Sheldon had plunged on into this new country rather recklessly, being in
reckless mood. Now, five days northward of Belle Fortune, he knew that
he had somewhere taken the wrong trail.
The knowledge came upon him gradually. There was the suspicion before
ten o’clock that morning, when the stream he followed seemed to him to
be running a little too much to the northwest. But he had pushed on,
watchful of every step, seeking a blazed tree or the monument of a stone
set upon a rock.
When he made camp at noon he was still undecided, inclined to believe
that the wise thing would be to turn back. But he did not turn back. He
was his own man now; all time was before him; the gigantic wilderness
about him was grateful. At night, when he had yanked his small pack down
from his horse’s saddle, suspicion had grown into certainty. He smoked
his good-night pipe in deep content.
If you could run a line straight from Belle Fortune to Ruminoff
Shanty—and you’d want both tunnel and aeroplane to do the job
nicely!—your line would measure exactly two hundred and forty miles. It
would cut almost in halves the Sasnokee-keewan, the country into which
few men come, let entirely alone by the Indians who with simple emphasis
term it “Bad Country.”
Men have found gold on Gold River, where the Russian camp of Ruminoff
Shanty made history half a century ago; they have taken out the pay-dirt
at Belle Fortune. Between the two points they have made many trails
during fifty years, trails which invariably turn to east or west of the
Sasnokee-keewan. For here is a land of fierce, iron-boweled mountains,
of tangled brush which grows thick and defies the traveler, of long
reaches, of lava-rock and granite, of mad, white, raging winters.
“Leave it alone,” men say down in Belle Fortune and up in Ruminoff.
“It’s No-Luck Land. Many a poor devil’s gone in that never came out. And
never a man brought a show of color out of it.”
Since Belle Fortune had dropped one day behind him, it had all been new
country to Sheldon. Although summer was on its way, there had been few
men before him since the winter had torn out the trails. Here and there,
upon the north slopes and in the shaded cañons, patches and mounds of
snow were thawing slowly.
More than once had he come to a forking of the ways, but he had pushed
on without hesitating, content to be driving ever deeper into the
wilderness. He planned vaguely on reaching French Meadows by way of the
upper waters of the Little Smoky, climbing the ridge whence rumor had it
you could see fifteen small lakes at once. But what mattered it, French
Meadows or the very heart of the Sasnokee-keewan?
A man who took life as it came, was John Sheldon; who lived joyously,
heedlessly, often enough recklessly. When other men grumbled he had been
known to laugh. While these last lean, hard years had toughened both
physical and mental fiber, they had not hardened his heart. And yet, a
short five days ago, he had had murder in his heart.
He had just made his “pile”; he, with Charlie Ward, who, Sheldon had
thought, was straight. And straight the poor devil would have been had
it not been that he was weak and there was a woman. He wanted her; she
wanted his money. It’s an old story.
Sheldon for once was roused from his careless, good-natured acceptance
of what the day might bring. He had befriended Ward, and Ward had robbed
him. In the first flare of wrath he took up the man’s trail. He followed
the two for ten days, coming up with them then at Belle Fortune.
There had been ten days of riot, wine and cards and roulette-wheel, for
Charlie Ward and the woman. Sheldon, getting word here and there, had
had little hope of recovering his money. But he did not expect what he
did find. Charlie was dying—had shot himself in a fit of remorseful
despondency. The woman was staring at him, grief-stricken, stunned,
utterly human after all.
She had loved him, it seemed; that was the strange part of it. The few
gold pieces which were left she hurled at Sheldon as he stood in the
door, cursing him. He turned, heard Charlie’s gasps through the chink of
the coins, went out, tossed his revolver into the road, bought a pack
outfit, shouldered a rifle, and left Belle Fortune “for a hunting trip,”
as he explained it to himself. He had never got a bear in his life and—
And there is nothing in all the world like the deepest solitude of the
woods to take out of a man’s heart the bitterness of revenge. Sheldon
was a little ashamed of himself. He wanted to forget gold and the
seeking thereof. And therefore, perhaps, his fate took it upon herself
to hide a certain forking of the trails under a patch of snow so that he
turned away from French Meadows and into the Sasnokee-keewan.
Now he was lost. Lost merely in so far as he did not know where he was;
not that he need worry about being able to retrace his steps. He had
provisions, ammunition, fishing tackle, bedding; was in a corner of the
world where men did not frequently come, and could stay here the whole
summer if he saw fit. He had been hunting gold all the years of his
life, it seemed to him. What had it brought him? What good had it done
him? Never was man in better mood to be lost than was John Sheldon as he
knocked out his pipe, rolled into his blankets, and went to sleep.
Now, the sixth day out he watched his way warily. If he were not already
in the Sasnokee-keewan, he should to-day, or by to-morrow noon at the
latest, come to the first of the Nine Lakes. He had studied the stars
last night; he had watched the sun to-day. It was guesswork at best,
since he had had no thought to prick his way by map.
Night came again, and he looked from a ridge down upon other ridges,
some bare and granite-topped, some timbered, with here and there a tall
peak looking out across the broken miles, with no hint of Lake Nopong.
He made his way down a long slope in the thickening dusk, seeking a
grassy spot to tether his packhorse. That night the animal crunched
sunflower leaves and the tenderer shoots of the mountain bushes. With
the dawn Sheldon again pushed on, seeking better pasture.
Late that afternoon he came into a delightfully green meadow, where a
raging creek grew suddenly gentle and wandered through crisp herbage and
little white flowers. There was a confusion of deer-tracks where a
narrow trail slipped through the alders of the creek banks. Upon the rim
of the meadow was a great log freshly torn into bits, as though by the
great paws of a bear.
Under a tall, isolated cedar about whose base there was dry ground,
Sheldon removed the canvas-rolled pack and the pack-saddle, turning his
horse into an alder-surrounded arm of the meadow where the grass was
thickest and tallest. While the sun was still high he cut the branches
which he would throw his blankets upon, fried his bacon and potatoes,
boiled his coffee, and ate heartily.
Then he sat upon the log at which the bear had torn, saw the tracks and
nodded over them, noting that they were only a few days old—smoked his
pipe, and out of the fulness of content watched his hungry horse ripping
away at the lush grass.
“Take your time, Buck, old boy,” he said gently. “We’ll stay right here
until you get a bellyful. We don’t have to move on until snow flies, if
we don’t want to. I think that this is one of the spots of the world
we’ve been looking for a long time. I’d lay a man a bet, two to one and
he names the stakes, that there’s not another human being in three days’
walk.”
And a very little after sunset, with the same thought soothing him, he
went to sleep.