CHAPTER XX. THE ACCURSED RIVER.
This world is a world of contrasts, in which laughter and tears, darkness and light, unite to make the varied pattern of our lives. When Ned Corbett left Lilla standing with tears which would not be denied upon her white cheeks, he felt as if he should never laugh again, and the ball in his throat rose as if it would choke him. In spite of the pace at which he strode through the moonlit forest aisles, his thoughts dwelt persistently upon the girl he had left behind him, or if they wandered at all from her, it was only to remind him of that snow-covered camp in the forest, at which he had taken his last farewell of that other true friend of his. And yet half an hour after he had wrung poor Lilla's hands in parting, Ned Corbett stood watching his comrades, his sides aching with suppressed laughter.
Phon's voice was the first sound to warn Ned that he had almost reached the camp, but Phon and Steve were both far too absorbed in the problem before them to notice his approach.
"You sure you no savey tie 'um hitch?" asked the Chinaman, who was standing with his hand upon the pack-ropes, whilst Chance held the cayuse by the head.
"No, Phon, I no savey. You savey all right, don't you?"
"I savey one side," replied the Chinaman. "S'pose the ole man throw the lopes, I catch 'um and fix 'um, but I no savey throw 'um lopes."
"What the devil are we to do then?" asked Chance, looking helplessly at the pack and its mysterious arrangement of ropes. "If the old man does not overtake us to-night we can't start before he gets here to-morrow morning. I wonder what the deuce is keeping him?"
Phon gave a grunt of contempt at his white companion's want of intelligence. He had a way of looking upon Steve as somewhat of an ignoramus.
"What keep the ole man? You halo comtax anything, Chance. Young woman keep him of course. Young woman always keep ole man long time, all same China. You bet I savey."
"You bet you are a jolly saucy heathen, who wants kicking badly," laughed Steve. "But say, if Corbett does not come along, what are you going to do with the packs?"
"I fix 'um, you see," replied Phon, suddenly brightening again and taking the pony by the head.
"Now then, you hold him there—hold him tight. He heap bad cayuse;" and Phon handed the lead-rope to Chance, whilst he himself swarmed nimbly up a bull-pine under which the pony now stood. A few feet from the ground (say seven or eight) a bare limb projected over the trail, from which the Chinaman could just manage to reach the top of the packs, so as to tie them firmly to the bough upon which he stood.
This done he descended again from his perch, hobbled the pack animal, and stood back to survey his work.
He had tied up the pony's legs, and tied him up by his packs to a bull-pine. Things looked fairly safe, but Phon was not content. "You hold him tight!" he sung out; "s'pose he go now he smash everything." A minute later Phon had undone the cinch and set the pack-saddle and its load free from the pony's back, and then picking up a big stake he hit the unfortunate cayuse a hearty good thump over the quarters, and bade him "Git, you siwash!"
The result was funny. A general separation ensued, in which—thanks to a pair of active heels—(horse's) a little blue bundle of Chinese manufacture went in one direction, a hobbled cayuse went jumping away like a lame kangaroo in another, while the pack swung in all the mystery of its diamond hitch intact upon the bough of the bull-pine.
It was a quaint method of off-saddling a pack-pony, but as Phon explained when he had picked himself up again, it saved the trouble of fixing the packs next day.
But such scenes as these are of more interest to those to whom packing is a part of their daily toils than to the average Englishman. The ordinary traveller puts his luggage in the van, or has it put in for him, and glides over his journey at the rate of forty miles an hour without even seeing, very often, what kind of country he is passing through.
It is quite impossible to travel quite as fast as this through Cariboo even on paper; but I will make the journey as short as I can, though for Phon and his friends it was weary work at first, with a pack-horse which would not be driven and could not be led. When the ordinary lead-rope had been tried and found useless, Phon slipped a clove-hitch round the brute's lower jaw, after which he and Corbett together led, throwing all their weight upon the rope and pulling for all they were worth. It seemed as if this must move even a mule; but its principal effect upon the "stud" was to make him sit down upon his quarters in regular tug-of-war fashion, rolling his eyes hideously, and squealing with rage. The application of motive power (by means of a thick stick) to his other end only elicited a display of heels, which whizzed and shot about Steve's ears until he determined to "quit driving."
After this the steed proceeded some distance of his own accord, and flattering terms were showered upon him.
"After all he only wanted humouring," Ned said; "horses were just alike all the world over. Kindness coupled with quiet resolution was all that was necessary for the management of the most obstinate brute on earth."
So spoke Corbett, after the manner of Englishmen, and the "stud" poked out his under lip and showed the whites of his eyes. He knew better than that, and for some time past had had his eye upon a gently sloping bank covered with young pines and some dead-fall. As he reached this he tucked in his tail, bucked to see if he could get his pack off, and failing in that let go with both heels at the man behind him, and then rolled over and over down the bank until he stuck fast amongst the fallen timber, where he lay contentedly nibbling the weeds, whilst his owners took off his packs and made other arrangements for his comfort, without which he pretended that it was absolutely impossible for him to get up again.
This sort of thing soon becomes monotonous, and our amateur prospectors found that though they were doing a good deal of hard work they were not making two miles an hour. Luckily for all concerned the "stud" died young, departing from this life on the third day out from Antler, a victim to the evil effects of about a truss of poison weed which he had picked up in his frequent intervals for rest by the roadside.
It was with a sigh of sincere relief that Corbett and Steve and Phon portioned out the pack among them, and said adieu to their dead cayuse. Whilst he lived they felt that they could not leave behind them an animal for which they had paid a hundred dollars, but now that he was dead they were free from such scruples, and proceeded upon their journey at a considerably increased rate of speed.
Flower-time was past in Cariboo, and the whole forest was full of fruit. Upon every stony knoll, where the sun's rays were reflected from white boulders or charred black stumps, there grew innumerable dwarf raspberry canes, bearing more fruit than leaves. By the side of the trail the broad-leaved salmon-berry held up its fruit of crimson velvet, just high enough for a man to pluck it without stooping, and every bush which Steve and Ned passed was loaded either with the purple of the huckle-berry or the clear coral red of the bitter soap-berry. Best of all berries to Ned's mind was that of a little creeper, the fruit of which resembled a small huckle-berry, and reminded the thirsty palate of the combined flavours of a pine-apple and a Ribston pippin.
Altogether, what with the fool-hens and the grouse (which were too careful of their young to care properly for themselves) and the berries, it was evident to Ned that no man need starve in the forests of Cariboo in early autumn; but there were broad tracks through the long grass and traces amongst the ruined bushes of another danger to man's life every bit as real and as terrible as the danger of starvation. The fruit season is also the bear season, and the long sharp claw-marks in front of the track told Corbett that the bears were not all black which used the trail at night and rustled in the dense bush by day. Though they never had the luck to meet one, Ned and Steve had their eyes skinned and their rifles loaded for grizzly every day until they issued from the forest on to the bare lands above the Frazer.
As they could not get a canoe at Soda Creek they had to tramp down stream to Chimney Creek, where a few Chinamen were washing for gold. These men, in return for some trifling gift of stores, took the party across the river, and so worked upon the mind of their fellow-countryman with stories of the great "finds" up stream of which they had heard that his eyes began to glisten with the same feverish light which had filled them at Lillooet.
The Frazer had a peculiar fascination for Phon, and no wonder, for there is something about this river unlike all other rivers—something which it owes neither to its size nor its beauty. The Frazer looks like a river of hell, if hell has rivers. From where Ned Corbett stood, high up above the right bank, he could get glimpses of the river's course for some miles. Everywhere the scene was the same, a yellow turbid flood, surging savagely along through a deep gully between precipitous mud bluffs, whose sides stained here and there with metallic colours—vivid crimson and bright yellow, made them look as if they had been poured hot and hissing from nature's cauldron, and that so recently that they had not yet lost the colours of their molten state. The rolling years are kind to most things, beautifying them with the soft tints of age or veiling them with gracious foliage, but the banks of the Frazer still look raw and crude; the gentler things of earth will have nothing to do with the accursed river, in which millions of struggling salmon rot and die, while beside its waters little will grow except the bitter sage bush and the prickly pear.
When Corbett and Chance reached Chimney Creek the fall run of salmon was at its height, and added, if possible, to the weird ugliness of the river. From mid-stream to either bank every inch of its surface was broken by the dorsal fins or broad tails of the travelling fish, while in the back waters, and under shelter of projecting rocks, they lay in such thousands that you could see the black wriggling mass from a point several hundred yards away. From the shingle down below you could if you chose kill salmon with stones, or catch them with your hands, but you could not walk without stepping on their putrefying bodies, which while they still lived and swam took the vivid crimson or sickly yellow of the Frazer's banks. They looked (these lean leprous fish) as if they had swallowed the yellow poison of the river, and it was burning their bodies alive.
And yet like the men their betters they still struggled up and up, reckless of all the dangers, though out of every hundred which went up the Frazer not three would ever find their way back again to the strong wholesome silvery sea. The glutted eagles watched for them, the bears preyed upon them, Indians speared them; they were too weak almost to swim; their bodies were rotting whilst they still lived, and yet they swam on, though their strength was spent and they rolled feebly in a flood through which, only a few months earlier, they would have shot straight and strong as arrows fresh loosed from the bow. Gold and desolation and death, and a river that roared and rattled as if playing with dead men's bones; a brittle land, where the banks fell in and the ruined pines lay, still living, but with their heads down and their roots turned up to the burning sky; a land without flowers, jaundiced with gold and dry with desire for the fairer things of earth—this is what Corbett saw, and seeing, he turned away with a shudder.
"My God!" he said, "gold should grow there; nothing else will; even the fish rot in that hell broth!"
"You aren't polite to Father Frazer, Ned. So I will propitiate him;" and the Yankee turned to the yellow river, and holding high a silver dollar he cried, "See here, old river, Steve Chance of N'York is dead broke except for this, and this he gives to you. Take his all as an offering. The future he trusts to you."
And so saying Steve sent his last coin spinning out into the gully, where for a moment it glittered and then sunk and was lost, swallowed up in the waves of the great river, which holds in her bed more wealth than has ever been won from nature by the greed and energy of man.