Vane of the Timberlands | Page 4

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 without answering and dropped into the canoe. Thrusting her
off, he drove the light craft toward the wharf with vigorous strokes of
the paddle, and Carroll shook his head whimsically as he watched him.
"Anybody except myself would conclude that he's waking up at last,"
he commented.
A minute or two later Vane swung himself up onto the wharf and
strode into the wooden settlement. There were one or two hydraulic
mines and a pulp mill in the vicinity, and, though the place was by no
means populous, a company of third-rate entertainers had arrived there
a few days earlier. On reaching the rude wooden building in which they
had given their performance and finding it closed, he accosted a
lounger.
"What's become of the show?" he asked.
"Busted. Didn't take the boys' fancy. The crowd went out with the stage
this afternoon; though I heard that two of the women stayed behind.
Somebody said the hotel-keeper had trouble about his bill."
Vane turned away with a slight sense of compassion. More than once
during his first year or two in Canada he had limped footsore and weary

into a wooden town where nobody seemed willing to employ him. An
experience of the kind was unpleasant to a vigorous man, but he
reflected that it must be much more so in the case of a woman, who
probably had nothing to fall back upon. However, he dismissed the
matter from his mind. Having been kneeling in a cramped position in
the canoe most of the day, he decided to stroll along the waterside
before going back to the sloop.
Great firs stretched out their somber branches over the smooth shingle,
and now that the sun had gone their clean resinous smell was heavy in
the dew-cooled air. Here and there brushwood grew among
outcropping rock and moss-grown logs lay fallen among the brambles.
Catching sight of what looked like a strip of woven fabric beneath a
brake, Vane strode toward it. Then he stopped with a start, for a young
girl lay with her face hidden from him, in an attitude of dejected
abandonment. He was about to turn away softly, when she started and
looked up at him. Her long dark lashes glistened and her eyes were wet,
but they were of the deep blue he had described to Carroll, and he stood
still.
"You really shouldn't give way like that," he said.
It was all he could think of, but he spoke without obtrusive assurance or
pronounced embarrassment; and the girl, shaking out her crumpled
skirt over one little foot, with a swift sinuous movement, choked back a
sob and favored him with a glance of keen scrutiny as she rose to a
sitting posture. She was quick at reading character--the life she led had
made that necessary--and his manner and appearance were reassuring.
He was on the whole a well-favored man--good-looking seemed the
best word for it--though what impressed her most was his expression. It
indicated that he regarded her with some pity, not as an attractive
young woman, which she knew she was, but merely as a human being.
The girl, however, said nothing; and, sitting down on a neighboring
boulder, Vane took out his pipe from force of habit.
"Well," he added, in much the same tone he would have used to a
distressed child, "what's the trouble?"

She told him, speaking on impulse.
"They've gone off and left me! The takings didn't meet expenses; there
was no treasury."
"That's bad," responded Vane gravely. "Do you mean they've left you
alone?"
"No; it's worse than that. I suppose I could go--somewhere--but there's
Mrs. Marvin and Elsie."
"The child who dances?"
The girl assented, and Vane looked thoughtful. He had already noticed
that Mrs. Marvin, whom he supposed to be the child's mother, was
worn and frail, and he did not think there was anything she could turn
her hand to in a vigorous mining community. The same applied to his
companion, though he was not greatly astonished that she had taken
him into her confidence. The reserve that characterizes the insular
English is less common in the West, where the stranger is more readily
taken on trust.
"The three of you stick together?" he suggested.
"Of course! Mrs. Marvin's the only friend I have."
"Then I suppose you've no idea what to do?"
"No," she confessed, and