The Gold Trail Part 16

"Consider!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "I know. The first thing is to eat breakfast. Then we'll lie down again until it's time for supper."

They did as he suggested, for there was meat enough to last until they found the cache. This they managed to do two days later. Somewhat to Weston's astonishment they found, also, the horse still feeding on the strip of natural prairie; and, as the beast and the buried camp gear it could now carry back represented their whole worldly wealth, this was a source of gratification to both of them. The man without an occupation or a dollar in his pocket does not, as a rule, find life very easy.

They made the first settlement on the railroad safely; and Weston, hearing that a new sawmill had been started in a neighboring valley, set out the next morning in search of it, leaving Grenfell to dispose, of the camp gear and the horse. The manager of the sawmill was, however, marking trees in the bush, and, as Weston had to wait some time before he learned that no more hands were wanted, it was evening before he reached the little wooden hotel where he had left his comrade. It had a veranda in front of it, and he stopped when he reached the steps, for it was evident from the hoa.r.s.e clamor and bursts of laughter which came out of the open windows that something quite unusual was going on. Then a man came down the steps chuckling, and Weston, who stopped him, inquired the cause of the commotion.

"Two or three of the boys we have no great use for are going out to-night to the copper vein the Dryhurst people are opening up," said the stranger. "Your partner has been setting up the drinks for them."

Weston was not pleased at this, but the other piece of information the man gave him was interesting.

"Are they taking on men?" he asked.

"Anybody who can shovel. Sent down to Vancouver for men a day or two ago."

"Then," said Weston, "why didn't this hotel-keeper tell me, instead of sending me across to the sawmill?"

His informant laughed.

"Jake," he said, "is most too mean to live. He strikes you a dollar for your breakfast and another for supper, though anybody else would give you a square meal for a quarter. Guess that may have something to do with it."

Weston nodded.

"It's very probable," he said. "They're evidently getting angry about something inside there. What's the trouble?"

"Guess it's your partner," said the other man, with a grin. "It seems Jake bought a horse from him; but you'd better go in and see. I decided to pull out when one of them got an ax. Struck me it would be kind of safer in my shanty."

He went down the stairway; and as Weston went up a raucous voice reached him.

"The money!" it said. "The money or the horse! You hear me! Hand out the blame money!"

Weston pushed open the door and stopped just inside it. The room was big, and, as usual, crudely furnished, with uncovered walls and floor, and a stove in the midst of it. A bar ran along part of one side, and a man in a white shirt was just then engaged in hastily removing the bottles from it. Another man, in blue shirt and duck trousers, stood beside the stove, and he held a big ax which he swung suggestively. It was evident that several of the others were runaway sailormen, who have, since the days of Caribou, usually been found in the forefront when there were perilous wagon bridges or dizzy railroad trestles to be built in the Mountain Province. There was, however, nothing English in their appearance.

"He wants his horse! Oh, bring it out!" sang the man with the ax.

There was a howl of approval from the cl.u.s.ter of men who sat on a rough fir table; but the man behind the bar raised an expostulating hand.

"Boys," he said, "you have got to be reasonable. I bought that horse.

If the deadbeat who made the deal with me wants it back, all he has to do is to produce the money."

Then Grenfell, who leaned on the table, drew himself up, and made a gesture of protest. He was as ragged and unkempt as ever.

"I've been called a deadbeat, and I want it taken back," he said.

"It's slander. I'm a celebrated mineralogist and a.s.sayer. Tell you how the deep leads run; a.n.a.lyze you anything. For example, we'll proceed to put this hotel-keeper in the crucible, and see what we get. It's thirty parts hoggish self-sufficiency, and ten parts ignorance. Forty more rank dishonesty, and ten of insatiable avarice. Ten more of go-back-when-you-get-up-and-face-him. Can't even bluff a drunken man.

I've no use for him."

There was a burst of applause, but Weston fancied that the hotel-keeper's att.i.tude was comprehensible in view of the fact that the drunken man had a big ax in his hand. Crossing the room, he seized Grenfell's shoulder.

"Sit down," he said sternly. "Have you sold that man my horse?"

"He has, sure," said one of the others. "Set us up the drinks afterward. We like him. He's a white man."

"How much?" Weston asked.

"Twenty dollars."

Then the man with the ax, who appeared to feel that he was being left out of it, swung the heavy blade.

"We want our horse!" he said. "Trot the blame thing out!"

One of the others thereupon raised a raucous voice and commenced a ditty of the deep sea which was quite unquotable. Weston silenced him with some difficulty and turned to the rest.

"Boys," he said, "has the man yonder spent twenty dollars on drinks to-day?"

They were quite sure that he had not. He had, they admitted, set up a round or two, but they were not the boys to impose upon a stranger, and in proof of this several of them asked the hotel-keeper what he had received from them. Then Weston turned to the latter.

"Now," he said, "we'll try to straighten this thing out, but I've no intention of being victimized. It's quite clear that the boys don't seem in a humor to permit that either."

"You've got us solid," one of them a.s.sured him. "All you have to do is to sail right ahead. Burn up the blame hotel. Sling him out of the window. Anything you like."

"Well," said Weston, addressing the hotel-keeper, "while I don't know what your tariff is, it's quite evident to me, after what the others have said, that my partner couldn't very well have spent more than five or six dollars. We'll call it eight to make more certain, and I'll pacify him if you'll hand me twelve."

"Twelve dollars," sang the axman, "or the horse! Bring them out!"

"It's worse than holding up a train," complained the hotel-keeper.

"Still, I'll part with it for the pleasure of getting rid of you."

He did so; and when Weston, who pocketed the money, inquired when the next east-bound train left, one of the others recollected that it was in rather less than half an hour. Some of them got up with a little difficulty, and Grenfell looked at Weston deprecatingly.

"You mustn't hurry me," he observed, "my knees have given out again."

They set out in a body, two of them a.s.sisting Grenfell, who smiled at the men a.s.sembled in the unpaved street to witness their departure.

There were eight of them altogether, including the man who still carried the ax, which, it transpired later, belonged to the hotel-keeper. The soft darkness fell, and the white mists crawled up the hillside as, laughing harshly, they plodded through the little wooden town. They were wanderers and vagabonds, but they were also men who had faced the stinging frost on the ranges and the blinding snow.

They had held their lives lightly as they flung the tall wooden bridges over thundering canons, or hewed room for the steel track out of their black recesses with toil incredible. Flood and frost, falling trees, and giant-powder that exploded prematurely, had as yet failed to crush the life out of them, and, after all, it is, perhaps, men of their kind who have set the deepest mark upon the wilderness.

CHAPTER XI

IN THE MOONLIGHT

It was, as far as outward appearances went, a somewhat disreputable company that had a.s.sembled in the little station when the whistle of the Atlantic train came ringing up the track, and Weston would have been just as much pleased if the agent had provided a little less illumination. Several big lamps had just been lighted, though, there was a bright moon in the sky, and Grenfell, who was dressed for the most part in thorn-rent rags, sat on a pile of express freight amidst a cl.u.s.ter of his new comrades discoursing maudlin philosophy. The other man, who still clung to the hotel-keeper's ax, was recounting with dramatic force how he had once killed a panther on Vancouver Island with a similar weapon, and, when he swung the heavy blade round his head, there was a momentary scattering of the crowd of loungers, who had, as usual, gathered to see the train come in.

"Yes, sir, I split that beast right up first time," he said. "I'm a chopper. You'd have seen the pieces fly if I'd sailed into that hotel bar a little while ago."

Weston fancied that this was probable, for the man was dexterous, and there was applause when he set the bright blade whirling, and pa.s.sed the haft from hand to hand. Most of the loungers could do a good deal with the ax themselves, and the lean, muscular demonstrator made rather a striking figure as he stood poised in statuesque symmetry under the lamplight with the bright steel flashing about him.

In the meantime, Weston leaned on the pile of cases and packages somewhat moodily. After paying for his ticket and Grenfell's to the station nearest the copper-mine he had about four dollars in his pocket, and he did not know what he should do if no employment were offered him when he got there. He had no doubt that he could provide for himself somehow, but Grenfell was becoming a responsibility. He felt that he could not cast the man adrift, and it seemed scarcely likely that anybody would be anxious to hire him. Still, Grenfell was his comrade, and they had borne a good deal together during their journey in the wilderness. That counted for something. There was also another matter that somewhat troubled Weston. He was not unduly careful about his personal appearance, but he had once been accustomed to the smoother side of life in England, and his clothing was now almost dropping off him. The storekeeper, whom he had interviewed that morning, had resolutely declined to part with a single garment except for money down; and, after an attempt to make at least part of the damage good with needle and thread, Weston found the effort useless and abandoned it.