The Gold Trail Part 14

Grenfell shook his head.

"It could never lift me back to where I was," he said. "Could it give me the steady nerves and the brain I used to have? There was a time when scarcely a big mine was started in the west before they sent their specimens to me. What could success offer me now besides a few more years of indulgence and an opportunity for drinking myself into my grave in comfort and with comparative decency?"

Weston supposed that this was the effect of weariness; but his comrade straightened himself a little, and his uncertain gaze grew steadier.

"There's one thing it can do," he went on. "It can show those who remember him as he was that Grenfell the a.s.sayer and mineralogist can still look round a mineral basin and tell just where the gold should be."

Weston was no geologist, but he had seen enough of it to recognize that prospecting is an art. Men certainly strike a vein or alluvial placer by the merest chance now and then, but the trained man works from indication to indication until, though he is sometimes mistaken, he feels reasonably sure as to what waits to be uncovered by the blasting charge or shovel. Grenfell's previous account of the discovery had, however, not made quite plain the fact that he had adopted the latter course.

"You told me you found the quartz by accident when you went to drink at a creek," he said. "Any green hand might have done the same."

Grenfell laughed.

"The point is that I knew there was gold in the valley. I told you we stayed there until the provisions had almost run out. I wanted material proof--and I was satisfied when I found that little strip of outcrop."

"A little strip! You said the lead ran right back to the hill and one could follow it with an adit."

"It does, although I haven't seen it. The adit would dip a little. The thing's quite certain."

Weston once more became sensible of the misgivings that not infrequently had troubled him. His comrade, he believed, really had been a famous mineralogist, but now he was a frail and broken man with a half-muddled brain who could not be trusted to keep the fire going beneath the pots while he cooked a meal. He was also a prey to maudlin fancies, and it seemed quite possible that the mine was no more than a creation of his disordered imagination. There were only two things that partly warranted his belief in it-a fragment of quartz, and the presence of the dead man on the lonely range, though Weston admitted that there was a certain probability of Grenfell's having deluded Verneille too. He had, however, pledged himself to look for the lead, and that, at least, he meant to do. The search, in the meanwhile, was sufficient to occupy him, as he was one who escaped a good many troubles by confining his attention to the task in hand.

"Well," he said, dismissing the matter from his mind, "I'll turn out at sun-up, and when we've had breakfast we'll go on again."

He lay down near the snapping fire and, drawing up the blanket to keep the rain from his face, was sound asleep in a few minutes. Grenfell, however, sat awake for a long time, shivering in the whirling smoke, and now and then glancing curiously at his companion.

CHAPTER IX

A FRUITLESS SEARCH

They had wandered far through the ranges, and camped beside several lonely lakes, none of which, however, proved to be the one for which they were searching, when Weston rose one morning from his lair among the dewy fern. He did it reluctantly, for during the past week he had carried Grenfell's load as well as his own, and it would have pleased him to lie still a little longer. His shoulders were aching, and the constant pressure of the pack-straps had galled them cruelly; but in one respect it would not have troubled him if his burden had been heavier, for their provisions were running out rapidly. There was a river close by, but he no longer felt the least inclination for a morning swim, or, indeed, for any occupation that was not obviously necessary. He had lived very sparingly of late, and had contrived that Grenfell got rather more than his share of the cut-down rations. It was clear to him that the older man's strength was rapidly failing.

He kicked the embers of the fire together, and, after laying on a few resinous billets split the night before, placed an inch or two of pork in the frying-pan, and then carefully shook out a double handful of flour from the almost-empty bag. This he beat up with water and poured into the hot pan when the pork was done. He watched it until it hardened a little on one side, when he flung it up into the air and caught it in the pan again. There is an art in making palatable flapjacks out of nothing but flour and water. When the meager breakfast was ready, he awakened Grenfell, who sat up grumbling.

"It's time we made a start. This is our last day," said Weston.

Grenfell, who did not answer, made his toilet by b.u.t.toning his jacket and stretching himself, after which he blinked at his companion with watery eyes.

"There are no marble basins or delicately perfumed soaps in the bush,"

he said.

Weston laughed.

"I don't remember having seen them at the muskeg camp. In the meanwhile, breakfast's ready. I'm sorry there isn't a little more of it."

His companion glanced at the frying-pan.

"A sc.r.a.p of rancid pork, and a very small flapjack--burnt at that! To think that human intelligence and man's force of will should be powerless without a sufficiency of such pitiable things. It's humiliating."

Then, with a grimace of disgust, he stretched out his hand for the blackened pannikin.

"Green tea is a beverage that never appealed to me, and I feel abject this morning. Now, if I had a little Bourbon whisky I could laugh at despondency and weariness. That golden liquid releases the mind from the thraldom of the worn-out body."

"It depends on one's knees," said Weston, with a trace of dryness.

"Yours have a habit of giving out unexpectedly, and I shouldn't like to carry you up this valley. Anyway, breakfast's ready, and we have to find that lake to-day or give up the search."

They set about breakfast, and again it happened that Grenfell got rather more than his share. Then Weston, who carried also the heavy rifle, strapped the double burden on his shoulders, and they started on their march, walking wearily. The valley that they followed, like most of the others, was choked with heavy timber, and they pressed on slowly through the dim shadow of great balsams, hemlocks, and Douglas firs, among which there sprang up thickets of tall green fern that were just then dripping with the dew. The stiff fronds brushed the moisture through the rags they wore and wet them to the skin; but they were used to that. It was the fallen trees that troubled them most.

These lay in stupendous ruin, with their giant branches stretching far on either side, and, where tangled thickets rendered a detour inadmissible, it now and then cost them half an hour's labor with the ax to hew a pa.s.sage through. Then there were soft places choked with willows where little creeks wandered among the swamp-gra.s.s in which they sank to the knees; but they pushed on resolutely, with the perspiration dripping from them, until well on in the afternoon.

Once or twice Weston wondered why he had held on so long. It was some time since they had found Verneille lying high upon the desolate range, and this was still the only thing which seemed to bear out his comrade's story. The latter had only a few very hazy recollections to guide him, and during the last week he had not come upon anything in the shape, of a mountain spur or frothing creek that appeared to fit in with them. There was, however, a vein of tenacity in Weston, and he was quietly bent on going on to the end--that is, until there were no more provisions left than would carry them back to the cache, marching on considerably less than half rations.

They had made, perhaps, two leagues with infinite difficulty, when toward the middle of the afternoon they came upon a spur of the range that ran out into the valley. Weston decided that they could probably see some distance across the timber from the crest of it, so they climbed up painfully. They were gasping when they reached a ledge of rock a little below the summit, but that was not why they sat down.

Both shrank from the first momentous glimpse into the head of the valley, for if there were no lake there they had thrown away their toil and must drag themselves back to the settlements defeated and broken men. It is hard to face defeat when one is young, and, perhaps, harder still when one is old and has nothing to fall back on. Grenfell expressed part of his thoughts when he turned to his companion.

"We shall decide the thing in a few more minutes," he said. "I suppose we couldn't risk going on a little farther to-morrow?"

Weston shook his head resolutely, though he felt the same temptation.

It was in one sense curious that the older man should defer to him.

"No," said Weston, "we should have turned back several days ago. It will be a tough march to reach the cache now."

Grenfell made a little gesture.

"Well," he said, "we'll go up and see."

They went up, part of the way on their hands and knees, and then, though the slope was less steep, both of them hung back when they neared the crest of the divide. There was still a faint probability that their journey had not been futile, and they clung to it desperately. Grenfell went first, and, when he reached the crest, stood stone still with his back to Weston, who held his breath as he scrambled after him. Then Grenfell, turning a little toward him, suddenly flung out a pointing hand.

The head of the valley stretched away beneath them, but there was no gleam from a lonely lake in the midst of it. From hillside to hillside the close ranks of somber firs ran unbroken.

Weston's face grew hard and grim.

"That's the end," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "There is nothing for it but to take the back trail."

Then the strength seemed to melt out of Grenfell, and he sat down limply.

"It was the belief that I should find that lake some day that has kept me on my feet the last eight years," he said. "Except for that I should have gone under long ago. Now, it's hardly likely that I shall ever get back here again."

He turned and blinked at Weston with half-closed eyes.

"You can't understand. You have the world before you," he said.

Weston fancied that he could understand in part, at least. His comrade was an old and frail and friendless man for whom n.o.body in that country was, as they say there, likely to have any use, and the fact that he probably had himself to blame for it did not make things easier. Weston forgot that he also was a man without an occupation, and his face grew sympathetic; but in a few minutes Grenfell seemed to pull himself together.

"Well," he said, "we'll take the back trail."