Vane of the Timberlands | Page 3

I have a big stake in the concern; and I haven't got used to spending money unnecessarily yet, I've been mighty glad to earn a couple dollars by working from sunup until dark, though I didn't always get it afterward. So have you."
"How are you going to dispose of your money, then? You have a nice little balance in cash, besides the shares."
"It has occurred to me that I might spend a few months in the Old Country. Have you ever been over there?"
"I was across some time ago; but, if you like, I'll go along with you. We could start as soon as we've arranged the few matters left open in Vancouver."
Vane was glad to hear it. He knew little about Carroll's antecedents, but his companion was obviously a man of education, and they had been staunch comrades for the last three years. They had plodded through leagues of rain-swept bush, had forded icy rivers, had slept in wet fern and sometimes slushy snow, and had toiled together with pick and drill. During that time they had learned to know and trust each other and to bear with each other's idiosyncrasies.
Filling his pipe again as he lay in the fading sunlight, Vane looked back on the nine years he had passed in Canada, and, allowing for the periods of exposure to cold and wet and the almost ceaseless toil, he admitted that he might have spent them more unpleasantly. He had a stout heart and a muscular body, and the physical hardships had not troubled him. What was more, he had a quick, almost instinctive, judgment and the faculty for seizing an opportunity.
Having quarreled with his relatives and declined any favors from them, he had come to Canada with only a few pounds and had promptly set about earning a living with his hands. When he had been in the country several years, a friend of the family had, however, sent him a small sum, and the young man had made judicious use of the money. The lot he bought outside a wooden town doubled in value, and the share he took in a new orchard paid him well; but he had held aloof from the cities, and his only recklessness had been his prospecting journeys into the wilderness. Prospecting for minerals is at once an art and a gamble. Skill, acquired by long experience or instinctive--and there are men who seem to possess the latter--counts for much, but chance plays a leading part. Provisions, tents and packhorses are expensive, and though a placer mine may be worked by two partners, a reef or lode can be disposed of only to men with means sufficient to develop it. Even in this delicate matter, in which he had had keen wits against him, Vane had held his own; but there was one side of life with which he was practically unacquainted.
There are no social amenities on the rangeside or in the bush, where women are scarce. Vane had lived in Spartan simplicity, practising the ascetic virtues, as a matter of course. He had had no time for sentiment, his passions had remained unstirred; and now he was seven and twenty, sound and vigorous of body, and, as a rule, level of head. At length, however, there was to be a change. He had earned an interlude of leisure, and he meant to enjoy it without, so he prudently determined, making a fool of himself.
Presently Carroll took his pipe from his mouth.
"Are you going ashore again to the show to-night?"
"Yes," Vane answered. "It's a long while since I've struck an entertainment of any kind, and that yellow-haired mite's dancing is one of the prettiest things I've seen."
"You've been twice already," Carroll hinted. "The girl with the blue eyes sings her first song rather well."
"I think so," Vane agreed with a significant absence of embarrassment. "In this case a good deal depends on the singing--the interpretation, isn't it? The thing's on the border, and I've struck places where they'd have made it gross; but the girl only brought out the mischief. Strikes me she didn't see there was anything else in it"
"That's curious, considering the crowd she goes about with. Aren't you cultivating a critical faculty?"
Vane disregarded the ironical question.
"She's Irish; that accounts for a good deal."
He paused and looked thoughtful.
"If I knew how to do it, I'd like to give five or ten dollars to the child who dances. It must be a tough life, and her mother--the woman at the piano--looks ill. I wonder whatever brought them to a place like this?"
"Struck a cold streak at Nanaimo, the storekeeper told me. Anyway, since we're to start at sunup, I'm staying here." Then he smiled. "Has it struck you that your attendance in the front seats is liable to misconception?"
Vane rose