"Well," said the man with an air of reflection, "it might be. This thing's quick. Leaves you or wipes you out right away. There's very little strength in him."

He turned out the pockets of Nasmyth's clothes, which were, however, empty of anything that might disclose his ident.i.ty.

"Not a sc.r.a.p of paper, not a dollar; but I guess that wasn't always the case with him--you can see it by his face," he said. Then he laughed. "He's probably like a good many more of us--not very anxious to let folks know where he came from."

The girl, though he did not notice it, winced at this; but next moment he touched her shoulder.

"Get some water on," he said. "After we've made the poultice, I'll take charge of him. We may get Mrs. Custer round in the morning."

The girl merely smiled and went out with him. She was aware that it was in some respects an unusual thing which she was doing, but that did not greatly trouble her. They are not very conventional people in that country.

CHAPTER III

WAYNEFLEET'S RANCH

Though he afterwards endeavoured to recall them, Nasmyth had never more than a faint and shadowy recollection of the next few days.

During most of the time, he fancied he was back in England, and the girl he had left there seemed to be hovering about him. Now and then, she would lay gentle hands upon him, and her soothing touch would send him off to sleep again; but there was a puzzling change in her appearance. He remembered her as slight in figure--sylph-like he had sometimes called her--fastidious and dainty, and always artistically dressed. Now, however, she seemed to have grown taller, stronger, more reserved, and, as he vaguely realized, more capable, while her garments were of a different and coa.r.s.er fashion. What was still more curious, she did not seem to recognize her name, though he addressed her by it now and then. He pondered over the matter drowsily once or twice, and then ceased to trouble himself about it. There were several other things that appeared at least as incomprehensible.

After a long time, however, his senses came back to him, and one evening, as he lay languidly looking about him in his rude wooden bunk, he endeavoured to recall what had pa.s.sed since he left the loggers' camp. The little room was comfortably warm, and a plain tin lamp burned upon what was evidently a home-made table. There was nothing, except a rifle, upon the rough log walls, and nothing upon the floor, which was, as usual, rudely laid with split boards, for dressed lumber is costly in the Bush. Looking through the open door into the general living-room, which was also lighted, he could see a red twinkle beneath the register of the stove, beside which a woman was sitting sewing. She was a hard-featured, homely person in coa.r.s.ely fashioned garments, which did not seem to fit her well, and Nasmyth felt slightly disconcerted when he glanced at her, for she was not the woman whom he had expected to see. Then his glance rested on a man, who had also figured in his uncertain memories, and now sat not far away from him. The man, who was young, was dressed in plain blue duck, and, though Nasmyth noticed that his hands were hard, and that he had broken nails, there was something in his bronzed face that suggested mental capacity.

"I suppose," the sick man said, "you are the doctor who has evidently taken care of me?"

He was not quite himself yet, and he spoke clean colloquial English, without any trace of the Western accentuation he usually considered it advisable to adopt, though, as a matter of fact, the accent usually heard on the Pacific slope is not unduly marked. The other man naturally noticed it, and laughed somewhat curiously.

"I have some knowledge of medicine and surgery," Gordon answered. "Now and then I make use of it, though I don't, as a rule, get a fee." Then he looked rather hard at Nasmyth. "Quite a few of us find it advisable to let our professions go when we come to this country."

Nasmyth nodded, for this was a thing he had discovered already. Many of the comrades he had made there were outcasts--men outside the pale--and they were excellent comrades, too.

"Well," he said, "I have evidently been very sick. How did I get here?

I don't seem to remember."

"Miss Waynefleet found you lying in the snow in the clearing."

"Ah!" said Nasmyth--"a tall girl with a quiet voice, big brown eyes, and splendid hair?"

Gordon smiled. "Well," he said, "that's quite like her."

"Where is she now?" asked Nasmyth; and though he was very feeble still, there was a certain expectancy in his manner.

"In the barn, I believe. The working oxen have to be fed. It's very probable that you will see her in the next half-hour. As to your other question--you were very sick indeed--pneumonia. Once or twice it seemed a sure thing that you'd slip through our fingers. Where were you coming from when you struck the clearing?"

Nasmyth, who had no reason for reticence, and found his mind rapidly growing clearer, briefly related what had led him to set out on his journey through the Bush, and his companion nodded.

"It's very much as I expected," he said. "They paid you off before you left that logging camp?"

"They did," said Nasmyth, who was pleased to recall the fact. "I had thirty-two dollars in my belt."

His companion looked at him steadily. "When you came here you hadn't a belt on. There was not a dollar in your pockets, either."

This was naturally a blow to Nasmyth. He realized that it would probably be several weeks at least before he was strong enough to work again, and he had evidently been a charge upon these strangers for some little time. Still, he did not for a moment connect any of them with the disappearance of his belt. He was too well acquainted with the character of the men who are hewing the clearings out of the great forests of the Pacific slope. As a matter of fact, he never did discover what became of his belt.

"Well," he said, "I suppose I forgot to put it on, one of those mornings on the march. Still, it's not very astonishing that the thing should worry me. I can't expect to stay on at this ranch. When do you think I can get up and set out again?"

"How long have you been out here?"

"Been out?"

Gordon laughed. "You're from the Old Country--that's plain enough."

"Several years."

"In that case I'm not going to tell you we're not likely to turn you out until you have some strength in you. I believe I'm speaking for Miss Waynefleet now."

Nasmyth lay still and considered this. It was, at least, quite evident that he could not get up yet, but there were one or two other points that occurred to him.

"Does the ranch belong to Miss Waynefleet?" he inquired. "She can't live here alone."

"She runs the concern. She has certainly a father, but you'll understand things more clearly when you see him. He's away in Victoria, which is partly why Mrs. Custer from the settlement is now in yonder room. Her husband is at present building a trestle on the Dunsmore track. I come up here for only an hour every day."

Nasmyth afterwards discovered that this implied a journey of three or four miles either way over a very indifferent trail, but at the moment he was thinking chiefly of Miss Waynefleet, who had given him shelter.

"You practise at the settlement?" he asked.

"Yes," said his companion dryly, "chopping big trees. I've a ranch there. Still, I don't know that you could exactly call it practising.

By this time, I've acquired a certain proficiency in the thing."

Nasmyth fancied that he must have gone to sleep soon after this, for when he opened his eyes again there was no sign of the doctor, and a girl was quietly moving about the room. She sat down, when she saw that he was awake, and looked at him with a little smile, and it was only natural that Nasmyth should also look at her. It struck him once more that she had wonderful hair. In the lamp-light, it seemed to glow with curious red-gold gleams. She had also quiet brown eyes, and a face that was a trifle darkened by sun and wind. He guessed that she was tall. She looked so as she moved about the room with a supple gracefulness that had a suggestion of strength in it. That was all he noticed in detail, for he was chiefly conscious of the air of quiet composure that characterized her. He was a trifle fanciful that night, and, while he looked her, he felt as he had sometimes felt when he stood at sunset in the silence of the shadowy Bush, or gazed down into the depths of some still river pool. Only her gleaming red-gold hair and her full red lips slightly counteracted this impression. There was in them at least a hint of fire and pa.s.sion.

"You are much better," she said, and her softly modulated voice fell pleasantly on his ears. He contrived to raise himself a trifle.

"I believe I am," he answered, "In any case, I know I owe it to you that I'm alive at all. Still"--and he hesitated--"I can't help feeling a bit uncomfortable. You see, I have really no claim on you."

Laura Waynefleet laughed. "Did you expect me to leave you out in the snow?"

"If you had, I couldn't have complained. There wasn't the least obligation upon you to look after a penniless stranger."

"Ah!" said the girl, with a little smile which was curiously expressive, "after all, many of us are in one sense strangers in the Bush."

Nasmyth pondered over this, for, in view of what he had noticed in her voice and manner, he fancied he understood her meaning.

"Well," he said, "it's evident that I can do nothing in return for all your kindness, except take myself off your hands as soon as possible.

That's partly why I'm particularly anxious to get better."

He stopped a moment, with a faint flush in his hollow face. "It sounds very ungracious, doesn't it? But, after all, it's sense. Besides, I scarcely feel up to expressing myself very neatly."