jack staring
his puzzlement.

"What did he want?" Barrow asked bluntly.  "That was the Bush turnout,
wasn't it?"

"You heard about Mr. Bush getting hurt, didn't you?" she inquired.

"Saw it in the paper.  Why?"

"Nothing, except that he is supposed to be dying--and he wanted to see
me.  At least--well, read the note," Hazel answered.

Barrow glanced over the missive and frowned.

"What do you suppose he wanted to see you for?" he asked.

"How should I know?" Hazel evaded.

She felt a reluctance to enter into any explanations.  That would
necessitate telling the whole story, and she felt some delicacy about
relating it when the man involved lay near to death.  Furthermore, Jack
might misunderstand, might blame her.  He was inclined to jealousy on
slight grounds, she had discovered before now.  Perhaps that, the
natural desire to avoid anything disagreeable coming up between them,
helped constrain her to silence.

"Seems funny," he remarked slowly.

"Oh, let's forget it."  Hazel came and sat down on the couch by him.
"I don't know of any reason why he should want to see me.  I wouldn't
go merely out of curiosity to find out.  It was certainly a peculiar
request for him to make.  But that's no reason why we should let it
bother us.  If he's really so badly hurt, the chances are he's out of
his head.  Don't scowl at that bit of paper so, Johnnie-boy."

Barrow laughed and kissed her, and the subject was dropped forthwith.
Later they went out for a short walk.  In an hour or so Barrow left for
home, promising to have the concert tickets for Thursday night.

Hazel took the note out of her belt and read it again when she reached
her room.  Why should he want to see her?  She wondered at the man's
persistence.  He had insulted her, according to her view of it--doubly
insulted her with threats and an enforced caress.  Perhaps he merely
wanted to beg her pardon; she had heard of men doing such things in
their last moments.  But she could not conceive of Mr. Andrew Bush
being sorry for anything he did.  Her estimate of him was that his only
regret would be over failure to achieve his own ends.  He struck her as
being an individual whose own personal desires were paramount.  She had
heard vague stories of his tenacity of purpose, his disregard of
anything and everybody but himself.  The gossip she had heard and half
forgotten had been recalled and confirmed by her own recent experience
with him.

Nevertheless, she considered that particular episode closed.  She
believed that she had convinced him of that.  And so she could not
grasp the reason for that eleventh-hour summons.  But she could see
that a repetition of such incidents might put her in a queer light.
Other folk might begin to wonder and inquire why Mr. Andrew Bush took
such an "interest" in her--a mere stenographer.  Well, she told
herself, she did not care--so long as Jack Barrow's ears were not
assailed by talk.  She smiled at that, for she could picture the
reception any scandal peddler would get from _him_.

The next day's papers contained the obituary of Mr. Andrew Bush.  He
had died shortly after midnight.  And despite the fact that she held no
grudge, Hazel felt a sense of relief.  He was powerless to annoy or
persecute her, and she could not escape the conviction that he would
have attempted both had he lived.

She had now been idle a matter of days.  Nearly three months were yet
to elapse before her wedding.  She and Barrow had compromised on that
after a deal of discussion.  Manlike, he had wished to be married as
soon as she accepted him, and she had held out far a date that would
permit her to accumulate a trousseau according to her means.

"A girl only gets married once, Johnnie-boy," she had declared.  "I
don't want to get married so--so offhand, like going out and buying a
pair of gloves or something.  Even if I do love you ever so much."

She had gained her point after a lot of argument.  There had been no
thought then of her leaving Harrington & Bush so abruptly.  Jack had
wanted to get the license as soon as he learned that she had thrown up
her job.  But she refused to reset the date.  They had made plans for
October.  There was so sense in altering those plans.

It seemed scarcely worth while to look for another position.  She had
enough money saved to do everything she wanted to do.  It was not so
much lack of money, the need to earn, as the monotony of idleness that
irked her.  She had acquired the habit of work, and that is a thing not
lightly shaken off.  But during that day she gathered together the
different Granville papers, and went carefully over the "want" columns.
Knowing the town as she did, she was enabled to eliminate the unlikely,
undesirable places.  Thus by evening she was armed with a list of firms
and individuals requiring a stenographer.  And in the morning she
sallied forth.

Her quest ended with the first place she sought.  The fact of two
years' service with the biggest firm in Granville was ample
recommendation; in addition to which the office manager, it developed
in their conversation, had known her father in years gone by.  So
before ten o'clock Miss Hazel Weir was entered on the pay-roll of a
furniture-manufacturing house.  It was not a permanent position; one of
their girls had been taken ill and was likely to take up her duties
again in six weeks or two months.  But that suited Hazel all the
better.  She could put in the time usefully, and have a breathing spell
before her wedding.

At noon she telephoned Jack Barrow that she was at work again, and she
went straight from lunch to the office grind.

Three days went by.  Hazel attended the concert with Jack the evening
of the day Mr. Andrew Bush received ostentatious burial.  At ten the
next morning the telephone girl called her.

"Some one wants you on the phone, Miss Weir," she said.

Hazel took up the dangling receiver.

"Hello!"

"That you, Hazel?"

She recognized the voice, half guessing it would be he, since no one
but Jack Barrow would be likely to ring her up.

"Surely.  Doesn't it sound like me?"

"Have you seen the morning papers?"

"No.  What--"

"Look 'em over.  Particularly the _Gazette_."

The harsh rattle of a receiver slammed back on its hook without even a
"good-by" from him struck her like a slap in the face.  She hung up
slowly, and went back to her work.  Never since their first meeting,
and they had not been exempt from lovers' quarrels, had Jack Barrow
ever spoken to her like that.  Even through the telephone the resentful
note in his voice grated on her and mystified her.

Something in the papers lay at the bottom of it, but she could
comprehend nothing, absolutely nothing, she told herself hotly, that
should make Jack snarl at her like that.  His very manner of conveying
the message was maddening, put her up in arms.

She was chained to her work--which, despite her agitation, she managed
to wade through without any radical errors--until noon.  The
twelve-to-one intermission gave her opportunity to hurry up the street
and buy a _Gazette_.  Then, instead of going home to her luncheon, she
entered the nearest restaurant.  She wanted a chance to read, more than
food.  She did not unfold the paper until she was seated.

A column heading on the front page caught her eye.  The caption ran:
"Andrew Bush Leaves Money to Stenographer."  And under it the subhead:
"Wealthy Manufacturer Makes Peculiar Bequest to Miss Hazel Weir."

The story ran a full column, and had to do with the contents of the
will, made public following his interment.  There was a great deal of
matter anent the principal beneficiaries.  But that which formed the
basis of the heading was a codicil appended to the will a few hours
before his death, in which he did "give and bequeath to Hazel Weir,
until lately in my employ, the sum of five thousand dollars in
reparation for any wrong I may have done her."

The _Gazette_ had copied that portion verbatim, and used it as a peg
upon which to hang some adroitly worded speculation as to what manner
of wrong Mr. Andrew Bush could have done Miss Hazel Weir.  Mr. Bush was
a widower of ten years' standing.  He had no children.  There was
plenty of room in his life for romance.  And wealthy business men who
wrong pretty stenographers are not such an unfamiliar type.  The
_Gazette_ inclined to the yellow side of journalism, and it overlooked
nothing that promised a sensation.

Hazel stared at the sheet, and her face burned.  She could understand
now why Jack Barrow had hung up his receiver with a slam.  She could
picture him reading that suggestive article and gritting his teeth.
Her hands clenched till the knuckles stood white under the smooth skin,
and then quite abruptly she got up and left the restaurant even while a
waiter hurried to take her order.  If she had been a man, and versed in
profanity, she could have cursed Andrew Bush till his soul shuddered on
its journey through infinite space.  Being a woman, she wished only a
quiet place to cry.




CHAPTER IV

AN EXPLANATION DEMANDED

Hazel's pride came to her rescue before she was half-way home.
Instinctively she had turned to that refuge, where she could lock
herself in her own room and cry her protest against it all.  But she
had done no wrong, nothing of which to be ashamed, and when the first
shock of the news article wore off, she threw up her head and refused
to consider what the world at large might think.  So she went back to
the office at one o'clock and took up her work.  Long before evening
she sensed that others had read the _Gazette_.  Not that any one
mentioned it, but sundry curious glances made her painfully aware of
the fact.

Mrs. Stout evidently was on the watch, for she appeared in the hall
almost as the front door closed behind Hazel.

"How de do, Miss Weir?" she greeted.  "My, but you fell into quite a
bit of a fortune, ain't you?"

"I only know what the papers say," Hazel returned coldly.

"Just fancy!  You didn't know nothing about it?"  Mrs. Stout regarded
her with frank curiosity.  "There's been two or three gentlemen from
the papers 'ere to-day awskin' for you.  Such terrible fellows to quiz
one, they are."

"Well?" Hazel filled in the pause.

"Oh, I just thought I'd tell you," Mrs. Stout observed, "that they got
precious little out o' _me_.  I ain't the talkin' kind.  I told 'em
nothink whatever, you may be sure."

"They're perfectly welcome to learn all that can be learned about me,"
Hazel returned quietly.  "I don't like newspaper notoriety, but I can't
muzzle the papers, and it's easy for them to get my whole history if
they want it."

She was on the stairs when she finished speaking.  She had just reached
the first landing when she heard the telephone bell, and a second or
two later the land-lady called:

"Oh, Miss Weir!  Telephone."

Barrow's voice hailed her over the line.

"I'll be out by seven," said he.  "We had better take a walk.  We can't
talk in the parlor; there'll probably be a lot of old tabbies there out
of sheer curiosity."

"All right," Hazel agreed, and hung up.  There were one or two
questions she would have liked to ask, but she knew that eager ears
were close by, taking in every word.  Anyway, it was better to wait
until she saw him.

She dressed herself.  Unconsciously the truly feminine asserted its
dominance--the woman anxious to please and propitiate her lover.  She
put on a dainty summer dross, rearranged her hair, powdered away all
trace of the tears that insisted on coming as soon as she reached the
sanctuary of her own room.  And then she watched for Jack from a window
that commanded the street.  She had eaten nothing since morning, and
the dinner bell rang unheeded.  It did not occur to her that she was
hungry; her brain was engrossed with other matters more important by
far than food.

Barrow appeared at last.  She went down to meet him before he rang the
bell.  Just behind him came a tall man in a gray suit.  This individual
turned in at the gate, bestowing a nod upon Barrow and a keen glance at
her as he passed.

"That's Grinell, from the _Times_," Barrow muttered sourly.  "Come on;
let's get away from here.  I suppose he's after you for an interview.
Everybody in Granville's talking about that legacy, it seems to me."

Hazel turned in beside him silently.  Right at the start she found
herself resenting Barrow's tone, his manner.  She had done nothing to
warrant suspicion from him.  But she loved him, and she hoped she could
convince him that it was no more than a passing unpleasantness, for
which she was nowise to blame.

"Hang it!" Barrow growled, before they had traversed the first block.
"Here comes Grinell!  I suppose that old cat of a landlady pointed us
out.  No dodging him now."

"There's no earthly reason why I should dodge him, as you put it,"
Hazel replied stiffly.  "I'm not an escaped criminal."

Barrow shrugged his shoulders in a way that made Hazel bring her teeth
together and want to shake him.

Grinell by then was hurrying up with long strides.  Hat in hand, he
bowed to her.  "Miss Hazel Weir, I believe?" he interrogated.

"Yes," she confirmed.

"I'm on the _Times_, Miss Weir," Grinell went straight to the business
in hand.  "You are aware, I presume, that Mr. Andrew Bush willed you a
sum of money under rather peculiar conditions--that is, the bequest was
worded in a peculiar way.  Probably you have seen a reference to it in
the papers.  It has caused a great deal of interest.  The _Times_ would
be pleased to have a statement from you which will tend to set at rest
the curiosity of the public.  Some of the other papers have indulged in
unpleasant innuendo.  We would be pleased to publish your side of the
matter.  It would be an excellent way for you to quiet the nasty rumors
that are going the rounds."

"I have no statement to make," Hazel said coolly.  "I am not in the
least concerned with what the papers print or what the people say.  I
absolutely refuse to discuss the matter."

Grinell continued to point out--with the persistence and persuasive
logic of a good newspaper man bent on learning what his paper wants to
know--the desirability of her giving forth a statement.  And in the
midst of his argument Hazel bade him a curt "good evening" and walked
on.  Barrow kept step with her.  Grinell gave it up for a bad job
evidently, for he turned back.

They walked five blocks without a word.  Hazel glanced at Barrow now
and then, and observed with an uncomfortable sinking of her heart that
he was sullen, openly resentful, suspicious.

"Johnnie-boy," she said suddenly, "don't look so cross.  Surely you
don't blame me because Mr. Bush wills me a sum of money in a way that
makes people wonder?"

"I can't understand it at all," he said slowly.  "It's very
peculiar--and deucedly unpleasant.  Why should he leave you money at
all?  And why should he word the will as he did?  What wrong did he
ever do you?"

"None," Hazel answered shortly.  His tone wounded her, cut her deep, so
eloquent was it of distrust.  "The only wrong he has done me lies in
willing me that money as he did."

"But there's an explanation for that," Barrow declared moodily.
"There's a key to the mystery, and if anybody has it you have.  What is
it?"

"Jack," Hazel pleaded, "don't take that tone with me.  I can't stand
it--I won't.  I'm not a little child to be scolded and browbeaten.
This morning when you telephoned you were almost insulting, and it hurt
me dreadfully.  You're angry now, and suspicious.  You seem to think I
must have done some dreadful thing.  I know what you're thinking.  The
_Gazette_ hinted at some 'affair' between me and Mr. Bush; that
possibly that was a sort of left-handed reparation for ruining me.  If
that didn't make me angry, it would amuse me--it's so absurd.  Haven't
you any faith in me at all?  I haven't done anything to be ashamed of.
I've got nothing to conceal."

"Don't conceal it, then," Barrow muttered sulkily.  "I've got a right
to know whatever there is to know if I'm going to marry you.  You don't
seem to have any idea what this sort of talk that's going around means
to a man."

Hazel stopped short and faced him.  Her heart pounded sickeningly, and
hurt pride and rising anger choked her for an instant.  But she managed
to speak calmly, perhaps with added calmness by reason of the struggle
she was compelled to make for self-control.

"If you are going to marry me," she repeated, "you have got a right to
know all there is to know.  Have I refused to explain?  I haven't had
much chance to explain yet.  Have I refused to tell you anything?  If
you ever thought of anybody beside yourself, you might be asking
yourself how all this talk would affect a girl like me.  And, besides,
I think from your manner that you've already condemned me--for what?
Would any reasonable explanation make an impression on you in your
present frame of mind?  I don't want to marry you if you can't trust
me.  Why, I couldn't--I _wouldn't_--marry you any time, or any place,
under those conditions, no matter how much I may foolishly care for
you."

"There's just one thing, Hazel," Barrow persisted stubbornly.  "There
must have been something between you and Bush.  He sent flowers to you,
and I myself saw when he was hurt he sent his carriage to bring you to
his house.  And then he leaves you this money.  There was something
between you, and I want to know what it was.  You're not helping
yourself by getting on your dignity and talking about my not trusting
you instead of explaining these things."

"A short time ago," Hazel told him quietly, "Mr. Bush asked me to marry
him.  I refused, of course.  He--"

"You refused!" Barrow interrupted cynically.  "Most girls would have
jumped at the chance."

"Jack!" she protested.

"Well," Barrow defended, "he was almost a millionaire, and I've got
nothing but my hands and my brain.  But suppose you did refuse him.
How does that account for the five thousand dollars?"

"I think," Hazel flung back passionately, "I'll let you find that out
for yourself.  You've said enough now to make me hate you almost.  Your
very manner's an insult."

"If you don't like my manner--" Barrow retorted stormily.  Then he cut
his sentence in two, and glared at her.  Her eyes glistened with
slow-welling tears, and she bit nervously at her under Up.  Barrow
shrugged his shoulders.  The twin devils of jealousy and distrust were
riding him hard, and it flashed over Hazel that in his mind she was
prejudged, and that her explanation, if she made it, would only add
fuel to the flame.  Moreover, she stood in open rebellion at being, so
to speak, put on the rack.

She turned abruptly and left him.  What did it matter, anyway?  She was
too proud to plead, and it was worse than useless to explain.

Even so, womanlike, she listened, expecting to hear Jack's step
hurrying up behind.  She could not imagine him letting her go like
that.  But he did not come, and when, at a distance of two blocks, she
stole a backward glance, he had disappeared.

She returned to the boarding-house.  The parlor door stood wide, and
the curious, quickly averted glance of a girl she knew sent her
quivering up to her room.  Safe in that refuge, she sat down by the
window, with her chin on her palms, struggling with the impulse to cry,
protesting with all her young strength against the bitterness that had
come to her through no fault of her own.  There was only one cheerful
gleam.  She loved Jack Barrow.  She believed that he loved her, and she
could not believe--she could not conceive--him capable of keeping
aloof, obdurate and unforgiving, once he got out of the black mood he
was in.  Then she could snuggle up close to him and tell him how and
why Mr. Andrew Bush had struck at her from his deathbed.

She was still sitting by the window, watching the yellow crimson of the
sunset, when some one rapped at her door.  A uniformed messenger boy
greeted her when she opened it:

"Package for Miss Hazel Weir."

She signed his delivery sheet.  The address on the package was in
Jack's handwriting.  A box of chocolates, or some little peace
offering, maybe.  That was like Jack when he was sorry for anything.
They had quarreled before--over trifles, too.

She opened it hastily.  A swift heart sinking followed.  In the small
cardboard box rested a folded scarf, and thrust in it a small gold
stickpin--the only thing she had ever given Jack Barrow.  There was no
message.  She needed none to understand.

The sparkle of the small diamond on her finger drew her gaze.  She
worked his ring over the knuckle, and dropped it on the dresser, where
the face in the silver frame smiled up at her.  She stared at the
picture for one long minute fixedly, with unchanging expression, and
suddenly she swept it from the dresser with a savage sweep of her hand,
dashed it on the floor, and stamped it shapeless with her slippered
heel.

"Oh, oh!" she gasped.  "I hate you--I hate you!  I despise you!"

And then she flung herself across the bed and sobbed hysterically into
a pillow.




CHAPTER V

THE WAY OF THE WORLD AT LARGE

Through the night Hazel dozed fitfully, waking out of uneasy sleep to
lie staring, wide-eyed, into the dark, every nerve in her body taut,
her mind abnormally active.  She tried to accept things
philosophically, but her philosophy failed.  There was a hurt, the pain
of which she could not ease by any mental process.  Grief and anger by
turns mastered her, and at daybreak she rose, heavy-lidded and
physically weary.

The first thing upon which her gaze alighted was the crumpled photo in
its shattered frame; and, sitting on the side of her bed, she laughed
at the sudden fury in which she had destroyed it; but there was no
mirth in her laughter.

"'Would we not shatter it to little bits--and then,'" she murmured.
"No, Mr. John Barrow, I don't believe I'd want to mold you nearer to my
heart's desire.  Not after yesterday evening.  There's such a thing as
being hurt so badly that one finally gets numb; and one always shrinks
from anything that can deliver such a hurt.  Well, it's another day.
And there'll be lots of other days, I suppose."

She gathered up the bits of broken glass and the bent frame, and put
them in a drawer, dressed herself, and went down to breakfast.  She was
too deeply engrossed in her own troubles to notice or care whether any
subtle change was becoming manifest in the attitude of her fellow
boarders.  The worst, she felt sure, had already overtaken her.  In
reaction to the sensitive, shrinking mood of the previous day, a spirit
of defiance had taken possession of her.  Figuratively she declared
that the world could go to the devil, and squared her shoulders with
the declaration.

She had a little time to spare, and that time she devoted to making up
a package of Barrow's ring and a few other trinkets which he had given
her.  This she addressed to his office and posted while on her way to
work.

She got through the day somehow, struggling against thoughts that would
persist in creeping into her mind and stirring up emotions that she was
determined to hold in check.  Work, she knew, was her only salvation.
If she sat idle, thinking, the tears would come in spite of her, and a
horrible, choky feeling in her throat.  She set her teeth and thumped
away at her machine, grimly vowing that Jack Barrow nor any other man
should make her heart ache for long.

And so she got through the week.  Saturday evening came, and she went
home, dreading Sunday's idleness, with its memories.  The people at
Mrs. Stout's establishment, she plainly saw, were growing a trifle shy
of her.  She had never been on terms of intimacy with any of them
during her stay there, hence their attitude troubled little after the
first supersensitiveness wore off.  But her own friends, girls with
whom she had played in the pinafore-and-pigtail stages of her youth,
young men who had paid court to her until Jack Barrow monopolized
her--she did not know how they stood.  She had seen none of them since
Bush launched his last bolt.  Barrow she had passed on the street just
once, and when he lifted his hat distantly, she looked straight ahead,
and ignored him.  Whether she hurt him as much as she did herself by
the cut direct would be hard to say.

On Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons ordinarily from two to a
dozen girl friends called her up at the boarding-house, or dropped in
by ones and twos to chat a while, tease her about Jack, or plan some
mild frivolity.  Hazel went home, wondering if they, too, would stand
aloof.

When Sunday noon arrived, and the phone had failed to call her once,
and not one of all her friends had dropped in, Hazel twisted her chair
so that she could stare at the image of herself in the mirror.

"You're in a fair way to become a pariah, it seems," she said bitterly.
"What have you done, I wonder, that you've lost your lover, and that
Alice and May and Hortense and all the rest of them keep away from you?
Nothing--not a thing--except that your looks attracted a man, and the
man threw stones when he couldn't have his way.  Oh, well, what's the
difference?  You've got two good hands, and you're not afraid of work."

She walked out to Granville Park after luncheon, and found a seat on a
shaded bench beside the lake.  People passed and repassed--couples,
youngsters, old people, children.  It made her lonely beyond measure.
She had never been isolated among her own kind before.  She could not
remember a time when she had gone to Granville Park by herself.  But
she was learning fast to stand on her own feet.

A group of young people came sauntering along the path.  Hazel looked
up as they neared her, chattering to each other.  Maud Steele and Bud
Wells, and--why, she knew every one of the party.  They were swinging
an empty picnic basket, and laughing at everything and nothing.  Hazel
caught her breath as they came abreast, not over ten feet away.  The
three young men raised their hats self-consciously.

"Hello, Hazel!" the girl said.

But they passed on.  It seemed to Hazel that they quickened their pace
a trifle.  It made her grit her teeth in resentful anger.  Ten minutes
later she left the park and caught a car home.  Once in her room she
broke down.

"Oh, I'll go mad if I stay here and this sort of thing goes on!" she
cried forlornly.

A sudden thought struck her.

"Why _should_ I stay here?" she said aloud.  "Why?  What's to keep me
here?  I can make my living anywhere."

"But, no," she asserted passionately, "I won't run away.  That would be
running away, and I haven't anything to be ashamed of.  I will _not_
run."

Still the idea kept recurring to her.  It promised relief from the hurt
of averted faces and coolness where she had a right to expect sympathy
and friendship.  She had never been more than two hundred miles from
Granville in her life.  But she knew that a vast, rich land spread
south and west.  She was human and thoroughly feminine; loneliness
appalled her, and she had never suffered as Granville at large was
making her suffer.

The legal notice of the bequest was mailed to her.  She tore up the
letter and threw it in the fire as if it were some poisonous thing.
The idea of accepting his money stirred her to a perfect frenzy.  That
was piling it up.

All during the next week she worked at her machine in the office of the
furniture company, keeping strictly to herself, doing her work
impassively, efficiently, betraying no sign of the feelings that
sometimes rose up, the despairing protest and angry rebellion against
the dubious position she was in through no fault of her own.  She swore
she would not leave Granville, and it galled her to stay.  It was a
losing fight, and she knew it even if she did not admit the fact.  If
she could have poured the whole miserable tale into some sympathetic
ear she would have felt better, and each day would have seemed less
hard.  But there was no such ear.  Her friends kept away.

Saturday of the second week her pay envelope contained a brief notice
that the firm no longer required her services.  There was no
explanation, only perfunctory regrets; and, truth to tell, Hazel cared
little to know the real cause.  Any one of a number of reasons might
have been sufficient.  But she realized how those who knew her would
take it, what cause they would ascribe.  It did not matter, though.
The very worst, she reasoned, could not be so bad as what had already
happened--could be no more disagreeable than the things she had endured
in the past two weeks.  Losing a position was a trifle.  But it set her
thinking again.

"It doesn't seem to be a case of flight," she reflected on her way
home, "so much as a case of being frozen out, compelled to go.  I can't
stay here and be idle.  I have to work in order to live.  Well, I'm not
gone yet."

She stopped at a news stand and bought the evening papers.  Up in the
top rack of the stand the big heads of an assorted lot of Western
papers caught her eye.  She bought two or three on the impulse of the
moment, without any definite purpose except to look them over out of
mere curiosity.  With these tucked under her arm, she turned into the
boarding-house gate, ran up the steps, and, upon opening the door, her
ears were gladdened by the first friendly voice she had heard--it
seemed to her--in ages, a voice withal that she had least expected to
hear.  A short, plump woman rushed out of the parlor, and precipitated
herself bodily upon Hazel.

"Kitty Ryan!  Where in the wide, wide world did you come from?" Hazel
cried.

"From the United States and everywhere," Miss Ryan replied.  "Take me
up to your room, dear, where we can talk our heads off.

"And, furthermore, Hazie, I'll be pleased to have you address me as
Mrs. Brooks, my dear young woman," the plump lady laughed, as she
settled herself in a chair in Hazel's room.

"So you're married?" Hazel said.

"I am that," Mrs. Kitty responded emphatically, "to the best boy that
ever drew breath.  And so should you be, dear girl.  I don't see how
you've escaped so long--a good-looking girl like you.  The boys were
always crazy after you.  There's nothing like having a good man to take
care of you, dear."

"Heaven save me from them!" Hazel answered bitterly.  "If you've got a
good one, you're lucky.  I can't see them as anything but
self-centered, arrogant, treacherous brutes."

"Lord bless us--it's worse than I thought!"  Kitty jumped up and threw
her arms around Hazel.  "There, there--don't waste a tear on them.  I
know all about it.  I came over to see you just as soon as some of the
girls--nasty little cats they are; a woman's always meaner than a man,
dear--just as soon as they gave me an inkling of how things were going
with you.  Pshaw!  The world's full of good, decent fellows--and you've
got one coming."

"I hope not," Hazel protested.

"Oh, yes, you have," Mrs. Brooks smilingly assured her.  "A woman
without a man is only half a human being, anyway, you know--and vice
versa.  I know.  We can cuss the men all we want to, my dear, and some
of us unfortunately have a nasty experience with one now and then.  But
we can't get away from the fundamental laws of being."

"If you'd had my experience of the last two weeks you'd sing a
different tune," Hazel vehemently declared.  "I hate--I--"

And then she gave way, and indulged in the luxury of turning herself
loose on Kitty's shoulder.  Presently she was able to wipe her eyes and
relate the whole story from the Sunday Mr. Bush stopped and spoke to
her in the park down to that evening.

Kitty nodded understandingly.  "But the girls have handed it to you
worse than the men, Hazel," she observed sagely.  "Jack Barrow was just
plain crazy jealous, and a man like that can't help acting as he did.
You're really fortunate, I think, because you'd not be really happy
with a man like that.  But the girls that you and I grew up with--they
should have stood by you, knowing you as they did; yet you see they
were ready to think the worst of you.  They nearly always do when
there's a man in the case.  That's a weakness of our sex, dear.  My,
what a vindictive old Turk that Bush must have been!  Well, you aren't
working.  Come and stay with me.  Hubby's got a two-year contract with
the World Advertising Company.  We'll be located here that long at
least.  Come and stay with us.  We'll show these little-minded folk a
thing or two.  Leave it to us."

"Oh, no, I couldn't think of that, Kitty!" Hazel faltered.  "You know
I'd love to, and it's awfully good of you, but I think I'm just about
ready to go away from Granville."

"Well, come and stop with us till you do go," Kitty insisted.  "We are
going to take a furnished cottage for a while.  Though, between you and
me, dear, knowing people as I do, I can't blame you for wanting to be
where their nasty tongues can't wound you."

But Hazel was obdurate.  She would not inflict herself on the one
friend she had left.  And Kitty, after a short talk, berated her
affectionately for her independence, and rose to go.

"For," said she, "I didn't get hold of this thing till Addie Horton
called at the hotel this afternoon, and I didn't stop to think that it
was near teatime, but came straight here.  Jimmie'll think I've eloped.
So ta-ta.  I'll come out to-morrow about two.  I have to confab with a
house agent in the forenoon.  By-by."

Hazel sat down and actually smiled when Kitty was gone.  Somehow a
grievous burden had fallen off her mind.  Likewise, by some
psychological quirk, the idea of leaving Granville and making her home
elsewhere no longer struck her as running away under fire.  She did not
wish to subject Kitty Brooks to the difficulties, the embarrassment
that might arise from having her as a guest; but the mere fact that
Kitty stood stanchly by her made the world seem less harsh and dreary,
made it seem as if she had, in a measure, justified herself.  She felt
that she could adventure forth among strangers in a strange country
with a better heart, knowing that Kitty Brooks would put a swift
quietus on any gossip that came her way.

So that Hazel went down to the dining-room light-heartedly, and when
the meal was finished came back and fell to reading her papers.  The
first of the Western papers was a Vancouver _World_.  In a real-estate
man's half-page she found a diminutive sketch plan of the city on the
shores of Burrard Inlet, Canada's principal outpost on the far Pacific.

"It's quite a big place," she murmured absently.  "One would be far
enough away there, goodness knows."

Then she turned to the "Help Wanted" advertisements.  The thing which
impressed her quickly and most vividly was the dearth of demand for
clerks and stenographers, and the repeated calls for domestic help and
such.  Domestic service she shrank from except as a last resort.  And
down near the bottom of the column she happened on an inquiry for a
school-teacher, female preferred, in an out-of-the-way district in the
interior of the province.

"Now, that--" Hazel thought.

She had a second-class certificate tucked away among her belongings.
Originally it had been her intention to teach, and she had done so one
term in a backwoods school when she was eighteen.  With the ending of
the term she had returned to Granville, studied that winter, and got
her second certificate; but at the same time she had taken a
business-college course, and the following June found her clacking a
typewriter at nine dollars a week.  And her teacher's diploma had
remained in the bottom of her trunk ever since.

"I could teach, I suppose, by rubbing up a little on one or two
subjects as I went along," she reflected.  "I wonder now--"

What she wondered was how much salary she could expect, and she took up
the paper again, and looked carefully for other advertisements calling
for teachers.  In the _World_ and in a Winnipeg paper she found one or
two vacancies to fill out the fall term, and gathered that Western
schools paid from fifty to sixty dollars a month for "schoolma'ams"
with certificates such as she held.

"Why not?" she asked herself.  "I've got two resources.  If I can't get
office work I can teach.  I can do _anything_ if I have to.  And it's
far enough away, in all conscience--all of twenty-five hundred miles."

Unaccountably, since Kitty Brooks' visit, she found herself itching to
turn her back on Granville and its unpleasant associations.  She did
not attempt to analyze the feeling.  Strange lands, and most of all the
West, held alluring promise.  She sat in her rocker, and could not help
but dream of places where people were a little broader gauge, a little
less prone to narrow, conventional judgments.  Other people had done as
she proposed doing--cut loose from their established environment, and
made a fresh start in countries where none knew or cared whence they
came or who they were.  Why not she?  One thing was certain: Granville,
for all she had been born there, and grown to womanhood there, was now
no place for her.  The very people who knew her best would make her
suffer most.

She spent that evening going thoroughly over the papers and writing
letters to various school boards, taking a chance at one or two she
found in the Manitoba paper, but centering her hopes on the country
west of the Rockies.  Her letters finished, she took stock of her
resources--verified them, rather, for she had not so much money that
she did not know almost where she stood.  Her savings in the bank
amounted to three hundred odd dollars, and cash in hand brought the sum
to a total of three hundred and sixty-five.  At any rate, she had
sufficient to insure her living for quite a long time.  And she went to
bed feeling better than she had felt for two weeks.

Kitty Brooks came again the next afternoon, and, being a young woman of
wide experience and good sense, made no further attempt to influence
Hazel one way or the other.

"I hate to see you go, though," she remarked truthfully.  "But you'll
like the West--if it happens that you go there.  You'll like it better
than the East; there's a different sort of spirit among the people.
I've traveled over some of it, and if Jimmie's business permitted we'd
both like to live there.  And--getting down to strictly practical
things--a girl can make a much better living there.  Wages are high.
And--who knows?--you might capture a cattle king."

Hazel shrugged her shoulders, and Mrs. Kitty forbore teasing.  After
that they gossiped and compared notes covering the two years since they
had met until it was time for Kitty to go home.

Very shortly thereafter--almost, it seemed, by return mail--Hazel got
replies to her letters of inquiry.  The fact that each and every one
seemed bent on securing her services astonished her.

"Schoolma'ams must certainly be scarce out there," she told herself.
"This is an embarrassment of riches.  I'm going somewhere, but which
place shall it be?"

But the reply from Cariboo Meadows, B. C., the first place she had
thought of, decided her.  The member of the school board who replied
held forth the natural beauty of the country as much as he did the
advantages of the position.  The thing that perhaps made the strongest
appeal to Hazel was a little kodak print inclosed in the letter,
showing the schoolhouse.

The building itself was primitive enough, of logs, with a pole-and-sod
roof.  But it was the huge background, the timbered mountains rising to
snow-clad heights against a cloudless sky, that attracted her.  She had
never seen a greater height of land than the rolling hills of Ontario.
Here was a frontier, big and new and raw, holding out to her as she
stared at the print a promise--of what?  She did not know.  Adventure?
If she desired adventure, it was purely a subconscious desire.  But she
had lived in a rut a long time without realizing it more than vaguely,
and there was something in her nature that responded instantly when she
contemplated journeying alone into a far country.  She found herself
hungering for change, for a measure of freedom from petty restraints,
for elbow-room in the wide spaces, where one's neighbor might be ten or
forty miles away.  She knew nothing whatever of such a life, but she
could feel a certain envy of those who led it.

She sat for a long time looking at the picture, thinking.  Here was the
concrete, visible presentment of something that drew her strongly.  She
found an atlas, and looked up Cariboo Meadows on the map.  It was not
to be found, and Hazel judged it to be a purely local name.  But the
letter told her that she would have to stage it a hundred and
sixty-five miles north from Ashcroft, B. C., where the writer would
meet her and drive her to the Meadows.  She located the stage-line
terminal on the map, and ran her forefinger over the route.  Mountain
and lake and stream lined and dotted and criss-crossed the province
from end to end of its seven-hundred-mile length.  Back of where
Cariboo Meadows should be three or four mining camps snuggled high in
the mountains.

"What a country!" she whispered.  "It's wild; really, truly wild; and
everything I've ever seen has been tamed and smoothed down, and made
eminently respectable and conventional long ago.  That's the place.
That's where I'm going, and I'm going it blind.  I'm not going to tell
any one--not even Kitty--until, like a bear, I've gone over the
mountain to see what I can see."

Within an hour of that Miss Hazel Weir had written to accept the terms
offered by the Cariboo Meadow school district, and was busily packing
her trunk.




CHAPTER VI

CARIBOO MEADOWS

A tall man, sunburned, slow-speaking, met Hazel at Soda Creek, the end
of her stage journey, introducing himself as Jim Briggs.

"Pretty tiresome trip, ain't it?" he observed.  "You'll have a chance
to rest decent to-night, and I got a team uh bays that'll yank yuh to
the Meadows in four hours 'n' a half.  My wife'll be plumb tickled to
have yuh.  They ain't much more'n half a dozen white women in ten miles
uh the Meadows.  We keep a boardin'-house.  Hope you'll like the
country."

That was a lengthy speech for Jim Briggs, as Hazel discovered when she
rolled out of Soda Creek behind the "team uh bays."  His conversation
was decidedly monosyllabic.  But he could drive, if he was no talker,
and his team could travel.  The road, albeit rough in spots, a mere
track through timber and little gems of open where the yellowing grass
waved knee-high, and over hills which sloped to deep caņons lined with
pine and spruce, seemed short enough.  And so by eleven o'clock Hazel
found herself at Cariboo Meadows.

"Schoolhouse's over yonder."  Briggs pointed out the place--an
unnecessary guidance, for Hazel had already marked the building set off
by itself and fortified with a tall flagpole.  "And here's where we
live.  Kinda out uh the world, but blame good place to live."

Hazel did like the place.  Her first impression was thankfulness that
her lot had been cast in such a spot.  But it was largely because of
the surroundings, essentially primitive, the clean air, guiltless of
smoke taint, the aromatic odors from the forest that ranged for
unending miles on every hand.  For the first time in her life, she was
beyond hearing of the clang of street cars, the roar of traffic, the
dirt and smells of a city.  It seemed good.  She had no regrets, no
longing to be back.  There was a pain sometimes, when in spite of
herself she would fall to thinking of Jack Barrow.  But that she looked
upon as a closed chapter.  He had hurt her where a woman can be most
deeply wounded--in her pride and her affections--and the hurt was
dulled by the smoldering resentment that thinking of him always fanned
to a flame.  Miss Hazel Weir was neither meek nor mild, even if her
environment had bred in her a repression that had become second nature.

So with the charm of the wild land fresh upon her, she took kindly to
Cariboo Meadows.  The immediate, disagreeable past bade fair to become
as remote in reality as the distance made it seem.  Surely no ghosts
would walk here to make people look askance at her.

Her first afternoon she spent loafing on the porch of the Briggs
domicile, within which Mrs. Briggs, a fat, good-natured person of
forty, toiled at her cooking for the "boarders," and kept a brood of
five tumultuous youngsters in order--the combined tasks leaving her
scant time to entertain her newly arrived guest.  From the vantage
ground of the porch Hazel got her first glimpse of the turns life
occasionally takes when there is no policeman just around the corner.

Cariboo Meadows, as a town, was simply a double row of buildings facing
each other across a wagon road.  Two stores, a blacksmith shop, a feed
stable, certain other nondescript buildings, and a few dwellings,
mostly of logs, was all.  Probably not more than a total of fifty souls
made permanent residence there.  But the teams of ranchers stood in the
street, and a few saddled cow ponies whose listlessness was mostly
assumed.  Before one of the general stores a prospector fussed with a
string of pack horses.  Directly opposite Briggs' boarding-house stood
a building labeled "Regent Hotel."  Hazel could envisage it all with a
half turn of her head.

From this hotel there presently issued a young man dressed in the
ordinary costume of the country--wide hat, flannel shirt, overalls,
boots.  He sat down on a box close by the hotel entrance.  In a few
minutes another came forth.  He walked past the first a few steps,
stopped, and said something.  Hazel could not hear the words.  The
first man was filling a pipe.  Apparently he made no reply; at least,
he did not trouble to look up.  But she saw his shoulders lift in a
shrug.  Then he who had passed turned square about and spoke again,
this time lifting his voice a trifle.  The young fellow sitting on the
box instantly became galvanized into action.  He flung out an oath that
carried across the street and made Hazel's ears burn.  At the same time
he leaped from his seat straight at the other man.  Hazel saw it quite
distinctly, saw him who jumped dodge a vicious blow and close with the
other; and saw, moreover, something which amazed her.  For the young
fellow swayed with his adversary a second or two, then lifted him
bodily off his feet almost to the level of his head, and slammed him
against the hotel wall with a sudden twist.  She heard the thump of the
body on the logs.  For an instant she thought him about to jump with
his booted feet on the prostrate form, and involuntarily she held her
breath.  But he stepped back, and when the other scrambled up, he
side-stepped the first rush, and knocked the man down again with a blow
of his fist.  This time he stayed down.  Then other men--three or four
of them--came out of the hotel, stood uncertainly a few seconds, and
Hazel heard the young fellow say:

"Better take that fool in and bring him to.  If he's still hungry for
trouble, I'll be right handy.  I wonder how many more of you fellers
I'll have to lick before you'll get wise enough not to start things you
can't stop?"

They supported the unconscious man through the doorway; the young
fellow resumed his seat on the box, also his pipe filling.

"Roarin' Bill's goin' to get himself killed one uh these days."

Hazel started, but it was only Jim Briggs in the doorway beside her.

"I guess you ain't much used to seein' that sort of exhibition where
you come from, Miss Weir," Briggs' wife put in over his shoulder.  "My
land, it's disgustin'--men fightin' in the street where everybody can
see 'em.  Thank goodness, it don't happen very often.  'Specially when
Bill Wagstaff ain't around.  You ain't shocked, are you, honey?"

"Why, I didn't have time to be shocked," Hazel laughed.  "It was done
so quickly."

"If them fellers would leave Bill alone," Briggs remarked, "there
wouldn't be no fight.  But he goes off like a hair-trigger gun, and
he'd scrap a dozen quick as one.  I'm lookin' to see his finish one uh
these days."

"What a name!" Hazel observed, caught by the appellation Briggs had
first used.  "Is that Roaring Bill over there?"

"That's him--Roarin' Bill Wagstaff," Briggs answered.  "If he takes a
few drinks, you'll find out to-night how he got the name.  Sings--just
like a bull moose--hear him all over town.  Probably whip two or three
men before mornin'."

His spouse calling him at that moment, Briggs detailed no more
information about Roaring Bill.  And Hazel sat looking across the way
with considerable interest at the specimen of a type which hitherto she
had encountered in the pages of fiction--a fighting man, what the West
called a "bad actor."  She had, however, no wish for closer study of
that particular type.  The men of her world had been altogether
different, and the few frontier specimens she had met at the Briggs'
dinner table had not impressed her with anything except their shyness
and manifest awkwardness in her presence.  The West itself appealed to
her, its bigness, its nearness to the absolutely primeval, but not the
people she had so far met.  They were not wrapped in a glamor of
romance; she was altogether too keen to idealize them.  They were not
her kind, and while she granted their worth, they were more picturesque
about their own affairs than when she came in close contact with them.
Those were her first impressions.  And so she looked at Roaring Bill
Wagstaff, over the way, with a quite impersonal interest.

He came into Briggs' place for supper.  Mrs. Briggs was her own
waitress.  Briggs himself sat beside Hazel.  She heard him grunt, and
saw a mild look of surprise flit over his countenance when Roaring Bill
walked in and coolly took a seat.  But not until Hazel glanced at the
newcomer did she recognize him as the man who had fought in the street.
He was looking straight at her when she did glance up, and the mingled
astonishment and frank admiration in his clear gray eyes made Hazel
drop hers quickly to her plate.  Since Mr. Andrew Bush, she was
beginning to hate men who looked at her that way.  And she could not
help seeing that many did so look.

Roaring Bill ate his supper in silence.  No one spoke to him, and he
addressed no one except to ask that certain dishes be passed.  Among
the others conversation was general.  Hazel noticed that, and wondered
why--wondered if Roaring Bill was taboo.  She had sensed enough of the
Western point of view to know that the West held nothing against a man
who was quick to blows--rather admired such a one, in fact.  And her
conclusions were not complimentary to Mr. Bill Wagstaff.  If people
avoided him in that country, he must be a very hard citizen indeed.
And Hazel no more than formulated this opinion than she was ashamed of
it, having her own recent experience in mind.  Whereupon she dismissed
Bill Wagstaff from her thoughts altogether when she left the table.

Exactly three days later Hazel came into the dining-room at noon, and
there received her first lesson in the truth that this world is a very
small place, after all.  A nattily dressed gentleman seated to one side
of her place at table rose with the most polite bows and extended hand.
Hazel recognized him at a glance as Mr. Howard Perkins, traveling
salesman for Harrington & Bush.  She had met him several times in the
company offices.  She was anything save joyful at the meeting, but
after the first unwelcome surprise she reflected that it was scarcely
strange that a link in her past life should turn up here, for she knew
that in the very nature of things a firm manufacturing agricultural
implements would have its men drumming up trade on the very edge of the
frontier.

Mr. Perkins was tolerably young, good looking, talkative, apparently
glad to meet some one from home.  He joined her on the porch for a
minute when the meal was over.  And he succeeded in putting Hazel
unqualifiedly at her ease so far as he was concerned.  If he had heard
any Granville gossip, if he knew why she had left Granville, it
evidently cut no figure with him.  As a consequence, while she was
simply polite and negatively friendly, deep in her heart Hazel felt a
pleasant reaction from the disagreeable things for which Granville
stood; and, though she nursed both resentment and distrust against men
in general, it did not seem to apply to Mr. Perkins.  Anyway, he was
here to-day, and on the morrow he would be gone.

Being a healthy, normal young person, Hazel enjoyed his company without
being fully aware of the fact.  So much for natural gregariousness.
Furthermore, Mr. Perkins in his business had been pretty much
everywhere on the North American continent, and he knew how to set
forth his various experiences.  Most women would have found him
interesting, particularly in a community isolated as Cariboo Meadows,
where tailored clothes and starched collars seemed unknown, and every
man was his own barber--at infrequent intervals.

So Hazel found it quite natural to be chatting with him on the Briggs'
porch when her school work ended at three-thirty in the afternoon.  It
transpired that Mr. Perkins, like herself, had an appreciation of the
scenic beauties, and also the picturesque phases of life as it ran in
the Cariboo country.  They talked of many things, discussed life in a
city as compared with existence in the wild, and were agreed that both
had desirable features--and drawbacks.  Finally Mr. Perkins proposed a
walk up on a three-hundred-foot knoll that sloped from the back door,
so to speak, of Cariboo Meadows.  Hazel got her hat, and they set out.
She had climbed that hill by herself, and she knew that it commanded a
great sweep of the rolling land to the west.

They reached the top in a few minutes, and found a seat on a dead tree
trunk.  Mr. Perkins was properly impressed with the outlook.  But
before very long he seemed to suffer a relaxation of his interest in
the view and a corresponding increase of attention to his companion.
Hazel recognized the symptoms.  At first it amused, then it irritated
her.  The playful familiarity of Mr. Perkins suddenly got on her nerves.

"I think I shall go down," she said abruptly.

"Oh, I say, now, there's no hurry," Perkins responded smilingly.

But she was already rising from her seat, and Mr. Perkins, very likely
gauging his action according to his experience in other such
situations, did an utterly foolish thing.  He caught her as she rose,
and laughingly tried to kiss her.  Whereupon he discovered that he had
caught a tartar, for Hazel slapped him with all the force she could
muster--which was considerable, judging by the flaming red spot which
the smack of her palm left on his smooth-shaven cheek.  But he did not
seem to mind that.  Probably he had been slapped before, and regarded
it as part of the game.  He attempted to draw her closer.

"Why, you're a regular scrapper," he smiled.  "Now, I'm sure you didn't
cuff Bush that way."

Hazel jerked loose from his grip in a perfect fury, using at the same
time the weapons nature gave her according to her strength, whereby Mr.
Perkins suffered sundry small bruises, which were as nothing to the
bruises his conceit suffered.  For, being free of him, Hazel stood her
ground long enough to tell him that he was a cad, a coward, an ill-bred
nincompoop, and other epithets grievous to masculine vanity.  With that
she fled incontinently down the hill, furious, shamed almost to tears,
and wishing fervently that she had the muscle of a man to requite the
insult as it deserved.  To cap the climax, Mrs. Briggs, who had seen
the two depart, observed her return alone, and, with a curious look,
asked jokingly:

"Did you lose the young man in the timber?"

And Hazel, being keyed to a fearful pitch, unwisely snapped back:

"I hope so."

Which caused Mrs. Briggs' gaze to follow her wonderingly as she went
hastily to her own room.

Like other mean souls of similar pattern, it suited Mr. Perkins to seek
revenge in the only way possible--by confidentially relating to divers
individuals during that evening the Granville episode in the new
teacher's career.  At least, Hazel guessed he must have told the tale
of that ambiguously worded bequest and the subsequent gossip, for as
early as the next day she caught certain of Jim Briggs' boarders
looking at her with an interest they had not heretofore displayed--or,
rather, it should be said, with a _different_ sort of interest.  They
were discussing her.  She could not know it positively, but she felt it.

The feeling grew to certainty after Perkins' departure that day.  There
was a different atmosphere.  Probably, she reflected, he had thrown in
a few embellishments of his own for good measure.  She felt a tigerish
impulse to choke him.  But she was proud, and she carried her head in
the air, and, in effect, told Cariboo Meadows to believe as it pleased
and act as it pleased.  They could do no more than cut her and cause
her to lose her school.  She managed to keep up an air of cool
indifference that gave no hint of the despairing protest that surged
close to the surface.  Individually and collectively, she reiterated to
herself, she despised men.  Her resentment had not yet extended to the
women of Cariboo Meadows.  They were mostly too busy with their work to
be much in the foreground.  She did observe, or thought she observed, a
certain coolness in Mrs. Briggs' manner--a sort of suspended judgment.

In the meantime, she labored diligently at her appointed task of
drilling knowledge into the heads of a dozen youngsters.  From nine
until three-thirty she had that to occupy her mind to the exclusion of
more troublesome things.  When school work for the day ended, she went
to her room, or sat on the porch, or took solitary rambles in the
immediate vicinity, avoiding the male contingent as she would have
avoided contagious disease.  Never, never, she vowed, would she trust
another man as far as she could throw him.

The first Saturday after the Perkins incident, Hazel went for a tramp
in the afternoon.  She avoided the little hill close at hand.  It left
a bad taste in her mouth to look at the spot.  This was foolish, and
she realized that it was foolish, but she could not help the
feeling--the insult was still too fresh in her mind.  So she skirted
its base and ranged farther afield.  The few walks she had taken had
lulled all sense of uneasiness in venturing into the infolding forest.
She felt that those shadowy woods were less sinister than man.  And
since she had always kept her sense of direction and come straight to
the Meadows whenever she went abroad, she had no fear or thought of
losing her way.

A mile or so distant a bare spot high on a wooded ridge struck her as a
likely place to get an unobstructed view.  To reach some height and sit
in peace, staring out over far-spreading vistas, contented her.  She
could put away the unpleasantness of the immediate past, discount the
possible sordidness of the future, and lose herself in dreams.

To reach her objective point, she crossed a long stretch of rolling
land, well timbered, dense in parts with thickets of berry bushes.
Midway in this she came upon a little brook, purring a monotone as it
crawled over pebbled reaches and bathed the tangled roots of trees
along its brink.  By this she sat a while.  Then she idled along,
coming after considerable difficulty to abruptly rising ground.  Though
in the midst of timber the sun failed to penetrate, she could always
see it through the branches and so gauge her line of travel.  On the
hillside it was easier, for the forest thinned out.  Eventually she
gained a considerable height, and while she failed to reach the opening
seen from the Meadows, she found another that served as well.  The sun
warmed it, and the sun rays were pleasant to bask in, for autumn drew
close, and there was a coolness in the shade even at noon.  She could
not see the town, but she could mark the low hills behind it.  At any
rate, she knew where it lay, and the way back.

So she thought.  But the short afternoon fled, and, warned by the low
dip of the sun, she left her nook on the hillside to make her way home.
Though it was near sundown, she felt no particular concern.  The long
northern twilight gave her ample time to cover the distance.

But once down on the rolling land, among the close-ranked trees, she
began to experience a difficulty that had not hitherto troubled her.
With the sun hanging low, she lost her absolute certainty of east and
west, north and south.  The forest seemed suddenly to grow confusingly
dim and gloomier, almost menacing in its uncanny evening silence.  The
birds were hushed, and the wind.

She blundered on, not admitting to herself the possibility of being
unable to find Cariboo Meadows.  As best she could, and to the best of
her belief, she held in a straight line for the town.  But she walked
far enough to have overrun it, and was yet upon unfamiliar ground.  The
twilight deepened.  The sky above showed turquoise blue between the
tall tree-tops, but the woods themselves grew blurred, dusky at a
little distance ahead.  Even to a seasoned woodsman, twilight in a
timbered country that he does not know brings confusion; uncertainty
leads him far wide of his mark.  Hazel, all unused to woods travel,
hurried the more, uneasy with the growing conviction that she had gone
astray.

The shadows deepened until she tripped over roots and stones, and
snagged her hair and clothing on branches she could not see in time to
fend off.  As a last resort, she turned straight for the light patch
still showing in the northwest, hoping thus to cross the wagon road
that ran from Soda Creek to the Meadows--it lay west, and she had gone
northeast from town.  And as she hurried, a fear began to tug at her
that she had passed the Meadows unknowingly.  If she could only cross a
trail--trails always led somewhere, and she was going it blind.  The
immensity of the unpeopled areas she had been looking out over for a
week appalled her.

Presently it was dark, and darkness in the woods is the darkness of the
pit itself.  She found a fallen tree, and climbed on it to rest and
think.  Night in gloomy places brings an eerie feeling sometimes to the
bravest--dormant sense impressions, running back to the cave age and
beyond, become active, harry the mind with subtle, unreasoning
qualms--and she was a girl, brave enough, but out of the only
environment she knew how to grapple with.  All the fearsome tales of
forest beasts she had ever heard rose up to harass her.  She had not
lifted up her voice while it was light because she was not the timid
soul that cries in the face of a threatened danger.  Also because she
would not then admit the possibility of getting lost.  And now she was
afraid to call.  She huddled on the log, shuddering with the growing
chill of the night air, partly with dread of the long, black night
itself that walled her in.  She had no matches to light a fire.

After what seemed an age, she fancied she saw a gleam far distant in
the timber.  She watched the spot fixedly, and thought she saw the
faint reflection of a light.  That heartened her.  She advanced toward
it, hoping that it might be the gleam of a ranch window.  Her progress
was slow.  She blundered over the litter of a forest floor, tripping
over unseen obstacles.  But ten minutes established beyond peradventure
the fact that it was indeed a light.  Whether a house light or the
reflection of a camp fire she was not woodwise enough to tell.  But a
fire must mean human beings of one sort or another, and thereby a means
to reach home.

She kept on.  The wavering gleam came from behind a thicket--an open
fire, she saw at length.  Beyond the fire she heard a horse sneeze.
Within a few yards of the thicket through which wavered the yellow
gleam she halted, smitten with a sudden panic.  This endured but a few
seconds.  All that she knew or had been told of frontier men reassured
her.  She had found them to a man courteous, awkwardly considerate.
And she could not wander about all night.

She moved cautiously, however, to the edge of the thicket, to a point
where she could see the fire.  A man sat humped over the glowing
embers, whereon sizzled a piece of meat.  His head was bent forward, as
if he were listening.  Suddenly he looked up, and she gasped--for the
firelight showed the features of Roaring Bill Wagstaff.

She was afraid of him.  Why she did not know nor stop to reason.  But
her fear of him was greater than her fear of the pitch-black night and
the unknown dangers of the forest.  She turned to retreat.  In the same
instant Roaring Bill reached to his rifle and stood up.

"Hold on there!" he said coolly.  "You've had a look at me--I want a
look at you, old feller, whoever you are.  Come on--show yourself."

He stepped sidewise out of the light as he spoke.  Hazel started to
run.  The crack of a branch under foot betrayed her, and he closed in
before she took three steps.  He caught her rudely by the arm, and
yanked her bodily into the firelight.

"Well--for the--love of--Mike!"

Wagstaff drawled the exclamation out in a rising crescendo of
astonishment.  Then he laid his gun down across a roll of bedding, and
stood looking at her in speechless wonder.




CHAPTER VII

A DIFFERENT SORT OF MAN

"For the love of Mike!" Roaring Bill said again.  "What are you doing
wandering around in the woods at night?  Good Lord!  Your teeth are
chattering.  Sit down here and get warm.  It is sort of chilly."

Even in her fear, born of the night, the circumstances, and partly of
the man, Hazel noticed that his speech was of a different order from
that to which she had been listening the past ten days.  His
enunciation was perfect.  He dropped no word endings, nor slurred his
syllables.  And cast in so odd a mold is the mind of civilized woman
that the small matter of a little refinement of speech put Hazel Weir
more at her ease than a volume of explanation or protest on his part
would have done.  She had pictured him a ruffian in thought, speech,
and deed.  His language cleared him on one count, and she observed that
almost his first thought was for her comfort, albeit he made no sort of
apology for handling her so roughly in the gloom beyond the fire.

"I got lost," she explained, growing suddenly calm.  "I was out
walking, and lost my way."

"Easy thing to do when you don't know timber," Bill remarked.  "And in
consequence you haven't had any supper; you've been scared almost to
death--and probably all of Cariboo Meadows is out looking for you.
Well, you've had an adventure.  That's worth something.  Better eat a
bite, and you'll feel better."

He turned over the piece of meat on the coals while he spoke.  Hazel
saw that it lay on two green sticks, like a steak on a gridiron.  It
was quite simple, but she would never have thought of that.  The meat
exhaled savory odors.  Also, the warmth of the fire seemed good.  But--

"I'd rather be home," she confessed.

"Sure!  I guess you would--naturally.  I'll see that you get there,
though it won't be easy.  It's no snap to travel these woods in the
dark.  You couldn't have been so far from the Meadows.  How did it come
you didn't yell once in a while?"

"I didn't think it was necessary," Hazel admitted, "until it began to
get dark.  And then I didn't like to."

"You got afraid," Roaring Bill supplied.  "Well, it does sound creepy
to holler in the timber after night.  I know how that goes.  I've made
noises after night that scared myself."

He dug some utensils out of his pack layout--two plates, knife, fork,
and spoons, and laid them by the fire.  Opposite the meat a pot of
water bubbled.  Roaring Bill produced a small tin bucket, black with
the smoke of many an open fire, and a package, and made coffee.  Then
he spread a canvas sheet, and laid on that bread, butter, salt, a jar
of preserved fruit.

"How far is it to Cariboo Meadows?" Hazel asked.

Bill looked up from his supper preparations.

"You've got me," he returned carelessly.  "Probably four or five miles.
I'm not positive; I've been running in circles myself this afternoon."

"Good heavens!" Hazel exclaimed.  "But you know the way?"

"Like a book--in the daytime," he replied.  "But night in the timber is
another story, as you've just been finding out for yourself."

"I thought men accustomed to the wilderness could always find their way
about, day or night," Hazel observed tartly.

"They can--in stories," Bill answered dryly.

He resumed his arranging of the food while she digested this.
Presently he sat down beside the fire, and while he turned the meat
with a forked stick, came back to the subject again.

"You see, I'm away off any trail here," he said, "and it's all woods,
with only a little patch of open here and there.  It's pure accident I
happen to be here at all; accident which comes of unadulterated
cussedness on the part of one of my horses.  I left the Meadows at
noon, and Nigger--that's this confounded cayuse of mine--he had to get
scared and take to the brush.  He got plumb away from me, and I had to
track him.  I didn't come up with him till dusk, and then the first
good place I struck, which was here, I made camp.  I was all for
catching that horse, so I didn't pay much attention to where I was
going.  Didn't need to, because I know the country well enough to get
anywhere in daylight, and I'm fixed to camp wherever night overtakes
me.  So I'm not dead sure of my ground.  But you don't need to worry on
that account.  I'll get you home all right.  Only it'll be mean
traveling--and slow--unless we happen to bump into some of those
fellows out looking for you.  They'd surely start out when you didn't
come home at dusk; they know it isn't any joke for a girl to get lost
in these woods.  I've known men to get badly turned round right in this
same country.  Well, sit up and eat a bite."

She had to be satisfied with his assurance that he would see her to
Cariboo Meadows.  And, accepting the situation with what philosophy she
could command, Hazel proceeded to fall to--and soon discovered herself
relishing the food more than any meal she had eaten for a long time.
Hunger is the king of appetizers, and food cooked in the open has a
flavor of its own which no aproned chef can duplicate.  Roaring Bill
put half the piece of meat on her plate, sliced bread for her, and set
the butter handy.  Also, he poured her a cup of coffee.  He had a small
sack of sugar, and his pack boxes yielded condensed milk.

"Maybe you'd rather have tea," he said.  "I didn't think to ask you.
Most Canadians don't drink anything else."

"No, thanks.  I like coffee," Hazel replied.

"You're not a true-blue Canuck, then," Bill observed.

"Indeed, I am," she declared.  "Aren't you a Canadian?"

"Well, I don't know that the mere accident of birth in come particular
locality makes any difference," he answered.  "But I'm a lot shy of
being a Canadian, though I've been in this country a long time.  I was
born in Chicago, the smokiest, windiest old burg in the United States."

"It's a big place, isn't it?"  Hazel kept the conversation going.  "I
don't know any of the American cities, but I have a girl friend working
in a Chicago office."

"Yes, it's big--big and noisy and dirty, and full of wrecks--human
derelicts in an industrial Sargasso Sea--like all big cities the world
over.  I don't like 'em."

Wagstaff spoke casually, as much to himself as to her, and he did not
pursue the subject, but began his meal.

"What sort of meat is this?" Hazel asked after a few minutes of
silence.  It was fine-grained and of a rich flavor strange to her
mouth.  She liked it, but it was neither beef, pork, nor mutton, nor
any meat she knew.

"Venison.  Didn't you ever eat any before?" he smiled.

"Never tasted it," she answered.  "Isn't it nice?  No, I've read of
hunters cooking venison over an open fire, but this is my first taste.
Indeed, I've never seen a real camp fire before."

"Lord--what a lot you've missed!"  There was real pity in his tone.  "I
killed that deer to-day.  In fact, the little circus I had with Mr.
Buck was what started Nigger off into the brush.  Have some more
coffee."

He refilled her tin cup, and devoted himself to his food.  Before long
they had satisfied their hunger.  Bill laid a few dry sticks on the
fire.  The flames laid hold of them and shot up in bright, wavering
tongues.  It seemed to Hazel that she had stepped utterly out of her
world.  Cariboo Meadows, the schoolhouse, and her classes seemed
remote.  She found herself wishing she were a man, so that she could
fare into the wilds with horses and a gun in this capable man fashion,
where routine went by the board and the unexpected hovered always close
at hand.  She looked up suddenly, to find him regarding her with a
whimsical smile.

"In a few minutes," said he, "I'll pack up and try to deliver you as
per contract.  Meantime, I'm going to smoke."

He did not ask her permission, but filled his pipe and lighted it with
a coal.  And for the succeeding fifteen minutes Roaring Bill Wagstaff
sat staring into the dancing blaze.  Once or twice he glanced at her,
and when he did the same whimsical smile would flit across his face.
Hazel watched him uneasily after a time.  He seemed to have forgotten
her.  His pipe died, and he sat holding it in his hand.  She was
uneasy, but not afraid.  There was nothing about him or his actions to
make her fear.  On the contrary, Roaring Bill at close quarters
inspired confidence.  Why she could not and did not attempt to
determine, psychological analysis being rather out of her line.

Physically, however, Roaring Bill measured up to a high standard.  He
was young, probably twenty-seven or thereabouts.  There was
power--plenty of it--in the wide shoulders and deep chest of him, with
arms in proportion.  His hands, while smooth on the backs and well
cared for, showed when he exposed the palms the callouses of ax
handling.  And his face was likable, she decided, full of character,
intensely masculine.  In her heart every woman despises any hint of the
effeminate in man.  Even though she may decry what she is pleased to
term the brute in man, whenever he discards the dominant, overmastering
characteristics of the male she will have none of him.  Miss Hazel Weir
was no exception to her sex.

Consciously or otherwise she took stock of Bill Wagstaff.  She knew him
to be in bad odor with Cariboo Meadows for some unknown reason.  She
had seen him fight in the street, knock a man unconscious with his
fists.  According to her conceptions of behavior that was brutal and
vulgar.  Drinking came under the same head, and she had Jim Briggs'
word that Bill Wagstaff not only got drunk, but was a "holy terror"
when in that condition.  Yet she could not quite associate the twin
traits of brutality and vulgarity with the man sitting close by with
that thoughtful look on his face.  His speech stamped him as a man of
education; every line of him showed breeding in all that the word
implies.

Nevertheless, he was "tough."  And she had gathered enough of the
West's wide liberality of view in regard to personal conduct to know
that Roaring Bill Wagstaff must be a hard citizen indeed to be
practically ostracized in a place like Cariboo Meadows.  She wondered
what Cariboo Meadows would say if it could see her sitting by Bill
Wagstaff's fire at nine in the evening in the heart of the woods.  What
would they say when he piloted her home?

In the midst of her reflections Roaring Bill got up.

"Well, we'll make a move," he said, and disappeared abruptly into the
dark.

She heard him moving around at some distance.  Presently he was back,
leading three horses.  One he saddled.  The other two he rigged with
his pack outfit, storing his varied belongings in two pair of kyaks,
and loading kyaks and bedding on the horses with a deft speed that
bespoke long practice.  He was too busy to talk, and Hazel sat beside
the fire, watching in silence.  When he had tucked up the last rope
end, he turned to her.

"There," he said; "we're ready to hit the trail.  Can you ride?"

"I don't know," Hazel answered dubiously.  "I never have ridden a
horse."

"My, my!" he smiled.  "Your education has been sadly neglected--and you
a schoolma'am, too!"

"My walking education hasn't been neglected," Hazel retorted.  "I don't
need to ride, thank you."

"Yes, and stub your toe and fall down every ten feet," Bill observed.
"No, Miss Weir, your first lesson in horsemanship is now due--if you
aren't afraid of horses."

"I'm not afraid of horses at all," Hazel declared.  "But I don't think
it's a very good place to take riding lessons.  I can just as well
walk, for I'm not in the least afraid." And then she added as an
afterthought: "How do you happen to know my name?"

"In the same way that you know mine," Bill replied, "even if you
haven't mentioned it yet.  Lord bless you, do you suppose Cariboo
Meadows could import a lady school-teacher from the civilized East
without everybody in fifty miles knowing who she was, and where she
came from, and what she looked like?  You furnished them a subject for
conversation and speculation--the same as I do when I drop in there and
whoop it up for a while.  I guess you don't realize what old granny
gossips we wild Westerners are.  Especially where girls are concerned."

Hazel stiffened a trifle.  She did not like the idea of Cariboo Meadows
discussing her with such freedom.  She was becoming sensitive on that
subject--since the coming and going of Mr. Howard Perkins, for she felt
that they were considering her from an angle that she did not relish.
She wondered also if Roaring Bill Wagstaff had heard that gossip.  And
if he had--  At any rate, she could not accuse him of being impertinent
or curious in so far as she was concerned.  After the first look and
exclamation of amazement he had taken her as a matter of course.  If
anything, his personal attitude was tinctured with indifference.

"Well," said he, "we won't argue the point."

He disappeared into the dark again.  This time he came back with the
crown of his hat full of water, which he sprinkled over the dwindling
fire.  As the red glow of the embers faded in a sputter of steam and
ashes, Hazel realized more profoundly the blackness of a cloudy night
in the woods.  Until her eyes accustomed themselves to the transition
from firelight to the gloom, she could see nothing but vague shapes
that she knew to be the horses, and another dim, moving object that was
Bill Wagstaff.  Beyond that the inky canopy above and the forest
surrounding seemed a solid wall.

"It's going to be nasty traveling, Miss Weir," Roaring Bill spoke at
her elbow.  "I'll walk and lead the packs.  You ride Silk.  He's
gentle.  All you have to do is sit still, and he'll stay right behind
the packs.  I'll help you mount."

If Hazel had still been inclined to insist on walking, she had no
chance to debate the question.  Bill took her by the arm and led her up
beside the horse.  It was a unique experience for her, this being
compelled to do things.  No man had ever issued ultimatums to her.
Even Jack Barrow, with all an accepted lover's privileges, had never
calmly told her that she must do thus and so, and acted on the
supposition that his word was final.  But here was Roaring Bill
Wagstaff telling her how to put her foot in the stirrup, putting her
for the first time in her life astride a horse, warning her to duck low
branches.  In his mind there seemed to be no question as whether or not
she would ride.  He had settled that.

Unused to mounting, she blundered at the first attempt, and flushed in
the dark at Bill's amused chuckle.  The next instant he caught her
under the arms, and, with the leverage of her one foot in the stirrup,
set her gently in the seat of the saddle.

"You're such a little person," he said, "these stirrups are a mile too
long.  Put your feet in the leather above--so.  Now play follow your
leader.  Give Silk his head."

He moved away.  The blurred shapes of the pack horses forged ahead,
rustling in the dry grass, dry twigs snapping under foot.  Obedient to
Bill's command, she let the reins dangle, and Silk followed close
behind his mates.  Hazel lurched unsteadily at first, but presently she
caught the swinging motion and could maintain her balance without
holding stiffly to the saddle horn.

They crossed the small meadow and plunged into thick woods again.  For
the greater part of the way Hazel could see nothing; she could tell
that Wagstaff and the pack horses moved before her by the sounds of
their progress, and that was all.  Now and then low-hanging limbs
reached suddenly out of the dark, and touched her with unseen fingers,
or swept rudely across her face and hair.

The night seemed endless as the wilderness itself.  Unused to riding,
she became sore, and then the sore muscles stiffened.  The chill of the
night air intensified.  She grew cold, her fingers numb.  She did not
know where she was going, and she was assailed with doubts of Roaring
Bill's ability to find Cariboo Meadows.

For what seemed to her an interminable length of time they bore slowly
on through timber, crossed openings where the murk of the night thinned
a little, enabling her to see the dim form of Wagstaff plodding in the
lead.  Again they dipped down steep slopes and ascended others as
steep, where Silk was forced to scramble, and Hazel kept a precarious
seat.  She began to feel, with an odd heart sinking, that sufficient
time had elapsed for them to reach the Meadows, even by a roundabout
way.  Then, as they crossed a tiny, gurgling stream, and came upon a
level place beyond, Silk bumped into the other horses and stopped.
Hazel hesitated a second.  There was no sound of movement.

"Mr. Wagstaff!" she called.

"Yours truly," his voice hailed back, away to one side.  "I'll be there
in a minute."

In less time he appeared beside her.

"Will you fall off, or be lifted off?" he said cheerfully.

"Where are we?" she demanded.

"Ask me something easy," he returned.  "I've been going it blind for an
hour, trying to hit the Soda Creek Trail, or any old trail that would
show me where I am.  It's no use.  Too dark.  A man couldn't find his
way over country that he knew to-night if he had a lantern and a
compass."

"What on earth am I going to do?" Hazel cried desperately.

"Camp here till daylight," Roaring Bill answered evenly.  "The only
thing you can do.  Good Lord!"  His hand accidentally rested on hers.
"You're like ice.  I didn't think about you getting cold riding.  I'm a
mighty thoughtless escort, I'm afraid.  Get down and put on a coat, and
I'll have a fire in a minute."

"I suppose if I must, I must; but I can get off without any help, thank
you," Hazel answered ungraciously.

Roaring Bill made no reply, but stood back, and when her feet touched
solid earth he threw over her boulders the coat he had worn himself.
Then he turned away, and Hazel saw him stooping here and there, and
heard the crack of dry sticks broken over his knee.  In no time he was
back to the horses with an armful of dry stuff, and had a small blaze
licking up through dry grass and twigs.  As it grew he piled on larger
sticks till the bright flame waved two feet high, lighting up the
near-by woods and shedding a bright glow on the three horses standing
patiently at hand.  He paid no attention to Hazel until she came
timidly up to the fire.  Then he looked up at her with his whimsical
smile.

"That's right," he said; "come on and get warm.  No use worrying--or
getting cross.  I suppose from your civilized, conventional point of
view it's a terrible thing to be out in the woods all night alone with
a strange man.  But I'm not a bear--I won't eat you."

"I'm sorry if I seemed rude," Hazel said penitently; Roaring Bill's
statement was reassuring in its frankness.  "I can't help thinking of
the disagreeable side of it.  People talk so.  I suppose I'll be a nine
days' wonder in Cariboo Meadows."

Bill laughed softly.

"Let them take it out in wondering," he advised.  "Cariboo Meadows is a
very small and insignificant portion of the world, anyway."

He went to one of the packs, and came back with a canvas cover, which
he spread on the ground.

"Sit on that," he said.  "The earth's always damp in the woods."

Then he stripped the horses of their burdens and tied them out of sight
among the trees.  That task finished, he took his ax and rustled a pile
of wood, dragging dead poles up to the fire and chopping them into
short lengths.  When finally he laid aside his ax, he busied himself
with gathering grass and leaves and pine needles until he had several
armfuls collected and spread in an even pile to serve as a mattress.
Upon this he laid his bedding, two thick quilts, two or three pairs of
woolen blankets, a pillow, the whole inclosed with a long canvas sheet,
the bed tarpaulin of the cattle ranges.

"There," he said; "you can turn in whenever you feel like it."

For himself he took the saddle blankets and laid them close by the fire
within reaching distance of the woodpile, taking for cover a pack
canvas.  He stretched himself full length, filled his pipe, lit it, and
fell to staring into the fire while he smoked.

Half an hour later he raised his head and looked across the fire at
Hazel.

"Why don't you go to bed?" he asked.

"I'm not sleepy," she declared, which was a palpable falsehood, for her
eyelids were even then drooping.

"Maybe not, but you need rest," Bill said quietly.  "Quit thinking
things.  It'll be all the same a hundred years from now.  Go on to bed.
You'll be more comfortable."

Thus peremptorily commanded, Hazel found herself granting instant
obedience.  The bed, as Bill had remarked, was far more comfortable
than sitting by the fire.  She got into the blankets just as she stood,
even to her shoes, and drew the canvas sheet up so that it hid her
face--but did not prevent her from seeing.

In spite of herself, she slept fitfully.  Now and then she would wake
with a start to a half-frightened realization of her surroundings and
plight, and whenever she did wake and look past the fire it was to see
Roaring Bill Wagstaff stretched out in the red glow, his brown head
pillowed on one folded arm.  Once she saw him reach to the wood without
moving his body and lay a stick on the fire.

Then all at once she wakened out of sound slumber with a violent start.
Roaring Bill was shaking the tarpaulin over her and laughing.

"Arise, Miss Sleeping Beauty!" he said boyishly.  "Breakfast's ready."

He went back to the fire.  Hazel sat up, patting her tousled hair into
some semblance of order.  Off in the east a reddish streak spread
skyward into somber gray.  In the west, black night gave ground slowly.

"Well, it's another day," she whispered, as she had whispered to
herself once before.  "I wonder if there will ever be any more like it?"




CHAPTER VIII

IN DEEP WATER

The dawn thrust aside night's somber curtains while they ate, revealing
a sky overcast with slaty clouds.  What with her wanderings of the
night before and the journey through the dark with Roaring Bill, she
had absolutely no idea of either direction or locality.  The infolding
timber shut off the outlook.  Forest-clad heights upreared here and
there, but no landmark that she could place and use for a guide.  She
could not guess whether Cariboo Meadows was a mile distant, or ten, nor
in what direction it might lie.  If she had not done so before, she now
understood how much she had to depend on Roaring Bill Wagstaff.

"Do you suppose I can get home in time to open school?" she inquired
anxiously.

Roaring Bill smiled.  "I don't know," he answered.  "It all depends."

Upon what it depended he did not specify, but busied himself packing
up.  In half an hour or less they were ready to start.  Bill spent a
few minutes longer shortening the stirrups, then signified that she
should mount.  He seemed more thoughtful, less inclined to speech.

"You know where you are now, don't you?" she asked.

"Not exactly," he responded.  "But I will before long--I hope."

The ambiguity of his answer did not escape her.  She puzzled over it
while Silk ambled sedately behind the other horses.  She hoped that
Bill Wagstaff knew where he was going.  If he did not--but she refused
to entertain the alternative.  And she began to watch eagerly for some
sign of familiar ground.

For two hours Roaring Bill tramped through aisles bordered with pine
and spruce and fir, through thickets of berry bush, and across limited
areas of grassy meadow.  Not once did they cross a road or a trail.
With the clouds hiding the sun, she could not tell north from south
after they left camp.  Eventually Bill halted at a small stream to get
a drink.  Hazel looked at her watch.  It w