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NORTH OF FIFTY-THREE
by
BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR
Author of
The Land of Frozen Suns, Etc.
With Illustrations by Anton Otto Fischer
[Frontispiece: "Oh!" she gasped. "Why--it's gold!"]
New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers
Copyright, 1914,
by Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved.
CONTENTS
CHAPTERS
I. WHICH INTRODUCES A LADY AND TWO GENTLEMEN
II. HEART, HAND--AND POCKETBOOK
III. "I DO GIVE AND BEQUEATH"
IV. AN EXPLANATION DEMANDED
V. THE WAY OF THE WORLD AT LARGE
VI. CARIBOO MEADOWS
VII. A DIFFERENT SORT OF MAN
VIII. IN DEEP WATER
IX. THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT
X. A LITTLE PERSONAL HISTORY
XI. WINTER--AND A TRUCE
XII. THE FIRES OF SPRING
XIII. THE OUT TRAIL
XIV. THE DRONE OF THE HIVE
XV. AN ENDING AND A BEGINNING
XVI. A BRIEF TIME OF PLANNING
XVII. EN ROUTE
XVIII. THE WINTERING PLACE
XIX. FOUR WALLS AND A ROOF
XX. BOREAS CHANTS HIS LAY
XXI. JACK FROST WITHDRAWS
XXII. THE STRIKE
XXIII. THE STRESS OF THE TRAIL
XXIV. NEIGHBORS
XXV. THE DOLLAR CHASERS
XXVI. A BUSINESS PROPOSITION
XXVII. A BUSINESS JOURNEY
XXVIII. THE BOMB
XXIX. THE NOTE DISCORDANT
XXX. THE AFTERMATH
XXXI. A LETTER FROM BILL
XXXII. THE SPUR
XXXIII. HOME AGAIN
XXXIV. AFTER MANY DAYS
List of Illustrations
"Oh!" she gasped. "Why--it's gold!" . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
Roaring Bill Wagstaff stood within five feet of her, resting one
hand on the muzzle of his grounded rifle
"Hurt? No," he murmured; "I'm just plain scared."
Bill stood before the fireplace, his shaggy fur cap pushed far
back on his head
NORTH OF FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER I
WHICH INTRODUCES A LADY AND TWO GENTLEMEN
Dressed in a plain white shirt waist and an equally plain black cloth
skirt, Miss Hazel Weir, on week days, was merely a unit in the office
force of Harrington & Bush, implement manufacturers. Neither in
personality nor in garb would a casual glance have differentiated her
from the other female units, occupied at various desks. A close
observer might have noticed that she was a bit younger than the others,
possessed of a clear skin and large eyes that seemed to hold all the
shades between purple and gray--eyes, moreover, that had not yet begun
to weaken from long application to clerical work. A business office is
no place for a woman to parade her personal charms. The measure of her
worth there is simply the measure of her efficiency at her machine or
ledgers. So that if any member of the firm had been asked what sort of
a girl Miss Hazel Weir might be, he would probably have replied--and
with utmost truth--that Miss Weir was a capable stenographer.
But when Saturday evening released Miss Hazel Weir from the plain brick
office building, she became, until she donned her working clothes at
seven A. M. Monday morning, quite a different sort of a person. In
other words, she chucked the plain shirt waist and the plain skirt into
the discard, got into such a dress as a normal girl of twenty-two
delights to put on, and devoted a half hour or so to "doing" her hair.
Which naturally effected a more or less complete transformation, a
transformation that was subjective as well as purely objective. For
Miss Weir then became an entity at which few persons of either sex
failed to take a second glance.
Upon a certain Saturday night Miss Weir came home from an informal
little party escorted by a young man. They stopped at the front gate.
"I'll be here at ten sharp," said he. "And you get a good beauty sleep
to-night, Hazel. That confounded office! I hate to think of you
drudging away at it. I wish we were ready to--"
"Oh, bother the office!" she replied lightly. "I don't think of it out
of office hours. Anyway, I don't mind. It doesn't tire me. I _will_
be ready at ten _this_ time. Good night, dear."
"Good night, Hazie," he whispered. "Here's a kiss to dream on."
Miss Weir broke away from him laughingly, ran along the path, and up
the steps, kissed her finger-tips to the lingering figure by the gate,
and went in.
"Bed," she soliloquized, "is the place for me right quickly if I'm
going to be up and dressed and have that lunch ready by ten o'clock. I
wish I weren't such a sleepyhead--or else that I weren't a 'pore
wurrkin' gurl.'"
At which last conceit she laughed softly. Because, for a "pore
wurrkin' gurl," Miss Weir was fairly well content with her lot. She
had no one dependent on her--a state of affairs which, if it
occasionally leads to loneliness, has its compensations. Her salary as
a stenographer amply covered her living expenses, and even permitted
her to put by a few dollars monthly. She had grown up in Granville.
She had her own circle of friends. So that she was comfortable, even
happy, in the present--and Jack Barrow proposed to settle the problem
of her future; with youth's optimism, they two considered it already
settled. Six months more, and there was to be a wedding, a
three-weeks' honeymoon, and a final settling down in a little cottage
on the West Side; everybody in Granville who amounted to anything lived
on the West Side. Then she would have nothing to do but make the home
nest cozy, while Jack kept pace with a real-estate business that was
growing beyond his most sanguine expectations.
She threw her light wraps over the back of a chair, and, standing
before her dresser, took the multitude of pins out of her hair and
tumbled it, a cloudy black mass, about her shoulders. Occupying the
center of the dresser, in a leaning silver frame, stood a picture of
Jack Barrow. She stood looking at it a minute, smiling absently. It
was spring, and her landlady's daughter had set a bunch of wild flowers
in a jar beside the picture. Hazel picked out a daisy and plucked away
the petals one by one.
"He loves me--he loves me not--he loves me--" Her lips formed the
words inaudibly, as countless lips have formed them in love's history,
and the last petal fluttered away at "not."
She smiled.
"I wonder if that's an omen?" she murmured. "Pshaw! What a silly
idea! I'm going to bed. Good night, Johnny boy."
She kissed her finger-tips to him again across the rooftops all grimed
with a winter's soot, and within fifteen minutes Miss Weir was sound
asleep.
She gave the lie, for once, to the saying that a woman is never ready
at the appointed time by being on the steps a full ten minutes before
Jack Barrow appeared. They walked to the corner and caught a car, and
in the span of half an hour got off at Granville Park.
The city fathers, hampered in days gone by with lack of municipal
funds, had left the two-hundred-acre square of the park pretty much as
nature made it; that is to say, there was no ornate parking, no attempt
at landscape gardening. Ancient maples spread their crooked arms
untrimmed, standing in haphazard groves. Wherever the greensward
nourished, there grew pink-tipped daisies and kindred flowers of the
wild. It was gutted in the middle with a ravine, the lower end of
which, dammed by an earth embankment, formed a lake with the inevitable
swans and other water-fowl. But, barring the lake and a wide drive
that looped and twined through the timber, Granville Park was a bit of
the old Ontario woodland, and as such afforded a pleasant place to loaf
in the summer months. It was full of secluded nooks, dear to the
hearts of young couples. And upon a Sunday the carriages of the
wealthy affected the smooth drive.
When Jack Barrow and Hazel had finished their lunch under the trees, in
company with a little group of their acquaintances, Hazel gathered
scraps of bread and cake into a paper bag.
Barrow whispered to her: "Let's go down and feed the swans. I'd just
as soon be away from the crowd."
She nodded assent, and they departed hastily lest some of the others
should volunteer their company. It took but a short time to reach the
pond. They found a log close to the water's edge, and, taking a seat
there, tossed morsels to the birds and chattered to each other.
"Look," said Barrow suddenly; "that's us ten years from now."
A carriage passed slowly, a solemn, liveried coachman on the box, a
handsome, smooth-shaven man of thirty-five and a richly gowned woman
leaning back and looking out over the pond with bored eyes. And that
last, the half-cynical, half-contemptuous expression on the two faces,
impressed Hazel Weir far more than the showy equipage, the outward
manifestation of wealth.
"I hope not," she returned impulsively.
"Hope not!" Barrow echoed. "Those people are worth a barrel of money.
Wouldn't you like your own carriage, and servants, and income enough to
have everything you wanted?"
"Of course," Hazel answered. "But they don't look as if they really
enjoyed it."
"Fiddlesticks!" Barrow smilingly retorted. "Everybody enjoys luxury."
"Well, one should," Hazel admitted. But she still held to the
impression that the couple passing got no such pleasure out of their
material possessions as Jack seemed to think. It was merely an
intuitive divination. She could not have found any basis from which to
argue the point. But she was very sure that she would not have changed
places with the woman in the carriage, and her hand stole out and gave
his a shy little squeeze.
"Look," she murmured; "here's another of the plutocrats. One of my
esteemed employers, if you please. You'll notice that he's walking and
looking at things just like us ordinary, everyday mortals."
Barrow glanced past her, and saw a rather tall, middle-aged man, his
hair tinged with gray, a fine-looking man, dressed with exceeding
nicety, even to a flower in his coat lapel, walking slowly along the
path that bordered the pond. He stopped a few yards beyond them, and
stood idly glancing over the smooth stretch of water, his gloved hands
resting on the knob of a silver-mounted cane.
Presently his gaze wandered to them, and the cool, well-bred stare
gradually gave way to a slightly puzzled expression. He moved a step
or two and seated himself on a bench. Miss Weir became aware that he
was looking at her most of the time as she sat casting the bits of
bread to the swans and ducks. It made her self-conscious. She did not
know why she should be of any particular interest.
"Let's walk around a little," she suggested. The last of the crumbs
were gone.
"All right," Barrow assented. "Let's go up the ravine."
They left the log. Their course up the ravine took them directly past
the gentleman on the bench. And when they came abreast of him, he rose
and lifted his hat at the very slight inclination of Miss Weir's head.
"How do you do, Miss Weir?" said he. "Quite a pleasant afternoon."
To the best of Hazel's knowledge, Mr. Andrew Bush was little given to
friendly recognition of his employees, particularly in public. But he
seemed inclined to be talkative; and, as she caught a slightly
inquiring glance at her escort, she made the necessary introduction.
So for a minute or two the three of them stood there exchanging polite
banalities. Then Mr. Bush bowed and passed on.
"He's one of the biggest guns in Granville, they say," Jack observed.
"I wouldn't mind having some of his business to handle. He started
with nothing, too, according to all accounts. Now, that's what I call
success."
"Oh, yes, in a business way he's a success," Hazel responded. "But
he's awfully curt most of the time around the office. I wonder what
made him thaw out so to-day?"
And that question recurred to her mind again in the evening, when Jack
had gone home and she was sitting in her own room. She wheeled her
chair around and took a steady look at herself in the mirror. A woman
may never admit extreme plainness of feature, and she may deprecate her
own fairness, if she be possessed of fairness, but she seldom has any
illusions about one or the other. She knows. Hazel Weir knew that she
was far above the average in point of looks. If she had never taken
stock of herself before, the reflection facing her now was sufficient
to leave no room for doubt on the score of beauty. Her skin was
smooth, delicate in texture, and as delicately tinted. The tan pongee
dress she wore set off her dark hair and expressive, bluish-gray eyes.
She was smiling at herself just as she had been smiling at Jack Barrow
while they sat on the log and fed the swans. And she made an amiable
grin at the reflection in the glass. But even though Miss Weir was
twenty-two and far from unsophisticated, it did not strike her that the
transition of herself from a demure, business-like office person in
sober black and white to a radiant creature with the potent influences
of love and spring brightening her eyes and lending a veiled caress to
her every supple movement, satisfactorily accounted for the sudden
friendliness of Mr. Andrew Bush.