A WAY OUT
Three shivering, miserable mortals were we, as we stood there in our
wet clothes contemplating the impassable rock which barred the way. Two
badly scared mortals were Percy and I, as we turned instinctively to
our leader for comfort.
“What’s to be done now, Jack?” asked the former, tucking his hands
beneath his arms to warm them. “There’s no getting over this thing.”
Then did our captain come out strong. If ever I get into such a
predicament again, give me a fellow like Jack for a leader. He knew
better than we did the danger of the position in which his bad
management--as he considered--had placed us; he was quite as much
alarmed as we were at the plight in which we found ourselves; but,
seeing that if he should give way to his fears his two followers
would instantly be plunged into the depths of despair, he assumed a
cheerfulness he was far from feeling, and with an air of assurance
which was most encouraging he answered Percy’s question as promptly and
decisively as though, far from being taken by surprise, he had been
thinking over the matter for a week beforehand. A very fine fellow was
our captain; though he would be the first to laugh at me for saying so.
“This rock must be about thirty feet high,” said he, contemplating the
obstruction in a calm, critical manner, as though it were some natural
curiosity, “and, as you see, it fits down so closely there is no
crawling under it. All we have to do, therefore, is to crawl over it.”
“That’s a good deal, though,” said Percy, brightening up a little,
however, under the influence of Jack’s example. “How do you propose
to do it? The rock leans over this way so much that we can’t possibly
climb up it.”
“We’ll bring up a thirty-foot pole,” replied Jack, “lean it against
the rock, and climb up that. Simple enough, eh? So, let us get back to
camp at once. You two shall transfer our baggage to the cabin, because
I think it quite probable that we shall have to stay here until the
storm is over, and a roof will be a good thing in this snow, and while
you are doing that I will go and cut the pole, which we will bring up
at once, so that, even if we don’t get out to-day, we may have it ready
when we want it.”
“But, Jack,” said Percy, “suppose we should not be able to bring the
pole up here. What then? Shall we--shall we--?”
“Shall we have to stay here all winter?” I blurted out, unable any
longer to keep down the momentous question we all of us had in our
minds.
“Stay here all winter?” cried Jack--and he actually managed to scare
up a laugh. “Not we! Why, Percy, where’s your American enterprise?
Where’s your English bull-doggedness, Tom? Do you think we’ll give in
at one failure? Not we, indeed! If we should be unable to get over this
rock, why, then, we’ll just go up our ladder and walk home over the
mountains. Give in! I should think not. We’re not babies; we’re men!”
That was a grand stroke of Jack’s: calling us men. I felt myself grow
two inches immediately; and Percy, taking his hands from under his
arms, and repressing his shivers as well as he could, straightened up
and exclaimed:
“Go ahead, Jack! You lead; we’ll follow!”
“Come on, then!” cried our captain.
Back we went at once, up the waterway, through the pool, and down to
the fort, where we picked up our blankets and carried them over to the
cabin; after which Percy and I busied ourselves in transporting the
rest of our baggage to the same haven, while Jack went off in search of
a pole which should be at once sufficiently long and not too heavy.
The better part of an hour passed ere we were ready to set out again,
by which time the snow had so increased in depth as to be up to our
knees, making the task of carrying the heavy pole one of great labour.
After innumerable pauses to rest and recover breath, and after a great
deal of manœuvring to coax the awkward burden around the corners, we at
length reached the pool. But there we encountered a new and unexpected
obstacle. We were met in the face by a rush of wind, which was driving
out of the mouth of the tunnel with force enough to make us stagger
under our load. It had been perfectly calm down in the valley when we
left it, and in the cleft in the rocks up which we had just come there
was no air stirring, but judging from the blast which came out of the
tunnel, we guessed that there must be a high wind sweeping over the
hog-back above our heads.
“Stop!” cried Jack. “You fellows wait here, while I go through and see
what it is like on the other side. From the look of things, I expect we
have got to get back to the cabin at once.”
We “up-ended” the pole and leaned it against the rocks, so that it
should not be buried in the snow, and then Jack, for the third time
that day, waded into the pool. In a short time he came splashing back
again, and reported, as we had expected, that there was a gale blowing
on the other side of the valley-wall.
“It’s no use to think of going on at present,” said he; “the snow is
drifting badly out there. We should only lose ourselves; and the result
of that would probably be that we should freeze to death or die of
exhaustion, tired as we are, and wet through as we have been all day.
We must make our way down to the cabin again as fast as we can.”
We accordingly retraced our steps; and it was well we turned back when
we did, or we might never have reached the little shanty at all. As we
were about to enter, Jack stopped and held up his finger.
“Hark!” he cried. “Do you hear that booming noise? The wind in the
pines. It will be down on us directly. Come in, and help me fasten the
waggon-sheet over the doorway.”
Such a storm as that which burst upon us five minutes later I never
saw before; and I shall be well content if I never see such another.
The wind leaped upon us like a wild beast, and instantly the whole
atmosphere seemed to go crazy. Our little, creaking cabin shook and
trembled so that the mud “chinking” fell out upon the floor; several
of the stones composing our chimney came tumbling into the fireplace;
three or four times our door was dashed from its fastenings--when the
room was filled with snow in an instant--and hard work we had to get it
back again.
The fierceness of the wind, and the whirling, stifling, never-ceasing
rush of the snow were enough to frighten the boldest. It was one of
those storms which drive the range-cattle headlong before them for
miles and miles, until the poor beasts give in, exhausted, and fall to
the ground, never to get up again; one of those storms which, catching
the solitary immigrant-waggon unprepared, pass on and leave it with
its occupants--men, women, and children, perhaps--and the horses which
pulled it, all stiff and dead together.
“This is a bad one, and no mistake,” said Jack, after one of our
periodical struggles to replace our door. “It is fortunate for us that
we have four stout walls and a roof to shelter us. If it was Squeaky
who upset that rock into the passage up above, he did us a good turn in
my opinion. If it had not been there to stop us, we should have been
caught half-way down the mountain; and that, I expect, would have been
the end of us. I don’t believe a man could live half an hour in this
storm if he were exposed to its full force.”
All the rest of that day we sat still or walked restlessly up and down
listening to the commotion outside, and all through the night we slept
in fitful snatches, roused now and then when a blast of extra power
burst in our door or sent crashing to the ground one of the trees on
the slope close behind the cabin. It was an anxious night; nor did we
get relief until midday next day, when the wind stopped as suddenly as
it had begun.
Jack stepped to the doorway and removed the waggon-sheet.
The sky was clearing rapidly, the snow had ceased to fall. Except for
a few drifts, the valley was swept clean, the mountain-tops were bare,
and the branches of the trees, which before had bent under the weight
of snow, had now shaken themselves free of their burden.
For a minute Jack stood in the doorway, silent, and frowning to
himself, and then, “Come over and look at the pass,” said he, and set
off across the valley.
The pass was gone--vanished! We could not tell even where it ought
to be, so completely was it filled up, and such a maze of drifts of
all shapes and sizes was there among the woods which bordered it. The
entrance--supposing we had found the right place--was buried under
fifty feet of snow.
I glanced at Jack, expecting to see him overwhelmed by this crowning
misfortune. But not a bit of it. He merely nodded his head in the
direction of the pass, and said: “No getting out that way seemingly.
Let us go and look at the ladder.”
But that way, too, was barred. Nature seemed to have made a dead set
at us. A freak of the wind had piled a great drift upon the top of the
wall just above the ladder, where it hung like a combing wave, ready
to fall at a touch to all appearance. Indeed, a large mass had already
fallen, breaking the ladder in two.
Our case seemed to me to be pretty desperate, and from the concerned
expression upon Percy’s face I guessed that he was of the same
mind. But upon Jack this accumulation of difficulties, instead of
casting him down, seemed to have the opposite effect; it aroused his
fighting-spirit.
“Give in!” he cried, just as though someone had suggested it, and
shaking his fist at the world in general. “Not if I know it! We’ll
find, or force, a way out somewhere! You see,” he went on, addressing
us, “some of these drifts are pretty sure to reach to the top of the
wall somewhere, and as soon as the snow has settled a bit, and after
the sun and frost have hardened the surface, we shall be able to get
about, and then we’ll make an exploring expedition. All we can do at
present is to go down to the cabin and make ourselves as comfortable as
we can for a few days. It is no good trying to get out while the snow
is soft, we should bury ourselves in the drifts.”
In spite of Jack’s heroic efforts to put a good face on the situation,
I confess that I, at least, felt much inclined to despair of being able
ever to climb out of the old crater by means of the unstable drifts,
while Percy, I have good reason to believe, felt much as I did about it.
How we should have scoffed at anyone who should have ventured to
suggest that anything could possibly happen to make us forget, even for
a moment, the pressing question of finding a way out of the valley! Yet
such an event did actually occur; and no later than the next morning.
When I first described the Mushroom Rock I mentioned, it will be
remembered, that the cap was split in two, and, that the pieces
overhung the stalk in such a manner as to make it appear that a strong
wind might blow them down. Appearances were deceitful, however, or the
late storm would certainly have upset them. But where the blustering
wind had failed, the sun and the frost, working in turns, succeeded.
The crack dividing the cap was drifted full of snow, and this snow the
sun next day reduced to a state of slush, the frost at night converting
it in turn into ice. The lateral pressure thus brought to bear upon
them by the ice was sufficient to move the pieces the quarter-inch or
so necessary to destroy their balance, and when we looked out of the
cabin door next morning, there were the two great rocks lying on their
backs--one of them bridging the creek.
Percy and I walked over to look at them, and as we stood beside the
fallen fragment which lay athwart the stream, our conversation--I
forget why--turned upon the subject of the pot-holes and the gold
button that Percy had found in one of them.
“That’s the hole,” said he, pitching a snowball into the water, “and I
should like to know why that one should have had a nugget in it while
the others had nothing but scales and grains.”
“What I should like to know,” said I, “is why we should find gold in
the pot-holes and nowhere else. Is there a goose around here that goes
about laying golden eggs and using these holes for nests? Perhaps she
has been along again by this time and laid another in your pot-hole.”
“Highly probable,” replied Percy, ironically. “I’ll look.”
As he spoke he stepped over to the spot and looked down into the hole.
To my great surprise he fell upon his knees, tucked up his sleeve, and
plunged his hand into the water.
“Look here!” he exclaimed, holding out a yellow lump in his dripping
fingers.
My imaginary goose had laid another egg; an egg three times as big as
the last one too.
We were nonplussed this time. If the presence of gold in the pot-holes
had been a puzzle to us before, what were we to think of the conjuring
trick that Nature had played upon us now? Without a word--for, indeed,
we had nothing to say--we hurried back to the cabin, outside which was
Jack, busy chopping wood. To him Percy held out his hand just as he had
done to me.
“Well, Percy,” cried the wood-chopper, straightening his back and
stretching himself, “what have you found this time?”
“This,” replied Percy, briefly.
Jack dropped the axe and took the nugget.
“Where did it come from?” he asked, opening his eyes wide.
Percy told him.
“What!” he exclaimed. “You found it in the same pot-hole that we
cleaned out a month ago? Well, that is the most astonishing thing I
ever heard of. Where can it have come from?”
As he talked he kept turning the nugget over and over, examining it on
every side, and presently, in a little crevice or fold, he espied a
tiny white streak. Taking out his pocket-knife he extracted a little
of this white material and thoughtfully spread it upon the palm of his
hand. It made a mark like white paint.
We two stood patiently waiting for him to offer some explanation of
this mysterious “find,” when, with startling suddenness, he cast his
knife upon the ground, slapped his leg, and burst into a great laugh; a
laugh half of amusement and half of annoyance.
“Ho, ho, ho!” he went, stamping about and clutching his back hair as if
he had been stung by a hornet. “Oh my, oh my, oh my! What a blundering
dunderhead I must have been never to have guessed it before! Here, give
me a hand with this pole, one of you,” picking up, as he spoke, the
butt end of a dead pine-tree which formed part of our heap of fire-wood.
“What are you going to do with it?” asked Percy, as he shouldered the
little end.
“Show you that vein, I hope,” replied Jack. “Come on!”
Down we went to the stream, and there we reared the pole on end and
leaned it against one piece of the prostrate cap, when Jack at once
shinned up it and stepped upon the top of the rock. In half a minute he
looked down, at us and said, in a rather excited tone of voice “Come
up!”
Up went Percy, with me close behind him, and soon we were standing at
our leader’s side.
“Look here!” said he.
About half the surface of the rock, originally its under side, was
covered with a layer of reddish, clay-like material some two inches
thick, across the middle of which ran a white streak about a span in
width. Going down upon his knees, Jack pointed out to us little flakes
and lumps of gold, showing in several places along the white streak.
“There is our gold-vein,” said he. “It has been lying under our noses,
or, rather, above our heads, all this time. The gold we got out of
the pot-holes with the help of the clay balls came out of the clay
balls themselves. With our own stupid hands we put the gold into the
pot-holes, and then ‘discovered’ it. Did ever such a thing happen
before? And to think that I never suspected it! No wonder we couldn’t
find the vein up in the mountain, when, just as likely as not, this
rock rode on a glacier down from Alaska or Hudson’s Bay, or anywhere
else you like, ages ago, when half this continent was covered with
ice.”
“Then that nugget I found this morning,” said Percy, “tumbled into the
water when the rock fell down.”
“Yes,” replied Jack. “And the water had not had time to wash it quite
clean. It was the little scrap of clay left sticking to it that showed
me where it came from.”
“I suppose this white streak probably runs across the other rocks as
well,” said I.
“Probably. We’ll soon see.”
The three rocks lay close together, and being all about the same height
there was no difficulty in stepping from one to the other. Each of them
was traversed by the same white line, which, like the first one, showed
scraps of gold in various places; one scrap, which I picked out with my
knife, being as big as the top of my thumb.
At last, then, we had found that elusive gold-vein; a small one,
indeed, but to all appearance a rich one; and having found it, we
determined to make the most of it.
That day, and the next three days as well, we spent upon the top of the
rock exposed to the full blast of the wintry wind--for the winter now
seemed to have set in in earnest,--each with a sheath-knife cutting a
trench along the line of the white streak, and carefully saving every
scrap of the frozen clay thus laboriously collected. By the time the
work was finished, we had accumulated some five hundred pounds of the
precious stuff, which we carried to the cabin and there proceeded to
wash, a double handful at a time, in the gold-pan; a slow and tedious
undertaking.
Our reason for doing this work in the house was that the little creek
had ceased to flow, being now frozen solid, and we were obliged in
consequence to resort to melted snow for washing and drinking purposes.
The iron pot was kept continuously upon the fire, and one of us was
constantly engaged in bringing in shovels full of snow with which to
feed it, in order to supply Jack’s insatiable demands for more water.
In the corner of the house we dug a hole two feet deep to serve as
a sink, and in this corner sat Jack, hour after hour, with his feet
planted on either side of the hole, washing “dirt” in the pan, pouring
away the muddy water into the sink, and saving the precious residue of
gold and black sand.
By the time all of the original five hundred pounds of clay had been
washed, we found ourselves in possession of about a tenth of that
amount of black sand, which was then all washed over again with the
greatest care. At last Jack declared that he was afraid to wash it any
more, for fear of losing some of the fine particles of gold; so our
labour was concluded when the mass had been reduced to about thirty
pounds’ weight, of which two-thirds, perhaps, was gold.
Percy and I were anxious to know what was the value of the little
heap; but to make the calculation was beyond our power, for we had
not the least idea of how many Troy ounces there might be in a pound
Avoirdupois; and gold, of course, is sold by Troy weight.
Jack said he thought he could calculate it, and with a burnt stick he
forthwith proceeded to work out the sum upon the waggon-sheet.
“In the first place,” said he, “there are twenty-nine thousand one
hundred and sixty-six Troy ounces in a ton of two thousand pounds
Avoirdupois.”
“How do you know?” asked Percy, promptly.
“Learnt it in a book on assaying,” replied Jack, with equal promptness.
“All right,” said Percy, “peg away, then.”
“We are supposing that we have twenty pounds of gold here,” Jack went
on. “Twenty pounds is one-hundredth part of a ton. H-m--h-m! Two
hundred and ninety-one ounces and a fraction Troy--say, two hundred and
ninety. Multiply that by eighteen. Gold is reckoned at eighteen dollars
an ounce up here in Montana, you know. There!” as he drew with his
burnt stick a line beneath the total.
“Oh, get out!” exclaimed Percy, when he saw the figure. “You don’t mean
to say that this little heap is worth five thousand two hundred and
twenty dollars!”
“Something of the sort,” replied Jack. “Of course there is a great deal
of guess-work about it, but I expect that my calculation is not far
out. I shouldn’t wonder if this heap, and the gold we got out of the
pot-holes, were to mount up to six thousand dollars, or even more.”
It was hard to believe that so small a heap could be worth so much; but
Jack seemed to be pretty confident, and so we took his word for it,
hoping he might turn out to be right.
That our treasure might be packed in handy form for travelling we
applied our time that evening to making little bags of canvas cut from
the waggon-sheet, and these having been packed tight and sewn up, they
were put into other bags made of buckskin, having thongs of the same
material attached with which to tie them to our belts.
“There,” said Jack, as he restored the needles and thread to the case,
and the case itself to his pocket, “now we are ready to get out as soon
as we can. We’ll try the drifts to-morrow. Those near the north end
look most promising. We’ll try them first.”
But, as it happened, we had no occasion to try the drifts after all.
Before we set out next morning, Percy suggested that it might be worth
while to look into the cleft in the valley-wall through which the
stream ran out.
“For,” said he, “if this creek here is frozen so solid, it may be that
we can walk on the ice down the cañon, and if we can, that will be
much the easiest way to travel, because then we can follow along the
stream--which is sure to bring us out somewhere--instead of climbing
over the mountains.”
“We’ll have a look,” said Jack. “But I doubt if we shall find it
frozen; the water runs at such a tremendous pace.”
Jack was right. The water was not frozen; it was just as wild as ever.
But we could walk over the top of it nevertheless. For at the very
entrance of the cañon, the stream vanished into a tunnel of snow. The
great storm had drifted the gorge half full. Resting upon the boulders
which cumbered its bed lay a heavy mass of tightly-packed snow, roofing
the stream from one end of the cañon to the other.
We might walk out of the valley whenever we chose!
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