Part 56 (1/2)
”If they only stay a couple o' nights at Anvik,” said Potts, with gloomy foreboding, ”they could get back here inside a week.”
”No,” answered Mac, following the two figures with serious eyes, ”they may be dead inside a week, but they won't be back here.”
And Potts felt his anxiety eased. A man who had mined at Caribou ought to know.
CHAPTER X
PRINCESS MUCKLUCK
”We all went to Tibbals to see the Kinge, who used my mother and my aunt very gratiouslie; but we all saw a great chaunge betweene the fas.h.i.+on of the Court as it was now, and of y in ye Queene's, for we were all lowzy by sittinge in Sr Thomas Erskin's chamber.” _Memoir: Anne Countess of Dorset_, 1603.
It was the 26th of February, that first day that they ”hit the Long Trail.”
Temperature only about twenty degrees, the Colonel thought, and so little wind it had the effect of being warmer. Trail in fair condition, weather gray and steady. Never men in better spirits. To have left the wrangling and the smouldering danger of the camp behind, that alone, as the Boy said, was ”worth the price of admission.” Exhilarating, too, to men of their temperament, to have cut the Gordian knot of the difficulty by risking themselves on this unprecedented quest for peace and food. Gold, too? Oh, yes--with a smile to see how far that main object had drifted into the background--they added, ”and for gold.”
They believed they had hearkened well to the counsel that bade them ”travel light.” ”Remember, every added ounce is against you.” ”n.o.body in the North owns anything that's heavy,” had been said in one fas.h.i.+on or another so often that it lost its ironic sound in the ears of men who had come so far to carry away one of the heaviest things under the sun.
The Colonel and the Boy took no tent, no stove, not even a miner's pick and pan. These last, General Lighter had said, could be obtained at Minook; and ”there isn't a cabin on the trail,” Dillon had added, ”without 'em.”
For the rest, the carefully-selected pack on the sled contained the marmot-skin, woollen blankets, a change of flannels apiece, a couple of sweaters, a Norfolk jacket, and several changes of foot-gear. This last item was dwelt on earnestly by all. ”Keep your feet dry,” John Dillon had said, ”and leave the rest to G.o.d Almighty.” They were taking barely two weeks' rations, and a certain amount of stuff to trade with the up-river Indians, when their supplies should be gone. They carried a kettle, an axe, some quinine, a box of the carbolic ointment all miners use for foot-soreness, O'Flynn's whisky, and two rifles and ammunition.
In spite of having eliminated many things that most travellers would count essential, they found their load came to a little over two hundred pounds. But every day would lessen it, they told each other with a laugh, and with an inward misgiving, lest the lightening should come all too quickly.
They had seen in camp that winter so much of the frailty of human temper that, although full of faith by now in each other's native sense and fairness, they left nothing to a haphazard division of labour. They parcelled out the work of the day with absolute impartiality. To each man so many hours of going ahead to break trail, if the snow was soft, while the other dragged the sled; or else while one pulled in front, the other pushed from behind, in regular s.h.i.+fts by the watch, turn and turn about. The Colonel had cooked all winter, so it was the Boy's turn at that--the Colonel's to decide the best place to camp, because it was his affair to find seasoned wood for fuel, his to build the fire in the snow on green logs laid close together--his to chop enough wood to cook breakfast the next morning. All this they had arranged before they left the Big Chimney.
That they did not cover more ground that first day was a pure chance, not likely to recur, due to an unavoidable loss of time at Pymeut.
Knowing the fascination that place exercised over his companion, the Colonel called a halt about seven miles off from the Big Chimney, that they might quickly despatch a little cold luncheon they carried in their pockets, and push on without a break till supper.
”We've got no time to waste at Pymeut,” observes the Colonel significantly.
”I ain't achin' to stop at Pymeut,” says his pardner with a superior air, standing up, as he swallowed his last mouthful of cold bacon and corn-bread, and cheerfully surveyed the waste. ”Who says it's cold, even if the wind is up? And the track's bully. But see here, Colonel, you mustn't go thinkin' it's smooth glare-ice, like this, all the way.”
”Oh, I was figurin' that it would be.” But the Boy paid no heed to the irony.
”And it's a custom o' the country to get the wind in your face, as a rule, whichever way you go.”
”Well, I'm not complainin' as yet.”
”Reckon you needn't if you're blown like dandelion-down all the way to Minook. Gee! the wind's stronger! Say, Colonel, let's rig a sail.”
”Foolishness.”
”No, sir. We'll go by Pymeut in an ice-boat, lickety split. And it'll be a good excuse for not stopping, though I think we ought to say good-bye to Nicholas.”
This view inclined the Colonel to think better of an ice-boat. He had once crossed the Bay of Toronto in that fas.h.i.+on, and began to wonder if such a mode of progression applied to sleds might not aid largely in solving the Minook problem.
While he was wondering the Boy unlashed the sled-load, and pulled off the canvas cover as the Colonel came back with his mast. Between them, with no better tools than axe, jack-knives, and a rope, and with fingers freezing in the south wind, they rigged the sail.
The fact that they had this increasingly favourable wind on their very first day showed that they were specially smiled on by the great natural forces. The superst.i.tious feeling that only slumbers in most b.r.e.a.s.t.s, that Mother Nature is still a mysterious being, who has her favourites whom she guards, her born enemies whom she baulks, pursues, and finally overwhelms, the age-old childishness stirred pleasantly in both men, and in the younger came forth unabashed in speech: