THE EMPTY FLOUR-BAG
When it was getting dark Andrew and Carnally gave up the useless
search. A red glow, flickering among the spruce trunks, guided them
down the pass, and they saw Graham's figure, black against the
firelight, as they approached the camp. He was standing up, looking
out for them, but they came on in silence and after a quick glance at
their faces he turned away and busied himself getting supper. He knew
they had failed and words were superfluous.
They ate the small bannock he took from the frying-pan, and Andrew
glanced about the camp when he had lighted his pipe. Graham had been
at work while they were away, laying down spruce branches and raising
a wall to keep off the wind. It was warm beside the fire, and the
place looked comfortable.
"There wouldn't be much to complain of if we had enough to eat," said
Andrew. "It's surprising how soon one gets grateful for such a shelter
as this, and I believe I've slept as soundly in the snow as I ever did
in bed."
"I tried to fix things neatly, though I wouldn't have been sorry if
I'd wasted my labor," Graham replied and glanced at Carnally. "It
struck me we might be here a day or two."
Carnally's smile was rather grim.
"It's very likely. S'pose I ought to play up to Allinson, but he's
put it a notch too high. I've been doing some hard thinking while I
was on the hill. We're certainly up against a tough proposition."
"You're still convinced the grub is here?"
"That is a sure thing--all we have to do is to find it; but it's going
to be a big job. I expect both of you want me to talk?"
Their willingness to hear his views was obvious.
"The trouble is," he explained, "you can get down from the neck a
number of different ways--there are the spurs one could break a trail
along and there are the ravines. We may try them all before we strike
the right one; but we'll have a better chance if we work up instead of
down."
"Why?" Andrew asked.
"Because the packers would start from the low ground, and the benches
look different from below."
"Do you think Mappin told them to pick any particular place?"
"I've been figuring on that. He's learned something about the ground,
and my idea is that the provisions are dumped in a hollow that looks
like a good road up to the gap; that is, as you would see it from the
creek. What we don't know is where his boys would strike the ice. It
might be anywhere within three or four miles."
Andrew knit his brows.
"It's a puzzling question and we have only a day or two to find the
answer. The worst of it is that we're worn out and famishing; I feel
that my wits would be quicker if I could come at it fresh from a
square meal."
"No, sir! A man's brain is keenest when he's working on short
rations."
"I believe that's true," Graham said.
"Our rations," contended Andrew, "couldn't be much shorter; but I
couldn't think of anything intelligently as I stumbled along through
the snow to-day. And yet----"
He broke off, remembering that once or twice of late he had become
capable of a strange clarity of thought, accompanied by an unusual
emotional stirring. It had passed, but it had left its mark on him.
After all, it was in the stern North that he had first seen things in
their true proportions; it was there that the duty he had vaguely
realized had grown into definite shape, and Leonard's treachery to
Allinson's had been clearly perceived. Moreover, he had somehow gained
a new and unexpected sense of power. Then as the fire blazed up he
glanced with sudden interest at the faces of his comrades. They were
worn and haggard, and Graham's was stamped with lines of pain; but
there was something in them he could best describe as fine. Hunger and
toil, instead of subduing the men, had given them new strength and an
elusive dignity. Andrew remembered having seen that puzzling look in
the lean, brown faces of tired and thirsty soldiers as a brigade went
by through the rolling dust of the African veldt. It had been flung
back, shattered, from a rock fortress, and was pressing on, undaunted,
to a fresh attack. Andrew's heart had throbbed faster at the sight,
and he now felt something of the same thrill again; but these things
were not to be spoken of.
"Well," said Carnally, "I might feel content if I thought Mappin was
as hungry as we are; but there's not much fear of that. The blasted
hog has sense enough to keep out of the bush; going about the country
getting his hands on other men's money pays him better. He's no use
for eating supper behind a bank of snow; the Place Viger and the
Windsor in Montreal are more his style."
This was far from heroic, but Andrew laughed; the minor weaknesses of
human nature seldom jarred on him.
"I think," he suggested lightly, "you might, for a change, call him
the swine. It's a term we sometimes use and it sounds grosser than the
other. The hogs I've seen running in the Ontario bush were thin and
not repulsive."
"I'll admit it's foolish; but when I think of that man studying the
menu, I get mad! Can't you see him picking out the dollar dishes, on
the European plan? Canvasbacks and such, if they're in season."
"They wouldn't give him much canvasback for a dollar," Graham
objected.
"That doesn't count. The point is--where does he get the dollar?"
"I'm afraid he has got a few of them out of us," said Andrew. "He has
got more out of the Rain Bluff shareholders; though I'm glad to think
that supply will be stopped. Anyhow, our first business is to find the
cache."
"That's so," assented Carnally, as he threw some branches on the fire.
"We'll try again at sun-up. Though it makes you feel easier now and
then, talking doesn't do much good."
A few minutes later they were all asleep, and when day broke Andrew
and Carnally descended a steep, snow-covered bank below the neck.
Their search proved unsuccessful, and they were very silent after they
returned to camp in the evening. The next morning Graham gave them a
very small bannock for breakfast, and then threw an empty flour-bag
into the snow.
"Boys," he said gravely, "you have got to find the cache to-day."
Spurred on by the imminence of starvation, they started off again,
beating their way against a driving snowstorm, stumbling often and
rising each time with greater difficulty; always, however, keeping
eager watch for the pole that should mark the spot of the cache.
After three days of fruitless search, they could not bear to talk when
they met in camp in the evening. They knew that starvation was upon
them; their last strength was fast running out. They were not the men,
however, to give up easily; and once more they set off grimly at
sunrise.
It was snowing hard when Andrew, knowing that he could drag himself no
farther, crawled into the shelter of a rock on the desolate hillside
and sat down shivering. There was an intolerable pain in his left
side, he was faint with hunger, and his muscles ached cruelly. His fur
coat was ragged, his moccasins were cut by the snow-shoe fastenings
and falling to pieces; his face was pinched and hollow. It was some
hours since he had seen Carnally. He was physically unable to continue
the search, but he shrank from going back to camp, where there was
nothing to eat, and facing his famishing comrade. Indeed, as he grew
lethargic with cold, it scarcely seemed worth while to make the effort
of getting on his feet again. He sat still, listlessly looking down
across the white slopes; Carnally would probably pass near the spot,
though there was now no expectation of his finding the cache. During
the last few days they had sometimes met while they searched and
exchanged a brief "Nothing yet," or a dejected shake of the head. It
would be the same again, though Andrew felt that his comrade might
have succeeded if they could have held out.
He could not see far through the snow, which swept along the hillside
before a savage wind. Blurred clumps of spruce marked the edge of the
lower ground, but the river was hidden and the straggling junipers on
the spurs were formless and indistinct. At last, however, Andrew
noticed something moving near the end of a long ridge and, as it must
be a man, he concluded it was Carnally returning. Then he imagined
that the hazy figure stopped and waved an arm, as if signaling to
somebody below; that was curious, for his comrade would be alone.
Andrew decided that he had been mistaken, and bent down to brush the
gathering snow from his torn moccasins; but he started when he looked
up. There were now two men on the slope below, and while he gazed at
them a third emerged from among the rocks.