Part 60

“Can it never be, Margaret, in the years to come?”

She clasped her hands above her heart. “Dick,” she cried piteously, “I can't see how it can be. My heart is not my own. While Barney lives I could not be true and be another's wife.”

“While Barney lives!” echoed Dick blankly. “Then God grant you may never be mine!” He stood straight for a moment, then with a shake of his shoulders, as if adjusting a load, he stepped into the path. “Come, let us go,” he said. “There will be letters and I must get to work.”

“Yes, Dick dear,” said Margaret, her voice full of tender pity, “there's always our work, thank God!”

Together they entered the shady path, going back to the work which was to them, as to many others, God's salvation.

There were a number of letters lying on the office desk that day, but one among them made Margaret's heart beat quick. It was from Iola. She caught it up and tore it open. It might hold a word of Barney. She was not mistaken. Hurriedly she read through Iola's glowing accounts of her season's triumph with Wagner. “It has been a great, a glorious experience,” wrote Iola. “I cannot be far from the top now. The critics actually classed me with the great Malten. Oh, it was glorious. But I am tired out. The doctors say there is something wrong, but I think it is only that I am tired to death. They say I cannot sing for a year, but I don't want to sing for a long, long time. I want you, Margaret, and I want--oh, fool that I was!--I may as well out with it--I want Barney. I have no shame at all. If I knew where to find him I would ask him to come. But he would not. He loathes me, I know. If I were only with you at the manse or at the Old Mill I should soon be strong. Sometimes I am afraid I shall never be. But if I could see you! I think that is it. I am weary for those I love. Love! Love! Love! That is the best. If you have your chance, Margaret, don't throw away love! There, this letter has tired me out. My face is hot as I read it and my heart is sore. But I must let it go.” The tears were streaming down Margaret's face as she read.

“Read it, Dick,” she said brokenly, thrusting the letter into his hands.

Dick read it and gave it back to her without a word.

“Oh, where is he?” cried Margaret, wringing her hands. “If we only knew!”

“The date is a month old,” said Dick. “I think one of us must go. You must go, Margaret.”

“No, Dick, it must be you.”

“Oh, not I, Margaret! Not I! You remember--”

“Yes, you, Dick. For Barney's sake you must go.”

“For Barney's sake,” said Dick, with a sob in his throat. “Yes, I'll go. I'll go to-night. No, I must go to see a man dying in the Big Horn Canyon. Next day I'll be off. I'll bring her back to him. Oh! if I could only bring her back for him, dear old boy! God give me this!”

“Amen,” said Margaret with white lips. For hope lives long and dies hard.

UNTIL SEVENTY TIMES SEVEN

The Big Horn flowed by a tortuous and rapid course through rough country into the Goat. The trail was bad and, in places, led over high mountain shoulders in a way heartbreaking to packers. For this reason, all who knew the ways and moods of a canoe chose the water in going up the canyon. True enough, there were a number of lift-outs and two rather long portages that made the going up pretty stiff, but if a man had skill with the paddle and knew the water he might avoid these by running the rapids. Men from the Ottawa or from some other north Canadian river, like all true canoemen, hated to portage and loved to take the risk of the rapids. Though the current was fairly rapid, going upstream was not so difficult as one might imagine; that is, if the canoeman happened to know how to take advantage of the eddies, how to sneak up the quiet water by the banks, how to put the nose of his canoe into the swift water and to hold her so that, as Duprez, the keeper of the stopping place at the Landing, said, “She would walk on de rapide toute suite lak one oiseau.”

There was a bad outbreak of typhoid at the upper camp on the Big Horn, and Dr. Bailey had been urgently summoned. The upper camp lay on the other side of the Big Horn Lake, twenty miles or more from the steel. The lake itself was six miles long by canoe, but by trail it was at least twice that. Hence, though there would be some stiff paddling in the trip, the doctor did not hesitate in his choice of route. He knew his canoe and loved every rib and thwart in her. He had learned also the woodsman's trick of going light. A blanket, a tea pail which held his grub, consisting of some Hudson Bay hard tack, a hunk of bacon, and a little tea and sugar, and his drinking cup constituted his baggage, so that he could make the portages in a single carry. Many a mile had he gone, thus equipped, both by trail and by canoe, in his journeyings up and down these valleys, doing his work for the sick and wounded in the railroad, lumber, and tie camps, and more recently in the new-planted mining towns.

It was a great day for his trip. A stiff breeze upstream would help him in his fight with the current and coming down it would be glorious. The sun was just appearing over the row of pines that topped the low mountain range to the east when he packed his kit and blankets under the gunwale in the bow and slipped his canoe into the water. He was about to step in when a voice he had not heard for many days arrested him.

“Hello, Duprez! Did you see the preacher pass this way yesterday? He was--By the livin' jumpin' Jemima! Barney!”

It was Ben Fallows, gazing with open mouth on the doctor. With two swift steps the doctor was at his side. He grasped Ben by the arm and walked him swiftly apart.

“Ben,” he said, in a low, stern voice, “not a word. I once did you a good turn?”

Ben nodded, still too astonished for speech.

“Then listen to what I tell you. No one must know what you know now.”

“But--but Miss Margaret and Dick--” gasped Ben.

“They don't know,” interrupted the doctor, “and must not know. Will you promise me this, Ben?”

“By Jove, Barney! I don't--I don't think--”

“Do you hear me, Ben? Do you promise?”