Nasmyth was very lean now, but he was also hard and muscular, and the old blue shirt, which hung open at the neck, and torn duck trousers, which clung about him still wet with river-water, accentuated the wiry suppleness of his frame; but it was in his face that Gordon noticed the greatest change. The good-humoured, tolerant indifference he remembered had melted out of it, the lips seemed set more firmly, and the eyes were resolute and keen. Nasmyth, so Gordon noticed, had grown since he first took up his duties as Waynefleet’s hired hand. Still, though it was less apparent, the stamp of refinement and what Gordon called, for want of a better term, “sensibility,” clung to him, and it seemed to the trained observer that the qualities it suggested might yet handicap his comrade in a country where the struggle with primitive forces chiefly demands from man an unreasoning animal courage. In that land the small contractor and Bush-rancher must bear the brunt on his body every day, toiling waist-deep in icy waters, or gripping the drill with bleeding hands, while each fresh misfortune that follows flood and frost is met with a further strain on weary muscles and sterner resolution. It is a fight that is usually hardest for the man who thinks, and in which the one thing that counts is the brutal, bulldog valour that takes hold and holds on in spite of each crushing blow.
“This high water,” said Gordon, “has kept you back considerably.”
“It has,” Nasmyth replied with emphasis. “It has cost me more money that I care to figure up the last month, and we’re considerably behind. The dam’s still at the mercy of the next big flood.”
“It’s a little curious that you seem to stand it better than you did the logging,” said Gordon, with a quick glance at him.
Nasmyth appeared to consider this. “I do, and that’s a fact. For one thing, I’m fighting for my own hand, and no doubt that counts, though, perhaps, it doesn’t go quite far enough. After all, it’s a point you ought to know more about than I do.”
His companion smiled. “I can describe the mechanical connection between the thought in a man’s brain and the movement of his muscles. It’s comparatively simple; but when you understand that, you’re only beginning. There’s much more behind. To particularize, if you had done what you’re doing now when you were logging, it would, in all probability, have broken you up again.”
Nasmyth fancied that this was correct, though, as he had admitted, he could give no reason for it. He was only conscious that he was being constrained by some new influence, and, under the pressure it laid upon him, he became almost insensible to physical weariness. He had now a motive for fighting, in place of drifting, that no mere hired hand can possess. His indolent content had been rudely dissipated, and something that had lain dormant in the depths of his nature had come uppermost. It was certainly Laura Waynefleet who had given it the first impulse, but why he had permitted her to impose her will on him was a matter that was still incomprehensible to him. Seeing that he did not answer, Gordon changed the subject.
“Some of the boys and I have been wondering how you contrived to finance the thing,” he said.
Nasmyth smiled, though there was just a trace of darker colour in his face. “Well,” he replied, “one can get tolerably long credit from most of the Bush stores, and Clipton has let me have provisions for the boys on quite reasonable terms. Besides, as it happens, there is money in the family. There was a time when one might have considered it almost the duty of certain relatives of mine to give me a lift, but I didn’t offer them the opportunity. I came out here and set about driving cows and chopping trees instead.”
“You felt you’d sooner cut your hand off than give them a gentle hint,” remarked Gordon. “It’s not an uncommon feeling, but, when you give way to it, it clears the other people. Won’t you go on?”
“When I undertook this affair, I laid the opportunity before them, and one–the last I expected anything of that kind from–sent me out a draft. He kindly pointed out that there appeared to be in me certain capabilities, which he had never supposed I possessed, and added that, if I ever really succeeded in building a dam or anything else useful, he would be pleased to take a share in my next venture. In the meanwhile, he would charge me interest on the amount of that draft. Perhaps I may mention that the man in question was naturally the one the rest of them rather looked down upon.”
Gordon laughed. “Oh, yes,” he said, “I like that, naturally. I guess you would have taken their view of him once. Well, since you can put your pride in your pocket, you’re evidently growing. There’s just one way of putting anything through here, and that’s to take hold and hang right on, no matter what it costs. I guess there’s one of the boys wanting you.”
A man stood knee-deep in the river waving his hand. Nasmyth rose and stretched himself.
“They seem to want me all the time from sun-up until it’s dark,” he said. “In one way it’s a little curious, since there’s reason to believe that most of them know a good deal more about what we’re doing than I do myself. You’ll excuse me.”
Gordon smiled as his comrade strode away. He was one who had studied human nature, and because he was well acquainted with the Bushman’s capabilities, he knew that there were also limitations to them. Even in such matters as the splitting of hard rock and the driving of massive piles into the river-bed, the higher intelligence of the man of intellect had its effect. Gordon smoked his pipe out as he watched Nasmyth flounder into the stream among the other men, pushing a little car loaded with broken rock that apparently ran along a submerged track. Then he strolled back toward the settlement.
Nasmyth toiled on in the river until the camp-cook hammered upon a suspended iron sheet as a signal that supper was ready. The summons was answered without delay. With the water running from their clothing Nasmyth and his men went back to the little log shanty. One or two changed their dripping garments, but the rest left their clothes to dry upon them, as their employer did. When the plentiful, warm supper had been eaten, Nasmyth went back to the little hut that served him as store and sleeping quarters. A big, grizzled man from Mattawa, Ontario, went in with him, and lounged upon the table while he sat in his bunk, which was filled with fresh spruce twigs.
“I’m pretty well played out, and if I’m to work to-morrow, I’ve got to sleep to-night,” said Nasmyth.
The grizzled axeman nodded. “Well,” he volunteered, “I’ll stand watch. I was in the last two nights, and I guess it’s up to me to see you through. We’re going to have trouble, if one of those big logs fetches up across the sluiceway. The river’s full of them, and she’s risen ’most a foot since sun-up.”
Nasmyth held up one hand, and both heard the deep roar of frothing water that came in with the smell of the firs through the open door. The Bush was very still outside, and that hoarse, throbbing note flung back by the rock slope and climbing pines filled the valley. Nasmyth smiled grimly, for it was suggestive of the great forces against which he had pitted his puny strength. Then there was a crash, and, a few moments later, a curious thud, and both men listened, intent and strung up, until the turmoil of the river rose alone again.
“A big log,” said the older man. “She has gone through the run. Guess we’ll get one by-and-by long enough to jamb. Now, if you’d run out those wing-frames I was stuck on, she’d have took them straight through, every one.”
“The trouble was that I hadn’t the money, Mattawa,” said Nasmyth dryly.
His companion nodded, for this was a trouble he could understand. “Well,” he answered, “when you haven’t got it you have to face the consequences. I’ll roust you out if a big log comes along.”
Mattawa went out, and soon afterwards Nasmyth, whose clothes were now partly dry, lay down, dressed as he was, in his twig-packed bunk, with his pipe in his hand. It was growing a little colder, and a keen air, which had in it the properties of an elixir, blew in, but that was a thing Nasmyth scarcely noticed, and the dominant roar of the river held his attention. He wondered again why he had been drawn into the conflict with it, or, rather, why he had permitted Laura Waynefleet to set him such a task, and the answer that