Vernon Lisle was fishing with a determination that did not spring altogether from love of the sport. The water of the British Columbian river in which he stood knee-deep was icy cold; his rubber boots were badly ripped and leaky, and he was wet with the drizzle that drove down the lonely valley. It was difficult to reach the slack behind a boulder some distance outshore, and the arm he strained at every cast ached from hours of assiduous labor; but there was another ache in his left side which was the result of insufficient food, and though the fish were shy he persevered.
A few hundred yards away the stream came roaring down a long declivity in a mad white rapid and then shot across the glassy green surface of the pool below in a raised-up wedge of foam. Wet boulders and outcropping fangs of rock hemmed in the water, and among them lay stranded logs and stream-packed masses of whitened branches. Farther back, ragged cypresses and cedars, half obscured by the drifting haze of spray, climbed the sides of the gorge, and beyond rose the dim, rounded summits of treeless hills. There were streaks of snow on some of them, for winter threatened to close in unusually early.
With a lowering sky overhead and the daylight beginning to fade, it was a desolate picture; one into which the lonely figure of the man in tattered deerskin jacket and shapeless hat somehow fitted. His attire matched the gray-white coloring of rock and boulder; his spare form and agile movements, together with the intentness of his bronzed face and the steadiness of his eyes, hinted at the quickness of observation, the stubborn endurance, and the tireless activity, by which alone life can be maintained in the savage North. He had the alertness of the wild creatures of the waste; and it was needed.
All round him stretched a forbidding wilderness, part of the great desolation which runs north from the warmer and more hospitable thick-forest belt of British Columbia. Indeed, this wilderness, broken by the more level spaces between the Rockies and Lake Winnipeg, runs right across Canada from Labrador to the Pacific on the northern edge of the heavy-timber line. It contains little human life—a few Hudson Bay fur-traders and the half-breed trappers who deal with them—and it is frozen for eight months in the year. There are only two practicable means of traversing it—with dog sledges on the snow, or by canoe on the lakes and rivers in the brief summer.
The water routes are difficult in British Columbia, but Lisle and his two companions had chosen to go by canoe, partly because the question of food is vitally important to men cut off from all source of supply except game, and even that is scarce in places. To transport upon one’s back any weight of provisions besides tents, blankets, and other necessaries, through a rugged country is an almost impossible task. The men, accordingly, after relaying part of their stores, had secured an Indian craft and had paddled and poled her laboriously across lakes and up rivers. Now when their provisions were running short, they were confronted with a difficult portage round a thundering rapid.
At length Lisle, securing another trout, waded ashore and glanced with a rueful smile at the dozen this one made. They scarcely averaged half a pound, and he had spent most of a day that could badly be spared in catching them. Plodding back along the shingle with his load, he reached a little level strip beneath a scarp of rock, where a fire blazed among the boulders. A tent stood beneath two or three small, wind-stunted spruces, and a ragged man in long river-boots lay resting on one elbow near the blaze, regardless of the drizzle. He was a few years over thirty, Lisle’s age, and he differed from Lisle in that something in his appearance suggested that he was not at home in the wilds. As a matter of fact, Nasmyth was an adventurous English sportsman—which describes him fairly in person and character.
“Not many,” he commented, glancing at the trout Lisle laid down. “They’ll hardly carry us over to-morrow, and I only got a couple from the canoe with the troll. We’ve gained nothing by stopping here, and time’s precious.”
“A sure thing,” Lisle agreed, beginning to clean the trout. “We’ll tackle the portage as soon as it’s light to-morrow. Where’s Jake?”
“Gone off to look for a deer,” was the answer. “Said he wouldn’t come back without one if he camped on the range all night.”
Lisle made no comment, but went on dexterously with his work, while Nasmyth watched him with half-amused admiration.
“You’re handy at that and at everything else you do,” Nasmyth remarked at length. “In fact, you easily beat Jake, though he’s a professional packer and, so to speak, to the manner born.”
“So am I,” said Lisle.
It was growing dark, but the coppery glow of the fire fell upon his face, emphasizing the strong coloring of his weather-darkened skin. On the whole, it was a prepossessing face, clearly cut—indeed, it was a trifle thin—with a hint of quiet determination in the clear gray eyes and firm mouth. He looked capable of resolute action and, when it was needed, of Spartan self-denial. There was no suggestion of anything sensual, or even of much regard for bodily comfort.
“If you don’t mind my being a little personal, I’d better own that I suspected the fact you mention, and it puzzled me,” Nasmyth replied. “You see, when I first met you at the Empress Hotel, in Victoria, you were dressed and talked like the usual prosperous business man. Trafford, who introduced us, said that you had a good deal of money in some of the Yukon mines.”
“Trafford was quite right. The point is that I took a part in locating two of the claims. Before that I followed a good many rough occupations, mostly in the bush. My prosperity’s recent.”
Nasmyth still looked curious, and Lisle smiled.
“I can guess your thoughts—I don’t speak altogether like a bushman? Well, my father was an Englishman, and my mother a lady of education from Montreal; that was why, at the cost of some self-denial on their part, I was sent East to school.”
It was an incomplete explanation. He had inherited the Englishman’s reticence, which forbade him to point out that his father sprang from an old family of standing and had, for some reason which his son had never learned, quarreled bitterly with his English relatives. Coming to Canada, he had married and taken up the bush life on a small and unremunerative ranch, where he had died and left his widow and his son badly provided for.
“Thank you,” responded Nasmyth; and Lisle supposed it was in recognition of the fact that he would hardly have furnished even those few particulars to one whom he regarded as a stranger. “To reciprocate, a few words will make clear all there is to know about me. English public school, Oxford afterward—didn’t take a degree. Spend most of my time in the country, though I make a few sporting trips abroad when I can afford it and have nothing better to do. That partly explains this journey. But I haven’t tried to force your confidence, nor offered you mine, altogether casually.”
“So I supposed,” returned Lisle. “It strikes me that since we got near the Gladwyne expedition’s line of march we have both felt that some explanation is needed. To go back a little, when I met you in Victoria and you offered to join me in the trip, I agreed partly because I wanted an intelligent companion, but I had another reason. At first I supposed you wished to go because a journey through a rough and little-known country seems to appeal to one kind of Englishman, but I changed my mind when you showed your anxiety to get upon the Gladwyne party’s trail.”
“You were right. I knew the Gladwynes in England; the one who died was an old and valued friend of mine. I could give you the history of their march, though I hardly think that’s needful. You seem remarkably well acquainted with it.”
Lisle’s face hardened. With the exception of one man, he knew more than anybody else about the fatal journey a party of four had made a year earlier through the region he and Nasmyth were approaching.
“I am,” he said. “There’s a cause for it; but I’ll ask you to tell me what you know.”
He threw more branches on the fire and a crackling blaze sprang aloft, forcing up the ragged spruce boughs out of the surrounding gloom.
“This is the survivor’s narrative. I heard it from his own lips more than once,” began Nasmyth. “I dare say most of it’s a kind of story that’s not unusual in the North.”
“It’s one that has been repeated with local variations over and over again. But go on.”
“There were two Gladwynes—cousins. George, the elder of the two, was a man of means and position; Clarence, the younger, had practically nothing—two or three hundred pounds a year. They were both sportsmen—George was a bit of a naturalist—and they made the expedition with the idea of studying the scarcer game. Well, their provisions were insufficient; an Indian packer deserted them; they were delayed here and there; and when they reached the river that we are making for they were badly worn out and winter was closing in. Knowing it was dangerous to go any farther, they started down-stream to strike their outgoing trail, but not long afterward they wrecked their canoe in a rapid and lost everything except a few pounds of provisions. To make things worse, George had fallen from a slippery rock at the last portage and badly hurt his leg. After making a few leagues with difficulty, he found he could go no farther, and they held a council. They were already suffering from want of food, but their guide estimated that by a forced march overland they might reach a place where some skin-hunters were supposed to be camped. There was a Hudson Bay post farther away. On coming up they had cached some provisions in two places on opposite sides of the river—they kept crossing to pole through the easiest slack. George accordingly insisted that the others go on; each was to follow a different bank and the first to find the provisions was to try to communicate with the other and hurry back with food. If they were unable to locate the caches they were to leave the river and push on in search of help. They agreed; but deep snow had fallen and Clarence Gladwyne failed to find the cache. He reached the hunters’ camp famishing, and they went back with him. He found his cousin dead.”
“And the guide?”
“It’s rather an ugly story. You must have heard it.”
“I haven’t heard the one Gladwyne told in England.”
“The guide reached the Hudson Bay post—a longer journey than the one Gladwyne made—in the last stage of exhaustion. He had taken very little food with him—Gladwyne knew exactly how much—and the Hudson Bay agent decided that it was impossible he could have covered the distance on the minute quantity. There was only one inference.”
“That he had found the cache?” Lisle’s face grew very stern.
Nasmyth nodded.
“In a way, there was some slight excuse for him. Think of it—a worn-out, famishing man, without blankets or means of making a fire, who had struggled over icy rocks and through leagues of snow, finding a few cans of provisions and a little moldy flour! Even when he had satisfied his hunger, he was, no doubt, unequal to making the return journey to rejoin a man who was probably already dead.”
“If that man had found a scrap of food, he would have tried!”
Lisle’s voice had a curious ring in it, and Nasmyth looked at him hard.
“You seem convinced.”
“I am; I knew him well.”
Nasmyth was startled and he showed it, but afterward he looked thoughtful.
“I believe I understand,” he said.
For a minute or two there was silence which was broken only by the snapping of the branches on the fire and the hollow roar of the rapid. The latter had a curious, irritating effect on Nasmyth, who hitherto had scarcely noticed the insistent pulsatory clamor. At length Lisle spoke again, laying a strong restraint upon himself.
“Our mutual friend called me Lisle at the Empress Hotel. I don’t think he mentioned my first name, Vernon; and as that was the name of Gladwyne’s guide I kept it in the background. I was anxious to take you with me; I wanted an Englishman of some standing in the old country whose word would be believed. What was more, I wanted an honest man who would form an unbiased opinion. I didn’t know then that you were a friend of Gladwyne’s.”
Nasmyth made a slight gesture which suggested the acknowledgment of a compliment.
“I’ll try to be just—it’s sometimes hard.” His voice had a throb of pain in it as he went on: “I was the friend of George Gladwyne—the one who perished. I had a strong regard for him.”
Something in his expression hinted that this regard had not been shared by the Gladwyne who survived.
“When my father first came out to British Columbia, new to the bush ways,” Lisle resumed, “a neighbor, Vernon, was of great help to him—lent him teams, taught him how to chop, and what cattle to raise. He died before my father, and I was named for him; but he left a son, older than I, who grew up like him—I believe he was the finest chopper and trailer I have ever come across. He died, as you have heard, from exposure and exhaustion, a few days after he reached the Hudson Bay post—before he could clear himself.”
Lisle broke off for a moment and seemed to have some difficulty in continuing.
“When my father died, Vernon took charge of the ranch, at my mother’s request—I was rather young and she meant to launch me in some profession. Vernon had no ambition—he loved the bush—and he tried to give me enough to finish my education while he ran both ranches with a hired man. I think my mother never suspected that he handed her over more than she was entitled to, but I found it out and I’ve been glad ever since that I firmly prevented his continuing the sacrifice. For all that, I owe him in many ways more than I could ever have repaid.” He clenched one hand tight as he concluded: “I can at least clear his memory.”
Nasmyth nodded in sympathy.
“You called me an honest man; you have my word—I’ll see the right done.”
Quietly as it was spoken, Lisle recognized that it was no light thing his companion promised him. In the Dominion, caste stands by caste, and Lisle, having seen and studied other Englishmen of his friend’s description, knew that the feeling was stronger in the older country. To expose a man of one’s own circle to the contempt and condemnation of outsiders is, in any walk of life, a strangely repugnant thing.
“Well,” he said, “to-morrow we’ll pull out and portage across the divide to strike the Gladwynes’ trail. And now I’ll fry the trout and we’ll have supper.”
They let the subject drop by tacit agreement during the meal, and soon after it was over a shout from the crest of the ridge above, followed by a smashing of underbrush, announced that their packer was making for the camp. Lisle answered, and a cry came down:
“Got a deer, and there are duck on the lake ahead! We’ll try for some as we go up!”
Nasmyth’s smile betokened deep satisfaction.
“That’s a weight off my mind,” he declared. “I’ll smoke one pipe, and then I think I’ll go to sleep. We’ll make a start with the first loads as soon as it’s light enough.”
Dawn was late the next morning; the light crept slowly through bitter rain, and when Lisle and his companions had breakfasted sumptuously for the first time during several days it was with reluctance that they broke camp. Indeed, Nasmyth would have suggested remaining under shelter only that he had come to accept Lisle’s decision as final and the latter was eager to push on. The blacktail deer would not last them long; the trout were getting shyer every day with the increasing cold; they were a long distance from the nearest settlement; while winter was rapidly coming on.
Nasmyth shouldered his load with the others, and they set out across a strip of gravel strewn with boulders. Here and there networks of stranded branches had to be floundered through, and the ragged ends rasped their dilapidated boots and bruised their legs. Then, where the bluff rose almost precipitously from the water, they crept along slippery ledges, or waded through the shallower pools, with the white rapid roaring down a few yards outshore of them. There were places where a slip would have meant destruction, but that was nothing unusual and time was too precious to spend in an attempt to climb the ridge which hemmed them in.
The pack-straps hurt Nasmyth’s shoulders—one of them had been rubbed raw by previous loads and it smarted painfully until he grew warm with exertion. He was soon wet through; in places the spray drove into his face so that he could hardly see; but he held on with dogged determination, trying to keep up with the others. With the exception of a few hunting trips, his life had been smooth, and now, dressed mostly in rags and aching in every limb, he smiled grimly as he remembered how he had hitherto taken his pleasure. When he had shot partridges, he had, as a rule, been driven to such stubble or turnip fields as lay at any distance from his residence, and he had usually been provided with a pony when he ascended the high moors in search of grouse. Money smoothed out many small difficulties in the older land, but it was powerless in the wilds of the new one, where one must depend on such things as native courage, brute strength, and the capacity for dogged endurance, which are common to all ranks of men. It was fortunate for Nasmyth that he possessed them, but that, as he was discovering, is not quite enough. They are great gifts in the raw, but, like most others, they need exercise and assiduous cultivation for their full development.
On reaching the head of the rapid, they went back for another load, and afterward Jake got into the canoe, while Lisle fixed the end of the tracking-line about his shoulders. Aided by the line, the packer swung the canoe across madly whirling eddies and in and out among foam-lapped rocks, and now and then drove her, half hidden by the leaping froth, up some tumultuous rush. At times Lisle, wading waist-deep and dragged almost off his feet, barely held her stationary—Nasmyth could see his chest heave and his face grow darkly flushed—but in another instant they were going on again. That a craft could be propelled up any part of the rapid would, Nasmyth thought, have appeared absolutely incredible to any one who had not seen it done.
At last, however, the task became too hard for them and after dragging her out they carried her, upside down, in turn. It was difficult for them to see where they were going, and the craft, made from a hollowed log, was by no means so well fitted for the work as the bark or canvas canoe of the more eastern wilds. She was comparatively heavy, and their heads and shoulders were inside of her. Once or twice the portager fell; and the fall is an awkward one, as it is impossible to break it with one’s hands, which are occupied in holding the canoe. Still, they made progress, and, launching again above the rapid, they reached a lake at noon, by hard paddling. Here they landed, and Nasmyth dropped down upon a boulder to look about him.
It was a cheerless prospect he saw through the haze of rain. Back into the distance ran a stretch of slate-gray water, flecked and seamed by the white tops of little splashing waves, for a nipping wind blew down the lake. On either side rose low hills, dotted here and there with somber and curiously rigid trees. They were not large, and though from a distance they looked much the same, Nasmyth recognized some as spruce and supposed the other ragged spires to be cedars. In one spot there were some that resembled English larch, and these were almost bare.
Then his companions began to discuss the best means of further progress. With a fresh breeze ahead, Jake advocated poling through the shallows near the beach; and Lisle, with a courtesy which Nasmyth had already noticed, turned toward him when he answered, as if his opinion might be valuable.
“The trouble is that the beach sweeps back off the straight. We’d drive her right up the middle to headwater with the paddle before we’d make two-thirds of the way poling alongshore.”
“It would be a good deal harder work, wouldn’t it?” Nasmyth ventured, and laughed when he saw Lisle’s faint amusement. “I suppose that doesn’t count. It’s not worth mentioning,” he added. “Since you’re anxious to get on, what’s the use of stopping for dinner? After the breakfast I had, I can hold out some time.”
“I want to get through as quickly as I can; that’s why I’m not going to rush you unless it’s necessary,” Lisle answered. “Try to get hold of the fact that a man needs food regularly to keep him in efficient going order.”
“Indisputable,” Nasmyth agreed. “But he can do without it and work for a while. We’ve proved it.”
“Not without paying,” Lisle pointed out. “You can draw upon your reserves, but it takes time and rest to make them good. We may need all ours badly before we’re through.”
There was a grim hint in his last words which Nasmyth found convincing, and when he had rested he helped to prepare the meal. It was a simple one—cold doughy cakes baked in a frying-pan, extraordinarily tough and stringy venison, with a pint-can each of strong green tea. Their sugar had long ago melted and the condensed milk was exhausted.
Afterward, they shoved the canoe out and paddled doggedly into the driving rain and the strong headwind. The spray from the splashing bows blew into their faces, and the broken water checked them badly. Nasmyth’s hands began to blister. To make it worse, there was a raw wound on one of them, the result of a similar day’s toil; and his knees chafed sore against the branches in the craft’s bottom. There was, however, no respite—the moment they slackened their exertions they would drift to lee—and he held on, keeping awkward stroke with Jake, while Lisle swung the balancing paddle astern.
They kept it up for several hours, and then, toward evening, the rain ceased and the clouds rolled aside. A wonderful yellow light shone behind the bordering hills, and the twisted, wind-battered cedars on their crests stood out against it in hard, fretted tracery. The wind dropped; the short, white waves smoothed down; the water, heaving gently, gleamed with a coppery glare, and the paddle blades seemed to splash up liquid fire. Then the shores closed in ahead, and, landing on a shingle beach, they made camp in the mouth of a gap among the hills. Supper was prepared and eaten, and afterward Jake took up his rifle.
“I saw some ducks in the next bay,” he explained.
He strolled out of camp, and Nasmyth smiled at Lisle.
“Except when he advised you to pole, that’s about all he has said to-day.”
This was correct. The packer was a taciturn inhabitant of the wilds who seldom indulged in an unnecessary remark. There was, however, no moroseness about him; the man was good-humored in his quiet way, and his usual ruminative calm was no deterrent from apparently tireless action. For the most part, he lived alone in the impressive stillness of the bush, where he had a few acres of partly cleared land which failed to provide him with a living. For that reason, he periodically left his tiny log house and packed for some survey expedition, or went down to work for a few months at a sawmill. Capable of most determined labor, wonderfully proficient with his hands, he asked no more from life than a little plain food and indifferent shelter. No luxury that civilization could offer would have tempted him to desert the wilds.
Lisle filled his pipe with leisurely content. He shared Jake’s love for the wilderness, and he found it strangely pleasant to rest in camp after a day’s persistent toil. Besides, he usually enjoyed his evening chat with Nasmyth, for, widely different as their training and mode of life had been, they had much in common. Then, too, there was something in the prospect spread out before them that impelled tranquillity. The clump of wet cedars among which they had camped distilled a clean, aromatic smell; and there was a freshness in the cool evening air that reinvigorated their tired bodies. Above the low hilltops the sky glimmered with saffron and transcendental green, and half the lake shone in ethereal splendor; the other half was dim and bordered with the sharply-cut shadows of the trees. Except for the lap of water upon the pebbles and the wild cry of a loon that rang like a peal of unearthly laughter out of a darkening bay, there was nothing to break the deep stillness of the waste.
Lisle pointed to the gap in the hills, which was filling with thin white mist.
“That’s the last big portage the Gladwynes made,” he remarked. “They came in by a creek to the west, and they were badly played out when they struck this divide; the struggle to get through broke them up.” He paused before he added: “What kind of men were they?”
“George wasn’t effusive; he was the kind of man you like better the longer you know him. If I were told that he ever did a mean thing, I wouldn’t believe it. His last action—sending the others on—was characteristic.”
“They didn’t want to go,” Lisle interposed quietly.
His companion nodded.
“I believe that’s true. I like to think so.”
There was something curious in his tone, which Lisle noticed.
“From the beginning,” Nasmyth went on, “George behaved very generously to Clarence.”
“It was Clarence that I meant to ask about more particularly.”
Nasmyth looked thoughtful, and when he answered, it struck Lisle that he was making an effort to give an unbiased opinion.
“Clarence,” he said, “is more likable when you first meet him than George used to be; a handsome man who knows how to say the right thing. Makes friends readily, but somehow he never keeps the best of them. He’s one of the people who seem able to get whatever they want without having to struggle for it and who rarely land in any difficulty.”
Again a grudging note became apparent, as though the speaker were trying to subdue faint suspicion or disapproval, and Lisle changed the subject.
“Had George Gladwyne any immediate relatives?”
“One sister, as like him as it’s possible for a woman to be. He wasn’t greatly given to society; I don’t think he’d ever have married. His death was a crushing blow to the girl—they were wonderfully attached to each other—but I’ve never seen a finer display of courage than hers when Clarence cabled the news.”
He broke off, as if he felt that he had been talking with too much freedom, and just then the report of a rifle came ringing across the water.
“That’s a duck’s head shot off. Jake doesn’t miss,” he said.
Lisle nodded. He could take a hint; and he had no doubt that Nasmyth was right regarding the shot, though it is not easy to decapitate a swimming duck with a rifle. He began to talk about the portage; and soon after Jake returned with a single duck they went to sleep.
It was clear and bright the next morning and they spent the day carrying their loads a few miles up the hollow which pierced the height of the divide. Part of it was a morass, fissured with little creeks running down from the hills whose tops rose at no great elevation above the opening. This was bad to traverse, but it was worse when they came to a muskeg where dwarf forest had once covered what was now a swamp. Most of the trees had fallen as the soil, from some change in the lake’s level, had grown too wet. They had partly rotted in the slough, and willows had afterward grown up among them.
Now and then the men laid down their loads and hewed a few of the still standing trunks, letting them fall to serve as rude bridges where the morass was almost impassable, but the real struggle began when they went back for the canoe. At first they managed to carry her on their shoulders, wading in the bog, but afterward she must be dragged through or over innumerable tangles of small fallen trunks and networks of rotten branches that had to be laboriously smashed. It was heroic labor—sometimes they spent an hour making sixty yards—and Lisle’s face grew anxious as well as determined. Game had been very scarce; the deer would not last them long; and disastrous results might follow a continuance of their present slow progress. When, utterly worn out, they made camp on slightly firmer ground toward four o’clock in the afternoon, Lisle strode off heavily toward the bordering hills, while Jake pushed on to prospect ahead. Nasmyth, who was quite unable to accompany either, prepared the supper and awaited their reports with some anxiety.
Lisle came back first and shook his head when Nasmyth asked if he had found a better route on higher ground.
“Not a slope we could haul along,” he reported. “That way’s impracticable.”
It was nearly dark when Jake came in.
“It’s not too bad ahead,” he informed them.
They were not greatly reassured, because Jake’s idea of what was really bad was alarming. Nasmyth glanced at his companion with a smile.
“Is it any better than this?” he asked.
“A little,” answered Jake. “An old trail runs in.”
“Gladwyne’s trail?” exclaimed Nasmyth. “The one we’re looking for?”
“Why, yes,” drawled Jake, as if it were scarcely worth mentioning. “I guess it is.”
Nasmyth turned to Lisle.
“I was lucky when I lighted on you as a companion for this trip. You have been right in your predictions all along, and now you’re only out in striking the trail a day before you expected.”
“I know the bush,” returned Lisle. “It’s been pretty easy so far—but, for several reasons, I wish the next week or two were over.”
Nasmyth looked troubled. One could have imagined that misgivings which did not concern his personal safety were creeping into his mind.
“So do I,” he confessed, and turning toward the fire he busied himself with Jake’s supper.
There was no change in the work the next morning, but in the afternoon it became evident that another party had made that portage ahead of them. The soil was a little drier and where the small trees grew more thickly they could see that a passage had been laboriously cleared. In the swampy hollows, which still occurred, trunks had here and there been flung into the ooze. This saved them some trouble and they made better progress, but both Lisle and Nasmyth became silent and grave as the signs of their predecessors’ march grew plainer. By nightfall they had reached the second camping-place, which told an eloquent story of struggle with fatigue and exhaustion. Lisle, stopping in the gathering dusk, glanced around the old camp site.
“A good place to pitch the tent, but I think I’d rather move on a little,” he said.
Nasmyth made a sign of comprehension.
“Yes,” he agreed. “I couldn’t sleep soundly here. Everything about us is too plain a reminder; I’ve no doubt you feel it as I do. A firm and trusted friend lay, famishing, beside that fire, in what extremity of weakness and suffering I dare not let myself think. It’s possible he cut those branches yonder.”
Lisle’s face expressed emotion sternly held in check.
“That was Vernon’s work—no Englishman new to the country could have slashed them off so cleanly. But look at this small spruce stump. He was the better chopper, but it’s significant that he used three or four strokes where I would have taken one.”
Even the laconic Jake appeared relieved when they forced their way a little farther through the tangled undergrowth, until finding a clear space they set up the tent.
They spent the greater part of a week on the portage, crossing here and there a little lake; and then came out one evening on a river that flowed, green and tranquil, beneath a ridge of hills. Here they camped; and on rising with a shiver in the raw and nipping dawn the next morning, Nasmyth found Lisle busy at the fire. Jake was cutting wood some distance off, for the thud of his ax rang sharply through the stillness.
“I was awake—thinking—a good deal last night; in fact, I’ve been restless ever since we struck the Gladwynes’ trail,” Nasmyth began. “Now, I understand that an uninterrupted journey of about sixteen days would take us well on our way toward civilization. You say you apprehend no difficulty after that?”
“No.” Lisle waited, watching his companion in an intent fashion.
Nasmyth hesitated.
“Then, considering everything, mightn’t it be better to waste no time, and push straight on?”
“And leave the work that brought me here—I believe that brought us both here—undone?”
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t express myself very fortunately. What I feel is this—Gladwyne’s story is a tragic one, but it’s twelve months old. In a way, it’s forgotten; the wounds it made have healed.”
“Is such a man as the one you have described forgotten in a year?” Lisle asked with a hardening expression.
Nasmyth, being a man of simple and, for the most part, wholesome ideas, was in a quandary. His feelings were generous, but he shrank from putting them into words. Moreover he was just and was not wholly convinced that the course he wished to recommend was right.
“Well,” he contended, “there are faithful hearts that never quite forget—with them the scar remains; but it’s fortunate that the first keen pain does not last. Is it decent—I almost think that’s the right word—to reopen the wound?”
He paused and spread out one hand as if in expostulation.
“Your late comrade has gone beyond your help; you told me he had left no relatives; and you have only yourself to consider. Can you do any good by bringing this sorrowful tale of disaster up again?”
“Are you pleading for your English friends, anxious to save them pain at my expense? Can’t you understand my longing to clear my dead partner’s name?”
A trace of color crept into Nasmyth’s face.
“I suppose I deserve that, though it wasn’t quite the only thing I meant. I’ve an idea that you are somehow going to lay up trouble for yourself by persevering in this search.”
“I don’t want to be offensive; but can’t you see that by urging me to let the thing drop you are casting grave doubts upon the honor of a man of your own caste and kind, one with whom you are closely acquainted? Are you afraid to investigate, to look for proofs of Clarence Gladwyne’s story?”
Nasmyth looked him steadily in the eyes.
“For the sake of one or two others, I think I am. Your belief in the guide, Vernon, has had its effect on me.”
“Then,” said Lisle, “I have no fear of putting my belief to the test; I came up here for that purpose, and I mean to call upon you as my witness. As you said of George Gladwyne, the man I owe so much to never did a shabby thing. That he should have deserted a starving comrade is clean impossible!”
“I suppose there’s no help for it,” responded Nasmyth, with a gesture of acquiescence. “We have said enough. Since you insist, I’ll stand by my promise.”
The thudding of the ax ceased, and they heard Jake returning with the wood. Lisle set out the simple breakfast, and when they had eaten they launched the canoe and floated swiftly down the smooth green river all that day. They had accomplished the worst half of the journey; henceforward their way lay down-stream, and with moderate good fortune they need have no apprehension about safely reaching the settlements, but they were both silent and ill at ease. Lisle was consumed with fierce impatience; and Nasmyth shrank from what might shortly be revealed to him. Scarcely a word was spoken when they lay in camp that night.
The next day they came to the head of a long and furiously-running rapid. Rocks encumbered its channel; the stream boiled fiercely over sunken ledges, dropping several feet here and there in angry falls; and in one place, where the banks narrowed in, a white stretch of foaming waves ran straight down the middle. Here they unloaded and spent the day laboriously relaying their stores and camp-gear over the boulders and ragged ledges between a wall of rock and the water. It was a remarkably difficult traverse. In places they had to hoist the leader up to some slippery shelf he could not reach unassisted and to which he dragged his companions up in turn; in others deep pools barred their way, and in skirting them they were forced to cling to any indifferent handhold on the rock’s fissured side. As they toiled on, badly hampered by their loads, the same thought was in the minds of two of the men—a wonder as to how Gladwyne’s exhausted party had crossed that portage, unless the water had been lower. It was not difficult to understand how the famishing leader had fallen and lamed himself.
When at last, toward the end of the afternoon, the stores had been deposited on the banks of the pool below, Lisle sat down and filled his pipe.
“It would take us most of two days to portage the canoe, and we might damage her badly in doing so,” he said. “The head of the rapid’s impossible, but with luck we might run her down the rest in about ten minutes. The thing seems worth trying, though I wouldn’t have risked it with the stores on board.”
“Suppose you swamped or upset her?” Nasmyth suggested.
“It’s less likely, since she’d go light, with only two of us paddling.”
Nasmyth considered. The sight of the rapid was not encouraging, but he shrank from the intense effort that would be needed to transport the craft by the way they had come. Eventually it was decided to leave Jake below, ready to swim out with the tracking-line and seize the canoe if any mishap befell, and Lisle and Nasmyth went back to the head of the rapid. They dragged the canoe round the worst rush with infinite difficulty; and then Nasmyth set his lips and braced himself for the mad descent when his companion thrust her off.
A few strokes of the paddle drove them out into the stream, and then their task consisted in holding her straight and swinging her clear of the rocks that showed up through the leaping foam, which was difficult enough. Seen from the water, the prospect was almost appalling, though it was blurred and momentarily changing. Nasmyth’s eyes could hardly grasp salient details—he had only a confused impression of flying spray, rushing green water that piled itself here and there in frothy ridges, flitting rocks, and trees that came furiously speeding up toward him. He had an idea that Lisle once or twice shouted sharp instructions and that he clumsily obeyed, but he could not have told exactly what he did. He only knew that now and then he paddled desperately, but more often he knelt still, gazing fascinated at the mad turmoil in front of him.
At last there was an urgent cry from Lisle and he backed his paddle. The canoe swerved, a foaming wave broke into her, and in another moment Nasmyth was in the water. He was dragged down by the swirling stream, and when he rose he dimly saw the canoe a few yards in front of him. He failed to reach her—she was traveling faster than he was—and, though he could swim well, he grew horribly afraid. It struck him that there was a strong probability of his being driven against a boulder with force enough to break his bones or of being drawn down and battered against the stony bottom. Still, he struck out for a line of leaping froth between him and the bank and was nearing it when Lisle grasped his shoulder and thrust him straight down-stream. Scarcely able to see amid the turmoil, confused and bewildered, he nevertheless realized that it was not desirable to attempt a landing where he had intended. Yielding to the guiding impulse, he floundered down-stream, until Lisle again seized him and drove him shoreward, and a few moments later he stood up, breathless, in a few feet of slacker water. He waded to the bank, and then turned to Lisle, who was close behind.
“Thanks,” he gasped. “I owe you something for that.”
“Pshaw!” disclaimed the other. “I only pulled you back. You’d have got badly hammered if you’d tried to cross that ledge. I’d noticed the inshore swirl close below it when we were packing along the bank, and remembered that we could land in it.”
“But you had hold of the canoe. I saw you close beside her.”
“I only wanted her to take me past the ledge,” Lisle explained. “I’d no notion of going right through with her. Now we’ll make for camp.”
On arriving there as darkness closed down, they found that Jake had recovered the craft. The paddles had gone, but he could make another pair in an hour or two. They had a few dry things to put on, and as they lay beside the fire after supper they were sensible that the slight constraint both had felt for the last two days had vanished. Neither would have alluded to the feeling which had replaced it, nor, indeed, could have clearly expressed his thoughts, but mutual liking, respect and confidence had suddenly changed to something stronger. During the few minutes they spent in the water a bond, indefinite, indescribable, but not to be broken, had been forged between the two.
The next morning it was clear and cold, and they made good progress until they landed late in the afternoon. Then, after scrambling some distance over loose gravel, Lisle and Nasmyth stopped beside a slight hollow in a wall of rock. A few large stones had been rudely placed on one another to form a shelter; there were still some small spruce branches, which had evidently been used for a roof, scattered about; and the remains of a torn and moldering blanket lay near by. In another place was a holed frying-pan and a battered kettle.
Nasmyth gravely took off his shapeless hat, and stood glancing about him with a fixed expression.
“This,” he said quietly, “is where my friend died—as you have heard, they afterward took his body out. There are few men who could compare with that one; I can’t forget him.”
There was nothing to be done, and little that could be said; and they turned away from the scene of the tragedy, where a man, who to the last had thought first of his companions, had met his lonely end. Launching the canoe, they sped on down-river, making a few easier portages, and four days later they landed on the bank of a turbulent reach shut in by steep, stony slopes. There was a little brushwood here and there, but not a tree of any kind.
“It was on this beach that Gladwyne made one cache,” said Lisle. “If there had been a cypress or a cedar near, he’d have blazed a mark on it. As it is, we’d better look for a heap of stones.”
They searched for some time without finding anything, for straight beach and straight river presented no prominent feature which any one making a cache would fix upon as guide. Lisle directed Nasmyth’s attention to this.
“There was deep snow when Vernon came down the gorge, on this side,” he pointed out. “It doesn’t follow that he was with the others when they buried the stores—he might have been carrying up a load—and it’s possible they couldn’t give him a very exact description. If I’m right in this, he’d have a long stretch of beach to search, and a man’s senses aren’t as keen as usual when he’s badly played out.”
Nasmyth made no comment, but his expression suggested that he would not be disappointed if they failed to strike the cache. Shortly afterward, however, Jake called out, and on joining him they saw a cross scratched on a slab of slightly projecting rock. Even with that to guide them, it was some time before they came upon a few stones roughly piled together and almost hidden in a bank of shingle.
“First of all, I want you to notice that this gravel has slipped down from the bluff after the cache was made,” Lisle said to Nasmyth. “With snow on the ground and the slab yonder covered, it would be almost impossible to locate it.” He turned to Jake. “How long would you say it was since the rain or frost brought that small stuff down?”
Jake glanced at the young brushwood growing higher up the slope. It was shorter than that surrounding it, and evidently covered the spot which the mass of débris had laid bare in its descent.
“Part of one summer and all the next,” he answered decidedly.
“Tell us how you figured it out.”
Jake climbed the bank and returned with two or three young branches which he handed to Lisle.
“The thing’s plain enough to you.” He turned toward Nasmyth. “No growth except in the summer—they’d had a few warm months to start them, but they don’t fork until the second year. See these shoots?”
“As winter was beginning when the Gladwyne party came down, that small landslide must have taken place some time before then,” declared Lisle.
They set to work and carefully moved aside the stones. First they uncovered three cans of preserved meat, and then a small flour bag which had rotted and now disclosed a hard and moldy mass inside. There was also another bag which had evidently contained sugar; and a few other things. All examined them in silence, and then sat down grave in face.
“It’s unfortunate that nobody could positively state whether this cache has been opened or not since it was made, but there are a few points to guide us,” said Lisle. “Do you know what kind of food civilized men who’ve been compelled to work to exhaustion on insufficient rations, helped out by a little fish or game, generally long for most?”
“No,” answered Nasmyth, with a feeble attempt at levity. “I’ve now and then remembered with regret the kind of dinner I used to get in England.”
“You have scarcely felt the pinch,” Lisle informed him. “The two things are farinaceous stuff and sugar. No doubt, it will occur to you that Vernon might have taken a can or two of meat; but that’s not likely.”
“If you’re right about the longing for flour and sweet-stuff, it’s a strong point,” Nasmyth declared. “Where did you learn the fact?”
Lisle looked at Jake, and the packer smiled in a significant manner.
“He’s right,” he vouched. “We know.”
“Then,” continued Lisle, indicating the sugar bag, which had been wrapped in a waterproof sheet, “can you imagine a starving man, in desperate haste, making up this package as it was when we found it?”
“No,” admitted Nasmyth; “it’s most improbable.”
Somewhat to his astonishment, the usually taciturn Jake broke in.
“You’re wasting time! Vernon never struck this cache—he told the folks at the post so. Worked with him once trail-cutting—what that man said goes!”
“You never told me you knew Vernon!” exclaimed Lisle.
“Quite likely,” Jake drawled. “It didn’t seem any use till now.”
For the first time since they landed, Nasmyth laughed—he felt that something was needed to relieve the tension.
“If people never talked unless they had something useful to say, there would be a marvelous change,” he declared.
Lisle disregarded this, but he was a little less grave when he resumed:
“There’s another point to bear in mind. Two of Gladwyne’s party left him; and of those two which would be the more likely to succumb to extreme exertion, exposure, and insufficient food?”
“Against the answer you expect, there’s the fact that Vernon made the longer journey,” Nasmyth objected.
“It doesn’t count for much. Was Clarence Gladwyne accustomed to roughing it and going without his dinner? Would you expect him to survive where you would perish, even if you had a little more to bear?”
“No,” confessed Nasmyth; “he’s rather a self-indulgent person.”
“Then, for example, could you march through a rough, snow-covered country on as little food as I could?”