CHAPTER XXIII.
THE HORNET'S NEST.
After the removal of Phon's boulder there was no more talk of washingwith pan or rocker, no more thought of digging or mining. Even Chanceand Phon were content with the quantity of gold which lay ready to theirhands at Pete's Creek. The only trouble was that at Pete's Creek theyellow stuff was absolutely worthless, and that between Pete's Creek,where the gold lay, and those cities of men in which gold is of morevalue than anything else upon earth, were several hundred miles of wildcountry, where a man might be lost in the forest, or drowned in theriver, or starved on the mountain, just like a beggarly _coyote_, andthat although he was richer than a Rothschild.
Steve had heard of men in Cariboo who had paid others ten dollars a dayto carry their gold-dust for them, and he would gladly have done as muchhimself; but, unluckily, the only men within reach of him were as richas he was, and wanted help just as badly. So Steve joined Corbett andPhon, and the three men sat together looking down upon as much wealth aswould buy the life-long labour, aye, the very bodies and souls, of ahundred ordinary men, and yet they were conscious that it was about evenbetting that they would all three die beggars--die starving for want ofa loaf of bread, though each man carried round his waist the price of ascore of royal banquets!
Steve was the first to break the silence. Pointing away over the rollingforest lands, towards the bed of the Frazer river, he said:
"It looks pretty simple, Ned, and I guess we could get there and back ina week."
"Do you? You would be a good woodsman if you got to the river in a week,and a better one if you ever found your way back here at all."
"How's that? You don't mean to say that you think it possible that weshall lose the creek again now that we have found it?"
"We ought not to, Steve, but that is a bad country to get through and aneasy one to get lost in;" and Corbett's eyes dwelt mistrustingly uponthe dark, dense woods, the deep gullies, the impervious stretches of_brule_, and the choking growth of young pines which lay between theknoll upon which they sat and the distant benches of the Frazer river.
"Well what had we better do, Ned? If we don't take care we shall getcaught in a cold snap before we know where we are."
"We had better leave here to-morrow morning, I think, Steve, carryingall the gold we can with us, and make straight for the Frazer. There wemay meet some miners going out for the winter, and if they have notstruck it rich themselves they may be willing to pack the stuff out forus. If not, we must look for old Rampike and wait for the spring."
"What! and put up with nearly another year of this dog's life with all_that_ lying there?"
"I'm afraid so, Steve. You can't order a special train from here to NewYork though you are a millionaire."
For a little while Steve Chance sat moodily biting at the stem of hisunlit pipe, and then he asked Corbett--
"Are you going to join Rampike for his fall hunt, Ned?"
"Certainly. Why not?"
"Oh, I don't know, only I thought that you might have changed yourmind;" and Chance's eyes wandered round to the pile of gold nuggets overwhich Phon kept guard.
"That can make no difference, Steve. I don't want what Cruickshank stolefrom me. I want to settle with him for my countryman's life."
"Much good that will do poor old Roberts. But as you please. We are allmad upon one subject or another. Do you still think that Cruickshank issomewhere hereabouts?"
"I don't think that he is on this side of the river or we should havecome across his tracks before now, but I fancy he is somewhere in thisChilcotin country."
"You don't think that that glove could have been his?"
"You said that there were no men's tracks anywhere near it, so Isuppose not."
"That's so; but I've seen some of your tracks since, Ned, which lookedawfully like those bear tracks. I'm hanged if I know whether they werebear tracks after all!"
"It is a pity you were so positive about them at first then. But it istoo late now in any case. If the tracks were made by Cruickshank he isfar enough from here by now."
Again the conversation ceased for a time, the only sound being therattle of Pete's Creek in the dark gorge below.
"It is a pity the goats have all cleared out. Don't you think you couldfind one, Ned, before we start?" asked Chance at length.
"No, I'm certain that I could not. We must be content with trout (ifPhon can catch any), and the flour which I saved when we struck thecreek."
"Ah, I had forgotten that. Is there much of it?"
"About half a pound apiece _per diem_ for a week."
"Short commons for a hungry man, especially as the berries are nearlyall gone."
"It _will_ be hungry work for us until we reach the Frazer, but there isa little goat's meat left and the fish."
"Say, Phon, you think you catch plenty fish by to-morrow?"
"S'pose you come 'long an' help I catch 'em," replied Phon.
"All right, I'll come. How much gold you pack along with you, Phon?"Steve added as the three went down to the creek to fish.
"Me halo pack any," was Phon's unexpected reply.
"Halo pack any! Why, don't you want any gold?"
"Yes, me want him, but me not pack any. Me not go to-mollow. Me stophere!"
"Stop here! What, alone! How about the devils?"
Poor Phon glanced nervously over his shoulder. The shadows were growingdeeper and deeper amongst the pine stems, and the trees were creakingand groaning with a little wind which generally rose about sundown.
"S'pose you want find men carry gold to Victollia, one man go catch 'em.One man plenty. S'pose two man stop here, that heap good. No one steal'um gold then," and the speaker pointed to the bags of dust.
"Nonsense, Phon. Who do you suppose would take the gold?"
"Debil take him; debil take him, sure. Debil watch him all the time.S'pose all go, debil take him quick."
"Well, I'm afraid your friend the devil will take the stuff to-morrowmorning, for to-morrow morning we all leave this place. You had betterpack as much dust as you can carry if you are afraid to leave it."
"No. Me halo pack any. S'pose all go, me stop 'lone."
It was a resolute reply in spite of the man's frightened face, and thetone of it arrested Ned's attention.
"Have you ever really seen anyone about the camp?" he asked.
"No, me halo see him, me halo see him. Only me know him there. All thetime he go lound an' lound and look at the gold and come closer. Me halosee him, me feel him looking all the time. Stop here, Misser Ned, stophere."
"The gold has made you crazy, Phon," said Ned, somewhat contemptuously,disregarding the piteous appeal in the man's tone and gesture."However, if you like to stay, it will do no harm. You can catch plentyof fish, and we shall be back in a fortnight or so." And then turning toSteve, Ned added, in a lower tone: "He'll change his mind when he seesus start, and if he doesn't we cannot drag him through that countryagainst his will."
That night the three discoverers of Pete's Creek worked as hard tocollect a store of little trout as they had ever worked to gather gold,and at dawn two of the three stood ready to start on their march to theFrazer. In spite of all Ned's persuasions Phon remained firm in hisresolution to stay with his treasure. For him the woods weredevil-haunted; articulate voices whispered in every wind; faces of fearwere reflected from every starlit pool; and yet, in spite of all theterrors which walk at night, Phon refused to leave his gold. In himgreed was stronger even than fear.
"He will be raving mad before we get back," muttered Ned, as he gazed atthe frail blue figure crouching over the camp-fire; "but what can we do?We can't 'pack' the fellow along with us."
"No, we cain't do that," replied Steve. "Poor beggar! I wouldn't be inhis shoes for all the gold in the creek."
And as he stared in a brown study at the charred stumps and rough whitewoodwork in that gloomy canyon, at the broken rock and the dead fires,Chance began unconsciously to hum the air of "The Old Pack-mule."
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bsp; "Confound you, Steve," cried Corbett angrily, "stop that! Isn't it badenough to hear the winds crooning that air all night, and the waters ofthe creek keeping time to it? Shut up, for heaven's sake, and comealong!" and without waiting for an answer Ned turned his back upon thegold camp and plunged boldly into the woods between it and the Frazer.
It had been arranged that Corbett should go ahead with the rifle, andthat Chance should follow him with an axe. "Any fool can blaze a tree,but it takes a quick man to roll over a buck on the jump," had beenSteve's verdict, and he had allotted to himself the humbler office.
From the moment they left camp until nightfall, it seemed to Steve thathe and his companion did nothing but step over or crawl under logs ofvarious sizes and different degrees of slipperiness. To follow thesinuous course of a mountain stream through a pine-forest may look easyenough from a distance, but in reality to do so at all closely is almostimpossible.
As for Pete's Creek, it ran through a deep and narrow canyon, the wallsof which were precipitous rocks, along which no man could climb. The bedof the creek for the most part was choked with great boulders, amongstwhich the water broke and foamed, rendering wading impossible; and alongthe edges of the canyon up at the top the pines grew so thick, or thedead-falls were so dense, that it was all Ned could do to keep withinhearing of the creek.
The constant forking of the stream made careful blazing very necessary,and this took time, and the course of the stream was so tortuous thatthey had frequently to walk four miles to gain one in the direction inwhich they wanted to go, so that when at last they reached a bare knoll,from which they could look out over the forest, it seemed to Ned andSteve that the Frazer valley was no nearer, and the crawling folds ofthe great Chilcotin mountains no more distant than they had been atdawn.
But the folds of the mountains were already full of inky gloom, and itwas evident that a stormy night was close at hand, so that whether theyhad made many miles or few upon their way, it was imperatively necessaryto camp at once. Almost before the fire had been lighted night fell, anight of intense darkness and severe cold, a cold which seemed to bedriven into the tired travellers by a shrill little wind, which got upand grew and grew until the great pines began to topple down by thedozen. From time to time one or other of the sleepers would wake with ashiver and collect fresh fuel for the dying fire, or rearrange the logwhich he had laid at his back to keep the wind off; but in spite ofevery effort the night was a weary and a sleepless one both for Ned andSteve, and in the morning, winter, the miner's deadliest foe, had come.
For a month or more yet there might not be any serious snowfall, but thefirst flakes of snow were melting upon Corbett's clothes when he got upfor the last time that night and found that the dawn had come. Far awayupon the distant crest of the black mountains at his back, Ned saw thedelicate lace-work of the first snow-storm of the year like a mantillaupon the head of some stately Spanish beauty.
"By Jove, Steve, we have no time to lose," said Ned. "Look at that!" andhe pointed to the mountains. "If this is going to be an early winter,Phon is a lost man."
"Lead on, Ned," replied Steve, "I'll follow you as long as my legs willlet me, but if you can find any way of avoiding those dead-falls to-day,do so. Nature never meant me for a squirrel or a Blondin."
"The only other way if you don't like balancing along these logs is downthere over these boulders, and the water there is thigh-deep in places,and cold as ice;" and Corbett pointed to the bed of the creek a hundredfeet below.
"Let's try it for a change, Ned, it cain't be worse than this," pantedSteve, who at the moment was crawling on his hands and knees through amesh-work of burnt roots and rampikes.
"All right, come along," said Ned, and using their hands more than theirfeet, the two men crept down the rock wall of the canyon until theyreached the bed of the creek.
Here things went fairly well with them at first. The water was icy cold,but their limbs were so bruised and feverish that the cold water waspleasant to them; and though the boulders over which they had to climbwere slippery and hard to fall against, they were not more slippery andvery little harder than the logs above. After two or three miles ofwading, however, Steve's limbs began to get too numbed with cold tocarry him any further, and a return to dry land became necessary.Looking up for some feasible way out of the trap into which they hadfallen, Ned at last caught sight of what appeared to be fairly opencountry along the edge of the canyon, and of a way up the rock wallwhich, though difficult, was not impossible.
"Here we are, Steve," he cried as soon as he saw the opening. "Here's anopen place and a fairly easy way to it. Come along, let's get out ofthis freezing creek;" and so saying he went at the rock wall and beganto scramble up like a cat.
Steve was either too tired or too deliberate to follow his friend atonce, and in this instance it was well for him that he was so, for asecond glance showed him a far easier way to the upper edge of thecanyon than the direct route taken by Ned.
Clambering slowly up by the easier way of the two, Steve was surprisednot to find Ned waiting for him when he at length gained the top of therocks, and still more surprised when, after waiting for some minutes, heheard a faint voice below him calling him by name.
"Steve! Steve!" cried the voice.
"What is it, and where are you, Ned?" answered Chance.
"Here, underneath you. Look sharp and lend me a hand, I can't hold onmuch longer!"
By Ned's tones his need was urgent, and yet Chance could not get aglimpse of him anywhere. Dropping on to his knees and crawling to theedge, Steve leaned over until half his body was beyond the edge of thecliff. Then he saw his friend, but even then he did not comprehend hisperil. The rock wall at the point at which Ned had tried to scale itended in a kind of coping, which now projected over his head; but as ifto make amends for this, a stout little juniper bush offered the climbera convenient hand-rail by which to swing himself up on to the top. Andyet with the juniper within reach of him, there hung Ned Corbett yellingfor help.
"Why don't you get hold of the bush, Ned, and haul yourself up? I cain'treach you from here," cried Steve.
"Daren't do it!" came the short answer. "There's a hornet's nest on it!"and as Ned spoke Steve caught sight of a great pear-shaped structure ofdry mud which hung from the bush over the creek.
"Well, get down and come round my way."
"Can't do it. I can't get back," answered Ned, who, like many anotherclimber, had managed to draw himself up by his hands to a spot fromwhich descent was impossible.
At that moment, whilst Steve was devising some kind of extempore ladderor rope, there was a rattle of falling stones, and a cry: "Look out,Steve, catch hold of me if you can!" and as the frail hold of his handsand feet gave way, Ned made a desperate spring and clutched wildly atthe very bough from which that innocent-looking globe of gray mud hung.The next moment, at the very first oscillation of their home, out rusheda host of furious-winged warriors straight for Corbett's face. Luckilyfor him Steve had clutched him by the wrist, and though the suddenattack of the hornets upon his eyes made Ned himself let go his hold,his friend managed to maintain his until, amid a perfect storm of angrywings and yellow bodies, the two lay together upon the top of the cliff.If Steve had let go at that moment when the hornets rushed out to war,Ned Corbett must have fallen back upon the rocks at the bottom of thecanyon, and there would have been an end to all his troubles. As it washe lay upon the top of the cliffs, and realized that the worst of histroubles were but beginning.
"Are you much stung, Steve?" he asked.
"You bet I am, Ned. Look! that would hardly go into an eight-and-a-halflavender kid now," and Steve held out his right hand, which was alreadymuch swollen.
But Ned did not take any notice of it. Instead he pressed his handsagainst his eyes and writhed with pain, and when Steve laid his hand onhim he only muttered: "My God! my God! Steve, how will you and Phon everfind your way out? I am stone blind!"
Gold, Gold, in Cariboo! A Story of Adventure in British Columbia Page 23
