Part 48 (1/2)
”Its stiffness, if that's what you mean,” Carroll answered with a smile.
”These big conifers look as if they'd been carved, like the wooden trees in the Swiss or German toys. They're impressive in a way, but they're too formally artificial.”
”That's not what I mean,” Vane said impatiently.
”To tell the truth, I didn't suppose it was. Anyway, these trees aren't spruce. They're red cedar; the stuff they make roofing s.h.i.+ngles of.”
”Precisely. Just now, s.h.i.+ngles are in good demand in the Province, and with the wooden towns springing up on the prairie, western millers can hardly send roofing material across the Rockies fast enough. Besides this, I haven't struck a creek more adapted for running down logs, and the last sharp drop to tide-water would give power for a mill. I'm only puzzled that none of the timber-lease prospectors have recorded the place.”
”That's easy to understand,” laughed Carroll. ”Like you, they'd no doubt first search the most difficult spots to get at.”
They went on, and when darkness fell they pitched their light tent beside the creek. It was now freezing hard, and after supper the men lay smoking, wrapped in blankets, with the tent between them and the stinging wind, while a great fire of cedar branches snapped and roared in front of them. Sometimes the red blaze shot up, flinging a lurid light on the stately trunks and tinging the men's faces with the hue of burnished copper; sometimes it fanned out away from them while the sparks drove along the frozen ground and the great forest aisle, growing dim, was filled with drifting vapor. The latter was aromatic; pungently fragrant.
”It struck me that you were disappointed when you got no mail at Comox,” Carroll remarked at length, feeling that he was making something of a venture.
”I was,” admitted Vane.
”That's strange,” Carroll persisted, ”because your hearing nothing from Nairn left you free to go ahead, which, one would suppose, was what you wanted.”
Vane happened to be in a confidential mood; though usually averse to sharing his troubles, he felt that he needed sympathy.
”I'd better confess that I wrote Miss Chisholm a few lines from Nanaimo.”
”And she didn't answer you? Now, I couldn't well help noticing that you were rather in her bad graces that night at Nairn's--the thing was pretty obvious. No doubt you're acquainted with the reason?”
”I'm not. That's just the trouble.”
Carroll reflected. He had an idea that Miss Horsfield was somehow connected with the matter, but this was a suspicion he could not mention.
”Well,” he said, ”as I pointed out, you're addicted to taking the hardest way. When we came up here before, you marched past this valley, chiefly because it was close at hand; but I don't want to dwell on that. Has it occurred to you that you did something of the same kind when you were at the Dene? The way that was then offered you was easy.”
Vane frowned.
”That is not the kind of subject one cares to talk about; but you ought to know that I couldn't allow them to force Miss Chisholm upon me against her will. It was unthinkable! Besides, looking at it in the most cold-blooded manner, it would have been foolishness, for which we'd both have had to pay afterward.”
”I'm not so sure of that,” Carroll smiled. ”There were the Sabine women, among other instances. Didn't they cut off their hair to make bowstring for their abductors?”
His companion made no comment, and Carroll, deciding that he had ventured as far as was prudent, talked of something else until they crept into the little tent and soon fell asleep.
They started with the first of the daylight, but the timber grew denser and more choked with underbrush as they proceeded and for a day or two they wearily struggled through it and the clogging ma.s.ses of tangled, withered fern. Besides this, they were forced to clamber over mazes of fallen trunks, when the ragged ends of the snapped-off branches caught their loads. Their shoulders ached, their boots were ripped, their feet were badly galled; but they held on stubbornly, plunging deeper into the mountains all the while. It would probably overcome the average man if he were compelled to carry all the provisions he needed for a week along a well-kept road, but the task of the prospector and the survey packer, who must transport also an ax, cooking utensils and whatever protection he requires from the weather, through almost impenetrable thickets, is infinitely more difficult.
Vane and Carroll were more or less used to it, but both of them were badly jaded when soon after setting out one morning they climbed a clearer hillside to look about them. High up ahead, the crest of the white range gleamed dazzlingly against leaden clouds in a burst of suns.h.i.+ne; below, dark forest, still wrapped in gloom, filled all the valley; and in between, a belt of timber touched by the light shone with a curious silvery l.u.s.ter. Though it was some distance off, probably a day's journey allowing for the difficulty of the march, Vane gazed at it earnestly. The trees were bare--there was no doubt of that, for the dwindling ranks, diminished by the distance, stood out against the snow-streaked rock like rows of thick needles set upright; their straightness and the way they glistened suggested the resemblance.
”Ominous, isn't it?” Carroll suggested at length. ”If this is the valley Hartley came down--and everything points to that--we should be getting near the spruce.”
Vane's face grew set.
”Yes,” he agreed. ”There has been a big fire up yonder; but whether it has swept the lower ground or not is more than I can tell. We'll find out to-night or early to-morrow.”