_Into the Cariboo Mountains._
Four days distant from this camp, Cameron and his companion unloosed
their mining kit for the first time. Nowhere had they found any
evidences that human beings had ever before penetrated into this
region. They climbed the steep mountain sides only to descend again
through the darkest ravines. Unaccustomed to the points of the
compass, they were obliged to watch their course by the sun. Each
with his secret burning within his heart, they encountered bravely
the difficulties of their task. Many times on this hazardous journey
they were almost overcome by fatigue, and often saved from instant
death over the side of some unseen precipice by only the margin of a
step. Finally, as they emerged from the forest-clad mountains upon a
slight plateau, they reached the first slate bottoms, which gave the
well-nigh disheartened prospectors new courage, and the first view of
the uninterrupted rays of the sun that they had encountered since their
hunt through the wilderness. Here on this promontory, which sloped
gently down westward to what seemed to be a dried-up water course, Andy
and his companion built their miners’ cabin. Water they had discovered
trickling down the face of a steep rock at one side of the site they
had chosen for their home. And game they knew in the mountains was
plentiful, for at their approach the flight of the wild fowl had shaken
the overhanging branches of the evergreens and strange-looking animals
scudded beneath the underbrush and sprang into hiding behind the rocks
and boulders.
Here at the close of the day, standing before the door of their
rudely-constructed hut, the two hopeful miners, already fast friends,
silently watched the setting of the sun. Neither had told of the
friends left at home; Andy had kept sacred within his heart the need,
the incentive, which drove him forward facing the desperate chances of
death by starvation or sickness, to discover the hidden treasures of
this almost impenetrable region, and his companion was equally reticent
as to his own counsels of the past. Willing to lead in the trail where
almost certain death seemed ahead, he had proved himself many times
in their short acquaintance a man of reckless daring. The look each
encountered in the other’s eyes upon this eve, as they watched the sun
go down behind the opposite hills, plainly said: “My secret is a sacred
one; ask me nothing.”
On the morrow they were to begin their task of digging for the yellow
nuggets, in the search for which thousands of others had gone into the
same ranges, many to join the bandit gangs of roving miners, never
again to return to their loved ones, others to sicken and die with
the malignant fevers of camp life, and a few—a very few—to realize
their dreams, and return again to their homes, bearing with them the
shining golden nuggets, at the sight of which a new army of inspired
prospectors would soon be started upon its way to repeat the same acts
in the great drama entitled “The Hunt for Gold.”
* * * * *
And here we leave for the present, Andy and his youthful partner to
dig for the elusive golden specks which had drawn them onward with a
terrible fascination for thousands of miles. They are now securely
hidden away in the mountain fastnesses where never a human voice nor
the tread of man had yet fallen.
[Illustration]