CHAPTER XVIII

THE WINTERING PLACE

On the second day they crossed the Skeena, a risky and tedious piece of business, for the river ran deep and strong. And shortly after this crossing they came to a line of wire strung on poles. Originally a fair pa.s.sageway had been cleared through low brush and dense timber alike. A pathway of sorts still remained, though dim and little trodden and littered with down trees of various sizes. Bill followed this.

"What is the wire? A rural telephone? Oh, I remember you told me once--that Yukon telegraph," Hazel remarked.

"Uh-huh. That's the famous Telegraph Trail," Bill answered. "Runs from Ashcroft clear to Dawson City, on the Yukon; that is, the line does. There's a lineman's house every twenty miles or so, and an operator every forty miles. The best thing about it is that it furnishes us with a sort of a road. And that's mighty lucky, for there's some tough going ahead of us."

So long as they held to the Telegraph Trail the way led through fairly decent country. In open patches there was ample grazing for their horses. Hills there were, to be sure; all the land rolled away in immense forested billows, but the mountains stood off on the right and left, frowning in the distance. A plague of flies hara.s.sed them continually, Hazel's hands suffering most, even though she kept religiously to thick buckskin gloves. The poisonous bites led to scratching, which bred soreness. And as they gained a greater elevation and the timbered bottoms gave way to rocky hills over which she must perforce walk and lead her horse, the sweat of the exertion stung and burned intolerably, like salt water on an open wound.

Minor hardships, these; scarcely to be dignified by that name, more in the nature of aggravated discomforts they were. But they irked, and, like any acc.u.mulation of small things, piled up a disheartening total.

By imperceptible degrees the glamour of the trail, the lure of gypsying, began to lessen. She found herself longing for the Pine River cabin, for surcease from this never-ending journey. But she would not have owned this to Roaring Bill; not for the world. It savored of weakness, disloyalty. She felt ashamed. Still--it was no longer a pleasure jaunt. The country they bore steadily up into grew more and more forbidding. The rugged slopes bore no resemblance to the kindly, peaceful land where the cabin stood. Swamps and reedy lakes lurked in low places. The hills stood forth grim and craggy, gashed with deep-cleft gorges, and rising to heights more grim and desolate at the uttermost reach of her vision. And into the heart of this, toward a far-distant area where she could faintly distinguish virgin snow on peaks that pierced the sky, they traveled day after day.

Shortly before reaching Station Six they crossed the Naas, foaming down to the blue Pacific. And at Station Seven, Bill turned squarely off the Telegraph Trail and struck east by north. It had been a break in the monotony of each day's travel to come upon the lonely men in their little log houses. When they turned away from the single wire that linked them up with the outer world, it seemed to Hazel as if the profound, disquieting stillness of the North became intensified.

Presently the way grew rougher. If anything, Roaring Bill increased his pace. He himself no longer rode. When the steepness of the hills and canons made the going hard the packs were redivided, and henceforth Satin bore on his back a portion of the supplies. Bill led the way tirelessly. Through flies, river crossings, camp labor, and all the petty irritations of the trail he kept an unruffled spirit, a fine, enduring patience that Hazel marveled at and admired. Many a time, wakening at some slight stir, she would find him cooking breakfast. In every way within his power he saved her.

"I got to take good care of you, little person," he would say. "I'm used to this sort of thing, and I'm tough as buckskin. But it sure isn't proving any picnic for you. It's a lot worse in this way than I thought it would be. And we've got to get in there before the snow begins to fly, or it will play the d.i.c.kens with us."

Many a strange shift were they put to. Once Bill had to fell a great spruce across a twenty-foot crevice. It took him two days to hew it flat so that his horses could be led over. The depth was bottomless to the eye, but from far below rose the cavernous growl of rushing water, and Hazel held her breath as each animal stepped gingerly over the narrow bridge. One misstep--

Once they climbed three weary days up a precipitous mountain range, and, turned back in sight of the crest by an impa.s.sable cliff, were forced to back track and swing in a fifty-mile detour.

In an air line Roaring Bill's destination lay approximately two hundred miles north--almost due north--of Hazleton. By the devious route they were compelled to take the distance was doubled, more than doubled.

And their rate of progress now fell short of a ten-mile average.

September was upon them. The days dwindled in length, and the nights grew to have a frosty nip.

Early and late he pushed on. Two camp necessities were fortunately abundant, gra.s.s and water. Even so, the stress of the trail told on the horses. They lost flesh. The extreme steepness of succeeding hills bred galls under the heavy packs. They grew leg weary, no longer following each other with sprightly step and heads high. Hazel pitied them, for she herself was trail weary beyond words. The vagabond instinct had fallen asleep. The fine aura of romance no longer hovered over the venture.

Sometimes when dusk ended the day's journey and she swung her stiffened limbs out of the saddle, she would cheerfully have foregone all the gold in the North to be at her ease before the fireplace in their distant cabin, with her man's head nesting in her lap, and no toll of weary miles looming sternly on the morrow's horizon. It was all work, trying work, the more trying because she sensed a latent uneasiness on her husband's part, an uneasiness she could never induce him to embody in words. Nevertheless, it existed, and she resented its existence--a trouble she could not share. But she could not put her finger on the cause, for Bill merely smiled a denial when she mentioned it.

Nor did she fathom the cause until upon a certain day which fell upon the end of a week's wearisome traverse of the hardest country yet encountered. Up and up and still higher he bore into a range of beetling crags, and always his gaze was fixed steadfastly and dubiously on the serrated backbone toward which they ascended with infinite toil and hourly risk, skirting sheer cliffs on narrow rock ledges, working foot by foot over declivities where the horses dug their hoofs into a precarious toe hold, and where a slip meant broken bones on the ragged stones below. But win to the uppermost height they did, where an early snowfall lay two inches deep in a thin forest of jack pine.

They broke out of a canon up which they had struggled all day onto a level plot where the pine stood in somber ranks. A spring creek split the flat in two. Beside this tiny stream Bill unlashed his packs. It still lacked two hours of dark. But he made no comment, and Hazel forbore to trouble him with questions. Once the packs were off and the horses at liberty. Bill caught up his rifle.

"Come on, Hazel," he said. "Let's take a little hike."

The flat was small, and once clear of it the pines thinned out on a steep, rocky slope so that westward they could overlook a vast network of canons and mountain spurs. But ahead of them the mountain rose to an upstanding backbone of jumbled granite, and on this backbone Bill Wagstaff bent an anxious eye. Presently they sat down on a bowlder to take a breathing spell after a stiff stretch of climbing. Hazel slipped her hand in his and whispered:

"What is it, Billy-boy?"

"I'm afraid we can't get over here with the horses," he answered slowly. "And if we can't find a pa.s.s of some kind--well, come on! It isn't more than a quarter of a mile to the top."

He struck out again, clambering over great bowlders, clawing his way along rocky shelves, with a hand outstretched to help her now and then.

Her perceptions quickened by the hint he had given, Hazel viewed the long ridge for a possible crossing, and she was forced to the reluctant conclusion that no hoofed beast save mountain sheep or goat could cross that divide. Certainly not by the route they were taking. And north and south as far as she could see the backbone ran like a solid wall.

It was a scant quarter mile to the top, beyond which no farther mountain crests showed--only clear, blue sky. But it was a stretch that taxed her endurance to the limit for the next hour. Just short of the top Bill halted, and wiped the sweat out of his eyes. And as he stood his gaze suddenly became fixed, a concentrated stare at a point northward. He raised his gla.s.ses.

"By thunder!" he exclaimed. "I believe--it's me for the top."

He went up the few remaining yards with a haste that left Hazel panting behind. Above her he stood balanced on a bowlder, cut sharp against the sky, and she reached him just as he lowered the field gla.s.ses with a long sigh of relief. His eyes shone with exultation.

"Come on up on the perch," he invited, and reached forth a long, muscular arm, drawing her up close betide him on the rock.

"Behold the Promised Land," he breathed, "and the gateway thereof, lying a couple of miles to the north."

They were, it seemed to Hazel, roosting precariously on the very summit of the world. On both sides the mountain pitched away sharply in rugged folds. Distance smoothed out the harsh declivities, blurred over the tremendous canons. Looking eastward, she saw an ample basin, which gave promise of level ground on its floor. True, it was ringed about with sky-sc.r.a.ping peaks, save where a small valley opened to the south. Behind them, between them and the far Pacific rolled a sea of mountains, snow-capped, glacier-torn, gigantic.

"Down there," Roaring Bill waved his hand, "there's a little meadow, and turf to walk on. Lord, I'll be glad to get out of these rocks!

You'll never catch me coming in this way again. It's sure tough going.

And I've been scared to death for a week, thinking we couldn't get through."

"But we can?"

"Yes, easy," he a.s.sured. "Take the gla.s.ses and look. That flat we left our outfit in runs pretty well to the top, about two miles along.

Then there's a notch in the ridge that you can't get with the naked eye, and a wider canon running down into the basin. It's the only decent break in the divide for fifty miles so far as I can see. This backbone runs to high mountains both north and south of us--like the great wall of China. We're lucky to hit this pa.s.s."

"Suppose we couldn't get over here?" Hazel asked. "What if there hadn't been a pa.s.s?"

"That was beginning to keep me awake nights," he confessed. "I've been studying this rock wall for a week. It doesn't look good from the east side, but it's worse on the west, and I couldn't seem to locate the gap I spotted from the basin one time. And if we couldn't get through, it meant a hundred miles or more back south around that white peak you see. Over a worse country than we've come through--and no cinch on getting over at that. Do you realize that it's getting late in the year? Winter may come--bing!--inside of ten days. And me caught in a rock pile, with no cabin to shelter my best girl, and no hay up to feed my horses! You bet it bothered me."

She hugged him sympathetically, and Bill smiled down at her.

"But it's plain sailing now," he continued. "I know that basin and all the country beyond it. It's a pretty decent camping place, and there's a fairly easy way out."

He bestowed a rea.s.suring kiss upon her. They sat on the bowlder for a few minutes, then scrambled downhill to the jack-pine flat, and built their evening fire. And for the first time in many days Roaring Bill whistled and lightly burst into s.n.a.t.c.hes of song in the deep, bellowing voice that had given him his name back in the Cariboo country. His humor was infectious. Hazel felt the G.o.ds of high adventure smiling broadly upon them once more.

Before daybreak they were up and packed. In the dim light of dawn Bill picked his way up through the jack-pine flat. With easy traveling they made such time as enabled them to cross through the narrow gash--cut in the divide by some glacial offshoot when the Klappan Range was young--before the sun, a ball of molten fire, heaved up from behind the far mountain chain.

At noon, two days later, they stepped out of a heavy stand of spruce into a sun-warmed meadow, where ripe, yellow gra.s.ses waved to their horses' knees. Hazel came afoot, a fresh-killed deer lashed across Silk's back.

Bill hesitated, as if taking his bearings, then led to where a rocky spur of a hill jutted into the meadow's edge. A spring bubbled out of a pebbly basin, and he poked about in the gra.s.s beside it with his foot, presently stooping to pick up something which proved to be a short bit of charred stick.

"The remains of my last camp fire," he smiled reminiscently. "Packs off, old pal. We're through with the trail for a while."

CHAPTER XIX

FOUR WALLS AND A ROOF

To such as view with a kindly eye the hushed areas of virgin forest and the bold cliffs and peaks of mountain ranges, it is a joy to tread unknown trails, camping as the spirit moves, journeying leisurely and in decent comfort from charming spot to spots more charming. With no spur of need to drive, such inconsequential wandering gives to each day and incident an added zest. Nature appears to have on her best bib and tucker for the occasion. The alluring finger of the unknown beckons alluringly onward, so that if one should betimes strain to physical exhaustion in pursuit, that is a matter of no moment whatever.

But it is a different thing to face the wilderness for a purpose, to journey in haste toward a set point, with a penalty swift and sure for failure to reach that point in due season. Especially is this so in the high lat.i.tudes. Natural barriers uprear before the traveler, barriers which he must scale with sweat and straining muscles. He must progress by devious ways, seeking always the line of least resistance.

The season of summer is brief, a riot of flowers and vegetation. A certain number of weeks the land smiles and flaunts gay flowers in the shadow of the ancient glaciers. Then the frost and snow come back to their own, and the long nights shut down like a pall.

Brought to it by a kindlier road, Hazel would have found that nook in the Klappan Range a pleasant enough place. She could not deny its beauty. It snuggled in the heart of a wild tangle of hills all turreted and battlemented with ledge and pinnacle of rock, from which ran huge escarpments clothed with spruce and pine, scarred and gashed on every hand with slides and deep-worn watercourses, down which tumultuous streams rioted their foamy way. And nestled amid this, like a precious stone in its ma.s.sive setting, a few hundred acres of level, gra.s.sy turf dotted with trees. Southward opened a narrow valley, as if pointing the road to a less rigorous land. No, she could not deny its beauty. But she was far too trail weary to appreciate the grandeur of the Klappan Range. She desired nothing so much as rest and comfort, and the solemn mountains were neither restful nor soothing. They stood too grim and aloof in a lonely land.