CHAPTER II. A "GILT-EDGED" SPECULATION.
"Ned, were you drunk last night, or am I dreaming?" asked Chance next morning, as the two sat over their breakfast, while the canoes of the early Indian fishers stole out along the edges of the great kelp beds.
It was a lovely scene upon which Corbett's tent looked out, but Chance at the moment had no eyes for the blue water, or the glories of the snow range beyond, all he could think of was "three claims at two thousand dollars apiece."
"Neither, that I am aware of, Steve. You eat as if you had all your faculties about you, and I've no head ache."
"Then you did not buy three claims from Cruickshank at two thousand dollars apiece?"
"Yes, I did; and why not?"
"Where is the money to come from?"
"I'll see to that," replied Corbett. "I am quite aware that six thousand dollars is twelve hundred pounds; but if you don't want to take a share in my speculation, I propose to invest that much of my capital in the venture, and even if I lose it all I shall still have something left, besides my muscles, thank God. You two, Phon and yourself, can work for me on wages if you like, or we'll make some other arrangement to keep the party together."
For a minute or two Chance said nothing, and then he began laughing quietly to himself.
"Say, Ned, you took scarlatina pretty bad when you were a kiddy, didn't you?"
"I don't remember, old chap. Why do you ask?"
"And whooping-cough, and measles, and chicken-pox, and now its gold fever, and my stars isn't it a virulent attack?" and Chance broke out laughing afresh.
"I don't see," began Corbett, growing rather red in the face.
"Oh, no; you don't see what all this has to do with me," interrupted Chance, "and it's infernal impertinence on my part to criticise your actions, and if I wasn't so small you would very likely punch my head. I know all that. But, you see, we two are partners, and I am not going to dissolve partnership because I think you are taking bigger risks than you ought to. If you put up three thousand dollars I will put up as much, and part of it can come out of the money owing to the firm."
"But why do this if you think the risk too big?" asked Corbett.
"Why ask questions, Ned? I feel like taking the risk; I am a Yankee, and therefore a natural gambler. You of course are not, are you? And then it's spring-time, and from twenty-three to the other end of threescore years and ten is a long, long time; and even if we 'bust,' there'll be lots of time to build again. So we will go halves, the third claim to be held in Phon's name, and Phon to work on wages."
"Let us have old Phon in. Phon! Phon!" shouted Corbett.
The Chinaman, who was cleaning the tin plates by a creek hard by, came slowly towards them.
"Well, Phon, did you lose all your dollars last night?" asked his master.
"Me tell you debbil say me win—debbil know, you bet," replied Phon coolly.
"And did you win?"
"Me win a hundred dollars—look!" and the little man held out a roll of dirty notes, amounting to something more than the sum named.
"You were in luck, Phon. 'Spose I were you, I no go gamble any more," remarked Corbett, dropping into that pigeon English, which people seem to think best adapted to the comprehension of the Chinaman.
"Oh yes, you go gamble too. Debbils bodder me very bad last night. They say you go gamble, Chance he go gamble, Phon he go gamble too. All go gamble togedder. And then debbil he show me gold, gold,—so much gold me no able to carry it. Where you goin' now?"
"I guess your friends, the devils, might have told you that too," remarked Chance. "Don't you know?"
"No, me no savey. You tell me."
"Corbett and myself are going up to Cariboo mining, and if you like you can come as cook, or you can come and work on wages in our claims. How would you like that?"
"Me come, all-lite me come; only you give me one little share in the claims—you let me put in one hundred dollars I win last night."
"Better keep what you've got and not gamble any more," replied Corbett kindly.
"Halo! Halo keep him. 'Spose you not sell me share I go gamble again to-night."
"Better let him have his way, Ned. Let the whole crowd go in together, 'sink or swim.'"
"Very well, Phon, then you will come."
"You bet you, Misser Corbett. Who you 'spose cook for you 'spose I no come?" And having proposed this final conundrum, Phon retired again to his kitchen.
"Rum, the way in which he seemed to know all about our movements, Ned," remarked Chance, when the Chinaman had done.
"Oh, he overheard what we said last night, or at breakfast this morning," replied Corbett.
"He wasn't here last night, and he was down by the stream whilst we were at breakfast."
"All right, old man, perhaps his 'debbil' told him. It doesn't much matter anyway. Did you see this piece in the Colonist?"
"About us? No. Read it out."
"'We understand that Colonel Cruickshank, the Napoleon of Victorian finance, the mammoth hustler of the Pacific coast, has determined to conduct those gentlemen who have bought his bonded claims to the fortunes which await them. This additional proof of the colonel's belief in the property which he offers for sale should ensure a keen competition for the one claim still left upon his hands, which we understand will be raffled for this afternoon at 4 p.m. at Smith's saloon. Tickets, ten dollars each. We are informed that amongst the purchasers of claims in the Cruickshank reserve are an English gentleman largely interested in the lumber business, and an American artist rapidly rising into public notice.'"
"What cheer, my lumber king!" laughed Chance as Corbett laid down the paper. "These journalists are wonderful fellows, but I suspect most of that paragraph was inspired and paid for by the 'mammoth hustler.' By the way, if it is true that he means to personally conduct a party to Williams Creek, it does really look as if he had some belief in the claims."
"Yes, IF he means to; but I expect that is simply to draw people to his raffle this afternoon."
"Probably; but if he were to go up to Williams Creek we might as well go up with him. You see, he has travelled along the trail before."
"Well, I'll see about that, and make any arrangements I can for getting up to Cariboo, if you will try to get our accounts settled up, Steve. I'm no good at figures, as you know."
"That's what!" replied Chance laconically; and the two young men got upon their legs and prepared to start on their day's business.
It will be as well here to enter upon a short explanation of the law as it then stood in British Columbia with regard to the bonding of claims. Experience had shown that in the upper country, early winters and late springs, with their natural accompaniment of deep snows, made mining impossible for about half the year. In consequence of this a law had been passed enabling miners to "bond" claims taken up late in the fall until the next spring. Upon claims so bonded it was not necessary to do any work until the 1st of June of the ensuing year, so that from November to June the claims lay safe under the wing of the law; but should their owners neglect to put in an appearance or fail to commence work upon the 1st of June, they forfeited all right to the claims, which could then be "jumped" or seized upon by the first comer.
It was under this law that Corbett and Chance had bought, so that it was imperatively necessary that they should reach their claims by the 1st of June; and although there was still ample time in which to make the journey, there was no time to waste. The Cariboo migration had already begun, and every day saw fresh bands of hard-fists leave Victoria for the mines. Already the gamblers had gone, the whisky trains and other pack trains had started, and the drain upon the stock of full-grown manhood in Victoria was easily noticeable. It was no vain boast which the miners made that the men of Cariboo were the pick of the men of their day. Physically, at any rate, it would have been hard indeed to find a body of men tougher in fibre and more recklessly indifferent to hardships than the pioneers who pushed their way through the Frazer valley to the gold-fields beyond. In that crowd there was no room for the stripling or the old man. The race for gold upon the Frazer was one in which only strong men of full age could live even for the first lap.
And this was the crowd which Corbett and Chance sought to join. To some men the mere idea of a railway journey, entered upon without due consideration and ample forethought, is fraught with terrors. Luckily neither Corbett nor Chance were men of this sort. Chance was a Yankee to the tips of his fingers, and had therefore no idea of distance or fear of travel. The world was nearly big enough for him, and he cared just as little about "crossing the herring-pond" as he did about embarking on a ride in a 'bus. As for Corbett, nature had made him a nomad—one of those strangely restless beings, who, having a lovely home, and knowing it to be lovely, still long for constant change, and circle the world with tireless feet, only to bring home the report that "after all England is the only place fit for a fellow to live in." The odd part of it all is, that that being their conviction, most of these wanderers contrive to live out of England for three parts of their lives.
It was no wonder, then, that when Corbett and Chance met again at dusk everything had been, as Chance said, "fixed right away."
"It's a true bill about Cruickshank, old man," Corbett said. "And if you can get the bills paid and our kit packed he wants us to start with him on the Umatilla for Westminster the day after to-morrow."
"I don't know about getting the bills paid," replied Chance. "A good many fellows who owe us money appear to have gone before to Cariboo, but I reckon we must look upon that as the opening of an account to our credit in the new country."
"Not much of an account to draw upon; but I suppose it can't be helped. I believe, though, that to do the thing properly we ought both to get stone-broke before starting," remarked Corbett.
"That will come later. Hullo, Cruickshank! what is in the wind now?" cried Steve, turning to the new-comer.
"Gold, gold, nothing but gold, Chance. But I say, gentlemen, are those your packs?" asked the colonel, pointing to two small mountains of luggage which nearly filled the interior of the tent.
"Yes. That is Chance's pack, and this is mine. There will be a sort of joint-stock pack made up to-morrow of the kitchen stuff and the tent. And I think that will be all."
"And you think that will be all, Mr. Corbett?" repeated Cruickshank. "You are a strong man; can you lift that pack?" and he pointed to the biggest of the two.
"Oh yes, easily; carry it a mile if necessary," replied Corbett, swinging the great bundle up on to his shoulders.
"You are a stout fellow," admitted Cruickshank admiringly; "but hasn't it occurred to you that you may have to carry all you want for a good many miles? And even if you can do that, who is to carry the joint-stock pack? Not Phon, surely?"
"Well, but won't there be any pack ponies?" asked Corbett.
"For hire on the road, do you mean? Certainly not."
"All right, then," replied Corbett, after a minute or two spent in solemnly and somewhat sadly contemplating all the neatly-packed camp equipage. "I can do with two blankets and a tin pannikin if it comes to that. Can't you, Steve?"
"A tin pannikin and blanket goes," answered Chance. "To blazes with all English outfits anyway!"
"Well, I don't know about that," put in Cruickshank, who seemed hardly as well pleased at his comrade's readiness to forswear comfort as might have been expected. "I thought that you fellows might like to take a few comforts along with you, so I had mentally arranged a way in which we might combine pleasure with profit."
"Pleasure with profit by all means, my boy. Unfold your scheme, colonel; we are with you," cried Chance.
"Well, stores are terribly high up in Cariboo. Whisky is about the only thing these packers think of packing up to the mines, and if you fellows had the coin I could easily buy a little train of cayuses down at Westminster pretty cheap, and load them up with stuff which would pay you cent per cent, and between us the management of a little train like that would be a mere nothing."
"How about packing? You cain't throw a diamond hitch by instinct," remarked Chance, who knew a little from hearsay of the life of the road.
"Oh, I can throw the hitch, and so I guess can your heathen, and we'll deuced soon teach both of you to take the on-side if you are wanted to."
"How much would such a train cost?"
"The ponies ought not to cost more than fifty dollars apiece; as to the stores, of course it depends upon what you choose to take. The ponies will carry about two hundred pounds apiece, if they are good ones."
"What do you say to it, Steve?" asked Ned.
"Seems a good business," replied Chance, "and we may as well put our last dollars into a pack-train as leave them in the bank or chuck them into the Frazer. A pack-train goes."
And so it was settled that the two friends should invest the balance of their funds in a pack-train and stores for Cariboo. The venture looked a promising one, with no possibility of failure or loss, and even if things went wrong the boys would only be stone-broke; and who cares whether he is stone-broke or not at twenty-three, in a new country with no one dependent upon him?
It was only eighteen months before that Edward Corbett had left home, a home in which it was part of the duty of about five different human beings to see that Master Edward wanted for nothing. At about the same time one of the finest houses in New York would have been disturbed to its very foundations if it were suspected that Mr. Steve Chance wanted for any of the luxuries of the nineteenth century, and yet here were Steve Chance and Ned Corbett, their last dollar invested in a doubtful venture, their razors abandoned, their toilet necessaries reduced to one cake of soap and a towel between two (Cruickshank condemned the habit of washing altogether upon the road), and their whole stock of household goods reduced to two light packs, to be carried mile after mile upon their own strong shoulders. There was daily labour ahead of them such as a criminal would hardly have earned for punishment at home, there was a certainty before them of bad food, restless nights, thirst, hunger, and utter discomfort, and yet this life was of their own choosing, and a smile hovered round the lips of each of them as the pipes dropped out of their mouths and they turned over to sleep.
As for "gold," the prize which both of them appeared to be making all these sacrifices for, neither of the boys, oddly enough, had thought of it that night. With Phon it was different, but then he was a celestial. He played for the stakes. Both the whites played, though in different ways, for the fun of the game.