Kitabı oku: «For the Allinson Honor», sayfa 10

CHAPTER XVI
THE CACHE

The two prospectors forgot their weariness as they rushed to the dying fire. Carnally looked at the embers.

"Can't have been gone long," he declared.

"Shout, Jake!" cried Andrew. "I'm out of breath."

Carnally called, and Andrew's heart throbbed when a faint cry rose in answer. His anxiety had not been groundless: a lonely man runs many risks in the frozen North. Following the sound, they hastened up the ravine, and as they rounded a projecting boulder, a red glow flashed out a little distance ahead, died down, and rose more clearly.

"That's mighty good to see!" Carnally exclaimed.

Graham met them as they entered the firelight.

"Had any trouble?" Andrew asked anxiously.

"No; and the foot's feeling better. The rest has done it good. I've been pretty comfortable since you left, though the wolves got so friendly last night that I thought I'd better shift my camp a bit to-night. I didn't allow you could get back before to-morrow, and I knew I'd hear you shout if you did. I left the other fire burning as a beacon."

Andrew breathed deeply.

"It's a wonderful relief!" he said.

Carnally looked hard at Graham's face.

"Guess you didn't sleep well, but we'll get a good rest to-night, now there are three of us. A timber wolf is a cussed mean brute. Government ought to supply the bush settlers with free arsenic."

There was a brief silence, while Graham waited, intent and eager, until Carnally broke into a soft laugh.

"We struck it, partner! Guess your lode's right there, but we couldn't do enough prospecting to tell you what it's worth."

Graham turned his head for a moment, and his eyes glittered when he looked around.

"That is my misfortune and Mappin's fault. But you must have your supper, and then we'll talk."

Carnally glanced at Andrew, who had thrown off his pack and sat down on it in an attitude of exhaustion.

"Allinson allowed we'd be back to-night, and he hustled me along pretty lively for a tenderfoot."

They laughed at this and began the meal which Graham soon had ready. Then, sitting close beside the fire, they filled their pipes and Graham carefully examined the bits of stone Carnally produced. He poised them in his hands, because the weight is a rough test, before he looked up.

"What do you think of them, Jake?" he asked.

"My idea is that they're pretty good, though they are not carrying a remarkable quantity of metal. Of course, we may have struck only the edge of the lode. There wasn't time to find how it ran."

Graham sat silent a while, and then turned to Andrew with a strained expression.

"I agree with Carnally. So far as I can judge, these specimens are not very rich, though the ore might pay for reduction. That I feel disappointed after waiting twenty years for this chance doesn't need saying; but I've brought you here at a big expense and risk and I can't blame you if you let the matter drop."

"Nothing is farther from my mind," declared Andrew, smiling. "It's unpleasant to feel beaten; and I'm partly responsible for our failure by confiding in Mappin. If you and Carnally still think I'm to be trusted as a partner, we'll come back again, though I'd prefer waiting until the ice breaks up in the spring."

Graham's relief carried him away.

"I'd trust you with my life, Allinson! It's hard to express what I feel, but I've got to talk. If we had failed to find the lode, I'd have gone home, content, I think, to forget it; but to have struck it and got no farther would have been maddening! The thing would have haunted me for the rest of my days; but I hardly expect any one would have put up the money for another search. I can see myself hanging round mining men's offices, laughed and sneered at, neglecting my work until the sawmill people turned me out – they'll tell you at the Landing that I'm a crank. But the silver's there, Allinson! You have only to look for it!"

"We'll have a good try," Andrew promised cheerfully. "But the first thing we have to do is to get home, and I'm afraid it won't be easy. I wish the Hudson Bay factory weren't so far off."

They discussed their return, Graham declaring that his foot was much better and that he ought to have no difficulty in keeping up with them, and soon afterward they went to sleep.

At daybreak they set off in a haze of driving snow, and Andrew long remembered the march with a shudder. There was only one thing in their favor – the raging wind which drove the loose snow in clouds along the frozen creeks blew behind them. The cold was intense; even when no snow fell the light was dim; but they stumbled on, making the best progress they could. On the second day out Graham sat down among the willows on an island trying to alter the fastenings of his snow-shoe. Carnally, turning back with Andrew through a cloud of drifting flakes glanced sharply at the sitting man.

"Ah!" he said, indicating a broad smear on his moccasin; "that's fresh and bigger than before."

"Broken out again," said Graham, curtly. "There's no use in talking about it. I can't nurse it now."

"Can you walk?" Andrew asked.

"I'll have to," Graham answered, getting up.

The truth of this was obvious, for the alternative was to freeze to death. He managed to keep up with the others, though Carnally slackened the pace all the afternoon. When they camped at nightfall, Graham would not let him examine his foot.

"If the moccasin comes off, I'll never get it on again," he declared.

After this, the distance traversed daily was reduced and rations were cut down to match. One day when the wind raged behind them, they made fourteen miles along a frozen creek; but more often they made eight or nine; and part of the time Graham carried his snowshoes and limped in his moccasins. His companions helped him as much as they could over the roughest ground; but the only effectual way of assisting a crippled man is to carry him, which they could not do. Their faces grew sterner and gaunter, but with grim restraint they husbanded the rapidly running out provisions, and one blustering morning they came upon the sled they had left on their outward journey, half covered with snow.

The traces, though frozen hard, were still attached to it, and Andrew slipped them over his shoulders when Graham, wrapped in all their blankets, sat down on the sled. It was a relief to get rid of their loads, and for a while Andrew made a moderate pace. The wind had hardened the surface of the snow, and the runners slid along easily, but he found it different when he came to the next ascent. The trace hurt his chest, the weight he was hauling seemed to increase, his breathing got harder, his knees and shoulders ached.

"You had better let me have hold," Carnally suggested.

"I'll get off," said Graham. "I could hobble along if you fixed the back posts so I could lean on them."

"Stay where you are!" Carnally bade him curtly. "We have to make good time and we're going faster with you on the sled."

They altered the traces and plodded forward side by side, until the sled overturned on a steep slope and flung Graham off. For the next hour he had to walk while they struggled across rocky hummocks and through belts of small spruces, and his face was gray with pain when he resumed his place. Still, they made progress and felt more cheerful when they camped at night.

"I allow we're four miles to the good on this stage," Carnally said. "That's a quarter of a day knocked off. With luck and a smooth trail, we're going through."

Somehow they maintained the speed, though the struggle was almost unbearably hard, and one afternoon they nerved themselves to an extra effort as they toiled up a creek. It ran between rugged hills and the snow was good. They were badly worn out and Andrew had a distressing pain in his side, but he braced himself against the drag of the trace, watching the white hill-shoulders change their shapes ahead. They were on the Whitefish Creek, and the first provision cache was not far off. When they reached it they would rest and feast luxuriously.

"Keep her going," urged Carnally "We want to make the island where the cache is before dark."

For an hour they struggled on in a state of tension, the snow crunching beneath their shoes, large flakes blowing past them. A heavy gray sky hung over head, and the cold was biting. Then the hills in front grew dimmer, the scattered spruces lost their sharpness of form; dusk was falling when they came to a narrow lake. Here the snow was very firm and the pace grew faster. They broke into a run when a blurred mass of willows came into sight. The cruel aches in joints and muscles were no longer felt; the food they craved was close at hand. They drew near the willows rapidly, though Andrew was panting with exhaustion; the first of the bushes slipped behind, but more rose ahead, and he grew savage as he glanced at them. He knew that the island was small, but they seemed to be getting no nearer to its upstream tongue where he had arranged with Mappin that the cache should be made.

"Get on!" he cried hoarsely. "I can stand a little more yet."

A few minutes later they dropped the traces, and the sled, driving in among the willows, stopped with a crash. Leaving Graham to hobble after them, Andrew and Carnally plunged through the branches and came out on a short level strip. It was nearly dark now, but the snow glimmered faintly and only a few clumps of brush broke its surface. Andrew stopped, breathing hard, and dismay seized him as he glanced about.

"This is the place," he said hoarsely. "I can't see the cache."

"Search round here; I'll try farther on," Carnally said, and vanished among the willows.

Pulling himself together, Andrew spent a few anxious minutes hurrying up and down the open space, but found nothing to suggest that it had lately been visited by a transport party. When he stopped, Graham awkwardly hobbled toward him.

"Haven't you found it yet?" he asked.

"No," said Andrew, as calmly as he could. "There may have been a mistake about the spot. Carnally's gone back to look."

They stood still for a few moments while the willows rustled harshly in the bitter wind. A little snow blew about them and it was very cold. Then Andrew broke away from his companion and, plunging into the bushes that grew thickly up the middle of the island, savagely floundered through them. He could not see where he was going, snow-laden branches whipped him, and he stuck fast now and then; but he thought that nobody could have traversed those thickets without leaving traces of his passage, and, finding none, he presently returned to the clear space. Graham was still standing in the middle of it, but they waited in silence until Carnally appeared. He was walking heavily, and they knew he had been unsuccessful.

"Nothing; not a sign of a cache," he reported in a strained voice. "So far as I can see, this is the only place on the island where one could have been made. I found a few small spruces on a higher patch. We'll pack the truck along and camp there."

It took them some time and they had trouble in helping Graham through the brush, but scarcely a word was spoken until they gathered about their fire. Then Carnally broke into a harsh laugh as he laid three morsels of pork in the frying-pan and took out a very small bannock baked the previous night.

"This isn't the kind of supper I looked forward to but we'll get less to-morrow," he said. "The blasted hog has played another trick on us!"

CHAPTER XVII
THE GAP IN THE RIDGE

The scanty supper was finished before the three men held a council.

"We'll have another search in the morning, but you can take it for granted that there's no cache here," Carnally said grimly.

"Could Mappin have made a mistake about the place?" Graham suggested.

"No, sir! That's a sure thing. But wait a minute. I think I see!" Carnally lighted his pipe before he resumed: "Now, you want to remember that we're up against a clever man. He didn't mean us to find the food but he'd see that there was a chance of our getting through without it and try to fix things so Allinson wouldn't have much ground for making trouble. So he sent the supplies up."

"Then where are they?" Andrew broke in.

"Let me finish. I guess there was nobody else about when you told him where to make the cache?"

Andrew nodded, and Carnally went on:

"You said the east Whitefish, and he sent the truck to the west fork. It's a point where one might go wrong, and he'll claim that he misunderstood you and you didn't make your instructions clear."

"I believe you're right!" Andrew had a savage glitter in his eyes. "But the brute's cold-blooded cunning is devilish! He meant to starve us to death because I threatened his contract!"

"That's not all. Mappin's dirt mean, but I guess he has a stronger count against you."

"Ah!" said Andrew sharply, as a light dawned on him. "I wonder whether you have hit the mark?"

In spite of the peril to which he was exposed he felt a thrill of satisfaction. It looked as if Mappin, whom he suspected of seeking Geraldine's favor, had some ground for believing him a successful rival. Perhaps the girl had inadvertently betrayed a preference for him. Mappin would not be driven into a risky course by impulse; he must have believed his jealousy well-founded. This was comforting; but Andrew had now to consider how he and his comrades were to escape from their difficulties.

"Couldn't we get across to the west fork?" he suggested.

"We'll try," said Carnally. "It's a rough bit of country."

"Very rough," Graham agreed. "A low range with steep rock on this side runs through it. I've no doubt Mappin knew that when he decided to make the cache on the other fork."

"Then suppose we can't get over?"

Carnally looked thoughtful.

"If that's so, we'll push on for the second cache."

They looked at him in astonishment and he smiled. "The cache is there – somewhere about the neck you told him of – though I guess he'll have had it put where we won't find it easily. Anyhow, it will have to be found and, when it comes to bush work, my head's as good as Mappin's."

Andrew made a gesture of assent. Apart from his knowledge of the wilds, Carnally had shown a power of close and accurate reasoning which had surprised him. Indeed, Andrew was inclined to think him a match for Mappin all round, and was glad of it, because there was no doubt that he needed a keen-witted supporter.

"There's another thing," Carnally remarked presently "Has it struck you that Hathersage may have given the hog a hint?"

Andrew flushed.

"No," he said sternly. "It's unthinkable! I can't discuss the point."

"Oh, well," acquiesced Carnally. "Now that we've decided what to do, we'd better get to sleep. We have to look for a way across the range the first thing to-morrow."

At noon the next day Andrew stood, breathless, half-way up a gully filled with hard snow. Walls of ice-glazed rock shut it in, but it led straight up the face of a towering crag toward an opening high above. Andrew carried a thick, sharp-pointed stick with which he had laboriously broken holes for his feet, because soft moccasins are treacherous things on a steep snow-slope. He and Carnally had spent half an hour over the ascent, and Andrew, looking up with a sinking heart, thought it would take them as long to reach the summit, provided they could avoid slipping, which was doubtful.

The gully lay in shadow, a long, deep rent, widening toward the bottom, in which the snow gleamed a soft blue-gray, though a ray of sunlight struck the beetling crag so that it flashed with steely brightness. Here and there a spur of rock broke the smooth surface and offered a resting-place, but some of the spaces between them seemed dangerously precipitous. Andrew, worn with hunger and fatigue, frowned at the sight.

"This looked the quickest way up and we haven't much time to lose," he said. "I'll feel very savage if we don't get a clear view from the top."

"You'll get that," replied Carnally, finding a precarious seat near by. "Whether you'll see a way through the rocks on the other side or not is another matter, and I'm doubtful. Better get a move on, hadn't you?"

Andrew placed his foot in a hole he had made, but the snow broke as he rested on it, and he slipped down several yards before the stick brought him up. He shuddered as he glanced below, for it struck him that had he slid a little farther he would not have stopped until he reached the bottom.

"This is an abominable slope," he exclaimed. "I've been on worse in Switzerland, but I had an ice-ax and wasn't half starved then. However, we'll have another try."

He got up twenty yards, clawing at the snow, and then stopped for breath, glancing ruefully at his mittens, which showed signs of wearing through.

"It means frost-bitten hands if these things give out, and they won't stand much more," he said. "The worst of it is that you think we'll find we have wasted our labor when we get to the top. I believe I could feel cheerful if I could see Mappin crawling up after us."

"Mappin has more sense. He stays in his office, which is how money is made. You don't, as a rule, get much for doing this kind of thing. Still, he has to take some chances, and one he didn't size up right is going back on him. When I'm feeling tired and hungry I like to think of my meeting with that man."

"When you're feeling tired and hungry!" Andrew exclaimed. "I feel both all the time!"

"Well," returned Carnally, "what can you expect? If you will make trouble instead of letting things alone, you must take the consequences. Now, if you had been a sensible man and not worried about shareholders you have never seen, you might have been sitting down to your lunch at home. Think of it! A nice warm room, a butler, or somebody of the kind, bringing you a menu as long as your hand. Put you there right now, and you'd take the whole lot. Say, what do you have as a rule?"

"Stop!" said Andrew. "It won't bear thinking of! I know what I'll get for supper, and that's an inch or two of flinty bannock, burned black outside."

It was surface jesting and forced upon them, because they would not face the tragic possibilities of the situation before it was necessary. It was easier to do what could be done with a laugh. Still, they had not laughed much lately, until the imminence of disaster braced them to it.

Changing places now and then to relieve the leader of the work of breaking footholds, they reached the summit, and Andrew's heart sank as he gazed at the landscape which stretched away before him. The air was clear, bright sunshine glittered on the high rocks, but the snow in the shadow was steeped in ethereal blue; dark spruces broke the gleaming surface with a delicate intricacy of outline. The scene had a wild grandeur, but from Andrew's point of view it was inexpressibly discouraging. They had laboriously scaled the first and largest rampart, but beyond it lay a series of lower ridges with rugged and almost precipitous sides. The hollows, so far as he could see, were filled with spruce muskeg – the small rotting trees falling across each other with underbrush pushing up between. To traverse these places would be a very difficult matter.

"It looks pretty bad," he said slowly. "Mappin knew his business when he had the cache made on the wrong side of the range."

"He's smart," Carnally agreed. "A hard man to beat, and you want to use a full-sized club when you stand up to him; but I guess he'd go down if he got the right knock-out."

Andrew, tired and hungry, failed to see how the decisive blow could be given: there did not seem to be much probability of his ever coming to close quarters with his enemy. So far as his brief experience went, injustice was singularly hard to vanquish and the reformer's path rough.

"Couldn't we work around the hills to the other fork?" he asked.

"The grub would run out before we got there."

"I suppose we couldn't push straight across, leaving Graham until we came back?"

"We might, if we had time enough. I believe there's forty miles of this broken country. Look at it!"

Andrew had already done so, and it had daunted him. He remembered that they had been since sunrise reaching the top of the first ridge.

"Then what must be done?"

"My advice is to look for the second cache."

They turned back, following the crest until they found an easier but longer way down. Graham glanced at them sharply when they reached the camp, and guessed the truth, though Andrew tried to smile.

"Leave me behind," he urged.

"No," said Andrew firmly; "not while we have strength enough to haul the sled. There's no more to be said on that point. We're going on together to the gap in the long ridge."

"When do you mean to start?"

"Right now!" Carnally broke in. "Get the camp truck rolled up. We'll have mighty keen appetites before we make the cache."

In quarter of an hour they crossed the creek and toiled up a broken slope, and when they gained the top Andrew looked back at the island with a grim smile.

"Yesterday afternoon I came up that river at four miles an hour, looking forward to my supper like an epicure. Now I'm glad to see the last of the place."

"Quit talking!" said Carnally. "We can make a few minutes by a hustle down the pitch ahead."

They went down, stumbling and sliding, while Graham clung tightly to the lurching sled. Time was of vital importance to them now, for its flight could be measured by the exhaustion of their food supply. For the hour or two of daylight that remained Carnally drove his comrade hard, and it was with a strange savage hilarity that they rushed the sled down declivities and dragged it with many a crash and bump through thickets. Their course was roughly south and any deviation was intolerable. Night closed in, but it was far from dark and they held on until Andrew stumbled and fell. The sled struck him before he could get up, but a hard smile was on his lips when he rose shakily and looked about. There was an uncovered rock not far off with a few junipers growing beside it.

"This is far enough, Jake," he said. "You're bad to tire, but I don't suppose you feel equal to hauling another passenger."

They broke camp in the dark the next morning, and the forced marches they made during the next seven days wore the half-starved men terribly. Sometimes they had to contend with fresh snow, in which the sled runners sank; sometimes they plodded doggedly with lowered heads while a raging wind drove the stinging flakes into their pinched faces; and there were days of bitter frost when they could not keep warm. Still, they crept on across the rugged desolation, and one evening reached a belt of timber beneath a low range that stretched across their path. The ridge was broken by a gap a mile or two ahead, and it was there that Andrew had instructed Mappin to make the second cache. A crescent moon rose above the dark tree-tops as they lighted a fire. Andrew glanced at the hillside irresolutely.

"There's food up yonder, if we could get our hands on it, and I would enjoy a good supper, Heaven knows; but I don't feel equal to facing another disappointment," he said. "I'm afraid we'll have to wait until to-morrow."

"That's my feeling," Carnally agreed. "I've gone as far as I'm able, and that grub won't be found easily. You may as well gather some wood and fill the kettle."

When they had eaten the few morsels he allowed them they sat smoking beside the fire. The thin spruce boughs above them were laden with snow which now and then fell upon the brands; a malignant wind swept between the slender trunks and blew the smoke about the men. After a while the casual talk, which had cost them an effort to keep up, died away, and there was a long silence until Carnally spoke.

"I guess we're all thinking about those provisions. We'll look for them at sun-up. What I've been trying to do for several days is to put myself in Mappin's place."

"It must have been difficult," Andrew remarked. "If I thought you could do so, I'd disown you. But go on."

"Well," said Carnally, "we have agreed that he meant to make it hard for us to find the cache; but he'd try to fix things so the packers he sent up with the truck shouldn't guess his object. He wouldn't tell them to pick a place where nobody would think of looking."

"You're assuming that he'd employ honest men," Graham objected. "What's to prevent his hiring three or four toughs and bribing them to say nothing?"

"He's too smart," said Carnally promptly. "He'd know that if we got lost up here the fellows could keep striking him for money and he'd have to pay; while if we got through, there'd be a risk of our finding them and buying them over. Besides, men of the kind he'd want are scarce in the bush. If they're to be found, it's hanging round the saloons in the cities."

"Then we'll assume that the boys were square. That would make it harder for him and easier for us. What follows?"

Carnally drank some tea from a blackened can before he answered.

"This matter needs a lot of thinking out, and it looks as if our lives depended on our thinking right. Allinson's instructions to the hog seem to have been pretty clear, and he wouldn't plant the cache too far from the gap. Then he'd have to arrange things so the boys would think they'd dumped the truck in a handy place for a party coming down from the north."

"I believe he has never been up here," Andrew argued. "Are there any good maps? I couldn't get one."

"They're sketchy," Graham said. "My idea is that Mappin would get hold of a prospector who knows the country and have a good talk with him; but he wouldn't send him up with the other men."

"It's probable," agreed Carnally. "Well, in my opinion the provisions are lying south of the pass in one of the gulches leading down from the height of land, but not directly on our line of march. You can come up from Rain Bluff several ways, and the hog would mark a route for the boys which would bring them in, so far as he could figure, a bit outside the shortest track. We've got to find the gulch they'd pitch on. It's our brains against Mappin's."

"Your brains," Andrew corrected him.

Carnally knocked out his pipe.

"I allow I'll want a clear head to-morrow and I'm going to sleep."

He and Andrew left camp in the dark the next morning; but day had broken when they stood in the gap of the neck, looking down on the broken country beneath. For a short distance the descent from the pass was clearly defined, leading down a hollow among the rocks, but after that it opened out on to a scarp of hillside from which a number of ravines branched off and led to the banks of a frozen creek. They seemed to be filled with brush, and the spurs between them were rough. It was a difficult country to traverse, and Andrew realized with concern that the search might last several days.

"Take that right hand gulch," Carnally directed. "Follow it right down to the creek and come back up the next farther on, while I prospect east. If we find nothing in the ravines, we'll try the spurs."

"The obvious place is the gap we're standing in," Andrew pointed out. "How would Mappin get over that without making his packers suspicious?"

"I thought of it," said Carnally. "He'd contend that he was afraid the cache might get snowed up; and it would be a pretty good reason. The drifts pile up deep in a gap like this."

Andrew left him and spent a long while climbing down a rough ravine which led him to the river. It was noon when he came back up another and the exertion had told on him, but they had long ago dispensed with a midday meal and he held on at a dragging pace until a thrill ran through him at the sight of a tall pole among the rocks ahead. He made for it in haste, floundering over the snow-covered stones, and lost it once or twice at a bend in the gully. At last he stopped in the bottom of the hollow, looking up at a steep face of rock. It was ragged and broken, glazed with ice in some places, and he doubted whether he could get up; but a foot or two of the pole rose above the top. Following up the gully, he looked for an easier ascent, but he could not find one. Fearing to lose the pole, he stopped and shouted on the chance that Carnally might be in the neighborhood. Presently a cry answered him, and when Carnally came scrambling down the hollow Andrew took him back and pointed out the pole.

"A dead fir!" cried Carnally. "Looks as if somebody had broken the branches off, and there are no other trees about! The trouble is, we can't get up from here."

"We will have to!" declared Andrew. "If you could give me a lift up over the worst bits, I'd help you when I had found a hold. Anyway, we must try!"

Carnally consented dubiously. The rock was about thirty feet in height and very steep, though there were several crevices and broken edges. Andrew ascended one of the latter, gripping it with hands and knees. Reaching a narrow ledge, he leaned down and gave his hand to Carnally, and when he had helped him up they stopped for a minute or two. They were weak and hungry, and there was an awkward bulge above.

"Steady me up," said Andrew. "If I can find a crack for my hand, I can get up there."

For a few moments he rested his foot on Carnally's back; then he pressed his toes against the stone and his comrade watched him disappear beyond the bulging rock with unpleasant sensations, knowing that he would have to follow. Presently, however, the bottom of Andrew's fur coat fell over the edge and Carnally, seizing it, scrambled up three or four feet, until the projecting stone forced him outward. Losing hold with his feet, he hung by his hands for a moment or two, in a state of horrible fear.

"Throw one arm over the projection!" Andrew shouted.

Carnally found a hold; Andrew seized his arm; and after an arduous struggle he stood, gasping, on a snowy knob. The sharp edge of a big slab rose eight or nine feet above him.

"Take a rest," advised Andrew. "If you go slowly, you ought to get up this last bit."

"I'll have to try. It's a sure thing I can't get down. But how d'you come to be so smart at this work?"

"I used to do something like it in Switzerland."

"Well," said Carnally, "you're a curious kind of man: I guess you didn't have to climb. I'd find it a bit too exciting if I wasn't doing it for money."