CHAPTER XVII. CHANCE'S GOLD-FEVER RETURNS.
"Well, Steve, what is the news? I can see that you are just bursting with intelligence. Out with it, little man."
"Bell has struck it rich again. It's a fortune this time, they say."
"Is that all? Poor Bell! He'll be drunk, then, at Victoria the whole of the winter. I shouldn't be surprised if this second stroke of luck killed him."
The speakers were our old friends Ned Corbett and Steve Chance, and when Steve joined him Ned was sitting with his long gum boots tucked under a table in the Antler dance-house, smoking his evening pipe.
It was nearly a month since Cruickshank had stolen away from Antler, and since then Ned had recovered all his old strength and vigour.
At first he had brooded incessantly over Cruickshank's escape, but as the days went by he realized that there was no chance for him, without knowledge of the country and without funds, against a man like the colonel, with a fortnight's start of him. Together with one or two miners to whom he had told his tale he had made an attempt to follow Cruickshank's tracks, and had succeeded in tracking him and his pony as far as the main trail to Soda Creek. Here the tracks, which were already old, became confused with others, and sorely against their will the pursuers had to give up the chase.
"Cruickshank has got clean away with you this journey, partner, and I guess you may as well own up to it," was the verdict of one of his comrades.
And Ned, recognizing the justice of it, threw up the sponge, and owned himself beaten for the time; but although he said no more about the claims or the packs or the comrade of whom he had been robbed, he consoled himself with the thought that life was long and had in it many chances, and that whenever his chance came, however late, it would find his hand as strong and as quick to take vengeance as it was to-day.
As soon as his story had become known, and men had seen what manner of man he was, Ned had found no difficulty in getting employment in the claims, and, indeed, he had done so well that he had been induced to send a message to his friends at Williams Creek, in answer to which Steve and Phon had hastened to join him at Antler. Rampike promised to come up later on in the fall, but as yet he had plenty to do in his own claim.
For a full fortnight the three comrades had worked away steadily with pick and shovel, and now, in spite of all his troubles, Ned was his own cheery self again, proud of the strength which enabled him to do almost as much as two other men, and content with the work which kept him supplied with all the necessaries of life. But if Ned Corbett was content, his comrades were not. Steve hated the daily labour for daily wage, and Phon was hardly strong enough for the work, and anxious to go off prospecting on his own account.
"What a phlegmatic old cuss you are, Ned! Don't you envy Bell a bit?"
"Not I. Why should I? I am strong and well again, thank God. I've plenty of fresh air and hard work, and I'm earning ten dollars a day—"
"And spending eight. You won't make a fortune that way."
"Who said that I should? Who said that I wanted to? Why, my dear chap, just think for a moment. If I did make a fortune I should have to stop at home and invest it and look after it. Stop at home, do you hear, Steve?"
"You'll die a pauper, Ned," asserted Chance solemnly.
"And you, perhaps, a millionaire. Poor old chap! I'm sorry for you. I am indeed. Well, Lilla, what can I do for you?" and Ned, rising, took off his hat, as if he had been saluting a duchess.
"The boys want a song, Ned. Will you sing for them?" asked the girl, her pretty eyes brightening and her cheeks flushing as she took Ned's hand. Somehow, though Ned had often sought her, he had seen very little of his gentle nurse since he had become convalescent.
"Bother the boys!" quoth this young man of big muscle and limited intelligence. "I'm not going to do any work to-night. I have earned enough money for the day; but," he added quickly as he saw the girl's look of disappointment, "I'll sing for you, little sister, and you can give the money to the next dead-beat you nurse back again to life."
"I never nursed any dead-beats," began Lilla.
"Oh no, of course not. Never heard of Ned Corbett, or Pete of Lost Creek, or any of that crowd, did you, Lilla? Now I'm going to sing;" and with that he threw back his head, and sang in a full rich baritone a song of his Canadian lumbering days:—
A SONG OF THE AXE.
When winter winds storm, and the snow-flakes swarm,
And the forest is soft to our tread;
When the women folk sit, by their fires fresh lit,
Oh, ho, for the toque of red!
With our strong arms bare, it's little we care
For politics, rates, or tax;
Let the good steel ring on the forest king—
Oh, ho, for the swing of the axe!
Your diamonds may glitter, your rubies flame,
Our gems are but frozen dew;
Yet yours grow tame, being always the same,
Ours every night will renew.
Let the world rip: tighten your grip,
Make the blades glitter and shine;
At it you go, swing to each blow,
And down with the pride of the pine!
For the trees, I ween, which have long grown green
In the light of the sun and the stars,
Must bend their backs to the lumberer's axe,
Mere timber and planks and spars!
Then oh, ho, ho! for the carpet of snow!
Oh, ho, for the forest of pine!
Wealth shall be yours, with its business and bores,
Health and hard labour be mine!
"Health and hard labour be mine!" thundered a score of voices, and a score of strong labour-hardened hands came crashing down upon the rough deal tables. "Bravo, Ned!" "That's your sort for Cariboo!" "Mate, we'll wet that song if you please," and a dozen other similar expressions of approval rewarded Ned for his efforts, but Steve Chance did not go as far as the rest of the audience.
"A pretty good song, Ned," he said, "with lots of shouting in it, but no sense."
"Give us a better, little one," replied his friend good-naturedly. "Ah, Lilla, you are a brick—I beg your pardon, but I don't know the German for a fairy who brings a thirsty man just what he wants;" and Ned buried his moustache in a foaming glass of Lager.
"That beats all the champagne and such like trash into fits," he added with a sigh of satisfaction as he put down the empty glass. "Now, Steve, beat my song if you can."
"Beat it! No trouble to do that. If the boys don't shout themselves silly over my chorus I'll take a back seat."
"You wouldn't stay there if you did," laughed Ned; "but drive on, my boy."
Thus adjured, Steve got up and sang with a spirit and go of which I am unable to give any adequate idea, the song of—
THE YANKEE DOLLAR.
With sword or shovel, pick or pen,
All strive to win the yellow ore;
And "bust or boom," our natural doom,
Is but to love the dollar more.
Chorus.
The Yankee doodle dollar, oh!
I'm no saint or scholar, oh!
I only know, that high or low,
All love the Yankee dollar, oh!
In miner's ditch some strike it rich,
And some die in the collar, oh!
But live or die, succeed or sigh,
All strive to win the dollar, oh!
"Chorus, gentlemen,—'The Yankee doodle dollar oh!'" sang Chance, and the whole room rose to him and sang as one man—
The Yankee doodle dollar, oh!
I'm no saint or scholar, oh!
I only know, that high or low,
All love the Yankee dollar, oh!
There was no question as to Steve's victory. Ned had stirred the hearts of a few, and pleased all, but Steve had played upon the principal chord in the heart of Antler, and for weeks the men hummed the empty words and whistled the frivolous, ranting little air of "The Yankee doodle dollar, oh!" until even its author was sick of it.
"You see, Ned, everyone thinks the same except you," said Chance, when the applause had somewhat moderated. "Why the deuce are you so pig-headed? Now that we have saved a few dollars why should we not go prospecting and make our pile like other people? I'm sick of all this picking and scratching in other men's claims."
"'Yo mun larn to scrat afore yo peck,'" replied Ned stolidly, quoting a good old Shropshire proverb; "and 'scratting' for ten dollars a day doesn't seem to me to be very badly-paid labour."
"You forget, Ned, that this cain't last. How do you mean to live during the winter?"
"Sufficient unto the day—" began Ned, and then suddenly altering his tone he added, "What is it that you want me to do, Steve?"
"What do I want you to do? Why, what any other man in Cariboo would do if he had half your chance. Take Lilla's offer and go and look for Pete's Creek for her."
"Pete's Creek! Why, my dear Steve, you don't seriously believe in that cock-and-bull story, do you?"
"Don't you believe Lilla?" retorted Chance.
"Of course I believe Lilla," replied Corbett hotly, "but she only tells the story as it was told to her."
"By a dying man who knew that he was dying, to a woman who had nursed him for weeks like a sister! According to you, Pete must have been a worse liar than Ananias, Ned."
"I didn't say Pete lied either, but Pete may not have been sane when he died. You know that he had been drinking like a fish before Lilla got hold of him."
"Yes, and slept out a couple of nights in the snow. I know that. But he died of pleurisy, not of the jim-jams."
"Well, have your own way, but nothing will make me believe in that creek. It had too much gold in it," replied Corbett. "And even if I did believe in it, why should I take Lilla's gold? Hasn't she done enough for me already?"
"Perhaps. But if you don't get it for her, I guess someone else will come along and find it for himself."
"Why don't you go for it, Steve, if you believe in it?"
"So I would if Lilla would trust me; but you see Lilla is not spoons on me, and she is on you."
Corbett flushed to the roots of his yellow hair.
"Don't talk rot, Chance, and leave Lilla's name alone."
"I'm not talking rot," said Chance seriously. "But say, Ned, do you mean to marry that girl?"
"Marry your grandmother! I don't mean to marry anyone, and no one is such a fool as to want to marry me."
"All right, Ned, don't lose your temper; but I know, old chap, that you would not like to get Lilla talked about, and the boys are beginning to say that Lilla got rid of her heart when you got rid of your fever."
"The boys are a parcel of chattering idiots, whose mouths will get stopped pretty roughly if they talk like that before me," growled Ned. "But really, Steve, this is too ridiculous. Fancy anyone wanting to marry me!" and the speaker looked down with a grin at his mud-spattered, much-mended pants, passed his hand meditatively over a rough young beard of three months' growth, and burst out laughing.
Ned Corbett was heart-whole, and he did not see why everyone else should not be as lucky in that respect as himself.