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

by Clive Phillipps-Wolley

  CHAPTER V.

  "IS THE COLONEL 'STRAIGHT?'"

  At the very last moment, when all Corbett's party, except Cruickshank,had yielded to despair, the Indian Jim gave in, and sold his animals asthey stood for sixty dollars a head. This included the purchase ofpack-saddles, cinches, and other items essential to a packer's outfit.

  The steamer for Douglas started at 8 p.m., and it was long afterbreakfast on the same day that the eyes of Corbett and Chance, who weresmoking outside their inn, were gladdened by the sight of Phon andCruickshank driving ten meek-looking brutes up to the front of theMansion House.

  Having tied each pony short by the head to the garden rail, Cruickshankbegan to organize his forces. There were the ponies, it was true, buttheir packs and many other things had still to be bought. There was muchto be done and very little time to do it in. Then it was thatCruickshank showed himself to the greatest advantage. For days he hadappeared to dawdle over his bargaining with Jim, until Ned almostthought that Indian and white together were in league against him; nowhe felt miserable at the mere memory of his former suspicions.Cruickshank knew that no man can hurry an Indian, and thereforeabstained from irritating Jim by attempting the impossible. The resultof this was that at the end of the time at his disposal Cruickshank hadby his indifference convinced Jim that he cared very little whether hegot the horses or not, so that now the Indian was in a hurry to sellbefore the steamer should carry Cruickshank and his dollars away toDouglas. So Cruickshank bought the ponies, bought them cheap, and,moreover, just in time to catch the boat. This was all he had struggledfor.

  But now that he had white men to deal with his tactics changed. Thesemen knew the value of time and could hurry, therefore Cruickshankhurried them. To every man he gave some independent work to do. No onewas left to watch another working. Whilst one dashed off to buy storesanother took the horses to the forge to be shod, and old Phon was leftto repair the horse furniture and overhaul the outfit generally.Cruickshank himself went off to buy gunny sacks, boxes, ropes, andsuch-like, rendered necessary by the absence of _aparejos_, needing theknowledge of an expert in their selection.

  It was already late in the afternoon, and Ned, hot and dusty, and ashappy as a schoolboy, was helping the smith to shoe the last of theponies, when Roberts, who had done his own work, walked into the forge.

  For a minute or two Roberts stood unnoticed, observing hisfellow-countryman with eyes full of a sort of hero-worship, commoner ata public school than in the world.

  But Ned was one of those fellows who win men's hearts without trying todo so; a young fellow who said what he thought without waiting to pickhis words, who did what he liked, and luckily liked what was good, andhonest, and manly, and who withal looked the man he was, upstanding,frank, and absolutely fearless. Ned had been in the forge for perhapshalf a day or more, and had already so won the heart of the smith thatthat good man with his eyes on the boy's great forearm had been hintingthat there was "just as much money in a good smithy as there was in mostof them up-country claims."

  But Ned was bent on gold-mining and seeing life with the hard-fists, sothough he loved to swing the great smith's hammer he was not to betempted from his purpose, though he was quite ready to believe that asmith in New Westminster could earn more by his hands than many aprofessional man by his brains in Westminster on the Thames.

  "Hullo, Rob! have you got through with your work?" cried Ned, catchingsight of his friend at last.

  "Yes. I've done all I've got to do; can I lend you a hand?"

  "Why, no, thanks; my friend here is putting on the last shoe. But whatis the matter? you look as if you had got 'turned round' in the bush,and were trying to think your way out;" and Ned laid his hand laughinglyon his friend's shoulder.

  Roberts laughed too, but led the younger man outside, and once thereblurted out his trouble.

  "Look here, Corbett, ever since that gambling row I've had my eye onCruickshank, and I thought that I knew him for a rascal, but blow me ifhe hasn't got beyond me this time."

  "How so, Rob?"

  "Well, I'm half-inclined to think he's honest after all. He is a realrustler when he chooses anyway," added the poet admiringly.

  "Oh, I expect he is as honest as most of his kind. Why shouldn't he be?All men haven't the same ideas of honesty out here; and if he isn'thonest it doesn't matter much to us, does it?" asked Ned carelessly.

  "Doesn't it? Ain't you trusting him with a good many thousand dollars?"asked Roberts with some asperity.

  "No, I don't think so. You see, Rob, if he is, as you thought, acard-sharper and a bogus estate-agent, my money is lost already; hecan't clear out with the claims or the packs even if he wants to. Butwhy do you think he is a rogue?"

  "I tell you I'm beginning to think that he isn't."

  "Bully for you, that's better!" cried Ned approvingly; "but what hasworked this change in your opinions, Rob?"

  "Well, last night that scoundrelly siwash, Captain Jim, tried to work aswindle with those pack-ponies, and Cruickshank wouldn't have it. Jimwas to sell you a lot of unsound beasts at eighty dollars a head. Youwould never have noticed that they had healed sores on their backs, andif Cruickshank had held his tongue he was to have had twenty dollars apony, and the way he 'talked honest' to that Indian was astonishing, youbet."

  "How did you find all this out?" asked Ned.

  Roberts looked a little uncomfortable and flushed to the roots of hishair, but at length made the best of it, and admitted that he hadfollowed the two men and overheard their conversation.

  "You see, Ned," he added, "it's not very English, I know, but you mustfight these fellows with their own weapons."

  For a while Ned said nothing, though he frowned more than Roberts hadever seen him frown before, and his fingers tugged angrily at his slightmoustache.

  "Roberts," he said at last, "I agree with you, this sort of thing isn'tvery English, I'm hanged if it is; but I've been pretty nearly assuspicious as you have, so I can't afford to talk. Once for all, do youknow anything against the colonel?"

  "No," hesitated Roberts, "I don't know anything against Dan, but Bub--."

  "Oh, to blazes with Bub!" broke in Corbett angrily. "A man cannot beresponsible for every one of his cousins and kinsmen. From to-day I meanto believe in Cruickshank as an honest man, until I prove him to be aknave. You had better do the same, Rob; spying after a fellow as we havebeen doing is enough to make an honest man sick;" and Ned Corbett made awry face as if the mere thought of it left a bad taste in his mouth.

  "All right, that's a-go then. He was honest about these cayuses anyway,and if he does go back on us we'll fire him higher than a sky-rocket;"and so saying Roberts lent Ned a hand to collect the said cayuses. Theseat the first glance would have struck an English judge of horseflesh asbeing ten of the very sorriest screws that ever stood upon four legs;but at least they showed to Roberts' practised eye no signs of old sorebacks, none of those half-obliterated scars which warn the _cognoscenti_of evils which have been and are likely to recur.

  Taken in a body, they were a little too big for polo ponies, and alittle too ragged, starved, and ill-shaped for a respectablecostermonger's cart. There was one amongst them, a big buckskin standingnearly 14.2 hands, which looked fairly plump and able-bodied, but atonedfor these merits by an ugly trick of laying back her ears and showingthe whites of her eyes whenever she got a chance.

  The most typical beast of his class was one Job, a parti-coloured brute(or pinto as they call them in British Columbia), with one eye brown andthe other blue, and a nose of the brightest pink, as if he suffered froma chronic cold and a rough pocket-handkerchief. Job's bones stared atyou through his skin, his underlip protruded and hung down, giving himan air of the most abject misery, and even a Yorkshire horse-dealercould not have found a good point to descant upon from his small weakquarters to his ill-shaped shoulder.

  But though Job's head was fiddle-shaped there was a good deal in it, asthose were likely to discover who had given sixty dollars for him, an
dexpected to get sixty dollars' worth of work out of him. He had not beenpacking since the days when he trotted as a foal beside a "greasers'"train for nothing. At present he was the meekest, most ill-used-lookingbrute on the Pacific coast, and Corbett was just remarking to Roberts"that that poor devil of a pony would never be able to carry a hundredand fifty pounds let alone two hundred over a bad road," when thebuckskin let out, and caught the bay alongside of him such a kick on thestifle as made that poor beast go a little lame for days. No one noticedthat the bite which set the buckskin kicking was given by old Job, whomoved his weary old head sadly, just in time, however, to let the kickgo by and land on the unoffending body of his neighbour.

  An hour later all the horses were up again at the hotel, and the billhaving been settled Phon and Roberts drove the train down to the wharf,where the steamer for Douglas, a small stern-wheeler, was waiting forher passengers and her cargo. With the exception of Job, all the cayuseswere put on board at once and secured, but seeing that there was still agood deal of luggage in small parcels up at the hotel, Chance kept "thatquiet old beast Job, just to carry down the odds and ends;" and Job,with a sigh which spoke volumes to those who could understand, ploddedaway to do the extra work set aside as of right for the meek andlong-suffering.

  It is an aggravating employment under any circumstances, the employmentof packing. Many men, otherwise good men, swear naturally (and freely)as soon as they engage in it; but then, why I know not, the verypresence of a horse makes some men swear. Steve knew very little aboutpacking anyway, and had he known more he would not have found it easy tofasten his bundles on to the back of a beast which shifted constantlyfrom one leg to another, and always seemed to be standing uphill ordownhill, with one leg at least a foot shorter than the other three.

  When Steve spoke to him (with an angry kick in the stomach), Job wouldlift his long-suffering head with an air of meek dejection, and shiftinghis leg as required plant a huge hoof solidly upon Steve's moccasinedfoot. If I could paint the look on that great ugly equine head as itturned with leering eye and projecting nether lip, and looked into theanguished face of Steve Chance, I should be able to teach my reader moreof cayuses (the meanest creatures on God's earth) than I can ever hopeto do. But even with Job to help him, Steve got his load down to theboat at last, and put all aboard except a new pack-saddle, which he hadtaken off the pack-horse and laid down on the ground beside him.

  With lowered head and half-shut eyes Job stood for some minutespatiently waiting, and then, as Steve came over the side to drive him onboard with his fellows, the old horse heaved a long, long sigh, andbefore Steve could reach him lay down slowly and gently upon thatpack-saddle. Of course when he got up, the pack-saddle was demolished,and as the last whistle had sounded, there was no time to get anotherbefore leaving Westminster.

  A new saddle would have to be bought at Douglas, and that would costmoney, or made upon the road, and that would mean delay, so Job, with acynical gleam in his wall-eye, trotted meekly and contentedly on board.He had entered his first protest against extra work.

  Five minutes later the steamer _Lillooet_ cast loose from her moorings,the gangway was taken in, and the gallant little stern-wheeler wentcleaving her way up through the yellow Frazer, on her forty-mile run tothe mouth of Harrison river, steaming past long mud-flats and many amile of heavy timber.

  A day and a half was the time allowed for the journey from NewWestminster to Douglas, but Corbett and Chance could hardly believe thatthey had taken so long when they came to their moorings again at thehead of the Harrison Lake.

  To them the hours had seemed to fly by, for their eyes and thoughts werebusy, intent at one moment upon the bare mud-banks, watching for game orthe tracks of the game, the next straining to catch a glimpse of deerfeeding at dawn upon the long gray hills--hills which were a pale dun inthe light of early morning, but which became full of rich velvetyshadows as the day wore on.

  Overhead floated the fleecy blue and white sky of spring-time; on thehills patches of wild sunflower mingled with the greenish gray of thesage brush, and here and there, even on the arid barren banks of theFrazer itself, occurred little "pockets" of verdure--hollows withfresh-water springs in them, where the tender green of the youngwillows, and the abundant white bloom of the choke cherries and olalibushes, made Edens amongst the waste of alkaline mud-banks, Edenstenanted and made musical by all the collected bird-life of that barrenland.

  The only difficult bit of water for the little steamer was the sevenmiles of the Harrison river, a rapid, turbulent stream, up which theS.S. _Lillooet_ had to fight every inch of the way; but beyond that laythe lake, a broad blue lake, penned in by steep and heavily-timberedmountains, and beyond the one-house town of Douglas, at which Ned andhis fellow-passengers disembarked about noon of the second day out fromWestminster.

  From Douglas the ordinary route was by river and lake, with a few shortportages to _Lillooet_ on the Frazer; and in 1862 there were steamersupon all the lakes (Lillooet, Anderson, and Seton), and canoes (with acertainty of a fair breeze in summer) for such as preferred them.

  But Ned and his friends had decided that as they had a pack-train, andwould be compelled to pack part of the way in any case, they might justas well harden their hearts and pack the whole distance, more especiallysince they had ample time to make their journey in, and not too muchmoney to waste upon steamboat fares. So at Douglas Cruickshank boughtanother pack-saddle for about twice what it would have cost atWestminster (freight was high in the early days), and suggested that asthe one house (half store, half hotel) was full to overflowing, theymight as well strike out for themselves, and as it was only mid-day makea few miles upon their road before camping for the night.

  "You see," argued Cruickshank, "it's no violet's camping where so manymen have camped before, and a good many of them greasers and Indians."

  Corbett and Chance were new to the discomforts of the road, and hadstill to learn the penalty for camping where Indians have camped; butfor all that they took the colonel's advice and assented to hisproposal, though it meant bidding good-bye to their fellow-men a day ortwo sooner than they need have done.

  Once the start had been decided upon Cruickshank lost no time in gettingunder weigh. The diamond hitch had no mysteries for him, the loops flewout and settled to an inch where he wanted them to, every strand in hisropes did its share of binding and holding fast; his very curses seemedto cow the most stubborn cayuse better than another man's, and when hecinched the unfortunate beasts up you could almost hear their ribscrack.

  Job alone nearly got the better of the colonel, but even he just missedit. Cruickshank cinched this wretched scarecrow a little less severelythan the rest, but when later on he saw old Job with his cinch allslack, a malevolent grin came over his face, and he muttered, "Oh,that's your sort, is it, an old-timer? So am I!" And after giving Job akick which would have knocked the wind out of anything, he cinched himup again before he could recover himself, and then led him to drink. Asthe horse sucked down the water greedily Cruickshank muttered tohimself, "_Bueno_, I guess your load will stick now until you arethirsty again." After this Job and the colonel seemed to have a mutualunderstanding, and as long as he was within hearing of Cruickshank'scurses there was no better pack-pony on the road than old Job.

  It seems as if men who have been used to packing, and have had a spellof rest from their ordinary occupation, itch to handle the ropes again;at least, it is only in this way that I can explain the readinessdisplayed by so many of Ned's fellow-passengers to lend a hand in fixinghis packs for him.

  In an hour from the time of disembarkation the train was ready to start,and the welcome cry of "All set!" rang out, after which there was alittle hand-shaking, a lighting of pipes, and the procession filed awayup the river, Cruickshank leading the first five ponies, then Robertsplodding patiently along on foot, then another five ponies, and then, aslong as the narrow train would permit of it, Ned and Steve trudgingalong, chatting and keeping the ponies on the move.

 
Cruickshank was already some distance ahead, and even Steve and Ned werealmost outside the little settlement, when a big red-headed Irishman,whom Corbett remembered as his fighting friend at Westminster, camerunning after him.

  "Say," asked Mr. O'Halloran, rather out of breath from his run. "Say,are you and that blagyard partners?"

  "Which?" asked Ned in amaze. "My friend Chance?"

  "No, no, not this boy here--that fellow riding ahead of the train."

  "Cruickshank? Yes, we are partners in a way," replied Ned.

  "And you know it was his brother you laid out? Faith, you laid him outas nate as if it was for a berryin'," he added with a grin.

  "I've heard men say that the colonel is Bub Cruickshank's brother,"admitted Ned; "but the colonel is all right, whatever Bub is."

  "And you and he ain't had no turn-up along of that scrimmage down atWestminster?" persisted O'Halloran.

  "Not a word. I don't think he knew about it."

  "Oh yes, he did. I saw Bub and him talking it over, and you may bet yourboots the only reason he didn't bark is that he means to bite--yes, andbite hard too. It's the way with them dark, down-looking blagyards,"added the honest Irishman, in a tone of the deepest scorn.

  "Ah, well, I don't think Cruickshank is likely to try his teeth on me,"laughed Ned. "If he does I must try that favourite rib-bender of yoursupon him," and Ned gripped O'Halloran's hand and strode gaily after histrain.

  For a moment the red-headed one stood looking after his friend, and thenheaving a great sigh remarked:

  "Indade and I'd like a turn wid you mesilf, but if that black-lookingblagyard does a happorth of harm to you, it's Kornaylius O'Halloran as'll put a head on him."