CHAPTER VII.
FACING DEATH ON THE STONE-SLIDE.
It was the last day of Corbett's journey between the Harrison and theFrazer, and a boiling hot day at that. With the exception of Corbetthimself, and perhaps Cruickshank, whose back alone was visible as he ledthe train, the whole outfit had relapsed into that dull mechanical gaitpeculiar to packers and pack animals. To Chance it seemed that he was ina dream--a dream in which he went incessantly up and up or down, downday after day without pause or change. To him it seemed that there wasalways the same gray stone-slide under foot, the same hot sun overheard,and the same gleaming blue lake far below; like the pack animals, he wascontent to plod along hour after hour, seeing nothing, thinking ofnothing, unless it was of that blessed hour when the camp would bepitched and the tea made, and the soothing pipe be lighted.
But though Chance had no eyes for it, the end of this first part of hisjourney was near at hand. Fourteen miles away the great grisly mountainscame together and threw a shadow upon Seton Lake, building a wall andsetting a barrier over or through which there seemed no possible way ofescape. As Corbett looked at it, he could see the trees quite plainly onthe narrow rim of grass between that mountain wall and the lake, andthough he could not see that too, he knew that through them ran a trailwhich led to Lillooet on the Frazer. Even Ned longed to reach that trailand catch a glimpse of the little town, in which he and his weary beastsmight take at least one day's rest and refreshment.
Since leaving Douglas, Cruickshank and Corbett had been upon the best ofterms. Cruickshank knew how everything ought to be done, and Corbett wasquick and tireless to do it, so that between them these two did most ofthe work of the camp; and though Ned noticed that his guide was not asanxious to get to Lillooet as he had been to get away from Douglas, hemade allowances for him. Cruickshank was hardly a young man, and nodoubt his strength was not equal to his will.
As to the straying of the horses at the second camp, there could be butone opinion. It was a bad mistake to leave them unhobbled; but after alleveryone made mistakes sometimes, and though that mistake had involvedthe loss of a great deal of time, it was the only one which could belaid to Cruickshank's account. So far not one single thing, howeverunimportant, had been left behind in camp or lost upon the trail; therehad been no accidents, no lost packs, nor any sign of sore backs. Dayafter day Cruickshank himself had led the train, choosing the best goingfor his ponies, and seeing them safely past every projecting rock andover every _mauvais pas_.
On this day for the first time Cruickshank proposed to give up hisposition in front of the train to Ned. Stopping at a place where therewas room to shunt the rear of his column to the front, the colonelhailed Ned, and suggested that they should change places.
"Come on and set us a quick step, Corbett. Even if you do overtire theponies a bit, it doesn't matter now that we are so near Lillooet. Theycan rest there as much as they like."
"Very well. I expect _you_ must want a change, and I'll bet old Stevedoes. Why, you have hardly had anyone to speak to for a week," repliedCorbett good-naturedly.
"That's so, but I must save my breath a little longer still. If Robertswill go behind with Phon and Chance, I'll keep the first detachment asclose to your heels as I can; and, by the way, we had better make achange with the horses whilst we are about it."
"Why?" asked Ned. "What is the matter with them?"
"Not much, but if we are to have any more swimming across places wherethe bridging is broken down, we may as well have the horses that takekindly to water in front, and send that mean old beast to the rear;" andthe colonel pointed to Job, which with its head on one side and anunearthly glare in its blue eye, appeared to be listening to what wasbeing said.
"All right, we can do that here if you will lend a hand. Which shall weput the bell on?" and Ned took the bell off Job, and turned that veteranover to the second half of the train.
"Put it on this fellow; he takes to the water like an otter, and he willmake a good leader. Wherever his packs can go, any of the others canfollow;" and Cruickshank pointed to the great bulging bales upon theback of the buckskin.
"I expect Steve and Roberts packed him, didn't they?" Cruickshank added."Well, they aren't pretty to look at, but I guess they'll stick;" and sosaying, he gave the buckskin a smack on his quarters which sent thatbig star-gazing brute trotting to the front, where Ned invested him withthe order of the bell.
"Is it all right now, Cruickshank?" asked Corbett.
"All right."
"Forrard away then!" cried Ned, and turning he strode merrily along anarrow trail, which wound up and up across such sheer precipitous sidehills as would make some men dizzy to look at. A slip in some placeswould have meant death to those who slipped, long before their bruisedbodies could reach the edge of the lake glittering far below; butneither men in moccasins nor mountain ponies are given to slipping.
After the rain had come the sunshine and the genial warmth of spring,under the influence of which every hill was musical with new-bornrivulets, and every level place brilliant with young grass. The verystone-slides blossomed in great clumps of purple gentian, and over eventhe stoniest places crept the tendrils of the Oregon vine, with itsthorny shining leaves and flower-clusters of pale gold.
Now and again the trail rose or fell so much that it seemed to Ned as ifhe had passed from one season of flowers to another. Down by the lake,where the pack animals splashed along the bed of a little mountainstream, the first wild rose was opening, a mere speck of pink in thecool darkness made by the overhanging bushes. Here by the lake side,too, were numerous butterflies--great yellow and black "swallow tails,"hovering in small clouds over the damp stones, or Camberwell beauties inroyal purple, floating through sun and shadow on wings as graceful inflight as they were rich in colour. Higher up, where the sun had heatedthe stone-slides to a white heat, were more butterflies (fritillariesand commas and tortoise-shells), while now and again a flash of orangeand a shrill little screech told Ned that a humming-bird went by.
In the highest places of all, where the snow still lingered in tinypatches, the red-eyed spruce-cocks hooted from the pines, the ruffedgrouse strutted and boomed in the thickets, and the yellow flowers oflilies gave promise of many a meal for old Ephraim, when their sweetbulbs should be a few weeks older.
To Ned, merely to swing along day after day in the sunshine and notethese things, was gladness enough, and it was little notice he took ofheat, or thirst, or weariness. Unfortunately he became too absorbed, andas often happens with men unused to leading out, forgot his train andwalked right away from his ponies.
When this fact dawned upon him it was nearly mid-day, and he foundhimself at the highest point which the path had yet reached, from which,looking back, he could see the train crawling wearily after him. Hecould see, too, that Cruickshank was signalling him to stop, so nothingloth Ned sat down and waited. The path where he sat came out to a sharppromontory, and turning round this it began to pass over the worststone-slide Ned had yet seen. Most of those he had hitherto encounteredhad been mere narrow strips of bad going from fifty to a hundred yardsacross, but this was nearly five hundred yards from side to side, andexcept where the trail ran, there was not foothold upon it for a fly.Properly speaking it was not, as the natives called it, a stone-slide atall, but rather the bed or shoot, by which, century after century, somehundreds of stone-slides had gone crashing down into the lake below.
As soon as Ned had assured himself that the train was once more as nearto him as it ought to be, he knocked off as much of the projectingcorner as he could, and passed round it on to the slide.
Looking up from the narrow trail, the young Englishman could see thegreat rocks which hung out from the cliffs above; rocks whose fellowshad been the makers of this slide, letting go their hold up above as thesnows melted and the rains sapped their foundations, and then thunderingdown to the lake with such an army of small stones and debris that itseemed as if the whole mountain-side was moving. When thisstone-avalanche crashed in
to the water a wave rolled out upon the lakebig as an ocean swell from shore to shore.
Looking down, a smooth shoot sloped at an angle from him to the bluewater.
"Well, that is pretty sheer," muttered Ned, craning his neck to lookdown to where the lake glistened a thousand feet below, "and if one ofour ponies gets his feet off this trail, there won't be anything of himleft unbroken except his shoes;" and so saying, he turned to see how theleader would turn the awkward corner which led on to this _viadiabolica_.
As he did so the report of a pistol rang out sharp and clear, followedby a rush and the clatter of falling stones, and the next moment Ned sawthe leading pony dash round the overhanging rocks, its ropes all loose,its packs swinging almost under its belly, its bell ringing as if itwere possessed, and its eyes starting from its head in the insanity ofterror.
At every stride it was touch-and-go whether the brute would keep itslegs or not. Each slip and each recovery at that flying pace was initself a miracle, and Ned hardly hoped that he could stop the maddenedbeast before it and the packs went crashing down to the lake.
Stop the pony! He might as well have tried to stop a stone-slide. And ashe realized this, the danger of his own position flashed across him forthe first time.
Coming towards him, now not fifty yards away, was the maddened horse,which probably could not have stopped if it wanted to in that distance,and on such a course. Behind Ned was four hundred yards of such a trailas he hardly dared to run over to escape death, and even if he haddared, what chance in the race would he have had against the horse?Above him there was nothing to which even his strong fingers couldcling, and below the trail--well, he had already calculated on thechances of any living thing finding foothold below the trail.Instinctively Ned shouted and threw up his hands. He might as well havetried to blow the horse back with his breath. In another ten seconds thebrute would be upon him; in other words, in another ten seconds horseand packs and Ned Corbett would be the centre of a little dust-stormbounding frantically down that steep path to death!
In such a crisis as this men think fast, or lose their wits altogether.Some, perhaps, rather than face the horror of their position shut theireyes, mental and physical, and are glad to die and get it over. Ned wasof the other kind: the kind that will face anything with their eyesopen, and fight their last round with death with eyes that will onlyclose when the life is out of them.
There was just one chance for life, and having his eyes open, Ned saw itand took it.
Twenty yards from him now was that hideous maddened brute, with itsears laid back, its teeth showing, the foam flying from its jaws, andits great blood-shot eyes almost starting from their sockets. Twentyyards, and the pace the brute was coming at was the pace of alocomotive!
And yet, though Corbett's face was gray as a March morning, and hissquare jaws set like a steel trap, there was no blinking in his eyes. Hesaw the blow coming, and quick as light he countered. Never on parade inthe old school corps did his rifle come to his shoulder more steadilythan it came now; not a nerve throbbed as he pressed (not pulled) thetrigger, nor was it until he stood _alone_ upon that narrow path thathis knees began to rock beneath him, while the cold perspiration poureddown his drawn white face in streams.
One man only besides Corbett saw that drama; one man, whose featureswore a look of which hell might have been proud, so fiendish was it inits disappointed malice, when through the dust he saw the red flameflash, and then, almost before the report reached him, saw the body ofthe big buckskin, a limp bagful of broken bones, splash heavily into theSeton Lake.
But the look passed as a cloud passes on a windy morning, and the nextmoment Cruickshank was at Corbett's side, a flood of congratulations andinquiries pouring from his ready lips. As for Ned, now that the dangerwas over, he was utterly unstrung, and a bold enemy might have easilydone for him that which the runaway horse had failed to do. Perhaps thatthought never occurred to any enemy of Ned's; perhaps the quick,backward glance, in which Cruickshank recognized old Roberts' purplefeatures, was as effectual a safeguard to the young man's life as evenhis own good rifle had been; be that as it may, a few moments later Nedstumbled along after his friend to a place of safety, and there sat downagain to collect himself.
Meanwhile, Roberts and Cruickshank stood looking at one another, anexpression in the old poet's face, which neither Corbett nor Cruickshankhad ever seen there before, the hand in his coat pocket grasping arevolver, whose ugly muzzle was ready to belch out death from thatpocket's corner at a moment's notice. At last Cruickshank spoke in avoice so full of genuine sorrow, that even Roberts slackened his holdupon the weapon concealed in his coat pocket.
"You've had a near shave to-day, Corbett, and it was my fault. I amalmost ashamed to ask you to forgive me."
"How--what do you mean? Did you fire that shot?"
"I did, like a cursed idiot," replied Cruickshank.
Roberts' face was a study for an artist. Speechless surprise reignedupon it supreme.
"I did," Cruickshank repeated. "I fired at a grouse that was hooting ina bull-pine by the track, and I suppose that that scared thecayuse--though I've never known a pack-horse mind a man shootingbefore."
"Nor I," muttered Roberts. "I suppose you didn't notice if you hit thatfool-hen, Colonel Cruickshank?"
"No; I don't suppose I did. I'd enough to think of when I saw what I haddone."
"Well, it didn't fly away, and it ain't there now," persisted Roberts."Perhaps you'd like to go and look for it."
However, Cruickshank took no notice of Roberts' speech, but held out hishand to Corbett with such an honest expression of sorrow, that if it wasnot sincere, it was superb as a piece of acting.
Without a word Corbett took the proffered hand. There are some natureswhich find it hard to suspect evil in others, and Ned Corbett's was oneof these. Only he made a mental note, that though Cruickshank had onlymade two mistakes since starting from Douglas, they had both been ofrather a serious nature.
Only one man climbed down to look at the dead cayuse as it lay halfhidden in the shallow water at the edge of the lake, and that was only aChinaman. Of course he went to see what he could save from the wreck;equally, of course, he found nothing worth bringing away; found nothingand noticed nothing, or if he did, only told what he had seen to oldRoberts. There seemed to be an understanding between these two, for Phontrusted the hearty old Shropshireman as much as he seemed to dread andavoid the colonel.
Gold, Gold, in Cariboo! A Story of Adventure in British Columbia Page 7
