CAUSE FOR ANXIETY
There was no sign of the missing horse next day, and Alton's face was
grave when he returned to camp at noon. Tom of Okanagan arrived an
hour or two later, and shook his head when Seaforth glanced at him
inquiringly.
"Rock again. Right down to the river," he said.
Alton nodded, but did not ask if his companion had effected a crossing.
"There was a good deal of water coming down?" he said.
"Oh, yes," said Okanagan. "It was cold. Boulders all along on the
other side. Now if the beast got over he'll be lighting out for home,
and there are some of us better than others at picking up a trail."
Seaforth understood him, and the implication pleased him though it was
not openly expressed. "Had you any especial reason when you asked me
to go, Harry?" he asked.
Alton smiled dryly. "I had, but I don't know that it was a very good
one. You would sooner stay up here. What do you think, Tom?"
"Of course!" said Seaforth, and Alton nodded silently, while Okanagan
rose to his feet.
"Now you have asked me, Charley's right," he said. "I'll be moving
south in ten minutes."
He had set off in somewhat less, and the men he left behind stood still
listening until the sound of his footsteps had sunk into the stillness.
Then Seaforth glanced at his comrade, and Alton laughed.
"It's lonely, Charley," he said. "I don't know that you were wise, but
we'll get a move on and cache some of these provisions."
Seaforth was glad of something to do. Three had started from Somasco,
and already one had gone, while he felt a slight sense of depression as
he glanced north towards the wilderness of rock and snow their path led
into. He did not, however, tell his comrade so, and they toiled for an
hour before Alton, carefully smoothing off the soil that covered what
they had hidden, strewed it with cedar-twigs.
"Step it off, Charley; twenty paces east to the rock, with the big peak
over the shoulder of the hill," he said.
Seaforth walked straight forward with measured strides. "A foot over!"
he said.
Alton nodded. "Go back and make your traverse," he said. "Forty north
with the gully over the fork of the river."
"Forty," said Seaforth, "and a half."
"Well," said Alton, "whatever you don't remember, hold tight on to
that."
Seaforth felt the depression he had shaken off return to him. "There
are," he said slowly, "few things that you forget."
Alton, glancing at him, understood, and then turned his eyes towards
the snow of the wilderness. "It's the man that can't look forward who
gets left," he said. "Now something might stop me coming back with you
for that grub."
Seaforth said nothing, and he was a little graver than usual as they
packed the tent and blankets on the remaining horse, and an extra load
upon their own backs. A good many things might happen up there in the
north, including snow-slides, floods and frost, or the downward rush of
great trees in a _brulee_. That was possibly why he commenced a little
jingling song of the music-halls when they took the trail again, but
the white grandeur of the great peaks silenced him, or his breath gave
out as they floundered into fern-choked forest which was further
garnished with the horrible devil's club. Seaforth fell into a clump
of it, and for several minutes his comments were venomous, for though
he had been taught restraint in England and had further tuition in
Canada of a grimmer description, little can be expected from the man
who is gripped by that Satanic thorn.
It was half an hour before he went on again with his garments
ensanguined as the result of Alton's treatment with the knife, and he
gasped with relief when after a march of four miles, which occupied
most of what was left of the day, they came out into the more open
spaces of a big _brulee_. Some time in the hot autumn a fire had
passed that way, and the great trees towered above them, stripped and
blackened columns, that seemed to stretch between earth and sky. There
was no limb left them, and they rose, majestic in their cylindrical
symmetry, in apparently endless battalions, a vista of plutonic
desolation. Underfoot there was charcoal, and feathery ashes that
whirled aloft, and sprinkling the men with a fine grey powder slowly
settled again.
Alton was white in ten minutes, a gritty mire defiled the horse's
sides, and Seaforth floundered, coughing, ankle-deep at times, with
livid circles where he had rubbed the grime away about his eyes. There
was no sign of beast or bird, and the shuffle of weary feet and thud of
hoofs rose muffled out of a great silence, until there was a stupendous
crash somewhere in the distance. The charred trunks took up the sound,
and while they flung it from one to another Alton sprang forward and
smote the pack-horse with his fist.
"Jump!" he said hoarsely.
Next moment Seaforth felt himself hurled forward, and glancing over his
shoulder when he found his footing again saw a big trunk tilt a little.
It seemed to hang quivering for a second or two, then toppled further,
and with a great humming came rushing down. Then there was a stunning
crash, and he stood gasping, deafened, and bereft of sight, amidst a
stifling cloud of dust which swept into his mouth and nostrils and
almost suffocated him. When he could see anything again the horse was
quivering, and the dust still rising from a shapeless pile a few yards
behind him. Alton, who was black and grey to the ankles, took his hat
off, shook it, and put it on again in a curious unconcerned fashion
which suggested that he did it unconsciously.
"Those six feet make a big difference," said he. As he spoke there was
a crash a little farther behind them, another ahead, and they stood
still; Alton gripping the horse's bridle, Seaforth staring about him
and scarcely breathing, while concussion answered concussion, until
there was a silence that was almost bewildering again.
"Now," said Alton quietly, "we'll get out of this, though I don't know
that we need worry, because that should have cleared out the shaky
ones. When one goes, more of them generally follow. It wouldn't have
grieved Hallam of the Tyee very much if we had been a yard or two
farther back."
Seaforth was possibly a little shaken, for he answered as he might not
otherwise have done. "I wonder if it would have displeased anybody
else," he said.
Alton jerked the horse to a standstill and looked at him. "I don't
think you meant that, Charley."
Seaforth noticed the glint in his comrade's eyes, and departed a little
from veracity. "No," he said. "There are times when a man is apt to
talk a little at random."
Alton nodded. "You'll not forget again. The man is a kinsman of mine."
Seaforth smote the pack-horse, because he did not quite know what to
answer. He had vague suspicions concerning Deringham, but was quite
aware that it would be inappropriate for him to express them. Also,
having seen a little of the smoother side of life in England, he knew a
trifle more about young women of Miss Deringham's description than his
comrade did. He admired the girl, as most men would have done, but the
qualities Alton had evidently endowed her with were not especially
apparent to him. He also fancied that Miss Deringham would have found
some of them distinctly irksome now and then.
It was dark when they came out of the _brulee_ and pitched camp amidst
the boulders beside a lonely lake. The mists crawled about the pines
that shut it in, and its surface was seamed with white by a little
bitter wind. Sombre clouds rolled lower down the surrounding hills,
and Seaforth was glad to stretch his weary limbs under the lee of a big
boulder while the fire snapped and crackled in front of him.
"I wonder when we shall see this lake again," he said.
Alton, who was busy with the frypan, turned and stirred the fire, and
the sparks and smoke whirled about them before a stinging blast. "I
don't know," he said, glancing at a smear of whiteness that swept
athwart the lake. "It depends upon the weather, and I'm not pleased
with that to-night. You see the Chinook winds would keep off the snow."
"Of course," said Seaforth, who knew that the warm breezes from the
Pacific occasionally drive back the rigorous winter that turns the
northern portion of the mountain province into a white desolation.
"They usually do, but we'll surmise that in place of them we get the
back-draughts from the Pole?"
"Then," said Alton dryly, "it would be a good deal nicer down at
Somasco. Are you sorry you didn't stop there, Charley?"
Seaforth threw an armful of fir wood upon the fire with somewhat
unnecessary violence. "You are not so pleasant as you might be
to-night," he said.
Alton rose and stretched himself. "I wouldn't worry about me. It
seems to me we are both of us feeling lonely, and that's curious,
because when we had him Okanagan wasn't any special kind of a
companionable man. There was a time when you would have been driving
to dinner with a diamond pin stuck in you and silk stockings on about
this time, Charley?"
Seaforth laughed. "I scarcely think either of the things are in common
masculine use," he said. "There, however, was a time when I walked
into a British Columbian mining camp with my whole wardrobe on my back
and, I think, fifty cents in my pocket. Still, what you ask me
suggests a not quite unwarranted question. What are you going to do
with Carnaby, Harry?"
"I don't know yet. I'm not sure it's mine, you see."
"Your grandfather left it you," said Seaforth; "and it was his."
"Yes," said Alton gravely. "He did, but he tacked a kind of condition
on to it, and--well, that's about all I can tell you, Charley."
"Of course!" and Seaforth smiled curiously. "I would not have asked
you, only I am your partner, and when you're Alton of Carnaby you will
have no more use for me."
Alton seemed to sigh. "I am," he said simply, "Alton of Somasco, and I
fancy now and then that was all I was meant to be. You are my partner,
Charley, and it would take a good deal more than Carnaby to separate
you and me."
Seaforth smiled again, though there was more than amusement in his
face, while Alton, who stopped beside the fire and filled two cans from
the kettle, shook his head reproachfully as he flung their contents
into the bush.
"That's what comes of talking too much. You have forgotten to put in
the tea," he said.
They lay down early, rolled in the blankets, with the tent across them,
for the wind that lashed the lake rendered it advisable not to erect
it, but it was some time before Seaforth went to sleep. He fancied he
understood Alton's assertion that he was not sure Carnaby was his, for
he knew his comrade was capable under certain conditions of almost
reasonless generosity. Nor did he desire a better partner, but he was
not sure that in the event of Alton transferring his activities to
England their friendship would be approved of by a possible mistress of
Carnaby. Women, Seaforth knew, regarded these things differently.
He slept at last, and awakening felt the tent heavy upon him. There
was also a curious rawness in the atmosphere, and he glanced about him
with a little gasp of consternation. The hillside gleamed coldly above
him under the creeping light, and only the pines were sombre, for the
earth was white with snow.
"Get up, Harry," he said, with something in his voice that roused his
comrade suddenly.
Alton rose, and his face became a trifle grim. "This," he said
quietly, "is going to mix up things. We'll have breakfast quick as you
can get it."
They were on their way in half an hour, struggling up the hillside
under the pines until at last the trees grew smaller towards the timber
line. Then they floundered painfully over what had been bare slopes of
rock and was now a waste of snow, with a dazzling field of whiteness.
between them and the blue. Up there the frost was biting, and the snow
lay fine as flour, blowing in thin wisps from under the horse's hoofs,
while the men's jean and deerhide were sprinkled with glittering
particles. The wind dropped towards sundown, and when, climbing a
great hill shoulder, they dipped again to the forest the snows flamed
crimson, against a pitiless blueness, out of which there seemed to fall
a devastating cold.
Diamonds glinted upon the shivering pines, sound seemed frozen, and
there was a great impressive stillness across which the jingle of the
bridle rang stridently when Alton pulled the horse up near the foremost
of the trees.
"This," he said softly, "is where I found Jimmy. He was sitting there
with his rifle on his knee, looking straight at me, as though there
were lots of things he could tell me."
Seaforth shivered a little. "He had the specimens with him?"
Alton nodded. "Yes," he said. "He had his grip right on the deerhide
bag, as though he didn't want to let me have them, and I had to think
of Mrs. Jimmy while I took them from him. It didn't seem quite fair of
Jimmy, because they haven't much use for silver in the country the long
trail leads to."
Seaforth glanced down into the great hollow that fell away beneath
them, and up at the glittering snow. "You were alone, I think?"
"I was," said Alton grimly. "And most half-frozen. It was that cold
there was ice in the big rapid, and I hadn't had much to eat for
several days."
Seaforth shivered again, as he pictured that strange encounter between
the dead and the living. Jimmy the prospector, having taken his secret
with him to a region where silver is valueless, had sat within a few
paces from where he stood with his fingers clenched upon the bag, and
an awful disregard of the rights of the woman he had left behind in his
frozen face. Seaforth could also picture his comrade stooping over him
with averted eyes, but swift, resolute movements, for when there was
work to be done Alton of Somasco was not the man to turn aside.
"It must have been a trifle horrible," he said.
Alton's eyes closed a little. "It wasn't nice. Still, there was Mrs.
Jimmy working down at the store, and that secret belonged to her."
He stopped abruptly with a little gesture as of one shaking off a
painful memory, and looked down across the climbing pines to the lake
in the hollow behind them. It still shone steelily, and apparently not
very far away, though it had cost the men strenuous toil all day to
traverse the distance that divided them from it. Seaforth, who watched
him, noticed something unusual in his attitude, for his comrade stood
very still with eyes that never for a moment wavered from one point in
the valley.
"Do you see anything down there?" he said.
"Yes," said Alton grimly. "I see smoke."
"There is nothing astonishing in that," said Seaforth. "I damped down
the bark well, and raked up the soil to shut off the draught. There
was a big pile of wet green twigs, Harry."
Alton smiled curiously. "You made one fire?"
"Yes," said Seaforth, wondering. "We don't usually make two."
His sight was not equal to his comrade's, but he could see a smear of
blue vapour curl athwart the pines, for he had banked the fire with wet
fuel, so that it should smoke all day in case Tom of Okanagan had
overtaken the horse and was following their trail.
"Well," said Alton dryly, "there is another one."
Seaforth swept his gaze twice across the valley before he saw anything
beyond the crowded pines, and then for a moment he caught sight of a
second faint streak athwart their sombreness. It was a mere film that
vanished and rose again, illusory and almost imperceptible, but for
some reason it troubled him.
"It might be Tom," he said.
Alton laughed in a curious fashion. "I don't think it is. One fire
would be enough for Tom to make his supper with, and that one's nearer
us."
"But," said Seaforth, "I can scarcely see the smoke."
Alton raised one hand impatiently. "No," he said. "Whoever made that
fire didn't want you to, and there's no need to make much smoke if you
keep clear of sap and twigs."
Seaforth's face grew grave. "Is there any reason why you can't tell me
a little more? If the man would sooner we did not see it, what did he
make the fire for?"
Alton smiled grimly. "I don't know any more, but a man must eat," he
said. "In the meanwhile it seems to me that fellow understands his
business, and I've a kind of notion we shall hear from him or see him
presently."
Seaforth glanced back along the blue-grey trail that led towards the
bare hill shoulder, which rose a mere ridge of the great mountain side
that swept round the hollow.
"There is no controverting that, and he needn't have much difficulty in
finding us if he wants to. Is there anything to be done?" he said.
"No," said Alton dryly. "If there was, I'd sit down here and wait for
him, but there's nothing to stop a free miner prospecting round where
it suits him in this country."