Читать книгу The Ghost of Hemlock Canyon - Harold Bindloss - Страница 5

V

THE TRAIL

Small frame houses straggled down the hill by the descending track. Denis saw orchards, a church with a little wooden tower, and a big water-tank. The brakes jarred, the cars stopped, and, jumping down, he ran along the line. The Misses Cullen were on the platform-steps, and Monica gave him her hand. Bride’s fresh face was touched by delicate color; her look was frankly sorrowful.

“We were watching for you,” she said. “All our friends on board the ship are gone. You’re the last and nicest. And now we’re lonely.”

“Smile and look in front,” said Denis. “You will soon collect another lot. Then by dark you’ll be with your relations, and Danny’s but a day behind.”

“Ah,” said Monica, “the friends one knows are best, and when one needs help one finds out which are true.”

Denis began to be embarrassed and he glanced about. Water splashed by the tank; the locomotive-pump clanged. Men dragged hose-pipes along the car roofs. One or two were occupied by a hot axle-box. Thick black smoke rolled across the pines. In a few minutes the train would roar down the tremendous gorge in front on its last race to the sea.

By the baggage-car, a tall, thin man controlled two restive horses. The team was good and the man was obviously important, because the station-agent stood by the car until the baggage-hands threw out the trunks for which he waited. The girls to whom Denis had talked joined him and climbed into the rig. The horses plunged, and the lurching vehicle vanished in a red dust-cloud up the hill. The party, however, had nothing to do with Denis, and the Misses Cullen would soon be gone.

“We will not forget you,” Monica resumed. “When we were lonely and anxious you were kind. You’re the sort one trusts.”

“I wonder—” said Denis, smiling. “At the beginning, I thought Danny had some doubts.”

“It was the coat,” Bride rejoined, in an apologetic voice, although her eyes sparkled. “The buttons annoyed him. After the Black and Tans burned the creamery, we don’t like the uniform.”

“Then, if you are logical, you ought not to like me. After all, the uniform was mine.”

Bride was very young and she blushed like a rose.

“Sure we hate England; ’tis wan’s duty; but wan loves some Englishmen.”

Since she no longer translated, Denis imagined she was moved. The bell, however, clanged and wheels and couplings groaned. Monica seized the brass rail, and when she gave Denis her hand he felt it tremble.

“The best of good luck go with ye. All ye want in life—”

The car lurched. Pullmans, baggage-cars, and Colonists rolled noisily by, and the figures on the swaying platform got small and indistinct. Denis turned, and as he walked along the track he smiled. The girls exaggerated, but he would lend his coat another time for a worse reward. The shabby war-stained material had sheltered Monica. Perhaps it had helped her feel less forlorn, but for all he knew it might have covered the frank, impulsive Bride. Well, he was not a sentimentalist, and both were gone. The rattle of the train was getting faint and he must take the trail.

His trunk had not arrived, and he bought some food at the settlement store. The storekeeper also supplied a large cotton flour-bag, a pair of braces, and some thin nails, by which Denis could carry his coat and the groceries like a pack. He strapped on the load, inquired his way, and started uphill.

Giant firs and hemlocks bordered the trail. The dust was soft and red, but where bright beams pierced the shade the trunks and ground were checkered by shimmering gold. Denis began to breathe harder. He had got soft on board ship, and the afternoon was hot. All the same, he had forty miles to go, and he pushed on.

After a time, the trees got smaller. Smooth rocks crossed the trail, and stones rolled under Denis’s boots. The top of the hill was open, and he looked about.

In front, a valley curved into the woods and rocks. Pines like dusky pyramids rolled down the steep slopes and, getting smaller, melted in a deep, blue gulf where a thin white river ran. Upstream, the valley turned behind folding hills, and in the distance a glacier sparkled. No smoke stained the landscape. All one saw was rocks and pines and sky.

The trail, plowed by wagon-wheels, went downhill. At some spots, one edge had slipped across the top of a precipice; at another spot, large stones from a snow-swept gully had buried the uneven road. All the same, it led on downhill, and Denis doubted if an athletic man could make much progress in the bush. Thick fern and tangled raspberry-canes grew between the trunks, and where big trees had crashed one must use an ax to clear a path.

A vivid, green-and-red woodpecker tapped on a slab of bark, and a little willow grouse flew to a branch and fearlessly watched Denis pass a few yards off. Then a sharp rhythmic note pierced the brooding calm, as if somebody in the distance beat a drum. Denis wondered whether a chopper was at work; but the noise stopped and began afresh at another spot. Human muscle could not force a passage through the brush so fast, and Denis speculated about the creature’s speed. He had not before heard a blue grouse call its mate.

By and by all was quiet. A light wind touched the pines and the heat began to go, but the blue shadows were yet splashed by sparkling gold. The smell of balsam and pine got keener, and Denis pushed ahead. He had no map, but he thought if it were possible to steer straight north his line to the Arctic Sea might not touch a clearing man had made. One got a sense of vastness; the wide spaces called.

His head was up, his light, muscular figure was firmly poised. The braces pressed his shoulders with a strain he knew, and he went with the quick step he used when the battalion swung along the roads in France.

Then the trail began to climb and his skin got wet. The yellow beams had vanished, and when he looked ahead the valley was dark but for the glacier’s silver streak. A stream splashed in the stones and Denis threw down his load. He had no ax, but he broke thin branches for a bed, and a dead hemlock supplied dry fuel. Brewing green tea, he fried bacon and crackers; and then, sitting by the fire, lighted his pipe.

Blue smoke curled about the straight trunks; a star shone above the glacier. The creek’s splash was musical, and Denis thought about the other Aylward who had taken the forest trail. When Tom Aylward started for the canyon, it looked as if he were making good. His letters were optimistic; a relation had yet the packet his mother had kept. Then it looked as if his partner were a good sort; anyhow, Marvin was just. His letter was frank, and he had sent a useful sum and a valuation certificate, although Denis imagined the fellow might have kept the lot.

So far as Denis knew, Marvin could not have saved his partner. The flood broke suddenly and his uncle was embarrassed by his load. He was not going to bother Marvin, but he was a raw stranger and the fellow might put him on the proper track. Denis remembered his uncle. Tom Aylward was big and humorous; he liked to joke, and he walked with a sort of careless swing, but the picture was indistinct. Well, he was gone, and now Denis faced the mountains the other had crossed. In the quiet evening he seemed to hear his rolling step, as he had heard it, long since, on the gravel in an English garden.

The important thing was, when Tom Aylward started for Canada he had money to invest, but Denis had not. The Aylwards’ fortunes had not mended in the war, and Denis, glancing at the massive trunks, reflected that money was needed as well as muscle to clear ground for cultivation on the Pacific Slope. However, he must not be daunted, and he began to think about something else.

Monica and Bride, he supposed, had now joined their friends. In a few weeks they would forget him, and for all their fresh charm, Denis was resigned. The other girls had got in the rig; he did not know where they went, but if it was to a ranch, the ranch was, no doubt, large and prosperous. They were cultivated young women, and one carried the stamp of command. Perhaps her relations indulged her, but Denis thought he had sensed force and pride and keen intelligence. Anyhow, like the Misses Cullen, she had vanished.

Denis admitted philosophically that a girl of her sort would not think about him again. Moreover, he must concentrate on getting a job. For all the poets and dramatists, he rather thought man’s real business was to labor at something useful; anyhow, one must supply oneself with food and clothes.

Well, he was perhaps not romantic; in France the boys had bantered him about his soberness. Denis was not at all a prig. He was frankly modern and challenged old-fashioned rules, but he was unconsciously fastidious. The ladies of the cabarets had not attracted him, and he could picture calmly the young women of another sort with whom he had joked and danced.

Brooding by the fire, he recaptured half-forgotten names and faces: singers at concert parties behind the line, nurses, Red Cross helpers, and post-war tennis girls. Some were kind and some were scornful. All had some charm, and Denis thought them a plucky lot, but none in particular had moved him much.

Although they had vanished, it now looked as if they were coming back. When the red flames leaped about the branches, unsubstantial figures floated in the curling smoke and vague faces smiled. Denis’s pipe was cold, but he could not bother to get a light. The river’s turmoil had melted; he thought he heard jazz music; and then the measured beat of feet and a marching-song.

A high fresh note, disturbing like a bugle, rolled across the woods, and Denis sharply turned his head. A timber wolf in the rocks? A loon on the river? He did not know; but the wilds had called and banished his fantasy. Only the pine-trunks loomed in the smoke, and the mountain creek splashed. Denis threw fresh wood on the fire, and in a few minutes was asleep.