Lorimer of the Northwest
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The prospector waded in foremost, sounding with a long fir pole. The stream swirled in white wreaths about his waist, and Johnston turned to speak to me, standing a few yards nearer with the ripples at his knee; then I grasped the pack-horse’s bridle and forced it into the water. The beast carried a heavy load, including most of our blankets, and almost the entire balance of our provisions. A rusty rifle was slung behind my shoulders, besides tools and utensils, and Johnston was similarly caparisoned, so I felt my way cautiously as the ice-cold waters frothed higher about me. Near by, the creek poured into the main river, which swept with a great black swirling into the gloom of the forest.
All went well until we gained the center of the stream, and then a loose stone turned under the horse’s hoof, or it sank into a deeper hollow, for there was a plunge and a flounder, and, jerked sideways by the bridle, I went down headforemost into the stream. This was a common enough accident, but the bridle slipped from my fingers, and when some seconds later I stood erect, gasping, with the torrent racing past me, the horse was swimming down-stream a dozen yards away, while Johnston struggled in that direction to intercept it.
“Let it go!” I roared. “Water’s deepening; you’ll be sucked out into the main river,” and caught the answer, “All our provisions there!” after which there was a confused shouting, which ended in the warning, “For the Lord’s sake, Johnston, look out for yourself!”
I could see that our best chance of rendering assistance would be to cross and try to overtake them from the further bank, and a few seconds later I was clattering over the shingle with the prospector close behind me. But we were already too late. When, waist-deep, I floundered down a shingle spit, the half-submerged beast, handicapped by its burden, swept past out of reach, and I caught a momentary glimpse of a wet white face and a man’s uplifted arm before a tumbling ridge splashed up and hid them.
“Couldn’t never overtake them, but it’s running slacker in the river,” the prospector said.
We smashed through a willow thicket which covered a little promontory, and then, staring wide-eyed under the branches, I saw an indistinct object lurch unevenly into the froth of a rapid, and so pass the next instant out of sight. Whether it was man or horse no one could say.
“He’s gone,” said the grizzled prospector. “Many another has gone the same way. Find them! Of course, we’ll search, but I guess it’s hopeless. Don’t think your partner was great on swimming, and he was loaded heavy. Come on, daylight’s going.”
For a moment I felt limp and abject, then in savage fury I broke through barberry branches and thorny brakes, fell into the river, and blundered down a shoaler portion of its channel, until I brought up breathless on the verge of a deep boiling pool, while even as I stared across it the last of the day went out.
“It sounds hard,” said the prospector, “but you can’t do nothin’. No man could make his way through this bush in the dark, and it wouldn’t be any good. Your partner never got so far. We can only say we’re sorry, and strike back for camp.”
He was right, though I think I cursed him for cowardice then. We struggled on through a horrible chaos of tangled forest, but each time when, peering out between the dark fir branches, I cried aloud, the blackness returned no answer save the boom of angry water. So, bruised, wet, and bleeding, I struggled back toward the fatal creek, and found that my lips would not frame words to answer when Harry said:
“It was horrible, Ralph. I’d give all our hopes and prospects to have the poor fellow safe again. But there’s no help for it, and somehow I fancy it was a release. You remember how he looked when he said that this was his last march?”
We lighted a fire, dried our garments and the blankets that were left us, then Harry flung aside the battered camp spider, and drew out a flask.
“Ten pounds of flour, five of reistit pork – and that’s what he gave his life for. No, I don’t think I could eat anything to-night. Here, empty half of this, Ralph, you’re shaking all over,” and Harry lifted his hat as he touched the metal cup with his lips: “Good rest to you, comrade,” he said.
I choked over the mouthful of spirits, which I needed badly enough, and then sat shivering wide awake beside the fire through the long bitter night, while when at daybreak I called the others, they both rose with a suspicious readiness. For hours we wandered along the river bank, but found nothing whatever beyond conclusive evidence that even the best swimmer could hardly have come out of that icy flood alive. Then dejectedly we strapped up our traps, and turned our backs on the dismal camp. We halted and looked back a moment on the crest of the divide.
“The beast was badly played out,” the guide said, “the man was loaded. Thirty pounds and a rifle – and he couldn’t hardly swim. He’s gone out on the lonely trail, but whether there’s gold at the end of it no living man can say. Maybe you’ll find out some day when you follow him.”
Then in mournful silence we turned away, and that night we ate our last mouthful in another valley, and forgot the gnawing hunger in broken sleep, through which a wet face persistently haunted me. When we arose there was not even a handful of caked flour in the damp bag, and during a discussion the miner, in reply to Harry’s statement, said it did not follow that there were no deer or bear in the country because we had not seen them. Men tramping noisily behind shod horses do not generally chance upon the shy deer, he pointed out; while if two previous hunts had proved unsuccessful, we might do better on the third. It was at least four days’ march to the nearest dwelling, and I agreed with his observation that no starving men could march for four days through such a country. So, to enhance our chances, the company divided, agreeing to meet again, if they killed nothing, at the same spot by sunset.
It was with a heavy heart and my belt drawn tighter that I left the others, carrying a loaded rifle, which seemed to increase considerably in weight. Now, even well north in British Columbia, especially if near the Pacific, there are favored valleys sunk deep among the ranges and open to the west which escape the harder frost, and as this was one of them I determined to search the half-frozen muskegs for bear. The savage grizzly lives high under the ragged peaks, the even fiercer cinnamon haunts the thinly-covered slopes below, but I had no desire to encounter either of them, for the flesh of the little vegetable-feeding black bear is by no means unpalatable, especially to starving men.
So I prowled from swamp to swamp, seeing nothing but the sickly trunks which grew up out of thinly frozen slime, while no sound made by either bird or beast broke the impressive silence of the primeval solitude. At last, when the day was nearly spent, I crawled toward a larger muskeg, which spread out from a running creek, and knelt in congealed mire behind a blighted spruce, listening intently, for a sound I recognized set my heart beating. All around, dwindling in gradations as the soil grew wetter, the firs gave place to willows, and there was mud and ice cake under them. Peering hard into the deepening shadows, I saw what I had expected – a patch of shaggy fur. This was one of the small black bears, and the creature was grubbing like a hog among the decaying weed for the roots of the wild cabbage, which flourishes in such places. Some of these bears hibernate in winter, I believe, but by no means all, for the bush settlers usually hunt them then for their fur. No summer peltry is worth much.
I was only a fair shot with the rifle, and the strip of black, half seen between the branches, would prove a difficult mark in an uncertain light, while it was probable that three lives might answer for the bear’s escape. So I waited, aching in every joint, while my hands grew stiffer on the rifle stock, but still the beast refrained from making a target of itself, until, knowing that it would soon be too dark to shoot, I had to force the crisis. A strange sound might lead the quarry to show himself an instant before taking flight, and so I moistened my blue lips and whistled shrilly. A plump rotund body rose from the weeds, sixty yards away, I guessed, and I pitched up the rifle, dropping my left elbow well over my knee and steadying the cold barrel against the tree.
Sixty yards and a two-foot target, what need for such precautions? one hears the marksmen say, and when stalking sand-hill cranes in warm sunlight now I can agree with them. But I was nearly famished, stiff with cramp and cold, and shooting then for bare existence. With a half-articulate prayer I increased the pressure on the trigger as the fore-bead trembled – it would tremble – across the fur. The bear was clearly suspicious. He would be off the next moment, the trigger was yielding, and with a sudden stiffening of every muscle I added the final pressure as the notch in the rear-sight and the center of the body came for a moment in line. I heard no explosion – one rarely does when watching the result intently – but there was a red flash from the tilting muzzle, and the heel-plate jarred my shoulder. Then I growled with satisfaction as almost simultaneously I heard a sound there was no mistaking, the crunch of a forty-four bullet smashing through flesh and bone. The bear was down, straggling among the weed, and plunging straight through the muskeg I fell upon it, and, after burning another cartridge with the muzzle against the flesh, I drove the long knife in to the hilt.
Next I rose stiffly upright, ensanguined, with wild gasps of thankfulness, and sent a hoarse cry ringing across the woods, after which I sat down on the fur and stabbed the lifeless brute twice again, for I was filled with a childish fear that even now it might escape me. This was needless, and even barbarous, but to one in my position it was natural.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE BRINK OF ETERNITY
A shout came down from the range side, and when the others joined me even Harry surveyed the bear with wolfish eyes, while it did not take long to perform what the French-Canadians call the éventrer, and, smeared red all over, we bore the dismembered carcass into camp. We feasted like wild beasts – we were frankly animal then – and it was not until hunger was satisfied that we remembered the empty place. Then we drew closer together, and, though it was mere fancy, the gloom of the forest seemed to thicken round the circle of fading firelight, as Harry said:
“He was the life of the party at either work or feast. Ralph, we shall miss him sorely; a sound sleep to him!”
No one spoke again, and, drawing the two remaining blankets across the three, we sank into our couches of spruce twigs and slept soundly. It was after midnight, by the altitude of the moon, when the prospector roused me, and I sat up with chattering teeth, for there was a bitter wind.
“Don’t you hear it? – there – again!” he said.
I was not quite awake, and, when a tramp of footsteps came faintly out of the obscurity, at first I felt only elation. Johnston had escaped and followed our trail, I thought. This was short-lived, and was replaced by superstitious dread, for there could be no human being within leagues of us, and yet the ghostly footsteps drew steadily nearer and nearer. Even the miner, who had spent half his life in the ranges seemed uneasy, for he stretched out his hand for the rifle, and Harry started upright as a challenge rang through the stillness.
“Stop there, and call out what you want, whoever you are!”
There was no answer from the silence, only the footsteps still approaching, and Harry looked at me curiously when the miner called again.
“Keep back – tell us who you are before we fire on you!”
Then a hoarse voice reached us: “If you have nothing to eat it won’t matter much if you do. We are three starving men, and past doing anybody an injury.”
“Come forward,” I shouted. “We have food here,” and three figures staggered into the glow of the fire. The foremost seemed familiar, and I could not repress a start when the red blaze leaped up, for Geoffrey Ormond stood before us leaning heavily on a rifle. His face was thin and furrowed, his coat badly rent, and his very attitude spoke of utter weariness.
“Lorimer, by all that’s wonderful!” he exclaimed. “You were not exactly friendly the last time we met. In fact, I almost fancied you wished to ride over me. I hope we’re not intruding, but we’re most confoundedly hungry.”
The last words were unnecessary, for the way the men behind him glanced at the meat showed it plainly enough.
“I must apologize for a fit of temper,” I said, holding out my hand, “but it happened near the settlements, and old quarrels don’t hold up here. We have food to give you, and we hope that you will consider yourselves welcome.”
They certainly did so, for more bear steaks were laid on the embers, and while one of the newcomers, stripping a cartridge, rubbed powder grains into the flesh another produced a few of the fern roots which in times of scarcity the Siwash Indians eat. When at last they had finished, one of the party, pushing back his fur cap, turned to me.
“You ought to remember me, Lorimer,” he said.
“Of course I do, Calvert. Didn’t you hire my horses, once?” I replied. “You must take my meaning the right way when I say that I’m pleased to see you here. But what brought you and the others into this desolation?”
Calvert’s eyes twinkled. “The same thing that brought you – stories of unlimited treasure. When I heard them I left my few machines – they were not working well, and humbly craved the autocratic president of the Day Spring mine’s permission to join this expedition. The Day Spring was not prospering in such a degree that we could afford to ignore the rumors – eh, Geoffrey?”
“You may put it so,” said Ormond quietly. “But Colonel Carrington is your acknowledged chief, and you owe him due respect.”
“Well,” the narrator continued, “we came up, six sanguine men and one despondent mule, which showed its wisdom by breaking its tether and deserting. I gather that these expeditions are generally rough on cattle. Then we lost our way, and, provisions growing scanty, divided the party, three returning and three holding on, Geoffrey and I, unfortunately, among the latter. We got lost worse than ever on the return journey, and were steering south, we hoped, at the last gasp, so to speak, when we found you. That’s about all, but, if it’s a fair question, did you find any sign of gold?”
“Not a sign,” I answered.
“Yours was a triple combination,” Ormond said. “Where’s your cheerful partner; I liked him. Ah, excuse an unfortunate question – a difference of opinion most probably?”
“No,” I answered. “We never had a difference of opinion since poor Johnston joined us. He lies somewhere in a nameless river – we lost him crossing a treacherous ford two days ago.”
Ormond looked startled for a moment, then he bent his head and answered with a kindly glance toward me: “He was a good comrade, and you have my deep sympathy. May I say that sometimes I fancied your friend could tell a painful story, and in endeavoring to forget it made the most of the present.”
“You are probably right,” said Harry. “He hinted as much, but no one will learn that story now. He took his secret with him, and the river guards it.”
“It’s an old tale,” said Ormond gravely. “The way into this country was opened by the nameless unfortunate. After all, where could a man rest better than among the ranges through which he had found a pathway. Are not these dark pines grander than any monument? Poor Johnston! Lorimer, I wonder, if we knew all, whether we should pity him?”
His face grew somber as he spoke, but it was Ormond who presently dissipated the gloom by a humorous narrative of the doings of the vanished mule, after which we went to sleep again. A pale blink of sunshine shone down when we started south the next day, for we had agreed to march in company, but the weary leagues lengthened indefinitely, and there was still no sign of the eagerly expected trail leading to Macdonald’s Crossing, until, when we almost despaired of finding it, one of the party assured us that we should reach it before the second nightfall. During the morning Ormond and I lagged behind the others as we wound with much precaution along the sides of an almost precipitous descent. He limped from some small injury to his foot, made worse by exposure, and as it happened a passing mention of Colonel Carrington stirred up the old bitterness.
Why should this man enjoy so much while I had so little, I thought. I was handicapped by poverty, and his wealth lay like an impassable barrier between Grace and myself. Then, though I tried hard, I could not drive out the reflection that all would have been different if he had not found our camp. Our partner had gone down in the black pool; we could not save him, but chance had made it easy to succor the one man who could bring me sorrow in his necessity. Then, as I struggled to shake off the feeling of sullen resentment, Ormond perhaps noticed my preoccupation, for he remarked:
“In other circumstances how we should enjoy this prospect, Lorimer!”
We halted a few minutes, and I agreed with him as I glanced about me. A great slope of snow ran upward above us, and as far as eye could see there was a white confusion of glittering ranges. The footprints of our comrades wound in zig-zags among deep drifts and outcrops of ice-touched rock across the foreground, and perhaps twenty feet below the ledge on which we stood a smooth slide of frozen snow dropped steeply toward the edge of a precipice, through a gully in which we could see the tops of the climbing pines far beneath. A few small clumps of bushes and spruce rose out of this snow.
“It’s an awkward place for a lame man, but if we wait much longer we will lose the others,” said Ormond, pointing to the distant figures struggling across the dazzling incline.
He moved a few steps, then there was a stumble and a sudden cry. I saw him for a moment slipping down the slanted surface of the rock, and when I reached the edge he hung apparently with one foot on a slippery stone, and his left hand clawing wildly at the snow, which yielded under it. I think his other fingers were in a crevice. The fall might not be dangerous in itself, but it seemed impossible that anybody launched upon that declivity could escape a glissade over the precipice. This struck me in an instant and, grasping a shrub which grew in a crevice, I held out my right hand toward him.
“Get hold, lift yourself with your foot, and I’ll drag you up!” I said.
He made a desperate effort, for I could see the veins swell on his forehead, but it was the injured foot which had found hold, and when his chest was level with the edge, still clawing at the treacherous covering, he commenced to slip back again.
“Can’t do it. Let go, before I pull you over too!” he gasped.
One reads that in cases of imminent peril men’s memories have been quickened and past events rise up before them, but nothing of this kind happened to me, for as far as recollection serves I was conscious only that I could not recover my own balance now, and that there were great beads of sweat on the forehead of the man struggling for his life below who stared up with starting eyes, while my right arm seemed slowly being drawn out of its socket. So I fought for breath, and held on, while I fancy Ormond choked out again: “You fool, let go!” and then, with slow rending, the roots of the shrub gave way, and we plunged downward together.
Ormond was undermost, and he must have struck an uncovered rock heavily, for I heard a thudding shock, and the next moment, driving my heels into the snow, I swept down the incline at a speed which threatened to drive the little sense left in me completely away. Nevertheless, I noticed that Ormond rushed downward head foremost several yards away, and there was a loud crash when he charged through a juniper thicket, and then struck violently against a spruce, which brought him up almost on the verge of the gully. By good luck I slid into a clump of stout saplings, and presently rose to my knees, blinking about me in a dazed fashion. One thing, however, was evident – any rash move would launch me over the sheer fall. Ormond lay still against the slender trunk, and several minutes passed before he raised his head. There was a red stain on the snow beside him, and his voice was uneven.
“You are not a judicious man, Lorimer,” he said. “I’m infinitely obliged to you, but no one would have blamed you for letting go.”
“We’ll let that pass,” I answered shortly. “I’m glad I did not. We are in an awkward place, and the first thing is to decide how to get out of it.”
There was a wry smile on Ormond’s face when he spoke again: “It’s certainly a perilous position, and a somewhat unusual one. You and I – of all men – to be hung up here together on the brink of eternity. Still I, at least, am doubtful whether I’ll ever get out again; there’s something badly broken inside of me.”
The hot blood surged to my forehead, for I understood what he meant, but that was a side issue, and, answering nothing, I scanned the slope for some way of ascent. There was none, and nothing without wings could have gained the valley. Ormond, too, realized this.
“All we can do, Lorimer,” he said, “is to wait until our friends assist us. In the meantime you might fire your rifle to suggest that they hurry!”
He spoke very thickly. I scraped the snow from the slung weapon’s muzzle, for this will sometimes burst a gun, and then a red flash answered the ringing report from the opposite slope, and presently a cry reached us from the foremost of the clambering figures. “Hold on! We’re coming to get you out!” it said.
Now most luckily we had brought several stout hide ropes with us, which was a rather unusual procedure. The British Columbian mountaineer will carry a flour bag over moraine and glacier trusting only to the creeper spikes on his heels, and in objecting to the extra weight our guide said derisively: “We’ve quite enough to pack already, and I guess you don’t want to dress us up with a green veil, a crooked club with a spike in the end of it, and fathoms of spun hemp, like them tourist fellows bring out to sit in the woods with.”
Nevertheless, I insisted, and now we were thankful for the coupled lariats. They could not lower them directly toward me because of a tree, and when the end lay resting on the snow several yards away I braced myself to attempt the risky traverse. The slope was pitched as steeply as the average roof, and there was ice beneath the frost-dried powder that slid along it. Leaving the rifle behind, I drove the long blade of my knife deep down for a hand-hold before the first move.
“Lie flat and wriggle!” called a man above. “Jam the steel into the hard cake beneath!” and with the cold sweat oozing from my hair I proceeded to obey him. How long I took to cover the distance we could not afterward agree, but once I lay prone for minutes together, with both arms buried in the treacherous snow, which was slipping under me, and the end of the lariat a foot or two away. Then with a snake-like wriggle I grasped it, and there was a cry of relief from the watchers. I got a bight around Ormond’s shoulders, and after some difficulty fastened it. One cannot use ordinary knots on hide. Ready hands gathered in the slack, and my rival was drawn up swiftly, while they guided him diagonally around instead of under the jutting shelf from which we had fallen.
Then the end came down again, and with it fast about my shoulders I went back for the rifle, after which they hauled me up, filling my neck and both sleeves with snow in the process. Though Harry laughed, his voice trembled when, as I gained the platform, he exclaimed:
“Well done, partner! You fought gamely, and if you had eaten another bear we should never have landed you.”
Harry, I think, had been at one time a trout fisher. Ormond, however, after making an effort to rise, lay limply in the snow.
“I’m very sorry to trouble you, but I can’t get up,” he said. “Something gone wrong internally and my leg’s broken. I’m much afraid you will have to carry me.”
It was an arduous undertaking, and even before starting it was necessary to lash his limbs together with a rifle between them by way of splint. After this we spent two hours traversing the next mile or so, and my shoulders ached when with intense satisfaction we found firm earth beneath our feet once more. Ormond was distinctly heavy, and that region is sufficiently difficult to traverse even by a wholly unburdened man, while, hampered by his weight, the two days’ march to the crossing might be lengthened indefinitely. Still, we could not leave him there, and, framing two spruce poles with branches between them into a litter, we struggled forward under our burden. We were five partly fed and worn-out men in all, and we carried the litter alternately by twos and fours, finding the task a trying one either way. Probably we could never have accomplished it except under pressure of necessity.