Ben sat dreaming. The Athabaska Rapids was not an empty name to him now.

He remembered the day he had won the canoe race at Lodge Pole. Other exploits occurred to him,--of brutal, savage brawls in river taverns, of adventures on the trail, of struggling with wild rivers when his canoe capsized, of running the great logs down through white waters. It was his world, these far-stretching wildernesses. And he blessed, with all the fervency of his heart, the man who had brought him home.

He went to his bed, but sleep did not at once come to him. He lay with hushed breathing, listening to the little, secret noises, known so well, of the wilderness night. He heard the wild creatures start forth on their midnight journeys. Once a lynx mewed at the edge of the forest; and he laughed aloud when some large creature--probably a moose--grunted and splashed water in the near-by beaver meadow.

Thus ended the first of a brilliant succession of joyous days, descending the stream in the daylight hours and camping on the bank at night. Every day they plunged deeper into the heart of the wilderness, and every hour Ben felt more at home.

It was only play for him,--to meet and shoot successfully the rapids of the river. In the long stillnesses he paddled hour upon hour, not only to make time but to find an outlet for his surging energy. His old-time woodsman's pleasures were recalled again: shooting waterfowl for their mess in the still dawns, racing the swimming moose when they ran on him in the water. One day, fish hungry, he rigged up the elementary fishing tackle that they had brought from Saltsville and tried for a salmon.

To a long, tough rod cut on the river bank he attached thirty feet of cheap, white cord, and to the cord he fastened a bright spoon hook--the spinner that salmon fishers know. He had no leader, no reel, no delicately balanced salmon rod--and Ezram was full of scorn for the whole proceeding. And it was certainly true that, by all the rules of angling, Ben had no chance whatever to get a bite.

The cord was visible in the clear water, and the spoon itself was scarcely more than twenty feet from the rear of the boat. But this northern stream was not at all like the famous salmon rivers known to sportsmen. In years to come, when the lines of communication are better and tourist hotels are established on its banks, the river may then begin to conform to the qualifications of a conventional fishing stream, and then Ben's crude tackle will be unavailing. But at present the salmon were not so particular. As fishermen came but rarely, the fish were in countless numbers; and in such a galaxy there were bound to be few misguided fish that did not know a sportsman's tackle from a dub's.

The joy of angling, once known, dwells in the body until death, and Ben was a born fisherman. The old delight that can never die crept back to him the instant he felt the clumsy rod in his hands and the faint throb of the line through the delicate mechanism of his nerves. And apparently for no other reason than that the river hordes wished to welcome him home, almost at once a gigantic bull salmon took his spoon.

Ezram's first knowledge of it was a wild yell that almost startled him over the side--the same violent outcry that old anglers still can not restrain when the fish takes hold, even after a lifetime of angling.

When he recovered himself he looked to see Ben kneeling frantically in the stern, hanging for dear life to his rod and seemingly in grave danger of being pulled overboard.

No man who has felt that first, overpowering jolt of a striking salmon can question the rapture of that first moment. The jolt carried through all the intricacies of the nerves, jarred the soul within the man, and seemingly registered in the germ plasm itself an impression that could be recalled, in dreams, ten generations hence. Fortunately the pole withstood that first, frantic rush, and then things began to happen in earnest.

The great trout seemed to dance on the surface of the water. He tugged, he swam in frantic circles, he flopped and darted and sulked and rushed and leaped. If he hadn't been securely hooked, and if it had not been for a skill earned in a hundred such battles, Ben would not have held him a moment.

But the time came at last, after a sublime half-hour, when his steam began to die. His rushes were less powerful, and often he hung like a dead weight on the line. Slowly Ben worked him in, not daring to believe that he was conquering, willing to sell his soul for the privilege of seeing the great fish safe in the boat. His eyes protruded, perspiration gleamed on his brow, he talked foolishly and incessantly to Ezram, the fish, the river-G.o.ds, and himself. Ezram, something of an old Isaac Walton himself, managed the canoe with unusual dexterity and chuckled in the contagion of Ben's delight. And lo--in a moment more the thing was done.

"You'd think you never had a rod in your hand before," Ezram commented in mock disgust. "Such hollerin' and whoopin' I never heard."

Ben grinned widely. "That's fishing--the sport that keeps a man an amateur all his days--with an amateur's delight." His vivid smile quivered at his lips and was still. "That's why I love the North; it can never, never grow old. You're just as excited at the close as at the beginning. Ezram, old man, it's life!"

Ezram nodded. Perhaps, in the moment's fire, Ben had touched at the truth. Perhaps _life_, in its fullest sense, is something more than being born, breathing air, consuming food, and moving the lips in speech. _Life_ is a thing that wilderness creatures know, realized only when the blood, leaping red, sweeps away lifeless and palsied tissue and builds a more sentient structure in its place; invoked by such forces as adventure and danger and battle and triumph. For the past half-hour Ben had lived in the fullest sense, and Ezram was a little touched by the look of unspeakable grat.i.tude with which his young companion regarded him.

But the journey ended at last. They saw the white peak they had been told to watch for, and soon after they came to a green bank from which the forest had been cut away. Softly, rather regretfully, they pushed up and made landing on the banks of a small stream, tributary to the great river, that marked the end of the water route.

This stream, Ezram knew, was Poor Man's Creek, the stream of which his brother had written and which they must ascend to reach Spruce Pa.s.s.

Only five miles distant, in a quartering direction from the river, was Snowy Gulch, the village where they were to secure supplies and, from Steve Morris, the late Hiram's gun and his pet, Fenris.

For a time, at least, they had left the utter solitudes of the wild. Men had cut away the forest and had built a crude wagon road to Snowy Gulch.

And before they were fully unpacked they made out the figure of a middle-aged frontiersman, his back loaded, advancing up the road toward them.

Both men knew something of the ways of the frontier and turned in greeting. "Howdy," Ezram began pleasantly.

"Howdy," the stranger replied. "How was goin'?"

"Oh, good enough."

"Come all the way from Saltsville?"

"Yes. Goin' to Snowy Gulch."

"It's only five miles, up this road," the stranger ventured. "I'm goin'

up Saltsville way myself, but I won't have no river to tow me. I've got to do my own paddlin'. Thank the lord I'm only goin' a small part of the way."

"You ain't goin' to swim, are you? Where's your boat."

"My pard's got an old craft, and he and I are goin' to pack it out next trip." The stranger paused, blinking his eyes. "Say, partners--you don't want to sell your boat, do you?"

Ben started to speak, but the doubtful look on Ezram's face checked him.

"Oh, I don't know," the old man replied, in the discouraging tones of a born tradesman. In reality the old Shylock's heart was leaping gayly in his breast. This was almost too good to be true: a purchaser for the boat in the first hour. "Yet we might," he went on. "We was countin' on goin' back in it soon."

"I'd just as leave buy it, if you want to sell it. In this jerked-off town there ain't a fit canoe to be had. Our boat is the worst tub you ever seen. How much you want for it?"

Ezram stated his figure, and Ben was p.r.o.ne to believe that he had adopted a highwayman for a buddy. The amount named was nearly twice that which they had paid. And to his vast amazement the stranger accepted the offer in his next breath.

"It's worth something to bring it up here, you dub," Ezram informed his young partner, when the latter accused him of profiteering.

After the sale was made Ezram and the stranger soon got on the intimate terms that almost invariably follow a mutually satisfactory business deal, and in the talk that ensued the old man learned a fact of the most vital importance to their venture. And it came like a bolt from the blue.

"So you don't know any folks in Snowy Gulch, then?" the stranger had asked politely. "But you'll get acquainted soon enough--"

"I've got a letter to a feller named Morris," Ezram replied. "And I've heard of one or two more men too--Jeffery Neilson was one of 'em--"

"You'll find Morris in town all right," the stranger ventured to a.s.sure him. "He lives right next to Neilson's. And--say--what do you know about this man Neilson?"

"Oh, nothin' at all. Why?"

"If you fellows is prospectin', Jeffery Neilson is a first-cla.s.s man to stay away from--and his understrapers, too--Ray Brent and Chan Heminway.

But they're out of town right now. They skinned out all in a bunch a few weeks ago--and I can't tell you what kind of a scent they got."

Ezram felt cold to the marrow of his bones. He glanced covertly at Ben; fortunately his partner was busy among the supplies and was not listening to this conversation. Yet likely enough it was a false alarm!

Doubtless the ugly possibility that occurred to him had no justification whatever in fact. Nevertheless, he couldn't restrain the question that was at his lips.

"You don't know where they went, do you?" he asked.

"Not exactly. They took up this creek here a ways, through Spruce Pa.s.s, and over to Yuga River--the country that kind of a crazy old chap named Hiram Melville, who died here a few weeks ago, has always prospected."

The stranger marvelled that his old listener should have suddenly gone quite pale.

VIII

Ezram had only a moment's further conversation with his new friend. He put two or three questions--in a rather curious, hushed voice--and got his answer. Yes, it was true that the shortest way to go to the Yuga River was to follow up the creek by which he was now standing. It was only out of the way to go into Snowy Gulch: they would have to come back to this very point. And yes, a pedestrian, carrying a light pack, could make much better time than a horseman with pack animals. The horses could go no faster than a walk, and the time required to sling packs and care for the animals cut down the day's march by half.

These things learned, Ezram strolled over to his young partner. And at that moment he revealed the possession of a talent that neither he nor any of his friends had ever suspected. The stage had lost an artist of no mean ability when Ezra Melville had taken to the cattle business.

Outwardly, to the last, little lines about his lips and eyes, he was his genial, optimistic, droll old self. His eye twinkled, his face beamed in the gray stubble, his voice was rollicking with the fun of life the same as ever. And like Pagliacci in his masque there was not the slightest exterior sign of the fear and despair that chilled his heart.

"What have you and your poor victim been talking about, all this time?"

Ben asked.

"Oh, just a gab-fest--a tat-i-tat as you'd call it. But you know, Ben, I've got a idea all a-sudden." Ben straightened, lighted his pipe, and prepared to listen.