and with that in view,
I'll send up a man or two I can rely on to investigate."

"If they get crawling round that canyon and up and down the valley, it
will set the blame settlers talking. We want the thing run quietly,"
Martial cautioned.

"I guess it can be done," replied Hutton. "They'll go camping out for
pleasure. In fact, to make the thing more like it, I'll send them
fishing." Martial rose. "Anyway," he said, "I'll leave it with you in
the meanwhile."

CHAPTER XXI

THE MEN OF THE BUSH

A cool shadow fell upon the descending trail that wound in among the
towering firs, and Nasmyth checked his jaded horse as he entered on
the last league of his long ride from the railroad. The red dust had
settled thick upon his city clothes, and for the first time he found
the restraint of them irksome. The band of his new hat had tightened
unpleasantly about his forehead, and in scrambling up the side of the
last high ridge which he had crossed, one neatly-fitting boot had
galled his foot, while he smiled with somewhat sinister amusement as
he felt the grip of the tight jacket on his shoulders. These were, as
he recognized, petty troubles, and he was rather astonished that he
should resent them, as he certainly did. He remembered that a little
while before he had made no complaint against the restraints of
civilization, and had, indeed, begun to shrink from the prospect of
going back to the untrammelled life of the wilderness.

But, as he straightened himself in his saddle and gazed down the deep
valley through which the trail twisted, he felt the shrinking melt
away. After all, there was something in the wilderness that appealed
to him. There was vigour in the clean smell of it, and the little
breeze that fanned his face was laden with the scent of the firs. The
trees rolled away before him in sombre battalions that dwindled far up
the rocky sides of the enfolding hills, and here and there a flood of
sunlight that struck in through the openings fell in streams of
burning gold upon their tremendous trunks. Beyond them the rugged
heights rose, mass on mass, against the western sky.

He rode into the shadow, and, though he thought of her, it was curious
that Violet Hamilton seemed to become less real to him as he pushed on
down the valley. He vaguely felt that he could not carry her with him
into the wilderness. She was a part of the civilization upon which he
had once more, for a time at least, turned his back, an