He was up long before the late dawn, and it was still early when we waded scarcely knee-deep among the boulders of a curiously shrunken stream.

Smooth-ground rocks c.u.mbered its bed, and the muddy water that gurgled among them was stained red instead of the usual glacial green, while, as I wondered where the rest had gone, the prospector remarked, "These blamed rivers are low in winter, but I never saw one quite so ashamed of itself as this. It's the snow-slide we heard last night damming the valley, and there'll be a rush worth seeing when it does break through."

I had occasion afterward to learn that he was right, but meanwhile we followed the banks of the river up-stream, still looking for the gorge.

Several times the prospector fancied that he identified a transverse opening, and then confessed that he was not even sure of the river, because, as he said, there were so everlasting many of them. Johnston grew more and more uneasy, until, when I called a halt as the sun bore south, he looked at me appealingly, and I agreed to continue until there was just time enough left to reach our previous camp by nightfall. So we held on, and finally he turned to me.

"I've played the last game and lost it," he said. "Well, you kept your part of the bargain; I'll keep mine. It's take up the home-trail, boys, we're going back to camp."

He said it lightly, but I could tell that he felt the disappointment bitterly, while even I, who had expected nothing, wheeled the pack-horse around with an angry growl. It was toward dusk when we neared the creek we had crossed in the morning, but it was no longer shrunken. Evidently the dam of debris had given way, for it roared in full flood now, and it was with anxiety that we quickened our pace. The hillsides loomed black out of chilly mist that wrapped the serried ranks of climbing pines in their smoky folds. It was not yet dark in the valley, but the light was dying fast, and a bitter breeze swept down a darkening gorge, bringing with it the moan of an unseen forest until presently this was lost in the voice of the frothing torrent before us. There was neither fuel nor shelter on that side, and we determined to attempt the crossing, for, as Harry said, "Hunger alone is bad, but hunger and cold together are worth an effort to avoid."

The prospector waded in foremost, sounding with a long fir pole. The stream swirled in white wreaths about his waist, and Johnston turned to speak to me, standing a few yards nearer with the ripples at his knee; then I grasped the pack-horse's bridle and forced it into the water. The beast carried a heavy load, including most of our blankets, and almost the entire balance of our provisions. A rusty rifle was slung behind my shoulders, besides tools and utensils, and Johnston was similarly caparisoned, so I felt my way cautiously as the ice-cold waters frothed higher about me. Near by, the creek poured into the main river, which swept with a great black swirling into the gloom of the forest.

All went well until we gained the center of the stream, and then a loose stone turned under the horse's hoof, or it sank into a deeper hollow, for there was a plunge and a flounder, and, jerked sideways by the bridle, I went down headforemost into the stream. This was a common enough accident, but the bridle slipped from my fingers, and when some seconds later I stood erect, gasping, with the torrent racing past me, the horse was swimming down-stream a dozen yards away, while Johnston struggled in that direction to intercept it.

"Let it go!" I roared. "Water's deepening; you'll be sucked out into the main river," and caught the answer, "All our provisions there!" after which there was a confused shouting, which ended in the warning, "For the Lord's sake, Johnston, look out for yourself!"

I could see that our best chance of rendering a.s.sistance would be to cross and try to overtake them from the further bank, and a few seconds later I was clattering over the shingle with the prospector close behind me. But we were already too late. When, waist-deep, I floundered down a shingle spit, the half-submerged beast, handicapped by its burden, swept past out of reach, and I caught a momentary glimpse of a wet white face and a man's uplifted arm before a tumbling ridge splashed up and hid them.

"Couldn't never overtake them, but it's running slacker in the river," the prospector said.

We smashed through a willow thicket which covered a little promontory, and then, staring wide-eyed under the branches, I saw an indistinct object lurch unevenly into the froth of a rapid, and so pa.s.s the next instant out of sight. Whether it was man or horse no one could say.

"He's gone," said the grizzled prospector. "Many another has gone the same way. Find them! Of course, we'll search, but I guess it's hopeless. Don't think your partner was great on swimming, and he was loaded heavy. Come on, daylight's going."

For a moment I felt limp and abject, then in savage fury I broke through barberry branches and th.o.r.n.y brakes, fell into the river, and blundered down a shoaler portion of its channel, until I brought up breathless on the verge of a deep boiling pool, while even as I stared across it the last of the day went out.

"It sounds hard," said the prospector, "but you can't do nothin'. No man could make his way through this bush in the dark, and it wouldn't be any good. Your partner never got so far. We can only say we're sorry, and strike back for camp."

He was right, though I think I cursed him for cowardice then. We struggled on through a horrible chaos of tangled forest, but each time when, peering out between the dark fir branches, I cried aloud, the blackness returned no answer save the boom of angry water. So, bruised, wet, and bleeding, I struggled back toward the fatal creek, and found that my lips would not frame words to answer when Harry said:

"It was horrible, Ralph. I'd give all our hopes and prospects to have the poor fellow safe again. But there's no help for it, and somehow I fancy it was a release. You remember how he looked when he said that this was his last march?"

We lighted a fire, dried our garments and the blankets that were left us, then Harry flung aside the battered camp spider, and drew out a flask.

"Ten pounds of flour, five of reist.i.t pork--and that's what he gave his life for. No, I don't think I could eat anything to-night. Here, empty half of this, Ralph, you're shaking all over," and Harry lifted his hat as he touched the metal cup with his lips: "Good rest to you, comrade," he said.

I choked over the mouthful of spirits, which I needed badly enough, and then sat shivering wide awake beside the fire through the long bitter night, while when at daybreak I called the others, they both rose with a suspicious readiness. For hours we wandered along the river bank, but found nothing whatever beyond conclusive evidence that even the best swimmer could hardly have come out of that icy flood alive. Then dejectedly we strapped up our traps, and turned our backs on the dismal camp. We halted and looked back a moment on the crest of the divide.

"The beast was badly played out," the guide said, "the man was loaded.

Thirty pounds and a rifle--and he couldn't hardly swim. He's gone out on the lonely trail, but whether there's gold at the end of it no living man can say. Maybe you'll find out some day when you follow him."

Then in mournful silence we turned away, and that night we ate our last mouthful in another valley, and forgot the gnawing hunger in broken sleep, through which a wet face persistently haunted me. When we arose there was not even a handful of caked flour in the damp bag, and during a discussion the miner, in reply to Harry's statement, said it did not follow that there were no deer or bear in the country because we had not seen them.

Men tramping noisily behind shod horses do not generally chance upon the shy deer, he pointed out; while if two previous hunts had proved unsuccessful, we might do better on the third. It was at least four days'

march to the nearest dwelling, and I agreed with his observation that no starving men could march for four days through such a country. So, to enhance our chances, the company divided, agreeing to meet again, if they killed nothing, at the same spot by sunset.

It was with a heavy heart and my belt drawn tighter that I left the others, carrying a loaded rifle, which seemed to increase considerably in weight. Now, even well north in British Columbia, especially if near the Pacific, there are favored valleys sunk deep among the ranges and open to the west which escape the harder frost, and as this was one of them I determined to search the half-frozen muskegs for bear. The savage grizzly lives high under the ragged peaks, the even fiercer cinnamon haunts the thinly-covered slopes below, but I had no desire to encounter either of them, for the flesh of the little vegetable-feeding black bear is by no means unpalatable, especially to starving men.

So I prowled from swamp to swamp, seeing nothing but the sickly trunks which grew up out of thinly frozen slime, while no sound made by either bird or beast broke the impressive silence of the primeval solitude. At last, when the day was nearly spent, I crawled toward a larger muskeg, which spread out from a running creek, and knelt in congealed mire behind a blighted spruce, listening intently, for a sound I recognized set my heart beating. All around, dwindling in gradations as the soil grew wetter, the firs gave place to willows, and there was mud and ice cake under them. Peering hard into the deepening shadows, I saw what I had expected--a patch of s.h.a.ggy fur. This was one of the small black bears, and the creature was grubbing like a hog among the decaying weed for the roots of the wild cabbage, which flourishes in such places. Some of these bears hibernate in winter, I believe, but by no means all, for the bush settlers usually hunt them then for their fur. No summer peltry is worth much.

I was only a fair shot with the rifle, and the strip of black, half seen between the branches, would prove a difficult mark in an uncertain light, while it was probable that three lives might answer for the bear's escape.

So I waited, aching in every joint, while my hands grew stiffer on the rifle stock, but still the beast refrained from making a target of itself, until, knowing that it would soon be too dark to shoot, I had to force the crisis. A strange sound might lead the quarry to show himself an instant before taking flight, and so I moistened my blue lips and whistled shrilly. A plump rotund body rose from the weeds, sixty yards away, I guessed, and I pitched up the rifle, dropping my left elbow well over my knee and steadying the cold barrel against the tree.

Sixty yards and a two-foot target, what need for such precautions? one hears the marksmen say, and when stalking sand-hill cranes in warm sunlight now I can agree with them. But I was nearly famished, stiff with cramp and cold, and shooting then for bare existence. With a half-articulate prayer I increased the pressure on the trigger as the fore-bead trembled--it would tremble--across the fur. The bear was clearly suspicious. He would be off the next moment, the trigger was yielding, and with a sudden stiffening of every muscle I added the final pressure as the notch in the rear-sight and the center of the body came for a moment in line. I heard no explosion--one rarely does when watching the result intently--but there was a red flash from the tilting muzzle, and the heel-plate jarred my shoulder. Then I growled with satisfaction as almost simultaneously I heard a sound there was no mistaking, the crunch of a forty-four bullet smashing through flesh and bone. The bear was down, straggling among the weed, and plunging straight through the muskeg I fell upon it, and, after burning another cartridge with the muzzle against the flesh, I drove the long knife in to the hilt.

Next I rose stiffly upright, ensanguined, with wild gasps of thankfulness, and sent a hoa.r.s.e cry ringing across the woods, after which I sat down on the fur and stabbed the lifeless brute twice again, for I was filled with a childish fear that even now it might escape me. This was needless, and even barbarous, but to one in my position it was natural.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE BRINK OF ETERNITY

A shout came down from the range side, and when the others joined me even Harry surveyed the bear with wolfish eyes, while it did not take long to perform what the French-Canadians call the _eventrer_, and, smeared red all over, we bore the dismembered carca.s.s into camp. We feasted like wild beasts--we were frankly animal then--and it was not until hunger was satisfied that we remembered the empty place. Then we drew closer together, and, though it was mere fancy, the gloom of the forest seemed to thicken round the circle of fading firelight, as Harry said:

"He was the life of the party at either work or feast. Ralph, we shall miss him sorely; a sound sleep to him!"

No one spoke again, and, drawing the two remaining blankets across the three, we sank into our couches of spruce twigs and slept soundly. It was after midnight, by the alt.i.tude of the moon, when the prospector roused me, and I sat up with chattering teeth, for there was a bitter wind.

"Don't you hear it?--there--again!" he said.

I was not quite awake, and, when a tramp of footsteps came faintly out of the obscurity, at first I felt only elation. Johnston had escaped and followed our trail, I thought. This was short-lived, and was replaced by superst.i.tious dread, for there could be no human being within leagues of us, and yet the ghostly footsteps drew steadily nearer and nearer. Even the miner, who had spent half his life in the ranges seemed uneasy, for he stretched out his hand for the rifle, and Harry started upright as a challenge rang through the stillness.

"Stop there, and call out what you want, whoever you are!"

There was no answer from the silence, only the footsteps still approaching, and Harry looked at me curiously when the miner called again.

"Keep back--tell us who you are before we fire on you!"

Then a hoa.r.s.e voice reached us: "If you have nothing to eat it won't matter much if you do. We are three starving men, and past doing anybody an injury."

"Come forward," I shouted. "We have food here," and three figures staggered into the glow of the fire. The foremost seemed familiar, and I could not repress a start when the red blaze leaped up, for Geoffrey Ormond stood before us leaning heavily on a rifle. His face was thin and furrowed, his coat badly rent, and his very att.i.tude spoke of utter weariness.

"Lorimer, by all that's wonderful!" he exclaimed. "You were not exactly friendly the last time we met. In fact, I almost fancied you wished to ride over me. I hope we're not intruding, but we're most confoundedly hungry."

The last words were unnecessary, for the way the men behind him glanced at the meat showed it plainly enough.

"I must apologize for a fit of temper," I said, holding out my hand, "but it happened near the settlements, and old quarrels don't hold up here. We have food to give you, and we hope that you will consider yourselves welcome."

They certainly did so, for more bear steaks were laid on the embers, and while one of the newcomers, stripping a cartridge, rubbed powder grains into the flesh another produced a few of the fern roots which in times of scarcity the Siwash Indians eat. When at last they had finished, one of the party, pushing back his fur cap, turned to me.

"You ought to remember me, Lorimer," he said.

"Of course I do, Calvert. Didn't you hire my horses, once?" I replied.

"You must take my meaning the right way when I say that I'm pleased to see you here. But what brought you and the others into this desolation?"

Calvert's eyes twinkled. "The same thing that brought you--stories of unlimited treasure. When I heard them I left my few machines--they were not working well, and humbly craved the autocratic president of the Day Spring mine's permission to join this expedition. The Day Spring was not prospering in such a degree that we could afford to ignore the rumors--eh, Geoffrey?"