The Long Portage Part 39

"We'll have to find a shelter for the tent by nightfall, or dig a snowpit where there's some wood," he declared. "I'll try to hold out."

They proceeded and the afternoon's march tried him severely. Aching all over, breathing hard when they stumbled among the stones to skirt some half-frozen rapid, he labored on, regretting the comforts he had abandoned in England and yet not wholly sorry that he had done so. His moral fiber was toughening, for after all his faults were largely the result of circ.u.mstances and environment. Of no great intelligence, and imperfectly taught, he had been neglected by his penurious father who had been engaged in building up his commercial prosperity; his mother had died when he was young.

One of his marked failings was an inability to estimate the true value of things. He possessed something of the spirit of adventure and a desire to escape from the drab monotony of his early life, but these found expression in betting on the exploits of others on the football field and the turf, a haunting of the music-halls, and the cultivation of acquaintances on the lowest rung of the dramatic profession. All this offered him some glimpses of what he did not then perceive was merely sham romance. Later when, on the death of his father, wealth had opened a wider field, deceived by surface appearances, he had made the same mistake, selecting wrong models and then chiefly copying their failings.

Even his rather generous enthusiasm for those whom he admired had led him farther into error.

Now, however, his eyes had been partly opened. Thrown among men who pretended nothing, in a land where pretense is generally useless, he was learning to depreciate much that he had admired. Called upon to make the true adventure he had blindly sought for, he found that little counted except the elemental qualities of courage and steadfastness. Dear life was the stake in this game, and the prizes were greater things than a repute for cheap gallantry, and pieces of money; they were the subjugation of rock and river, the conversion of the wilderness to the use of man. Crestwick was growing in the light he gained, and in proof of it he stumbled forward, scourged by driving snow, throughout the bitter afternoon, although before the end of it he could scarcely lift his weary feet.

It was getting dark, when they found a few cedars cl.u.s.tered in the shelter of a crag, and Lisle set to work hewing off the lower branches and cutting knots of the resinous wood. Crestwick could not rouse himself to a.s.sist, and when the fire was kindled he lay beside it, shivering miserably.

"There's the kettle to be filled," suggested Lisle. "You could break the ice where the stream's faster among those stones; we'd boil water quicker than we'd melt down snow."

Crestwick got up with an effort that cost him a good deal and stumbled away from the fire. Then a gust of wind met him, enveloping him in snow-dust and taking the power of motion momentarily away. He shook beneath his furs in the biting cold. Still, the river was near, and he moved on another few yards, when the kettle slipped from his stiffened hands and rolled down a steep slope. He stopped, wondering stupidly whether he could get down to recover it.

"Never mind; come back!" Lisle called to him. "I'll go for the thing."

The lad turned at the summons and sank down again beside the fire.

"I think I'm done," he said wearily. "I may feel a little more fit in the morning."

Lisle filled the kettle and prepared supper, and after eating voraciously, Crestwick lay down in the tent. It was in comparative shelter, but the frost grew more severe and the icy wind, eddying in behind the rock, threatened to overturn the frail structure every now and then. He tried to smoke, but found no comfort in it after he had with difficulty lighted his pipe; he did not feel inclined to talk, and it was a relief to him when Lisle sank into slumber.

Crestwick long remembered that night. His feet and hands tingled painfully with the cold, the branches he lay upon found out the sorest parts of his aching body, and he would have risen and walked up and down in the lee of the rock had he felt capable of the exertion, but he was doubtful whether he could even get upon his feet. At times thick smoke crept into the tent, and though it set him to coughing it was really a welcome change in his distressing sensations. He was utterly exhausted, but he shivered too much to sleep.

At last, a little while before daybreak, Lisle got up and strode away to the river after stirring the fire, and then, most cruel thing of all, the lad became sensible of a soothing drowsiness when it was too late for him to indulge in it. For a few moments he struggled hard, and then blissfully yielded. He was awakened by his companion, who was shaking him as he laid a plate and pannikin at his feet.

"We must be off in a few minutes," he announced.

Crestwick raised himself with one hand and blinked.

"I don't know whether I can manage it."

"Then," responded Lisle, hiding his compa.s.sion, "you'll have to decide which of two things you'll do--you can stay here until I come back, or you can take the trail with me. I must go on."

Crestwick shrank from the painful choice. He did not think that he could walk; but to prolong the experience of the previous night for another twenty-four hours or more seemed even worse. He ate his breakfast; and then with a tense effort he got upon his feet and slipped the straps of the pack over his shoulders. Moving unevenly, he set off, lest he should yield to his weariness and sink down again.

"Come on!" he called back to Lisle.

He sometimes wondered afterward how he endured throughout the day. He was half dazed; he blundered forward, numbed in body, with his mind too dulled to be conscious of more than a despairing dejection. As he scarcely expected to reach the post, it did not matter how soon he fell.

Yet, by instinctive effort stronger than conscious volition, the struggle for life continued; and Lisle's keen anxiety concerning him diminished as the hours went by. Every step brought them nearer warmth and shelter, and made it more possible that help could be obtained if the lad collapsed.

That was the only course that would be available because they were now crossing a lofty wind-swept elevation bare of timber.

It was afternoon when they entered a long valley, and Lisle, grasping Crestwick's arm, partly supported him as they stumbled down the steep descent. Stunted trees straggled up toward them as they pushed on down the hollow, and Lisle surmised that the journey was almost over. That was fortunate, for he had some trouble in keeping his companion upon his feet. At length a faint howl rose from ahead and Lisle stopped and listened intently. The sound was repeated more plainly, and was followed by a confused snarling, the clamor of quarreling dogs.

"Malamutes; the freighters can't have started yet with their sledges," he said to Crestwick, who was holding on to him. "I don't think they can be more than half a mile off."

"I'll manage that somehow," replied the lad.

They went on through thickening timber, until at last a log house came into sight. In front of it stood two sledges, and a pack of snapping, snarling dogs were scuffling in the snow. Lisle was devoutly thankful when he opened the door and helped the lad into a log-walled room where four men, two of whom wore furs, were talking. The air was dry and strongly heated, besides being heavy with tobacco smoke and Crestwick sank limply into a chair. Gasping hard, he leaned forward, as if unable to hold himself upright; but Lisle was not alarmed: he had suffered at times, when exhausted, from the reaction that follows the change from the bitter cold outside to the stuffiness of a stove-heated room.

"Played out; I'd some trouble to get him along," he explained to the men.

"We're going on to the claims at the gulch to-morrow." Then he addressed the two in furs: "I guess you'll take me out a letter?"

"Why, of course; but you'll have to hustle," said one of them, and Lisle turned to a man in a deerskin jacket whom he took for the agent.

"Can you give me some paper?"

"Sure! Sit down right here."

It was not easy to write with stiffened fingers or to collect his thoughts with his head swimming from the change of temperature, but he informed Nasmyth briefly of what he had heard and asked how much truth there was in it. He added that he would have started for England forthwith, only that he could not be sure that this was necessary, and to leave his work unfinished might jeopardize the interests of people who had staked a good deal of money on the success of his schemes.

Nevertheless he would come at once, if Nasmyth considered the match likely to be brought about and would cable him at Victoria, from whence a message would reach him. In the meanwhile, Nasmyth could make such use of their knowledge of Gladwyne's treachery as he thought judicious.

Shortly after he had written the letter the two men in furs set out, and when the sound of their departure had died away the agent addressed his guests.

"I'll fix you some supper; you look as if you needed it. Rustle round, Larry, and get the frying-pan on."

They ate an excellent meal and shortly afterward Crestwick crawled into a wooden bunk, where he reveled in the unusual warmth and the softness of a mattress filled with swamp-hay. He had never lain down to rest in England with the delicious sense of physical comfort that now crept over his worn-out body.

CHAPTER XXIV

MILLICENT SUMMONS HER GUIDE

Lisle was living luxuriously in Victoria when Nasmyth's answer reached him by mail. Though it was still winter among the ranges of the North, the seaboard city had been bathed in clear sunshine and swept by mild west winds during the past few days, and after the bitter frost and driving snow Lisle rejoiced in the genial warmth and brightness. There are few more finely situated cities than Victoria, with its views across the strait of the white heights of Mount Baker and the Olympians on the American sh.o.r.e, even in the Pacific Province where the environment of all is beautiful.

Lisle was sitting in the hotel lounge after dinner when three English letters were handed to him. The sight of them affected him curiously, and leaning back in his chair he glanced round the room. Like the rest of the great building in which he had his quarters, it was sumptuously furnished, but everything was aggressively new. There was, he felt, little that suggested fixity of tenure and continuity in the West; the times changed too rapidly, people came and went, alert, feverishly bustling, optimistic. In the old land, his friends among the favored few dwelt with marked English calm in homes that had apparently been built to stand forever. Yet he was Western, by deliberate choice as well as by birth; while there was much to be said for the other life which had its seductive charm, the strenuous, eager one that he led was better.

He opened the letters--one from Bella, announcing her engagement and inquiring about her brother; a second from Millicent, stating that it was decided that she would visit British Columbia in the early summer; and a third from Nasmyth, which, dreading its contents, he kept to the last.

He was, however, slightly rea.s.sured when he opened it. Nasmyth's remarks were brief but clear enough. There was no actual engagement between Millicent and Clarence, though Mrs. Gladwyne was doing her utmost to bring one about and Millicent saw the man frequently. In the meanwhile, he did not think there was anything to be done; Lisle could not conclusively prove his story, though he could make a disastrous sensation, which was to be avoided, and it would be wiser to defer the disclosure until the engagement should actually be announced. Millicent's attachment to Clarence was not likely to grow very much stronger in a month or two. In conclusion, he urged Lisle to wait.

On the whole, Lisle agreed with him. Somehow he felt that Millicent would never marry Gladwyne. Apart from his interference, he thought that her instincts would, even at the last moment, cause her to recoil from the match. Furthermore, turning to another aspect of the matter, he could not clear his dead comrade's memory by telling a tale that was founded merely on probabilities. There was nothing for it but to await events, though he was still determined to start for England the moment Nasmyth's letter made this seem advisable.

Shortly afterward, one of his business a.s.sociates came in: a young man with a breezy, restless manner who would not have been trusted in England with the responsibilities he most efficiently discharged. In the West, a staid and imposing air carries no great weight with it and eagerness and even rather unguided activity are seldom accounted drawbacks. There dulness is dreaded more than rashness.

"I've seen Walthew and Slyde," he announced. "It will be all right about the money; we'll put the hydraulic plant proposition through at the next Board meeting. You'll have to go back right away."

"I've only just come down; the frost's not out of me yet," Lisle grumbled. "Besides, you seem to be going ahead rather fast here in the city. Walthew's a little too much of a hustler; I'd rather he'd stop to think. You're almost as bad, Garnet."

The young man laughed.

"I guess you can't help it, it's the English streak in you; but in a way you're right. Fact is Walthew and I have hustled the rest of the crowd most off their feet, and we mean to keep them on the jump. Last meeting old Macalan's eyes were bulging with horror, he could hardly stammer out his indignation--said our extravagance was sinful. Anyway, you've got to go."

Lisle made an acquiescent grimace. His face was strongly darkened by exposure to the frost and the glare of the snow; his hands were scarred, with several ugly recently-healed wounds on them.

"Well," he complied with some reluctance, "if it's necessary."