CHAPTER XXVII.
THE SEARCH FOR PHON.
For ten days or a fortnight after the conversation recorded in the lastchapter, Rampike and Ned Corbett wandered about the country trying to"locate" Pete's Creek.
They started, as they had arranged to, upon the very next morning,leaving Steve Chance with ample provisions, to sleep and eat and resthimself after the hard times which he had been through, or if he wanteda little exercise and amusement there was the bar down below the dug-outupon which he could earn very fair wages by using Rampike's rocker.
From the dug-out to the mouth of the Chilcotin was no great distance,and Ned felt certain that anyone who knew his way to it could reach thecamp in which he had left Phon in one day from the river's mouth.Unfortunately neither he nor Rampike knew their way to it, and stillmore unfortunately they went the wrong way to work to find it. At theend of a fortnight they both saw their mistakes, but it was too late toremedy them. Instead of taking up his own tracks at once and trying tofollow them back through the woods to the creek, Ned had taken Rampikeup the course of the Chilcotin, in the hope that he would be able toidentify Pete's Creek amongst the hundred and one creeks and streamswhich emptied themselves into the main river from its right bank.
In this he failed signally, and when the search was over it was somewhatlate to take up the back tracks, which were already faint and partlyobliterated. However, there was nothing else to be done, so Rampike andCorbett started again, following the tracks step by step until they cameat last to the Chilcotins' camp. Here they found dead fires and drybones, and piles upon piles of soft gray fur, and over all these signsof slaughter more than one track of the inquisitive deer whose kinsmenhad been so ruthlessly butchered all round. Where the principalcamp-fire had stood, was a message written to whomsoever it mightconcern, a message written with twelve unpeeled sticks, each about sixinches long, driven into the ground one behind the other, in Indianfile, their tops or heads all bent one way, towards the south.
There were two other sticks, but these were peeled and white, and theirheads bowed towards the Frazer.
Old Rampike touched the sticks with the toe of his moccasin.
"Pretty good writin', I call that," said he; "beats school-teachers'English to my mind. 'Twelve Injuns gone south, two whites gone down tothe Frazer,' that's what that fellow says, and the piles of fur willtell you why they were all here, and a squint at them bones will giveyou a pretty fair notion when they went away."
So far, no doubt, the records were plain enough. Unfortunately it hadnot occurred to the Indian historians to point out from which directionthose two whites had come to them, and a short distance outside thelimits of the Chilcotin camp all trace of them ceased, for winter hadcome upon the Chilcotin uplands. The higher Ned went the colder theweather grew, until at last he felt that he had fairly entered thedomain of the ice king. On the bald hills the yellow grass was hidden,and on the long pastures the little clumps of pines were powdered andplumed with snow.
All colour had gone from the landscape. There were no more red flushesof Indian pinks amongst the sun-dried grass, no more gleamings ofsunlight upon lakes of sapphire blue. All was white, white, dead white,or a still more lifeless gray where the wind had swept the lakelets andleft the rough ice bare.
In the glare of the winter sun, ice crystals floated instead of themites which used to dance in the summer sunshine, and on those grayblots, which had been lakes where ducks called and shook their drippingwings, stood now the mud-huts of the musk-rats, and beside them at theedge of the ice stood their owners, rigid, silent, and watchful, aseverything seemed to be in this silent winter-world. As far as the eyecould see, in heaven or on the earth, there was nothing which lived ormoved except those musk-rats, and you could not tell that they liveduntil the ice crunched under your feet. Then they vanished. There was nosound. You did not see them go, only when you looked again the littlerigid figures were there no longer. Even old Rampike almost shivered asthe biting wind caught him when he topped the ridge, and he drew hiscoat together and buttoned it as he turned to Ned.
"It's real winter up here, sonny, and I reckon it will be mightylonesome for that heathen of yours by the crik, unless he andCruickshank hev jined and gone into partnership. I'm beginning to thinkas he has got starved after all."
Ned made no reply. It _was_ horribly lonesome; but if Phon andCruickshank had met, Ned didn't think that the Chinaman would carewhether the sun warmed or the winter wind froze him, whether he layalone or in the midst of his fellow-men. Ned had a hideously vividrecollection of another snow scene, and of a certain little black bullethole in the nape of a man's neck.
Well, after all, he reflected, death by gunshot might be preferable to aslow death by starvation and cold, and day by day it became moreabundantly clear that neither Rampike nor Ned would find their way toPhon that winter.
The snow had changed the whole surface of the country so thoroughly thateven had Ned passed through every inch of it with his eyes open he wouldnever have recognized it again. There were hollows where before therehad been hills, hills where there had been hollows. The drifting snowhad made a false surface to the land and covered every landmark; and,moreover, the two searchers began to feel that it would not do to remainin the uplands any longer, unless they too would be cut off and buriedaway from their fellow-men by the tons upon tons of soft feathery stuffwhich the skies threatened to pour down upon them every day.
"It's no good talking, Ned, we're beat and we've got to give in. If yourheathen hasn't skipped out some other way he's a corpse, that's justwhat he is, and we've no call to risk our skins collecting corpses,"said Rampike as he sat in the dug-out, to which the two had returnedafter nearly three weeks' search for Phon. "The Almighty seems to have adown on you, my lad, someways, and if one may say so without harm, Heseems to be standin' in with Cruickshank, but you bet He'll straightenit out by and by. Up to now Cruickshank has won every trick, and you'rejest about broke; but no matter, we'll stay right with him all thewhile, and we'll get four kings or a straight flush and bust the beggarsky-high at the finish: see if we don't. What we've got to do now isjest to hole up like the bars. Winter's coming right away."
It was a long speech for Rampike, but the occasion was a serious one,and the old man felt that it would require all the influence which hecould bring to bear to make Ned Corbett accept his defeat, and take somethought for his own safety.
"What makes you think that winter is so close?" Ned asked.
"Wal, there's a many reasons. The weather has been hardenin' up slowlyall the while, and yesterday I saw the tracks of a little bunch of ewesalong the top of that bench above us. The big-horns are comin' down, andwhen they come down you may look out for real winter. You bet."
After this there was silence for a time. Steve and Ned were thinking ofthe long account unsettled between themselves and Cruickshank, and alittle too of the weary months during which they must lie dormant, asRampike said, "like bears in a hole."
At last there was a clatter on the floor. Jim's pipe had fallen from hismouth, and the old man was snoring peacefully in that beauty sleep withwhich he generally preluded his night's rest.
As he lay there with his coat under his head and his patched flannelshirt turned up to his elbows, showing a hard sinewy forearm, JimRampike was a type of that strong wild manhood which flooded the Westfrom '48 to '62, spending its force in a search for gold in spite ofnature and in the face of any odds, and yet utterly careless of the goldwhen won.
Let those who will preach upon the sordid motives which drew all thatmuscle and pluck to the West; others will remember how freely the minerssquandered that for which they risked so much.
There were no misers amongst the miners of the West; the fortunes theymade were mere counters in a game which they played, not for the stakesbut for the sake of the game itself--for its very dangers and hardships;and, thanks chiefly to one strong man, who still lives in the countrywhich owes him so much, their game was played in British Columbia withle
ss loss of life and less lawlessness than in any other mining centrein America.
To Jim mining or prospecting was what big game hunting is to richer men.He had prospected alone for months in the Rockies, he had won big stakesin California in the great "rushes," and he had starved and toiled,loafed and squandered in turn, until his hair was as gray as a badger'scoat and his lean frame strong and wiry as a wolf's. When he made a pilehe set himself diligently to "paint the nearest town red." Drinks forevery man and jewellery for every woman he met as long as the dustlasted was his motto; and if the dust which he had taken months togather would not melt quick enough by fairer means, he would smashcostly mirrors, fill champagne glasses only to sweep rows of them downwith his cane until the champagne or the dust was all gone, or else hewould put every cent upon the turn of a card in the hands of a man whomhe knew did not play fair.
In a month at most Jim's spree was over. For that month he had been themost noticeable fool in a town of noisy roisterers; at the end of it hewas "dead-broke" again and happy. Then without an idea of theeccentricity either of his own or the gambler's conduct, he wouldbetake himself to that worthy and borrow from him enough gold to beginlife again; and to the gambler's credit be it said, that he neverrefused to grant such a loan, never looked for interest upon it, nortroubled himself much about the return of the capital. Freely ifdishonestly he came by his gains, freely at any rate he gave; and many aman owes a good turn to the very men whose delicate sense of touch drewmore gold into their pockets than was ever won by any single miner'spick.
They are, after all, only symbols for which we all of us spend ourlives, and if the yellow dust led the old man to live the life he loved,and which suited him, what did it matter? As Ned watched the redfirelight flicker about the strong square jaw, and redden like blood onthe great forearm, he felt that there was at any rate one man in Caribooin whom he could unhesitatingly trust.
Before turning over to sleep Ned softly opened the door of the hut andlooked out. The night was clear and bright, so clear that the hillsopposite seemed to have come closer to the hut than they had been byday. Overhead stars and moon seemed to throb with a strange vitality,and burn with a cold fire all unlike the faint and far presentment ofstars in an English sky. Nor was the boom of the river, which was as theaccompaniment to every song of nature's changing moods, the only soundupon the night air. There was a voice somewhere amongst the stars--aloud clear "Honk, honk!" a cry of unseen armies passing overhead, andNed as he listened recognized in the cry of the geese another ofnature's prophecies of winter.
But the cry of the geese and the boom of the river only emphasized thesolitude which reigned around. Nature was alone on the Frazer thatnight, except for one great shadowy figure which Ned suddenly becameaware of, moving upon the sand-bar upon which he had first seen Rampike.For a while Corbett thought that the moon was playing strange freakswith him, and so thinking he covered his eyes and changed his position.But no, it was no fancy. From side to side with a slow swinging motionthe great dark bulk lurched silently along. If its tread had been asheavy as that of a battalion, Ned would not have heard it at thatdistance through the roar of the river, but that never occurred to him.The form gave him the idea of noiseless motion, and besides, at thesecond glimpse, he knew the beast that he was watching. The Lord of theFrazer walked in his own domain.
A moment before the mystery of the night had Ned Corbett in itsclutches, but the sight of the grizzly banished dreams at once, and themoon a minute later looked down upon another actor in the night's drama,one who hid his shining rifle barrels beneath his ragged coat, and triedhard but in vain to still the loud beatings of his heart; for the sightof so noble a foe stirred the blood of the Shropshireman as fiercely asthe sight of the gold had stirred Phon's sluggish blood. But the huntertoils in vain quite as often as his brother the gold-seeker, and whenNed Corbett reached the river bed the bear had gone--gone so silentlyand so speedily that but for those huge tracks in one of which bothNed's feet found room, Corbett would have vowed that what he had seenwas but another shadow of that haunted river bed.