ON THE TRAIL.
It was a long, wet sail up the coast with the wind ahead, and Carroll
was content, when, on reaching Comox, Vane announced his intention of
stopping there until the mail came in. Immediately after its arrival,
Carroll went ashore, and came back empty-handed.
"Nothing," he said. "Personally, I'm pleased. Nairn could have advised
us here if there had been any striking developments since we left the
last place."
"I wasn't expecting to hear from him," Vane replied.
Carroll read keen disappointment in his face, and was not surprised,
although the absence of any message meant that it was safe for them to
go on with their project, which should have afforded his companion
satisfaction.
They got off shortly afterwards and stood out to the northwards.
Most of that day and the next two they drifted with the tides through
narrowing waters, though now and then for a few hours they were wafted
on by light and fickle winds. At length they crept into the inlet where
they had landed on the previous voyage, and on the morning after their
arrival set out on the march. There was on this occasion reason to
expect more rigorous weather, and the load each carried was an almost
crushing one. Where the trees were thinner, the ground was frozen hard,
and even in the densest bush the undergrowth was white and stiff with
frost, while, when they could see aloft through some chance opening, a
forbidding grey sky hung over them.
On approaching the rift in the hillside which he had glanced at when
they first passed that way, Vane stopped a moment.
"I looked into that place before, but it didn't seem worth while to
follow it up," he said. "If you'll wait, I'll go a little farther along
it."
Though the air was nipping, Carroll, who was breathless, was content to
remain where he was, and he spent some time sitting upon a log before a
faint shout reached him. Then he rose, and making his way up the hollow,
found his comrade standing upon a jutting ledge.
"I thought you were never coming," the latter remarked. "Climb up; I've
something to show you."
Carroll joined him with difficulty, and Vane stretched out his hand.
"Look yonder," he said.
Carroll looked and started. They stood in a rocky gateway with a river
brawling down the chasm beneath them; but a valley opened up in front.
Filled with sombre forest, it ran back almost straight between
stupendous walls of hills.
"It answers Hartley's description," he said. "After all, I don't think
it's extraordinary we should have taken so much trouble to push on past
the right place."
"How's that?" Vane demanded.
Carroll sat down and filled his pipe. "It's the natural result of
possessing a temperament like yours. Somehow, you've got it firmly fixed
into your mind that everything worth doing must be hard."
"I've generally found it so."
"I think," said Carroll, grinning, "you've generally made it so. There's
a marked difference between the two. If any means of doing a thing looks
easy, you at once conclude it can't be the right way, which is a mode of
reasoning that has never convinced me. In my opinion, it's more sensible
to try the easiest method first."
"As a rule, that leads to your having to fall back upon the other one;
and a frontal attack on a difficulty's often quicker than considering
how you can work round its flank. In this case I'll own we have wasted a
lot of time and taken a good deal of trouble that might have been
avoided. But are you going to sit here and smoke?"
"Until I've finished my pipe," Carroll answered. "I expect we'll find
tobacco, among other things, getting pretty scarce before this
expedition ends."
He carried out his intention, and they afterwards pushed on up the
valley during the rest of the day. It grew more level as they proceeded,
and in spite of the frost, which bound the feeding snows, there was a
steady flow of water down the river, which was free from rocky barriers.
Vane, who now and then glanced at the latter attentively, stopped when
dusk was drawing near, and fixed his gaze on the long ranks of trees
that stretched away in front of him; fretted spires of sombre greenery
lifted high above a colonnade of mighty trunks.
"Does anything in connection with this bush strike you?" he asked.
"Its stiffness, if that's what you mean," Carroll suggested, smiling.
"These big conifers look as if they'd been carved. They're impressive,
in a way, but they're too artificial."
"That's not what I mean," Vane informed him impatiently.
"To tell the truth," said Carroll, "I didn't suppose it was. Anyway,
these trees aren't spruce. They're red cedar, the stuff they make the
roofing shingles of."
"Precisely. Just now, shingles are in good demand in the Province, and
with the wooden towns springing up on the prairie, Western millers can
hardly send roofing material across the Rockies fast enough. Besides
this, I haven't struck a creek more adapted for running logs down, and
the last sharp drop to tidewater would give power for a mill. I'm only
puzzled that none of the timber-lease prospectors has recorded the
place."
"That's easy to understand," said Carroll. "Like you, they'd no doubt
first search the most difficult spots to get at."
They went on in another minute, and pitched their light tent beside the
creek when darkness fell.
"By the by, I thought you were disappointed when you got no mail at
Comox," Carroll remarked at length, feeling that he was making something
of a venture.
"I was," said Vane.
This was not encouraging, but Carroll persisted. "That's strange,
because your hearing nothing from Nairn left you free to go ahead,
which, one would suppose, was what you wanted."
Vane, as it happened, was in a confidential mood; though usually averse
from sharing his troubles, he felt he needed sympathy. "I'd better
confess I wrote Miss Chisholm a few lines from Nanaimo."
"Ah!" said Carroll softly; "and she didn't answer you. Now, I couldn't
well help noticing that you were rather in her bad graces that night at
Nairn's. No doubt, you're acquainted with the reason?"
"I'm not," Vane replied. "That's just the trouble."
Carroll reflected. He had an idea that Miss Horsfield was somehow
connected with the matter, but this was a suspicion he could not
mention.
"Well," he said, "as I pointed out, you're addicted to taking the
hardest way. When we came up here before, you marched past this valley,
chiefly because it was close at hand; but I don't want to dwell on that.
Has it occurred to you that you did something of the same kind when you
were at the Dene? The way that was then offered you was easy."
"This is not the kind of subject one cares to talk about; but you ought
to know I couldn't allow them to force Miss Chisholm upon me against her
will. It was unthinkable! Besides, looking at it in the most
cold-blooded manner, it would have been foolishness, for which we'd both
have to pay afterwards."
"I'm not so sure of that," said Carroll thoughtfully. "There were the
Sabine women among other instances. Didn't they cut off their hair to
make bow-strings for their abductors?"
His companion made no answer, and Carroll, deciding that he had ventured
as far as was prudent, talked of something else until they crept into
the little tent, and soon afterwards they fell asleep.
They started with the first of the daylight next morning, but the timber
grew denser and more choked with underbrush as they proceeded, and for
several days they wearily struggled through it and the clogging masses
of tangled, withered fern. Besides this, they were forced to clamber
over fallen trunks, when the ragged ends of the snapped-off branches
caught their loads. Their shoulders ached, their boots were ripped,
their feet were badly galled; but they held on stubbornly, plunging
deeper into the mountains all the while.
Soon after setting out one morning, they climbed a clearer hillside to
look about them. High up ahead, the crest of the white range gleamed
dazzlingly against leaden cloud in a burst of sunshine; below, dark
forest, still wrapped in gloom, filled all the valley; and in between,
on the middle slopes, a belt of timber touched by the light shone with a
curious silvery lustre. Though it was some distance off, probably a
day's journey, allowing for the difficulty of the march, Vane gazed at
it earnestly. The trees were bare--there was no doubt of that, for the
dwindling ranks, diminished by the distance, stood out against the
snow-streaked rock like rows of rather thick needles set upright. Their
straightness and the way they glistened suggested the resemblance.
"Ominous, isn't it?" Carroll said at length. "If this is the valley
Hartley came down, and everything points to that, we should be getting
near the spruce."
Vane's face grew set. "Yes," he agreed. "There has been a big fire up
yonder; but whether it has swept the lower ground or not is more than I
can tell. We'll find out early to-morrow."