Part 43

Nash, on his way to join the Supervisor, raised a friendly greeting as he saw the girl, and drew rein. "I expected to meet you farther down the hill," he said. "Tony 'phoned that you had started. Where did you leave the Supervisor?"

"Over at the station waiting for you. Where's your outfit?"

"Camped down the trail a mile or so. I thought I'd better push through to-night. What about Norcross? Isn't he with you?"

She hesitated an instant. "He's in the tent. He fell and struck his head on a rock, and I had to go into camp here."

Nash was deeply concerned. "Is that so? Well, that's hard luck. Is he badly hurt?"

"Well, he had a terrible fall. But he's easier now. I think he's asleep."

"May I look in on him?"

"I don't think you'd better take the time. It's a long, hard ride from here to the station. It will be deep night before you can make it--"

"Don't you think the Supervisor would want me to camp here to-night and do what I could for you? If Norcross is badly injured you will need me."

She liked Nash, and she knew he was right, and yet she was reluctant to give up the pleasure of her lone vigil. "He's not in any danger, and we'll be able to ride on in the morning."

Nash, thinking of her as Clifford Belden's promised wife, had no suspicion of her feeling toward Norcross. Therefore he gently urged that to go on was quite out of order. "I can't think of leaving you here alone--certainly not till I see Norcross and find out how badly he is hurt."

She yielded. "I reckon you're right," she said. "I'll go see if he is awake."

He followed her to the door of the tent, apprehending something new and inexplicable in her attitude. In the music of her voice as she spoke to the sick man was the love-note of the mate. "You may come in," she called back, and Nash, stooping, entered the small tent.

"Hello, old man, what you been doing with yourself? Hitting the high spots?"

Norcross smiled feebly. "No, the hill flew up and bumped me."

"How did it all happen?"

"I don't exactly know. It all came of a sudden. I had no share in it--I didn't go for to do it."

"Whether you did or not, you seem to have made a good job of it."

Nash examined the wounded man carefully, and his skill and strength in handling Norcross pleased Berrie, though she was jealous of the warm friendship which seemed to exist between the men.

She had always liked Nash, but she resented him now, especially as he insisted on taking charge of the case; but she gave way finally, and went back to her pots and pans with pensive countenance.

A little later, when Nash came out to make report, she was not very gracious in her manner. "He's pretty badly hurt," he said. "There's an ugly gash in his scalp, and the shock has produced a good deal of pain and confusion in his head; but he's going to be all right in a day or two. For a man seeking rest and recuperation he certainly has had a tough run of weather."

Though a serious-minded, honorable forester, determined to keep sternly in mind that he was in the presence of the daughter of his chief, and that she was engaged to marry another, Nash was, after all, a man, and the witchery of the hour, the charm of the girl's graceful figure, asserted their power over him. His eyes grew tender, and his voice eloquent in spite of himself. His words he could guard, but it was hard to keep from his speech the song of the lover. The thought that he was to camp in her company, to help her about the fire, to see her from moment to moment, with full liberty to speak to her, to meet her glance, pleased him. It was the most romantic and moving episode in his life, and though of a rather dry and analytic temperament he had a sense of poesy.

The night, black, oppressive, and silent, brought a closer bond of mutual help and understanding between them. He built a fire of dry branches close to the tent door, and there sat, side by side with the girl, in the glow of embers, so close to the injured youth that they could talk together, and as he spoke freely, yet modestly, of his experiences Berrie found him more deeply interesting than she had hitherto believed him to be. True, he saw things less poetically than Wayland, but he was finely observant, and a man of studious and refined habits.

She grew friendlier, and asked him about his work, and especially about his ambitions and plans for the future. They discussed the forest and its enemies, and he wondered at her freedom in speaking of the Mill and saloon. He said: "Of course you know that Alec Belden is a partner in that business, and I'm told--of course I don't know this--that Clifford Belden is also interested."

She offered no defense of young Belden, and this unconcern puzzled him. He had expected indignant protest, but she merely replied: "I don't care who owns it. It should be rooted out. I hate that kind of thing. It's just another way of robbing those poor tie-jacks."

"Clifford should get out of it. Can't you persuade him to do so?"

"I don't think I can."

"His relationship to you--"