Berwick had been but a few months on Judas Creek, having essayed to try his fortune in Canada's most western province. Fortune meant much to him—for lack of it hindered his marriage with the one necessary girl, Alice Peel, the only daughter of Surgeon-Major Peel. This was one cause of his presence on the frontier: another was that he and his religion had "fallen out" years ago. His father had intended him for the Church, and here he was....
"The Creek is falling rapidly, we can hardly hear it now," remarked John.
"Dat's so," was Joe's reply. He was laconic.
John's thoughts went back to his prospects. Much of his small capital had gone into the works. Joe was not in love—he had no capital save his strength of body, and his religion was negligible. When first this French-Canadian had arrived in British Columbia, and started work in a saw-mill, he had refused to work on Sunday, until the foreman told him that the devil never crossed the Rocky Mountains—which silenced his scruples. For sure, the Rocky Mountains were very high!
"I think we should empty the shaft to-morrow with seventy or seventy-five buckets."
"I guess dat's so."
Again Berwick relapsed into silence, and kept his mind on his many problems: had he or had he not better throw up his Judas Creek Claim, and strike out for the scene whence came these wonderful tales?
The volume of the Creek was diminishing with abnormal rapidity. For three days now frost had been upon the canyon, and the flying spray had frozen upon the boulders. The rushing, gurgling stream, falling over rocks and sunken logs, had during that time been sucking down bubbles of cold air, which sealed the fine ice particles to the river bed. For miles Judas Creek was lined with anchor ice, encasing the rocks with a coating, sickly, white, insidious. In the darkness the opaque ice seemed to shine out in phosphorescence; in fact, it threw back the light of the stars overhead, which seemed to have lowered themselves in the heavens—so bright and grand were they.
At a point a mile below the little pool where the nucleus of the mass now filling the river-bed had formed, a tree was stretched across the torrent. It had fallen into the stream above, and floated down until it jammed, holding back the current. The avalanche—as the thickening stream had now become—found this tree, and swept against it but a second, when it snapped. Now the flow of the river became a seething mass of ice and sticks—four feet high—travelling at the rate of several miles an hour, picking up all that came in its way. It passed the mouth of several tributaries, which lent it increase of force: still its speed quickened: the grinding noise increased—logs, sticks, masses of ice and great roots of trees appeared for an instant on its surface and sank again. Now the wave was five feet—now six feet high—broadening out, gaining yet in speed, still more effectually holding back the river's flow.
The gradual silencing of the river's roar was getting on the nerves of John Berwick, who was miles down-stream, far below the ice-flow. The river had tapered into a little rill.