The Gold Trail | Page 3

crowd of stiffs and deadbeats
like those I'm driving now? You make me tired!"

He did not wait for an answer to the query, but plodded away; and
Weston sat still a few minutes longer, with a wry smile in his eyes. He
resented being over-driven, though he was more or less used to it, and
now and then he found his superior's vitriolic comments upon his
efforts almost intolerably galling. Still he had sense enough to realize
that the remedy open to him was a somewhat hazardous one, because,
while it would be easy to walk out of the construction camp, industrial
activity just then was unusually slack in the Mountain Province.
Besides, he was willing to admit that there were excuses for Cassidy,
and there was a certain quiet tenacity in him. He was also aware that
the man with little money has generally a good deal to bear, for Weston
was one who could learn by experience, though that faculty was not
one that hitherto had characterized the family from which he sprang.
None of the Westons had ever been remarkable for genius--a fact of
which they were rather proud than otherwise. They had for several
generations been content to be men of local importance in a secluded
nook of rural England, which is not the kind of life that is conducive to
original thought or enterprising action. They had chosen wives like
themselves from among their neighbors, and it was perhaps in several
respects not altogether fortunate for Clarence Weston that his mother
had been ultra-conservative in her respect for traditions, since he had
inherited one side of her nature. Still, in her case, at least, the respect
had been idealistic, and the traditions of the highest; and though she
had died when he was eighteen she had instilled into him a certain
delicacy of sentiment and a simple, chivalrous code that had somewhat
hampered him in the rough life he had led in the Canadian Dominion.
As a very young man he had quarreled with his father over a matter
trifling in itself, but each had clung to his opinions with the obstinacy
of men who have few ideas to spare, and Clarence had gone out to seek
his fortune in western Canada. He had naturally failed to find it, and the
first discovery that there was apparently nobody in that wide country
who was ready to appraise either his mental attainments or his bodily
activity at the value of his board was a painful shock to the sanguine
lad. That first year was a bad one to him, but he set his teeth and quietly
bore all that befell him; the odd, brutal task, paid for at half the usual

wages, the frequent rebuffs, the long nights spent shelterless in the bush,
utter weariness, and often downright hunger. It was a hard school, but it
taught him much, and he graduated as a man, strong and comely of
body, and resolute of mind. What was more, he had, though he scarcely
realized it, after all, only left behind in England a cramped life
embittered by a steady shrinkage in the rent roll and as steady an
increase in taxation and expenses. His present life was clean, and
governed by a code of crude and austere simplicity. His mother's spirit
was in him, and, being what he was, there were things he could not do.
He did not attempt to reason about them. The knowledge was borne in
upon him instinctively.
He rose, by and by, and, for he was hungry, limped on to the
sleeping-shanty of the construction gang. It was built of logs and roofed
with rough cedar shingles hand-split on the spot. The sun beat hot upon
them, and they diffused a faint aromatic fragrance, refreshing as the
scent of vinegar, into the long, unfloored room, which certainly needed
something of the kind. It reeked with stale tobacco-smoke, the smell of
cookery, and the odors of frowsy clothes. A row of bunks, filled with
spruce twigs and old brown blankets, ran down one side of it, a very
rude table down the other, and a double row of men with bronzed faces,
in dusty garments, sat about the latter, eating voraciously. Fifteen
minutes was, at the outside, the longest time they ever wasted on a
meal.
That evening, however, they were singularly short of temper, for
Cassidy had driven them mercilessly all day, and, though not usually
fastidious, the supper was not to their liking. The hash was burnt; the
venison, for one of them had shot a deer, had been hung too long; while
the dessert, a great pie of desiccated fruits, had been baked to a flinty
hardness. That was the last straw; for in the Mountain Province the
lumber and railroad