Part 14 (1/2)

Grenfell shook his head.

”It could never lift me back to where I was,” he said. ”Could it give me the steady nerves and the brain I used to have? There was a time when scarcely a big mine was started in the west before they sent their specimens to me. What could success offer me now besides a few more years of indulgence and an opportunity for drinking myself into my grave in comfort and with comparative decency?”

Weston supposed that this was the effect of weariness; but his comrade straightened himself a little, and his uncertain gaze grew steadier.

”There's one thing it can do,” he went on. ”It can show those who remember him as he was that Grenfell the a.s.sayer and mineralogist can still look round a mineral basin and tell just where the gold should be.”

Weston was no geologist, but he had seen enough of it to recognize that prospecting is an art. Men certainly strike a vein or alluvial placer by the merest chance now and then, but the trained man works from indication to indication until, though he is sometimes mistaken, he feels reasonably sure as to what waits to be uncovered by the blasting charge or shovel. Grenfell's previous account of the discovery had, however, not made quite plain the fact that he had adopted the latter course.

”You told me you found the quartz by accident when you went to drink at a creek,” he said. ”Any green hand might have done the same.”

Grenfell laughed.

”The point is that I knew there was gold in the valley. I told you we stayed there until the provisions had almost run out. I wanted material proof--and I was satisfied when I found that little strip of outcrop.”

”A little strip! You said the lead ran right back to the hill and one could follow it with an adit.”

”It does, although I haven't seen it. The adit would dip a little. The thing's quite certain.”

Weston once more became sensible of the misgivings that not infrequently had troubled him. His comrade, he believed, really had been a famous mineralogist, but now he was a frail and broken man with a half-muddled brain who could not be trusted to keep the fire going beneath the pots while he cooked a meal. He was also a prey to maudlin fancies, and it seemed quite possible that the mine was no more than a creation of his disordered imagination. There were only two things that partly warranted his belief in it-a fragment of quartz, and the presence of the dead man on the lonely range, though Weston admitted that there was a certain probability of Grenfell's having deluded Verneille too. He had, however, pledged himself to look for the lead, and that, at least, he meant to do. The search, in the meanwhile, was sufficient to occupy him, as he was one who escaped a good many troubles by confining his attention to the task in hand.

”Well,” he said, dismissing the matter from his mind, ”I'll turn out at sun-up, and when we've had breakfast we'll go on again.”

He lay down near the snapping fire and, drawing up the blanket to keep the rain from his face, was sound asleep in a few minutes. Grenfell, however, sat awake for a long time, s.h.i.+vering in the whirling smoke, and now and then glancing curiously at his companion.

CHAPTER IX

A FRUITLESS SEARCH

They had wandered far through the ranges, and camped beside several lonely lakes, none of which, however, proved to be the one for which they were searching, when Weston rose one morning from his lair among the dewy fern. He did it reluctantly, for during the past week he had carried Grenfell's load as well as his own, and it would have pleased him to lie still a little longer. His shoulders were aching, and the constant pressure of the pack-straps had galled them cruelly; but in one respect it would not have troubled him if his burden had been heavier, for their provisions were running out rapidly. There was a river close by, but he no longer felt the least inclination for a morning swim, or, indeed, for any occupation that was not obviously necessary. He had lived very sparingly of late, and had contrived that Grenfell got rather more than his share of the cut-down rations. It was clear to him that the older man's strength was rapidly failing.

He kicked the embers of the fire together, and, after laying on a few resinous billets split the night before, placed an inch or two of pork in the frying-pan, and then carefully shook out a double handful of flour from the almost-empty bag. This he beat up with water and poured into the hot pan when the pork was done. He watched it until it hardened a little on one side, when he flung it up into the air and caught it in the pan again. There is an art in making palatable flapjacks out of nothing but flour and water. When the meager breakfast was ready, he awakened Grenfell, who sat up grumbling.

”It's time we made a start. This is our last day,” said Weston.

Grenfell, who did not answer, made his toilet by b.u.t.toning his jacket and stretching himself, after which he blinked at his companion with watery eyes.

”There are no marble basins or delicately perfumed soaps in the bush,”

he said.

Weston laughed.

”I don't remember having seen them at the muskeg camp. In the meanwhile, breakfast's ready. I'm sorry there isn't a little more of it.”

His companion glanced at the frying-pan.

”A sc.r.a.p of rancid pork, and a very small flapjack--burnt at that! To think that human intelligence and man's force of will should be powerless without a sufficiency of such pitiable things. It's humiliating.”

Then, with a grimace of disgust, he stretched out his hand for the blackened pannikin.