Gold, Gold, in Cariboo! A Story of Adventure in British Columbia
Page 26
CHAPTER XXVI.
RAMPIKE'S WINTER QUARTERS.
"Hallo, there! Hallo!" cried Steve as soon as his eyes fell upon the manand his rocker; but Steve's voice was so pitiably weak and small in acountry where mud-banks are built like mountains, that it did not evenwake an echo.
"Come along, Steve; it's no good shouting for half an hour yet. Look outfor the prickly pears!" said Ned, and so saying he plunged into a littleravine, whose beggarly barrenness cried aloud to winter to come and hideit from the face of the sun.
"It's all very well to tell a man to look out for them," answered Stevein the peevish voice of sickness, "but there is nothing else to step on.It's all thorns and sharp stones in this confounded country."
"Never mind, stick to it, old chap."
"Just what I am doing, worse luck to it," muttered Steve, trying to tearhimself away from a patch of little cacti upon which he hadinadvertently sat down.
Ned turned and saw Steve's plight, and the white woe-begone face of hiscomrade only heightened the comedy of the position. So that there, atthe last gasp, sick and worn-out, these two failures, with theirstomachs empty and their soles full of thorns, stood and laughed untilthe tears rolled down their cheeks.
From the next step in the bench which led to the river Ned joined hisdeep bass to Steve's, and together they shouted their loudest to attractthe man's attention. In vain. Whoever he was the man worked on, bendingover his rocker, with the gold fever at his heart and the boom of thegreat river in his ears.
"It's no good, we must go right down to him," said Ned; and five minuteslater he and Steve stood together upon the bar on which the man was atwork. But so intent was he upon his rocking, or so silent was theapproach of his visitors' bare and bleeding feet over the greatboulders, that it was not until Ned's shadow fell upon him that thegold-worker was aware of a stranger's presence.
Then quick as thought he sprang to his feet, snatching up a Winchesteras he did so, and covering his men with it before he had time to lookinto their faces.
"Stand off!" he roared, "or by 'Mity I'll let light through you!" andfor the moment it seemed a mere toss-up whether he would shoot or not.But the men he spoke to were as reckless of life as he was. Hardship hadtaught them that a human life is not such a wonderfully big stake as thefat townsmen seem to think.
"You're in a tearing hurry to shoot, ain't you?" asked Steve coolly."How would it be if we were to talk first? Don't you know us, Rampike?"
At the first sound of Steve's voice the miner had dropped his rifle intothe hollow of his arm, and now he came forward, and holding out a hugehairy paw, yellow with river mud, said simply, "Shake."
It was not a very effusive greeting, but men don't "gush" much in theupper country, and yet that glimpse of a friendly face, and grip of afriendly hand, acted as a wonderful restorative upon the tired naturesof both Steve and Ned. The sky itself seemed to get clearer and themountain air less chill now that they had run against a "pal" once more.
"Wal, sonny, did you strike Pete's Creek?" was old Rampike's firstquestion after they had all three "shaken some."
"We did so," answered Steve.
"Any 'pay' up there?"
"I should smile," replied the Yankee, using the slang of his country,and throwing down the belt of dust which he had clung to through all hiswanderings.
"Why, this is free gold!"
"You bet it is; and there is enough for everyone we know and to spare,"added Steve, "where that came from."
For a minute or two Rampike only turned the gold over and over in hishands and said nothing. At last he asked:
"Did you git Cruickshank?"
"No, never saw him," answered Ned.
"Praise the Lord you ain't got everything. I ain't sure as I wouldn'truther look at him through the back-sights of this here, than find acrik like yourn;" and the old man passed his hand caressingly along thebarrel of his "44.70."
"But, say, you look mighty hard set. Have you any grub along with you?"
"Not an ounce of flour, and this is the last of our meat;" and so sayingNed pulled out of his pocket the ration which he had kept for Chance.
"It's pretty lucky that I'm well heeled in the way of provisions, ain'tit, else we'd all starve. Wal, come along up to the 'dug-out;'" and sosaying he picked up his coat and rifle and led up to the bluff, untilall three stood before the door of his winter residence.
Next to the homes of the pre-historic cavemen, and a few rudestone-heaps in which the Caucasian Ossetes live, the "dug-outs" alongthe Frazer river are the most miserable abodes ever fashioned forthemselves by men. And yet these holes in the hill, with doors and roofsaflush with the hillside, are better adapted to resist the intense coldof a British Columbian winter than either frame-shack or log-hut.
"Come right in, lads," said Rampike, putting his foot against the plankswhich served him for a door, and thus rudely clearing the way for hisvisitors into a little dark interior with walls and floor of Frazerriver mud.
A rough table, a solitary chair, and a kind of bench furnished the hovelsomewhat more luxuriously than might have been expected, but unless youtook a deep interest in geology the walls and general surroundings inRampike's reception-room were distinctly crude and unpleasant.
If, however, you cared for geology, you could study specimens of theFrazer river system through the wide chinks between the boards whichwalled the room without even leaving your chair. Indeed, there was more"bed rock," as Rampike called it, than boarding in the composition ofhis walls.
But neither geology nor furniture attracted any attention from Steve orNed. When they entered the cabin their eyes lit upon two things only,and it was a good hour before they took any real interest in anythingelse. The two centres of attraction were a frying-pan and a billy, roundwhich all three men knelt and served, making themselves into cooks,stokers, or bellows, until the billy sang on the hearth and the baconhissed in the pan.
Then for a while there was silence, and this story does not begin againuntil someone struck a match upon the seat of his pants. I believe itwas Rampike, because, having had more experience than Steve, he couldbolt his food faster. I know that it was not Ned, for he could neverfinish his meal until about the end of Steve's first pipe. Steve said itwas because the Englishman eat so much. Ned said that in England men eattheir food, in America they "swallered down their grub." "Swallerin'down your grub," he said, "was a faster but less satisfactory processthan eating your food." But as I wish to remain upon friendly terms withboth disputants, I cannot enter into this matter.
"Do you reckon to go in again this fall?" asked Rampike, without anyprelude but a puff of tobacco smoke.
"To the creek?" said Ned, reaching across his neighbour for the billy."Yes, we must go in, and that soon."
"What's your hurry? Steve here cain't travel, and you're pretty nighplayed out though you are hard; and as for the gold, that'll stay rightthere till spring."
"You forget that there were three of us at Antler. Phon is up at thecreek now."
"Phon! What, that Chinee! Is he up at the crik?"
"If he is alive he is," answered Ned. "He may have starved for all Iknow."
"Starved! not he; but you'll never see _that_ heathen agen. He'd live ondirt or nothin' at all, any Chinee can do that; but you bet your life heain't up there now. He's just skipped out to Victoria by some other roadwith all the dust he can pack along. That's what Phon has done."
"You don't know him, Jim, and you aren't fair to him. No westerner everis fair to a Chinaman. Phon will stay by the creek. My only fear is thatwe sha'n't be able to find the creek."
"Not find the crik, you say! Why, Ned Corbett, _you_ ain't no bloomin'tenderfoot in the woods, are you? You ain't likely to forgit your way tothe bank when the whole business belongs to you?"
"Perhaps not, but I've been blind for a week;" and then answering theinquiry in Rampike's eyes, Ned lighted his pipe and told the whole storyof his own and Steve Chance's wanderings, from the time when they struckPete's Creek until
their return to the Frazer.
Now and again Rampike broke in upon the thread of the narrative withsome pertinent question, or a comment as forcible as a kick from a mule,but he managed to keep his pipe going pretty steadily until Ned came toSteve's feat in "blazing." Then the old man's wrath broke out, and hispipe even dropped from his mouth. For a moment he looked at Steve inspeechless indignation, and then he expressed himself thus:
"Strike me pink," he said, "ef a real down-easter ain't a bigger bornfool in the woods than any bloomin' Britisher I ever heerd tell on.That's so."
After this there was a pause, during which Steve snored peacefully, andold Rampike, having made an exhaustive examination of the bowl of hispipe, proceeded to refill it with chips from his plug of T. & B.
At length Ned began again:
"You've been looking for the creek yourself, haven't you?"
"No. I stayed right here, making wages on that bar there."
"I wonder who made those camps then which we found along the divide. Ican't think that those were Indian camps;" and Ned told his companion ofthe camps which he and Steve had stumbled upon during their search forPete's Creek, as well as of that glove found by the bear tracks.
"Bear tracks!" growled Rampike, "not they. A softy who would blaze thewrong side of a tree wouldn't know bear tracks from the tracks of agal's shoe with a French heel to it. Cruickshank's tracks, that's what_they_ was, and ef you don't see more of 'em before you get your goldout of Pete's Crik you may call me the biggest liar in Cariboo!"
"You don't mean to say that you think Cruickshank would dare to dog_us_?"
"Dog _you_! That man would dog the devil for gold."
This was a new idea to Ned. If there was any truth in it, then allPhon's stories of faces seen in the pool, of eyes which watched thegold, of figures which rustled ever so lightly over the dry sal-lal onthe canyon's edge, when all save Phon and the night owls slept, allthese stories might be something more than the imaginings of a crazedChinaman's brain.
For a while Ned sat silently smoking and looking thoughtfully into theembers. Then he rose, and knocking the ashes out of his pipe said:
"I am going to look for Phon to-morrow if Steve seems well enough to beleft here. Shall you come?"
"Yes, I reckon I may as well. You cain't hev all the sport, sonny. I'mruther partial to gunning myself."