For the Allinson Honor Part 31

"No," said Andrew firmly; "not while we have strength enough to haul the sled. There's no more to be said on that point. We're going on together to the gap in the long ridge."

"When do you mean to start?"

"Right now!" Carnally broke in. "Get the camp truck rolled up. We'll have mighty keen appet.i.tes before we make the cache."

In quarter of an hour they crossed the creek and toiled up a broken slope, and when they gained the top Andrew looked back at the island with a grim smile.

"Yesterday afternoon I came up that river at four miles an hour, looking forward to my supper like an epicure. Now I'm glad to see the last of the place."

"Quit talking!" said Carnally. "We can make a few minutes by a hustle down the pitch ahead."

They went down, stumbling and sliding, while Graham clung tightly to the lurching sled. Time was of vital importance to them now, for its flight could be measured by the exhaustion of their food supply. For the hour or two of daylight that remained Carnally drove his comrade hard, and it was with a strange savage hilarity that they rushed the sled down declivities and dragged it with many a crash and b.u.mp through thickets. Their course was roughly south and any deviation was intolerable. Night closed in, but it was far from dark and they held on until Andrew stumbled and fell. The sled struck him before he could get up, but a hard smile was on his lips when he rose shakily and looked about. There was an uncovered rock not far off with a few junipers growing beside it.

"This is far enough, Jake," he said. "You're bad to tire, but I don't suppose you feel equal to hauling another pa.s.senger."

They broke camp in the dark the next morning, and the forced marches they made during the next seven days wore the half-starved men terribly. Sometimes they had to contend with fresh snow, in which the sled runners sank; sometimes they plodded doggedly with lowered heads while a raging wind drove the stinging flakes into their pinched faces; and there were days of bitter frost when they could not keep warm. Still, they crept on across the rugged desolation, and one evening reached a belt of timber beneath a low range that stretched across their path. The ridge was broken by a gap a mile or two ahead, and it was there that Andrew had instructed Mappin to make the second cache. A crescent moon rose above the dark tree-tops as they lighted a fire. Andrew glanced at the hillside irresolutely.

"There's food up yonder, if we could get our hands on it, and I would enjoy a good supper, Heaven knows; but I don't feel equal to facing another disappointment," he said. "I'm afraid we'll have to wait until to-morrow."

"That's my feeling," Carnally agreed. "I've gone as far as I'm able, and that grub won't be found easily. You may as well gather some wood and fill the kettle."

When they had eaten the few morsels he allowed them they sat smoking beside the fire. The thin spruce boughs above them were laden with snow which now and then fell upon the brands; a malignant wind swept between the slender trunks and blew the smoke about the men. After a while the casual talk, which had cost them an effort to keep up, died away, and there was a long silence until Carnally spoke.

"I guess we're all thinking about those provisions. We'll look for them at sun-up. What I've been trying to do for several days is to put myself in Mappin's place."

"It must have been difficult," Andrew remarked. "If I thought you could do so, I'd disown you. But go on."

"Well," said Carnally, "we have agreed that he meant to make it hard for us to find the cache; but he'd try to fix things so the packers he sent up with the truck shouldn't guess his object. He wouldn't tell them to pick a place where n.o.body would think of looking."

"You're a.s.suming that he'd employ honest men," Graham objected.

"What's to prevent his hiring three or four toughs and bribing them to say nothing?"

"He's too smart," said Carnally promptly. "He'd know that if we got lost up here the fellows could keep striking him for money and he'd have to pay; while if we got through, there'd be a risk of our finding them and buying them over. Besides, men of the kind he'd want are scarce in the bush. If they're to be found, it's hanging round the saloons in the cities."

"Then we'll a.s.sume that the boys were square. That would make it harder for him and easier for us. What follows?"

Carnally drank some tea from a blackened can before he answered.

"This matter needs a lot of thinking out, and it looks as if our lives depended on our thinking right. Allinson's instructions to the hog seem to have been pretty clear, and he wouldn't plant the cache too far from the gap. Then he'd have to arrange things so the boys would think they'd dumped the truck in a handy place for a party coming down from the north."

"I believe he has never been up here," Andrew argued. "Are there any good maps? I couldn't get one."

"They're sketchy," Graham said. "My idea is that Mappin would get hold of a prospector who knows the country and have a good talk with him; but he wouldn't send him up with the other men."

"It's probable," agreed Carnally. "Well, in my opinion the provisions are lying south of the pa.s.s in one of the gulches leading down from the height of land, but not directly on our line of march. You can come up from Rain Bluff several ways, and the hog would mark a route for the boys which would bring them in, so far as he could figure, a bit outside the shortest track. We've got to find the gulch they'd pitch on. It's our brains against Mappin's."

"Your brains," Andrew corrected him.

Carnally knocked out his pipe.

"I allow I'll want a clear head to-morrow and I'm going to sleep."

He and Andrew left camp in the dark the next morning; but day had broken when they stood in the gap of the neck, looking down on the broken country beneath. For a short distance the descent from the pa.s.s was clearly defined, leading down a hollow among the rocks, but after that it opened out on to a scarp of hillside from which a number of ravines branched off and led to the banks of a frozen creek. They seemed to be filled with brush, and the spurs between them were rough.

It was a difficult country to traverse, and Andrew realized with concern that the search might last several days.

"Take that right hand gulch," Carnally directed. "Follow it right down to the creek and come back up the next farther on, while I prospect east. If we find nothing in the ravines, we'll try the spurs."

"The obvious place is the gap we're standing in," Andrew pointed out.

"How would Mappin get over that without making his packers suspicious?"

"I thought of it," said Carnally. "He'd contend that he was afraid the cache might get snowed up; and it would be a pretty good reason. The drifts pile up deep in a gap like this."

Andrew left him and spent a long while climbing down a rough ravine which led him to the river. It was noon when he came back up another and the exertion had told on him, but they had long ago dispensed with a midday meal and he held on at a dragging pace until a thrill ran through him at the sight of a tall pole among the rocks ahead. He made for it in haste, floundering over the snow-covered stones, and lost it once or twice at a bend in the gully. At last he stopped in the bottom of the hollow, looking up at a steep face of rock. It was ragged and broken, glazed with ice in some places, and he doubted whether he could get up; but a foot or two of the pole rose above the top.

Following up the gully, he looked for an easier ascent, but he could not find one. Fearing to lose the pole, he stopped and shouted on the chance that Carnally might be in the neighborhood. Presently a cry answered him, and when Carnally came scrambling down the hollow Andrew took him back and pointed out the pole.

"A dead fir!" cried Carnally. "Looks as if somebody had broken the branches off, and there are no other trees about! The trouble is, we can't get up from here."

"We will have to!" declared Andrew. "If you could give me a lift up over the worst bits, I'd help you when I had found a hold. Anyway, we must try!"

Carnally consented dubiously. The rock was about thirty feet in height and very steep, though there were several crevices and broken edges.

Andrew ascended one of the latter, gripping it with hands and knees.

Reaching a narrow ledge, he leaned down and gave his hand to Carnally, and when he had helped him up they stopped for a minute or two. They were weak and hungry, and there was an awkward bulge above.

"Steady me up," said Andrew. "If I can find a crack for my hand, I can get up there."

For a few moments he rested his foot on Carnally's back; then he pressed his toes against the stone and his comrade watched him disappear beyond the bulging rock with unpleasant sensations, knowing that he would have to follow. Presently, however, the bottom of Andrew's fur coat fell over the edge and Carnally, seizing it, scrambled up three or four feet, until the projecting stone forced him outward. Losing hold with his feet, he hung by his hands for a moment or two, in a state of horrible fear.

"Throw one arm over the projection!" Andrew shouted.

Carnally found a hold; Andrew seized his arm; and after an arduous struggle he stood, gasping, on a snowy k.n.o.b. The sharp edge of a big slab rose eight or nine feet above him.

"Take a rest," advised Andrew. "If you go slowly, you ought to get up this last bit."

"I'll have to try. It's a sure thing I can't get down. But how d'you come to be so smart at this work?"

"I used to do something like it in Switzerland."

"Well," said Carnally, "you're a curious kind of man: I guess you didn't have to climb. I'd find it a bit too exciting if I wasn't doing it for money."

"We're not climbing for money now," Andrew grimly reminded him.

"There's food ahead of us and we must get on!"

They made the ascent, though it tried their nerve severely. When they finally crawled up to the summit Andrew stopped, growing suddenly white in the face.

"Look!" he said hoa.r.s.ely.

Carnally sat down heavily in the snow.