Part 33 (1/2)

”Well,” said the surveyor dryly, ”that might mean trouble. You should get there first; but I can't stop long if you're late, because we've got to make the railroad while the grub holds out. Anyhow, I could leave you rations for two or three marches in a cache, and by hustling you should catch up.”

Gerald agreed to this, and soon afterward he went to sleep on the floor.

It was early in the evening, but he knew that the next eight or nine days' work would try him hard.

It was dark when the storekeeper wakened him, and after a hasty breakfast he went out with the surveyor. Dawn was breaking, and there was an ashy grayness in the east, but the sky was barred with clouds.

The black pines were slowly growing into shape against the faint glimmer of the snow. The cold was piercing and Gerald s.h.i.+vered while the surveyor gave him a few last directions; then he slung his heavy pack upon his shoulders and set off down the unpaved street. There were lights in the log shacks and once or twice somebody greeted him, but after a few minutes the settlement faded behind and he and his companions were alone among the tangled firs. No sound but the crunch of snow beneath their big shoes broke the heavy silence; the small trees, slanting drunkenly, were dim and indistinct, and the solitude was impressive.

Gerald's lips were firmly set as he pushed ahead. Theoretically, his task was simple; he had only to keep a fixed course and he must cut the surveyor's line of march, but in practise there were difficulties. It is not easy to travel straight in a rugged country where one is continually forced aside by natural obstacles; nor can one correctly allow for all the divergences. This, however, was not what troubled Gerald, for the plan he had worked out since the previous night did not include his meeting the surveyor. It was the smallness of the quant.i.ty of provisions his party could transport that he was anxious about, because he meant to make a much longer march than his superior had directed.

His companions were strong, stolid bushmen, whose business it was to carry the provisions and camp outfit. They knew nothing about trigonometry; but they were at home in the wilds, and Gerald was glad the weather threatened to prove cloudy. He did not want them to check his course by the sun. Properly, it was northwest; and he marched in that direction until it was unlikely that anybody from the settlement would strike his trail; then he headed two points farther west, and, seeing that the packers made no remark, presently diverged another point.

Traveling was comparatively easy all day. Wind and fire had thinned the bush, cleaning out dead trees and undergrowth, and the snow lay smooth upon the outcropping rock. Here and there they struck a frozen creek which offered a level road, and when dark came they had made an excellent march. Gerald was glad of this, because all the food he could save now would be badly needed before the journey was finished. For all that, he felt anxious as he sat beside the camp-fire after his frugal supper.

A bank of snow kept off the stinging wind; there was, fortunately, no lack of fuel, and, sitting close to the pile of snapping branches, the men were fairly warm; but the dark pines were wailing mournfully and thick gloom encroached upon the narrow ring of light. The eddying smoke leaped out of it and vanished with startling suddenness. Gerald's shoulders ached from the weight of his pack, and the back of one leg was sore. He must be careful of it, because he had a long way to go, and men were sometimes lamed by snowshoe trouble.

The two packers sat, for the most part, smoking silently. Gerald now and then gave them a pleasant word, but he did not wish their relations to become friendly, as it was not advisable that they should ask him questions about the march. Indeed, he shrank from thinking of it as he listened to the savage wind in the pine-tops and glanced at the surrounding darkness. The wilderness is daunting in winter, even to those who know it best; but Gerald with his gambler's instincts was willing to take a risk. If he went home with the surveyor, ruin awaited him.

For a time he sat drowsily enjoying the rest and warmth, and then, lying down on a layer of spruce-twigs, he went to sleep. But the cold wakened him. One of the packers got up, grumbling, and threw more branches on the fire, and Gerald went to sleep again.

Starting shortly before daylight, they were met by blinding snow, but they struggled on all day across a rocky elevation. The snow clogged their eyelashes and lashed their tingling cheeks until the pain was nearly unbearable; still, that was better than feeling them sink into dangerous insensibility. They must go on while progress was possible.

The loss of a day or two might prove fatal, and there was a chance of their getting worse weather.

It overtook them two days later when they sat s.h.i.+vering in camp with the snow flying past their heads and an icy blizzard snapping rotten branches from the buffeted trees. Twigs hurtled about their ears; the woods was filled with a roar like the sea; the smoke was blinding to lee of the fire, and its heat could hardly reach them a yard to windward.

Gerald drank a quart of nearly boiling black tea, but he could not keep warm. There was no feeling in his feet, and his hands were too numbed to b.u.t.ton his ragged coat, which had fallen open. When he tried to smoke, his pipe was frozen, and as he crouched beneath the snow-bank he wondered dully whether he should change his plans and face the worst his creditors could do.

By altering his course northerly when he resumed the march he might still strike the surveyor's line, but after another day or two it would be too late. Still, he thought of his father's fury and the shares that were bound to rise. If he were disowned, he must fall back upon surveying for a livelihood. It was unthinkable that he should spend the winter in the icy wilds, and the summer in portaging canoes over rocky hills and dragging the measuring chain through mosquito haunted bush. He could not see how he was to avoid exposure when Davies claimed his loan; but something might turn up, and he was sanguine enough to be content if he could put off the day of reckoning.

The blizzard continued the next morning and no one could leave camp; indeed, Gerald imagined that death would have struck down the strongest of them in an hour. But the wind fell at night, and when dawn broke they set out again in Arctic frost. One could make good progress in the calm air, though the glitter was blinding when the sun climbed the cloudless sky as they followed a winding stream. Then a lake offered a smooth path, and they had made a good march when dark fell.

In the night it grew cloudy and the temperature rose, and when they started at daybreak they were hindered by loose, fresh snow. At noon they stopped exhausted after covering a few miles; and the next day the going was not much better, for they were forced to flounder through a tangle of blown-down trees. It was only here and there that the pines and spruces could find sufficient moisture among the rocks, and they died and fell across each other in a dry summer.

On the seventh day after leaving the settlement the three men plodded wearily through thin forest as the gloomy evening closed in. Their shoulders were sore from the pack-straps, the backs of their legs ached with swinging the big snowshoes, and all were hungry and moody.

Provisions were getting low, and they had been compelled to cut down rations. Now the cold was Arctic, and a lowering, steel-gray sky showed between the whitened tops of the trees. The packers had been anxiously looking for blaze-marks all afternoon; and Gerald, knowing they would not find them, felt his courage sink. He was numb with cold, and he dully wondered whether he had taken too great a risk.

Presently one of the men, who had been searching some distance to the right, joined his comrade. They spoke together and then turned back to meet Gerald.

”Say, boss, isn't it time we struck the boys' tracks?” one asked.

”Yes,” said Gerald, recognizing that much depended on how he handled the situation. ”We should have picked them up this morning.”

The men were silent for a moment.

”Looks as if we'd got off our line,” one of them then said resolutely.

”How were you heading?”

”Northwest, magnetic.”