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Updated: May 7, 2025
Can't you get hold of the fact that a man can start ranching right away on natural prairie, if he can once get the water out of it?" "Oh, yes," assented Nasmyth. "The point is that one has to get the water out of it. I would like Mattawa and Wheeler to notice it. You can go on."
"It was during the few days I spent between the logging camp and Waynefleet's ranch." Mattawa, who hove on the same handle, grinned. "Well," he said, "this is a tolerable sample of blame hard weather while it lasts, but we get months of it back East. Still, I guess we don't work then. No, sir, unless we're chopping, we sit tight round the stove." Mattawa was right in this.
"Kind of trump ace up your sleeve!" suggested Mattawa, and his master answered with a smile: "Not exactly. The other side is quite smart enough to know who holds the aces; but I fancy the complete disappearance of this few-spot card will puzzle them. Now, forget all about it. I wouldn't have said so much, but that I know I can trust you two!"
"But mightn't he try the same game again?" asked Mattawa, and Thurston answered: "He might, but I hardly think he will. I intend to keep him here under my own eyes until I want him. There's no particular reason why you shouldn't see that he earns his wages, Tom. Gillow, it's perhaps not wholly unfortunate you dropped him into the river."
"Seen something quite like it in Ontario; I guess it can be done." He turned to Nasmyth. "You can count me in." Wheeler made a sign of concurrence. "It seems to me that Mattawa is right. In a general way, I'm quite open to take a share in the thing, but there's a point you have to consider. Most of the work could be done only at low water, and a man might spend several years on it."
When they planned the journey for pleasure, Mattawa and Gordon had gone with them ostensibly on a shooting trip. There are game laws, which set forth when and where a man may shoot, and how many heads he is entitled to, but it must be admitted that the Bush-rancher seldom concerns himself greatly about them. When he fancies a change of diet, he goes out and kills a deer.
Nasmyth made no answer, but he waited until Gordon and Mattawa joined him, and they lowered themselves down from a rock shelf on to a pile of broken rock, about which the eddy swirled. The spray of the fall beat upon them, and the roar of it was bewildering, but the noise was softened when they crawled into the entrance of a narrow tunnel.
Mattawa looked up with a grin. "He said he'd a claim up at the head of the valley, and we had got to quit work right away. If we didn't he'd get the Crown people or the court to stop us. He liked plenty of water round his ranch. Some of the boys got a little riled with him, and they took him up the gully and put him on his horse." "I never heard of a claim up yonder," declared Nasmyth gravely.
Still he persisted, and Mattawa watched him, because there was only room for one, until there was a crash above them, and the tilted top of the great boom came down. Mattawa, flattened against the rock side, held his breath as the mass of timber rushed towards the pool, and next moment saw that Nasmyth was no longer standing on the shelf.
Wheeler's eyes twinkled. "Well," he returned, "they're smart. I have, however, come across smart folks who missed a point or two occasionally. Now, I saw a couple of red cedar logs among that hemlock." He glanced at Mattawa. "Tom, you've been round the head of the valley. Did you strike any trees of that kind up yonder?" "A few," answered Mattawa. "It's quite likely there are more."
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