North of Fifty-Three Part 21

EN ROUTE

Long since Hazel had become aware that whatsoever her husband set about doing he did swiftly and with inflexible purpose. There was no malingering or doubtful hesitation. Once his mind was made up, he acted, Thus, upon the third day from the land staking they bore away eastward from the clearing, across a trackless area, traveling by the sun and Bill's knowledge of the country.

"Some day there'll be trails blazed through here by a paternal government," he laughed over his shoulder, "for the benefit of the public. But _we_ don't need 'em, thank goodness."

The buckskin pony Hazel had bought for the trip in with Limping George ambled sedately under a pack containing bedding, clothes, and a light shelter tent. The black horse, n.i.g.g.e.r, he of the c.o.c.ked ear and the rolling eye, carried in a pair of kyaks six weeks' supply of food.

Bill led the way, seconded by Hazel on easy-gaited Silk. Behind her trailed the pack horses like dogs well broken to heel, patient under their heavy burdens. Off in the east the sun was barely clear of the towering Rockies, and the woods were still cool and shadowy, full of aromatic odors from plant and tree.

Hazel followed her man contentedly. They were together upon the big adventure, just as she had seen it set forth in books, and she found it good. For her there was no more diverging of trails, no more problems looming fearsomely at the journey's end. To jog easily through woods and over open meadows all day, and at night to lie with her head pillowed on Bill's arm, peering up through interlocked branches at a myriad of gleaming stars--that was sufficient to fill her days. To live and love and be loved, with all that had ever seemed hateful and sordid and mean thrust into a remote background. It was almost too good to be true, she told herself. Yet it was indubitably true. And she was grateful for the fact. Touches of the unavoidable bitterness of life had taught her the worth of days that could be treasured in the memory.

Occasionally she would visualize the cabin drowsing lifeless in its emerald setting, haunted by the rabbits that played timidly about in the twilight, or perhaps a wandering deer peering his wide-eyed curiosity from the timber's edge. The books and rugs and curtains were stowed in boxes and bundles and hung by wires to the ridge log to keep them from the busy bush-tailed rats. Everything was done up carefully and put away for safekeeping, as became a house that is to be long untenanted.

The mother instinct to keep a nest snug and cozy gave her a tiny pang over the abandoned home. The dust of many months would gather on the empty chairs and shelves. Still it was only a pa.s.sing absence. They would come back, with treasure wrested from the strong box of the wild.

Surely Fortune could not forbear smiling on a mate like hers?

There was no monotony in the pa.s.sing days. Rivers barred their way.

These they forded or swam, or ferried a makeshift raft of logs, as seemed most fit. Once their raft came to grief in the maw of a snarling current, and they laid up two days to dry their saturated belongings. Once their horses, impelled by some mysterious home yearning, hit the back trail in a black night of downpour, and they trudged half a day through wet gra.s.s and dripping scrub to overtake the truants. Thunderstorms drove up, shattering the hush of the land with ponderous detonations, a.s.saulting them with fierce bursts of rain.

Haps and mishaps alike they accepted with an equable spirit and the true philosophy of the trail--to take things as they come. When rain deluged them, there was always shelter to be found and fire to warm them. If the flies a.s.sailed too fiercely, a smudge brought eas.e.m.e.nt of that ill. And when the land lay smiling under a pleasant sun, they rode light-hearted and care-free, singing or in silent content, as the spirit moved. If they rode alone, they felt none of that loneliness which is so integral a part of the still, unpeopled places. Each day was something more than a mere toll of so many miles traversed. The unexpected, for which both were eager-eyed, lurked on the shoulder of each mountain, in the hollow of every cool canon, or met them boldly in the open, naked and unafraid.

Bearing up to where the Nachaco debouches from Fraser Lake, with a Hudson's Bay fur post and an Indian mission on its eastern fringe, they came upon a blazed line in the scrub timber. Roaring Bill pulled up, and squinted away down the narrow lane fresh with ax marks.

"Well," said he, "I wonder what's coming off now? That looks like a survey line of some sort. It isn't a trail--too wide. Let's follow it a while.

"I'll bet a nickel," he a.s.serted next, "that's a railroad survey."

They had traversed two miles more or less, and the fact was patent that the blazed line sought a fairly constant level across country. "A land survey runs all same lat.i.tude and longitude. Huh!"

Half an hour of easy jogging set the seal of truth on his a.s.sertion.

They came upon a man squinting through a bra.s.s instrument set on three legs, directing, with alternate wavings of his outspread hands, certain activities of other men ahead of him.

"Well, I'll be--" he bit off the sentence, and stared a moment in frank astonishment at Hazel. Then he took off his hat and bowed. "Good morning," he greeted politely.

"Sure," Bill grinned. "We have mornings like this around here all the time. What all are you fellows doing in the wilderness, anyway?

Railroad?"

"Cross-section work for the G. T. P.," the surveyor replied.

"Huh," Bill grunted. "Is it a dead cinch, or is it something that may possibly come to pa.s.s in the misty future?"

"As near a cinch as anything ever is," the surveyor answered.

"Construction has begun--at both ends. I thought the few white folks in this country kept tab on anything as important as a new railroad."

"We've heard a lot, but none of 'em has transpired yet; not in my time, anyway," Bill replied dryly. "However, the world keeps right on moving. I've heard more or less talk of this, but I didn't know it had got past the talking stage. What's their Pacific terminal?"

"Prince Rupert--new town on a peninsula north of the mouth of the Skeena," said the surveyor. "It's a rush job all the way through, I believe. Three years to spike up the last rail. And that's going some for a transcontinental road. Both the Dominion and B. C. governments have guaranteed the company's bonds away up into millions."

"Be a great thing for this country--say, where does it cross the Rockies?--what's the general route?" Bill asked abruptly.

"Goes over the range through Yellowhead Pa.s.s. From here it follows the Nachaco to Fort George, then up the Fraser by Tete Juan Cache, through the pa.s.s, then down the Athabasca till it switches over to strike Edmonton."

"Uh-huh," Bill nodded. "One of the modern labors of Hercules. Well, we've got to peg. So long."

"Our camp's about five miles ahead. Better stop in and noon," the surveyor invited, "if it's on your road."

"Thanks. Maybe we will," Bill returned.

The surveyor lifted his hat, with a swift glance of admiration at Hazel, and they pa.s.sed with a mutual "so long."

"What do you think of that, old girl?" Bill observed presently. "A real, honest-to-G.o.d railroad going by within a hundred miles of our shack. Three years. It'll be there before we know it. We'll have neighbors to burn."

"A hundred miles!" Hazel laughed. "Is that your idea of a neighborly distance?"

"What's a hundred miles?" he defended. "Two days' ride, that's all.

And the kind of people that come to settle in a country like this don't stick in sight of the cars. They're like me--need lots of elbow room.

There'll be hardy souls looking for a location up where we are before very long. You'll see."

They pa.s.sed other crews of men, surveyors with transits, chainmen, stake drivers, ax gangs widening the path through the timber. Most of them looked at Hazel in frank surprise, and stared long after she pa.s.sed by. And when an open bottom beside a noisy little creek showed the scattered tents of the survey camp, Hazel said:

"Let's not stop, Bill."

He looked back over his shoulder with a comprehending smile.

"Getting shy? Make you uncomfortable to have all these boys look at you, little person?" he bantered. "All right, we won't stop. But all these fellows probably haven't seen a white woman for months. You can't blame them for admiring. You do look good to other men besides me, you know."

So they rode through the camp with but a nod to the ap.r.o.ned cook, who thrust out his head, and a gray-haired man with gla.s.ses, who humped over a drafting board under an awning. Their noon fire they built at a spring five miles beyond.

Thereafter they skirted three lakes in succession, Fraser, Burns, and Decker, and climbed over a low divide to drop into the Bulkley Valley--a pleasant, rolling country, where the timber was interspersed with patches of open gra.s.sland and set with small lakes, wherein schools of big trout lived their finny lives unharried by anglers--save when some wandering Indian snared one with a primitive net.

Far down this valley they came upon the first sign of settlement.

Hardy souls, far in advance of the coming railroad, had built here and there a log cabin and were hard at it clearing and plowing and getting the land ready for crops. Four or five such lone ranches they pa.s.sed, tarrying overnight at one where they found a broad-bosomed woman with a brood of tow-headed children. Her husband was out after supplies--a week's journey. She kept Hazel from her bed till after midnight, talking. They had been there over winter, and Hazel Wagstaff was the first white woman she had bespoken in seven months. There were other women in the valley farther along; but fifty or sixty miles leaves scant opportunity for visiting when there is so much work to be done ere wild acres will feed hungry mouths.

At length they fared into Hazleton, which is the hub of a vast area over which men pursue gold and furs. Some hundred odd souls were gathered there, where the stern-wheel steamers that ply the turgid Skeena reach the head of navigation. A land-recording office and a mining recorder Hazleton boasted as proof of its civic importance. The mining recorder, who combined in himself many capacities besides his governmental function, undertook to put through Bill's land deal. He knew Bill Wagstaff.

"Wise man," he nodded, over the description. "If some more uh these boys that have blazed trails through this country would do the same thing, they'd be better off. A chunk of land anywhere in this country is a good bet now. We'll have rails here from the coast in a year.

Better freeze onto a couple uh lots here in Hazleton, while they're low. Be plumb to the skies in ten years. Natural place for a city, Bill. It's astonishin' how the settlers is comin'."

There was ocular evidence of this last, for they had followed in a road well rutted from loaded wagons. But Bill invested in no real estate, notwithstanding the positive a.s.surance that Hazleton was on the ragged edge of a boom.

"Maybe, maybe," he admitted. "But I've got other fish to fry. That one piece up by Pine River will do me for a while."

Here where folk talked only of gold and pelts and railroads and settlement and the coming boom that would make them all rich, Bill Wagstaff added two more ponies to his pack train. These he loaded down with food, staples only, flour, sugar, beans, salt, tea and coffee, and a sack of dried fruit. Also he bestowed upon n.i.g.g.e.r a further burden of six dozen steel traps. And in the cool of a midsummer morning, before Hazleton had rubbed the sleep out of its collective eyes and taken up the day's work of discussing its future greatness, Roaring Bill and his wife draped the mosquito nets over their heads and turned their faces north.

They bore out upon a wagon road. For a brief distance only did this endure, then dwindled to a path. A turn in this hid sight of the cl.u.s.tered log houses and tents, and the two steamers that lay up against the bank. The river itself was soon lost in the far stretches of forest. Once more they rode alone in the wilderness. For the first time Hazel felt a quick shrinking from the North, an awe of its huge, silent s.p.a.ces, which could so easily engulf thousands such as they and still remain a land untamed.

But this feeling pa.s.sed, and she came again under the spell of the trail, riding with eyes and ears alert, sitting at ease in the saddle, and taking each new crook in the way with quickened interest.