Alton of Somasco | Page 3

shaky to come down, and he can't live on nothing."
"And the Lord knows when he'll pay you," said the storekeeper. "It's a good twelve months since he sent a dollar to me."
Alton laughed a little. "I can wait," he said. "Fill that bag up again. Get hold of the truck, Charley."
Charles Seaforth, who was apparently younger, and certainly a trifle more fastidious about his attire than his comrade, shouldered a flour bag, and twenty minutes later he and Alton tramped out of the settlement with three loaded beasts splashing and floundering in front of them. It was almost dark now, though a line of snow still glimmered white and cold high up beyond the trees until the trail plunged into the blackness of the forest. Then the lights of the settlement were blotted out behind them, the hum of voices ceased, and they were alone in the primeval silence of the bush. The thud and splash of tired hoofs only served to emphasize it, the thin jingle of steel or creak of pack-rope was swallowed up and lost, for the great dim forest seemed to mock at anything man could do to disturb its pristine serenity. It had shrouded all that valley, where no biting gale ever blew, from the beginning, majestic in its solitary grandeur and eternally green. Pine and hemlock, balsam and cedar, had followed in due succession others that had grown to the fulness of their stature only in centuries, and their healing essence, which brings sound sleep to man's jaded body and tranquillity to his mind, had doubtless risen like incense when all was made very good.
Now Alton loved the wilderness, partly because he had been born in it, and because he had a large share of the spirit of his race. He had also seen the cities, and they did not greatly please him, though he had watched their inhabitants curiously and been taught a good deal about them by what he read in books, which to the wonder of his associates he would spend hardly-earned dollars upon. It was more curious that he understood all he read, and sometimes more than the writer apparently did, for Alton was not only the son of a clever man, but had seen Nature in her primitive nakedness and the human passions that usually lie beneath the surface, for man reverts a little and the veneer of his civilization wears through in the silent bush.
Thus he plodded on contentedly on his twelve-mile march, with the snow and the mire beneath it reaching now and then to his knee, until his companion stopped beside a little bark shanty and lighted a lantern.
"Thomson's dumping-place already," he said, pulling a burst cotton bag out of the sack of sundries upon the Cayuse pony's back. "Some of it has got out, and Jimmy was always particular about the weight of his sugar. Well, the rest of it must be in the bottom somewhere, and if you'll hold the sack up I'll shake it into my hat."
Alton's hat was capacious, and he had worn it during the two years which had elapsed since his last visit to Vancouver, but it did not seem to occur to him that it was in any way an unusual receptacle for sugar. His companion, however, laughed a little as he stirred the sticky mass round with his wet fingers.
"There is no use giving him our tobacco and matches in," said he. "Here are the letters Mrs. Neilson gave me at the post-office, too."
Alton took the letters, and his face grew a trifle grim under the flickering light of the lantern as he thrust them crumpled into his pocket. "From England, and they will keep," he said. "There's nobody I'm anxious to hear from in that country. Now we'll go on again, Charley."
The Cayuse, however, objected, and there was a struggle before Alton convinced it that resistance would be useless, while presently the trail grew steeper and the roar of water came out of the darkness before them.
"This," said Alton gravely, "is a great country, but it's mighty unfinished yet, and it kind of hurts me to see all that power wasted."
"Wasted?" said Seaforth, smiling. "Don't the salmon swim in it, and the bear and deer come down to drink?"
"Oh, yes," said Alton. "And sometimes the Siwash wash themselves in it too, but that's not the question. This earth wasn't made for the bear and deer, and they've thousands of poor folks they can't find a use for back there in the old country. Isn't that so, Charley?"
Seaforth, who was a young Englishman of good upbringing, laughed. "I have no reason for doubting it," said he. "In any case, none of my worthy relations had any use for me. Still, I don't see the connection exactly."
"No?" said Alton.