CHAPTER XXV.
IN THE CAMP OF THE CHILCOTINS.
As the echoes of Ned's hoot died away amongst the pines, both he andSteve became conscious that they were no longer alone. Someone else hadentered the clearing, and a pair of human eyes were intently fixed uponthem. This both the white men knew, not by sight or hearing, but by thatother sense for which we have no better name than instinct. They had notheard a rustle among the leaves, nor had Steve seen so much as a shadowupon the grass, and yet both men turned simultaneously towards the samepoint, and Ned, in spite of his blindness, said "_Clahowyah_" asconfidently as if he held his visitor by the hand.
"_Clahowyah_" (How do?), repeated a deep guttural voice from the shadowof the pines, and as he spoke a broad-shouldered wiry redskin steppedsoftly over the logs to meet the whites. If he always moved as silentlyas he moved then, it was no wonder that the listening deer so oftenfound themselves looking down the barrel of Anahem's Hudson Bay musketbefore their great ears had given them any warning of their danger.
"Thank God, we are saved," whispered Ned, as the chief's words reachedhim. "He has traded with whites, or he wouldn't speak Chinook. Lead meup to him."
But Anahem saw the outstretched hand as soon as Chance, and steppingquickly forward took it.
"_Mika halo nanitch?_" (You don't see?), he asked.
"_Halo!_" replied Ned, and he pointed to his swollen eyelids.
"_Mika comtax_--by and by _skookum nanitch_" (I understand, by and byyou'll see all right), replied the chief, and then turning he repeatedthe owl's call twice, and almost immediately a low answer came to himfrom the woods above.
Luckily for Steve and Ned, the chief of the Chilcotins had met manywhite men when in his early days he had hunted on the Stikeen river, andall those whom he had met had been servants of a company which hasalways kept good faith with its Indian neighbours and employes. Thehonesty and fair dealing of the Hudson Bay Company saved the two whitemen's lives from Anahem and his tribesmen, as it has saved many ahundred lives both of redskins and whites since the day when the tworaces first met. Anahem knew that a fresh class of whites had latelycome into his country--whites who cared nothing for skins and trading,but who spent all their time digging and making mud-pies by the riverbanks. He knew it because he had heard of them, had seen their strangecanoes upon the Frazer, bottom upwards sometimes; and once he had foundone of their tin cups, with something scratched upon it, hanging to apine-tree, underneath which lay a little pile of bones which the_coyotes_ had cleaned.
Probably these men, he thought, were gold-diggers, and lost as thatother one had been lost, whose bones he had seen; but at any rate theywere both very weak, and one was blind, so for the sake of that greatCompany which was honest, Anahem determined to help these men, who,within half an hour of their first meeting with the chief, lay warm andat rest within the glow of his camp-fire.
Then it seemed to Steve that their troubles fell away from them likethe forest shadows before the firelight, and it seemed already years agosince he and Ned had sat down in the bushes to die. Anahem's tribe wasout for its fall hunt, and Ned and Steve had luckily wandered within thearms of the great drag-net of men, which was still sweeping thehillsides for game. As they lay by the camp-fire Ned and his companioncould hear the hunters calling to each other; but the net was brokennow, and the cries were the cries of the owl who has killed, not of theowl who still seeks his quarry.
Here and there high up amongst the woods Steve could see a little columnof smoke, marking the spot where some belated hunter had made up hismind to pass the night. The fire would serve to cook his food and keephim warm; and if any friend chose to come and help him home with hisgame, the smoke would guide him. But most of the hunters brought backtheir game to camp that night, dragging it along the trails, or packingit on their backs, so that before Steve slept he had seen fifteencarcases brought in as the result of this one hunt.
He had often wondered in old days, how men who neither ploughed norsowed nor kept cattle could manage to live through the long wintermonths: now he wondered no longer. The Chilcotins had been in camp for aweek, and there were only six men amongst them who had muskets, and yetthere were four great stacks of raw hides in their camp already--stacksas high as a man's head, and on every bough within a hundred yards ofthe fires were hanging strips and chunks of deers' meat.
The camp reminded Steve of the appearance of a hawthorn bush, in which abutcher-bird has built its nest,--the whole place was red with rawmeat, and there were piles of soft gray down and hair, three and fourfeet high. These were the scrapings of a hundred hides, roughly cleanedby the Indian women during the week.
In such a camp as Anahem's hunger is an easy thing to cure, and that andblindness were Ned's chief complaints; and even the blindness yielded ina day or two to a certain dressing prepared for Ned by the squaws. ButSteve Chance did not recover as easily as Corbett did. The prostrationfrom which he suffered was too severe to be cured by a long night's restand a couple of square meals. At night he lay and tossed in brokenslumbers, and dreams came to him which wearied him more than if he hadnever slept. He saw, so he said, the gold-camp every night of his life,and Phon the only human being in it; and all the while Phon stood in aflood of gold dust, which rose higher and higher, until it swelled andbroke over him and ran on a yellow heavy flood like the flood of theFrazer.
Day after day Ned waited and hoped against hope, until the Chilcotinswere ready to strike their camp and go home for the winter. He hadalready done his utmost to persuade Anahem to search for Phon, but thechief took very little notice of him. Either he thought that Ned likeSteve was rambling in his mind, or he did not understand him (for Anahemspoke very little Chinook, and Ned spoke less), or, and that is probabletoo, he did not think it mattered much what became of a Chinaman; and asto the gold, if it really was there, it would probably wait until thewhite men could go and look for it themselves. If Ned would have gonewith him, Anahem would have gone perhaps to look for the creek; but Nedcould not leave Chance whilst he was ill, and Steve would not get well,so that ended the matter.
There seemed only one course open to Ned, and he prepared to take it.Anahem had told him as they talked one night over the camp-fire that hehad seen the smoke of a white man's fire coming from a dug-out on thebanks of the Frazer.
"How long ago was that?" asked Ned.
"On my way up here, about the time of the young moon," answered Anahem.
"Then that may be Rampike," muttered Ned; and the next day he got Anahemto show him the direction in which the dug-out lay.
"Could I get there in two days?" he asked.
"A _skukum_ (strong) Indian could. The sick white man can be there onthe third day at nightfall."
This was enough for Ned. Next morning he bought some meat and driedsalmon from his Indian friends, and guided by Anahem and followed byChance he left the camp. If Chance's strength would hold out until theycould reach the dug-out, he could nurse him there at his leisure, and byand by, when Steve was stronger, Ned and Rampike could go out togetherto look for Phon and Cruickshank. It was not impossible after all thatthey should find Phon still alive, though fish and roots and the innerbark of trees would be all that he could get to live upon. But wouldChance's strength hold out? That was the trouble. He was terribly wornand weak, and his eyes shone feverishly, and he neither slept well noreat well in spite of the fresh keen air. As he followed Anahem up asteep bluff Steve panted and his knees were unsteady, and when the chiefstopped at last upon a bald ridge overlooking the pine-woods, he layback upon his light load saying, "It's as well you've stopped, chief,at last. Another hundred yards, and I should have bucked my pack off."
Anahem looked surprised that even a sick man should complain of such atrifling hill. An old squaw would have carried two sacks (a hundredpounds) of flour up it without a murmur, and Steve's pack did not weighhalf that.
"Your bones," he said, smiling rather contemptuously, "white bone, ourbones wild bone," and then turning to Corbett he pointed out t
o himwhere the deep-bellied Frazer roared along in the valley below thepine-woods, and to one spot upon its banks, where, so he said, was thewhite man's dug-out.
"You see," he said, "where the sun will set."
"_Nawitka_" (Certainly), answered Ned.
"Now, look on the Frazer's banks under there where the sun will set, andyou will see one patch all the same, like blood."
"Yes, I see it."
"Now, look to that side of it," and he waved his hand to the left, "andyou will see one great mud-mountain like this;" and with his stick hedrew in the sandy soil at his feet a picture of a great cathedral organ,with pipes reaching from the river to the sky.
Ned was startled by the strange likeness which the chief's picture boreto a thing which the chief could never have seen, but he held his peaceand looked for the mud-mountain.
"Yes, chief," he said. "I see a great mountain of mud, but I cannot seethe shape of it from here."
"Not see the shape of him! Ah, my friend not see well yet," said Anahempityingly; and though Ned knew very well that his sight was as good asit had ever been, he said nothing.
He didn't want Anahem to think that wild sight like wild bone was betterthan the civilized samples of the same.
"Well, you see the mountain. By and by you come closer and see hisshape. Under that mountain, in the bank on this side the river, stop onewhite man. You keep along this trail," and Anahem pointed to the trackupon which they stood, "along the ridge, and by and by it will godownhill, and on the night of the third day you will see the white man.Good-bye," and before they knew that he was going the old chief turned,and like the shifting shadow of a cloud which the winds blow across thehillside, he moved away and was gone. There was no sound as he went--notwig snapped, no overall scraped against the bushes. In silence he hadcome, and in silence he had gone. For a moment the two with "parted lipsand straining eyes stood gazing where he sank," for indeed it seemed tothem as if the sea of the woods had opened and swallowed up theirfriend. Then Chance spoke:
"A creepy old gentleman, Ned; rather like one of Phon's devils."
"A deuced good devil to us, anyway. If we ever find Phon and the gold weshall owe our good luck to him, as we owe him our lives."
"Yes, I wish he had stopped. I should like to have given him a'potlatch.'"
"Just as well that you didn't offer him anything. He might have likedthis rifle, but I really doubt whether he knows enough about gold-dustto make him value that."
"That's what, Ned. But come on and let us get through this beastlyforest to those open benches below;" and Chance made as if he wouldburst his way through the barriers of serried pines which intervenedbetween him and the Frazer valley.
"What, again, Steve?" cried Ned. "Isn't one lesson enough for you? Ifyou tried that you would be lost again in ten minutes. No more shortcuts for me. I mean to stick to the trail, and you must follow me;" andso saying Corbett took up his bundle and went ahead at a quiet steadypace which, in five or six hours, brought Steve to the land of hisdesire, where what trees there were were great bull-pines standing farapart, and giving men lots of room for their feet below and wideglimpses of heaven above their heads.
As soon as they reached the open country Chance's spirits improved, andhis strength came back with his spirits, but for all that he was stillso weak that the progress which Ned and he made was very slow, and theirprovisions were again at a perilously low ebb when they came in sight ofthat strange freak of nature, opposite to which dwelt (so they hoped)their old friend Rampike. The bluff was exactly as Anahem had drawn it:an organ cast in some Titanic mould, the pipes of it two hundred feetfrom base to summit, and stained with all manner of vivid metalliccolours. At its foot was the gray Frazer, and the dull sky of earlywinter hung low about its head; but the organ was dumb from alleternity, unless those were its voices which ignorant men attributed tothe winds and the fretting foaming river.
For awhile the two wanderers stood staring in wonder at this strangelandmark, and then Steve's weary face lit up with a smile and a mistcame over his eyes.
"Ned, as I hope for heaven, there's smoke!" and he stretched out hisarm and pointed to where a thin blue column curled up against the sky.
Ned saw the smoke as clearly as Steve, but in spite of Steve'sentreaties he absolutely refused to press on towards it.
"No, old fellow, we will camp here for a couple of hours, and you musteat and sleep. That smoke is a long way from here yet, and we may missit to-night after all when we get low down amongst those sand-hills."
From where they stood the column of smoke looked within a stone's-throw,but Corbett knew well how the clear atmosphere of British Columbia candeceive eyes unused to measure distance amongst her mountains. So inspite of Steve's protestations the two men camped, and though he did notknow it, Steve ate Ned's lunch, and Ned carried Steve's away in hispocket in case they should not be able to reach the river by nightfall.That slender ration in Ned's pocket was the very last food which the twomen possessed, and Ned was already reproaching himself for his rashnessin starting so poorly provided.
"What if after all Rampike should not be at the dug-out, or, if there,should be himself short of grub?"
Luckily for Steve and Ned it seemed as if fortune had almost spent hermalice upon them, for that evening as they reached the edge of the lastbench above the Frazer, they saw that they had steered a true course.Right below them, issuing from a little black funnel in the mud-bankitself, rose the column of smoke, and in the bed of the river, upon asand-bar, they could see a man working a cradle.
Gold, Gold, in Cariboo! A Story of Adventure in British Columbia Page 25