NELL had been busy since morning, and a great spread of pies, cakes, and bread in small loaves testified to her industry.
She had been equally busy yesterday; but had sold everything out before going to bed, and had awakened this morning with a bareness of cupboards almost equal to Old Mother Hubbard of nursery fame. In fact, she and Patsey had made their breakfast from corn porridge and fried potatoes, because there was nothing else in the house to eat.
It was just one week ago to-day since they had arrived at the new house at Camp’s Gulch. They had found to their amazement when they arrived that Mrs. Peters had already opened shop for them in the bare new house, and was serving pies and pots of stew to the tired miners trailing home from work.
“The next two hours are the busy time; I’ve been nearly run off my feet every evening. Sam comes along to help when the last cars are gone; but by that time the rush is nearly over,” Mrs. Peters said, as she stirred the great dish of stew that was being kept hot on a kerosene heater in the window.
“But what made you begin it?” asked Nell, slipping off her hat and coat and appearing quite at home already, even though “home” as yet had not a stick of furniture in it, saving a rough table with a few borrowed cooking utensils in the kitchen, which was also shop during the hours of buying and selling.
“Two things. The first was that I was afraid a rival shop might start before you could begin; and the second was that I was so sorry for the men with no proper food when their day’s work was done. It is enough to make any ordinary man take to drink when he can’t get decent food to eat; and the whisky sold by that man at the Settlement saloon is just rank poison and nothing else, if you’ll believe me,” said Mrs. Peters. Then she turned to attend to the wants of two men who had just entered the kitchen.
“We want some supper, if you please, ma’am. What have you got?” asked the foremost man, sniffing hungrily, for the odours of the little kitchen were very appetizing to hungry men.
“Not much to-night except pies and stew. We haven’t got straight yet; but just wait until next week and then you’ll see a difference,” replied Mrs. Peters, with a wag of her head towards Nell, as if to emphasize where the difference came in.
“Well, we can’t very well wait until next week for our supper, so we’ll take what you’ve got and be thankful,” said the man. And the two walked off with a couple of tin basins of stew, two pies, and a small loaf of bread, for which they paid half a dollar, and thought themselves well off.
“You must come over to our place to sleep; you just can’t lie on the boards,” Mrs. Peters had said in hospitable invitation, although the little house at the depot was already as full as it could hold with any degree of comfort.
But neither Nell nor Gertrude would consent to this, and they spent the night comfortably enough each rolled in a rug and lying on a big sack of shavings, while Patsey had a similar sack all to himself in the kitchen.
Since then the days had been full of hard and constant work. It was fortunate for Nell that by this time she had regained the use of her hand. Leaving Gertrude to unpack and arrange the furniture she had devoted herself to the business of catering for her numerous customers, and had found more than enough to keep her busy.
As soon as the house had been arranged in comfortable order, Gertrude departed to fetch her mother and the children from Nine Springs, while Patsey remained to help Nell.
The question of school loomed largely in their minds just now—the Settlement school was three miles away. But with the Peters children and the young Lorimers, there were nearly enough children to start a school near the depot. If another family came to live at Camp’s Gulch this might be done; meanwhile it seemed easier for Patsey to go up and down to Bratley on the cars every day than for him to wear out his boots on the long walk to the Settlement.
Just at present he was not attending school, but had been out picking berries with which to make pies the next day. Nell’s customers appeared perfectly indifferent as to what pies were made of; the main thing was to get a pie.
“There ought to be enough to-day, Patsey; just look at them!” she exclaimed, as he came in laden with the berry baskets.
“My! Just don’t they look good!” exclaimed the boy, looking hungrily at them, for he had had nothing since breakfast; and although corn porridge with potatoes had been sufficiently satisfying at the time, he was conscious of very keen hunger at the present moment.
“There is a big one for you on the corner of the stove; sit down and eat it now, then you can get in the wood for to-morrow’s cooking. It is nearly three o’clock already; and the cars come up before six, you know,” Nell said, as she dusted down the baking board and put the things tidily away for the next day.
“I’ve got it all chopped, so it won’t take long to bring it down to the house in the truck,” Patsey said, attacking his pie with great gusto, and thinking that it was if anything even nicer than it looked; but then he was so very hungry that this imparted a special flavour to the homely viands.
Nell looked out through the open door with a sudden longing. The afternoon sunshine lay warm and bright on the cleared space before the house. It was late October, but the winter was holding off; the days were soft and pleasant, although the nights had mostly a touch of frost in them. She wanted to be out-of-doors, to feel the strong wind lifting her hair, to be dazzled with the sunshine, and to watch the darting chipmunks hunting and hoarding their winter store of nuts.
“Patsey, if I go to fetch in the wood, would you dust the sitting-room and your mother’s bedroom? I haven’t had time even to look in there since breakfast. If I go to do it now I shall not have a minute for out-of-doors; then I shall have that horrid buzzing in my head all the evening.”
“It is horrid work for a girl hauling that wood-truck down the slope,” said Patsey, with a rueful face, although, to be strictly honest, he deemed it still more horrid work for a boy to be obliged to dust a sitting-room and a bedroom.
“Oh, I don’t mind the wood-hauling. I simply could not go out walking for the sake of walking when there is so much to do in other ways; but to go backwards and forwards with the wood-truck is such an extremely virtuous way of taking the air that I shall not have any trouble with my conscience over the matter. Mind you dust the legs of the chairs, Patsey, and don’t round off the corners, for that isn’t good style in dusting.”
“What am I to do if customers come?” asked the boy, in a mumbling tone, his mouth fuller of pie than good manners warranted.
“Serve them, of course. But please don’t sell all the loaves before I get back, for I want a nice one for your mother’s supper. It won’t do to treat her badly on her first night at home, you know,” Nell said brightly; and she started up the slope at the back of the house, carrying her hat in one hand and dragging the wood-truck with the other.
Just over the hill at the back of the house was a strip of ground heaped with fallen trees, which some fierce storm in the previous winter had levelled to the ground. This wood might be had for bringing home; and Nell had determined to have her wood-shed filled with it before the bad weather came. With the rapid increase of population threatening Camp’s Gulch just now, the price of firing would be sure to go up, so it behoved them to secure as much as they could possibly get while it could be had for nothing.
Every morning Patsey went over the hill, hacking and hewing, until the sun was high enough for berry-gathering; then, bringing home a truck-load of wood, he left the remainder to be brought in the evening.
Nell loved this sort of work. The squealing of the wheels of the wood-truck as they cried out for grease troubled her not at all, because it seemed perfectly natural for the wheels of wood-trucks to make a noise; then there was the pleasant smell of bark, of falling leaves, and all the mingled perfumes of the forest.
Oh, it was good to be out! Nell loaded her truck with the cut wood Patsey had left ready; then raced down the slope, while the noisy wheels shrieked and groaned behind her. Tipping out her load of wood, she started up the slope again, going more slowly now as if the keen edge of her energy had worn off. Five times she made the journey; then, warned by the sinking of the sun that it was time for her to be going indoors again, she hauled the last load into the shed, then went in to see how Patsey was getting on at housekeeping.
To her surprise she found him talking to some one who was not a customer but a visitor.
“Dr. Russell!” she exclaimed.
“I thought I should surprise you,” he said, with a laugh. “I came up on the noon cars to see a patient at the Settlement, so I thought I would stay and see Mrs. Lorimer comfortably settled after her journey.”
“That is very good of you,” said Nell; adding, a little doubtfully, “but how will you get back to Bratley? Will the cars wait for you?”
“They will have to. I shall threaten Sam Peters that he will have to work me along to the junction on a hand-car if he lets the train go without me; and the thought of pumping me for sixteen miles will make him quite willing to hold the cars back for five or ten minutes if necessary. Why, pumping would be harder work than the stoking he did on the memorable night when we came in such a hurry to help you out of a fix,” replied the doctor, with a laugh.
“But there isn’t a hand-car at this depot; at least, I don’t think so. I know there wasn’t one at Bratley last winter when the inspector wanted to go up the Roseneath track, and we went on snow-shoes instead,” said Nell.
“A much pleasanter way of getting along—when there is snow, that is. But the cars will be here soon and I must be going. Are you coming over to the depot to welcome the arrivals?”
“No; I cannot leave now because my customers will be coming in, but Patsey will go; he is going to put some cushions in the wood-truck and bring his mother across from the cars, for she is much too weak to walk even such a short distance,” explained Nell.
“A wood-truck? That is a box on wheels without any springs, I suppose. It is not to be thought of. Is Mrs. Lorimer a heavy woman?”
“No; she is about my height, but, of course, much thinner; indeed, she has wasted fearfully of late,” replied Nell.
“Well, I have carried heavier people than you, so I ought to manage Mrs. Lorimer. Patsey can be at the depot with the wood-truck, but we will hope that we shall not need him for the invalid,” said the doctor. Then putting on his cap, he strode away in the gathering dusk.
Nell watched him with a smile quivering about her lips.
“Very kind of him to come up to meet the invalid; but I expect right down at the bottom of his heart it was Gertrude that he thought most about, poor man, though he does not seem to have the courage to tell her so.”
She sighed in a quick, impatient fashion, for well she understood the great barrier which Abe Lorimer’s death had raised between Gertrude and Dr. Russell. The doctor had his little son to keep, and only a poor and casual practice to depend upon; while Gertrude, with an invalid mother, a delicate sister, and three young brothers, was more heavily burdened still.
“If only they would understand how willing I am to take Gertrude’s family off her hands they might get along very well. But I can’t go and say so right out in plain speech; and, oh dear, they are so stupid!” she muttered in impatient speech, as she put some more wood on the sitting-room fire, lighted the lamp standing on the well-spread supper-table, then went back to the kitchen to serve a couple of customers who had just come in on their way back from the mines.
“How nice your food smells; why, it is worth a quarter just to stand inside and sniff,” said one of the men, who had evidently come down in the world, for he spoke with the cultured tone of a man of education and bore himself with the upright carriage of one who has been well drilled.
“That would be one way of making money, certainly; but I fancy it would hardly pay in the long run, because when I am very busy cooking I should find it an intolerable nuisance to have a lot of people crowding in to smell the savoury odours from my oven and stew-pans,” Nell answered, with a smile, as she served the two customers as quickly as she could.
There was a great bowl of beans being kept hot on the stove, flanked by another great bowl of potatoes which had been steamed with their skins on; and the stream of customers coming in soon disposed of the contents of both bowls.
But, without doubt, the most popular portion of Nell’s stock-in-trade were the pies. These were of varied sorts; there were meat-pies, apple-pies, huckleberry-pies, blueberry-pies, and pies filled with a savoury mess of vegetables and herbs chopped fine and mixed with suet. The last-named were, perhaps, the most popular of all; one of them, with a couple of good-sized potatoes, made a comfortable meal for a man at a very small cost indeed.
There was no Irish stew to-night, for Nell thought it well to vary the menu as much as she could. A nine-quart boiler of soup was fizzing and bubbling on the stove—very good soup it was, too; the rough cookery which Nell had learned during those lonely years on Blue Bird Ridge was standing her in good stead now, since it had taught her the art of making good soup from next to nothing.
The door from the kitchen to the living-room was kept closely shut this evening, for Nell did not want Mrs. Lorimer to be worried by the commotion of buying and selling, or by the odours of the hot little kitchen.
Nell heard the bustle of arrival; but the kitchen was thronged just then with men buying their suppers, so she could not go to give the travellers a welcome. But she was relieved when, a little later, Patsey slipped out from the sitting-room and helped her by ladling the soup from the boiler. She was so tired that even a little help was welcome.
By this time the potatoes had all gone; there were only a very few beans left; the stock of pies had diminished until there were only six or seven left, and the kitchen looked as if an invading army had swept through it.
Nell left Patsey in charge then, and stole into the next room to welcome her family. Teddy and the baby were sitting in front of the fire eating jam and bread, licking sticky fingers and enjoying themselves generally, watched over by Flossie, who was hovering about them like an anxious, motherly hen guarding her chickens.
“Oh, Nell, what a lovely house this is!” cried the little girl, as she gave Nell a rapturous welcome.
“It is lovely now you have all come to make it look homely; but it was rather lonely before,” said Nell, stooping to kiss the rather jammy faces of the two small boys.
“Poor mother cried, and was so bad when she got here that Gertrude has taken her off to bed,” said Flossie, resting her head against Nell in supreme content.
The last week had been such a hard one for the poor little girl that to-night seemed like the beginning of a new life.
“I am just going to have a look at your mother, Flossie, then I must come back and have a peep at you again; but I shall not be free of the kitchen for another half-hour, I expect. Have you had anything to eat yourself, dearie?”
“I’m not hungry,” said Flossie, with a sigh, as she turned her head sharply at the sound of a moaning wail from the next room.
Nell gave the child a loving hug; then crept softly into the chamber where Gertrude was getting her mother into bed and patiently soothing the feeble complainings of the poor sick woman, who was far too ill to be reasonable.
“I tell Gertrude all this dragging me about will just kill me; but no one seems to care,” said Mrs. Lorimer, looking up at Nell with imploring eyes.
“You shall not be dragged about any more, and to-morrow you can stay in bed all day. This is such a pleasant room when the sun shines, and the view is lovely,” Nell murmured, in a consoling tone. Then she helped to lift the invalid into a more comfortable position in the bed.
Gertrude was patient and tender as the most loving daughter could be. Nell, stealing a look at her, saw the flush on her cheeks and the radiant happiness in her eyes, and guessed that for her the sadness of that home-coming had been lifted and brightened by the kindly consideration of the doctor, who had arranged to be on the spot to help with the invalid when the cars came in.
“Where are we all to sleep, Nell?” asked Flossie, in a weary tone, when Nell went back through the sitting-room.
“Patsey and the little boys have got the room behind the kitchen, and I will either make you up a bed in your mother’s room, or you can come up in the loft and sleep with me,” Nell said.
“I should love to sleep with you; but I didn’t know there was a loft. Is it a ladder or steps?” asked the child, eagerly.
“Steps. But I will show you presently. I am going to send Patsey to put Teddy and the baby to bed, but you are to rest until I come in.”
“I can put the children to bed—I always do,” replied Flossie, with a patient sigh, for her small arms and feet were very weary to-night.
“No, no; you are too tired. Patsey will do it,” said Nell, with a brisk nod. Then she hurried into the kitchen, where Patsey was just draining the last of the soup into the tin pot of a man who was a late-comer, and so had to be satisfied with what he could get.
“There is not nearly a pint, so we will charge you half price,” said Nell, politely.
“That won’t suit me at all, for I don’t want half a supper. Ain’t you got anything you can fill it up with?” said the man, sending a hungry gaze round the bare kitchen in search of something eatable.
“There are the beans—they are filling,” suggested Patsey, with a wag of his head towards the big bowl, which still had a handful or so of beans lurking at the bottom.
“Right you are, boy. Beans is filling. Shove ’em into the soup, if you please, miss, and give it a stir, then I shall have a supper fit for a millionaire,” said the man, and, tossing down the money, he departed in great content.
NELL was very happy, and prospering beyond her wildest dreams.
Fortunately for her the early part of the winter was exceptionally mild and open, so that mining operations went busily forward, and she had no lack of customers nightly to consume the food which she spent her days in cooking.
The great burden of maintaining the family rested almost entirely upon her, for Mrs. Lorimer was so ill that most of Gertrude’s time was taken up in nursing and caring for the poor invalid. Patsey was away all day at Bratley, except on Saturdays, when he was chopping and hauling wood, or on Sundays, when he took Teddy and Flossie over to the Settlement in the wood-truck, to attend the Sunday School which was held there in the tin-roofed mission hall by the smelter works.
Despite her hard work, and the drudgery of her days, Nell carried a bright face all the time, feeling herself supremely blessed in having so many depending on her, so many to love, and to love her in return.
She possessed, too, the happy knack of finding employment for everyone, so Teddy, aged five, and little Abe, the baby, both had their accustomed tasks, which they performed with a zest and energy worthy of great undertakings.
Abe was two years and a half old now, a fine sturdy youngster, who loved nothing better than movement of some kind, so he and Teddy between them dragged wood into the kitchen from the wood shed, with much snorting and hissing, in imitation of the engines arriving and starting at the depot.
Both of the small boys yielded Nell a whole-hearted devotion, and followed her about nearly all day long. But it was Flossie’s love which was the most precious to Nell, and had her life been twice as hard, she would still have felt herself amply repaid in the affection she received from her adopted family.
Dr. Russell came regularly once a week to see Mrs. Lorimer, who grew rather worse than better as the weeks went on.
Mrs. Nichols had been to see them once, but she was ailing herself, and not able to get out much.
When Christmas had passed, and the new year had begun, a heavy snow fell, and lay for three weeks. Then came a check in Nell’s business, so many of her customers took holiday, and went off to the towns until the weather broke again.
She was rather glad of the slack time, since it gave her a breathing spell, and enabled her to do many things which were so impossible when in full tide of work.
Sometimes she sighed a little ruefully over her inability to find more time for reading, and told herself that she would soon forget what little she had learned before. But in reality she was making great strides in all sorts of knowledge, and learning some of the deep lessons of life, which no books could have taught her.
The loft where she and Flossie slept was almost as bare, although more weather-tight than the one in which she had slept at the Lone House. But Nell had put her bed near the pipe of the kitchen stove, which came up through the loft, and so she and Flossie were comfortably warm even in the bitterest weather.
One use Nell made of her spare time was to rearrange her premises for the greater convenience of her work. She got Sam Peters to make her a big store cupboard, which was placed in one corner of the kitchen, and saved her endless runs into the sitting-room, where formerly she had been obliged to keep her groceries, tubs of lard, and that sort of thing. Then she made a great stock of marmalade, for the huckleberry jam was almost gone, and her store of apples, which had been brought from Lorimer’s Clearing, was dwindling fast.
The wood shed was getting empty too, for although Patsey worked hard all day Saturday, he could not in one day supply the drain of seven. So, drawing a pair of old woollen stockings over her shoes, Nell sallied out to the clear crisp cold of the winter afternoons, armed with an axe, a saw, and an old box on runners which did duty for a sledge, and enjoyed blissful hours in chopping and sawing among the dead wood on the slope behind the house.
“Nell, dear, you have all the drudgery; it is too bad! I would come and help, only I can’t leave mother,” Gertrude said, on the first afternoon when Nell returned, flushed and sparkling, from her labours in the snow.
“It isn’t drudgery, it is a real holiday, only I wish the children could enjoy it too,” Nell answered wistfully, for the two little boys and Flossie had bad colds, and were not able to stir out of doors.
“I’m afraid I should not think it such a treat as you do,” said Gertrude, shivering a little.
She was looking pale and thin, while there were dark rings round her eyes, brought there by overmuch confinement in a sick-room.
“Then it is a very good thing that I am the one who is free to go. I had been feeling rather mean, because I was having all the fun, but this, of course, restores the balance,” laughed Nell, as she divested herself of her outdoor garments.
Every day for a week she went wood-hauling in the afternoons. Then a thaw set in, her customers came back, and the old rush began.
One evening, when February was well on its way, a member of the Syndicate dropped in late to buy his supper, and then remained to talk.
He was an elderly man, who should have been rich enough by this time to have ceased living such a toilsome life, only the trouble was that although he could earn as much money as any man, he could not save it. This individual went by the name of Ike, and Nell could never discover that he had any other. She always called him Mr. Ike, a circumstance which appeared to afford him great amusement. But she had long since found that “With what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again,” was as true in the simple things of life as in the great issues of the soul; and because she always treated her customers with a ceremonious civility, she invariably received from them a similar courtesy in return.
“Good evening, Miss Hamblyn,” said the miner, lifting his cap with a flourish when he entered the room, then dropping it back on his head with a weary air as he subsided on to the bench near the door.
“Good evening, Mr. Ike. Have you been taking a holiday?” she asked; for she had not seen Ike, who was one of her most regular customers, for nearly a fortnight.
“Yes; and I’ve been quite a considerable way too. Had a run down to Vancouver City, and spent ten days or more loafing round hearing the news.”
“You must have found the city pretty lively after Camp’s Gulch,” remarked Nell, as she ladled a pint of soup into the miner’s tin can.
“It was a sight too lively for me. I suppose I must be getting old and rusty, for I find I ain’t half nimble enough to keep up with city folks nowadays,” he answered, rather gruffly; by which she understood that he had been gambling, and had probably lost almost all the cash he had taken with him, and had returned with empty pockets.
“You would not find it so cold in Vancouver City as here among the hills?” she asked.
“It was cold enough. A sharper spell of winter weather than we often get in these parts,” he answered. Then, suddenly remembering an item of news which might interest her, he lifted his head and became talkative. “I heard a little about a friend of yours away down in the city,” he said, with a short gruff laugh.
“A friend of mine? But I don’t know anyone in Vancouver City,” she said, in surprise, then suddenly shivered, thinking that he might be referring to Doss Umpey.
“Not by sight, perhaps, for I don’t think you saw him, not that time when you had most to do with him, leastwise.” And Ike paused to relieve his feelings with a rumbling laugh.
“What do you mean?” demanded Nell, in a bewildered tone.
“I mean that I happened on news of Dick Brunsen, and he’s dead,” said Ike, stating the fact rather as if it were good news than otherwise.
But Nell turned ghastly white, and seized hold of the table to keep herself from falling, while she echoed faintly—
“Dead? How?”
“I HEARD A LITTLE ABOUT A FRIEND OF YOURS
AWAY DOWN IN THE CITY,” HE SAID.
Ike was sampling his soup, so failed to notice her agitation. Taking a deep draught from the tin can, he then wiped his lips on his jacket sleeve, and proceeded to answer her questions.
“Oh, he died real game. I always said he was a lad of parts, only the trouble was he’d got such a lot of misdirected energy that it was bound to get him into trouble sooner or later. He’d got two pals, one was his father, the veriest old hypocrite that ever drew breath, and the other was a chap they called Doss Umpey, a pretty good match for Brunsen senior by all accounts. A long time ago, when I was a young man, they two and an Irishman named Logan were up to no end of law-breaking, smuggling across the border, setting up coaches, and all that sort of thing; then Logan got pinched, and the other two turned virtuous, or pretended to.”
Nell nodded. So much of Doss Umpey’s past she already knew from Mrs. Nichols, but she was wondering what fresh revelations were to be made by Ike, or what he would say if she were to tell him that she had lived so long at the Lone House with the old man, believing him to be really her grandfather, and not merely the stepfather of her mother.
Ike had paused for another draught of soup; when it was swallowed he went on with his story.
“It seems that when we lifted Master Dick out of that Chinaman’s coffin, where you’d chained him up so secure, and he had paid back that little lump of dollars out of which he had cheated us, he and the two old chaps tracked off to Nelson, and worked there for awhile, with the eyes of the police on them all the time. Then suddenly they disappeared, and when next they were heard of, it was at Skeena, and they were giving it out that they had struck it rich on the shores of the Babine Lake, an uncertain number of miles from Skeena, and in a district pretty thickly sprinkled with Tacla Indians.”
“But Skeena is very cold, isn’t it?” asked Nell, thinking how Doss Umpey used to grumble about the cold during the long winters on Blue Bird Ridge.
“Rayther nippy, but it doesn’t count for much if you’ve wintered at Klondike, as I have,” replied Ike, taking another pull at the soup, which nearly emptied the can.
Nell shivered. She had the feeling of wanting to pull the information out of him, but Ike was not the sort of man to be hurried over any story he had to tell, so she was forced to wait patiently, and let him go his own way.
“There was a man stopping at Carter’s—he was working at Cate’s shipyard just then, but he had been in Skeena a month before, and had left the day after the thing happened,” went on Ike.
“What happened?” asked Nell, with a little stamp of her foot, for his slowness of narration thoroughly exasperated her.
“The way young Dick pegged out game, of course. The three of them had been showing round a couple of nuggets, and talking big about the bucketfuls of the same stuff that might be picked up for the asking on a little stream that emptied into the Babine Lake, and, of course, they pretty soon got a crowd together to go with them, every man armed, for the Tacla Indians are an awkward lot to deal with. So they started, and were three days out from Skeena when trouble began, for a rumour went round that the nuggets hadn’t been found on the Babine at all, but had been stolen from a man what had brought them down from Juneau, and taken too much liquor on board at Skeena to be able to look after his own property. The crowd was a pretty rough one, and they pretty soon made the three stand out.”
“What is that?” asked Nell, faintly.
Ike gave another rumbling laugh. “It about amounts to standing up to be shot at. The old men hadn’t got much fight left in them, but young Dick wasn’t made like that, and they say he fought like ten men rolled in one, and knocked the crowd over in so many places all at once, that at last they just bowled him over in self-defence, as you may say.”
“Do you mean he was shot?” asked Nell, in a horrified whisper.
“That is what it amounts to, I suppose, though I never heard anyone give it a name. In fact, it might prove extremely awkward for some of that crowd, if it could be proved which of them had let off their revolvers on that occasion. Law is law in Canada, you know; and the police are about as smart as they make ’em, but they haven’t got eyes in the back of their heads, and they can’t be in fifty different places at once, so accidents do occur once in a while,” said Ike, with a big sigh; after which he finished his soup, and decided to have another pint to take away with him.
“Were they all killed?” asked Nell, whose very teeth were chattering.
Ike shook his head. “There was no particulars come through regarding the old’uns. But the worst of it was that the story about gold on the Babine was true, as the crowd found when they got there, only the Indians was there too, and had their eyes skinned. So that of the thirty or forty what went, only five came back to Skeena.”
Nell covered her face with her hands, and sobbed from sheer horror, and sympathy with the poor victim of such a tragic fate. She had no especial pity for the crowd so nearly wiped out by Tacla Indians, for their end had in it a sort of retributive justice which appealed to her ideas of fitness.
“There now, don’t you take on about a fellow being wiped out as was born to be hanged, and only missed his destiny by a fluke, as you may say.”
There was considerable consternation in Ike’s tone, and he gazed at her with so much concern that she must have laughed at his lugubrious expression had her mood not been so far removed from merriment just then.
“It is such a dreadful story!” she gasped, her voice broken and unsteady.
“There are worse things happening in the world every day. Mind you, if the fellow had not cheated people before, they would not have been so likely to think he was cheating them then,” said Ike, rising to his feet, and laying some money on the kitchen table, which served Nell as a counter.
She opened the stout leather bag which hung from her waist to give him change, while words from Holy Writ beat themselves out in her brain, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
“Now, don’t you go a-crying yourself blind over Dick Brunsen, because, as I said before, he wasn’t worth it,” said Ike, as he took his change and prepared to depart.
Nell shook her head in a dubious fashion, which might have been translated in several ways, but she made no other remark, save a polite good evening; and Ike went away pondering on the soft-heartedness of girls in general, and of this one in particular, who could sob over the end of a low-down cheat like young Dick Brunsen.
Nell shed a good many tears during the next few days over that story of wilderness tragedy, and there was no doubt at all in her own mind that Doss Umpey and the elder Brunsen must have shared the fate of young Dick; or at any rate had they escaped being shot as he was, most probably they fell victims to the Indians later.
She said no word to Gertrude about the incident. There had never been any inducement to speak much of her past to the Lorimers. Since she could say so little in praise of Doss Umpey, she had carefully refrained from speaking of him at all to anyone, except Mrs. Nichols, who already knew more about him than Nell did herself.
Just now, too, Gertrude had enough sorrow of her own to bear, for Dr. Russell had spoken plainly of Mrs. Lorimer’s condition, and said that a few weeks would probably end the poor woman’s sufferings. He was very kind to them, doing everything in his power for the comfort of the invalid; but he could not lift or lessen the strain of Gertrude’s life, and Nell often looked at her in fear and trembling, wondering what they would do if she broke down.
Then, one day, just when it seemed the strain was as great as it could be, Mrs. Nichols came up from Bratley and announced that she had come on a good long visit, because she felt that she needed change of air and scene.
Nothing could have been more opportune than her coming, and if the doctor was at the bottom of it, neither he nor Mrs. Nichols ever mentioned the fact.
So the days wore on. Each week the sun shone with more strength; the sap rose in the forests, and the millions of leaf buds grew and swelled in token that summer was coming.
Meanwhile Nell toiled steadily for her adopted family, so content with the love that was her daily and hourly reward, as never to guess or to speculate concerning the future, and what it might bring her.
IT was the last day of June, and the promise for July was for fine weather and sunshine.
Camp’s Gulch was in a state of bustle and activity, which bespoke great business activity. There was a row of ugly little huts for miners on the side of the depot farthest from the Settlement road. Some of the miners had their wives and children with them now, and this increase of population necessitated a school-house here as well as at the Settlement.
So a wooden shed, brown and unpainted, with a shingled roof, had been hastily run up, and Gertrude had applied for and obtained the post of teacher. She had fortunately taken her certificate at Nine Springs, before becoming a telegraph operator, so there had been no difficulty regarding her fitness for the post, and as she was on the spot, everyone regarded her as the most suitable for the position.
Mrs. Lorimer had slipped out of life during the first days of March. Her sufferings had been so great that those who watched her could feel only thankfulness that the hour of her release had come.
Her children mourned her truly, but in the months of her helplessness they had learned to do without her, and so they could not be said to miss her as much as if she had been cut down in rude health.
With the coming of more women to Camp’s Gulch, some parts of Nell’s business had grown less, for where men had their wives to keep house for them, they did not need to go and buy cooked food. But she had made up the lack with other things, until her little kitchen had come to look like a regular store.
On that last day of June, Nell had an inspiration, and, according to her wont, she acted upon it promptly.
“Do you know, Gertrude, I am disposed to think we might take a summer boarder, perhaps two, if they were willing to share one room,” she said, as they sat resting in low chairs out in the garden, after the day’s work was done.
“Is it necessary, dear? You have such heaps to do already,” Gertrude said, a little doubtfully, for Nell worked so hard that it scarcely seemed possible she could do more.
“It would be very pleasant to have a city-dweller with us for a few weeks, and might save us from becoming too hopelessly countryfied,” Nell answered, with a laugh; then added in a more serious tone, “The fact is, I heard of one to-day, and that is what made me decide, all in a great hurry, that a summer boarder is the one thing needed to make my happiness complete.”
“But where would you put the individual to sleep, Nell?” asked Flossie, who lay in a hammock stretched between the wall of the house and a straight young cedar, which by a happy chance had escaped the destruction when the ground was cleared.
“I fear we should have to turn Gertrude out. But if we offered her the hospitality of our loft, perhaps she wouldn’t mind very much,” Nell replied, with a low laugh. Her mood was very happy to-night, and the others quickly caught the infection of her good spirits.
“Oh, I love to sleep in the loft, only I hope you won’t put my bed close to the stove-pipe, if the weather is very warm. But where did you hear of your boarder, Nell?”
“Mrs. Peters came over this afternoon while you were in school. She had just had a letter from a lady living in Victoria, over in Vancouver, a Miss Alfreton, who wanted to know if she could be accommodated at Camp’s Gulch, because she said that her nephew, who was here last summer, had told her it was the loveliest place on earth.”
“Poor lady, how disappointed she will be!” murmured Gertrude, thinking of the bare little school-house and the ugly houses of the miners.
“The trees and the hills are beautiful, anyway,” broke in Flossie, in a tone of protest, not choosing to hear Camp’s Gulch despised even by insinuation.
“And the view from my kitchen window is not to be surpassed, of that I am positive,” said Nell, with a laugh. “Miss Alfreton may or may not be accompanied by her sister. Now, shall we take them or not?”
“Would they board with us?” asked Gertrude, doubtfully still.
“They must. I for one shall not consent to give up our only sitting-room and take my meals in the wood-shed. Besides, I fear there is so much of the Yankee independence about me still, that I should not choose to have people here who wished to eat at a separate table, because we were not fine enough in our manners, or sufficiently solid in our finances, to eat with them,” Nell replied, with a toss of her head.
Gertrude’s brow cleared. “Oh, if they are to come on terms of equality, just paying for their board, that is a different matter. It is sinful to be so proud, especially when one is poor, but I just hated the thought of people lodging in the house, and having to be waited on by you, poor overworked dear!”
“I’m not overworked, so dismiss the idea at once and for ever,” said Nell, with a wave of her hand. “But if we could make a little money in that way this summer, we should be able to get Patsey into that school for electrical engineers next fall, without any more trouble, and once he is there, I am confident he will make his own way all right.”
“You are always thinking of us, Nell, never of yourself!” exclaimed Gertrude. And now there was almost a reproachful inflection in her voice, as if unselfishness were a matter for regret.
“Well, you need not be so ready to remind me that I am only adopted, and not the real thing,” said Nell, with a strained laugh as she rose hastily and went indoors, saying that there was something in the kitchen which she must do before bedtime.
“There, now you have hurt her feelings,” said Flossie, in low-voiced reproach.
“I did not mean to,” said Gertrude, humbly. “But it fairly frightens me sometimes to think of how much we owe to Nell that we can never, never pay. Why, to one dollar that I earn, she earns or saves ten, and she works twice as hard as I do every day in the week.”
“I know all that,” replied Flossie, with a contented laugh. “But there is another side to it, what Dr. Russell calls the other point of view, and that is that, while there is only one Nell to love us, there are five of us to love Nell, and that, as she reckons wealth, makes the balance even.”
“I wonder very often how we could ever have got through last winter without her,” Gertrude said, with a little sigh, as her thoughts went back to those days of pain and strain, when Nell had been the only breadwinner.
“I suppose we could not possibly have done without her, and that was why God sent her to us,” said Flossie, with such a thrill of confidence in her tones that Gertrude was comforted in spite of herself.
“Dear old Nell, she does deserve to be happy!” she murmured.
“Nell is happy, except for a slight pang now and then when you drop out allusions to her being only our adopted sister. The rest of us never hurt her in that way, because we never remember about her not being our own sister, unless some one reminds us. I’m going indoors now to see what she is doing, and if I find her weeping in the back entry, I shall come out and pinch you for having made her cry,” said Flossie, with a laugh, as she slipped out of her hammock and stole softly into the unlighted house to discover what Nell was doing.
Gertrude sat on in the gloaming, thinking her own thoughts and smiling over them. She was very tired with her day’s work, and rest was welcome. It was pleasant, too, to have a brief space in which to sit with folded hands while visions of the future stretched before her, tinted with a rosy light of happiness.
Back in the sad days of last winter Dr. Russell had asked her to let him share the burdens which had descended upon her, and although she would not let him do it then, it had brought comfort and happiness to her to know that he cared enough to be willing to take her and her family too.
But it was only common prudence to wait, for the doctor was earning little more than sufficed to keep Sonny and himself in food and clothes, although the increase of population in the neighbourhood would doubtless bring him more patients in course of time.
Gertrude could not stand alone and organize a career as Nell had done, she was formed on such entirely different lines. But she possessed a fund of enduring patience, and could bear great burdens if only she had some one to take the initiative for her.
Her thoughts to-night, resolved into plain speech, meant that if Patsey could be got into the school of electrical engineers next fall, it would clear the way considerably for herself and the doctor. Teddy and little Abe would require little more than food and clothes for some years to come, and could be brought up easily with Sonny Russell, for boys, like colts and calves, always do better in groups than singly, while Flossie belonged so entirely to Nell that no one would dream of parting them.
“Are you coming to bed to-night, or do you intend staying out there?” asked the brisk voice of Nell from the door, and then Gertrude’s dream visions fled, leaving her in the world of actualities once more.
“What a pity it is to be obliged to go to bed on a night like this,” she said regretfully, as she paused on the threshold.
“It would be a still greater pity if we could get no chance for sleep and forgetfulness, before the work of to-morrow began,” said practical Nell. “Come in and shut the door, Gertrude; you look just like a ghost.”
“I feel like one,” Gertrude answered dreamily. Then she said abruptly, “I have got a sensation about me that change is impending, and that we shall somehow be different to-morrow.”
“That follows as a matter of course, and to-morrow is always in advance of to-day. But I am too sleepy for moralizing, so let us go to bed,” Nell said, with a shiver, as she drew Gertrude in, and bolted the door.
Patsey and the two boys were already in bed and asleep. The three girls made haste to be ready for slumber also, and soon sleep and darkness held the little household in a profound hush until the coming of dawn.
Nell was early astir next morning. She made it a rule always to get her housework done before the cooking for the day began, and as she had mapped out an extra amount of housework for this particular morning, it behoved her to be up early to get it out of the way.
If Miss Alfreton were really coming, the room she would occupy must be scrubbed out, and put into fresh order for her arrival, so as soon as Gertrude could be persuaded out of bed Nell attacked the task with tremendous energy, turned almost all of the furniture out of doors into the cool shade thrown by the cedar, then scrubbed the floor and the wooden walls until the little chamber was redolent of cleanliness. Her housewifely instincts were very strong, and every part of her small domain must be as spotless as her hands could make it.
By the time the cleaning was done she had to start work in the kitchen, and was hard at work getting her first batch of pies baked, when a small boy of uncertain age appeared at the open door of the kitchen, and stood there as if not sure about entering.
He was a complete stranger to Nell, who knew most of the people, old and young, in the neighbourhood. He might have been merely nine or ten, judging by his size; or if one reckoned his age from the expression of his face, he would at once have been taken for fifteen or sixteen.
“Come in,” said Nell, pleasantly; then, seeing that he still hesitated, she asked, “What do you want?”
“I want a pie if you please, ma’am,” he said, with a true Yankee drawl.
“But they are not made yet. At least they are not baked,” said Nell, as she stooped to put another tin filled with pies into the oven, and shut the door, after having carefully tested the heat with her bare elbow, which was the only thermometer she possessed.
“How long to wait?” demanded the boy, in a laconic fashion.
“Half an hour, more or less. Where do you come from?” inquired Nell, turning from the oven to the table, and starting on a fresh batch of pies, her quick fingers turning, twisting, and moulding with an ease and skill delightful to witness, or at least the boy appeared to think so, as he crept into the room, and stood by the table, watching her operations with a look of absorbed interest.
At the question, he shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, as if hesitating about his answer; then, lifting his head with a defiant jerk, he replied—
“From Goat’s Gulch.”
“Goat’s Gulch?” repeated Nell, wondering why the name seemed so familiar, and at the same time brought with it such disagreeable sensations. Then suddenly she started, remembering that it was the place from which the man unknown had said that he brought the Chinaman’s coffin on that eventful evening in last September. “That is a long way from here, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes, about six or seven miles, perhaps, and such a road!” said the boy, rolling up his eyes until only the whites showed, as if to express its badness.
“Did you come all that way, just to buy a pie?” asked Nell, in surprise.
He nodded, then became more explicit. “I’ve got to take two, one for myself, don’t you see, for dad said I shouldn’t be picking and pulling at the one for old Doss if I’d got one of my own.”
Nell’s hand trembled suddenly, and there was a great clattering among the crockery which she was handling, but her tone was quite steady when she asked—
“Who is old Doss?”
“Oh, he’s our lodger, and he’s been sick a good while back. Off his feed he is too, and so thin you could pretty nearly count every bone in his body. So dad he said I was to come over and buy him a pie from the cook-shop close to Camp’s Gulch depot, and as there ain’t no other cook-shop than this, I guess I’ve hit the place right plump in the middle of the bulls-eye,” the boy said, with great complacency.
“But pies are not good for sick folk; they should have broths, and jellies, eggs, gruel, and that sort of thing,” expostulated Nell, in a shocked tone, for the thought of giving new pastry to an invalid did appear rather dreadful to her.
“Dad ’as made him broth and gruel, but he just tastes it and turns his head away, as if he hadn’t any relish for it. Then dad thought of your pies, and said he guessed the sight and smell of one of them would make old Doss eat, if anything could.”
Nell had grown very white; it had not taken her long to decide that probably the old man of whom the boy spoke was her grandfather, and she with equal quickness made up her mind what was her duty concerning him.
“I think I should like to come and see your sick man. How can I find my way from the Settlement to Goat’s Gulch?” she asked.
“You don’t want to go to the Settlement at all; there’s a nearer way over the hills. But you’d never find out where we lived, not alone,” said the boy, with a chuckle.
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because we live in a cart—me, and dad, and old Doss, and if we didn’t want our location spied upon, why we should just move on round the next corner, don’t you see,” the boy answered, with another chuckle.
“But you can’t live in the cart in winter,” objected Nell.
“We did last winter, and the winter before too. We backed the cart under a bluff, made a platform with a bit of sheet iron across the shafts, lifted the stove up on to that, and was just as cosy as chipmunks, I can tell you,” said the boy, who was eagerly eyeing Nell’s cooking operations.
“As you say I couldn’t find this place where you live without help, will you let me walk back with you, because I want to see your sick man?” she asked, rather anxiously.
The boy stared at her in undisguised amazement. “Do you mean you are wanting to tramp all the way to Goat’s Gulch, just to see whether old Doss is fit to eat one of your pies?” he demanded.
“I should not like him to have one unless he is fit for it,” Nell said, with a smile. “But if you are willing to let me go with you and will do an errand for me first, I will give you a nice pie to eat when the errand is done, and a big glass of lemonade to drink with it.”
“I’ll take you, though I ain’t, so to speak, much given to walking out with young ladies. What is the errand?” He smacked his lips appreciatively as he looked at the pies; then stuffed his hands deeper in his pockets as he waited to know what was really required of him.
Nell scribbled a few words on a piece of paper, and asked him to carry it across to Mrs. Peters, the station-master’s wife, and wait for an answer.
When the boy had gone on his errand she hurried to get her morning’s baking done, and to arrange matters so that she could leave for a few hours.
The answer sent back by Mrs. Peters was brief and to the point, for she had simply turned Nell’s piece of paper over, and written on the other side in very big letters, “I’ll be there.”
Nell put a big pie on a plate, poured out a glass of lemonade, and bade the boy sit down on the doorstep to eat his lunch.
“I shall be ready in just one hour,” she said. “So get a good rest, for I am a fast walker, and I shall expect you to keep up with me.”
The boy grinned as his sharp teeth closed on the first mouthful of that toothsome pie, but he was too busily occupied to discuss the question of his walking powers just then.
Never had Nell found an hour slip by at a quicker rate than this. There was the baking to finish, the kitchen to clear up, dinner to get ready for Gertrude and the children, and the furniture to restore to the room she had so carefully cleaned in the early morning.
But all the time she was darting to and fro in her endeavours to compress the work of two hours into one, there kept ringing in her mind Gertrude’s words of yesterday, “We shall somehow be different to-morrow.”
“If it is really granfer, I must not let him slip out of sight again, poor old man,” she murmured to herself. “I must take care of him somehow. Perhaps Joey and Mrs. Trip could board him; but I shall know better when I have seen him—poor granfer!”