The Long Portage.

by Harold Bindloss.

CHAPTER I

THE GLADWYNE EXPEDITION

Vernon Lisle was fishing with a determination that did not spring altogether from love of the sport. The water of the British Columbian river in which he stood knee-deep was icy cold; his rubber boots were badly ripped and leaky, and he was wet with the drizzle that drove down the lonely valley. It was difficult to reach the slack behind a boulder some distance outsh.o.r.e, and the arm he strained at every cast ached from hours of a.s.siduous labor; but there was another ache in his left side which was the result of insufficient food, and though the fish were shy he persevered.

A few hundred yards away the stream came roaring down a long declivity in a mad white rapid and then shot across the gla.s.sy green surface of the pool below in a raised-up wedge of foam. Wet boulders and outcropping fangs of rock hemmed in the water, and among them lay stranded logs and stream-packed ma.s.ses of whitened branches. Farther back, ragged cypresses and cedars, half obscured by the drifting haze of spray, climbed the sides of the gorge, and beyond rose the dim, rounded summits of treeless hills. There were streaks of snow on some of them, for winter threatened to close in unusually early.

With a lowering sky overhead and the daylight beginning to fade, it was a desolate picture; one into which the lonely figure of the man in tattered deerskin jacket and shapeless hat somehow fitted. His attire matched the gray-white coloring of rock and boulder; his spare form and agile movements, together with the intentness of his bronzed face and the steadiness of his eyes, hinted at the quickness of observation, the stubborn endurance, and the tireless activity, by which alone life can be maintained in the savage North. He had the alertness of the wild creatures of the waste; and it was needed.

All round him stretched a forbidding wilderness, part of the great desolation which runs north from the warmer and more hospitable thick-forest belt of British Columbia. Indeed, this wilderness, broken by the more level s.p.a.ces between the Rockies and Lake Winnipeg, runs right across Canada from Labrador to the Pacific on the northern edge of the heavy-timber line. It contains little human life--a few Hudson Bay fur-traders and the half-breed trappers who deal with them--and it is frozen for eight months in the year. There are only two practicable means of traversing it--with dog sledges on the snow, or by canoe on the lakes and rivers in the brief summer.

The water routes are difficult in British Columbia, but Lisle and his two companions had chosen to go by canoe, partly because the question of food is vitally important to men cut off from all source of supply except game, and even that is scarce in places. To transport upon one's back any weight of provisions besides tents, blankets, and other necessaries, through a rugged country is an almost impossible task. The men, accordingly, after relaying part of their stores, had secured an Indian craft and had paddled and poled her laboriously across lakes and up rivers. Now when their provisions were running short, they were confronted with a difficult portage round a thundering rapid.

At length Lisle, securing another trout, waded ash.o.r.e and glanced with a rueful smile at the dozen this one made. They scarcely averaged half a pound, and he had spent most of a day that could badly be spared in catching them. Plodding back along the shingle with his load, he reached a little level strip beneath a scarp of rock, where a fire blazed among the boulders. A tent stood beneath two or three small, wind-stunted spruces, and a ragged man in long river-boots lay resting on one elbow near the blaze, regardless of the drizzle. He was a few years over thirty, Lisle's age, and he differed from Lisle in that something in his appearance suggested that he was not at home in the wilds. As a matter of fact, Nasmyth was an adventurous English sportsman--which describes him fairly in person and character.

"Not many," he commented, glancing at the trout Lisle laid down. "They'll hardly carry us over to-morrow, and I only got a couple from the canoe with the troll. We've gained nothing by stopping here, and time's precious."

"A sure thing," Lisle agreed, beginning to clean the trout. "We'll tackle the portage as soon as it's light to-morrow. Where's Jake?"

"Gone off to look for a deer," was the answer. "Said he wouldn't come back without one if he camped on the range all night."

Lisle made no comment, but went on dexterously with his work, while Nasmyth watched him with half-amused admiration.

"You're handy at that and at everything else you do," Nasmyth remarked at length. "In fact, you easily beat Jake, though he's a professional packer and, so to speak, to the manner born."

"So am I," said Lisle.

It was growing dark, but the coppery glow of the fire fell upon his face, emphasizing the strong coloring of his weather-darkened skin. On the whole, it was a prepossessing face, clearly cut--indeed, it was a trifle thin--with a hint of quiet determination in the clear gray eyes and firm mouth. He looked capable of resolute action and, when it was needed, of Spartan self-denial. There was no suggestion of anything sensual, or even of much regard for bodily comfort.

"If you don't mind my being a little personal, I'd better own that I suspected the fact you mention, and it puzzled me," Nasmyth replied. "You see, when I first met you at the Empress Hotel, in Victoria, you were dressed and talked like the usual prosperous business man. Trafford, who introduced us, said that you had a good deal of money in some of the Yukon mines."

"Trafford was quite right. The point is that I took a part in locating two of the claims. Before that I followed a good many rough occupations, mostly in the bush. My prosperity's recent."

Nasmyth still looked curious, and Lisle smiled.

"I can guess your thoughts--I don't speak altogether like a bushman?

Well, my father was an Englishman, and my mother a lady of education from Montreal; that was why, at the cost of some self-denial on their part, I was sent East to school."

It was an incomplete explanation. He had inherited the Englishman's reticence, which forbade him to point out that his father sprang from an old family of standing and had, for some reason which his son had never learned, quarreled bitterly with his English relatives. Coming to Canada, he had married and taken up the bush life on a small and unremunerative ranch, where he had died and left his widow and his son badly provided for.

"Thank you," responded Nasmyth; and Lisle supposed it was in recognition of the fact that he would hardly have furnished even those few particulars to one whom he regarded as a stranger. "To reciprocate, a few words will make clear all there is to know about me. English public school, Oxford afterward--didn't take a degree. Spend most of my time in the country, though I make a few sporting trips abroad when I can afford it and have nothing better to do. That partly explains this journey. But I haven't tried to force your confidence, nor offered you mine, altogether casually."

"So I supposed," returned Lisle. "It strikes me that since we got near the Gladwyne expedition's line of march we have both felt that some explanation is needed. To go back a little, when I met you in Victoria and you offered to join me in the trip, I agreed partly because I wanted an intelligent companion, but I had another reason. At first I supposed you wished to go because a journey through a rough and little-known country seems to appeal to one kind of Englishman, but I changed my mind when you showed your anxiety to get upon the Gladwyne party's trail."

"You were right. I knew the Gladwynes in England; the one who died was an old and valued friend of mine. I could give you the history of their march, though I hardly think that's needful. You seem remarkably well acquainted with it."

Lisle's face hardened. With the exception of one man, he knew more than anybody else about the fatal journey a party of four had made a year earlier through the region he and Nasmyth were approaching.

"I am," he said. "There's a cause for it; but I'll ask you to tell me what you know."

He threw more branches on the fire and a crackling blaze sprang aloft, forcing up the ragged spruce boughs out of the surrounding gloom.

"This is the survivor's narrative. I heard it from his own lips more than once," began Nasmyth. "I dare say most of it's a kind of story that's not unusual in the North."

"It's one that has been repeated with local variations over and over again. But go on."

"There were two Gladwynes--cousins. George, the elder of the two, was a man of means and position; Clarence, the younger, had practically nothing--two or three hundred pounds a year. They were both sportsmen--George was a bit of a naturalist--and they made the expedition with the idea of studying the scarcer game. Well, their provisions were insufficient; an Indian packer deserted them; they were delayed here and there; and when they reached the river that we are making for they were badly worn out and winter was closing in. Knowing it was dangerous to go any farther, they started down-stream to strike their outgoing trail, but not long afterward they wrecked their canoe in a rapid and lost everything except a few pounds of provisions. To make things worse, George had fallen from a slippery rock at the last portage and badly hurt his leg. After making a few leagues with difficulty, he found he could go no farther, and they held a council. They were already suffering from want of food, but their guide estimated that by a forced march overland they might reach a place where some skin-hunters were supposed to be camped. There was a Hudson Bay post farther away. On coming up they had cached some provisions in two places on opposite sides of the river--they kept crossing to pole through the easiest slack. George accordingly insisted that the others go on; each was to follow a different bank and the first to find the provisions was to try to communicate with the other and hurry back with food. If they were unable to locate the caches they were to leave the river and push on in search of help. They agreed; but deep snow had fallen and Clarence Gladwyne failed to find the cache. He reached the hunters' camp famishing, and they went back with him.

He found his cousin dead."

"And the guide?"

"It's rather an ugly story. You must have heard it."

"I haven't heard the one Gladwyne told in England."

"The guide reached the Hudson Bay post--a longer journey than the one Gladwyne made--in the last stage of exhaustion. He had taken very little food with him--Gladwyne knew exactly how much--and the Hudson Bay agent decided that it was impossible he could have covered the distance on the minute quant.i.ty. There was only one inference."

"That he had found the cache?" Lisle's face grew very stern.

Nasmyth nodded.

"In a way, there was some slight excuse for him. Think of it--a worn-out, famishing man, without blankets or means of making a fire, who had struggled over icy rocks and through leagues of snow, finding a few cans of provisions and a little moldy flour! Even when he had satisfied his hunger, he was, no doubt, unequal to making the return journey to rejoin a man who was probably already dead."

"If that man had found a sc.r.a.p of food, he would have tried!"

Lisle's voice had a curious ring in it, and Nasmyth looked at him hard.

"You seem convinced."

"I am; I knew him well."

Nasmyth was startled and he showed it, but afterward he looked thoughtful.

"I believe I understand," he said.

For a minute or two there was silence which was broken only by the snapping of the branches on the fire and the hollow roar of the rapid.

The latter had a curious, irritating effect on Nasmyth, who hitherto had scarcely noticed the insistent pulsatory clamor. At length Lisle spoke again, laying a strong restraint upon himself.

"Our mutual friend called me Lisle at the Empress Hotel. I don't think he mentioned my first name, Vernon; and as that was the name of Gladwyne's guide I kept it in the background. I was anxious to take you with me; I wanted an Englishman of some standing in the old country whose word would be believed. What was more, I wanted an honest man who would form an unbiased opinion. I didn't know then that you were a friend of Gladwyne's."

Nasmyth made a slight gesture which suggested the acknowledgment of a compliment.