Gold, Gold, in Cariboo! A Story of Adventure in British Columbia

by Clive Phillipps-Wolley

Two tall pines had grown upon opposite edges of the narrow ravine in which the gulch ended. From side to side this ravine was rather too broad for a single pine to span, and far down below, somewhere in the darkness of it, a stream roared and foamed along. The rocks were damp with mist and spray, but the steep walls of the narrow place let in no light by which the prisoned river could be seen. In order to cross this place, men had loosened the roots of the two pines with pick and shovel, until the trees sinking slowly towards each other had met over the mid-stream. Then those who had loosened the roots did their best to make them fast again, weighting them with rocks, and tethering them with ropes. When they had done this they had lashed the tops of the trees together, lopped off a few boughs, run a hand-rope over all, and called the structure a bridge.

Over this bridge Ned and his comrades had now to pass, and as he looked at the white face and quaking legs of Phon, and then up at the evening sky, Ned turned to Steve and whispered in his ear: "Pull yourself together, Steve. This is a pretty bad place, but we have got to get over at once or not at all. That fellow will faint or go off his head before long."

Luckily for Ned, Steve Chance had plenty of what the Yankees call "sand."

"I'm ready, go ahead," he muttered, keeping his eyes as much as possible averted from the abyss towards which they were clambering.

"I'll go first," said Corbett, when they had reached the roots of the nearest pine; "then Phon, and you last, Steve." Then bending over his friend he whispered, "Threaten to throw him in if he funks."

Of course the bridge in front of Corbett was not the ordinary way to Williams Creek. Pack-trains had come to Williams Creek even in those early days, and clever as pack-ponies are, they have not yet developed a talent for tree climbing. So there was undoubtedly some other way to Williams Creek. This was only a short cut, a route taken by pedestrians who were in a hurry, and surely no pedestrians were ever in a much greater hurry than Steve and Ned and Phon.

Consider! Their all was on the other side of that ravine; all their invested wealth and all their hopes as well; all the reward for weeks of weary travel, as well as rest, and shelter, and food. They had much to gain in crossing that ravine, and the slowly sinking sun warned them that they had no time to look for a better way round. They must take that short cut or none. And yet when Ned got closer to the rough bridge he liked it less than ever. Where the trees should have met and joined together a terrible thing had happened. Ned could see it now quite plainly from where he stood. A wind, he supposed, must have come howling up the gulch in one of the dark days of winter, a wind so strong that when the narrow gully had pent it in, it had gone rushing along, smashing everything that it met in its furious course, and amongst other things it had struck just the top of the arch of the bridge.

The result was that just at the highest point there was a gap, not a big gap, indeed it was so small that some of the ropes still held and stretched from tree to tree, but still a gap, six feet wide with no bridge across it, and black, unfathomable darkness down below. Ned Corbett was one of those men who only see the actual danger which has to be faced, the thing which has to be done—that which is, and not that which may be. For instance, Ned saw that he had to jump from one stout bough to another, that he would have to cling to something with his hands on the other side, and that it would not do to make a false step, or to clutch at a rotten bough.

That was all he saw. So he leapt with confidence (he had taken twenty worse leaps in an afternoon in the gymnasium at home for the fun of the thing), and of course he alighted in safety, clambered down the other pine-tree trunk, and landed safe and sound on the farther shore. He had never stayed to think of the awful things which would have happened if he had slipped; of that poor body of his which might have gone whirling round and round through the darkness, until it plunged into the waters out of sight of the sun and his fellow-men.