The Prospector Part 22

But one not uncommon in life, and finally inevitable," continued the old philosopher, only the ghastly hue of his mask-like face giving token of the agony he was enduring.

Then Shock came to him.

"Let me carry you," he said. "It will give you less pain, I am sure."

"Well, it can hardly give more."

"Put your arms about my neck. There. Now don't try to help yourself."

"Most sound advice. I surrender," said the old man, his philosophic tone in striking contrast to his ghastly face. "But one most difficult to accept."

Gently, easily, as if he had been a child, Shock lifted him from the buckboard, carried him into the house and laid him upon his bed. The old man was faint with his pain.

"Thank you, sir--that was distinctly easier. You are--a mighty man.

Perault! I think--I--"

His voice faded away into silence and his head fell back. The girl sprang forward with a cry of fear, but Shock was before her.

"The brandy, Perault! Quick!" he said. "Don't fear, Miss Mowbray, he will soon be all right."

The girl glanced into Shock's face and at once grew calm again. Soon, under the stimulus of the brandy, the old man revived.

"Ah!" he said, drawing a long breath and looking with a faint apologetic smile at the anxious faces about, "pardon my alarming you. I am getting old. The long drive and the somewhat severe pain weakened me, I fear."

"Indeed, you have no need to apologise. It is more than I could have stood," said Shock in genuine admiration.

"Thank you," said the old man. "Now we shall get into blankets. I have the greatest faith in blankets, sir; the greatest faith. I have rolled myself in wet blankets in mid-winter when suffering from a severe cold, and have come forth perfectly recovered. You remember the Elk Valley, Perault?"

"Oui, for sure. I say dat tam ole boss blam-fool. Hees cough! cough!

ver' bad. Nex' mornin', by gar! he's all right."

"And will be again soon, Perault, my boy, by the help of these same blankets," said the old man confidently. "But how to negotiate the business is the question now."

"Let me try, sir. I have had some little experience in helping men with broken bones and the like," said Shock.

"You're at least ent.i.tled to confidence, Mr. Macgregor," replied the Old Prospector. "Faith is the reflection of experience. I resign myself into your hands."

In half an hour, with Perault's a.s.sistance, Shock had the old man between heated blankets, exhausted with pain, but resting comfortably.

"Mr. Macgregor," said the old man, taking Shock by the hand, "I have found that life sooner or later brings opportunity to discharge every obligation. Such an opportunity I shall eagerly await."

"I have done no more than any man should," replied Shock simply. "And I am only glad to have had the chance."

"Chance!" echoed the Old Prospector. "I have found that we make our chances, sir. But now you will require lodging. I regret I cannot offer you hospitality. Perault, go down to the Stopping Place, present my compliments to Carroll and ask him to give Mr. Macgregor the best accommodation he has. The best is none too good. And, Perault, we shall need another pony and a new outfit. In a few days we must be on the move again. See Carroll about these things and report. Meantime, Mr.

Macgregor, you will remain with us to tea."

"Carroll!" exclaimed Perault in a tone of disgust. "Dat man no good 'tall. I get you one pony cheap. Dat Carroll he's one beeg tief."

The little Frenchman's eyes glittered with hate.

"Perault," replied the Old Prospector quietly, "I quite understand you have your own quarrel with Carroll, but these are my affairs. Carroll will not cheat me."

"Ah! Bah!" spat Perault in a vicious undertone of disgust. "De ole boss he blam-fool. He not see noting." And Perault departed, grumbling and swearing, to make his deal with Carroll.

Timothy Carroll was a man altogether remarkable, even in that country of remarkable men. Of his past history little was known. At one time a Hudson Bay trader, then a freighter. At present he "ran" the Loon Lake Stopping Place and a livery stable, took contracts in freight, and conducted a general trading business in horses, cattle--anything, in short, that could be bought and sold in that country. A man of powerful physique and great shrewdness, he easily dominated the community of Loon Lake. He was a curious mixture of incongruous characteristics. At the same time many a poor fellow had found in him a friend in sickness or "in hard luck," and by his wife and family he was adored. His tenderness for little lame Patsy was the marvel of all who knew the terrible Tim Carroll. He had a furious temper, and in wrath was truly terrifying, while in matters of trade he was cool, cunning, and unscrupulous. Few men had ever dared to face his rage, and few had ever worsted him in a "deal." No wonder Perault, who had experienced both the fury of his rage and the unscrupulousness of his trading methods, approached him with reluctance. But, though Perault had suffered at the hands of the big Irishman, the chief cause of his hatred was not personal. He knew, what many others in the community suspected, that for years Carroll had systematically robbed and had contributed largely to the ruin of his "old boss." Walter Mowbray was haunted by one enslaving vice. He was by temperament and by habit a gambler. It was this vice that had been his ruin. In the madness of his pa.s.sion he had risked and lost, one fatal night in the old land, the funds of the financial inst.i.tution of which he was the trusted and honoured head. In the agony of his shame he had fled from his home, leaving in her grave his broken-hearted wife, and abandoning to the care of his maiden sister his little girl of a year old, and had sought, in the feverish search for gold, relief from haunting memory, redemption for himself, and provision for his child. In his prospecting experiments success had attended him. He developed in a marvellous degree the prospector's instinct, for instinct it appeared to be; and many of the important prospects, and some of the most valuable mines in Southern British Columbia, had been discovered by him.

It was at this point that Carroll took a hand. Acting in collusion with the expert agent for the British American Gold and Silver Mining Company, he had bought for hundreds of dollars and sold for thousands the Old Prospector's claims. Not that the old man had lost that financial ability or that knowledge of human nature that had given him his high place in former days, but he was possessed of a dream of wealth so vast that ordinary fortunes shrank into insignificance in comparison. He had fallen under the spell of an Indian tale of a lost river of fabulous wealth in gold that disturbed all his sense of value.

In one of his prospecting tours he had come upon an old Indian hunter, torn by a grizzly and dying. For weeks he nursed the old Indian in his camp with tender but unavailing care. In grat.i.tude, the dying man had told of the lost river that flowed over rocks and sands sown with gold.

In his young days the Indian had seen the river and had gathered its "yellow sand and stones"; in later years, however, when he had come to know something of the value of this "yellow sand and stones" he had sought the river, but in vain. A mountain peak in one vast slide had filled up the valley, diverted the course of the river, and changed the whole face of the country. For many summers the Indian had sought with the unfaltering patience of his race the bed of the lost river, and at length, that very summer, he had discovered it. Deep down in a side canyon in the bed of a trickling brook he had found "yellow sand and stones" similar to those of the lost river of his youth. As the dying Indian poured out from his buckskin bag the glittering sand and rusty bits of rock, there entered into the Old Prospector the terrible gold-l.u.s.t that for thirteen years burned as a fever in his bones and lured him on through perils and privations, over mountains and along canyons, making him insensible to storms and frosts and burning suns, and that even now, old man as he was, worn and broken, still burned with unquenchable flame.

Under the spell of that dream of wealth he found it easy to pay his "debts of honour" to Carroll with mining claims, which, however valuable in themselves, were to him paltry in comparison with the wealth of the Lost River, to which every year brought him nearer, and which one day he was sure he would possess. That Carroll and his confederate robbed him he knew well enough, but finding Carroll useful to him, both in the way of outfitting his annual expeditions and in providing means for the gratifying of his life-long gambling pa.s.sion, by which the deadly monotony of the long winter days and nights was relieved, he tolerated while he scorned him and his villainy.

Not so Perault, whose devotion to his "ole boss" was equalled only by his hate of those who robbed while they derided him, and he set himself to the task of thwarting their nefarious schemes. For this Perault had incurred the savage wrath of Carroll, and more than once had sufered bodily injury at his hands.

The Stopping Place was filled with men from the ranges, freighters from the trail, and the nondescript driftwood that the waves of civilisation cast up upon those far-away sh.o.r.es of human society. With all of them Perault was a favourite. Carroll was out when he entered. On all sides he was greeted with exclamations of surprise, pleasure, and curiosity, for all knew that he had set out upon another "annual fool hunt," as the Prospector's yearly expedition was called. "h.e.l.lo, Rainy, what's happened?" "Got yer gold dust?" "Goin' to retire, Rainy?" "The Old Prospector struck his river yit?" greeted him on every side.

"Oui, by gar! He struck heem, for sure," grinned Perault.

"What? The Lost River?" "What? His mine?" chorused the crowd, awakened to more than ordinary interest.

"Non, not Los' River, but los' man, blank near." And Perault went on to describe, with dramatic fervour and appropriate gesticulation, the scene at the Black Dog, bringing out into strong relief his own helplessness and stupidity, and the cool daring of the stranger who had s.n.a.t.c.hed his "ole boss" out of the jaws of the Black Dog.

"By Jove!" exclaimed a rancher when the narrative was finished, "not bad, that. Who was the chap, Rainy?"

"Do' no me. Tink he's one what you call pries'. Your Protestan' pries'."

"What, a preacher?" cried the rancher. "Not he. They're not made that way."

"I don't know about that, Sinclair," said another rancher. "There's Father Mike, you know."

"That's so," said Sinclair. "But there are hardly two of that kind on the same range."

"Fadder Mike!" sniffed Perault contemptuously. "Dat beeg feller hees roll Fadder Mike up in one beeg bunch an' stick heem in hees pocket.

Dat feller he's not 'fraid noting. Beeg blam-fool, jus' lak ole boss, for sure."

"I guess he must be good stuff, Rainy, if you put him in that cla.s.s."

"Dat's hees place," averred Rainy with emphasis. "Jus' lak ole boss."

At this point Carroll came in.

"h.e.l.lo, Perault!" he said. "What the blank, blank are ye doin' here?"

Perault spat deliberately into the ash-pan, tipped back his chair without looking at the big Irishman, and answered coolly.

"Me? After one pack pony an' some outfit for de ole boss."

"Pony an' outfit, is it?" shouted Carroll. "What the blank, blank d'ye mane? What 'av ye done wid that pack pony av moine, an' where's yer blank ould fool av a boss?"