Almost at once it appeared that we had landed in the same trouble as on the right bank. Directly off the mouth of the stream that came down from the slide the bow of the boat was caught and held between two submerged rocks, defying our every attempt to lift it over. Blackmore was becoming impatient again, and was just ready to give up and run, when Andy, with the aid of a young tree-trunk used as a lever, rolled one of the boulders aside and cleared the way. Five minutes later we had completed lining down and were pushing off for the final run to the Ferry. No more “mystery rapids” cropped up to disturb our voyage, and, pulling in deep, swift water, we made the next five miles in twenty-five minutes. A part of the distance was through the rocky-walled Red Canyon, one of the grandest scenic bits of the Bend. At one point Blackmore showed us a sheer-sided rock island, on which he said he had once found the graves of two white men, with an inscription so worn as to be indecipherable. He thought they were probably those of miners lost during the Cariboo gold-field excitement of the middle of the last century, or perhaps even those of Hudson Bay voyageurs of a century or more back. There were many unidentified graves all the way round the Bend, he said.
The river walls fell back a bit on both sides as we neared our destination, and the low-hanging western sun had found a gap in the Selkirks through which it was pouring its level rays to flood with a rich amber light the low wooded benches at the abandoned crossing. The old Ferry-tower reared itself upward like the Statue of Liberty, bathing its head in the golden light of the expiring day. Steering for it as to a beacon, Blackmore beached the boat on a gravel bar flanking an eddy almost directly under the rusting cable. We would cross later to spend the night in a trapper’s cabin on the opposite bank, he said; as there was sure to be a shovel or two in the old ferry shacks, he had come there at once so as to get down to business without delay.
Right then and there, before we left the boat, I did a thing which I have been greatly gratified that I did do—right then and there. I drew my companions close to me and assured them that I had made up my mind to divide the spoils with them. Blackmore and Andy should have a gallon apiece, and Roos a quart. (I scaled down the latter’s share sharply, partly because he had thrown that stone back at me, and the nerve of it rankled, and partly—I must confess—out of “professional jealousy.” “Stars” and “Directors” never do hit off.) The rest I would retain and divide with Captain Armstrong as agreed. I did not tell them that I had high hopes that Armstrong would soften in the end and let me keep it all to take home. After all of them (including Roos) had wrung my hand with gratitude, we set to work, each in his own way.
The spot was readily located the moment we took the compass bearing. Pacing off was quite unnecessary. It was in the angle of a V-shaped outcrop of bedrock, where a man who knew about what was there could feel his way and claw up the treasure in the dark. It was an “inevitable” hiding place, just as Gibraltar is an inevitable fortress and Manhattan an inevitable metropolis. Yes, we each went to work in our own way. Blackmore and Andy found a couple of rusty shovels and went to digging; Roos climbed up into the old ferry basket to take a picture of them digging; I climbed up on the old shack to take a picture of Roos taking a picture of them digging. Nothing was omitted calculated to preserve historical accuracy. I had been in Baalbek just before the war when a German archæological mission had inaugurated excavation for Phœnician antiquities, and so was sapient in all that an occasion of the kind required.
The picture cycle complete, I strolled over to where Andy and Blackmore were making the dirt fly like a pair of Airedales digging out a badger. The ground was soft, they said, leaning on their shovels; it ought to be only the matter of minutes now. The “showings” were good. They had already unearthed a glove, a tin cup and a fragment of barrel iron. “Gorgeous stroke of luck for us that chap, K——, hit the stuff so hard up at Kinbasket,” I murmured ecstatically. Blackmore started and straightened up like a man hit with a steel bullet. “What was that name again?” he gasped. “K——,” I replied wonderingly; “some kind of a Swede, I believe Armstrong said. But what difference does his name make as long as....”
Blackmore tossed his shovel out of the hole and climbed stiffly up after it before he replied. When he spoke it was in a voice thin and trailing, as though draggled by the Weariness of the Ages. “Difference, boy! All the difference between hell and happiness. About two years ago K—— dropped out of sight from Revelstoke, and it was only known he had gone somewhere on the Bend. A week after he returned he died in the hospital of the ‘D. T’s.’”
Roos (perhaps because he had the least to lose by the disaster) was the only one who had the strength to speak. It seemed that he had studied Latin in the high school. “Sic transit gloria spiritum frumenti,” was what he said. Never in all the voyage did he speak so much to the point.
Blackmore frowned at him gloomily as the mystic words were solemnly pronounced. “Young feller,” he growled, “I don’t savvy what the last part of that drug-store lingo you’re spitting means; but you’re dead right about the first part. Sick is sure the word.”
We spent the night in an empty trapper’s cabin across the river. Charity forbids that I lift the curtain of the house of mourning.