He didn't want Anahem to think that wild sight like wild bone was better than the civilized samples of the same.
"Well, you see the mountain. By and by you come closer and see his shape. Under that mountain, in the bank on this side the river, stop one white man. You keep along this trail," and Anahem pointed to the track upon which they stood, "along the ridge, and by and by it will go downhill, and on the night of the third day you will see the white man. Good-bye," and before they knew that he was going the old chief turned, and like the shifting shadow of a cloud which the winds blow across the hillside, he moved away and was gone. There was no sound as he went—no twig snapped, no overall scraped against the bushes. In silence he had come, and in silence he had gone. For a moment the two with "parted lips and straining eyes stood gazing where he sank," for indeed it seemed to them as if the sea of the woods had opened and swallowed up their friend. Then Chance spoke:
"A creepy old gentleman, Ned; rather like one of Phon's devils."
"A deuced good devil to us, anyway. If we ever find Phon and the gold we shall owe our good luck to him, as we owe him our lives."
"Yes, I wish he had stopped. I should like to have given him a 'potlatch.'"
"Just as well that you didn't offer him anything. He might have liked this rifle, but I really doubt whether he knows enough about gold-dust to make him value that."
"That's what, Ned. But come on and let us get through this beastly forest to those open benches below;" and Chance made as if he would burst his way through the barriers of serried pines which intervened between him and the Frazer valley.
"What, again, Steve?" cried Ned. "Isn't one lesson enough for you? If you tried that you would be lost again in ten minutes. No more short cuts for me. I mean to stick to the trail, and you must follow me;" and so saying Corbett took up his bundle and went ahead at a quiet steady pace which, in five or six hours, brought Steve to the land of his desire, where what trees there were were great bull-pines standing far apart, and giving men lots of room for their feet below and wide glimpses of heaven above their heads.
As soon as they reached the open country Chance's spirits improved, and his strength came back with his spirits, but for all that he was still so weak that the progress which Ned and he made was very slow, and their provisions were again at a perilously low ebb when they came in sight of that strange freak of nature, opposite to which dwelt (so they hoped) their old friend Rampike. The bluff was exactly as Anahem had drawn it: an organ cast in some Titanic mould, the pipes of it two hundred feet from base to summit, and stained with all manner of vivid metallic colours. At its foot was the gray Frazer, and the dull sky of early winter hung low about its head; but the organ was dumb from all eternity, unless those were its voices which ignorant men attributed to the winds and the fretting foaming river.
For awhile the two wanderers stood staring in wonder at this strange landmark, and then Steve's weary face lit up with a smile and a mist came over his eyes.