Joe Mixer and his men sat up late counting the golden harvest they
expected to reap; consequently next morning the sun was high in the sky
before the fat man woke. The instant consciousness returned to him the
thought of "Gold!" sprang up in his mind as if written in letters of
the metal. He sat up knuckling the sleep from his eyes. Instead of
the breakfast that usually awaited him, he saw Crusoe and Stack still
slumbering beside him. He awakened them with no gentle urgency.
"What's the matter with you!" he bawled with his own picturesque
expletives. "It's past six o'clock, and we were going to start at
five!"
Crusoe, the cook, looked around him in a dazed way. "The breed said
he'd wake me," he said; "I left it to him."
They saw Philippe's tumbled blanket on the ground beyond Stack. "He's
gone off, damn him!" cried Joe. "Hunting a puny rabbit most like!
They're all alike! Look sharp with the breakfast!"
While Crusoe cooked, Joe and Stack collected and packed the camp
impedimenta. In his eagerness to get away, the fat man was as active
as a stripling. When breakfast was ready, and the half-breed had not
yet returned, his anger was boundless. The camp atmosphere was lurid.
As yet he did not suspect any treachery, for as a result of his
experience with the race he had withheld Philippe's pay, and even a
breed does not run off with money owing him. Besides, he had left his
good blanket behind him.
After breakfast they scattered to look for him, awaking the forest with
their hails. Crusoe found tracks made that morning in the ravine. Joe
and Stack joined him, and they followed the tracks toward the mouth of
the cave.
"Maybe he got up early to get in ahead of us," said Stack, paling at
his own suggestion.
"By Gad! if he has----" cried Joe.
But the tracks led them beyond the drift-pile.
"It's game he's after," said Joe, reassured.
Crusoe, who was a pace in advance, had stopped, and was examining the
creek bed attentively. "There's another track here," he said suddenly;
"a small foot--a woman's foot! That's his game!"
The three men looked at each other with growing suspicions. "Get along
after them!" cried Joe harshly.
But none of them moved. They had become aware simultaneously of a
curious rumbling sound high above them. It approached with terrific
swiftness, ending with a mighty crash above, that caused each man
instinctively to make himself small, and guard his head with his arms.
A great boulder leaped across the ravine, high over their heads, and
smashed into the forest on the other side.
Of one accord the three turned and fled down the ravine, little Stack
in advance, leaping from stone to stone like an antelope. A shower of
pebbles peppered their heads and shoulders harmlessly. Outside the
danger zone they halted.
"By Gad! that was a close shave!" said Joe, wiping his face. "They say
those stones just naturally work themselves loose on the mountain, and
no man can tell when they'll fall!"
"Maybe somebody started it," suggested Stack. His teeth were
chattering.
Panic seized them again. They did not stop running until they had
climbed the bank of the ravine, and stood in their own camp. From this
point nearly the whole of the mountain side was visible. They searched
it excitedly.
"It's true!" cried Stack at last. "I see him! I see two of them up
there!"
"My binoculars!" shouted Joe.
His hands shook, and it took him a long time to focus the glasses.
Stack stood at his elbow instructing him shrilly where to look. Crusoe
stood with hanging jaw, looking up like a clown.
Immediately above the entrance to the cave there was a precipitous
cliff some seventy-five or a hundred feet high. On top of that was a
flat ledge or terrace reaching back. The floor of this terrace was
hidden from them, but behind it rose a long, steep bare slide of rubble
fully two thousand feet in the air, ending in a ridge or hog-back of
broken rock-masses, which extended up at right angles to the base of
the final peak of naked rock, the thumb. It was upon the ridge,
working among the rock-masses with pine poles for levers, that Stack's
sharp eyes had spotted the two tiny figures.
Joe finally got them within the field of his glasses. A frightful rage
took possession of him. His face turned purple. He frothed at the
mouth and stamped on the ground like a madman. Stack slyly took the
binoculars out of his hand or he would have dashed them to the ground.
From his broken exclamations and curses the others gathered that he had
recognized Philippe and Nahnya. Stack satisfied himself as to the
identity of the figures.
Another great stone started to roll down the gigantic slide. They saw
it coming before they heard the noise of its passage. They gazed
fascinated. As it gathered its terrific way it started to leap higher
and higher in the air like a mad elf. It struck the rock ledge with a
deafening crash, and like its predecessor bounded high over the ravine
and shattered the trees on the other side. The force suggested by the
soaring of these tons of matter lightly through the air struck awe into
the souls of the beholders. The silence following the final crash of
the projectile was broken by a long, dull rumble of the smaller stones
displaced in its course. A long cloud of yellow dust arose behind it.
Other rocks, small and large, followed. Stack, through the binoculars,
watched the two on the height working desperately with their levers.
Joe Mixer had exhausted himself in his transports. He now looked up
dumb and suffering with rage, his thick lips snarling and his nails
pressed into his palms. Suddenly a light broke on his face, and he
cried out:
"There's no danger! The cliff makes a screen. Look, how all the rocks
jump clear of the gulch. Come on back!"
Stack had seen this before, but had kept it to himself. Both Stack and
Crusoe turned white with terror at the thought of venturing up the
ravine beneath that bombardment.
"You white-livered cowards!" cried Joe; "you skulkers! you shivering
curs! I'll go alone! And I'll keep what I find!"
No one denied Joe Mixer brute courage. Paying no more attention to the
descent of the rocks, he methodically separated a portion of their food
for himself, and rolling it within his blanket, strapped the pack on
his back. Fastening a belt of ammunition around his waist, he picked
up his rifle, and went doggedly down the bank and up the bed of the
ravine. All the gold in the world would not have tempted the others to
follow.
While he was in the ravine the two on the mountain succeeded in
wresting loose a bigger mass of rock than any before. It came down
with a frightful impetus. The noise of its coming leaped out of
nothingness and stunned the ears. When it struck the ledge of rock
they felt the shock below. Joe crouched under a boulder. The mass
made a gaping wound in the forest where it earthed itself.
The succeeding rumble from above did not subside, but slowly deepened
and increased in volume. Stack, looking up, saw an incredible, an
insupportable sight, as in some hideous nightmare. The whole face of
the mountain was in motion. He screamed, and cast himself on his face,
covering his head with his thin arms. Crusoe followed his example.
Joe, hearing the ominous sounds above his head, wavered. The shrill
sound of terror decided him. He started to run back down the ravine,
but too late. A cataract of broken rocks came pouring over the lip of
the cliff.
When Jim Sholto found Ralph that morning he saw at a glance that he had
a desperately sick man to deal with. The exertion and the terrible
excitement following too soon upon his fever had brought about a
relapse. Jim carried him into camp, and Kitty did what little she
could for his comfort. Humanity forbade Jim's leaving her alone with
the patient, though he chafed to be away with the other men after the
gold. To this he owed his life.
They were attending to Ralph when they heard the fall of the first
stone. It was a sound they were not unfamiliar with in their own camp,
and caused them no perturbation. When several others followed in close
succession, Jim looked up.
"That's funny!" he said. "I never knew so many to fall together."
A minute later they heard Stack's scream. Jim jumped up.
"Somebody's caught!" he said grimly.
"Don't go!" cried Kitty sharply.
She had no need to speak. Jim was rooted to the spot. "A whole
landslide!" he murmured.
During the next few seconds chaos succeeded. There was a rushing sound
as of millions of great wings beating the air, and a shock under which
the earth rocked nauseatingly. The uproar was such that human ear
could not encompass it. It was like mountainous seas breaking over
their heads. Kitty and her father clutched the earth. It shook under
their bodies like a jelly. Ralph knew nothing of what was happening.
A tremendous silence succeeded, broken only by the detached tapping of
falling rocks here and there. Then a brief, terrible wind swept
screaming through the forest and was gone. A strange, thick, yellow
fog stole among the tree trunks; it left an acrid taste in the nostrils.
As soon as the uproar subsided Jim was for going to see what had
happened. Kitty clung to him hysterically. Not until half an hour had
passed would she let him leave her, and then only upon his repeated
assurances that no further disturbance was likely to occur for the
present. Anything that had not been shaken loose by that terrible
shock would stick, he said. Kitty herself refused to leave Ralph.
Jim had not gone two hundred yards before he began to meet with
evidences of the cataclysm in the scattered rocks and broken trees. A
little farther on he came to the edge of the flood of rocks that had
poured down from the mountain, obliterating the forest up to this
point. He circled the base of the gigantic heap until he came to a
point where he could overlook the entire height. This was on the edge
of the ravine behind Joe Mixer's camp.
Jim stood, struck to the soul with amazement. The genii had waved
their wands and the face of the earth was changed. There was no stream
below him; above where he stood there was no longer any gulch or any
cliff rising above it. The mountain had stepped forward and stamped
them out. A great new spur of raw rubble reeking with yellow dust now
reached across in front of him, blotting out the forest like grass as
far as he could see on that side. The entrance to the Bowl of the
Mountains was somewhere under the middle of the mountain; no man could
tell now where it had been, so complete was the change. Joe Mixer's
camp had not been in the direct line of the slide, but tons and tons of
rock had overflowed at the sides like a liquid, and the place where the
fire had been was drowned fathoms deep.
Jim remembered the scream they had heard. "Nothing to do here!" he
thought grimly. He returned to Kitty.
Nahnya and Philippe reached a little plateau of rock after a long
climb, and sat down to breathe themselves. Their faces were calm. For
the moment they were concerned only with their journey. On every side
great snowy peaks looked down on them over each other's shoulders. The
white fields dipped almost to the level where they sat. Behind them,
and far below, the forest ended in the throat of a valley; before them
lay a shallower valley of a bleak aspect. It supported only a little
scrub and a variegated carpet of moss, and the gorges on either hand
were choked with ice.
"This is a divide," Nahnya said. She spoke in Cree. "St. Jean Bateese
tell me this trail. The water out of that valley go to the Burning
River, he say. It is five days' journey from here."
"I have heard of that river," said Philippe. "It goes to the place of
the rising sun, and joins with the Great River of the Ice."
The sun had disappeared some time since behind the peaks on their left
hand. Philippe cast a look at the threatening sky. "It will rain
to-night," he said. "Let us go down. There is nothing here to make a
shelter. There is no wood for a fire."
"Wait a little," Nahnya said. "We must talk--what we do after."
Her simple-sounding words had an electric effect. Both faces changed
subtly; hers became wary; his sullen. They avoided each other's eyes.
"We will do what comes," said Philippe, feigning unconcern. "We will
walk to the Burning River, and make a raft and float to the Great River
of the Ice. Then we can go where we want."
"You know what I mean," said Nahnya quietly. "Why waste talk?"
Philippe's eyes suddenly blazed up. "You are mine now!" he said.
"Not yet," said Nahnya coolly. "I say you can come with me if you
want. I make no promise."
"You are mine!" repeated Philippe louder. "There is nothing to say!"
"There is much to say!" said Nahnya, with a direct look. "If you lay
hands on me without I give you leave, I will kill you!"
There was a short, fierce struggle between the two pairs of eyes. The
man's eyes gave way.
"I not want quarrel with you," said Nahnya presently, in a softened
voice. "You helped me very much. I have a kindness for you."
His eyes stole back to her face furtively and humbly.
"I will marry you if you want," Nahnya went on. "Because I have
learned a girl cannot be alone. And I have no people now. I will make
you a good wife if you want me. I will always work hard. I will try
to make you a rich, big man. But first the truth must be told."
"What truth?" muttered Philippe.
"I do not love you," she said.
"This is white people's talk," said Philippe. "What is love? You
marry me. You keep my lodge."
"I love the white man," Nahnya said firmly.
He sprang up with a threatening gesture. In his simplicity he thought
she was baiting him. His face was dark with wounded self-love.
Nahnya's eyes held his unflinchingly. "If you strike me I not stop
loving him," she said.
The youth was no match for her. His eyes could not support the strong
light behind hers. He turned away muttering.
"Do you want to marry me?" Nahnya asked after a while.
He turned on her with the violent upbraiding of a man's jealousy, which
is much the same, Cree or English. Nahnya saw that he had
misunderstood what she meant by "love." Interrupting him, she made the
point clear.
"No man has had me!" she proudly concluded.
He scowled, regarding her doubtfully. The boastful male in him was
loath to confess it, but he was like wax in her hands.
"Red and white cannot mate together," Nahnya said, with her strange,
fatalistic calmness. "He is gone away. I will never see him again."
"Swear it!" demanded Philippe.
She raised her hand. "I swear it!" she said, without a tremor.
He was much comforted. He scowled still, not knowing what to say.
"Do you want to marry me?" she asked again.
It was a kind of stricken look that he turned on her. "I want to marry
you," he murmured.
"There is my hand," said Nahnya. "Deal straight with me, and I will do
all that I say."
He fondled her hand clumsily.
Nahnya's eyes became kindly. "You were a good boy at the school," she
said. "It was good talk that we talked together. Why do you want to
be called a bad man now, and not work, and drink, and make trouble
everywhere?"
"I will tell you why I change," said Philippe boastfully. "I go among
the white men, thinking to find my brothers. My father was a white
man, and married to my mother in church. But they think little of me
because my skin is dark. They treat me like a slave, and give me hard
work and little pay like a slave. So I hate them. I am bad! I make
all the trouble I can!"
"White men only laugh at a bad man," said Nahnya, "and put him in jail.
You are going to make yourself a wise, big man now."
Philippe's self-love made its last stand. "I am a man," he said
scowling. "It is not for a woman to tell me what to do."
Nahnya made no answer. She was playing with some bits of broken stone.
"I will be the master in my own lodge!" Philippe said louder. "You
will work and keep quiet!"
"If you want me to live with you, you must live straight," said Nahnya,
with an ominous softness. "You think it is fun to be a bad man. It is
not fun to be a bad man's wife!"
"I will do what I want!" said Philippe boastfully.
"Look!" said Nahnya, pointing to the stones she had been arranging.
"Here I have made the sign of the cross. Kneel, and put your right
hand on it, and swear to live straight!"
Philippe laughed. Nahnya rose to her feet with the same dangerously
quiet air. She did not look at him. Anxiety began to undermine his
scornful smile.
"What are you going to do?" he asked sullenly.
"Swear!" she said. "Or I will jump off this rock into the valley!"
He sprang up. She was quicker than he. He saw her headed straight and
determined for the edge. He stopped dead.
"Nahnya!" he cried hoarsely.
She stopped on the very edge, looking down into the gulf with a kind of
wistful desirousness. One would almost have said that she was sorry he
had cried out.
"I will swear it!" he cried quickly. He dropped to his knees beside
the cross of stones.
She came back from the edge with a sigh. "I will do all that I said,"
she murmured, as if to herself.
The way down into the shallow valley on the other side was easy. As
they proceeded Nahnya laid out their plans for the future with a kind
of ecstasy in her sad eyes.
"All day I am thinking what we will do. We will gather those like
ourselves who are not red and not white, and make a new people of them.
First we will go to Caribou Lake and talk with the people. They have
steamboats now on Caribou Lake and the little river and the big river;
the York boats are rotting on the beach and the half-breeds have no
work to do. They are poor and sick and full of hate for the white men.
I know a fine country where the Tamarack River rises in the hills.
There are no white men near, and the Kakisa Indians who hunted there
are all dead or gone away with other tribes. It is the best fur
country there is left. We will tell the people about this country, and
make a village there. There is good hunting for all. The company will
make a post there, and you shall be the trader!"