XXIV.
ALLONBY STRIKES SILVER.
Winter had closed in early, with Arctic severity, and the pines wereswathed in white and gleaming with the frost when Brooke stood onemorning beside the crackling stove in the shanty he and Allonby occupiedat the Dayspring mine. A very small piece of rancid pork was frizzlingin the frying-pan, and he was busy whipping up two handfuls of flourwith water, to make flapjacks of. He could readily have consumed twiceas much alone, for it was twelve hours since his insufficient sixo'clock supper, but he realized that it was advisable to curb hisappetite. Supplies had run very low, and the lonely passes over whichthe trail to civilization led were blocked with snow, while it was amatter of uncertainty when the freighter and his packhorse train couldforce his way in.
When the flour was ready he stirred the stove to a brisker glow, and,crossing the room, flung open the outer door. It was still an hour ortwo before sunrise, and the big stars scintillated with an intensity offrosty radiance, though the deep indigo of the cloudless vault waspaling in color, and the pines were growing into definite form. Here andthere a sombre spire or ragged branch rose harshly from the rest, but,for the most part, they were smeared with white, and his eyes weredazzled by the endless vista of dimly-gleaming snow. Towering peak andserrated rampart rose hard and sharp against a background of coldestblue. There was no sound, for the glaciers' slushy feet that fed thestreams had hardened into adamant, and a deathlike silence pervaded thefrozen wilderness.
Brooke felt the cold strike through him with the keenness of steel, andwas about to cross the space between the shanty and the men's logshelter, when a dusky figure, beating its arms across its chest, cameout of the latter.
"Are the rest of the boys stirring yet?" he said.
The man laughed, and his voice rang with a curious distinctness throughthe nipping air.
"I guess we've had the stove lit 'most an hour ago," he said. "They'veno use for being frozen, and that's what's going to happen to some of usunless we can make Truscott's before it's dark. Say, hadn't you betterchange your mind, and come along with us?"
Brooke made a little sign of negation, though it would have pleased himto fall in with the suggestion. Work is seldom continued through thewinter at the remoter mines, and he had most unwillingly decided to payoff the men, owing to the difficulty of transporting provisions andsupplies. There was, however, a faint probability of somebody attemptingto jump the unoccupied claim, and he had of late become infected byAllonby's impatience, while he felt that he could not sit idle in thecities until the thaw came round again. Still, he was quite aware thathe ran no slight risk by remaining.
"I'm not sure that it wouldn't be wiser, but I've got to stay," he said."Anyway, Allonby wouldn't come."
The other man dropped his voice a little. "That don't count. If you'llstand in, we'll take him along on the jumper sled. The old tank's 'mostplayed out, and it's only the whisky that's keeping the life in him.He'll go out on the long trail sudden when there's no more of it, andit's going to be quite a long while before the freighter gets a loadover the big divide."
Brooke knew that this was very likely, but he shook his head. "I'm halfafraid it would kill him to leave the mine," he said. "It's the hope ofstriking silver that's holding him together as much as the whisky."
"Well," said the man, who laughed softly, "I've been mining andprospecting most of twenty years, and it's my opinion that, except thelittle you're getting on the upper level, there's not a dollar's worthof silver here. Now I guess Harry will have breakfast ready."
He moved away, and when Brooke went back into the shanty, Allonby cameout of an inner room shivering. His face showed grey in the lamplight,and he looked unusually haggard and frail.
"It's bitter cold, and I seem to feel it more than I did last year," hesaid. "We will, however, be beyond the necessity of putting up with anymore unpleasantness of the kind long before another one is over. I shallprobably feel adrift then--it will be difficult, in my case, to pick upthe thread of the old life again."
"If you stay here, I'm not sure you'll have an opportunity of doing itat all," said Brooke. "It's a risk a stronger man than you are mightshrink from."
"Still, I intend to take it. We have gone into this before. If I leaveDayspring before I find the silver, I leave it dead."
Brooke made a little gesture of resignation. "Well," he said, "I havedone all I could, and now, if you will pour that flour into the pan,we'll have breakfast."
Both men were silent during the frugal meal, for they knew what they hadto look forward to, and the cold silence of the lonely land alreadyweighed upon their spirits. Long weeks of solitude must be draggedthrough before the men who were going south that morning came backagain, while there might very well be interludes of scarcity, and hungeris singularly hard to bear with the temperature at forty degrees below.Allonby only trifled with his food, and smiled drily when at last hethrust his plate aside.
"Dollars are not to be picked up easily anywhere, and you and I aregoing to find out the full value of them before the thaw begins again,"he said. "We shall, no doubt, also discover how thoroughly nauseated onecan become with his companion's company. I have heard of men winteringin the mountains who tried to kill one another."
Brooke laughed. "It's scarcely likely we will go quite as far as that,though I certainly remember two men in the Quatomac Valley who flungeverything in the range at each other periodically. One was inordinatelyfond of green stuff, and his partner usually started the circus bytelling him to take his clothes off, and go out like Nebuchadnezzar.They refitted with wood-pulp ware when the proceedings becameexpensive."
Just then there was a knock upon the door, which swung open, and acluster of shadowy figures, with their breath floating like steam aboutthem, appeared outside it. One of them flung a deerhide bag into theroom.
"We figured we needn't trail quite so much grub along, and I guessyou'll want it," a voice said. "Neither of you changed your minds 'boutlighting out of this?"
"I don't like to take it from you, boys," said Brooke, who recognizedthe rough kindliness which had prompted the men to strip themselves ofthe greater portion of their provisions. "You can't have more thanenough for one day's march left."
"I guess a man never hits the trail so hard as when he knows he has to,"somebody said. "It will keep us on the rustle till we fetch Truscott's.Well, you're not coming?"
For just a moment Brooke felt his resolution wavering, and, underdifferent circumstances, he might have taken Allonby by force, and gonewith them, but by a somewhat involved train of reasoning he felt that itwas incumbent upon him to stay on at the mine because Barbara Heathcotehad once trusted him. It had been tolerably evident from her attitudewhen he had last seen her, that she had very little confidence in himnow, but that did not seem to affect the question, and most men are atrifle illogical at times.
"No," he said, with somewhat forced indifference. "Still, I don't mindadmitting that I wish we were."
The man laughed. "Then I guess we'll pull out. We'll think of you twonow and then when we're lying round beside the stove in Vancouver."
Brooke said nothing further. There was a tramp of feet, and the shadowyfigures melted into the dimness beneath the pines. Then the lastfootfall died away, and the silence of the mountains suddenly seemed togrow overwhelming. Brooke turned to Allonby, who smiled.
"You will," he said, "feel it considerably worse before the next threemonths are over, and probably be willing to admit that there is someexcuse for my shortcomings in one direction. I have, I may mention, putin a good many winters here."
Brooke swung round abruptly. "I'm going to work in the mine. It'sfortunate that one man can just manage that new boring machine."
He left Allonby in the shanty, and toiled throughout that day, andseveral dreary weeks, during most of which the pines roared beneath theicy gales and blinding snow swirled down the valley. What he did was ofvery slight effect, but it kept him from thinking, which, he felt, was anecessity, and he only
desisted at length from physical incapacity forfurther labor. The snow, it was evident, had choked the passes, so thatno laden beast could make the hazardous journey over them, for theanxiously-expected freighter did not arrive, and there was an increasingscarcity of provisions as the days dragged by; while Brooke discoveredthat a handful of mouldy floor and a few inches of rancid pork daily isnot sufficient to keep a man's full strength in him. Then, when anArctic frost followed the snow, Allonby fell sick, and one bitterevening, when an icy wind came wailing down the valley, it dawned uponhis comrade that his condition was becoming precarious. Saying nothing,he busied himself about the stove, and smiled reassuringly when Allonbyturned to him.
"Are we to hold a festival to-night, since you seem to be cooking whatshould keep us for a week?" said the latter.
"I almost fancy it would keep one of us for several days, which, sinceyou do not seem especially capable of getting anything ready foryourself, is what it is intended to do," said Brooke. "I shall probablybe that time in making the settlement and getting back again."
"What are you going there for?"
"To bring out the doctor."
Allonby raised his head and looked at him curiously. "Are you sure that,with six or eight feet of snow on the divide, you could ever get there?"
"Well," said Brooke, cheerfully, "I believe I could, and, if I don't,you will be very little worse off than you were before. You see, theprovisions will not last two of us more than a few days longer, and youcan take it that I will do all I can to get through the snow. Since youare not the only man who is anxious to find the silver, your health is amatter of importance to everybody just now."
Allonby smiled curiously. "We will consider that the reason, and it is atolerably good one, or I would not let you go. Still, I fancy you haveanother, and it is appreciated. There is, however, something more to besaid. You will find my working plans in the case yonder should anythingunexpected happen before you come back. Life, you know, is always atrifle uncertain."
"That," said Brooke, decisively, "is morbid nonsense. You will be downthe mine again in a week after the doctor comes."
"Well," said Allonby, with a curious quietness, "I should, at least,very much like to find the silver."
Brooke changed the subject somewhat abruptly, and it was an hour laterwhen he shook hands with his comrade and went out into the bitter nightwith two blankets strapped upon his shoulders. Their parting was notdemonstrative, though they realized that the grim spectre with thescythe would stalk close behind each of them until they met again, andBrooke, turning on the threshold, saw Allonby following him withcomprehending eyes. Then he suddenly pulled the door to, shutting outthe lamplight and the alluring red glow of the stove, and swung forward,knee-deep in dusty snow, into the gloom of the pines. The silence of thegreat white land was overwhelming, and the frost struck through him.
It was late on the third night when he floundered into a little sleepingsettlement, and leaned gasping against the door of the doctor's housebefore he endeavored to rouse its occupant. The latter stared at himalmost aghast when he opened it, lamp in hand, and Brooke reeled, greyin the face with weariness and sheeted white with frozen snow, into thelight.
"Steady!" he said, slipping his arm through Brooke's. "Come in here.Now, keep back from the stove. I'll get you something that will fix youup in a minute. You came in from the Dayspring--over the divide? I heardthe freighter telling the boys it couldn't be done."
Brooke laughed harshly. "Well," he said, "you see me here, and, ifthat's not sufficient, you're going to prove the range can be crossedyourself to-morrow."
The doctor was new to that country, and he was very young, or he would,in all probability, not been there at all, but when he heard Brooke'sstory he nodded tranquilly. "I'm afraid I haven't done anymountaineering, but I had the long-distance snowshoe craze rather badback in Montreal," he said. "You're not going to give me very much of alead over the passes, anyway, unless you sleep the next twelve hours."
Brooke, as it happened, slept for six and then set out with the youngdoctor in blinding snow. He had forty to fifty pounds upon his back now,and once they left the sheltering timber it cost them four strenuoushours to make a thousand feet. Part of that night they lay awake,shivering in the pungent fir smoke in a hollow of the rocks, and startedagain, aching in every limb, long before the lingering dawn, while thenext day passed like a very unpleasant dream with the young doctor. Thesnow had ceased, and lay without cohesion, dusty and dry as flour,waist-deep where the bitter winds had whirled it in wreaths, while theglare of the white peaks became intolerable under the cloudless sun.
For hours they crawled through juniper scrub or stunted wisps of pines,where the trunks the winds had reaped lay piled upon each other intangled confusion, with the sifting snow blown in to conceal thepitfalls between. By afternoon the doctor was flagging visibly, andwhite peaks and climbing timber reeled formlessly before his dazzledeyes as he struggled onward the rest of that day. Then, when thepitiless blue above them grew deeper in tint until the stars shone indepths of indigo, and the ranges fading from silver put on dim shades ofblueness that enhanced their spotless purity, they stopped again, andmade shift to boil the battered kettle in a gully, down which theremoaned a little breeze that seared every patch of unprotected skin. Thedoctor collapsed behind a boulder, and lay there limply while Brooke fedthe fire.
"I'm 'most afraid you'll have to fix supper yourself to-night," he said."Just now I don't quite know how I'm going to start to-morrow, though itwill naturally have to be done."
Brooke glanced round at the grim ramparts of ice and snow that cutsharp against the indigo. Night as it was, there was no softness in thatscheme of color lighted by the frosty scintillations of the stars, and ashiver ran through his stiffened limbs.
"Yes," he said. "Nobody not hardened to it could expect to stand morethan another day in the open up here."
He got the meal ready, but very little was said during it, and for a fewhours afterwards the doctor lay coughing in the smoke of the fire, whilehis gum-boots softened and grew hard again as he drew his feet, whichpained him intolerably between whiles, a trifle further from thecrackling brands. He staggered when at last Brooke, finding that shakingwas unavailing, dragged him upright.
"Breakfast's almost ready, and we have got to make the mine byto-night," he said.
The doctor could never remember how they accomplished it, but his lipswere split and crusted with coagulated blood, while there seemed to beno heat left in him, when Brooke stopped on a ridge of the hillside asdusk was closing in.
"The mine is close below us. In fact, we should have seen it from wherewe are," he said.
Worn out as he was, the doctor noticed the grimness of his tone. "Thenearer the better," he said. "I don't quite know how I got here, but youscarcely seem at ease."
"I was wondering why Allonby, who does not like the dark, has notlighted up yet," Brooke said, drily. "We will probably find out in a fewmore minutes."
Then he went reeling down the descending trail, and did not stop againuntil he stood amidst the piles of debris and pine stumps, with theshanty looming dimly in front of him across the little clearing. Itseemed very dark and still, and the doctor, who came up gasping, stoppedabruptly when his comrade's shout died away. The silence that closed inagain seemed curiously eerie.
"He must have heard you at that distance," he said.
"Yes," said Brooke, a trifle hoarsely. "If he didn't, there's only onething that could have accounted for it."
Then they went on again slowly, until Brooke flung the door of theshanty open. There was no fire in the stove, and the place was verycold, while the darkness seemed oppressive.
"Strike a match--as soon as you can get it done," said the doctor.
Brooke broke several as he tore them off the block with half-frozenfingers, for the Canadian sulphur matches are not usually put up inboxes, and then a pale blue luminescence crept across the room when heheld one aloft. It sputtered out, leaving a pungent
odor, and thickdarkness closed in again; but for a moment Brooke felt a curious relief.
"He's not here," he said.
The doctor understood the satisfaction in his voice, for his eyes hadalso turned straight towards the rough wooden bunk, and he had notexpected to find it empty.
"The man must have been fit to walk. Where has he gone?" he said.
Brooke fancied he knew, and, groping round the room, found and lighted alantern. Its radiance showed that his face was grim again.
"If you can manage to drag yourself as far as the mine, I think it wouldbe advisable," he said. "It seems to me significant that the stove isquite cold. One would fancy there had been no fire in it for severalhours now."
The doctor went with him, and somehow contrived to descend the shaft.Brooke leaned out from the ladder, swinging his lantern when they nearedthe bottom, and his shout rang hollowly among the rocks. There was noanswer, and even the doctor, who had never seen Allonby, felt thesilence that followed it.
"If the man was as ill as you fancied how could he have got down?" hesaid.
"I don't know," said Brooke. "Still, I think we shall come upon him notvery far away."
They went down a little further into the darkness, and then theprediction was warranted, for Brooke swung off his hat, and the doctordropped on one knee when Allonby's white face appeared in the movinglight. He lay very still, with one arm under him, and, when a fewseconds had slipped by, the doctor looked up and, meeting Brooke's eyes,nodded.
"Yes," he said. "It must have happened at least twelve hours ago. How, Ican't tell exactly. Cardiac affection, I fancy. Anyway, not a fall.There is something in his hand, and a bundle of papers beside him."
Brooke glanced away from the dead man, and noticed the stain of giantpowder on the rock, and shattered fragments that had not been where theylay when he had last descended. Then he turned again, and took the pieceof stone the doctor had, with some difficulty, dislodged from the coldfingers.
"It's heavy," said the latter.
"Yes," said Brooke, quietly. "A considerable percentage of it is eitherlead or silver. You are no doubt right in your diagnosis; so far as itgoes, I'm inclined to fancy I know what brought on the cardiacaffection."
The doctor, who said nothing, handed him the papers, and Brooke, whoopened them vacantly, started a little when he saw the jagged line,which, in drawings of the kind, usually indicates a break, was nowtraced across the ore vein in the plan. There was also a scrap of paper,with his name scrawled across it, and he read, "When you have got yourdollars back four or five times over, sell out your stock."
He scarcely realized its significance just then, and, moving thelantern a little, looked down on Allonby's face again. It was very whiteand quiet, and the signs of indulgence had faded from it, while Brookewas sensible of a curious thrill of compassion.
"I wonder if the thing we long for most invariably comes when it is nouse to us?" he said. "Well, we will go back to the shanty."
There was nothing more that any man could do for Allonby until themorrow, and the darkness once more closed in on him, while theflickering light grew fainter up the shaft.