第23章

ON THE TRAIL

"That's the trail.Loon Lake lies yonder."Shock's Convener, who had charge for his Church of this district, stood by the buck-board wheel pointing southwest.He was a man about middle life, rather short but well set up, with a strong, honest face, tanned and bearded, redeemed abundantly from commonness by the eye, deep blue and fearless, that spoke of the genius in the soul.

It was a kindly face withal, and with humour lurking about the eyes and mouth.During the day and night spent with him Shock had come to feel that in this man there was anchorage for any who might feel themselves adrift, and somehow the great West, with its long leagues of empty prairie through which he had passed, travelling by the slow progress of construction trains, would now seem a little less empty because of this man.Between the new field toward which this trail led and the home and folk in the far East there would always be this man who would know him, and would sometimes be thinking of him.The thought heartened Shock more than a little.

"That's the trail," repeated the Convener; "follow that; it will lead you to your home.""Home!" thought Shock with a tug at his heart and a queer little smile on his face.

"Yes, a man's home is where his heart is, and his heart is where his work lies."Shock glanced quickly at the man's tanned face.Did he suspect, Shock wondered, the homesickness and the longing in his heart?

Last night, as they had sat together in late talk, he had drawn from Shock with cunning skill (those who knew him would recognise the trick) the picture of his new missionary's home, and had interpreted aright the thrill in the voice that told of the old lady left behind.But now, as Shock glanced at his Convener's face, there was nothing to indicate any hidden meaning in his words.The speaker's eyes were far down the trail that wound like a wavering white ribbon over the yellow-green billows of prairie that reached to the horizon before and up to the great mountains on the right.

"Twenty miles will bring you to Spruce Creek stopping-place; twenty miles more and you are at Big River--not so very big either.You will see there a little school and beside it, on the left, a little house--you might call it a shack, but we make the most of things out here.That's Mr.McIntyre's manse, and proud of it they all are, Ican tell you.You will stay with him over night--a fine fellow you will find him, a Nova Scotian, very silent; and better than himself is the little brave woman he has for a wife; a really superior woman.I sometimes wonder--but never mind, for people doubtless wonder at our wives: one can never get at the bottom of the mystery of why some women do it.They will see you on your way.Up to this time he was the last man we had in that direction.Now you are our outpost--a distinction I envy you."The Convener's blue eye was alight with enthusiasm.The call of the new land was ever ringing in his heart, and the sound of the strife at the front in his ear.

Unconsciously Shock drew in a long breath, the homesickness and heart-longing gave back before the spirit of high courage and enterprise which breathed through the words of the little man beside him, whose fame was in all the Western Church.

"Up these valleys somewhere," continued the Convener, waving his hands towards the southern sky-line, "are the men--the ranchers and cowboys I told you of last night.Some good men, and some of them devils--men good by nature, devils by circumstance, poor fellows.

They won't want you, perhaps, but they need you badly.And the Church wants them, and"--after a little pause--"God wants them."The Convener paused, still looking at the distant flowing hills.

Then he turned to Shock and said solemnly, "We look to you to get them."Shock gasped."To me! to get them!"

"Yes, that's what we expect.Why! do you remember the old chap Itold you about--that old prospector who lives at Loon Lake?--you will come across him, unless he has gone to the mountains.For thirteen years that man has hunted the gulches for mines.There are your mines," waving his hand again, "and you are our prospector.Dig them up.Good-bye.God bless you.Report to me in six months."The Convener looked at his fingers after Shock had left, spreading them apart."Well, what that chap grips he'll hold until he wants to let it go," he said to himself, wrinkling his face into a curious smile.

Now and then as he walked along the trail he turned and looked after the buckboard heading toward the southern horizon, but never once did his missionary look back.

"I think he will do.He made a mess of my service last night, but Isuppose he was rattled, and then no one could be more disgusted than he, which is not a bad sign.His heart's all right, and he will work, but he's slow.He's undoubtedly slow.Those fellows will give him a time, I fear," and again the Convener smiled to himself.As he came to the brow of the hill, where the trail dipped into the river bottom in which the little town lay that constituted the nucleus of his parish, he paused and, once more turning, looked after the diminishing buckboard."He won't look back, eh! All right, my man.Ilike you better for it.It must have been a hard pull to leave that dear old lady behind.He might bring her out.There are just the two of them.Well, we will see.It's pretty close shaving."He was thinking of the threatened cut in the already meagre salaries of his missionaries, rendered necessary by the disproportion between the growth of the funds and the expansion of the work.

"It's a shame, too," he said, turning and looking once more after Shock in case there should be a final signal of farewell, which he would be sorry to miss.

"They're evidently everything to each other." But it was an old problem with the Convener, whose solution lay not with him, but with the church that sent him out to do this work.