Delilah of the Snows Part 47

There was a brief discussion, and as the result of it twenty men, of whom Ingleby was one, were fixed upon to make the attempt. They were all of them willing, and started two days later before the stars had paled, while every man in the valley, except those on guard behind the log, a.s.sembled to see them go, though Ingleby did not know that Hetty Leger stood a little apart from them watching the shadowy figures melt into the gloom beneath the pines. It was, everybody knew, by no means certain that all of them would come back again.

They made their way up-river, dragging a few rude sledges with them, and they crossed the big divide in the face of one of the blinding snowstorms that rage on the higher ranges most of the winter. That cost them a week of tremendous labour; and then they floundered through tangled muskegs, where the stunted pines that grew in summer out of quaggy mire had been reaped and laid in rows by the Arctic winds. Their branches were strewn about them, and the men smashed a way through the horrible maze, making, with infinite pains, scarcely a league a day.

Still, the muskegs were left behind, and the ground was clearer in a big _brulee_ where fire had licked up undergrowth and branches and the great trunks rose gauntly, charred and tottering columns. There they made as much as four leagues in a day through ashes and dusty snow, and at last came out on the trail to the settlement, dragging with them one man whose feet were frost-bitten. n.o.body had crossed the divide before; but that was probably because n.o.body had hitherto been driven by necessity into trying, and now, as usually happens in that country, the thing attempted had been done.

The settlement was not an especially cheerful spot, consisting as it did of three or four log-houses roofed with cedar s.h.i.+ngles which their owners had split, a store, and a frame hotel covered in with galvanized iron, though slabs of bark had been largely used as well. They, however, rested there several days, and they needed it, while the hearts of most of them sank a trifle at the contemplation of the journey home. They had set out light, but the store was crammed with provisions, which the freighter, who had somehow brought them there, had abandoned all hope of taking farther. It was evident they must each go back with a load which a man unaccustomed to the packing necessary in that country could scarcely carry a mile, and the hardiest prospector among them shrank from crossing the divide with such a burden. The thing, however, had to be done, and on the night before their departure they were arranging their packs in the store when the man who kept it pointed to a pile of bags and cases in a corner.

"That's the police lot, and I guess they'll want the grub," he said. "I can't quite figure why none of them have come in for it, but you could strike them for transport on anything you took along."

The reason Esmond had not sent down to inquire about his stores was, of course, quite plain to the miners; but n.o.body in that settlement knew which way they had reached it or what had happened in the Green River valley, and Sewell laughed.

"I am not," he said, "a freight-ox or a dromedary, and the rest of us have already got a good deal more than any one could reasonably expect them to carry."

The storekeeper glanced at a stout deal box. "Well," he said, "I guess there's not much more than twelve pounds in there, and it's for the major--tea and coffee and some special fixings from Vancouver. If he don't get it, he and Miss Coulthurst will come right down to drinking water. The freighter couldn't take more than a half-case of whisky in for him last time, and I guess that's not going to last the Gold Commissioner long."

Ingleby, who was acquainted with the major's habits, surmised that this was very probable, but it appeared of much less consequence than the fact that Grace might also have to do without even the few small comforts it had hitherto been possible to bring into the Green River country. He no longer remembered the galling of the pack-straps or the tremendous struggle over the big divide, but laid his hand upon the box.

"We'll manage this one, anyway," he said. "I'll take it along with me."

Then, turning at the sound of a step, he saw that Sewell, who had followed apparently with the same purpose, was looking at him.

"Well," he said, "what do you want?"

"You can't take that case," said Sewell. "My pack's lighter."

Ingleby was a trifle astonished. "I was first," he said. "Is there any special reason why you should have it instead of me?"

Sewell laughed, though his tone was not quite his usual one.

"No," he said. "If one must be candid, I scarcely think there is."

It had never occurred to Ingleby that his comrade might have set himself to gain Miss Coulthurst's favour and in a measure succeeded. He would have thought the notion preposterous in view of Sewell's opinions, and he smiled good-humouredly.

"It really doesn't matter. I wouldn't have let you have it, anyway," he said, and drew the storekeeper aside.

They started at daybreak next morning, and before they had gone a league Ingleby found that the extra twelve pounds made his burden almost insupportable. Still, he set his lips and bore it, taking a grim pleasure in the nip of the straps that galled his shoulders as he remembered for whom he was carrying the box. They were raw, and he was worn-out when the men made camp beneath a towering fir as the coppery sun went down, but it was very much worse on the morrow when he rose with aching limbs from the frozen soil to start again. Somehow he kept his place with the others throughout that weary day and the ones that dragged by after it, though when he remembered them afterwards the blurred pictures his fancy called up were like an evil dream of fatigue and pain.

They sank ankle-deep in ashes in the _brulee_, rent their limbs and garments smas.h.i.+ng through the muskeg, melted the snow with their camp-fires by lakes and streams whose sh.o.r.es even the wandering prospector's foot had scarcely trodden, and slept, or lay awake s.h.i.+vering, with boots in the embers and half-frozen bodies radiating like spokes from the hub of crackling fire, while the smoke, which was sharp with the sting of the resin, curled about them. Ingleby's shoulders bled daily and troubled him seriously in the frost at night, a seam of his boot had fretted a raw place across his foot, and in the bitter mornings the cold struck deep and keen. Twelve pounds more count for a good deal when the burden is already all that its bearer is fit to carry, and the effort drained the store of heat in his worn-out body and left nothing for the up-keep of its vitality. That heat is the source of energy everybody knows, but only those who have taxed every muscle in the cold of the Northwest realize the fact's full significance. The man who has tried his strength too hard in the Arctic frost may char his boots in the camp-fire, but he cannot get warm. To add to his troubles, Ingleby had no proper mittens, and when the one extemporized from a strip of flour-bag burst, the hand with which he clutched the pack-straps split at every finger joint and at that temperature a sore will rarely heal.

The others were not in much better condition, though day by day the line of weary men stumbled on in a silence that seemed the grimmer for the burst of anathemas from the one or two of them who had to be dragged up from the fire and brutally shaken into wakefulness when the hour to resume the journey came. Then they came to the tremendous barrier of the divide, a rampart of ice and snow which even in summer no man new to that country would attempt to climb.

It cost them a day to make the first thousand feet or so, and then they lost count of the rest, during which they dragged themselves upward from dwarf pine to pine or crawled along scarped slopes with the peaks still above them. They were waist-deep in snow when they crossed the ridge through the gap of a ravine down which all the winds of heaven apparently rioted, but they fought their way foot by foot, and were floundering down the farther side when Ingleby, who was staggering, grey in face, behind the rearmost of them, lost his footing and rolled down a declivity. He brought up with a crash in a juniper, and rising, half-dazed, recovered his legitimate burden and dragged himself on again. He could scarcely see the others, for his head was throbbing intolerably and his sight was dim, but it seemed to him that he was travelling a little more easily than he had done. It was, however, not until they lay beside a snapping fire that night with their packs piled behind them as a barrier to the bitter wind, that the reason for this became apparent.

"Where's that case of yours?" asked one of the men.

Ingleby glanced behind him, and then laid down the blackened can of tea he held and rose unsteadily.

"You haven't got it," he asked hoa.r.s.ely, "none of you?"

There was a little sardonic laughter, and one of the others said, "I guess we've got 'most enough without humping another case along for anybody."

"Then I must have left it where I fell into that juniper this afternoon."

He shook his galled shoulders, which were bleeding through the s.h.i.+rt that was glued to them, and he winced as the movement tore it from the wound. Then he turned slowly away from the fire.

"Hold on. Where are you going?" said one of the men.

"Back for the case. If I'm fortunate, I may make camp before you start to-morrow."

He stopped for just a moment, and looked back at the fire with a fierce physical longing in his eyes, for all that was animal in him craved for food and the rest of repletion. Sewell, he saw, was lying half-asleep, with a partly consumed flapjack fallen from his hand.

"Now, see here," said somebody, "we can't wait for you. Unless we get down out of the frost into thick timber by to-morrow night, it's quite likely one or two of us will stay up here altogether. You've got a straight warning. Let the blame thing go."

Ingleby said nothing. He knew that if he dallied his flesh would master him, and he limped out of the firelight with a groan. The red flicker faded suddenly, and he was alone on a great sloping waste where a few dwarf firs and junipers were scattered, black as ink on a ground of blinking white, under the big coppery moon. There was a pain in every joint, the rag wound about one hand was stiff, and he dare not move his shoulders now, while at every step the torturing boot ate into his flesh. That was all he remembered, for he could never recall afterwards much of what he felt and did that night.

He was not back at the camp next morning, and when his comrades had waited an hour or two they moved on slowly without him. One can live in the open under a greater cold than they were called upon to face, that is, if one is provided with costly furs and sleeping bags to suit it; but there are reasons why the prospector usually has neither, and there was no more endurance left in the men. Ingleby, however, would, at least, have no difficulty in picking up their trail, and unless they made shelter that night it seemed very probable that some of them would freeze. They found it at the foot of the mountain wall in a thick belt of young firs where the jumper-sledges and two or three axes had been left, and that night they lay in comfort about the fire with a kettle of strong green tea in their midst, and the springy cedar and spruce twigs piled high about them. Two of them, however, were not there, for Sewell had gone back in search of Ingleby.

It was snowing a little, and there was no moon visible, while, though the rest of the journey down the valley would, by comparison, be easy, now they had the sledges, the men were curiously silent as they lay about the fire. n.o.body seemed disposed to sleep, and the kettle had been emptied when one of them glanced round at the rest.

"If he doesn't come in by to-morrow I'm going back," he said.

"I guess it mightn't be much use to-morrow," said a comrade. "If I could get a move on me I'd go to-night, but I'm not sure I can. What d'you say 'he' for, anyway? There's two of them."

The men were dead-weary, too dazed with fatigue almost to think. Nor was there one of them anxious to make the effort, which if successful might drag him from his rest. Thus they were willing to be led away from the point at issue, which was what might have happened to Ingleby.

"Well," said the first speaker, "Sewell's a smart man, and he means well, but I hadn't quite remembered him. When I was broke, and hadn't a dollar's worth of dust to get the truck I had to have from the freighter, Ingleby went bond for me. He don't know a good deal more than he has any use for, like the other man, but he's there when he's wanted.

That's the kind he is. I'll give him another half-hour. Then I'm going back for him."

There was a drowsy murmur of concurrence. Sewell was liked in the Green River valley, and no man doubted his sincerity; but that was, after all, not quite enough, for it is, though somewhat difficult of comprehension, a fact that the dwellers in the wilderness, who see fewer of their fellowmen, have usually a clearer insight into the primitive essentials of human character than the men of the cities. They do not ask too much of it, but on certain points their demand is inexorable, and it is very seldom that a simply meretricious quality goes far with them. Ingleby was not a genius, he blundered in details, and he had few graces; but they believed in him.

The half-hour had almost pa.s.sed when one of them sharply raised his head, and, though few other men would probably have heard anything, the rest shook themselves to attention. High up on the range above them there was a soft pattering in the snow, which grew louder, until they could hear two men stumbling down the steep hillside. After that there was a snapping of twigs among the firs, and Sewell strode into the red light with his hand on Ingleby's shoulder. The latter's face was grey, and he staggered until somebody seized him and dragged him down beside the fire. Then he blinked at them out of half-closed eyes.

"I got the case," he said.

"That's all right," said a man soothingly as he loosed the straps about his shoulders and lifted the case aside, but Ingleby turned upon him savagely.

"Put it there, ---- you! I want to see it. It's hers," he said.

His voice was strained and broken, and Sewell did not hear all he said.

"Get him some tea and flapjacks. I think he's a little off his head," he said.

XXIX

ESMOND'S HANDS ARE TIED