CHAPTER XXI.
PETE'S CREEK.
For an hour Steve and Ned toiled steadily up the yellow banks, bluffrising above bluff and bench above bench, and all steep and allcrumbling to the tread. The banks of the Frazer may possess the charm ofpicturesqueness of a certain kind for the tourist to whom time is noobject, and for whom others work and carry the packs, but they werehateful as the treadmill and a very path of thorns to the men who toiledup them carrying a month's provisions on their backs, and wearingworn-out moccasins upon their swollen, bleeding feet. It was with a sighof heartfelt thankfulness that Corbett and Chance topped the last bench,and looked away to the west over the undulating forest plateau ofChilcotin. Men know Chilcotin now, or partly know it, as the finestranching country west of Calgary, but in the days of which I am writingit was very little known, and Steve and his friends looked upon the longreaches and prairies of yellow sun-dried grass, dotted here and therewith patches of pine forest, as sailors might look upon the coast ofsome untrodden island. To Steve and Phon this yellow table-land was theregion of fairy gold. It was somewhere here that the yellow stuff whichall men love lay waiting for man to find it. Surely it was somethingmore than the common everyday sun which made those Chilcotin uplands sowondrously golden! So thought Steve and Phon.
To Ned all was different. As far as the eye could see a thousand trailsled across the bluffs, gradually fading away in the distance. They werebut cattle trails--the trails of the wild cattle of thosehills--blacktail deer and bighorn sheep, but to Ned they were pathsalong which the feet of murder had gone, and his eye rested on the darkislands of pine, as if he suspected that the man he sought lurked intheir shadow.
"Well, Ned, which is the way? Let's look at the map," said Chance.
Ned produced the map, and together the two men bent over it.
"The trail should run south-west from the top of this ridge, until westrike what old Pete calls here a 'good-sized chunk of a crik.' That isour first landmark. 'Bear south-west from the big red bluff,' hesays--and there's the bluff," and Ned pointed to a big red buttress ofmud upon the further bank of the Frazer.
"That's so, Ned, but I can see another big red bluff, and there are anynumber of trails leading more or less south-west," replied Chance.
"Well, let's take the biggest," suggested Corbett, and no one having anybetter plan to propose, his advice was taken.
For some time all went well. The trail was plain enough for a blind manto follow, and the walking, after that which they had experienced in theforest and along the banks of the Frazer, was almost a pleasure to them.Unfortunately there were a few drawbacks to the pleasures of travel evenin Chilcotin. In Cariboo and up the Frazer the Indians had alreadylearnt that the white man's rifle could kill nearly as far as a mancould see, and they respected the white men, or feared them, which didas well. But in Chilcotin the red men were untamed (they are less tamedstill, probably, than any Indians on the Pacific coast), and it wasnecessary for Ned and his friends to take care lest they should blunderunasked into some hunter's camp.
This upon the evening of their first day upon these table-lands theyvery nearly did, but as luck would have it, they saw the thin column ofblue smoke winding up from a clump of pines just in time, and slunk awayinto the bed of Pete's "good-sized chunk of a crik," where they laywithout a fire until the dawn of the next day.
Luckily for them the nights were still fairly warm as high-land nightsgo, but after sundown the air is always fresh upon these hightablelands, and no one was sorry when the day broke. The expedition,Steve Chance opined, had ceased to be "a picnic." Food was becomingsomewhat scarce, and already Ned in his capacity of leader had put themupon rations of one tin cupful of flour per diem, two rashers of bacon,and a little tea. A cupful of flour means about four good-sized slicesof bread, and although a man can live very well upon two slices of breadfor breakfast and two at dinner, with a rasher of bacon and a littleweak tea at each meal, and nothing between meals except twelve hours'hard work in the open air, he ought not to be sneered at if he feels acraving for some little luxury in the way of sugar or butter, or evenanother slice of bread.
Every now and then, it is true, something fell to one of the rifles; butthey dared not shoot much for fear of attracting the attention ofwandering Indians, and besides it is astonishing how little game men seeupon the march. You can march or hunt, but it is difficult to bothmarch and hunt successfully at the same time. On the third day upon theChilcotin table-lands, the trail which the prospectors had beenfollowing "played out." For four or five miles it had grown fainter andfainter, and now the party stood out in the middle of a great sea ofsunburnt grass, with no road before them and no land-marks to guidethem.
"I'll tell you what it is, Steve, we have rather made a mess of thisjourney. It seems to me that unless there is something wrong with thesun we have been bearing too much to the west. It looks as if we weregoing a point to the north of west, instead of south-west, as weintended to do," said Ned after a careful survey of their position.
"Likely enough," assented his companion. "I don't see how a fellow is tokeep his course amongst all these ups and downs. Besides, we followedthe trail."
"Yes, and the trail has played out. I expect it was only a wateringtrail, though it is funny that it seems to start out of the middle ofnowhere. Let's steer by the sun and go nearly due south. We must hit offthe Chilcotin in that way."
"What, the Chilcotin river? Yes, that seems a good idea. Lead on,MacDuff!"
So it was that with his companion's assent Ned turned nearly south, andhour after hour strode on in silence over the yellow downs, until thesun had sank below the horizon.
"It's time to camp, Ned," cried Steve, who had fallen a good deal behindhis companions; "and that is rather a snug-looking hollow on our left.We should be sheltered from that beastly cold night-wind in there. Whatdo you say?"
"All right, if you must stop," replied Ned, looking forwardregretfully. "But ought we not to make another mile or two before wecamp?"
"You can do what you please, but I cain't crawl another yard, and don'tmean to try to. Bring yourself to an anchor, Ned, and let's have grub."
Of course Ned yielded. It was no good going on alone.
"Say, Ned," cried Steve a few minutes later, "we aren't the first tocamp here. Look at this."
"This" was the carcase of a mule-deer, which lay in the hollow in whichSteve wanted to camp.
"Well, old chap, that spoils your hollow, I'm afraid. It is too high tobe pleasant as a bed-fellow. By Jove, look here!" and stooping, Nedpicked up the empty shell of a Winchester cartridge.
"The fellow who killed that deer has camped right alongside his kill,"remarked Steve. "See here, he has cut off a joint to carry away withhim;" and Steve pointed to where a whole quarter had evidently beenneatly taken off with a knife. "It's some Indian, I reckon, outhunting."
"No, that is no Indian's work, Steve. An Indian would have cleaned hisbeast, and even if he did not mean to come back for the meat he wouldhave severed the joints and laid them neatly side by side. It is almosta part of his religion to treat what he kills with some show of respect.The man who slept here was a white man."
"Cruickshank?" suggested Steve.
"Yes, I think so," replied Ned quietly. "But he must have been here someweeks ago."
"Great Scott! then we'll get the brute yet."
"We may, but he has a long start of us, and the grub is getting verylight to carry;" and Ned lifted his little pack and weighed itthoughtfully. And Ned was right, the man had a long start of them.
From the evening upon which they found the ungralloched stag to the endof the month Corbett and his friends wandered about day after daylooking for Pete's Creek or Cruickshank, but found neither. They hadreached the Chilcotin of course, and on its banks had been lucky enoughto kill one of a band of sheep, upon which they lived for some days, butthey could find no traces of that stream which, according to the oldminer, flowed over a bed of gold into the river. They had washed pansfulof di
rt from a score of good-sized streams, and Phon had let no rillpass him without peering into it and examining a little of the gravelover which its waters ran, but so far the gold-seekers had not foundanything which seemed likely to pay even moderate daily wages.
Neither had they found anywhere traces of Cruickshank. Between the deadstag and the Chilcotin they had come across two or three camps, probablythe camps of the man who had killed that stag, but even Corbett began todoubt if the man could be a white man. Whoever he was he had wornmoccasins, had had but one pack animal with him, and there were noscraps of paper, or similar trifles, ever left about the camps to showthat he had carried with him any of the scanty luxuries which evenminers sometimes indulge in. It was odd that he left no Indian messagein his old camps--no wooden pegs driven in by the dead camp-fire, withtheir heads bent the way he was going.
But this proved nothing. He might be a white or he might be an Indian.In either case it looked as if, after hunting on the left bank of theChilcotin, he had crossed to the other bank as if making for EmpireValley, and, knowing as much as he knew about the position of Pete'sCreek, Cruickshank would hardly have been likely to leave the left bank.Ned began to fear that his quest was as hopeless as Steve's.
It was a chill, dark evening, with the first menace of winter in thesky, when Ned announced that the grub would not hold out more thananother week.
"We have made it go as far as possible, and of course if we killanything we can live on meat 'straight' again for a time, but I think,Steve, we have hunted this country pretty well for Pete's Creek, and wemay as well give it up," said Ned.
"And how about Cruickshank? Do you think he has cleared out, or do youthink he has never been here?"
"I don't know what to think, but I expect we shall come across oldRampike on the Frazer, and I shall stop and hunt with him."
That word "hunt" has an ugly sound when the thing to be hunted is a manlike yourself, and Steve looked curiously into Ned's face. Would henever get tired and give up the chase, this quiet man who looked as ifhe had no malice in his nature, and yet stuck to his prey with thepatience of a wolf?
"What do you propose, Ned? Fix things your own way. I am sick of drybread and sugarless tea, anyway."
Corbett laughed. He thought to himself that had he been as keen afterthe gold as Steve had been, he would hardly have remembered that the teahad no sugar in it. Phon, to his mind, was a much better stamp ofgold-seeker than his volatile Yankee friend.
"All right! If you leave it to me, I propose that we go down to theFrazer, following the Chilcotin to its mouth, and prospecting thesources of all these little streams as we go. You see, so far we haveonly been low down near the bed of the Chilcotin. What I propose to donow, is to keep along the divide where the streams rise. At any rate weshall see more game up there than down here."
"_Nawitka_ and _hyas sloosh_, as the siwashes say. Any blessed thing youplease, Ned, only let us get out of this before we starve. What do yousay, Phon?"
"Very good, not go yet," replied the Chinaman. "S'pose not find golddown low, find him high up."
"Phon sticks to his guns better than you do, Steve," remarked Corbett.
"I daresay. A herring-gutted Chinaman may be able to live on air. Icain't."
But the morrow brought Phon the reward of his faith, and twenty-fourhours from the time when Steve Chance had asked only to be allowed to"get out of the confounded country by the shortest road," he would nothave left it for ten thousand dollars.
This was how it happened.
About mid-day, the sun being unusually hot, a halt had been called tosmoke the mid-day pipe and rest legs wearied with the steep climb fromthe river bed to the crest of the divide.
"Don't you think, Ned, we might be allowed a square inch of damper forlunch to-day? We are going back now, and I am starving," said Steve.
"All right. Half a damper among the three if you like, but not amouthful more."
Even this was more than he had hoped for, so Steve chewed the heavy dampmorsel carefully; not that he distrusted the powers of his digestion,but because he was anxious to make the most of every crumb of hisscanty repast.
Just below where the three were sitting grew a patch of orange-colouredIndian pinks. "I guess there's water not far from those flowers,"remarked Steve, "and I want a drink badly before I light my pipe."
Dry bread is apt to stick in a man's gullet however hungry he may be, sothat the three went down together, and found that, as Steve suspected,the pinks were growing in a damp spot, from which oozed a tiny rill,which, as they followed it, grew and grew until the rapidity of itsgrowth roused their curiosity, and led them on long after they had foundthe drinking-place they sought.
All at once it seemed as if the stream had been augmented by water fromsome subterranean source, for its volume grew at a bound from that of arill to that of a good-sized mountain stream, which gurgled noisilythrough the mosses for a few hundred yards, and then plunged through acleft in the rocks to reappear, three or four hundred feet below, a darkrapid mountain-torrent, running between walls of wet black rock.
"It is a queer-looking place, isn't it, Steve? Any fellow might go allover this country and miss seeing that creek. I wonder if it is worthwhile climbing down that place to prospect it?"
But whilst the strongest stood doubting, the weakest of the party hadscrambled like a cat over the rocks, and could now be seen on his kneesby the brink of the dark waters, washing as he had never washed before.At last the little blue figure sprang to its feet, and waving its armswildly, yelled:
"_Chicamon! chicamon!_ Me find him. _Hyou Chicamon!_" (_anglice_ heapsof money).
Diphtheria, cholera, the black death itself, rapid though they are intheir spread, and appalling though they are in their strength, aresluggish and weak compared to the gold fever. In one moment, at that cryof "chicamon! chicamon!" (money! money!), Chance had recovered from hisfatigue, Corbett had awakened from his dreams of vengeance, and bothtogether were scrambling recklessly down the rocks to the pool, besidewhich Phon was again kneeling, washing the golden dirt.
In spite of his native phlegm and his professed disregard for gold, NedCorbett actually jostled his companions in his eagerness to get to thewater; and though his pet pipe dropped from his mouth and broke into ahundred pieces, he never seemed to know what had happened to him.
When Phon washed his first panful of dirt in Pete's Creek it was broadnoon; when Ned Corbett straightened his back with a sigh and came backfor a moment almost to his senses, it was too dark to see the glitteringspecks in their pans any longer.
From noon to dusk they had toiled like galley slaves, without a thoughtof time, or fatigue, or hunger, and yet two of these were weak, tiredmen, and the third, under ordinary circumstances, really had quite abeautiful contempt for the sordid dollar.
When Corbett looked at the gleaming yellow stuff, and realized whatpower it had suddenly exerted over him, he actually felt afraid of it.There was something uncanny about it. But there was no longer any doubtabout Pete's Creek. They had struck it this time, and no mistake; and ifthere was much "dirt" like that which they had been washing since noon,a few months of steady work would make all three rich men for life. Inmost places which they had seen, the gold had been found in dust: hereit was in flakes and scales, as big as the scales upon the back of achub. In most places a return of a few cents to the pan would have beenconsidered "good enough:" here the return was not in cents but indollars, and yet even now what was this which Phon the Chinaman wassaying, his features working as if he were going into an epileptic fit?
"This nothing, nothing at all! You wait till to-mollow. Then we seegold,--heap gold not all same this, but in _lumps_!"
And he got up and walked about, nodding his head and muttering: "You betyou sweet life! Heap gold! You bet you sweet life!" whilst the redfirelight flickered over his wizened features, and dwelt in the cornersof his small dark eyes, until he resembled one of those quaint Chinesedevils of whom he stood so much in awe.
As far as Ned and his companions could calculate, their first sevenhours' work had yielded them something like a thousand dollars-worth ofpure gold; and already Ned Corbett almost regretted the price he hadpaid for it, as he listened to the eager, crazy chatter of hiscompanions, and tried in vain to put together the good old pipe which hehad shattered in his rush for that yellow metal, which gleamed evilly,so Ned thought, from the tin pannikin upon Chance's knee.
There was another thing which Corbett could not forget. It was true thatthey had found Pete's Creek and the gold, but there was no trace ofCruickshank.