CHAPTER VII. FACING DEATH ON THE STONE-SLIDE.
It was the last day of Corbett's journey between the Harrison and the Frazer, and a boiling hot day at that. With the exception of Corbett himself, and perhaps Cruickshank, whose back alone was visible as he led the train, the whole outfit had relapsed into that dull mechanical gait peculiar to packers and pack animals. To Chance it seemed that he was in a dream—a dream in which he went incessantly up and up or down, down day after day without pause or change. To him it seemed that there was always the same gray stone-slide under foot, the same hot sun overheard, and the same gleaming blue lake far below; like the pack animals, he was content to plod along hour after hour, seeing nothing, thinking of nothing, unless it was of that blessed hour when the camp would be pitched and the tea made, and the soothing pipe be lighted.
But though Chance had no eyes for it, the end of this first part of his journey was near at hand. Fourteen miles away the great grisly mountains came together and threw a shadow upon Seton Lake, building a wall and setting a barrier over or through which there seemed no possible way of escape. As Corbett looked at it, he could see the trees quite plainly on the narrow rim of grass between that mountain wall and the lake, and though he could not see that too, he knew that through them ran a trail which led to Lillooet on the Frazer. Even Ned longed to reach that trail and catch a glimpse of the little town, in which he and his weary beasts might take at least one day's rest and refreshment.
Since leaving Douglas, Cruickshank and Corbett had been upon the best of terms. Cruickshank knew how everything ought to be done, and Corbett was quick and tireless to do it, so that between them these two did most of the work of the camp; and though Ned noticed that his guide was not as anxious to get to Lillooet as he had been to get away from Douglas, he made allowances for him. Cruickshank was hardly a young man, and no doubt his strength was not equal to his will.
As to the straying of the horses at the second camp, there could be but one opinion. It was a bad mistake to leave them unhobbled; but after all everyone made mistakes sometimes, and though that mistake had involved the loss of a great deal of time, it was the only one which could be laid to Cruickshank's account. So far not one single thing, however unimportant, had been left behind in camp or lost upon the trail; there had been no accidents, no lost packs, nor any sign of sore backs. Day after day Cruickshank himself had led the train, choosing the best going for his ponies, and seeing them safely past every projecting rock and over every mauvais pas.
On this day for the first time Cruickshank proposed to give up his position in front of the train to Ned. Stopping at a place where there was room to shunt the rear of his column to the front, the colonel hailed Ned, and suggested that they should change places.
"Come on and set us a quick step, Corbett. Even if you do overtire the ponies a bit, it doesn't matter now that we are so near Lillooet. They can rest there as much as they like."
"Very well. I expect you must want a change, and I'll bet old Steve does. Why, you have hardly had anyone to speak to for a week," replied Corbett good-naturedly.
"That's so, but I must save my breath a little longer still. If Roberts will go behind with Phon and Chance, I'll keep the first detachment as close to your heels as I can; and, by the way, we had better make a change with the horses whilst we are about it."
"Why?" asked Ned. "What is the matter with them?"
"Not much, but if we are to have any more swimming across places where the bridging is broken down, we may as well have the horses that take kindly to water in front, and send that mean old beast to the rear;" and the colonel pointed to Job, which with its head on one side and an unearthly glare in its blue eye, appeared to be listening to what was being said.
"All right, we can do that here if you will lend a hand. Which shall we put the bell on?" and Ned took the bell off Job, and turned that veteran over to the second half of the train.
"Put it on this fellow; he takes to the water like an otter, and he will make a good leader. Wherever his packs can go, any of the others can follow;" and Cruickshank pointed to the great bulging bales upon the back of the buckskin.
"I expect Steve and Roberts packed him, didn't they?" Cruickshank added. "Well, they aren't pretty to look at, but I guess they'll stick;" and so saying, he gave the buckskin a smack on his quarters which sent that big star-gazing brute trotting to the front, where Ned invested him with the order of the bell.
"Is it all right now, Cruickshank?" asked Corbett.
"All right."
"Forrard away then!" cried Ned, and turning he strode merrily along a narrow trail, which wound up and up across such sheer precipitous side hills as would make some men dizzy to look at. A slip in some places would have meant death to those who slipped, long before their bruised bodies could reach the edge of the lake glittering far below; but neither men in moccasins nor mountain ponies are given to slipping.
After the rain had come the sunshine and the genial warmth of spring, under the influence of which every hill was musical with new-born rivulets, and every level place brilliant with young grass. The very stone-slides blossomed in great clumps of purple gentian, and over even the stoniest places crept the tendrils of the Oregon vine, with its thorny shining leaves and flower-clusters of pale gold.
Now and again the trail rose or fell so much that it seemed to Ned as if he had passed from one season of flowers to another. Down by the lake, where the pack animals splashed along the bed of a little mountain stream, the first wild rose was opening, a mere speck of pink in the cool darkness made by the overhanging bushes. Here by the lake side, too, were numerous butterflies—great yellow and black "swallow tails," hovering in small clouds over the damp stones, or Camberwell beauties in royal purple, floating through sun and shadow on wings as graceful in flight as they were rich in colour. Higher up, where the sun had heated the stone-slides to a white heat, were more butterflies (fritillaries and commas and tortoise-shells), while now and again a flash of orange and a shrill little screech told Ned that a humming-bird went by.
In the highest places of all, where the snow still lingered in tiny patches, the red-eyed spruce-cocks hooted from the pines, the ruffed grouse strutted and boomed in the thickets, and the yellow flowers of lilies gave promise of many a meal for old Ephraim, when their sweet bulbs should be a few weeks older.
To Ned, merely to swing along day after day in the sunshine and note these things, was gladness enough, and it was little notice he took of heat, or thirst, or weariness. Unfortunately he became too absorbed, and as often happens with men unused to leading out, forgot his train and walked right away from his ponies.
When this fact dawned upon him it was nearly mid-day, and he found himself at the highest point which the path had yet reached, from which, looking back, he could see the train crawling wearily after him. He could see, too, that Cruickshank was signalling him to stop, so nothing loth Ned sat down and waited. The path where he sat came out to a sharp promontory, and turning round this it began to pass over the worst stone-slide Ned had yet seen. Most of those he had hitherto encountered had been mere narrow strips of bad going from fifty to a hundred yards across, but this was nearly five hundred yards from side to side, and except where the trail ran, there was not foothold upon it for a fly. Properly speaking it was not, as the natives called it, a stone-slide at all, but rather the bed or shoot, by which, century after century, some hundreds of stone-slides had gone crashing down into the lake below.
As soon as Ned had assured himself that the train was once more as near to him as it ought to be, he knocked off as much of the projecting corner as he could, and passed round it on to the slide.
Looking up from the narrow trail, the young Englishman could see the great rocks which hung out from the cliffs above; rocks whose fellows had been the makers of this slide, letting go their hold up above as the snows melted and the rains sapped their foundations, and then thundering down to the lake with such an army of small stones and debris that it seemed as if the whole mountain-side was moving. When this stone-avalanche crashed into the water a wave rolled out upon the lake big as an ocean swell from shore to shore.
Looking down, a smooth shoot sloped at an angle from him to the blue water.
"Well, that is pretty sheer," muttered Ned, craning his neck to look down to where the lake glistened a thousand feet below, "and if one of our ponies gets his feet off this trail, there won't be anything of him left unbroken except his shoes;" and so saying, he turned to see how the leader would turn the awkward corner which led on to this via diabolica.
As he did so the report of a pistol rang out sharp and clear, followed by a rush and the clatter of falling stones, and the next moment Ned saw the leading pony dash round the overhanging rocks, its ropes all loose, its packs swinging almost under its belly, its bell ringing as if it were possessed, and its eyes starting from its head in the insanity of terror.
At every stride it was touch-and-go whether the brute would keep its legs or not. Each slip and each recovery at that flying pace was in itself a miracle, and Ned hardly hoped that he could stop the maddened beast before it and the packs went crashing down to the lake.
Stop the pony! He might as well have tried to stop a stone-slide. And as he realized this, the danger of his own position flashed across him for the first time.
Coming towards him, now not fifty yards away, was the maddened horse, which probably could not have stopped if it wanted to in that distance, and on such a course. Behind Ned was four hundred yards of such a trail as he hardly dared to run over to escape death, and even if he had dared, what chance in the race would he have had against the horse? Above him there was nothing to which even his strong fingers could cling, and below the trail—well, he had already calculated on the chances of any living thing finding foothold below the trail. Instinctively Ned shouted and threw up his hands. He might as well have tried to blow the horse back with his breath. In another ten seconds the brute would be upon him; in other words, in another ten seconds horse and packs and Ned Corbett would be the centre of a little dust-storm bounding frantically down that steep path to death!
In such a crisis as this men think fast, or lose their wits altogether. Some, perhaps, rather than face the horror of their position shut their eyes, mental and physical, and are glad to die and get it over. Ned was of the other kind: the kind that will face anything with their eyes open, and fight their last round with death with eyes that will only close when the life is out of them.
There was just one chance for life, and having his eyes open, Ned saw it and took it.
Twenty yards from him now was that hideous maddened brute, with its ears laid back, its teeth showing, the foam flying from its jaws, and its great blood-shot eyes almost starting from their sockets. Twenty yards, and the pace the brute was coming at was the pace of a locomotive!
And yet, though Corbett's face was gray as a March morning, and his square jaws set like a steel trap, there was no blinking in his eyes. He saw the blow coming, and quick as light he countered. Never on parade in the old school corps did his rifle come to his shoulder more steadily than it came now; not a nerve throbbed as he pressed (not pulled) the trigger, nor was it until he stood alone upon that narrow path that his knees began to rock beneath him, while the cold perspiration poured down his drawn white face in streams.
One man only besides Corbett saw that drama; one man, whose features wore a look of which hell might have been proud, so fiendish was it in its disappointed malice, when through the dust he saw the red flame flash, and then, almost before the report reached him, saw the body of the big buckskin, a limp bagful of broken bones, splash heavily into the Seton Lake.
But the look passed as a cloud passes on a windy morning, and the next moment Cruickshank was at Corbett's side, a flood of congratulations and inquiries pouring from his ready lips. As for Ned, now that the danger was over, he was utterly unstrung, and a bold enemy might have easily done for him that which the runaway horse had failed to do. Perhaps that thought never occurred to any enemy of Ned's; perhaps the quick, backward glance, in which Cruickshank recognized old Roberts' purple features, was as effectual a safeguard to the young man's life as even his own good rifle had been; be that as it may, a few moments later Ned stumbled along after his friend to a place of safety, and there sat down again to collect himself.
Meanwhile, Roberts and Cruickshank stood looking at one another, an expression in the old poet's face, which neither Corbett nor Cruickshank had ever seen there before, the hand in his coat pocket grasping a revolver, whose ugly muzzle was ready to belch out death from that pocket's corner at a moment's notice. At last Cruickshank spoke in a voice so full of genuine sorrow, that even Roberts slackened his hold upon the weapon concealed in his coat pocket.
"You've had a near shave to-day, Corbett, and it was my fault. I am almost ashamed to ask you to forgive me."
"How—what do you mean? Did you fire that shot?"
"I did, like a cursed idiot," replied Cruickshank.
Roberts' face was a study for an artist. Speechless surprise reigned upon it supreme.
"I did," Cruickshank repeated. "I fired at a grouse that was hooting in a bull-pine by the track, and I suppose that that scared the cayuse—though I've never known a pack-horse mind a man shooting before."
"Nor I," muttered Roberts. "I suppose you didn't notice if you hit that fool-hen, Colonel Cruickshank?"
"No; I don't suppose I did. I'd enough to think of when I saw what I had done."
"Well, it didn't fly away, and it ain't there now," persisted Roberts. "Perhaps you'd like to go and look for it."
However, Cruickshank took no notice of Roberts' speech, but held out his hand to Corbett with such an honest expression of sorrow, that if it was not sincere, it was superb as a piece of acting.
Without a word Corbett took the proffered hand. There are some natures which find it hard to suspect evil in others, and Ned Corbett's was one of these. Only he made a mental note, that though Cruickshank had only made two mistakes since starting from Douglas, they had both been of rather a serious nature.
Only one man climbed down to look at the dead cayuse as it lay half hidden in the shallow water at the edge of the lake, and that was only a Chinaman. Of course he went to see what he could save from the wreck; equally, of course, he found nothing worth bringing away; found nothing and noticed nothing, or if he did, only told what he had seen to old Roberts. There seemed to be an understanding between these two, for Phon trusted the hearty old Shropshireman as much as he seemed to dread and avoid the colonel.