"GOOD-BYE, LILLA."
It was not Ned Corbett's nature to say much about what he felt. Like
most of his countrymen Ned was reserved to a fault, and prided himself
upon an impassive demeanour, suffering failure or achieving success with
the same quiet smile upon his face. The English adage "Don't cry until
you are hurt" had been only a part of the law of his childhood; the rest
of it read according to his teachers: "and then grin and bear it."
But even Steve, who knew Corbett as intimately as one man can know
another, was astounded at the readiness with which, after one wild
effort to grapple with the man who had killed Roberts, Corbett had been
content to settle down quietly to his daily labour in the claims at
Antler.
He could understand that his friend would take his own losses quietly.
Steve, like all Yankees and all true gamblers, was a good loser himself,
and didn't expect to hear a man make a moan over his own misfortunes,
but he had not expected to see Ned abandon his vengeance so readily.
After Lilla's incidental mention of Cruickshank, Steve began to
understand his friend better. His impatience to be on the war-path again
was the real thing; the assumed calmness and content had after all been
but the mannerism of the athlete, who smiles a sweet smile as he waits
whilst the blows rain upon him, for a chance of knocking his man out of
time before his own eyes close and his own strength fails him.
"So! you've only been lying low all this time, old man, and I thought
you had forgotten," said Chance, when Ned told him of his conversation
with Lilla. "Great Scott, I wouldn't care to be Cruickshank!"
"Forgotten!" echoed Corbett. "Do you suppose I am likely to forget that
Roberts risked his life for mine, and that Cruickshank took it--took it
when the old man sat with his back to him, and his six-shooter hanging
in a tree?"
"No, I don't suppose you would forget, Ned. When shall we start? Phon
and myself could be ready to 'pull out' to-morrow."
"That would suit me, Steve, but I am afraid that you and Phon are
embarking on a wild-goose chase. I don't believe in that creek of Pete's
one bit more now than I did before I saw Lilla's map."
"That's all right, Ned; but you see Cruickshank believed in it, and so
do we."
"Yes, Cruickshank believed in it, and in looking for the one we shall
find the other. That is why I am going."
"I know all about that; but as long as we both want to find the same
place, I don't see that it matters a row of beans why we want to find
it," replied Steve. "And mind you," he added, "I would be just as glad
to let a little daylight into Cruickshank as you would."
"Very well, if that is your way of looking at it, we need lose no more
time. You are old enough to know your own business."
"That's what. How about a cayuse?"
"I bought one yesterday for a hundred dollars."
"A hundred dollars! Great Scott, what a price!"
"Yes, it is a good deal, but old Dad wouldn't let the beast go for less.
He calculated it at so much a pound, and told me that if I knew where
to get fresh meat cheaper in Antler I'd better buy it."
"Fresh meat! I like that. Has old Dad taken to selling beef upon the
hoof, then?"
"Seems so. Anyway I had to pay for the bobtail almost as if I were
buying beefsteak by the hundredweight."
"Well, I suppose we cain't help ourselves; we shall only be stone-broke
again. It appears to be a chronic condition with us. Let's go and look
at the brute."
An inspection of the bobtail did not bring much consolation to either
Steve or Ned, for in spite of the smart way in which he had been docked,
he was as ragged and mean-looking a brute as anyone could want to see.
Besides, he was what the up-country folk call "a stud," and anyone who
has ever driven these beasts, knows that they add vices peculiar to
their class to the ordinary vices of the cayuse nature.
"He ain't a picture, but we've got to make the best of him," remarked
Steve. "So if you'll just fix things with Lilla, I'll see about getting
grub and a pack-saddle. We _might_ be ready to start to-night."
This was Steve's view on Tuesday at mid-day. At five o'clock on
Wednesday he was a humbler man, heartily thankful that at last he really
had got together most of the things necessary for one pack-horse. The
last twenty-four hours had been passed, it seemed to him, in scouring
the whole country for pack-saddles, sweat-clothes, cinch-hooks, and all
sort of things, which hitherto (when Cruickshank and Roberts had had
charge of the train) had seemed always at hand as a matter of course.
"Hang me if the cayuse doesn't want more fixing than a Brooklyn belle,"
muttered Steve. "But say, Ned," he added aloud, "do you mean to start
to-night?"
In another two hours it would be comparatively dark in the narrow
canyons through which the trail to Soda Creek ran, and in two hours the
three travellers could not hope to make much of a journey.
"Better wait till to-morrow, boys," remarked an old miner who had been
lending a hand with the packing, trying in vain to show Ned how the
diamond hitch ought to go. "It ain't no manner of use starting out at
this time o' day."
"I would start if it were midnight, Jack," replied Corbett resolutely.
"Once we get under weigh things will go better, but if we stayed over
the night in camp, something would be sure to turn up to waste another
day. Are you ready there, Steve?"
"All set, sonny," replied Steve, giving a final try at the cinch for
form's sake.
"Then just drive on. I am going to get the map from Lilla;" and so
saying he bent his steps towards the dance-house, whilst, one leading
and the other driving, his companions trudged away along the trail to
Soda Creek.
When he reached the dance-house Lilla was waiting for him, and together
the two turned their backs upon Antler and walked slowly away under the
pines.
"So then," said Lilla, "you will really go away to-night."
"Yes, we are really going, Lilla, to look for your golden creek. Don't
you feel as if you were a millionaire already? Chance does, I know, and
has decided to whom he will leave his estate when he dies."
Ned spoke lightly, and laughed as he spoke. He saw that the girl was
depressed, and wanted to cheer her up. But Lilla only gave a little
shiver, though the evening air was far from cold.
"Don't talk of dying, Ned. It is not good to talk of. Men die fast
enough out here." She was thinking, poor little soul! how very near
death that gallant yellow-haired friend of hers had been when she first
saw him, and perhaps death might come near him again whilst she was not
by to watch over him.
Ned looked surprised at her mood, but passed lightly to another subject.
"As you please, Lilla. Where am I to find you when we come back from
Chilcotin?"
"_Das weiss der lieber Gott_," she answered, speaking half to herself.
And then recovering herself she added in a firmer voice, "Either here or
at Kamloops: most likely at Kamloops, if you are not back soon."
"But we shall be back soon. What ails you to-night?"
"It is nothing, Ned; but it seems as if summer had gone soon this year,
and these great mountains will all be white again directly. I don't
think you will get back here this fall."
"Not get back this fall! Why, surely, Lilla, you don't think that we
mean to jump your claims, or make off with your gold?"
"No, no! of course not. I know you don't care for the gold, Ned, like
the other men. You don't care for anything like other men, I think."
"Don't I? Just wait until I come back from Chilcotin and pour buckets of
dust into your lap. See if I won't want my share then?"
"I wonder how long it will be that I must wait, Ned? I think sometimes
that we shall never meet again. Tell me, do you think such atoms as we
are could ever find their way to one another, up _there_? It seems so
hard to lose one's friends for ever."
And the girl looked despairingly up into the great blue vault above
them, wherein even the greatest of the stars are but as golden motes.
"Yes, little sister," answered Ned seriously. "I don't think that such
as you will have much difficulty in finding their way up there."
After this the two were silent for some time, standing on a rise above
Antler, looking out upon the deepening gloom of the evening, Ned's heart
very full of tenderness towards the little woman to whom he owed so
much.
It would have been so easy, Ned could not help thinking, to put his arm
round her and comfort her; but then, would that be a good thing for
either of them? The world was all before them, and the world was not all
Cariboo.
"Come, Lilla," he said at last, "this won't do. The night air is
chilling you. You must run back now. What would the boys say if their
little favourite came back without her smile? By George, they would give
me a short shrift if they thought that it was my fault."
"The boys! Ach, what do the boys care? All women can laugh, and dance,
and sing. One woman is all the same to them as another."
Well as Ned knew his little companion, he had never seen her in this
mood before, and his face betrayed the wonder which her bitterness awoke
in him.
A woman's eyes are quick, even in her trouble, to note the effect of her
words upon anyone she cares for, so that Lilla saw the expression in
Ned's face, and tried hard to rally her courage and laugh her tears
away.
After her fashion the poor little hurdy girl was as proud as any titled
dame on earth, and since Ned had not said that he loved her, she would
try hard to keep her own pitiful little secret to herself.
"Don't look like that, Ned. Don't you know when I am acting. But,
seriously, I am cross to-night. I wanted my gold, and I wanted to keep
my play-fellow too. We have been such good friends--haven't we, Ned?"
It was no good. In spite of her that treacherous voice of hers would
falter and break in a way quite beyond her control. Flight seemed to her
the only chance.
"Ach well, this is folly," she said. "_Auf wiedersehen_, my friend," and
she held out to him both her hands.
It was a dead still evening, and just at that moment the horn of the
pale young moon came up over the fringe of dark pine-trees and lit up
Lilla's sweet face, finding in it a grace and purity of outline which
the daylight overlooked. But even the moonlight could add nothing to the
tenderness of those honest blue eyes, which had grown so dim and misty
in the last few minutes, or to the sweetness of that tender mouth, whose
lips were so pitifully unsteady now.
"_Auf wiedersehen_" Ned repeated after her. "_Auf wiedersehen_,
Lilla,--we shall meet again."
For a while he stood irresolute. What did Shropshire or all the world
indeed matter to him? he asked himself, and in another moment he might
have spoken words which would surely have marred his own life and not
made hers one whit happier.
Luckily just then a wild laugh broke the silence and recalled Ned to
himself. It was only the owl who laughed, but it sufficed. The
dangerous charm of the silence was broken, and pressing the girl's hand
to his lips he dashed away up the trail.
Steve Chance and Phon had made nearly four miles and begun to pitch camp
whilst he was getting that map.