“I too loved a virtuous maiden, and, stranger still, I fancy she loved me, but unfortunately there was one of the other kind too, and the result thereof was as usual—disaster. I’ve been trying to remedy that disaster—did you ever wonder where my dividends went to? Well, there is a reason why I’m anxious to find a mine. If we do, I’ll tell you the sequel. Otherwise—and things do happen unexpectedly—there’s a leather case in my pocket, and in case of accident I hope my partners will act on what they find in it. Perhaps some one in England would bless them if they did.”
He ceased, and some time later a vibratory monotone commenced far up under the stars, gathering strength and volume until it rolled in long pulsations down the steep ranges’ side. 259
“It’s more common in spring,” remarked the prospector, “but some ice bridge has busted under pressure, and the snow is coming down. There’ll be most astonishing chaos in the next valley.”
I cannot say how long the great harmony lasted, for we listened spellbound, unheeding the passage of time, while the cedars trembled about us as the tremendous diapason leaped from peak to peak and the valleys flung back the echoes in majestic antiphones. There was the roar of sliding gravel, the crash of rent-down forest, and the rumble of ice and snow, each mingling its own note, softened by distance, in the supernatural orchestra, until the last echoes died away and there was a breathless hush.
“We have heard great things,” said Johnston; “what did the surveyor say? Not an ounce of the ruin is wasted; the lower Fraser wheat-lands are built that way. There’s a theme for a master to write a Benedicite. Grinding ice chanting to the thunders of the snow, and the very cedars listening in the valleys. Well, I’ll make him a free present of the fancy; we’re merely gold miners, or we hope to be. Good-night, and remember the early start to-morrow.”
He was up long before the late dawn, and it was still early when we waded scarcely knee-deep among the boulders of a curiously shrunken stream. Smooth-ground rocks cumbered its bed, and the muddy water that gurgled among them was stained red instead of the usual glacial green, while, as I wondered where the rest had gone, the prospector remarked, “These blamed rivers are low in winter, but I never saw one quite so ashamed of itself as this. It’s the snow-slide we heard last night damming the valley, and there’ll be a rush worth seeing when it does break through.”
I had occasion afterward to learn that he was right, but meanwhile we followed the banks of the river up-stream, still looking for the gorge. Several times the prospector 260 fancied that he identified a transverse opening, and then confessed that he was not even sure of the river, because, as he said, there were so everlasting many of them. Johnston grew more and more uneasy, until, when I called a halt as the sun bore south, he looked at me appealingly, and I agreed to continue until there was just time enough left to reach our previous camp by nightfall. So we held on, and finally he turned to me.
“I’ve played the last game and lost it,” he said. “Well, you kept your part of the bargain; I’ll keep mine. It’s take up the home-trail, boys, we’re going back to camp.”
He said it lightly, but I could tell that he felt the disappointment bitterly, while even I, who had expected nothing, wheeled the pack-horse around with an angry growl. It was toward dusk when we neared the creek we had crossed in the morning, but it was no longer shrunken. Evidently the dam of débris had given way, for it roared in full flood now, and it was with anxiety that we quickened our pace. The hillsides loomed black out of chilly mist that wrapped the serried ranks of climbing pines in their smoky folds. It was not yet dark in the valley, but the light was dying fast, and a bitter breeze swept down a darkening gorge, bringing with it the moan of an unseen forest until presently this was lost in the voice of the frothing torrent before us. There was neither fuel nor shelter on that side, and we determined to attempt the crossing, for, as Harry said, “Hunger alone is bad, but hunger and cold together are worth an effort to avoid.”
The prospector waded in foremost, sounding with a long fir pole. The stream swirled in white wreaths about his waist, and Johnston turned to speak to me, standing a few yards nearer with the ripples at his knee; then I grasped the pack-horse’s bridle and forced it into the water. The beast carried a heavy load, including most of our blankets, 261 and almost the entire balance of our provisions. A rusty rifle was slung behind my shoulders, besides tools and utensils, and Johnston was similarly caparisoned, so I felt my way cautiously as the ice-cold waters frothed higher about me. Near by, the creek poured into the main river, which swept with a great black swirling into the gloom of the forest.