The Sky Pilot in No Mans Land | Page 7

at it. Come, let us go."
Mr. Cornwall Brand they found in a fever of impatience. He had the
trip scheduled to a time table, and he hated to be forced to change his
plans. His impatience showed itself in snappy commands and inquiries
to his Indian guides, who, however, merely grunted replies. They knew
their job and did it without command or advice, and with complete
indifference to anything the white man might have to say. To Paula the
only change in his manner was an excess of politeness.
Her father, however, met her with remonstrances.

"Why, Paula, my dear, you have kept us waiting."
"What's the rush, pater?" she enquired, coolly.
"Why, my dear, we are already behind our schedule, and you know
Cornwall hates that," he said in a low voice.
"Cornwall!" said Paula, in a loud voice of unmistakable ill temper.
"Does Cornwall run this outfit?"
"My dear Paula!" again remonstrated her father.
She turned to him impatiently, with an angry word at her lips, caught
upon Barry's face a look of surprise, paused midway in her passion,
then moved slowly toward him.
"Well," she asked, in an even, cold voice, "what do you think about it?
And anyway," she dropped her voice so that none heard but himself,
"why should you halt me? Who are you, to give me pause this way?"
"Only a missionary," he answered, in an equally low tone, but with a
smile gentle, almost wistful on his face.
As with a flash the wrathful cloud vanished.
"A missionary," she replied softly. "God knows I need one."
"You do," he said emphatically, and still he smiled.
"Come, Paula," called Cornwall Brand. "We are all waiting."
Her face hardened at his words.
"Good-bye," she said to Barry. "I am coming back again to--to your
wonderful Canada."
"Of course you are," said Barry, heartily. "They all do."
He went with her to the canoe, steadied her as she took her place, and

stood watching till the bend in the river shut them from view.
"Nice people," said his father. "Very fine, jolly girl."
"Yes, isn't she?" replied his son.
"Handsome, too," said his father, glancing keenly at him.
"Is she? Yes, I think so. Yes, indeed, very," he added, as if pondering
the matter. "When do we move, dad?"
A look of relief crossed the father's face.
"This afternoon, I think. We have only a few days now. We shall run
up Buffalo Creek into the Foothills for some trout. It will be a little stiff,
but you are fit enough now, aren't you, Barry?" His voice was tinged
with anxiety.
"Fit for anything, dad, thanks to you."
"Not to me, Barry. To yourself largely."
"No," said the boy, throwing his arm round his father's shoulder,
"thanks to you, dear old dad,--and to God."
CHAPTER II
ON THE RED PINE TRAIL
On the Red Pine trail two men were driving in a buckboard drawn by a
pair of half-broken pinto bronchos. The outfit was a rather ramshackle
affair, and the driver was like his outfit. Stewart Duff was a rancher,
once a "remittance man," but since his marriage three years ago he had
learned self-reliance and was disciplining himself in self-restraint. A
big, lean man he was, his thick shoulders and large, hairy muscular
hands suggesting great physical strength, his swarthy face, heavy
features, coarse black hair, keen dark eyes, deepset under shaggy brows,
suggesting force of character with a possibility of brutality in passion.

Yet when he smiled his heavy face was not unkindly, indeed the smile
gave it a kind of rugged attractiveness. He was past his first youth, and
on his face were the marks of the stormy way by which he had come.
He drove his jibing bronchos with steady hands. No light touch was his
upon the reins, and the bronchos' wild plunging met with a check from
those muscular hands of such iron rigidity as to fling them back
helpless and amazed upon their hocks.
His companion was his opposite in physical appearance, and in those
features and lines that so unmistakably reveal the nature and character
within. Short and stout, inclined indeed to fat, to his great distress, his
thick-set figure indicated strength without agility, solidity without
resilience. He had a pleasant, open face, with a kindly, twinkling blue
eye that goes with a merry heart, with a genial, sunny soul. But there
was in the blue eye and in the open face, for all the twinkles and the
smiles, a certain alert shrewdness that proclaimed the keen man of
business, and in the clean cut lips lay the suggestion of resolute
strength. A likable man he was, with an infinite capacity for humour,
but with a bedrock of unyielding determination in him that always
surprised those who judged him