[Illustration: She, too, had seen Monohan seated on the after deck. FRONTISPIECE.] BIG TIMBER A Story of the Northwest By BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR With Frontispiece By DOUGLAS DUER 1916 CONTENTS CHAPTER I. GREEN FIELDS AND PASTURES NEW II. MR. ABBEY ARRIVES III. HALFWAY POINT IV. A FORETASTE OF THINGS TO COME V. THE TOLL OF BIG TIMBER VI. THE DIGNITY (?) OF TOIL VII. SOME NEIGHBORLY ASSISTANCE VIII. DURANCE VILE IX. JACK FYFE'S CAMP X. ONE WAY OUT XI. THE PLUNGE XII. AND SO THEY WERE MARRIED XIII. IN WHICH EVENTS MARK TIME XIV. A CLOSE CALL AND A NEW ACQUAINTANCE XV. A RESURRECTION XVI. THE CRISIS XVII. IN WHICH THERE IS A FURTHER CLASH XVIII. THE OPENING GUN XIX. FREE AS THE WIND XX. ECHOES XXI. AN UNEXPECTED MEETING XXII. THE FIRE BEHIND THE SMOKE XXIII. A RIDE BY NIGHT XXIV. "OUT OF THE NIGHT THAT COVERS ME" CHAPTER I GREEN FIELDS AND PASTURES NEW The Imperial Limited lurched with a swing around the last hairpin curve of the Yale canyon. Ahead opened out a timbered valley,--narrow on its floor, flanked with bold mountains, but nevertheless a valley,--down which the rails lay straight and shining on an easy grade. The river that for a hundred miles had boiled and snarled parallel to the tracks, roaring through the granite sluice that cuts the Cascade Range, took a wider channel and a leisurely flow. The mad haste had fallen from it as haste falls from one who, with time to spare, sees his destination near at hand; and the turgid Fraser had time to spare, for now it was but threescore miles to tidewater. So the great river moved placidly--as an old man moves when all the headlong urge of youth is spent and his race near run. On the river side of the first coach behind the diner, Estella Benton nursed her round chin in the palm of one hand, leaning her elbow on the window sill. It was a relief to look over a widening valley instead of a bare-walled gorge all scarred with slides, to see wooded heights lift green in place of barren cliffs, to watch banks of fern massed against the right of way where for a day and a night parched sagebrush, brown tumble-weed, and such scant growth as flourished in the arid uplands of interior British Columbia had streamed in barren monotony, hot and dry and still.