CHAPTER XIX. "GOOD-BYE, LILLA."
It was not Ned Corbett's nature to say much about what he felt. Like most of his countrymen Ned was reserved to a fault, and prided himself upon an impassive demeanour, suffering failure or achieving success with the same quiet smile upon his face. The English adage "Don't cry until you are hurt" had been only a part of the law of his childhood; the rest of it read according to his teachers: "and then grin and bear it."
But even Steve, who knew Corbett as intimately as one man can know another, was astounded at the readiness with which, after one wild effort to grapple with the man who had killed Roberts, Corbett had been content to settle down quietly to his daily labour in the claims at Antler.
He could understand that his friend would take his own losses quietly. Steve, like all Yankees and all true gamblers, was a good loser himself, and didn't expect to hear a man make a moan over his own misfortunes, but he had not expected to see Ned abandon his vengeance so readily.
After Lilla's incidental mention of Cruickshank, Steve began to understand his friend better. His impatience to be on the war-path again was the real thing; the assumed calmness and content had after all been but the mannerism of the athlete, who smiles a sweet smile as he waits whilst the blows rain upon him, for a chance of knocking his man out of time before his own eyes close and his own strength fails him.
"So! you've only been lying low all this time, old man, and I thought you had forgotten," said Chance, when Ned told him of his conversation with Lilla. "Great Scott, I wouldn't care to be Cruickshank!"
"Forgotten!" echoed Corbett. "Do you suppose I am likely to forget that Roberts risked his life for mine, and that Cruickshank took it—took it when the old man sat with his back to him, and his six-shooter hanging in a tree?"
"No, I don't suppose you would forget, Ned. When shall we start? Phon and myself could be ready to 'pull out' to-morrow."
"That would suit me, Steve, but I am afraid that you and Phon are embarking on a wild-goose chase. I don't believe in that creek of Pete's one bit more now than I did before I saw Lilla's map."
"That's all right, Ned; but you see Cruickshank believed in it, and so do we."
"Yes, Cruickshank believed in it, and in looking for the one we shall find the other. That is why I am going."
"I know all about that; but as long as we both want to find the same place, I don't see that it matters a row of beans why we want to find it," replied Steve. "And mind you," he added, "I would be just as glad to let a little daylight into Cruickshank as you would."
"Very well, if that is your way of looking at it, we need lose no more time. You are old enough to know your own business."
"That's what. How about a cayuse?"
"I bought one yesterday for a hundred dollars."
"A hundred dollars! Great Scott, what a price!"
"Yes, it is a good deal, but old Dad wouldn't let the beast go for less. He calculated it at so much a pound, and told me that if I knew where to get fresh meat cheaper in Antler I'd better buy it."
"Fresh meat! I like that. Has old Dad taken to selling beef upon the hoof, then?"
"Seems so. Anyway I had to pay for the bobtail almost as if I were buying beefsteak by the hundredweight."
"Well, I suppose we cain't help ourselves; we shall only be stone-broke again. It appears to be a chronic condition with us. Let's go and look at the brute."
An inspection of the bobtail did not bring much consolation to either Steve or Ned, for in spite of the smart way in which he had been docked, he was as ragged and mean-looking a brute as anyone could want to see. Besides, he was what the up-country folk call "a stud," and anyone who has ever driven these beasts, knows that they add vices peculiar to their class to the ordinary vices of the cayuse nature.
"He ain't a picture, but we've got to make the best of him," remarked Steve. "So if you'll just fix things with Lilla, I'll see about getting grub and a pack-saddle. We might be ready to start to-night."
This was Steve's view on Tuesday at mid-day. At five o'clock on Wednesday he was a humbler man, heartily thankful that at last he really had got together most of the things necessary for one pack-horse. The last twenty-four hours had been passed, it seemed to him, in scouring the whole country for pack-saddles, sweat-clothes, cinch-hooks, and all sort of things, which hitherto (when Cruickshank and Roberts had had charge of the train) had seemed always at hand as a matter of course.
"Hang me if the cayuse doesn't want more fixing than a Brooklyn belle," muttered Steve. "But say, Ned," he added aloud, "do you mean to start to-night?"
In another two hours it would be comparatively dark in the narrow canyons through which the trail to Soda Creek ran, and in two hours the three travellers could not hope to make much of a journey.
"Better wait till to-morrow, boys," remarked an old miner who had been lending a hand with the packing, trying in vain to show Ned how the diamond hitch ought to go. "It ain't no manner of use starting out at this time o' day."
"I would start if it were midnight, Jack," replied Corbett resolutely. "Once we get under weigh things will go better, but if we stayed over the night in camp, something would be sure to turn up to waste another day. Are you ready there, Steve?"
"All set, sonny," replied Steve, giving a final try at the cinch for form's sake.
"Then just drive on. I am going to get the map from Lilla;" and so saying he bent his steps towards the dance-house, whilst, one leading and the other driving, his companions trudged away along the trail to Soda Creek.
When he reached the dance-house Lilla was waiting for him, and together the two turned their backs upon Antler and walked slowly away under the pines.
"So then," said Lilla, "you will really go away to-night."
"Yes, we are really going, Lilla, to look for your golden creek. Don't you feel as if you were a millionaire already? Chance does, I know, and has decided to whom he will leave his estate when he dies."
Ned spoke lightly, and laughed as he spoke. He saw that the girl was depressed, and wanted to cheer her up. But Lilla only gave a little shiver, though the evening air was far from cold.
"Don't talk of dying, Ned. It is not good to talk of. Men die fast enough out here." She was thinking, poor little soul! how very near death that gallant yellow-haired friend of hers had been when she first saw him, and perhaps death might come near him again whilst she was not by to watch over him.
Ned looked surprised at her mood, but passed lightly to another subject.
"As you please, Lilla. Where am I to find you when we come back from Chilcotin?"
"Das weiss der lieber Gott," she answered, speaking half to herself. And then recovering herself she added in a firmer voice, "Either here or at Kamloops: most likely at Kamloops, if you are not back soon."
"But we shall be back soon. What ails you to-night?"
"It is nothing, Ned; but it seems as if summer had gone soon this year, and these great mountains will all be white again directly. I don't think you will get back here this fall."
"Not get back this fall! Why, surely, Lilla, you don't think that we mean to jump your claims, or make off with your gold?"
"No, no! of course not. I know you don't care for the gold, Ned, like the other men. You don't care for anything like other men, I think."
"Don't I? Just wait until I come back from Chilcotin and pour buckets of dust into your lap. See if I won't want my share then?"
"I wonder how long it will be that I must wait, Ned? I think sometimes that we shall never meet again. Tell me, do you think such atoms as we are could ever find their way to one another, up there? It seems so hard to lose one's friends for ever."
And the girl looked despairingly up into the great blue vault above them, wherein even the greatest of the stars are but as golden motes.
"Yes, little sister," answered Ned seriously. "I don't think that such as you will have much difficulty in finding their way up there."
After this the two were silent for some time, standing on a rise above Antler, looking out upon the deepening gloom of the evening, Ned's heart very full of tenderness towards the little woman to whom he owed so much.
It would have been so easy, Ned could not help thinking, to put his arm round her and comfort her; but then, would that be a good thing for either of them? The world was all before them, and the world was not all Cariboo.
"Come, Lilla," he said at last, "this won't do. The night air is chilling you. You must run back now. What would the boys say if their little favourite came back without her smile? By George, they would give me a short shrift if they thought that it was my fault."
"The boys! Ach, what do the boys care? All women can laugh, and dance, and sing. One woman is all the same to them as another."
Well as Ned knew his little companion, he had never seen her in this mood before, and his face betrayed the wonder which her bitterness awoke in him.
A woman's eyes are quick, even in her trouble, to note the effect of her words upon anyone she cares for, so that Lilla saw the expression in Ned's face, and tried hard to rally her courage and laugh her tears away.
After her fashion the poor little hurdy girl was as proud as any titled dame on earth, and since Ned had not said that he loved her, she would try hard to keep her own pitiful little secret to herself.
"Don't look like that, Ned. Don't you know when I am acting. But, seriously, I am cross to-night. I wanted my gold, and I wanted to keep my play-fellow too. We have been such good friends—haven't we, Ned?"
It was no good. In spite of her that treacherous voice of hers would falter and break in a way quite beyond her control. Flight seemed to her the only chance.
"Ach well, this is folly," she said. "Auf wiedersehen, my friend," and she held out to him both her hands.
It was a dead still evening, and just at that moment the horn of the pale young moon came up over the fringe of dark pine-trees and lit up Lilla's sweet face, finding in it a grace and purity of outline which the daylight overlooked. But even the moonlight could add nothing to the tenderness of those honest blue eyes, which had grown so dim and misty in the last few minutes, or to the sweetness of that tender mouth, whose lips were so pitifully unsteady now.
"Auf wiedersehen" Ned repeated after her. "Auf wiedersehen, Lilla,—we shall meet again."
For a while he stood irresolute. What did Shropshire or all the world indeed matter to him? he asked himself, and in another moment he might have spoken words which would surely have marred his own life and not made hers one whit happier.
Luckily just then a wild laugh broke the silence and recalled Ned to himself. It was only the owl who laughed, but it sufficed. The dangerous charm of the silence was broken, and pressing the girl's hand to his lips he dashed away up the trail.
Steve Chance and Phon had made nearly four miles and begun to pitch camp whilst he was getting that map.