Toward the end of the fourth day the pack-train wound down a hill to
Fort Geikie, and they saw the great river again, that they had been
following all the way, but at some distance from the bank. Fort Geikie
was no more than a couple of log shacks maintained during the winters
as an outpost for trading with the Indians. At present the shacks were
boarded up, and the Indians ranging away to the north and the west.
The prairie came to an abrupt end here, and immediately before them
rose the steep foothills, with the mountains proper looking over their
heads behind. Around a point off to the left the river issued foaming
from between grim, hewn walls of rock. Up and down river it was called
significantly, "Hell's Back door." "Hell's Opening," it followed, was
at the other end of the canyon. For upward of twenty miles between the
river roared down in unchecked fury, grinding the drift-logs to shreds.
The log shacks stood in the middle of another grassy esplanade, but
here elevated high above the river. The party camped on the edge of
the steep bank, with a lovely prospect visible from the tent openings.
The river was swifter and much narrower here; far below them lay a thin
island, and beyond, the river stretched away like a broad silver ribbon
among its hills, the whole mellowed and glowing in the late sunshine.
As soon as the horses were turned out Jack made his way to Sir Bryson.
The governor led him into the tent. "Well?" he said, seating himself,
and carefully matching his finger-tips.
"My instructions were to take you to the big canyon," said Jack. "Here
we are at the lower end of it. Do you want to make a permanent camp
here, or to push farther on?"
"Let me see," said Sir Bryson. Producing a paper from his pocket, he
spread it on the table. Jack saw that it was a handmade map. "The
lower end of the canyon," he repeated to himself. "That will be here,"
and he put his finger on a spot.
Jack's natural impulse was to walk around the table, and look at the
map over Sir Bryson's shoulder. As he did so, Sir Bryson snatched it
up, and held it against his breast like a child whose toy is threatened
by another child.
Jack, with a reddening face, retired around the table again. "I beg
your pardon," he said stiffly. "I didn't know it was private."
Sir Bryson reddened too, and murmured something indistinguishable.
Suddenly it came to Jack that he had seen the map before, and a smile
twitched the corners of his lips. Since Sir Bryson wished to make a
great secret of it, all right--he, Jack, was not obliged to tell all he
knew.
Sir Bryson did not see the smile. He was studying the map again. "How
far is it to the top of the canyon?" he asked.
"Twelve miles," said Jack. "The trail, as you see, cuts across a bend."
"Is there a good place to camp?"
"Better than here. First-rate water, grass, and wood."
"Can we cross the river if we wish to?"
"There are any number of boats cached along the shore. Everybody bound
downstream has to leave his boat there."
"Very well," said Sir Bryson. "Let's move on to-morrow."
When Jack joined Humpy Jull he said briefly: "I was right. The old boy
is travelling by Beckford and Rowe's map."
"Did you tell him what they were?" asked Humpy, all agog.
"No," said Jack coolly. "He wouldn't have thanked me. He'll find it
out himself in a couple of days."
"The nerve of it," said Humpy, tremendously impressed, "to play the
governor himself for a sucker! There'll be the deuce to pay when it
all comes out!"
It was impossible for Jack's spirits to remain permanently depressed.
To-night, after a long silence, the banjo and the insinuating baritone
were heard for a while by the fire. At the sound, Linda, in the big
tent, changed colour. The ladies still dressed for dinner as far as
they could, and Linda, with her elaborate hair arrangement, the pearls
in her ears, and the rings on her fingers, made an odd urban figure to
be here on the lonely plains.
Her attention wandered, and finally she committed the capital crime of
bridge.
"You've revoked!" cried Sir Bryson aghast, "when the game and the
rubber were ours!"
She was not much cast down by her parent's reproaches. "Kate, take my
hand," she said cajolingly. "I've no head for the game to-night."
They changed places, and Linda carried her chair outside the door of
the tent. The cook-fire was only some twenty paces distant, and she
saw Jack in his favourite attitude, the small of his back supported
against a log, and the banjo across his thighs. The admiring Humpy
Jull sat on the other and of the log, whittling a stick.
Jack saw her come out, and he felt the call that she sent him. He drew
in his upper lip a little, and stayed where he was. He would have been
glad enough to go of his own volition, but the hint of coercion made
him stubborn. Linda was finally obliged to retire beaten.
Next morning the pack-train climbed the steep hill that barred the way,
traversed the ancient portage around the canyon, and finally camped
beside the river again in a little clearing that has been a
camping-place since before the white men found America. Looking across
to the left, a smooth wall of rock seemed to bar the river's progress;
an ominous hoarse roar issued from its foot. All around them rose
moderate mountain heights green to their summits; farther upstream were
the first-class peaks.
After lunch a riding-party to High Rock, down the canyon, was talked
about. Long afterward Jack remembered that it had first been suggested
by Jean Paul, who volunteered to put the camp in order while they were
away. All the whites set out except Humpy Jull. Garrod accompanied
the others.
A change had come over Garrod, a comfortable daze taking the place of
the wild, harassed look in his eyes. He rode apparently without seeing
or caring where. He and Jean Paul had ridden together all morning, and
it was observable that the white's man eyes followed all the movements
of the Indian in a mechanical way. The two were rapidly becoming
inseparable. No thought of danger to himself from this connection
occurred to Jack. By this time he had forgotten the scene at Fort
Cheever.
They first visited "Hell's Opening" on foot, having to climb over a
tangle of great trunks cast high on the rocks by the freshets. One of
the great sights of earth rewarded them. The mighty river, a thousand
feet wide above, plunged through a cleft in the rock that a child could
have tossed a stone across, and, pent within its close, dark walls,
swept down with a deep, throaty roar.
The beholders remarked upon it according to their several natures.
"Very pretty," said Sir Bryson. "Let's get on."
"By Jove!" said Sidney Vassall.
"Tertiary rocks of the Cambrian period," said Baldwin Ferrie, or
whatever they were.
Garrod looked with lack-lustre eyes, and said nothing.
Linda looked at Jack. Seeing that he was genuinely moved by the sight,
familiar as it was to him, she began to enthuse. It sounded overdone
to Jack, and he turned on his heel.
Mrs. Worsley looked at it with shining eyes, and said nothing.
As they rode on it commenced to rain softly, and Sir Bryson was for
returning. His daughter opposed him, and all the others rallied to her
support. Garrod in particular, though he seemed to have no interest by
the way, was dead set against giving up the expedition. They rode
through a magnificent, untouched forest. The cool gloom, the slow drip
of the leaves, and the delicious fragrance of the wet greenery created
an effect the impressionable ones in the party were not soon to forget.
Sir Bryson grumbled.
In one of the various rearrangements of the party Jack found that Mrs.
Worsley was riding next behind him. Swinging around, he talked to her,
hanging sideways over his saddle.
"No one has passed this way this year," he said, glancing at the trail.
"I don't see how you know the path at all," she returned. "I can see
nothing."
Jack explained the blazes on the trees. "Beyond the next creek I
blazed a trail myself last year," he said. "The old trail was too
steep for white men's horses."
"You know the country well."
"I feel as if this bit was my own," he said, with a look around.
Crossing a little stream he pointed out the remains of a sluice and
cradle, and explained their uses to her. "Joe Casey had his camp on
that little hill two years ago," he said.
"What luck did he have?" she asked.
Jack shook his head. "But we all know the stuff's somewhere about," he
said.
Kate Worsley was able in turn to tell Jack something about the showy
plants they passed, and a bird or two. Jack's knowledge of the flora
and fauna was limited strictly to what would serve a man for fuel or
food.
"I believe this life would suit you, too," he said, approving her
strongly.
"I believe it would," she said with a smile, "if there was any place
for such as I."
"You would soon make a place," he said.
Linda, following Mrs. Worsley in the trail, wondered jealously why Jack
never unbent with her like that.
Though they were never out of hearing of its thunderous voice, they had
no sight of the canyon again until they suddenly issued out on the High
Rock, five miles from camp. A superb view arrested them. The trail
came out on a flat, overhanging table rock two hundred feet above the
water. The spot was in the middle of a wide bend in the walls of the
canyon, and they could therefore see both up and down, over the ragged
white torrent in the bottom.
This was their destination. To dismount they had to cross the rock to
a stretch of grass beyond. They instinctively lingered first for a
look. Jack, Mrs. Worsley, Linda, Vassall, Sir Bryson, and Baldwin
Ferrie lined up in that order, taking care to hold their horses in a
safe eight or ten feet back from the naked edge. Looking down river
afforded the finest prospect; here the steep, brown walls fell back a
little, and in the middle of the torrent rose a tall rock island, like
a tower, crowned with noble spruce trees.
Garrod, who had dropped behind the others, now came out from among the
trees on to the flat rock. His horse appeared to be fretting.
"Better dismount and lead him across," Jack flung over his shoulder.
If Jack had looked squarely at Garrod the look in the man's eyes would
surely have caused him to draw back himself and dismount. But he was
intent at the moment in pointing out a seam of coal in the face of the
rock opposite.
None of them could ever tell exactly what happened after that. Garrod
did not dismount, but attempted to ride across behind the others
through the narrow space between their horses and the thickly growing
trees. Jack was sitting loose in his saddle with an arm extended.
Suddenly his horse shrank and quivered beneath him. With a snort of
pain and terror the animal sprang forward, reared on the edge of the
rock, attempted desperately to turn on his hind legs--and, with his
rider, disappeared.
They heard breaking branches below, and a moment later a dull crash on
the rocks far beneath. No sound escaped from any member of the party.
The awful silhouette of the rearing horse on the edge of nothing had
frozen them into grotesque attitudes of horror, and they looked at the
empty place as if they saw it still. Finally Vassall swore in a
strange, soft voice, and Sir Bryson began to babble. Their horses,
infected by the terror of their riders, suddenly turned of one accord,
and shouldered each other off the rock to the grassy terrace at one
side. Garrod slipped out of his saddle and lay inert. The horses that
followed jumped over his body.
One by one the others half-rolled, half-slipped out of their saddles.
Linda Trangmar was the first to reach the ground, and it was she who
crawled back over the rock like a lithe little animal, and looked over
the hideous edge. She saw that several spruce trees grew out obliquely
from a ledge beneath the rock, and that horse and rider had fallen
through the tops of these. Far below she saw the lump of dead
horseflesh on the rocks. It had struck, and rolled down a steep
incline to the water's edge.
The three men watched her, trembling and helpless. Sir Bryson's legs
failed him, and he sat abruptly in the grass. Kate Worsley crawled
toward Linda on her hands and knees, and attempted to draw her back.
"Come away, come away," she whispered. "It's too horrible!"
"Let me be!" said Linda sharply. "I haven't found him yet!"
Suddenly a piercing scream broke from Linda. Kate, by main force,
snatched her back from the edge of the rock.
"He's safe!" cried Linda. She clung to Kate, weeping and laughing
together.
They thought it was merely hysteria. Vassall, extending his body on
the rock, looked over. He got up again, and shook his head.
High Rock was the highest point of the cliff on the side where they
stood. The stretch of grass where the horses were now quietly feeding
inclined gently down from the flat table.
"There he is!" screamed Linda, pointing.
Following the direction of her finger, they saw Jack's head and
shoulders rise above the edge of the grass. Pulling himself up, he
came toward them. He sat in the grass and wiped his face. He was
terribly shaken, but he would never confess it. His pallor he could
not control. All this had occurred in less than a minute.
The men gathered around him, their questions tumbling out on each other.
"I am not hurt," said Jack, steadying his speech word by word. "I
slipped out of the saddle as we went over, and I caught a spruce tree.
I had only to climb down the trunk and walk along the ledge to the
grass."
Their questions disconcerted him. He got up, and coolly throwing
himself down at the edge of the rock, looked over.
"Come back! Come back!" moaned Linda.
"Poor brute!" Jack said, turning away.
As he came back, Linda, straining away from Kate's encircling arms,
bent imploring eyes on him. Jack looked at her and stopped. Instead
of the worldly little coquette he had thought her up to now, he saw a
woman offering him her soul through her eyes. The sight disturbed and
thrilled him. It came at a moment of high emotional tension. He gave
her his eyes back again, and for moments their glances embraced,
careless of the others around. Had it not been for Kate's tight clasp,
Linda would have cast herself into his arms on the spot.
"What could have startled your horse?" Sir Bryson asked for the dozenth
time, breaking the spell.
Jack shrugged. "Where's Garrod?" he said suddenly.
Garrod had completely passed out of their minds. They found him lying
in the grass a little to one side. He had fainted. It provided a
distraction to their shaken nerves, and gradually a measure of calmness
returned to them all. Kate Worsley and Vassall worked over Garrod.
Jack, who felt a strong repugnance to touching him, rode back for water
to the last stream they had crossed.
When Garrod returned to consciousness the shock to his confused
faculties of seeing Jack standing in front of him, and his mingled
remorse and relief, were all very painful to see. He babbled
explanations, apologies, self-accusations; none of them could make out
what it all amounted to.
"Don't," said Jack turning away. "I don't blame you. I should have
made everybody dismount at once. It was my own fault."
At the time he honestly believed it.
It was a very much sobered procession that wound back to camp. As they
climbed the side of one of the steep gullies, leading their horses,
Jack and Linda found themselves together.
"I tell you, it gives you a queer start to fall through space," said
Jack with a grim smile. "I never lived so fast in my life. Down below
I saw every separate stone that was waiting to smash me. And in that
one second before I grabbed the tree I remembered everything that had
happened to me since I was a baby."
"Don't talk about it," she murmured, turning away her head. At the
same time a little spring of gladness welled in her breast, for it was
the first time that he had ever dropped his guard with her.
"Do you care?" he said, off-hand. "I thought you were the kind that
didn't."
She flashed a look at him. "Would you have me the same to everybody?"
she said.
He lifted her on her horse in the way that had suggested itself to him
as most natural. It was not according to the fashionable conventions
of riding, but Linda liked it. Her hand fell on his round, hard
shoulder under the flannel shirt, and she bore upon it heavier than she
need. They rode on with beating hearts, avoiding each other's eyes.
It signified only that their combined ages made something less than
fifty, and that each was highly pleasing in the eyes of the other sex.
His scornful air had piqued her from the first, and he had seen her
hard eyes soften for him at a high-pitched moment. Young people would
be saved a deal of trouble if the romantic idea were not so assiduously
inculcated that these feelings are irrevocable.
In camp after supper they found each other again.
"Too bad about the mosquitoes," said Jack a little sheepishly.
"Why?" she asked, making the big eyes of innocence.
"There's no place we can go."
"Let's sit under your mosquito bar."
Jack gasped a little, and looked at her with sidelong eyes. True, his
tent had no front to it and the firelight illumined every corner, still
it was a man's abode. Linda herself conceived a lively picture of the
consternation of Sir Bryson and his suite if they knew, but they were
good for an hour or more at the card-table, and, anyway, this was the
kind of young lady that opposition, even in prospect, drives headlong.
"Humpy Jull will chaperon us," she said demurely. "You can sing to me."
"All right," he said.
Linda sat in the middle of the tent, with a man on either hand, and the
fire glowing before them. Jack reclined on the end of his spine as
usual, with the banjo in his lap. The spirit of at least one of his
hearers was lifted up on the simple airs he sung. An instinct prompted
him to avoid the obviously sentimental.
"Exact to appointment I went to the grove
To meet my fair Phillis and tell tales of love;
But judge of my anguish, my rage and despair,
When I found on arrival no Phillis was there."
Between songs Linda, in the immemorial way of women, made conversation
with the man of the two present in which she was not interested.
"Don't you like to look for pictures in the fire, Mr. Jull?"
"Sure, I like to look at pitchers," returned Humpy innocently. "But
there ain't never no pitchers in camp. I like the move-'em pitchers
best. When I was out to the Landing last year I used to go ev'y night."
Jack was partly hidden from Humpy by Linda. Tempted by the hand that
lay on the ground beside him, he caught it up and pressed it to his
lips. When he sang again, the same hand, while its owner looked
innocently ahead of her, groped for and found his curly head. At the
touch of it Jack's voice trembled richly in his throat.
[Illustration: "Tempted by the hand that lay on the ground beside him,
he caught it up and pressed it to his lips"]
When she thought the rubber of rubbers would be nearing its end Linda
made Jack take her back. Walking across the narrow space their
shoulders pressed warmly together. They walked very slowly.
"I ought to have told you my name," murmured Jack uncomfortably.
"I know it, Malcolm, dear," she breathed.
"Who told you?" he demanded, greatly astonished.