A SUSPICIOUS MOVE
When Benson and Blake rode into the camp, apparently on good terms with
each other, Harding made no reference to what had occurred. He greeted
them pleasantly, and soon afterward they sat down to the supper he had
been cooking. When they had finished, they gathered round the fire
with their pipes.
"A remark was made the other night which struck me as quite warranted,"
Benson said. "It was pointed out that I had contributed nothing to the
cost of this trip."
"It was very uncivil of Harding to mention it," Blake answered.
"Still, you see, circumstances rather forced him."
"Oh, I admit that; indeed, you might put it more harshly with truth.
But I want to suggest that you let me take a share in your venture."
"Sorry," said Harding promptly; "I can't agree to that."
Benson sat smoking in silence for a moment.
"I think I understand," he said, "and I can't blame you. You haven't
much cause for trusting me.
"I didn't mean----"
"I know," Benson interrupted. "It's my weakness you're afraid of.
However, you must let me pay my share of the provisions and any
transport we may be able to get. That's all I insist on now; if you
feel more confidence in me later, I may reopen the other question." He
paused, and continued with a little embarrassment in his manner: "You
are two good fellows. I think I can promise not to play the fool
again."
"Suppose we talk about something else," Blake suggested.
They broke camp early the following morning; and Benson struggled
manfully with his craving during the next week or two, which they spent
in pushing farther into the forest. It was a desolate waste of small,
stunted trees, many of which were dead and stripped of half their
branches, while wide belts had been scarred by fire. Harding found the
unvarying somber green of the needles strangely monotonous; but the
ground was comparatively clear, and the party made progress.
Then, one evening, when the country grew more broken, they fell in with
three returning prospectors.
"If you'll trade your horses, we might make a deal," said one when they
camped together. "You can't take them much farther--the country's too
rough--and we could sell them to one of the farmers near the
settlements."
Blake was glad to come to terms.
"We've been out two months on a general prospecting trip," the man
informed them. "It's the toughest country to get through I ever
struck."
His worn and ragged appearance bore this out; and Benson looked
somewhat dismayed.
"Are there minerals up yonder?" Harding asked. "We're not in that
line; it's a forest product we're looking for."
"We found indications of gold, copper, and one or two other metals,
besides petroleum, but we didn't see anything that looked worth taking
up. Considering the cost of transport, you want to strike it pretty
rich before what you find will pay as a business proposition."
"So I should imagine. Petroleum's a cheap product to handle when
you're a long way from a market, isn't it?"
"Give us plenty of it and we'll make a market. It's an idea of mine
that there's no part of this country that hasn't something worth
working in it if you can get cheap fuel. Where the land's too poor for
farming, you often find minerals, and ore that won't pay for transport
can be reduced on the spot, so long as you have natural resources that
can be turned into power. With an oil well in good flow, we'd soon
start some profitable industry and put up a city that would bring a
railroad in. Show our business men a good opening, and you'll get the
money. And there are men across the frontier who have a mighty keen
scent for oil."
"Have you done much prospecting?" Harding asked.
The man smiled.
"Whenever I can get money enough for an outfit I go off on the trail.
There's a fascination in the thing that gets hold of you--you can't
tell what you may strike, and the prizes are big. However, I'll admit
that after seven or eight years of it I'm poorer than when I started at
the game."
Blake made a sign of comprehension. He knew the sanguine nature of the
Westerner and his belief in the richness of his country; and he himself
had felt the call of the wilderness. There was, in truth, a
fascination in the silent waste that drew the adventurous into its
rugged fastnesses; that a number of them did not come back seldom
deterred the others.
"We want to get as far north as the timber limit, if we can," Harding
said. "I understand that there are no Hudson Bay factories near our
line, but we were told we might find some Stony Indians."
"There's one bunch of them," the prospector replied. "They ramble
about after fish and furs, but they've a kind of base-camp where a few
generally stop. They're a mean crowd, and often short of food, but if
they've been lucky you might get supplies. Now and then they put up a
lot of dried fish and kill some caribou."
He told Blake roughly where the Indian encampment lay; and after
talking for a while they went to sleep. The next morning the
prospectors took the horses and started for the south, while Blake's
party pushed on north with loads that severely tried their strength.
After a few days' laborious march they reached a stream and found a few
Indians who were willing to take them some distance down it. It was a
relief to get rid of the heavy packs and rest while the canoe glided
smoothly through the straggling forest, and the labor of hauling her
across the numerous portages was light compared with the toil of the
march.
Blake, however, had misgivings. They were making swift progress
northward; but it would be different when they came back. Rivers and
lakes would be frozen then. That might make traveling easier, if they
could pick up the hand sleds they had cached; but there was a limit to
the provisions they could transport, and unless fresh supplies could be
obtained they would have a long distance to traverse on scanty rations
in the rigors of the arctic winter.
After a day or two the Indians, who were going no farther, landed them,
and they entered a belt of very broken country across which they must
push to reach a larger stream. The ground was rocky, pierced by
ravines, and covered with clumps of small trees. There were stony
tracts across which they painfully picked their way, steep ridges to be
clambered over, and belts of quaggy muskeg they must skirt. Benson,
however, gave them no trouble; the man was getting hard and was
generally cheerful; and when he had an occasional fit of moroseness, as
he fought with the longing that tormented him, they left him alone.
Still, at times they were daunted by the rugged sternness of the region
they were steadily pushing through, and the thought of the long return
journey troubled them.
One night, when it was raining, they sat beside their fire in a
desolate gorge. A cold wind swept between the thin spruce trunks that
loomed vaguely out of the surrounding gloom as the red glare leaped up,
and wisps of acrid smoke drifted about the camp. There was a lake up
the hollow, and now and then the wild and mournful cry of a loon rang
out. The men were tired and somewhat dejected as they sat about the
blaze with their damp blankets round them. A silence had fallen upon
them; but suddenly Blake looked up, startled.
"What was that?" he exclaimed.
The others could hear nothing but the sound of running water and the
wail of the wind. Since leaving the Indians they had seen no sign of
life and believed that they were crossing uninhabited wilds. Blake
could not tell what had suddenly roused his attention, but in former
days he had developed his perceptive faculties by close night watching
on the Indian frontier, where any relaxing of his vigilance might have
cost his life. Something, he thought, was moving in the bush, and he
felt uneasy.
A stick cracked, and Harding called out as a shadowy figure appeared on
the edge of the light. Blake laughed, but his uneasiness did not
desert him when he recognized Clarke. The fellow was not to be
trusted, and he had come upon them in a startling manner.
"I suppose you are surprised to see me," Clarke said, moving coolly
forward and sitting down by the fire.
"We are," Harding answered briefly.
Benson's face wore a curious, strained expression, but he did not speak.
"Well," Clarke laughed, as he filled his pipe, "I dare say I made a
rather dramatic entrance, falling upon you, so to speak, out of the
dark."
"I've a suspicion that you enjoy that kind of thing," Harding said.
"You're a man with the dramatic feeling; guess you find it useful now
and then."
Clarke's eyes twinkled, but it was not with wholesome humor. His eyes
were keen, but he looked old and forbidding as he sat with the smoke
blowing about him and the ruddy firelight on his face.
"There's some truth in your remark, and I take it as a compliment; but
my arrival's easily explained. I saw your fire in the distance and
curiosity brought me along."
"What are you doing up here?"
"Going on a visit to my friends, the Stonies. Though it's a long way,
I look them up now and then."
"From what I've heard of them, they don't seem a very attractive lot,"
Blake interposed. "But we haven't offered you any supper. Benson, you
might put on the frying-pan."
"No, thanks," said Clarke. "I'm camped with two half-breeds a little
way back. The Stonies, as you remark, are not a polished set; but
we're on pretty good terms, and it's their primitiveness that makes
them interesting. You can learn things civilized men don't know much
about from these people."
"In my opinion, it's knowledge that's not worth much to a white man,"
Harding remarked contemptuously. "Guess you mean the secrets of their
medicine-men? What isn't gross superstition is trickery."
"There you are wrong. They have some tricks, rather clever ones,
though that's not unusual with the professors of a more advanced
occultism; but living, as they do, in direct contact with nature in her
most savage mood, they have found clues to things that we regard as
mysteries. Anyway, they have discovered a few effective remedies that
aren't generally known yet to medical science."
He spoke with some warmth, and had the look of a genuine enthusiast;
but Harding laughed.
"Medical science hasn't much to say in favor of hoodoo practises, so
far as I know. But I understand you are a doctor?"
"I was pretty well known in London."
"Then," Harding asked bluntly, "what brought you to Sweetwater?"
"If you haven't heard, I may as well tell you, because the thing isn't
a secret at the settlement." Clarke turned and his eyes rested on
Blake. "I'm by no means the only man who has come to Canada under a
cloud. There was a famous police-court affair that I figured in.
Nothing was proved against me, but my practise afterward fell to bits.
As a matter of fact, I was absolutely innocent of the offense. I had
acted without much caution, out of pity, and laid myself open to an
attack that was meant to cover the escape of the real criminal."
Blake thought he spoke the truth, and he felt some sympathy; but Clarke
went on:
"In a few weeks I was without patients or friends; driven out from the
profession I loved and in which I was beginning to make my mark. It
was a blow that I never altogether recovered from; and the generous
impulse which got me into trouble was the last that I ever yielded to."
His face changed, growing hard and malevolent, and Blake now felt
strangely repelled. It looked as if the man had been soured by his
misfortunes, and had turned into an outlaw who took a vindictive
pleasure in making such reprisals as he found possible upon society at
large. This conclusion was borne out by what Blake had learned at the
settlement.
No one made any comment, and there was silence for a few minutes while
the smoke whirled about the group and the drips from the dark boughs
above fell upon the brands. Then, after a little casual talk, Clarke
rose to go.
"I shall start at daybreak, and your way lies to the east of mine," he
said. "You'll find traveling easier when the snow comes. I wish you
good luck."
Though the loneliness of the wilds had now and then weighed upon them,
they all felt relieved when he left. After Benson went to sleep, Blake
and Harding continued talking for a while.
"That's a man we'll have to watch," the American declared. "I suppose
it struck you that he made no attempt to get your friend back?"
"I noticed it. He may have thought it wouldn't succeed, and didn't
wish to show his hand. Benson already looks a different man; I saw
Clarke studying him."
"He could have drawn him away by the sight of a whisky flask, or a hint
of a jag in camp. My opinion is that he didn't want him."
"That's curious," said Blake. "He seems to have stuck to Benson pretty
closely, no doubt with the object of fleecing him; and you think he's
not altogether ruined yet."
"If what he told me is correct, there are still some pickings left on
him."
"I don't suppose the explanation is that Clarke has some conscience,
and feels that he has robbed him enough."
Harding laughed.
"He has about as much pity as a hungry wolf; in fact, to my mind, he's
the more dangerous brute, because I've a feeling that he delights in
doing harm. There's something cruel about the man; getting fired out
of his profession must have warped his nature. Then there was another
point that struck me--why's he going so far to stay with those Indians?"
"It's puzzling," Blake answered thoughtfully. "He hinted that he was
interested in their superstitions, and I think there was some truth in
it. Meddling with these things seems to have a fascination for
neurotic people, and as the fellow's a sensualist he may find some form
of indulgence that wouldn't be tolerated near the settlements. All
this, however, doesn't quite seem to account for the thing."
"I've another idea," said Harding. "Clarke's known as a crank, and he
takes advantage of it to cover his doings. At first, I thought of the
whisky trade; but taking up prohibited liquor would hardly be worth his
while; though I dare say he has some with him to be used for gaining
his Indian friends' good will. He's on the trail of something, and
it's probably minerals. What the prospector told us suggested it to
me."
"You may be right. Anyway, it doesn't seem to concern us."
"Well," said Harding gravely, "I'm troubled about his leaving Benson
alone. The fellow had some good reason--I wish I knew."
He rose to throw more wood on the fire, and they changed the subject.