DREAM MINE
The next morning the party broke camp, and after toiling hard with
pole and paddle reached, toward evening, a forest-shrouded gorge
through which the flood swept furiously. A quarter of a mile ahead
steep rocks pent in the raging water, which was veiled in spray; but
nearer at hand the stream widened into a pool at which Andrew gazed
with misgivings. Evidently Carnally meant to cross it. A wall of crag
formed one bank; the opposite beach was strewn with massy boulders,
over which the pine branches stretched; and in between there ran a
great wedge-shaped track of foam. No canoe, Andrew thought, could live
through that tumult of broken water; but it ran more slackly near the
boulder bank, and a short distance higher up an angry eddy swung back,
close inshore, to the head of the pool, where it joined the main
downward rush. At the junction a spur of rock ran out into the wild
side-swirl of the flood. Shut in as it was by dripping pines, the
place had a forbidding look.
"It strikes me that the Company will find carrying up its stores and
plant very costly work," Andrew remarked, as they rested in an eddy
behind a stone. "I'm beginning to understand why Leonard asked for so
much capital. My idea is that we'll have to do some preliminary
reducing on the spot to save mineral transport."
Carnally nodded. For a novice in such matters, Allinson was showing an
unusual grasp of details.
"It's a question of the quality of the ore. In the North you must have
a high-grade product that can be handled at a profit in small
quantities. It doesn't pay to work rock that carries a low percentage
of metal."
"What grade of stuff are we turning out? I've been unable to learn
anything about it since I saw the results of the first assays."
"So far, the Company has not got up much ore: the boys have been kept
busy at development work. But you'll be able to judge for yourself
shortly, and we had better get on. There's a slack along the edge of
the spur at the head of the pool which we ought to make, and it will
save us some trouble in portaging. I'll land you if you'd rather, but
I want a hand, and Lucien must give us a lift by tracking."
"If you can take the canoe up, I'll go with you," said Andrew quietly.
They headed for the boulder beach, where they landed the half-breed.
He made a line fast to the craft and went up-stream with the end of
it, while Carnally thrust the canoe out and, with Andrew's help,
forced her up against the current, aided by the line. It was arduous
work. The foam stood high about the bows; eddies swirling up from the
rough bottom swung them to and fro and, although they strained every
muscle, now and then brought them to a standstill. Angry waves broke
on board freely, and Andrew realized that if Lucien lost his footing
or slackened his efforts the line would be torn from him and they
would be swept back to the tail of the pool. This, however, would be
better than being sucked into the cataract close outshore, which
would no doubt result in the canoe's capsizing. At last they reached a
spot where they must stem the main rush, which swung in nearer the
bank.
"Can we get through there?" Andrew asked breathlessly.
"I'll try," said Carnally. "If we fail, I guess you'll have to swim."
Andrew said nothing, but the swollen veins rose on his forehead as he
strained upon his pole. Frothing water broke into the canoe; Lucien
was knee-deep in the foam, braced tensely against the drag of the
line. Spray lashed their hot faces, and the air was filled with the
roar of the torrent. For nearly a minute they hung stationary, their
strength taxed to the utmost, the pole-shoes gripping the bottom. Then
they moved a foot or two, and the work was a little easier when they
next dipped the poles. They made a few yards. With a cry to the
half-breed, Carnally loosed the line, and they shot forward up-stream
with a back-eddy. It swirled about them in curious green upheavals,
streaked with lines of foam, and they sped with it past boulder and
shingle at a furious pace. This was exhilarating; but when steep rocks
dropped to the water Andrew glanced anxiously toward the white
confusion where the eddy reunited with the downward stream. Its
descent was not to be thought of, but he could see no alternative
except being dashed against the crag.
Carnally, however, did not seem disturbed. He knelt in the stern, his
eyes fixed ahead, quietly dipping the steering paddle, for they had
laid down the poles.
"Use all your strength when I give the word," he said.
They slid on, a tall, projecting spur of rock drawing nearer, with
furious waves leaping down-stream a yard or two outshore of it. It
seemed to Andrew that destruction surely awaited them. The turmoil
grew closer, the rock was only a yard or two away; in another few
moments the bow of the canoe would plunge into the tumbling foam. Then
came a cry from Carnally:
"Now, with your right! Shoot her in!"
Andrew felt the stout paddle bend and afterward thought he had never
made a stronger effort. The bow swung inshore, the rock unexpectedly
fell back, and as they drove past its end a narrow basin opened up.
The next moment they had entered it and, gliding forward, grounded on
a gravelly bank. A man scrambled down a ledge and helped them to drag
out the canoe.
"I've been watching you; didn't think you would make it," he said.
"The stream's stronger than usual. Come along to my camp; I'll put you
up to-night."
"Thanks," responded Carnally. "This is Mr. Allinson, of the Rain Bluff
Mine." He turned to Andrew. "Mr. Graham, from the Landing."
Andrew saw that the man was studying him with quiet interest. Graham
was elderly; his hair was gray, and his face and general appearance
indicated that he led a comfortable, domestic life. Andrew supposed he
was in business, but when they reached his camp he recognized that it
had been laid out by a man with some knowledge of the wilds.
Graham gave them a supper of gray trout and bannocks and they
afterward sat talking while the half-breed went fishing. The rain had
ceased, though the mist still drifted heavily down the gorge, and the
aromatic smell of wood-smoke mingled with the scent of the pines.
Somewhere in the shadows a loon was calling, its wild cry piercing
through the roar of water.
"A rugged and beautiful country," Graham remarked. "Is this your first
visit to it, Mr. Allinson?"
"No," Andrew replied. "I was once some distance north, looking for
caribou. I'm glad of an opportunity for seeing it again. It gets hold
of one."
"So you know that; you have felt the pull of the lonely North! Curious
how it draws some of us, isn't it?"
"Have you been up there?"
"Oh, yes; as a young man I served the Hudson Bay. I've been through
most of the barrens between Churchill and the Mackenzie. Perhaps
that's the grimmest, hardest country white men ever entered; but it's
one you can't forget."
"It's undoubtedly hard," said Andrew. "We scarcely reached the fringe
of it, but I was dressed in rags and worn very thin when we struck
Lake Manitoba. I suppose you live at the Landing now?"
"I've been there twenty years; built my house myself when there was
only a shack or two and a Hudson Bay store. The railroad has changed
all that."
"Mr. Graham is treasurer for the sawmill," Carnally explained.
"Didn't you find it tamer than serving the fur company?" Andrew asked.
A curious smile crept into Graham's eyes.
"One can't have everything, Mr. Allinson. I've been content, a willing
slave of the desk, only seeing the wilds for a week or two in summer.
But I've thought I might make another trip before I get too old."
"I think I understand," Andrew replied; "if I've a chance, I'm going
before I return home. There's so much up yonder that impresses
me--the caribou, the timber wolves, the lake storms, and the break up
of the rivers in the spring. What a tremendous spectacle the last must
be!--six-foot ice, piled up in wild confusion, thundering down the
valleys. I've only followed the track of it in summer, but I've seen
the wreckage of rubbed-out buttes and islands, and boulders smashed to
rubble."
"It is grand," said Graham quietly.
"I wonder if you'd mind telling Mr. Allinson about the silver lode you
found?" Carnally suggested. "I guess he'd be interested."
Graham needed some persuasion before he began his tale.
"It happened a long time ago and I seldom mention it now; in fact,
I'll confess that the lode is looked upon as a harmless illusion of
mine. My friends call it my Dream Mine. When I was a young man I was
stationed at a Hudson Bay factory about four hundred miles north of
here and was despatched with two half-breeds and a canoe to carry
stores to a band of Indians. No doubt you know that the great Company
held sovereign authority over the North for a very long time and the
Indians depended on it for their maintenance. Well, we set off with
the canoe, paddling and portaging up rivers and across the height of
land, toward the south."
"Then you were working across country toward the headwaters of this
river," Andrew remarked.
"We didn't get so far, but I did my errand, and one day when crossing
a divide we nooned beside a little creek. As I filled the kettle I
noticed something peculiar about the pebbles and picked up a few. They
were unusually heavy and dully lustrous, which made me curious.
Following the creek back, I found a vein of the same material among
the rocks. I filled a small bag with specimens and took the bearings
of the spot, though we had to get on without loss of time because the
rivers would soon be freezing up. On reaching the fort I showed the
agent the specimens. I can remember his look of disgust. He was a grim
old Scot.
"Just pebbles; I'm no saying but they might be pretty,' he remarked,
and opening the door threw them out. 'Ye'll think nae mair o' them.
The Company's no collecting precious stones, and ye should ken a
souter's expected to stick till his last.'"
"I wonder," said Andrew, "which of you hailed from the Border."
"Both," laughed Graham. "He was a Hawick terry; I was born between
Selkirk and Ettrick shaws. The official language of the Company was
Caledonian; but that's beside the point. I was young enough to feel
hurt; though I knew my man and how staunch he was to the Company's
traditional policy."
"What was that policy?"
"The North for the Hudson Bay. As you know, in Canada all minerals
belong to the Crown. The first discoverer can claim the right to work
them, so long as he complies with the regulations."
"I see," said Andrew. "Prospectors might scare away animals with skins
worth a good deal of silver. But I didn't mean to interrupt you."
"A day or two later I thought I would look for the stones, but there
had been a heavy fall of snow and I found only a few of them. I never
got the rest, because I was away when the thaw came. About a year
later I was sent back with the same companions to the band of Indians.
It was winter, they were starving, and the agent recognized their
claim. There was no oppression of native races in the Hudson Bay
domains; not a yard of the Indians' land was taken from them, and
drink could not be bought at the factories. The Company offered them a
higher standard of comfort if they would work for it, but there was no
compulsion. If they found English guns and stores and blankets better
than the articles they had used, the agents were there to trade."
Graham paused with a smile.
"I'm discursive, Mr. Allinson, but I've a grievance against the Hudson
Bay, and I want to be fair."
"I'm interested," Andrew declared. "It's a clean record for a
commercial monopoly, considering how cocoa, rubber, and one or two
other things, are often procured."
"We reached the Indian camp, handed over the supplies, and started
back, with rations carefully weighed out to see us through. In winter
starvation stalks one closely across the northern wilds. Now I had
meant to visit the creek where I'd found the stones, but there was the
difficulty that, as the Indians had changed their location, it would
mean a longer trip. I couldn't rob the starving trappers of anything
that had been sent them, and I must make our provisions cover an extra
three or four days. There was a danger in this, because an unexpected
delay might be fatal, and the dogs were already in poor condition. I
faced the risk. We set off, the sledge running heavily over soft snow,
and we reached the neighborhood of the creek in a raging blizzard, and
camped for twenty-four hours. I could not find the creek, it was
impossible to wait, and we went on through the bitterest weather I
have known. Gales and snowstorms dogged our steps all the way to the
fort and we reached it, starving, four days late. One of the
half-breeds had a badly frozen foot and I'll carry a memento of that
march for the rest of my life."
Graham held up his left hand, which was short of two fingers.
"The result of a small ax cut and putting on a damp mitten, when we
were near the creek."
"That put an end to your prospecting?"
"It did. I think the agent suspected me, for he took care that I was
not sent south again, and during the next year I left the Company's
service. I kept the stones and after some time took them to an
American assayer. He found them rich in lead and silver, which are
often combined, and his estimate of the value of the matrix rock
startled me. It was beyond anything I had imagined."
"Then there's a fortune awaiting exploitation beside that creek,"
exclaimed Andrew. "Did you do nothing about it?"
Graham smiled at him.
"I was married then, Mr. Allinson; a clerk in a small sawmill. What
could I do? Stories of such strikes in the wilderness are common, and
I had nothing but two or three bits of stone to show a capitalist. The
country's difficult to traverse; it would have needed a well-equipped
party to carry up stores and haul a canoe over the divides. In winter,
provisions and sledge dogs could be obtained only from the Hudson Bay
agents. The Company had to be reckoned with, and it was too strong for
me."
"They couldn't have forbidden you to prospect in their territory."
"Oh, no; after all, it belongs to Canada. But their agents could
refuse me the assistance and supplies I couldn't do without. It was
impossible to hire an Indian guide or packer without their consent. If
I'd been able to raise a thousand dollars, I might have beaten them;
but that was out of the question."
"You tried, I've no doubt?"
"I spent a year's savings on a visit to Montreal and made the round of
the banks and financiers' offices. Here and there a man listened with
some interest, but nobody would venture five dollars on the project."
"And then?" said Andrew.
"I gave up all idea of developing the mine. I had two children to
bring up; my salary was small. From the beginning, my wife made light
of my discovery--I dare say she feared I might go back to the
North--the children as they grew up took her view, and my silver mine
became a joke among us. For twenty years I've led a happy, domestic
life; but I've never forgotten the lode and I've thought of it often
the last year or two. My girl is teaching, the boy has got a post, and
I have a few dollars accumulating in the bank."
Graham, breaking off, filled his pipe and laughed softly before he
went on.
"That's my story, Mr. Allinson; but perhaps it isn't finished yet. I
may take the trail again some day, but it will have to be soon. The
North is a hard country, and I'm getting old."
Andrew was moved. Loving adventure as he did, he could imagine what
Graham's self-denial had cost him while he had cheerfully carried out
his duty to his family.
"Prospecting would no doubt be easier now?" he suggested.
"Much easier," said Graham. "The railroad has opened up the country,
and the Company finds miners very good customers. Only, when you get
back a short distance from the track, the North is still unsubdued. To
grapple with its snow and ice, its rapids and muskegs, is mighty tough
work."
They talked about other matters, until the chilly mist, gathering
thicker round the camp, drove them into the tent.