Gold, Gold, in Cariboo! A Story of Adventure in British Columbia

  CHAPTER XX.

  THE ACCURSED RIVER.

  This world is a world of contrasts, in which laughter and tears,darkness and light, unite to make the varied pattern of our lives. WhenNed Corbett left Lilla standing with tears which would not be deniedupon her white cheeks, he felt as if he should never laugh again, andthe ball in his throat rose as if it would choke him. In spite of thepace at which he strode through the moonlit forest aisles, his thoughtsdwelt persistently upon the girl he had left behind him, or if theywandered at all from her, it was only to remind him of that snow-coveredcamp in the forest, at which he had taken his last farewell of thatother true friend of his. And yet half an hour after he had wrung poorLilla's hands in parting, Ned Corbett stood watching his comrades, hissides aching with suppressed laughter.

  Phon's voice was the first sound to warn Ned that he had almost reachedthe camp, but Phon and Steve were both far too absorbed in the problembefore them to notice his approach.

  "You sure you no savey tie 'um hitch?" asked the Chinaman, who wasstanding with his hand upon the pack-ropes, whilst Chance held thecayuse by the head.

  "No, Phon, I no savey. You savey all right, don't you?"

  "I savey one side," replied the Chinaman. "S'pose the ole man throw thelopes, I catch 'um and fix 'um, but I no savey throw 'um lopes."

  "What the devil are we to do then?" asked Chance, looking helplessly atthe pack and its mysterious arrangement of ropes. "If the old man doesnot overtake us to-night we can't start before he gets here to-morrowmorning. I wonder what the deuce is keeping him?"

  Phon gave a grunt of contempt at his white companion's want ofintelligence. He had a way of looking upon Steve as somewhat of anignoramus.

  "What keep the ole man? You halo comtax anything, Chance. Young womankeep him of course. Young woman always keep ole man long time, all sameChina. You bet I savey."

  "You bet you are a jolly saucy heathen, who wants kicking badly,"laughed Steve. "But say, if Corbett does not come along, what _are_ yougoing to do with the packs?"

  "I fix 'um, you see," replied Phon, suddenly brightening again andtaking the pony by the head.

  "Now then, you hold him there--hold him tight. He heap bad cayuse;" andPhon handed the lead-rope to Chance, whilst he himself swarmed nimbly upa bull-pine under which the pony now stood. A few feet from the ground(say seven or eight) a bare limb projected over the trail, from whichthe Chinaman could just manage to reach the top of the packs, so as totie them firmly to the bough upon which he stood.

  This done he descended again from his perch, hobbled the pack animal,and stood back to survey his work.

  He had tied up the pony's legs, and tied him up by his packs to abull-pine. Things looked fairly safe, but Phon was not content. "Youhold him tight!" he sung out; "s'pose he go now he smash everything." Aminute later Phon had undone the cinch and set the pack-saddle and itsload free from the pony's back, and then picking up a big stake he hitthe unfortunate cayuse a hearty good thump over the quarters, and badehim "Git, you siwash!"

  The result was funny. A general separation ensued, in which--thanks to apair of active heels--(horse's) a little blue bundle of Chinesemanufacture went in one direction, a hobbled cayuse went jumping awaylike a lame kangaroo in another, while the pack swung in all the mysteryof its diamond hitch intact upon the bough of the bull-pine.

  It was a quaint method of off-saddling a pack-pony, but as Phonexplained when he had picked himself up again, it saved the trouble offixing the packs next day.

  But such scenes as these are of more interest to those to whom packingis a part of their daily toils than to the average Englishman. Theordinary traveller puts his luggage in the van, or has it put in forhim, and glides over his journey at the rate of forty miles an hourwithout even seeing, very often, what kind of country he is passingthrough.

  It is quite impossible to travel quite as fast as this through Caribooeven on paper; but I will make the journey as short as I can, though forPhon and his friends it was weary work at first, with a pack-horse whichwould not be driven and could not be led. When the ordinary lead-ropehad been tried and found useless, Phon slipped a clove-hitch round thebrute's lower jaw, after which he and Corbett together led, throwing alltheir weight upon the rope and pulling for all they were worth. Itseemed as if this must move even a mule; but its principal effect uponthe "stud" was to make him sit down upon his quarters in regulartug-of-war fashion, rolling his eyes hideously, and squealing with rage.The application of motive power (by means of a thick stick) to his otherend only elicited a display of heels, which whizzed and shot aboutSteve's ears until he determined to "quit driving."

  After this the steed proceeded some distance of his own accord, andflattering terms were showered upon him.

  "After all he only wanted humouring," Ned said; "horses were just alikeall the world over. Kindness coupled with quiet resolution was all thatwas necessary for the management of the most obstinate brute on earth."

  So spoke Corbett, after the manner of Englishmen, and the "stud" pokedout his under lip and showed the whites of his eyes. He knew better thanthat, and for some time past had had his eye upon a gently sloping bankcovered with young pines and some dead-fall. As he reached this hetucked in his tail, bucked to see if he could get his pack off, andfailing in that let go with both heels at the man behind him, and thenrolled over and over down the bank until he stuck fast amongst thefallen timber, where he lay contentedly nibbling the weeds, whilst hisowners took off his packs and made other arrangements for his comfort,without which he pretended that it was absolutely impossible for him toget up again.

  This sort of thing soon becomes monotonous, and our amateur prospectorsfound that though they were doing a good deal of hard work they were notmaking two miles an hour. Luckily for all concerned the "stud" diedyoung, departing from this life on the third day out from Antler, avictim to the evil effects of about a truss of poison weed which he hadpicked up in his frequent intervals for rest by the roadside.

  It was with a sigh of sincere relief that Corbett and Steve and Phonportioned out the pack among them, and said adieu to their dead cayuse.Whilst he lived they felt that they could not leave behind them ananimal for which they had paid a hundred dollars, but now that he wasdead they were free from such scruples, and proceeded upon their journeyat a considerably increased rate of speed.

  Flower-time was past in Cariboo, and the whole forest was full of fruit.Upon every stony knoll, where the sun's rays were reflected from whiteboulders or charred black stumps, there grew innumerable dwarf raspberrycanes, bearing more fruit than leaves. By the side of the trail thebroad-leaved salmon-berry held up its fruit of crimson velvet, just highenough for a man to pluck it without stooping, and every bush whichSteve and Ned passed was loaded either with the purple of thehuckle-berry or the clear coral red of the bitter soap-berry. Best ofall berries to Ned's mind was that of a little creeper, the fruit ofwhich resembled a small huckle-berry, and reminded the thirsty palate ofthe combined flavours of a pine-apple and a Ribston pippin.

  Altogether, what with the fool-hens and the grouse (which were toocareful of their young to care properly for themselves) and the berries,it was evident to Ned that no man need starve in the forests of Caribooin early autumn; but there were broad tracks through the long grass andtraces amongst the ruined bushes of another danger to man's life everybit as real and as terrible as the danger of starvation. The fruitseason is also the bear season, and the long sharp claw-marks in frontof the track told Corbett that the bears were not all black which usedthe trail at night and rustled in the dense bush by day. Though theynever had the luck to meet one, Ned and Steve had their eyes skinned andtheir rifles loaded for grizzly every day until they issued from theforest on to the bare lands above the Frazer.

  As they could not get a canoe at Soda Creek they had to tramp downstream to Chimney Creek, where a few Chinamen were washing for gold.These men, in return for some trifling gift of stores, took the partyacross the river, and so worked upon the mind o
f their fellow-countrymanwith stories of the great "finds" up stream of which they had heard thathis eyes began to glisten with the same feverish light which had filledthem at Lillooet.

  The Frazer had a peculiar fascination for Phon, and no wonder, for thereis something about this river unlike all other rivers--something whichit owes neither to its size nor its beauty. The Frazer looks like ariver of hell, if hell has rivers. From where Ned Corbett stood, high upabove the right bank, he could get glimpses of the river's course forsome miles. Everywhere the scene was the same, a yellow turbid flood,surging savagely along through a deep gully between precipitous mudbluffs, whose sides stained here and there with metallic colours--vividcrimson and bright yellow, made them look as if they had been pouredhot and hissing from nature's cauldron, and that so recently that theyhad not yet lost the colours of their molten state. The rolling yearsare kind to most things, beautifying them with the soft tints of age orveiling them with gracious foliage, but the banks of the Frazer stilllook raw and crude; the gentler things of earth will have nothing to dowith the accursed river, in which millions of struggling salmon rot anddie, while beside its waters little will grow except the bitter sagebush and the prickly pear.

  When Corbett and Chance reached Chimney Creek the fall run of salmon wasat its height, and added, if possible, to the weird ugliness of theriver. From mid-stream to either bank every inch of its surface wasbroken by the dorsal fins or broad tails of the travelling fish, whilein the back waters, and under shelter of projecting rocks, they lay insuch thousands that you could see the black wriggling mass from a pointseveral hundred yards away. From the shingle down below you could if youchose kill salmon with stones, or catch them with your hands, but youcould not walk without stepping on their putrefying bodies, which whilethey still lived and swam took the vivid crimson or sickly yellow of theFrazer's banks. They looked (these lean leprous fish) as if they hadswallowed the yellow poison of the river, and it was burning theirbodies alive.

  And yet like the men their betters they still struggled up and up,reckless of all the dangers, though out of every hundred which went upthe Frazer not three would ever find their way back again to the strongwholesome silvery sea. The glutted eagles watched for them, the bearspreyed upon them, Indians speared them; they were too weak almost toswim; their bodies were rotting whilst they still lived, and yet theyswam on, though their strength was spent and they rolled feebly in aflood through which, only a few months earlier, they would have shotstraight and strong as arrows fresh loosed from the bow. Gold anddesolation and death, and a river that roared and rattled as if playingwith dead men's bones; a brittle land, where the banks fell in and theruined pines lay, still living, but with their heads down and theirroots turned up to the burning sky; a land without flowers, jaundicedwith gold and dry with desire for the fairer things of earth--this iswhat Corbett saw, and seeing, he turned away with a shudder.

  "My God!" he said, "gold should grow there; nothing else will; even thefish rot in that hell broth!"

  "You aren't polite to Father Frazer, Ned. So I will propitiate him;" andthe Yankee turned to the yellow river, and holding high a silver dollarhe cried, "See here, old river, Steve Chance of N'York is dead brokeexcept for this, and this he gives to you. Take his all as an offering.The future he trusts to you."

  And so saying Steve sent his last coin spinning out into the gully,where for a moment it glittered and then sunk and was lost, swallowed upin the waves of the great river, which holds in her bed more wealth thanhas ever been won from nature by the greed and energy of man.