Big Timber

Big Timber, by Bertrand W.
Sinclair

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Title: Big Timber A Story of the Northwest
Author: Bertrand W. Sinclair
Release Date: February 22, 2004 [EBook #11223]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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TIMBER ***

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[Illustration: She, too, had seen Monohan seated on the after deck.
FRONTISPIECE.]

BIG TIMBER
A Story of the Northwest
By BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR

With Frontispiece By DOUGLAS DUER
1916

CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I.
GREEN FIELDS AND PASTURES NEW II. MR. ABBEY ARRIVES
III. HALFWAY POINT IV. A FORETASTE OF THINGS TO COME
V. THE TOLL OF BIG TIMBER VI. THE DIGNITY (?) OF TOIL VII.
SOME NEIGHBORLY ASSISTANCE VIII. DURANCE VILE IX.
JACK FYFE'S CAMP X. ONE WAY OUT XI. THE PLUNGE XII.
AND SO THEY WERE MARRIED XIII. IN WHICH EVENTS
MARK TIME XIV. A CLOSE CALL AND A NEW
ACQUAINTANCE XV. A RESURRECTION XVI. THE CRISIS
XVII. IN WHICH THERE IS A FURTHER CLASH XVIII. THE
OPENING GUN XIX. FREE AS THE WIND XX. ECHOES XXI. AN
UNEXPECTED MEETING XXII. THE FIRE BEHIND THE SMOKE
XXIII. A RIDE BY NIGHT XXIV. "OUT OF THE NIGHT THAT
COVERS ME"
CHAPTER I
GREEN FIELDS AND PASTURES NEW
The Imperial Limited lurched with a swing around the last hairpin

curve of the Yale canyon. Ahead opened out a timbered valley,--narrow
on its floor, flanked with bold mountains, but nevertheless a
valley,--down which the rails lay straight and shining on an easy grade.
The river that for a hundred miles had boiled and snarled parallel to the
tracks, roaring through the granite sluice that cuts the Cascade Range,
took a wider channel and a leisurely flow. The mad haste had fallen
from it as haste falls from one who, with time to spare, sees his
destination near at hand; and the turgid Fraser had time to spare, for
now it was but threescore miles to tidewater. So the great river moved
placidly--as an old man moves when all the headlong urge of youth is
spent and his race near run.
On the river side of the first coach behind the diner, Estella Benton
nursed her round chin in the palm of one hand, leaning her elbow on
the window sill. It was a relief to look over a widening valley instead of
a bare-walled gorge all scarred with slides, to see wooded heights lift
green in place of barren cliffs, to watch banks of fern massed against
the right of way where for a day and a night parched sagebrush, brown
tumble-weed, and such scant growth as flourished in the arid uplands of
interior British Columbia had streamed in barren monotony, hot and
dry and still.
She was near the finish of her journey. Pensively she considered the
end of the road. How would it be there? What manner of folk and
country? Between her past mode of life and the new that she was
hurrying toward lay the vast gulf of distance, of custom, of class even.
It was bound to be crude, to be full of inconveniences and uncouthness.
Her brother's letters had partly prepared her for that. Involuntarily she
shrank from it, had been shrinking from it by fits and starts all the way,
as flowers that thrive best in shady nooks shrink from hot sun and rude
winds. Not that Estella Benton was particularly flower-like. On the
contrary she was a healthy, vigorous-bodied young woman, scarcely to
be described as beautiful, yet undeniably attractive. Obviously a
daughter of the well-to-do, one of that American type which flourishes
in families to which American politicians unctuously refer as the
backbone of the nation. Outwardly, gazing riverward through the dusty
pane, she bore herself with utmost serenity. Inwardly she was full of

misgivings.
Four days of lonely travel across a continent, hearing the drumming
clack of car wheels and rail joint ninety-six hours on end, acutely
conscious that every hour of the ninety-six put its due quota of miles
between the known and the unknown, may be either an adventure, a
bore, or a calamity, depending altogether upon the individual point of
view, upon conditioning circumstances and previous experience.
Estella Benton's experience along such lines was chiefly a blank and
the conditioning circumstances of her present journey were somber
enough to breed thought that verged upon the melancholy. Save for a
natural buoyancy of spirit she might have wept her way across North
America.