"IS THE COLONEL 'STRAIGHT?'"
At the very last moment, when all Corbett's party, except Cruickshank,
had yielded to despair, the Indian Jim gave in, and sold his animals as
they stood for sixty dollars a head. This included the purchase of
pack-saddles, cinches, and other items essential to a packer's outfit.
The steamer for Douglas started at 8 p.m., and it was long after
breakfast on the same day that the eyes of Corbett and Chance, who were
smoking outside their inn, were gladdened by the sight of Phon and
Cruickshank driving ten meek-looking brutes up to the front of the
Mansion House.
Having tied each pony short by the head to the garden rail, Cruickshank
began to organize his forces. There were the ponies, it was true, but
their packs and many other things had still to be bought. There was much
to be done and very little time to do it in. Then it was that
Cruickshank showed himself to the greatest advantage. For days he had
appeared to dawdle over his bargaining with Jim, until Ned almost
thought that Indian and white together were in league against him; now
he felt miserable at the mere memory of his former suspicions.
Cruickshank knew that no man can hurry an Indian, and therefore
abstained from irritating Jim by attempting the impossible. The result
of this was that at the end of the time at his disposal Cruickshank had
by his indifference convinced Jim that he cared very little whether he
got the horses or not, so that now the Indian was in a hurry to sell
before the steamer should carry Cruickshank and his dollars away to
Douglas. So Cruickshank bought the ponies, bought them cheap, and,
moreover, just in time to catch the boat. This was all he had struggled
for.
But now that he had white men to deal with his tactics changed. These
men knew the value of time and could hurry, therefore Cruickshank
hurried them. To every man he gave some independent work to do. No one
was left to watch another working. Whilst one dashed off to buy stores
another took the horses to the forge to be shod, and old Phon was left
to repair the horse furniture and overhaul the outfit generally.
Cruickshank himself went off to buy gunny sacks, boxes, ropes, and
such-like, rendered necessary by the absence of _aparejos_, needing the
knowledge of an expert in their selection.
It was already late in the afternoon, and Ned, hot and dusty, and as
happy as a schoolboy, was helping the smith to shoe the last of the
ponies, when Roberts, who had done his own work, walked into the forge.
For a minute or two Roberts stood unnoticed, observing his
fellow-countryman with eyes full of a sort of hero-worship, commoner at
a public school than in the world.
But Ned was one of those fellows who win men's hearts without trying to
do so; a young fellow who said what he thought without waiting to pick
his words, who did what he liked, and luckily liked what was good, and
honest, and manly, and who withal looked the man he was, upstanding,
frank, and absolutely fearless. Ned had been in the forge for perhaps
half a day or more, and had already so won the heart of the smith that
that good man with his eyes on the boy's great forearm had been hinting
that there was "just as much money in a good smithy as there was in most
of them up-country claims."
But Ned was bent on gold-mining and seeing life with the hard-fists, so
though he loved to swing the great smith's hammer he was not to be
tempted from his purpose, though he was quite ready to believe that a
smith in New Westminster could earn more by his hands than many a
professional man by his brains in Westminster on the Thames.
"Hullo, Rob! have you got through with your work?" cried Ned, catching
sight of his friend at last.
"Yes. I've done all I've got to do; can I lend you a hand?"
"Why, no, thanks; my friend here is putting on the last shoe. But what
is the matter? you look as if you had got 'turned round' in the bush,
and were trying to think your way out;" and Ned laid his hand laughingly
on his friend's shoulder.
Roberts laughed too, but led the younger man outside, and once there
blurted out his trouble.
"Look here, Corbett, ever since that gambling row I've had my eye on
Cruickshank, and I thought that I knew him for a rascal, but blow me if
he hasn't got beyond me this time."
"How so, Rob?"
"Well, I'm half-inclined to think he's honest after all. He is a real
rustler when he chooses anyway," added the poet admiringly.
"Oh, I expect he is as honest as most of his kind. Why shouldn't he be?
All men haven't the same ideas of honesty out here; and if he isn't
honest it doesn't matter much to us, does it?" asked Ned carelessly.
"Doesn't it? Ain't you trusting him with a good many thousand dollars?"
asked Roberts with some asperity.
"No, I don't think so. You see, Rob, if he is, as you thought, a
card-sharper and a bogus estate-agent, my money is lost already; he
can't clear out with the claims or the packs even if he wants to. But
why do you think he is a rogue?"
"I tell you I'm beginning to think that he isn't."
"Bully for you, that's better!" cried Ned approvingly; "but what has
worked this change in your opinions, Rob?"
"Well, last night that scoundrelly siwash, Captain Jim, tried to work a
swindle with those pack-ponies, and Cruickshank wouldn't have it. Jim
was to sell you a lot of unsound beasts at eighty dollars a head. You
would never have noticed that they had healed sores on their backs, and
if Cruickshank had held his tongue he was to have had twenty dollars a
pony, and the way he 'talked honest' to that Indian was astonishing, you
bet."
"How did you find all this out?" asked Ned.
Roberts looked a little uncomfortable and flushed to the roots of his
hair, but at length made the best of it, and admitted that he had
followed the two men and overheard their conversation.
"You see, Ned," he added, "it's not very English, I know, but you must
fight these fellows with their own weapons."
For a while Ned said nothing, though he frowned more than Roberts had
ever seen him frown before, and his fingers tugged angrily at his slight
moustache.
"Roberts," he said at last, "I agree with you, this sort of thing isn't
very English, I'm hanged if it is; but I've been pretty nearly as
suspicious as you have, so I can't afford to talk. Once for all, do you
know anything against the colonel?"
"No," hesitated Roberts, "I don't know anything against Dan, but Bub--."
"Oh, to blazes with Bub!" broke in Corbett angrily. "A man cannot be
responsible for every one of his cousins and kinsmen. From to-day I mean
to believe in Cruickshank as an honest man, until I prove him to be a
knave. You had better do the same, Rob; spying after a fellow as we have
been doing is enough to make an honest man sick;" and Ned Corbett made a
wry face as if the mere thought of it left a bad taste in his mouth.
"All right, that's a-go then. He was honest about these cayuses anyway,
and if he does go back on us we'll fire him higher than a sky-rocket;"
and so saying Roberts lent Ned a hand to collect the said cayuses. These
at the first glance would have struck an English judge of horseflesh as
being ten of the very sorriest screws that ever stood upon four legs;
but at least they showed to Roberts' practised eye no signs of old sore
backs, none of those half-obliterated scars which warn the _cognoscenti_
of evils which have been and are likely to recur.
Taken in a body, they were a little too big for polo ponies, and a
little too ragged, starved, and ill-shaped for a respectable
costermonger's cart. There was one amongst them, a big buckskin standing
nearly 14.2 hands, which looked fairly plump and able-bodied, but atoned
for these merits by an ugly trick of laying back her ears and showing
the whites of her eyes whenever she got a chance.
The most typical beast of his class was one Job, a parti-coloured brute
(or pinto as they call them in British Columbia), with one eye brown and
the other blue, and a nose of the brightest pink, as if he suffered from
a chronic cold and a rough pocket-handkerchief. Job's bones stared at
you through his skin, his underlip protruded and hung down, giving him
an air of the most abject misery, and even a Yorkshire horse-dealer
could not have found a good point to descant upon from his small weak
quarters to his ill-shaped shoulder.
But though Job's head was fiddle-shaped there was a good deal in it, as
those were likely to discover who had given sixty dollars for him, and
expected to get sixty dollars' worth of work out of him. He had not been
packing since the days when he trotted as a foal beside a "greasers'"
train for nothing. At present he was the meekest, most ill-used-looking
brute on the Pacific coast, and Corbett was just remarking to Roberts
"that that poor devil of a pony would never be able to carry a hundred
and fifty pounds let alone two hundred over a bad road," when the
buckskin let out, and caught the bay alongside of him such a kick on the
stifle as made that poor beast go a little lame for days. No one noticed
that the bite which set the buckskin kicking was given by old Job, who
moved his weary old head sadly, just in time, however, to let the kick
go by and land on the unoffending body of his neighbour.
An hour later all the horses were up again at the hotel, and the bill
having been settled Phon and Roberts drove the train down to the wharf,
where the steamer for Douglas, a small stern-wheeler, was waiting for
her passengers and her cargo. With the exception of Job, all the cayuses
were put on board at once and secured, but seeing that there was still a
good deal of luggage in small parcels up at the hotel, Chance kept "that
quiet old beast Job, just to carry down the odds and ends;" and Job,
with a sigh which spoke volumes to those who could understand, plodded
away to do the extra work set aside as of right for the meek and
long-suffering.
It is an aggravating employment under any circumstances, the employment
of packing. Many men, otherwise good men, swear naturally (and freely)
as soon as they engage in it; but then, why I know not, the very
presence of a horse makes some men swear. Steve knew very little about
packing anyway, and had he known more he would not have found it easy to
fasten his bundles on to the back of a beast which shifted constantly
from one leg to another, and always seemed to be standing uphill or
downhill, with one leg at least a foot shorter than the other three.
When Steve spoke to him (with an angry kick in the stomach), Job would
lift his long-suffering head with an air of meek dejection, and shifting
his leg as required plant a huge hoof solidly upon Steve's moccasined
foot. If I could paint the look on that great ugly equine head as it
turned with leering eye and projecting nether lip, and looked into the
anguished face of Steve Chance, I should be able to teach my reader more
of cayuses (the meanest creatures on God's earth) than I can ever hope
to do. But even with Job to help him, Steve got his load down to the
boat at last, and put all aboard except a new pack-saddle, which he had
taken off the pack-horse and laid down on the ground beside him.
With lowered head and half-shut eyes Job stood for some minutes
patiently waiting, and then, as Steve came over the side to drive him on
board with his fellows, the old horse heaved a long, long sigh, and
before Steve could reach him lay down slowly and gently upon that
pack-saddle. Of course when he got up, the pack-saddle was demolished,
and as the last whistle had sounded, there was no time to get another
before leaving Westminster.
A new saddle would have to be bought at Douglas, and that would cost
money, or made upon the road, and that would mean delay, so Job, with a
cynical gleam in his wall-eye, trotted meekly and contentedly on board.
He had entered his first protest against extra work.
Five minutes later the steamer _Lillooet_ cast loose from her moorings,
the gangway was taken in, and the gallant little stern-wheeler went
cleaving her way up through the yellow Frazer, on her forty-mile run to
the mouth of Harrison river, steaming past long mud-flats and many a
mile of heavy timber.
A day and a half was the time allowed for the journey from New
Westminster to Douglas, but Corbett and Chance could hardly believe that
they had taken so long when they came to their moorings again at the
head of the Harrison Lake.
To them the hours had seemed to fly by, for their eyes and thoughts were
busy, intent at one moment upon the bare mud-banks, watching for game or
the tracks of the game, the next straining to catch a glimpse of deer
feeding at dawn upon the long gray hills--hills which were a pale dun in
the light of early morning, but which became full of rich velvety
shadows as the day wore on.
Overhead floated the fleecy blue and white sky of spring-time; on the
hills patches of wild sunflower mingled with the greenish gray of the
sage brush, and here and there, even on the arid barren banks of the
Frazer itself, occurred little "pockets" of verdure--hollows with
fresh-water springs in them, where the tender green of the young
willows, and the abundant white bloom of the choke cherries and olali
bushes, made Edens amongst the waste of alkaline mud-banks, Edens
tenanted and made musical by all the collected bird-life of that barren
land.
The only difficult bit of water for the little steamer was the seven
miles of the Harrison river, a rapid, turbulent stream, up which the
S.S. _Lillooet_ had to fight every inch of the way; but beyond that lay
the lake, a broad blue lake, penned in by steep and heavily-timbered
mountains, and beyond the one-house town of Douglas, at which Ned and
his fellow-passengers disembarked about noon of the second day out from
Westminster.
From Douglas the ordinary route was by river and lake, with a few short
portages to _Lillooet_ on the Frazer; and in 1862 there were steamers
upon all the lakes (Lillooet, Anderson, and Seton), and canoes (with a
certainty of a fair breeze in summer) for such as preferred them.
But Ned and his friends had decided that as they had a pack-train, and
would be compelled to pack part of the way in any case, they might just
as well harden their hearts and pack the whole distance, more especially
since they had ample time to make their journey in, and not too much
money to waste upon steamboat fares. So at Douglas Cruickshank bought
another pack-saddle for about twice what it would have cost at
Westminster (freight was high in the early days), and suggested that as
the one house (half store, half hotel) was full to overflowing, they
might as well strike out for themselves, and as it was only mid-day make
a few miles upon their road before camping for the night.
"You see," argued Cruickshank, "it's no violet's camping where so many
men have camped before, and a good many of them greasers and Indians."
Corbett and Chance were new to the discomforts of the road, and had
still to learn the penalty for camping where Indians have camped; but
for all that they took the colonel's advice and assented to his
proposal, though it meant bidding good-bye to their fellow-men a day or
two sooner than they need have done.
Once the start had been decided upon Cruickshank lost no time in getting
under weigh. The diamond hitch had no mysteries for him, the loops flew
out and settled to an inch where he wanted them to, every strand in his
ropes did its share of binding and holding fast; his very curses seemed
to cow the most stubborn cayuse better than another man's, and when he
cinched the unfortunate beasts up you could almost hear their ribs
crack.
Job alone nearly got the better of the colonel, but even he just missed
it. Cruickshank cinched this wretched scarecrow a little less severely
than the rest, but when later on he saw old Job with his cinch all
slack, a malevolent grin came over his face, and he muttered, "Oh,
that's your sort, is it, an old-timer? So am I!" And after giving Job a
kick which would have knocked the wind out of anything, he cinched him
up again before he could recover himself, and then led him to drink. As
the horse sucked down the water greedily Cruickshank muttered to
himself, "_Bueno_, I guess your load will stick now until you are
thirsty again." After this Job and the colonel seemed to have a mutual
understanding, and as long as he was within hearing of Cruickshank's
curses there was no better pack-pony on the road than old Job.
It seems as if men who have been used to packing, and have had a spell
of rest from their ordinary occupation, itch to handle the ropes again;
at least, it is only in this way that I can explain the readiness
displayed by so many of Ned's fellow-passengers to lend a hand in fixing
his packs for him.
In an hour from the time of disembarkation the train was ready to start,
and the welcome cry of "All set!" rang out, after which there was a
little hand-shaking, a lighting of pipes, and the procession filed away
up the river, Cruickshank leading the first five ponies, then Roberts
plodding patiently along on foot, then another five ponies, and then, as
long as the narrow train would permit of it, Ned and Steve trudging
along, chatting and keeping the ponies on the move.
Cruickshank was already some distance ahead, and even Steve and Ned were
almost outside the little settlement, when a big red-headed Irishman,
whom Corbett remembered as his fighting friend at Westminster, came
running after him.
"Say," asked Mr. O'Halloran, rather out of breath from his run. "Say,
are you and that blagyard partners?"
"Which?" asked Ned in amaze. "My friend Chance?"
"No, no, not this boy here--that fellow riding ahead of the train."
"Cruickshank? Yes, we are partners in a way," replied Ned.
"And you know it was his brother you laid out? Faith, you laid him out
as nate as if it was for a berryin'," he added with a grin.
"I've heard men say that the colonel is Bub Cruickshank's brother,"
admitted Ned; "but the colonel is all right, whatever Bub is."
"And you and he ain't had no turn-up along of that scrimmage down at
Westminster?" persisted O'Halloran.
"Not a word. I don't think he knew about it."
"Oh yes, he did. I saw Bub and him talking it over, and you may bet your
boots the only reason he didn't bark is that he means to bite--yes, and
bite hard too. It's the way with them dark, down-looking blagyards,"
added the honest Irishman, in a tone of the deepest scorn.
"Ah, well, I don't think Cruickshank is likely to try his teeth on me,"
laughed Ned. "If he does I must try that favourite rib-bender of yours
upon him," and Ned gripped O'Halloran's hand and strode gaily after his
train.
For a moment the red-headed one stood looking after his friend, and then
heaving a great sigh remarked:
"Indade and I'd like a turn wid you mesilf, but if that black-looking
blagyard does a happorth of harm to you, it's Kornaylius O'Halloran as
'll put a head on him."