The camp reminded Steve of the appearance of a hawthorn bush, in which a butcher-bird has built its nest,—the whole place was red with raw meat, and there were piles of soft gray down and hair, three and four feet high. These were the scrapings of a hundred hides, roughly cleaned by the Indian women during the week.
In such a camp as Anahem's hunger is an easy thing to cure, and that and blindness were Ned's chief complaints; and even the blindness yielded in a day or two to a certain dressing prepared for Ned by the squaws. But Steve Chance did not recover as easily as Corbett did. The prostration from which he suffered was too severe to be cured by a long night's rest and a couple of square meals. At night he lay and tossed in broken slumbers, and dreams came to him which wearied him more than if he had never slept. He saw, so he said, the gold-camp every night of his life, and Phon the only human being in it; and all the while Phon stood in a flood of gold dust, which rose higher and higher, until it swelled and broke over him and ran on a yellow heavy flood like the flood of the Frazer.
Day after day Ned waited and hoped against hope, until the Chilcotins were ready to strike their camp and go home for the winter. He had already done his utmost to persuade Anahem to search for Phon, but the chief took very little notice of him. Either he thought that Ned like Steve was rambling in his mind, or he did not understand him (for Anahem spoke very little Chinook, and Ned spoke less), or, and that is probable too, he did not think it mattered much what became of a Chinaman; and as to the gold, if it really was there, it would probably wait until the white men could go and look for it themselves. If Ned would have gone with him, Anahem would have gone perhaps to look for the creek; but Ned could not leave Chance whilst he was ill, and Steve would not get well, so that ended the matter.
There seemed only one course open to Ned, and he prepared to take it. Anahem had told him as they talked one night over the camp-fire that he had seen the smoke of a white man's fire coming from a dug-out on the banks of the Frazer.
"How long ago was that?" asked Ned.
"On my way up here, about the time of the young moon," answered Anahem.
"Then that may be Rampike," muttered Ned; and the next day he got Anahem to show him the direction in which the dug-out lay.
"Could I get there in two days?" he asked.
"A skukum (strong) Indian could. The sick white man can be there on the third day at nightfall."
This was enough for Ned. Next morning he bought some meat and dried salmon from his Indian friends, and guided by Anahem and followed by Chance he left the camp. If Chance's strength would hold out until they could reach the dug-out, he could nurse him there at his leisure, and by and by, when Steve was stronger, Ned and Rampike could go out together to look for Phon and Cruickshank. It was not impossible after all that they should find Phon still alive, though fish and roots and the inner bark of trees would be all that he could get to live upon. But would Chance's strength hold out? That was the trouble. He was terribly worn and weak, and his eyes shone feverishly, and he neither slept well nor eat well in spite of the fresh keen air. As he followed Anahem up a steep bluff Steve panted and his knees were unsteady, and when the chief stopped at last upon a bald ridge overlooking the pine-woods, he lay back upon his light load saying, "It's as well you've stopped, chief, at last. Another hundred yards, and I should have bucked my pack off."