"Yes, it's one I bought at Lillooet. I hadn't got a good one with me."
"Well, I don't suppose you'll want it, now you have got it," replied Corbett.
"Well, I don't know. I might want it to shoot grouse with by the side of the trail."
And the old fellow laid such an emphasis upon his last words and chuckled so grimly, that Ned half suspected that he had wetted his whistle once too often after all.
CHAPTER IX. UNDER THE BALM-OF-GILEAD TREE.
From noon of the day upon which Ned Corbett and old Roberts strode out of Lillooet until the night upon which we meet them again was a fortnight and more, a fortnight of which I might, if I chose, write a history, but it would only be the history of almost every mining party and pack-train that ever went up the Frazer. The incidents of those days are indelibly engraved upon the memories of Steve and of Corbett, but to Roberts they passed without remark and left no impression behind. The life was only the ordinary miner's life; and there was nothing new to the old-timer in buoyant hopes wearing away day by day; nothing new in the daily routine of camps broken by starlight and pitched again at dusk; in trails blocked by windfalls or destroyed by landslips; in packs which would shift, tie them ever so tightly; in stones which cut the moccasins, and prickly pears which filled the sole with anguish; or in cruel fire-hardened rampikes, which tore the skin to rags and the clothes to ribands. Three weeks upon the road had done its work upon the party, had added much to their knowledge, and taken much away that was useless from their equipment.
When they left Westminster they were five smart, well-fed, civilized human beings; when they struggled up out of the valley of the Frazer towards Cariboo, at Soda Creek, they were five lean, weather-hardened men, their clothes all rags and patches, their skin all wounded and blistered, every "indispensable adjunct of a camp," as made by Mr. Silver, discarded long ago; but every article of camp furniture which was left, carried where it could be got at, ready when it was wanted, and thoroughly adapted to the rough and ready uses of those who took the trouble to "pack it along."
Even to Steve it seemed ages now since his nostrils were used to any other odour than the pungent scent of the pines; ages since his ears listened to any other sound than the roar of the yellow river and the monotonous tinkle of the leader's bell; ages even since washing had been to him as a sacred rite, and a clean shirt as desirable as a clean conscience.
And yet Corbett and Chance had seen, on their way up, men who led harder lives than theirs; blue-shirted, bearded fellows, who carried their all upon their own shoulders; and others who had put their tools and their grub in the craziest of crafts, and, climbing one moment and wading the next, strove to drag it up stream in the teeth of the Frazer.