Part 36 (2/2)

”If you stay here, I'm not sure you'll have an opportunity of doing it at all,” said Brooke. ”It's a risk a stronger man than you are might shrink from.”

”Still, I intend to take it. We have gone into this before. If I leave Dayspring before I find the silver, I leave it dead.”

Brooke made a little gesture of resignation. ”Well,” he said, ”I have done all I could, and now, if you will pour that flour into the pan, we'll have breakfast.”

Both men were silent during the frugal meal, for they knew what they had to look forward to, and the cold silence of the lonely land already weighed upon their spirits. Long weeks of solitude must be dragged through before the men who were going south that morning came back again, while there might very well be interludes of scarcity, and hunger is singularly hard to bear with the temperature at forty degrees below.

Allonby only trifled with his food, and smiled drily when at last he thrust his plate aside.

”Dollars are not to be picked up easily anywhere, and you and I are going to find out the full value of them before the thaw begins again,”

he said. ”We shall, no doubt, also discover how thoroughly nauseated one can become with his companion's company. I have heard of men wintering in the mountains who tried to kill one another.”

Brooke laughed. ”It's scarcely likely we will go quite as far as that, though I certainly remember two men in the Quatomac Valley who flung everything in the range at each other periodically. One was inordinately fond of green stuff, and his partner usually started the circus by telling him to take his clothes off, and go out like Nebuchadnezzar.

They refitted with wood-pulp ware when the proceedings became expensive.”

Just then there was a knock upon the door, which swung open, and a cl.u.s.ter of shadowy figures, with their breath floating like steam about them, appeared outside it. One of them flung a deerhide bag into the room.

”We figured we needn't trail quite so much grub along, and I guess you'll want it,” a voice said. ”Neither of you changed your minds 'bout lighting out of this?”

”I don't like to take it from you, boys,” said Brooke, who recognized the rough kindliness which had prompted the men to strip themselves of the greater portion of their provisions. ”You can't have more than enough for one day's march left.”

”I guess a man never hits the trail so hard as when he knows he has to,”

somebody said. ”It will keep us on the rustle till we fetch Truscott's.

Well, you're not coming?”

For just a moment Brooke felt his resolution wavering, and, under different circ.u.mstances, he might have taken Allonby by force, and gone with them, but by a somewhat involved train of reasoning he felt that it was inc.u.mbent upon him to stay on at the mine because Barbara Heathcote had once trusted him. It had been tolerably evident from her att.i.tude when he had last seen her, that she had very little confidence in him now, but that did not seem to affect the question, and most men are a trifle illogical at times.

”No,” he said, with somewhat forced indifference. ”Still, I don't mind admitting that I wish we were.”

The man laughed. ”Then I guess we'll pull out. We'll think of you two now and then when we're lying round beside the stove in Vancouver.”

Brooke said nothing further. There was a tramp of feet, and the shadowy figures melted into the dimness beneath the pines. Then the last footfall died away, and the silence of the mountains suddenly seemed to grow overwhelming. Brooke turned to Allonby, who smiled.

”You will,” he said, ”feel it considerably worse before the next three months are over, and probably be willing to admit that there is some excuse for my shortcomings in one direction. I have, I may mention, put in a good many winters here.”

Brooke swung round abruptly. ”I'm going to work in the mine. It's fortunate that one man can just manage that new boring machine.”

He left Allonby in the shanty, and toiled throughout that day, and several dreary weeks, during most of which the pines roared beneath the icy gales and blinding snow swirled down the valley. What he did was of very slight effect, but it kept him from thinking, which, he felt, was a necessity, and he only desisted at length from physical incapacity for further labor. The snow, it was evident, had choked the pa.s.ses, so that no laden beast could make the hazardous journey over them, for the anxiously-expected freighter did not arrive, and there was an increasing scarcity of provisions as the days dragged by; while Brooke discovered that a handful of mouldy floor and a few inches of rancid pork daily is not sufficient to keep a man's full strength in him. Then, when an Arctic frost followed the snow, Allonby fell sick, and one bitter evening, when an icy wind came wailing down the valley, it dawned upon his comrade that his condition was becoming precarious. Saying nothing, he busied himself about the stove, and smiled rea.s.suringly when Allonby turned to him.

”Are we to hold a festival to-night, since you seem to be cooking what should keep us for a week?” said the latter.

”I almost fancy it would keep one of us for several days, which, since you do not seem especially capable of getting anything ready for yourself, is what it is intended to do,” said Brooke. ”I shall probably be that time in making the settlement and getting back again.”

”What are you going there for?”

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