"Well," said Damer dryly, "I haven't got it now."

Hallam laughed, though the glint in his eyes did not express good will.

"You have got a temper that will be the ruin of you, and don't know when a man's too big for you, while, now I come to look at you, there's a lump on your forehead that makes the thing quite plain. You have been fooling with Alton, and he has 'most pounded the life out of you.

Still, what do you want to leave the country for, anyway?"

Damer set his lips, and drummed with his fingers on the table. Then he made a little deprecatory gesture, and glanced at Hallam.

"You'll hear it all by and by, but there's one point where you're wrong," he said. "Now, I'm not scared too easily, but I kind of feel it in me I'll make nothing but trouble for myself by worrying Alton.

Still, it's not the man himself I'm afraid of. I've met tougher ones, and come out ahead of them."

Hallam sat silent a moment, for he knew the prospectors and survey packers who passed their lives amidst the desolate ranges and in the shadowy bush and their superstitions.

"You have had trouble with him before?" he said.

"Yes," said Damer, "I have. He cut my partner down with an axe back there in Washington. It was in the big rush in the Baker foothills, and we had a hard crowd standing in with us; but I had to pull out, and Alton and another man made most of five thousand dollars out of the claim I left."

"The Bluebird?" said Hallam reflectively. "I remember that rush.

Alton did himself well. Wasn't there a man called Nailer mixed up in the affair?"

"There was," said Damer, who seemed to shiver a little. "He was my partner. We'd have had the claim, and Alton wouldn't have worried anybody again, if Nailer had kept his nerve that night. Something went wrong with the spring of his Winchester.--and Alton didn't give him another chance."

The silence that followed was, somewhat impressive. Hallam was trying to remember what he had read about the affray in question in a Tacoma paper, while Damer once more saw in fancy a man spring half-dressed through the wisp of smoke that drifted about a little tent. He remembered with an unpleasant distinctness the crash of the rifle shot that rang amidst the shadowy pines, and the grim face of the man who whirled an axe that glinted in the moonlight about his head. He saw the flash of its descent--and then brushing the memories from him stretched out a hand that shook a little towards the whisky on the table.

"Well," he said, "I owe Alton a good deal, and that's why I went up to Somasco when you told me, but he has been too much for me again, and now I feel it in me that if I'm wise I'll let that man alone."

He drank a little whisky, and sat still, staring vacantly before him with a vague apprehension in his eyes, while the strained tenseness of his expression and attitude was not without its effect on Hallam, and it was unfortunate he did not yield to the impulse which prompted him to let Damer go. He, however, shook off the fancy with a little, impatient laugh.

"It's not going to suit me to have you slipping out of the country," he said. "I want you right here, though it would be quite easy to find a man with twice the grit you have in you. You let Alton whip you off your claim in Washington, and--for I've a notion of what has happened--'most pound the head off you yesterday. Now you want to light out, leaving him to laugh at you?"

Damer flushed a little, and a look of vindictive malice crept into his eyes as he rose.

"That's about enough!" he said. "You're quite a different man from Alton. I'm going on."

"Sit down!" said Hallam sharply. "I'm quite as dangerous to you. Take some more whisky, and listen to me, though I didn't think it would be necessary to go into the thing again. I was with the men who found Gordon at the bottom of his shaft on the Quatchigan."

Damer appeared irresolute, but he sat down. "Nobody knows how he got there."

"No? Well, I have a notion, and I guess Tom Winstanley and one other man could tell."

"Winstanley's dead."

Hallam laughed. "Still, the other man is on my pay-roll, but where you can't get at him unless I want you to. Now, are you going to gain anything by kicking against me?"

Damer was evidently astonished, and sat for almost a minute as though lost in reflection. Then he made a little gesture as one who abandons a struggle.

"I guess that takes me. What do you want?" he said.

"Nothing very much in the meanwhile. They'll start you rock-drilling at the Tyee, but it's quite likely I'll send you up into the ranges prospecting by and by. Still, I don't want any of the folks down here to know you're with me, and you'll start out by the railroad trail to-morrow, and wait at the lake until I come up with you. There's somebody coming now!"

Damer moved abruptly, for there was a step on the stairway, and as he reached the verandah a man brushed past him. He stopped, and for a moment Damer and Alton stood face to face. The latter, however, passed on, and swept his glance round the room, seeing only a man he did not recognize sitting at the opposite end with his back to him. Then he swung round again, and went down the stairway shouting, "Horton!" until a man came out from a shed at the back of the store.

"Well," he said, "I'm here. You needn't raise the whole place, Harry."

Alton laughed. "I've been up to Grantly's, and he's going in to the railroad to-morrow. You can send that order for the crockery along with him. Dollars are no object so long as it's pretty. The tea is to be the best they keep in Vancouver, too."

He swung himself into the saddle, and shook the bridle, while Damer leaned on the verandah balustrade gazing up the dusky trail he had taken until the last faint beat of horsehoofs sank into the silence of the bush. It was now very black and solemn, but away beyond it the snow still shone faintly cold and white against the sky, and once more Damer shivered a little as he turned towards the lighted store. He had meant to leave the country, but fate had been too strong for him, and remembering what Hallam had told him about the prospecting he wondered if he and Alton would meet again under that cold gleam of snow amidst the great desolation of the ranges.

CHAPTER IX

MISS DERINGHAM FEELS SLIGHTED

The morning was still and almost unpleasantly warm, but Miss Deringham looked very fresh and cool in her long white dress as she lay in a deerhide chair on the verandah of the Somasco ranch. She had hung her hat on the back of the chair, and a shaft of sunlight called up an answering brightness from the coils of lustrous hair. One foot in the scantiest form of slipper rested on the lowest rail of the balustrade, and she had slightly curled herself up in the chair in a fashion which implied a languid content with her surroundings, and that there was no longer any need for ceremony between herself and her companion. It is possible that Miss Deringham was aware of this, even if she had not intended to convey that impression.

Alton, who now wore a new jean jacket buttoned right up to the neck, leaned against a pillar, answering the questions of the girl, who glanced at him with a smile occasionally. He had, as usual, a good deal to do that day, and now and then turned his eyes towards the sun, as though noticing its height above the cedars, which did not, of course, escape Miss Deringham's attention. Still, he lingered upon the verandah, and what she deduced from this was not unpleasant to the girl. Though it still returned at increasing intervals, she had almost forgotten her antipathy to the man, and the fact that he was rapidly yielding to her refining and sometimes chastening influence was indirectly flattering. Miss Deringham experienced the more gratification in using it because he was quick-witted, and a veiled rebuke would bring a little darker colour into his sun-darkened face, and she could forgive his offences, which were indeed not frequent, for the sake of his penitence.

"You have been very patient," she said at length.

"No," said Alton with a twinkle in his eyes, "I don't think that is a thing anybody could bring up against me."

"Still," said the girl, "you have been an hour here talking to me, when you must have been dying to get away."

Alton laughed, and Miss Deringham found something pleasant in his naive directness. "Now, that's not fair. If I had been I should have gone,"

said he. "It would please me to stay right here and talk to you all day."

Miss Deringham shook her head reproachfully. "One should imply such things and not put them into words. Still, I scarcely think you will much longer have an opportunity. We are going on to Vancouver very shortly."

Alton's face grew clouded. "Why?" he said.

The girl laughed softly. "We have inconvenienced Mrs. Margery a good deal already, and it is evident that we cannot stay here for ever."

Alton moved abruptly, and his companion fancied she heard a stifled sigh. "No," he said gravely. "It's a pity; but you could wait for another month or two."

Alice Deringham smiled a little. "You and Charley will miss us, then?"

Alton nodded gravely, but there was a subdued brightness in his eyes, and the girl wished he would open them fully. She fancied he was putting considerable restraint upon himself. "I don't know about Charley. He can talk better than I can for himself, but I shall miss you all the time," he said. "This has been a revelation to me, and I feel that it is good for me to talk to you. Then, before you came I had a kind of bitter feeling against all my father's folks in England.

I figured they were wrapped up in their cast-iron pride, and ready to trample on anybody who got in their way; but you have started me thinking differently, and it seems my duty to know more of them. After all, I am an Alton of Carnaby."

The girl smiled again. "You fancy you may have been wrong?"

The man's face flushed a little, and there was once more evidence of the self-restraint. "Yes," he said simply. "I know I was a fool."

He might have said a good deal more, and lessened the effect, for Miss Deringham had seen his face and read the respect in it. Its sincerity touched her, and she felt with a vague uneasiness that it would not be pleasant to face his contempt if he found it misplaced.

"And yet you take your father's part?" he said.

"Of course," said Alton simply. "What would any son do? But it seems to me there might be a little allowance for my grandfather, too, and I think he and my father have fixed up that quarrel long ago."