PETE'S CREEK.
For an hour Steve and Ned toiled steadily up the yellow banks, bluff
rising above bluff and bench above bench, and all steep and all
crumbling to the tread. The banks of the Frazer may possess the charm of
picturesqueness of a certain kind for the tourist to whom time is no
object, and for whom others work and carry the packs, but they were
hateful as the treadmill and a very path of thorns to the men who toiled
up them carrying a month's provisions on their backs, and wearing
worn-out moccasins upon their swollen, bleeding feet. It was with a sigh
of heartfelt thankfulness that Corbett and Chance topped the last bench,
and looked away to the west over the undulating forest plateau of
Chilcotin. Men know Chilcotin now, or partly know it, as the finest
ranching country west of Calgary, but in the days of which I am writing
it was very little known, and Steve and his friends looked upon the long
reaches and prairies of yellow sun-dried grass, dotted here and there
with patches of pine forest, as sailors might look upon the coast of
some untrodden island. To Steve and Phon this yellow table-land was the
region of fairy gold. It was somewhere here that the yellow stuff which
all men love lay waiting for man to find it. Surely it was something
more than the common everyday sun which made those Chilcotin uplands so
wondrously golden! So thought Steve and Phon.
To Ned all was different. As far as the eye could see a thousand trails
led across the bluffs, gradually fading away in the distance. They were
but cattle trails--the trails of the wild cattle of those
hills--blacktail deer and bighorn sheep, but to Ned they were paths
along which the feet of murder had gone, and his eye rested on the dark
islands of pine, as if he suspected that the man he sought lurked in
their shadow.
"Well, Ned, which is the way? Let's look at the map," said Chance.
Ned produced the map, and together the two men bent over it.
"The trail should run south-west from the top of this ridge, until we
strike what old Pete calls here a 'good-sized chunk of a crik.' That is
our first landmark. 'Bear south-west from the big red bluff,' he
says--and there's the bluff," and Ned pointed to a big red buttress of
mud upon the further bank of the Frazer.
"That's so, Ned, but I can see another big red bluff, and there are any
number of trails leading more or less south-west," replied Chance.
"Well, let's take the biggest," suggested Corbett, and no one having any
better plan to propose, his advice was taken.
For some time all went well. The trail was plain enough for a blind man
to follow, and the walking, after that which they had experienced in the
forest and along the banks of the Frazer, was almost a pleasure to them.
Unfortunately there were a few drawbacks to the pleasures of travel even
in Chilcotin. In Cariboo and up the Frazer the Indians had already
learnt that the white man's rifle could kill nearly as far as a man
could see, and they respected the white men, or feared them, which did
as well. But in Chilcotin the red men were untamed (they are less tamed
still, probably, than any Indians on the Pacific coast), and it was
necessary for Ned and his friends to take care lest they should blunder
unasked into some hunter's camp.
This upon the evening of their first day upon these table-lands they
very nearly did, but as luck would have it, they saw the thin column of
blue smoke winding up from a clump of pines just in time, and slunk away
into the bed of Pete's "good-sized chunk of a crik," where they lay
without a fire until the dawn of the next day.
Luckily for them the nights were still fairly warm as high-land nights
go, but after sundown the air is always fresh upon these high
tablelands, and no one was sorry when the day broke. The expedition,
Steve Chance opined, had ceased to be "a picnic." Food was becoming
somewhat scarce, and already Ned in his capacity of leader had put them
upon rations of one tin cupful of flour per diem, two rashers of bacon,
and a little tea. A cupful of flour means about four good-sized slices
of bread, and although a man can live very well upon two slices of bread
for breakfast and two at dinner, with a rasher of bacon and a little
weak tea at each meal, and nothing between meals except twelve hours'
hard work in the open air, he ought not to be sneered at if he feels a
craving for some little luxury in the way of sugar or butter, or even
another slice of bread.
Every now and then, it is true, something fell to one of the rifles; but
they dared not shoot much for fear of attracting the attention of
wandering Indians, and besides it is astonishing how little game men see
upon the march. You can march or hunt, but it is difficult to both
march and hunt successfully at the same time. On the third day upon the
Chilcotin table-lands, the trail which the prospectors had been
following "played out." For four or five miles it had grown fainter and
fainter, and now the party stood out in the middle of a great sea of
sunburnt grass, with no road before them and no land-marks to guide
them.
"I'll tell you what it is, Steve, we have rather made a mess of this
journey. It seems to me that unless there is something wrong with the
sun we have been bearing too much to the west. It looks as if we were
going a point to the north of west, instead of south-west, as we
intended to do," said Ned after a careful survey of their position.
"Likely enough," assented his companion. "I don't see how a fellow is to
keep his course amongst all these ups and downs. Besides, we followed
the trail."
"Yes, and the trail has played out. I expect it was only a watering
trail, though it is funny that it seems to start out of the middle of
nowhere. Let's steer by the sun and go nearly due south. We must hit off
the Chilcotin in that way."
"What, the Chilcotin river? Yes, that seems a good idea. Lead on,
MacDuff!"
So it was that with his companion's assent Ned turned nearly south, and
hour after hour strode on in silence over the yellow downs, until the
sun had sank below the horizon.
"It's time to camp, Ned," cried Steve, who had fallen a good deal behind
his companions; "and that is rather a snug-looking hollow on our left.
We should be sheltered from that beastly cold night-wind in there. What
do you say?"
"All right, if you must stop," replied Ned, looking forward
regretfully. "But ought we not to make another mile or two before we
camp?"
"You can do what you please, but I cain't crawl another yard, and don't
mean to try to. Bring yourself to an anchor, Ned, and let's have grub."
Of course Ned yielded. It was no good going on alone.
"Say, Ned," cried Steve a few minutes later, "we aren't the first to
camp here. Look at this."
"This" was the carcase of a mule-deer, which lay in the hollow in which
Steve wanted to camp.
"Well, old chap, that spoils your hollow, I'm afraid. It is too high to
be pleasant as a bed-fellow. By Jove, look here!" and stooping, Ned
picked up the empty shell of a Winchester cartridge.
"The fellow who killed that deer has camped right alongside his kill,"
remarked Steve. "See here, he has cut off a joint to carry away with
him;" and Steve pointed to where a whole quarter had evidently been
neatly taken off with a knife. "It's some Indian, I reckon, out
hunting."
"No, that is no Indian's work, Steve. An Indian would have cleaned his
beast, and even if he did not mean to come back for the meat he would
have severed the joints and laid them neatly side by side. It is almost
a part of his religion to treat what he kills with some show of respect.
The man who slept here was a white man."
"Cruickshank?" suggested Steve.
"Yes, I think so," replied Ned quietly. "But he must have been here some
weeks ago."
"Great Scott! then we'll get the brute yet."
"We may, but he has a long start of us, and the grub is getting very
light to carry;" and Ned lifted his little pack and weighed it
thoughtfully. And Ned was right, the man had a long start of them.
From the evening upon which they found the ungralloched stag to the end
of the month Corbett and his friends wandered about day after day
looking for Pete's Creek or Cruickshank, but found neither. They had
reached the Chilcotin of course, and on its banks had been lucky enough
to kill one of a band of sheep, upon which they lived for some days, but
they could find no traces of that stream which, according to the old
miner, flowed over a bed of gold into the river. They had washed pansful
of dirt from a score of good-sized streams, and Phon had let no rill
pass him without peering into it and examining a little of the gravel
over which its waters ran, but so far the gold-seekers had not found
anything which seemed likely to pay even moderate daily wages.
Neither had they found anywhere traces of Cruickshank. Between the dead
stag and the Chilcotin they had come across two or three camps, probably
the camps of the man who had killed that stag, but even Corbett began to
doubt if the man could be a white man. Whoever he was he had worn
moccasins, had had but one pack animal with him, and there were no
scraps of paper, or similar trifles, ever left about the camps to show
that he had carried with him any of the scanty luxuries which even
miners sometimes indulge in. It was odd that he left no Indian message
in his old camps--no wooden pegs driven in by the dead camp-fire, with
their heads bent the way he was going.
But this proved nothing. He might be a white or he might be an Indian.
In either case it looked as if, after hunting on the left bank of the
Chilcotin, he had crossed to the other bank as if making for Empire
Valley, and, knowing as much as he knew about the position of Pete's
Creek, Cruickshank would hardly have been likely to leave the left bank.
Ned began to fear that his quest was as hopeless as Steve's.
It was a chill, dark evening, with the first menace of winter in the
sky, when Ned announced that the grub would not hold out more than
another week.
"We have made it go as far as possible, and of course if we kill
anything we can live on meat 'straight' again for a time, but I think,
Steve, we have hunted this country pretty well for Pete's Creek, and we
may as well give it up," said Ned.
"And how about Cruickshank? Do you think he has cleared out, or do you
think he has never been here?"
"I don't know what to think, but I expect we shall come across old
Rampike on the Frazer, and I shall stop and hunt with him."
That word "hunt" has an ugly sound when the thing to be hunted is a man
like yourself, and Steve looked curiously into Ned's face. Would he
never get tired and give up the chase, this quiet man who looked as if
he had no malice in his nature, and yet stuck to his prey with the
patience of a wolf?
"What do you propose, Ned? Fix things your own way. I am sick of dry
bread and sugarless tea, anyway."
Corbett laughed. He thought to himself that had he been as keen after
the gold as Steve had been, he would hardly have remembered that the tea
had no sugar in it. Phon, to his mind, was a much better stamp of
gold-seeker than his volatile Yankee friend.
"All right! If you leave it to me, I propose that we go down to the
Frazer, following the Chilcotin to its mouth, and prospecting the
sources of all these little streams as we go. You see, so far we have
only been low down near the bed of the Chilcotin. What I propose to do
now, is to keep along the divide where the streams rise. At any rate we
shall see more game up there than down here."
"_Nawitka_ and _hyas sloosh_, as the siwashes say. Any blessed thing you
please, Ned, only let us get out of this before we starve. What do you
say, Phon?"
"Very good, not go yet," replied the Chinaman. "S'pose not find gold
down low, find him high up."
"Phon sticks to his guns better than you do, Steve," remarked Corbett.
"I daresay. A herring-gutted Chinaman may be able to live on air. I
cain't."
But the morrow brought Phon the reward of his faith, and twenty-four
hours from the time when Steve Chance had asked only to be allowed to
"get out of the confounded country by the shortest road," he would not
have left it for ten thousand dollars.
This was how it happened.
About mid-day, the sun being unusually hot, a halt had been called to
smoke the mid-day pipe and rest legs wearied with the steep climb from
the river bed to the crest of the divide.
"Don't you think, Ned, we might be allowed a square inch of damper for
lunch to-day? We are going back now, and I am starving," said Steve.
"All right. Half a damper among the three if you like, but not a
mouthful more."
Even this was more than he had hoped for, so Steve chewed the heavy damp
morsel carefully; not that he distrusted the powers of his digestion,
but because he was anxious to make the most of every crumb of his
scanty repast.
Just below where the three were sitting grew a patch of orange-coloured
Indian pinks. "I guess there's water not far from those flowers,"
remarked Steve, "and I want a drink badly before I light my pipe."
Dry bread is apt to stick in a man's gullet however hungry he may be, so
that the three went down together, and found that, as Steve suspected,
the pinks were growing in a damp spot, from which oozed a tiny rill,
which, as they followed it, grew and grew until the rapidity of its
growth roused their curiosity, and led them on long after they had found
the drinking-place they sought.
All at once it seemed as if the stream had been augmented by water from
some subterranean source, for its volume grew at a bound from that of a
rill to that of a good-sized mountain stream, which gurgled noisily
through the mosses for a few hundred yards, and then plunged through a
cleft in the rocks to reappear, three or four hundred feet below, a dark
rapid mountain-torrent, running between walls of wet black rock.
"It is a queer-looking place, isn't it, Steve? Any fellow might go all
over this country and miss seeing that creek. I wonder if it is worth
while climbing down that place to prospect it?"
But whilst the strongest stood doubting, the weakest of the party had
scrambled like a cat over the rocks, and could now be seen on his knees
by the brink of the dark waters, washing as he had never washed before.
At last the little blue figure sprang to its feet, and waving its arms
wildly, yelled:
"_Chicamon! chicamon!_ Me find him. _Hyóu Chicamon!_" (_anglice_ heaps
of money).
Diphtheria, cholera, the black death itself, rapid though they are in
their spread, and appalling though they are in their strength, are
sluggish and weak compared to the gold fever. In one moment, at that cry
of "chicamon! chicamon!" (money! money!), Chance had recovered from his
fatigue, Corbett had awakened from his dreams of vengeance, and both
together were scrambling recklessly down the rocks to the pool, beside
which Phon was again kneeling, washing the golden dirt.
In spite of his native phlegm and his professed disregard for gold, Ned
Corbett actually jostled his companions in his eagerness to get to the
water; and though his pet pipe dropped from his mouth and broke into a
hundred pieces, he never seemed to know what had happened to him.
When Phon washed his first panful of dirt in Pete's Creek it was broad
noon; when Ned Corbett straightened his back with a sigh and came back
for a moment almost to his senses, it was too dark to see the glittering
specks in their pans any longer.
From noon to dusk they had toiled like galley slaves, without a thought
of time, or fatigue, or hunger, and yet two of these were weak, tired
men, and the third, under ordinary circumstances, really had quite a
beautiful contempt for the sordid dollar.
When Corbett looked at the gleaming yellow stuff, and realized what
power it had suddenly exerted over him, he actually felt afraid of it.
There was something uncanny about it. But there was no longer any doubt
about Pete's Creek. They had struck it this time, and no mistake; and if
there was much "dirt" like that which they had been washing since noon,
a few months of steady work would make all three rich men for life. In
most places which they had seen, the gold had been found in dust: here
it was in flakes and scales, as big as the scales upon the back of a
chub. In most places a return of a few cents to the pan would have been
considered "good enough:" here the return was not in cents but in
dollars, and yet even now what was this which Phon the Chinaman was
saying, his features working as if he were going into an epileptic fit?
"This nothing, nothing at all! You wait till to-mollow. Then we see
gold,--heap gold not all same this, but in _lumps_!"
And he got up and walked about, nodding his head and muttering: "You bet
you sweet life! Heap gold! You bet you sweet life!" whilst the red
firelight flickered over his wizened features, and dwelt in the corners
of his small dark eyes, until he resembled one of those quaint Chinese
devils of whom he stood so much in awe.
As far as Ned and his companions could calculate, their first seven
hours' work had yielded them something like a thousand dollars-worth of
pure gold; and already Ned Corbett almost regretted the price he had
paid for it, as he listened to the eager, crazy chatter of his
companions, and tried in vain to put together the good old pipe which he
had shattered in his rush for that yellow metal, which gleamed evilly,
so Ned thought, from the tin pannikin upon Chance's knee.
There was another thing which Corbett could not forget. It was true that
they had found Pete's Creek and the gold, but there was no trace of
Cruickshank.