THE WET CAMP.
As his pack-train wound away along the trail from Douglas, Ned Corbett
gave a great deep sigh as if there was something which he fain would
blow away from him. And so there was.
As he left the last white man's house between Douglas and Lillooet, he
hoped and believed that he left behind him towns and townsmen, petty
delays, swindlings, and suspicions of swindlings.
He was going to look for gold, and give a year at least of his young
life to be spent in digging for it, and yet this absurd young Englishman
was actually thanking his stars that now, at last, he was rid of dollars
and dollar hunters, business and business men, for at least a month.
There was food enough on the beasts in front of him to last his party
for a year. He was sound in wind and limb, his rifle was not a bad one,
and he had seen lots of game tracks already, and that being so he really
cared very little whether he reached his claims in time or not. But of
course, as Cruickshank said, there was ample time to make the journey
in, time indeed and to spare, as every one he had met admitted, so that
no doubt Steve and he would reach Williams Creek in time, find the
claims as Cruickshank had represented them, and make no end of money.
That would just suit Steve; and after all a lot of money would be a good
thing in its way. It would make a certain old uncle at home take back a
good many things he had once said about his nephew's "great useless body
and ramshackle brains," and besides, he would like a few hundred pounds
himself to send home, and a bit in hand to hire a boat to go to Alaska
in. That had been Ned's day-dream ever since he had seen a certain cargo
of bear-skins which had come down from that ice-bound _terra incognita_
to Victoria.
So Ned sighed a great sigh of relief and contentment, took off his coat
and slung it on his back, opened the collar of his flannel shirt and let
the soft air play about his ribs, turned his sleeves up over his elbows,
tied a silk handkerchief turban-wise on his yellow head, and having cut
himself a good stout stick trudged merrily along, sucking in the
glorious mountain air as greedily as if he had spent the last six months
of his life waiting for briefs in some grimy fog-haunted chamber of the
Temple.
He would have liked the ponies to have moved along a little faster,
because as it was he found it difficult to keep behind them, five miles
an hour suiting his legs better than two. But this was his only trouble,
and as every now and then he got a breather, racing up some steep
incline to head back a straggler to the path of duty, Ned managed to be
perfectly happy in spite of this little drawback.
As for the others, Cruickshank, who had seemed restless and nervous as
long as he had been with the crowd of miners on the boat and at Douglas,
had now relapsed into a mere automaton, which strode on silently ahead
of the pack-train, emitting from time to time little blue jets of
tobacco smoke. Steve seemed buried in calculations, based on a miner's
report that the dirt at Williams Creek had paid as much as fifty cents
to the shovelful, an historical fact which Phon and the young Yankee
discussed occasionally at some length; and old Roberts, having agreed to
leave his suspicions behind him, shared his tobacco cheerily with
Cruickshank, and from time to time startled the listening deer with
scraps of his favourite ditties.
It was the refrain of the old pack mule, "Riding, riding, riding on my
old pack mule," which at last roused Steve Chance's indignation against
the songster.
"Confound the old idiot!" growled the Yankee; "I wish he wouldn't remind
me of the unattainable. I shouldn't mind riding, but I am getting pretty
sick of tramping. Isn't it nearly time to camp, Ned?"
"Nearly time to camp? Why, we haven't made eight miles yet," replied
Corbett.
"Oh, that be hanged for a yarn! We have been going five solid hours by
my watch, and five fours are twenty."
"That may be, but five twos are ten, and what with stoppages to fix
packs, admire the scenery, and give you time to munch a sandwich and tie
up your moccasins, I don't believe we have been going two miles an hour.
But are you tired, Steve?"
"You bet I am, Ned. If there really is no particular hurry let us camp
soon."
"All right, we will if you like. Hullo, Cruickshank!" Cruickshank
turned.
"Steve is tired and wants to camp--what do you say?"
Cruickshank hesitated a moment and then agreed to the proposition,
beginning at once to loosen the packs upon the beasts nearest to him.
"Here, I say, steady there!" cried Corbett; "you take me too literally.
Steve can go another mile if necessary. We'll stop at the next good
camping-ground."
"I'm afraid you won't get anything better than this," replied the
colonel. "Why, what is the matter with this? You didn't expect
side-walks and hotels on the trail, did you, Corbett?"
Even in his best moods there was a nasty sneering way about Cruickshank,
which put his companions' backs up.
"No, but I did think we might find a flat spot to camp on."
"Did you? Then I'm sorry to disappoint you. You won't find anything
except a swamp meadow flatter than this for the next ten miles or so,
and the swamps are a little too wet for comfort at this time of year."
"Do you mean to say, Cruickshank, that we can't find a flatter spot than
this? Why, hang it, man, you couldn't put a tea-cup down here without
spilling the contents," remonstrated Corbett.
"Well, if you think you can better this, let us go on; perhaps you know
best. What is it to be, camp or 'get?'"
"Oh, if you are certain about it I suppose we may as well stay here;
but, by Jove, we shall have to tie ourselves up to trees when we go to
sleep to prevent our straying downhill." And Ned laughed at the vision
he had conjured up.
A minute later a bale,--bigger, heavier, and more round of belly than
its fellows,--escaped from Steve Chance's grip and fell heavily to the
earth. Steve was not a strong man, certainly not a man useful for
lifting weights, besides he was a careless fellow, and tired. For a
moment Steve stood looking at the bale as it turned slowly over and
over. Twice it turned round and Steve still looked at it. The next
moment it gathered way, and before Steve could catch it was hopping
merrily downhill, in bounds which grew in length every time it touched
the hillside. Steve, assisted by Phon, had the pleasure of recovering
that bale from the group of young pines amongst which it eventually
stuck, and brought it with many sobs and much perspiration to the point
from which it originally started. It took Steve and Phon longer to get
over that two hundred feet of hillside than it had taken the bale.
That first camp of theirs has left an impression upon Ned's mind and
Steve's which years will not efface. Ned was too tough to look upon it
as more than a somewhat rough practical joke, likely to pall upon a man
if repeated too often, but to Chance that camp was a camp of misery and
a place of tears. There was water, but it was a long way downhill; there
was, as Cruickshank said, timber enough to keep a mill going for a
twelvemonth, but whatever was worth having for firewood was either
uphill or downhill--you had to climb for everything you happened to
want; and to wind up with, you absolutely had to dig a sort of shelf out
of the hillside upon which to pitch your tent.
It was here, too, that Steve had his first real experience of camping
out. He helped to unpack the horses, but he took so long to retrieve the
bale which had gone downhill that some one had to lend him a hand even
with the one beast which he unpacked. He volunteered to cook, but when
on investigation it was discovered that he would have fried beans
without boiling them, a community unduly careful of its digestion
scornfully refused his assistance. In despair he seized an axe, and went
away as "a hewer of wood and a drawer of water." By and by the voice of
his own familiar friend came to him again and again in tones of cruel
derision:
"Where is that tree coming down, Steve?"
"I don't know and don't care, but it's got to come somewhere," replied
the operator angrily, as he hewed blindly at the tough green pine.
"But it won't do for firewood anyway, Steve, this year, and if you don't
take care you will never need firewood again. Don't you know how to make
a tree fall where you want it to?" and Ned took the tool from his hand,
and completing what his companion had so badly begun, laid the tree out
of harm's way.
"Well, it seems that I can't do anything to please you," grumbled Steve,
now thoroughly angry. "When there is anything that you and Cruickshank
reckon you want my help in you can call me, Corbett. I'll go and smoke
whilst you run this show to your own satisfaction."
"No you won't, old man, and you won't get riled either. Just be a good
chap and go and cut us some brush for bedding. See, this is the best
kind," and Ned held out to his friend a branch of hemlock. Although an
hour later Ned noticed that there was every kind of brush _except_
hemlock in the pile which Steve had collected, he wisely complimented
him on his work, and said nothing about his mistake. A man does not
become a woodsman in a week.
Meanwhile the tent had been pitched; Cruickshank was just climbing up
the hill again after driving the ponies to a swamp down below, and old
Phon was handling a frying-pan full of the largest and thickest rashers
of bacon on record. Little crisp ringlets of fried bacon may serve very
well for the breakfast of pampered civilization, but if you did not cut
your rashers thick out in the woods you would never stop cutting.
Lucky would it have been for Steve and Ned if rough fare and a rocky
camp had been the worst troubles in store for them, but unluckily, even
as they lit their post-prandial pipes, the storm-clouds began to blow up
the valley, ragged and brown, and whilst poor Steve was still tossing on
a sleepless pillow, vexed by the effects of black tea on his nerves, and
crawling beasts upon his sensitive skin, the first great drops of the
coming storm splashed heavily on the sides of the tent.
Of course the tent was new. Everything the two young miners had was new,
brand-new, and made upon the most recent and improved lines. None of the
old, time-tried contrivances of practical men are ever good enough for
beginners. So the fourth or fifth drop of rain which hit that tent came
through as if it had been a sieve, and when well-meaning Steve rubbed
his hand over the place "feeling for the leak," the water came in in a
stream.
When the next morning broke, the wanderers looked out upon that most
miserable of all things, a wet camp in the woods. The misery of a wet
camp is the one convincing argument in favour of civilization.
It was still early in the year, and the season was a late one even for
British Columbia, amongst whose mountains winter never yields without a
struggle. On the dead embers of last night's camp-fire were slowly
melting snowflakes, and a chill wet wind crept into Ned's bosom, as he
looked out upon the morning, and made him shudder.
But Ned was hard, so that careless of rain and puddles he splashed out
past the camp-fire, and after a good many failures kindled a little
comparatively dry wood, over which to make the morning tea, and then
drew upon himself the scorn of that old campaigner Cruickshank by
washing.
What work they could find to do the men did, but even so the hours went
wearily by. Cruickshank was opposed to making a start, for fear lest the
rain should damage the packs, which now lay all snug beneath their
_manteaux_. So they waited until Cruickshank was tired of smoking, and
Roberts of hearing himself sing; until Corbett could sleep no more, and
Steve was hoarse with grumbling. Only Phon, lost in thought which white
men cannot fathom, and the pack animals full of sweet young grass,
seemed content.
For three whole days the party stopped in the same camp, gazing hour
after hour upon a limited view of stiff burnt pines, with the melting
snow drifting down through them, and the fog wrapping them and hiding
away all the distance. Even the fire of piled logs shone, _not_ with
heat but with damp, and the monotonous splash of the drops as they fell
from a leak in the tent into the frying-pan set to catch them, combined
with Phon's harsh cough, to break the silence.
At last, when even Ned was beginning to think of rheumatism, and to
long for a glass of hot toddy and a Turkish bath, the sun came back
again, and cast long rich shadows from the red stems of the bull-pines
across the trail, over which Steve nearly ran, in his anxiety to leave
the wet camp as far behind him as possible.
But even the wet camp was only the beginning of troubles. Three days
they lost waiting for the sun, and in the next camp they waited three
more days for their horses.
At the first camp Cruickshank had been careful to hobble the horses,
which would not have strayed had he left them free in a small naturally
inclosed pasture, like that swamp at the foot of the side hills. But at
the second camp, where the feed was bad and the ways open, he neglected
to hobble any of them, and, oddly enough, old packer though he was, he
overlooked the whole band in his first day's search, so that no one went
that way to look for them again, until it occurred to Corbett to try to
puzzle out their tracks in that direction for himself. There he found
them, in the very meadow in which they had pastured the first night, all
standing in a row behind a bush no bigger than a cabbage, old Job at
their head, every nose down, every ear still, even Job's blue eye fixed
in a kind of glassy stare, and the bell round Job's neck dumb, for it
was full of mud and leaves. It was deuced odd, Ned thought, as he drove
the beasts home. Cruickshank didn't seem to know as much of packing and
the care of horses as he appeared to know at first; but if he knew too
little, that wall-eyed fiend, Job, knew too much.
Anyway, they had taken eight days to do two days' travel, up to that
time. It was well that they had ample time in which to make their
journey to Cariboo.