Alton of Somasco: A Romance of the Great Northwest

CHAPTER XVI

CAUSE FOR ANXIETY

There was no sign of the missing horse next day, and Alton's face was grave when he returned to camp at noon. Tom of Okanagan arrived an hour or two later, and shook his head when Seaforth glanced at him inquiringly.

"Rock again. Right down to the river," he said.

Alton nodded, but did not ask if his companion had effected a crossing.
"There was a good deal of water coming down?" he said.

"Oh, yes," said Okanagan. "It was cold. Boulders all along on the other side. Now if the beast got over he'll be lighting out for home, and there are some of us better than others at picking up a trail."

Seaforth understood him, and the implication pleased him though it was not openly expressed. "Had you any especial reason when you asked me to go, Harry?" he asked.

Alton smiled dryly. "I had, but I don't know that it was a very good one. You would sooner stay up here. What do you think, Tom?"

"Of course!" said Seaforth, and Alton nodded silently, while Okanagan rose to his feet.

"Now you have asked me, Charley's right," he said. "I'll be moving south in ten minutes."

He had set off in somewhat less, and the men he left behind stood still listening until the sound of his footsteps had sunk into the stillness. Then Seaforth glanced at his comrade, and Alton laughed.

"It's lonely, Charley," he said. "I don't know that you were wise, but we'll get a move on and cache some of these provisions."

Seaforth was glad of something to do. Three had started from Somasco, and already one had gone, while he felt a slight sense of depression as he glanced north towards the wilderness of rock and snow their path led into. He did not, however, tell his comrade so, and they toiled for an hour before Alton, carefully smoothing off the soil that covered what they had hidden, strewed it with cedar-twigs.

"Step it off, Charley; twenty paces east to the rock, with the big peak over the shoulder of the hill," he said.

Seaforth walked straight forward with measured strides. "A foot over!" he said.

Alton nodded. "Go back and make your traverse," he said. "Forty north with the gully over the fork of the river."

"Forty," said Seaforth, "and a half."

"Well," said Alton, "whatever you don't remember, hold tight on to that."

Seaforth felt the depression he had shaken off return to him. "There are," he said slowly, "few things that you forget."

Alton, glancing at him, understood, and then turned his eyes towards the snow of the wilderness. "It's the man that can't look forward who gets left," he said. "Now something might stop me coming back with you for that grub."

Seaforth said nothing, and he was a little graver than usual as they packed the tent and blankets on the remaining horse, and an extra load upon their own backs. A good many things might happen up there in the north, including snow-slides, floods and frost, or the downward rush of great trees in a brulee. That was possibly why he commenced a little jingling song of the music-halls when they took the trail again, but the white grandeur of the great peaks silenced him, or his breath gave out as they floundered into fern-choked forest which was further garnished with the horrible devil's club. Seaforth fell into a clump of it, and for several minutes his comments were venomous, for though he had been taught restraint in England and had further tuition in Canada of a grimmer description, little can be expected from the man who is gripped by that Satanic thorn.

It was half an hour before he went on again with his garments ensanguined as the result of Alton's treatment with the knife, and he gasped with relief when after a march of four miles, which occupied most of what was left of the day, they came out into the more open spaces of a big brulee. Some time in the hot autumn a fire had passed that way, and the great trees towered above them, stripped and blackened columns, that seemed to stretch between earth and sky. There was no limb left them, and they rose, majestic in their cylindrical symmetry, in apparently endless battalions, a vista of plutonic desolation. Underfoot there was charcoal, and feathery ashes that whirled aloft, and sprinkling the men with a fine grey powder slowly settled again.

Alton was white in ten minutes, a gritty mire defiled the horse's sides, and Seaforth floundered, coughing, ankle-deep at times, with livid circles where he had rubbed the grime away about his eyes. There was no sign of beast or bird, and the shuffle of weary feet and thud of hoofs rose muffled out of a great silence, until there was a stupendous crash somewhere in the distance. The charred trunks took up the sound, and while they flung it from one to another Alton sprang forward and smote the pack-horse with his fist.

"Jump!" he said hoarsely.

Next moment Seaforth felt himself hurled forward, and glancing over his shoulder when he found his footing again saw a big trunk tilt a little. It seemed to hang quivering for a second or two, then toppled further, and with a great humming came rushing down. Then there was a stunning crash, and he stood gasping, deafened, and bereft of sight, amidst a stifling cloud of dust which swept into his mouth and nostrils and almost suffocated him. When he could see anything again the horse was quivering, and the dust still rising from a shapeless pile a few yards behind him. Alton, who was black and grey to the ankles, took his hat off, shook it, and put it on again in a curious unconcerned fashion which suggested that he did it unconsciously.

"Those six feet make a big difference," said he. As he spoke there was a crash a little farther behind them, another ahead, and they stood still; Alton gripping the horse's bridle, Seaforth staring about him and scarcely breathing, while concussion answered concussion, until there was a silence that was almost bewildering again.

"Now," said Alton quietly, "we'll get out of this, though I don't know that we need worry, because that should have cleared out the shaky ones. When one goes, more of them generally follow. It wouldn't have grieved Hallam of the Tyee very much if we had been a yard or two farther back."

Seaforth was possibly a little shaken, for he answered as he might not otherwise have done. "I wonder if it would have displeased anybody else," he said.

Alton jerked the horse to a standstill and looked at him. "I don't think you meant that, Charley."

Seaforth noticed the glint in his comrade's eyes, and departed a little from veracity. "No," he said. "There are times when a man is apt to talk a little at random."

Alton nodded. "You'll not forget again. The man is a kinsman of mine."

Seaforth smote the pack-horse, because he did not quite know what to answer. He had vague suspicions concerning Deringham, but was quite aware that it would be inappropriate for him to express them. Also, having seen a little of the smoother side of life in England, he knew a trifle more about young women of Miss Deringham's description than his comrade did. He admired the girl, as most men would have done, but the qualities Alton had evidently endowed her with were not especially apparent to him. He also fancied that Miss Deringham would have found some of them distinctly irksome now and then.

It was dark when they came out of the brulee and pitched camp amidst the boulders beside a lonely lake. The mists crawled about the pines that shut it in, and its surface was seamed with white by a little bitter wind. Sombre clouds rolled lower down the surrounding hills, and Seaforth was glad to stretch his weary limbs under the lee of a big boulder while the fire snapped and crackled in front of him.

"I wonder when we shall see this lake again," he said.

Alton, who was busy with the frypan, turned and stirred the fire, and the sparks and smoke whirled about them before a stinging blast. "I don't know," he said, glancing at a smear of whiteness that swept athwart the lake. "It depends upon the weather, and I'm not pleased with that to-night. You see the Chinook winds would keep off the snow."

"Of course," said Seaforth, who knew that the warm breezes from the Pacific occasionally drive back the rigorous winter that turns the northern portion of the mountain province into a white desolation. "They usually do, but we'll surmise that in place of them we get the back-draughts from the Pole?"

"Then," said Alton dryly, "it would be a good deal nicer down at
Somasco. Are you sorry you didn't stop there, Charley?"

Seaforth threw an armful of fir wood upon the fire with somewhat unnecessary violence. "You are not so pleasant as you might be to-night," he said.

Alton rose and stretched himself. "I wouldn't worry about me. It seems to me we are both of us feeling lonely, and that's curious, because when we had him Okanagan wasn't any special kind of a companionable man. There was a time when you would have been driving to dinner with a diamond pin stuck in you and silk stockings on about this time, Charley?"

Seaforth laughed. "I scarcely think either of the things are in common masculine use," he said. "There, however, was a time when I walked into a British Columbian mining camp with my whole wardrobe on my back and, I think, fifty cents in my pocket. Still, what you ask me suggests a not quite unwarranted question. What are you going to do with Carnaby, Harry?"

"I don't know yet. I'm not sure it's mine, you see."

"Your grandfather left it you," said Seaforth; "and it was his."

"Yes," said Alton gravely. "He did, but he tacked a kind of condition on to it, and—well, that's about all I can tell you, Charley."

"Of course!" and Seaforth smiled curiously. "I would not have asked you, only I am your partner, and when you're Alton of Carnaby you will have no more use for me."

Alton seemed to sigh. "I am," he said simply, "Alton of Somasco, and I fancy now and then that was all I was meant to be. You are my partner, Charley, and it would take a good deal more than Carnaby to separate you and me."

Seaforth smiled again, though there was more than amusement in his face, while Alton, who stopped beside the fire and filled two cans from the kettle, shook his head reproachfully as he flung their contents into the bush.

"That's what comes of talking too much. You have forgotten to put in the tea," he said.

They lay down early, rolled in the blankets, with the tent across them, for the wind that lashed the lake rendered it advisable not to erect it, but it was some time before Seaforth went to sleep. He fancied he understood Alton's assertion that he was not sure Carnaby was his, for he knew his comrade was capable under certain conditions of almost reasonless generosity. Nor did he desire a better partner, but he was not sure that in the event of Alton transferring his activities to England their friendship would be approved of by a possible mistress of Carnaby. Women, Seaforth knew, regarded these things differently.

He slept at last, and awakening felt the tent heavy upon him. There was also a curious rawness in the atmosphere, and he glanced about him with a little gasp of consternation. The hillside gleamed coldly above him under the creeping light, and only the pines were sombre, for the earth was white with snow.

"Get up, Harry," he said, with something in his voice that roused his comrade suddenly.

Alton rose, and his face became a trifle grim. "This," he said quietly, "is going to mix up things. We'll have breakfast quick as you can get it."

They were on their way in half an hour, struggling up the hillside under the pines until at last the trees grew smaller towards the timber line. Then they floundered painfully over what had been bare slopes of rock and was now a waste of snow, with a dazzling field of whiteness. between them and the blue. Up there the frost was biting, and the snow lay fine as flour, blowing in thin wisps from under the horse's hoofs, while the men's jean and deerhide were sprinkled with glittering particles. The wind dropped towards sundown, and when, climbing a great hill shoulder, they dipped again to the forest the snows flamed crimson, against a pitiless blueness, out of which there seemed to fall a devastating cold.

Diamonds glinted upon the shivering pines, sound seemed frozen, and there was a great impressive stillness across which the jingle of the bridle rang stridently when Alton pulled the horse up near the foremost of the trees.

"This," he said softly, "is where I found Jimmy. He was sitting there with his rifle on his knee, looking straight at me, as though there were lots of things he could tell me."

Seaforth shivered a little. "He had the specimens with him?"

Alton nodded. "Yes," he said. "He had his grip right on the deerhide bag, as though he didn't want to let me have them, and I had to think of Mrs. Jimmy while I took them from him. It didn't seem quite fair of Jimmy, because they haven't much use for silver in the country the long trail leads to."

Seaforth glanced down into the great hollow that fell away beneath them, and up at the glittering snow. "You were alone, I think?"

"I was," said Alton grimly. "And most half-frozen. It was that cold there was ice in the big rapid, and I hadn't had much to eat for several days."

Seaforth shivered again, as he pictured that strange encounter between the dead and the living. Jimmy the prospector, having taken his secret with him to a region where silver is valueless, had sat within a few paces from where he stood with his fingers clenched upon the bag, and an awful disregard of the rights of the woman he had left behind in his frozen face. Seaforth could also picture his comrade stooping over him with averted eyes, but swift, resolute movements, for when there was work to be done Alton of Somasco was not the man to turn aside.

"It must have been a trifle horrible," he said.

Alton's eyes closed a little. "It wasn't nice. Still, there was Mrs.
Jimmy working down at the store, and that secret belonged to her."

He stopped abruptly with a little gesture as of one shaking off a painful memory, and looked down across the climbing pines to the lake in the hollow behind them. It still shone steelily, and apparently not very far away, though it had cost the men strenuous toil all day to traverse the distance that divided them from it. Seaforth, who watched him, noticed something unusual in his attitude, for his comrade stood very still with eyes that never for a moment wavered from one point in the valley.

"Do you see anything down there?" he said.

"Yes," said Alton grimly. "I see smoke."

"There is nothing astonishing in that," said Seaforth. "I damped down the bark well, and raked up the soil to shut off the draught. There was a big pile of wet green twigs, Harry."

Alton smiled curiously. "You made one fire?"

"Yes," said Seaforth, wondering. "We don't usually make two."

His sight was not equal to his comrade's, but he could see a smear of blue vapour curl athwart the pines, for he had banked the fire with wet fuel, so that it should smoke all day in case Tom of Okanagan had overtaken the horse and was following their trail.

"Well," said Alton dryly, "there is another one."

Seaforth swept his gaze twice across the valley before he saw anything beyond the crowded pines, and then for a moment he caught sight of a second faint streak athwart their sombreness. It was a mere film that vanished and rose again, illusory and almost imperceptible, but for some reason it troubled him.

"It might be Tom," he said.

Alton laughed in a curious fashion. "I don't think it is. One fire would be enough for Tom to make his supper with, and that one's nearer us."

"But," said Seaforth, "I can scarcely see the smoke."

Alton raised one hand impatiently. "No," he said. "Whoever made that fire didn't want you to, and there's no need to make much smoke if you keep clear of sap and twigs."

Seaforth's face grew grave. "Is there any reason why you can't tell me a little more? If the man would sooner we did not see it, what did he make the fire for?"

Alton smiled grimly. "I don't know any more, but a man must eat," he said. "In the meanwhile it seems to me that fellow understands his business, and I've a kind of notion we shall hear from him or see him presently."

Seaforth glanced back along the blue-grey trail that led towards the bare hill shoulder, which rose a mere ridge of the great mountain side that swept round the hollow.

"There is no controverting that, and he needn't have much difficulty in finding us if he wants to. Is there anything to be done?" he said.

"No," said Alton dryly. "If there was, I'd sit down here and wait for him, but there's nothing to stop a free miner prospecting round where it suits him in this country."

CHAPTER XVII

ALONE

The frost held for two days, and the men made small progress through the dusty snow. On the third it grew softer as they floundered wearily down into a valley, and Seaforth was aching in every limb when at last they halted at the edge of a river. Not far below them it plunged frothing into a gloomy canon, and the roar of its turmoil came out of the thin white vapour which curled through the stupendous portals of stream-worn stone. Seaforth felt moist and generally uncomfortable, as well as weary, for it was humid and a trifle warmer now, while his long boots were soaked, and at every step he dragged after him a clogging weight of snow. He leaned against a cedar, glad to rest a while, and glanced inquiringly at his comrade.

Alton, however, showed no sign of fatigue. He stood with the half-melted snow he had fallen in clinging about his deerskin jacket and trickling slowly down his tattered leggings, the bridle of the worn-out horse in his hand and a slight perplexity in his eyes.

"Now, I wonder if that will make a road to the south," he said reflectively, pointing to the canon.

"I don't know," said Seaforth dryly. "So far as my opinion goes, I scarcely think it will; but isn't that a little outside the question? Just now a road to the north would be more to the purpose."

"Well," said Alton, "a few sticks of giant powder here and there would make a difference, and one could do a good deal with a few score of men used to the pick and drill."

"It would also," said Seaforth, "take a good many dollars to pay them."

Alton laughed as he turned, and pointed upstream, Darkness was not far away, and the river came down deep and slow out of the dimness. Dark pines rolled up the hillsides that shut it in, and wisps of grey vapour drifted about them.

"There are," he said, "dollars enough to build a road right down to Vancouver in those hills, and by and by one of two men will have his hands on them."

"Isn't that a somewhat curious way of putting it?" said his companion.

"Well," said Alton, "there is as usual a reason. Whichever of those men comes out on top will not have much use for the other fellow. In the meanwhile we'll be getting on. There's a canoe under the big boulders yonder, and the island should make the horse a corral."

Seaforth said nothing, though he thought a good deal. He guessed that one of the men alluded to was his comrade and the other Hallam, and there was a grim suggestiveness in the former's simple explanation, for it seemed that Alton understood quarter would not be given in the struggle he had embarked upon. There was also something disconcerting in the fact that they found the canoe where he indicated. That it had lain there since Jimmy the prospector, who lay sleeping on the heights above them, had last used it emphasized the desolation of the region they were pushing their way into, and Seaforth once more felt a curious depression as he glanced up the lonely valley. It stretched away before them, a road to the unknown, and he fancied that a future which was fraught with great and perilous possibilities lay hidden beyond the drifting mist.

They had, it seemed, set out upon a journey which led farther than the silver Jimmy had found, but knowing that his comrade would go on to the end of it, Seaforth shook off his misgivings, and assisted him to load and launch the craft. They made fast the pack-horse by a halter, and in ten minutes had landed the beast upon an island. Then, somewhat to Seaforth's regret, they took up the paddles and went on again. Alton smiled curiously as he glanced towards the firs that slid by them half-seen through the mist.

"We're taking Jimmy's road. He was the last man to come down here, and I wonder what he was thinking about," he said. "There would have been an ice fringe along the bank, and Jimmy was hungry. I think he knew he wouldn't get through, and it was only because of the woman he held on so tight."

Seaforth shivered a little, as his fancy called up the scene. The starving man crouching half-frozen with the paddle clenched in stiffened fingers had watched those trees slide by him, knowing that on their speed depended his fast-failing chance of life. He had, Seaforth fancied, stared at the crawling boulders with despair in his dimming eyes, and the weary man turned towards his comrade almost savagely.

"Can't you think of anything a little more pleasant?" he said.

Alton smiled gravely. "It comes to all of us one day, and the trail of the treasure-seeker leads most often to the unknown hunting grounds," he said. "We have got to keep faith with Jimmy. He did his best, and I think he knew I would come up here after him."

Seaforth said nothing further, but bent over his paddle, until an hour later they landed on a point and set up the tent. Neither was communicative over the supper, and Seaforth went early to sleep. The last thing he saw was Alton sitting, a black motionless figure, apparently staring into the darkness from the door of the tent, with his face towards the north.

It was raining when he awakened next morning. The tent was saturated, the fire ill to light, and that day was spent in unremitting toil. The stream ran strong against them, and Seaforth's wet hands grew blistered from the grasp of the paddle and his knees raw from the rasp of the craft's bottom as he swung with the weary blade. Hour by hour the rain beat on them, and the pines that crawled out of it went very slowly by, while it was almost a relief to stand upright now and then, and with strenuous effort drive the frail shell up against the swirl of the slower rapids with long fir poles. At times they were swept down sideways before the poles could find hold again, and fought, gasping and panting, for minutes to regain what they had lost in as many seconds.

Now and then it was also needful to drag the canoe out, flounder amidst boulders or through tangled forest with her contents, and then, hewing a path here and there with the axe, painfully drag her round; but portage after portage was left behind, and they were still fighting their way yard by yard upstream while the rain came down. Seaforth also knew that it often rains for several weeks in that country when the Chinook wind that melts the snow sets in.

Darkness was closing down when at last they drew the canoe out upon a shelving bank and dragged themselves ashore. Seaforth was too chilled and wet to sleep, and his eyes had scarcely closed when Alton shook him, and he rose up, shivering, and stiff in every joint, to commence the task again. It was fortunately easier that day, for the river spread out into a narrow winding lake, and there was less current against them. Still the rain did not abate, and the afternoon was not quite spent when Alton pointed to a little cove.

"We haven't made much to-day, but unless you're anxious to go on that would make a good camping-place," he said deprecatingly. "Now there was a time when I wouldn't have thought of stopping yet, but I guess too much good living has taken a little of the stiffening out of me."

Seaforth slowly unclenched one hand from the red-smeared paddle-haft, and glanced at it. "If you feel diffident, don't worry about me," he said. "Eight hours' hard labour while you're wet through is, in my opinion, quite enough for anybody."

Alton ran the canoe in, and Seaforth staggered a little when he walked ashore. The water was draining from him, and it was several minutes before he could straighten himself. There were pools amidst the boulders, and when they had splashed through these to the edge of the forest, fallen needles and withered fern were spongy, while the dark branches shook down water on them as they swung to the chilly blast. Seaforth groaned now and then as he struggled with the tent, while Alton tramped into the forest with the axe, but he came back presently with an armful of resinous chips, and his comrade's spirits rose a trifle when a crackling fire flung its red flicker through the creeping shadows. It hissed as the gusts lashed it with the rain, but the blackened and dinted kettle boiled, and while they ate and drank the smoke-flavoured tea, a little warmth crept with the pungent vapour into the tent.

The bush was dim and shadowy before the meal was finished, but Alton flung fresh branches on the fire, and the blaze that whirled aloft rent a track of radiance through the rain, and called up the vague outlines of the columnar trunks. Then he stretched himself out upon an armful of dripping twigs, and his garments steamed about him as he lighted an old blackened pipe. Seaforth lay amidst the packages, feeling blissfully drowsy as the warmth crept slowly into his aching limbs. Overhead the pine branches, wailed in wild harmonies, and the showers they shook down beat upon the tent.

"It seems to me this journey might have begun better," said Alton presently.

Seaforth nodded full concurrence. "It would be a little difficult to imagine it commencing very much worse. Wouldn't it have been wiser if you had waited a little longer, Harry?"

Alton seemed to notice something unusual in his companion's inflection.
"You will have to talk straighter, Charley," he said.

Seaforth, who saw the glint in his eyes, laughed. "I merely meant that spring is coming, and it would be a trifle warmer then. I'm inclined to be a little cantankerous to-night, but, of course, it is not my business how long you stayed at the ranch."

"No," said Alton dryly, "I don't think it is. Spring would have been nicer, but, you see, Hallam was crowding me. Did anything else strike you, Charley?"

"Nothing of much importance," said Seaforth, smiling. "Only that while we lie shivering here Hallam is probably dining in state in the big hotel at Vancouver. Jingling glasses, good wine, light and warmth, flowers and silver on the table. The contrast's a little exasperating."

Alton glanced at the saturated canvas and his steaming clothes, while Seaforth, for no apparent reason, stretched out one foot and kicked over the dinted kettle.

"There are folks who would think that's only fit," he said. "Mr. Hallam is one of the men who are building up the future greatness of this wonderful country. At least, that's what they called him at the last big speech-making, but I don't quite see what good it would do us if you kicked the bottom of that kettle in, Charley. Now it's curious how a thing that's once started goes on. Jimmy took a notion that there was silver here, and that drew me in as well as Mrs. Jimmy. Then you came along, and presently it got hold of Hallam. The Somasco Consolidated has got drawn in, too—now there are you and I, with only the Almighty knows how much upon our shoulders, up here in the rain and snow."

Seaforth glanced at his comrade reflectively as he said, "I was wondering if there was anybody else."

Alton's face grew suddenly impassive. "Oh, yes," he said. "There's another man I don't know, the one who lighted the fire. He's back there somewhere."

Seaforth said nothing for a minute or two, but as he glanced about him the shadows seemed to grow darker beyond the flickering radiance of the fire, and the roar of wind in the branches angrier. He had been a prey to half-formed suspicions of late, and there was something sinister in the thought of that man who followed them.

"Harry," he said presently, "you have got most of the things you wanted so far?"

"Yes," said Alton quietly. "It wasn't always easy, and they didn't come to me, but I knew what I wanted, and I usually got it."

Seaforth made a sign of comprehension. "Did it ever occur to you that you had probably as much already as is good for you?"

Alton glanced at him with half-closed eyes. "A little plainer,
Charley."

"You have Somasco, the liking of all the ranchers down the valley, the timber rights and mill. You have also Carnaby, and most folks would think you a fortunate man. Now the man who wants too much is occasionally sorry when he gets it."

Alton's eyes glinted. "I have a partner, too, who doesn't know where to stop," he said.

Seaforth met his comrade's gaze steadily. "This," he said reflectively, "is a good country. In fact I don't know a better one for the man who wants to live as he was meant to in the wind and sun, watching what he has worked for slowly grow. Is it a little thing, Harry, to see the oats and timothy where the forest had been, to clear a new way for the river with giant powder, and hear the big wheels humming where there was only a frothing rapid? Orchards, barns, and homestead built by your own labour, horses and herds of cattle all your own, and by and by the railroad coming through to bring you the long dreamed of prosperity. It's alluring, Harry?"

The glint was a trifle plainer in Alton's eyes, and his lean fingers were closed together. "I don't quite see where that trail leads to," he said quietly.

Seaforth laughed a little. "It is good to rise when the sun is creeping above the firs and plunge down into an ice-cold pool. Better still to lie on the verandah, tired in body, tranquil in mind, when the snows are fading and your work is done, knowing that every redwood hewn and new plough-furrow driven has been so much added to the prosperity of this province and the Dominion. It isn't a bad life—this one you were meant for, Harry."

"No," said Alton slowly. "There are times when I'm a very thankful man."

"Well, there is another one, and I have seen very tired men playing at being amused by the trifles that sickened them. They had, however, kept up the game so long that the manhood they were once proud of was only a memory. There are a good many of them in the old country, and some of them have sacrificed all they had for the one thing that wasn't good for them. It was too late when they found it out, Harry."

Alton's face was grim. "It would," he said, "be a pity if you and I fell out, Charley."

Seaforth laughed in a curious fashion. "It would, but I scarcely think we shall. You and I are partners, and a little more, and I will keep silent now I have spoken."

Alton said nothing, but sat smoking and staring at the fire, until Seaforth rolled himself in his damp blankets and sank into not altogether refreshing sleep. A misty light was creeping into the tent when he was awakened by the thudding of his companion's axe, and rising stiffly with the ache at the hip-joint which every bushman knows, went out shivering.

"Coffee!" said Alton. "I left it in the deerhide bag in the canoe."

Seaforth's limbs were too stiff to be much use to him yet, and he blundered amidst the boulders, falling over one or two, before he reached the shingle where they had partly drawn out the canoe. Then he stood still, staring about him, and saw only the green-tinted water sliding by under the uncertain light, and the pines on the other side growing a trifle plainer through the mist. Turning, he hastened along the shingle until a shelf of rock shut it in, and then back to the tent again. Alton laid down the axe, for there was something in his comrade's face that troubled him.

"Have you got it?" he asked.

"No," said Seaforth very quietly. "You told me the bag was in the canoe."

"Of course," said Alton. "Well, wasn't it there?"

"I don't know," said Seaforth. "I couldn't find the canoe."

Alton said nothing further, but stumbled in haste towards the river. Seaforth followed him more slowly, and Alton stood very still when he found nothing but boulders and shingle. Then he stooped and bent over a little depression in the pebbles, and when he rose again his face was impassive.

"The water has risen since last night, but I'm not sure that accounts for it," he said. "The bank slopes a little, but we pulled most of her out."

"I think we pulled the whole of her clear," said Seaforth quietly.

Alton stood silent for almost a minute with his right hand clenched. Then he said slowly, "You'll have to go down and look for her while I push on, Charley."

Seaforth was about to speak, but he saw his comrade's eyes and did not express himself as he had meant to. "Yes," he said. "I don't know that I shall find her."

The two men looked at each other, until Alton moved his head. "Still, one of us must try," he said. "Take all you can carry, and a rifle. I'll load up as much as I'm fit for, and we'll cache the rest. You'll come on after me, or join Tom, as you think best."

Seaforth smiled a little. "I'll come on, and even if I sacrifice something else I'll take the rifle."

Alton said nothing, and for an hour they were busy about the camp. Then as they stood a moment, loaded like beasts of burden, under the dripping pines, Seaforth held out his hand.

"Harry, are you wise?" he said.

"I don't know," said Alton simply; "but I'm going on."

It was noticeable that they shook hands, which they were not in the habit of doing, and that there was a very faint but perceptible tremor in Seaforth's voice.

"Good-bye," he said.

"Well," said Alton with a smile, which seemed to lack heartiness. "I wouldn't put it that way."

He swung forward with his face towards the north, but the smile faded and his fingers closed on the rifle when he heard Seaforth struggling southwards through the bush.

"Two of them gone now," he said. "I wonder if that is what the other fellow wanted."

CHAPTER XVIII

IN THE WILDERNESS

Dusk was closing down on the valley, and the rain had ceased, when Alton unstrapped his load, and stood with aching shoulders amidst the dripping pines. He could hear the rattle of the twigs that met and brushed through the shrill wailing of the wind about the sombre spires that pierced the growing darkness far above him, and the harmonic murmuring that rose and fell in cadence along the dim, vaulted roof. There was, however, nothing else beyond the growl of a rapid somewhere up the valley, and stretching out his arms wearily, he stooped with a little smile that was grim rather than mirthful and caught up the axe.

Now one can usually hear the thudding of the axe a mile or more in the stillness of the woods that is not silence to the bushman's ear. Their voice is always musical, and the sounds that man makes jar through its harmonies, but only a forest rancher or free prospector would have caught the muffled sound, that was lost in the song of the pines a few score yards from Alton's camp. He knew where to find the resinous knots with their sticky exudations, and was a master of the axe, while it was noticeable that when the fire commenced to crackle he stood still and listened again before he went down to the river with the kettle. Nor did he at once return into the light, but slipped for a moment behind a wide-girthed trunk. It was only a deer he heard moving along the hillside above him, and there was nothing visible but the row of stupendous columns that appeared and vanished as the red light rose and sank. Alton set the kettle down amidst the flame, and unrolling one of the packages laid out his supper.

It was prepared and eaten in twenty minutes, and refilling the kettle for breakfast he lay smoking in a hollow between the great roots which crawled away from a cedar-trunk. Nothing moved in the bush now but a bear that was grubbing amidst the wild cabbage in a swamp, and the weary man, stretching out his hand instinctively to touch the rifle that lay within his reach, gave himself up to thought. He had also much to occupy him, and being a somewhat systematic person he proceeded to consider the questions that demanded an answer in what appeared to him their order of importance. It was characteristic that in face of recent events he placed the probable whereabouts of the silver first.

This was at the first glance a somewhat difficult problem. In front of him lay the wilderness, a trackless chaos of forest and rock and snow wherein he had to find the scar made by a stick of giant powder or the scratching of the shovel. There were, however, points to guide the searcher, and Alton could deduce a good deal from each of them. Jimmy the prospector had, it was evident, perished of hunger and exhaustion, for Alton had traced the last stages of his journey backwards through the snow, and the grim story of human endurance and anguish was plainly legible. Here Jimmy had fallen, there lain still, and then dragged himself forward before he rose again, while the uneven footsteps had borne their own testimony. Also the bag of specimens was heavy, and Alton decided that for a man in the last stages of exhaustion, the river had furnished the only road. The silver was therefore somewhere up the Valley, and as it was winter when Jimmy found it, it would lie low down where the snow was cut off by the pines. Alton lay still a minute with a curious glint in his eyes when the firelight touched them which was a tribute to the dead man, and then filled his pipe again.

His journey had been marked by petty misfortunes, each of which might become a more serious one, hitherto, and he was now alone. This might be due to coincidence, but Alton, admitting that hypothesis, proceeded to consider an alternative one which resolved itself into two. It was generally known in Somasco that he and Jimmy had held the clue to a secret that might be valuable, and strange prospectors for timber rights and minerals occasionally strayed into the valley. Alton knew that most of the bushmen and free prospectors had a standard of honour which was somewhat higher than that usually lived up to in the cities. They were quiet, fearless, free-handed men, the antitype of the roystering desperadoes he had now and then seen them depicted as by those who did not know them. There were, he, however, knew, among them a few who it was probable had their own reasons for vacating the great Republic, and these were men of distinctly different calibre. One or more of them, it seemed, might have heard of his aspirations and be following him. If so, it was evident that he would be in security until he found the silver. Then the peril would begin.

This led to the second issue. Alton was quite aware that he had an enemy whom he had got the better of on several occasions hitherto. Partly because devious finesse is not always superior to shrewd sense and fearless honesty, he had as yet held his own against Hallam of the Tyee. Both knew that a time of prosperity was approaching for Somasco, and had decided more or less correctly that it would lead to affluence the man who had control of the valley; but while Alton had striven with arduous toil to bring about this consummation, Hallam of the Tyee was waiting while those he meant to plunder worked for him. It was also plain that there was no room for two leaders with divergent aspirations, and the rancher had seen sufficient of his opponent's dealings to recognize that he would not scruple about any measures which promised to rid him of a rival. Therefore it became him to be careful, and once more his fingers fell upon the rifle.

Alton had reached the limit of his surmises, and refilling his pipe again abandoned himself to more pleasant dreams. He heard the whistle of the locomotive ringing among the pines, and the hum of the great mills that would grind out wealth for Somasco. Then while the pungent smoke curled about him visions materialized out of its filmy wreaths, and he saw the lake at Carnaby shining amidst the woodlands of peaceful England, and the old grey hall. In place of the sting of the resin he could smell the English roses, and when the next acrid wisp slid past him it seemed to change its form, and there grew out of it the gracious, alluring shape of a woman. Costly fabrics floated about her, there was a flash of diamonds in the red-gold hair, a face that lost its patrician serenity as it smiled, and for a setting the glitter of light and silver in the great hall at Carnaby. Alton, whose eyes were growing dim, stretched out his arms towards the darkness, and a chilling gust swept the smoke aside, while great drops of water fell splashing upon him. He was back once more in the wilderness, a wet and very weary man, with thorn-rents in his deerskin jacket and the mire clinging about him, but he smiled as he rose stiffly and stretched his aching limbs.

"I figure there's a good deal to be done before that time comes, and some of it can't wait after sun up," he said.

Then, having left the tent behind, he carried his blankets away from the fire, and rolled himself up in them between two great fir-roots that afforded concealment as well as shelter. Though he had strewn them about the blaze the blankets were still clammy, but he drew the damp folds about him uncomplainingly, and lay down with the rifle at his side. Ten minutes passed. The fire snapped and crackled, the growl of the rapid rose and fell fitfully, but the worn-out man heard neither, for he was sleeping heavily.

There are many like him who dream great dreams scattered across the new lands by the Pacific from the snow of the Yukon to Mexico, but their visions are sacred and not expressed in speech, while a smile which is half ironical flickers in the steadfast eyes when they hear them caricatured by the platform Imperialist. Their words are scanty, but their handiwork is plain; the gap hewn in the virgin forest, bridge flung over frothing river, and the raw rent of the giant powder amidst the lonely hills. It is crude and unsightly often, the creosote-reeking railroad track, and the ugly humming mills, but it means food for the toilers, good wages and trade, and in place of a pleasance for the rich to seek diversion in, a new and rich dominion won, not for England, or the Republic, alone, but for humanity.

He started with the sunrise, the pack-straps galling his shoulders, his feet bleeding in the saturated boots, clammy blankets, flour-bag, and pork upon his aching back, kettle, frypan, and rifle rattling about him, and for the first hour every stride that led him farther into the wilderness was made with pain and difficulty. Still, he made it cheerfully, for Alton had long borne the burden that was laid on Adam uncomplainingly, while his rival, sitting beyond the reach of hardship in his Vancouver office, plotted, and filched the fruits of others' toil. It was also an apparently unequal conflict they had been drawn into, subtlety pitted against sturdiness, the elusive, foining rapier against the bushman's axe, but there are moments in all struggles when finesse does not avail, and it is by raw, unreasoning valour a man must stand or fall, while at times like these the ponderous blade is the equal of the slender streak of steel.

It was two days later when Alton, who may have made ten miles in the time, noticed something unusual on the opposite hillside. A snowslide had come down that way, and its path was marked by willows and smaller trees. Alton, of course, knew that the hollow they sprang from had been scored out deep by countless tons of debris and snow, and that prospector Jimmy would scarcely have passed the place. It also seemed to him that there was a gap in the slighter band of forest which ran straight towards the snowline up the face of the hill that suggested the work of man, and his pace quickened a trifle as he pressed forward towards the river. There he stopped for several minutes, gazing about him.

The flood came down before him stained green with the clay that underlies the glaciers, and swollen by rain and snow. There was a big pool above him, lake-like and still, but it was too wide for any weary and shivering man to swim, and the wild, white rush of a rapid close below. Alton glanced at both of them and a cluster of smaller trees across the river, and smiled somewhat grimly.

"Now I wonder," he said, "why the thing one wants the most is always on the other side."

The firs behind him were great of girth, the smallest some distance from the bank, and he was weary; but loosing the straps about him, he dropped his burdens and fell to with the axe. It was an hour before the tree went down, and at least another had passed before he had hewn off a portion. Then very slowly and painfully he rolled it to the river with skids and levers cut in the bush. He was breathless, and the perspiration dripped from him when at last it slid into the water and he seated himself astride, with his possessions on the wet bark in front of him. The device was a very old one, but there is a difficulty attached to the putting it in execution, for it is needful to lean out a little while using the propelling pole, and a log is addicted to rolling round when anything disturbs its equilibrium.

Alton, of course, knew this, but when still some distance from the opposite side, had apparently to choose between a somewhat perilous effort and an unwished-for descent of the rapid. He glanced at its foaming rush a moment, and then decided upon the former. Several times he dipped the pole and won a yard with the strenuous thrust, and then what he partly expected happened. The bark seemed to be slipping away beneath him, and, as throwing himself forward upon his belongings he flung an arm about it, the log rolled slowly, and there was a splash in the water. He had restored the equilibrium, but one blanket and the flour-bag were in the river. In another few minutes he waded ashore, and drew the butt of the log out upon the shingle before he turned to glance ruefully at the sliding water.

"If I went back and plunged for it I might get that flour," he said. "Still, I should have to go down the rapid with it, and I mightn't want it then."

Dripping from the waist with snow water, he reslung his traps, glanced back at the sombre bush behind him and then plunged into that ahead, while the dusk was closing in when he stood panting amidst the stumps of smaller trees. The mark of the axe was on them, and somebody had piled up a mound of rock and stones. Alton drew in a long breath and shook off his burden.

"Jimmy's claim," he said. "It may mean—most anything—to me."

Then, though his pulses throbbed, and he could feel his blood tingling, he fell to work systematically, groping about the excavation the dead man had made where the snowslide had rent apart the forest and scored out the rock for him. Here and there he smashed a fragment of it with the back of the axe, or picked up a discoloured stone of unusual gravity and compared it with the pieces he took out of a little bag, until at last he stood up stiffly and flung his head back.

All round him the forest rose dim and sombre, flinging back the roar of the rapid in long pulsations of sound, and its solitude was not lessened by the presence of the wet and weary man standing so still that his outline was scarcely perceptible against the trunks behind him. Save for the light of triumph in his eyes there was nothing in the whole scene to uplift the fancy. The man's garments were tattered, the river had not washed the mire from him, and one of his boots was gaping, but the discovery he had made was fraught with great possibilities for that lonely valley, and changes in the destinies of many other men. It had lain wrapped in stillness, a sanctuary for the beasts of the forest, countless ages since the world was young, being made ready slowly by frost and sun, and now man had come.

For five long minutes Alton looked into the future, and once more the fragrance of English roses seemed to steal faintly through the resinous odours of the firs. Then he shook himself, and glanced again dubiously at the river.

"And now," he said half aloud, "I'll get supper. It's a pity about that flour."

As those who have sojourned in the bush of that country know, one can sup on reasty pork and green tea alone, when it is impossible to get anything better, but there are more appetizing compounds, and when the edge of his appetite had been blunted, Alton stopped with greasy fingers in the frypan and a little smile upon his face.

"And Somasco's mine, and Carnaby—when I ask for it, with all that lies beneath me here," he said, and sat very still a space, with eyes that had lost their keenness fixed upon the bush. He did not see the big balsam in front of him nor the dusky firs, for it was once more the picture of a woman with red-gold hair standing in an English rose garden his fancy painted him.

Then he rose abruptly, and the smile faded, while his face grew grim again. "In the meanwhile I figure there's a good deal to do," he said.

He commenced it by picking the remnants of the pork out of the frying-pan, and when he had replaced them carefully in the bag, he filled the former with water and set it on the fire. That done, he proceeded to hew four square pegs, and spent some little time cutting, "One Discovery," upon the largest of them. Then with a compass in his palm he strode with even paces up the slope of the hill, and drove one of the pegs in, turned sharply, and floundered into the bush, where he hammered down a second, and came back along the river until he had paced off and marked down an oblong.

"Now I'll put in the first shot," he said.

He toiled assiduously with the axehead and a little drill, bruising his fingers as the light grew dim, and when his left hand was smeared with blood, drew out a plastic yellow roll from one of his bundles. This he gently rammed into the hole, squeezed down a copper cap upon a strip of fuse, and, lighting the latter, retired expeditiously towards the river. Standing behind a big cedar, he watched the train of blue vapour and thin red sparks creep on through the dusk until a blaze of yellow flame leapt up, and a stunning detonation rolled across the woods. The hillsides took up the sound, and flung it from one to another in great reverberations, while the pines, quivering in all their sprays, shook drops of water down. Alton stood still and listened, silent and intent, while the discord died, until there was once more stillness again, realizing dimly a little of its significance.

It was man's challenge to the wilderness that had lain sterile long, and he could forecast the grimness, but not the end of the coming struggle with rock and flood and snow. Other men had gone down vanquished in such a fight, he knew, and the forest they slept in had closed once more upon and hidden the little scars they made. Jimmy had also challenged savage nature, and Jimmy was dead, while the man who came after him stood alone, dripping still, and weary, amidst the whispering pines: he had more than the wilderness against him. Alton turned with a little shiver, strode back to the fire, unrolled a piece of pork, a packet of green tea, and a little bag of sugar from a strip of hide. The piece of pork was very small, and a good deal of it apparently bad. Then he laughed curiously.

"It seems to me that the sooner I can get south and put in my record the less hungry I'm likely to be," he said. "It would be kind of convenient if I could find a deer. I wonder just how far back the other man is?"

CHAPTER XIX

FOUL PLAY

Alton looked for a deer on the morrow and during several days that followed without finding it. There are tracts of the mountain province which for no apparent reason are almost devoid of animal life, while the deer are also addicted to travelling south towards valleys swept by the warm Chinook wind before the approach of winter. Meanwhile, though he husbanded it, the piece of pork grew rapidly smaller, and Alton hungry, while there were times when he wondered somewhat anxiously when he would find his comrades. It was unpleasantly possible that he might miss them, which would have been especially unfortunate, because, as every adult citizen is entitled to claim so many feet of frontage on unrecorded mineral land which pertains to the Crown, it appeared advisable that they should have the opportunity of staking off two more claims, and his provisions were almost exhausted.

Thus it came about that one evening he tramped somewhat dejectedly back towards his camp through a strip of thinner forest high up on the hill. There was a sting of frost in the air and a little snow beneath his feet, while his belt was girded about him tightly and his fingers stiffened on the rifle-barrel. Alton had eaten nothing since early morning, and very little then, while the fashion in which he stumbled through the thickets and amidst the fern conveyed a hint of exhaustion. It was, however, fortunate that a twig snapped noisily beneath him, because the deer are difficult to see in their sylvan home, and the sound was answered by a crackle that roused him to eager attention.

Alton, knowing there was a big fir behind him, stood very still, glancing about him without a movement of his head, until he made out what might have been a forked twig rising above the thicket. He did not, however, think it was, and gazing more intently fancied he saw a patch of something that was not the fern. He knew that at the first movement it would be gone, and there was no time for any fine alignment of the sights of the rifle, so leaning slightly forward he drew his right foot back, and with eyes fixed steadily on the little patch amidst the fern, trusted to them and the balance as he flung the long barrel up. Few men can use the rifle as the Canadian bush rancher can, and there was a flash from the muzzle as the heelplate touched his shoulder. Alton had not glanced along the barrel, but the curious thud which he heard in place of the explosion told him that the heavy bullet was smashing through bone and muscle. Then thin smoke drifted into his eyes, and there was a crackling amidst the thicket.

When he floundered forward the deer had gone, but something was smashing through the undergrowth up the face of the hill, and the weary man prepared for a grim effort as he saw the red trail it left behind. He fell headlong in a thicket where the splashes were warm upon the withered leaves, staggered up again, and presently reeled against a cedar on the crest of a depression. There was nothing visible, but he could hear a confused rattle and snapping of twigs, and shook himself as he remembered the speed with which even a badly-wounded deer can make downhill. He had his choice of a long and possibly fruitless chase or another supperless night that would be followed by a very scanty breakfast on the morrow. Alton did not care to anticipate what might happen after that, because he had discovered on previous occasions that green tea will not unassisted sustain vigorous animation very long.

In place of it he went downhill, falling into bushes, floundering to the shoulders through withered fern, and now and then stumbling over rotting trees, but the splashes grew closer, and he fancied the sound before him a little nearer. It was significant that there was any sound at all, because a deer usually clears every obstacle in its almost silent flight, and the gasping man took heart again. The quarry's strength was evidently failing as its life drained away, but darkness was also close at hand, and Alton knew that he could not hold out very long. Already there was a horrible pain in his left side and his sight was growing dim.

He went on, stumbling, gasping, falling now and then, for any man not accustomed to the bush in that country would find it sufficiently difficult to walk through, until once more a grey patch of something showed up in a thicket. Again the rifle flashed, a dim shape reeled out of the bushes, and, while the man savagely smashed through those it had quitted, plunged into another thicket. Alton, who did not see it come out again, also went in headlong, tripped, and fell upon something with life in it that struggled spasmodically beneath him. There was no room to use his rifle, for he and the deer were rolling amidst the fern together, and while he felt for its throat the long knife came out. Twice it sank harmlessly amidst the snow and leaves, and then there was a gurgle, and the man rose stiffly to his feet, with dripping hands and something smoking on the sleeve of his jacket. He glanced at it without disgust, and then down at the limp shape, which now lay very still, almost compassionately.

"Well," he said simply, "it was you or me, and the wolves would have had you, anyway."

He was busy amidst the bushes for some time, and the light had gone when he stood up with the deer upon his shoulders and the rifle beneath it. It would have pleased him better to carry the latter, but the bushman brings home a deer with its fore-legs drawn over his shoulders and grasped in front of him. Alton jerked it into the most convenient position, and then stopped a moment, panting, and glanced about him. His burden was not especially heavy, but he was weary and his camp was far away, while, though a half-moon was now growing into brilliancy above the firs, it was dark below.

"I figure I'd not have to worry quite so much about my supper at Carnaby," he said, and laughed a little as he floundered stiffly up the hill.

It was at least an hour later, and he was limping on, encouraging himself with the expectation of resting in warm repletion beside the snapping fire, when he entered a denser growth of timber. Alton had like most of his kind been taught by necessity to hold the weaknesses of his body in subjection, but he was a man with the instincts of his fellows, and the thought of the steaming kettle, smell of roasting meat, glare of flickering light, and snug blankets appealed to him, and just then he would not have bartered the blackened can of smoke-tasted tea for all the plate and glass of Carnaby. His step grew a little steadier, and the sound of the river louder, until he stopped suddenly near a prostrate fir. There was a gap in the dusky vault above him through which the moon shone down and called up a sparkle from the thin scattering of snow. Beyond it the dark trunks stretched back, a stupendous colonnade, into the shadow again. There was nothing unusual in all this, but the man had seen something that made him check his breathing and set his lips. He knew he might be mistaken, but the glint he had caught for a moment suggested the barrel of a rifle.

He stood, as he realized instinctively, in the shadow with a great trunk behind him, and remained so, motionless, with his blood tingling, because the bushman knows the difficulty of catching the outline of anything that is still. Then there was a soft snapping, and the glint became visible, in another place, again, while Alton saw that he was not mistaken. He was also aware that the free prospector does not usually wait the approach of a stranger in silence with the rifle, and it flashed upon him that as the other man had moved there would in place of a shadowy trunk now be a patch of snow behind him. Alton regretted he had waited so long, and dropping the deer sprang backwards, feeling for the sling of his rifle.

He was, however, a second too late, for there was a thin red flash amidst the undergrowth, and he reeled with a stinging pain somewhere about his knee. It yielded and grew almost useless under him, and while his rifle fell with a rattle he lurched into a thicket of withered fern. For a moment he lay still, his face awry with pain, and groaned as he strove to draw his leg up beneath him. It felt numbed and powerless, and, desisting, he strove to collect his scattered wits, realizing that he had never needed them more than he did just then.

The rifle had fallen outside the thicket where the forest was more open and there was a sprinkling of snow, and Alton knew that an attempt to recover it would probably be fatal. He was equally convinced that the man who had shot him would not have come out on such an errand without his magazine full, or leave his task unfinished. There was in the meanwhile no sign of him beyond the smoke that hung about the bushes, and Alton turning over groaned again more loudly as he felt for his long-bladed knife. It was not done without a purpose, but he had little difficulty in simulating a moan of pain, and when he heard a swish of leaves, lay flat, and dragged himself very softly farther into the fern.

The wet fronds brushed his face, and here and there his fingers sank into a patch of snow, but he found its chilly touch curiously pleasant, and once clawed up a handful and thrust it into his mouth. A numbness was creeping over him, his head felt curiously heavy, but he was scheming for his life with the instinctive cunning of a wounded beast rather than reason. There was now a sound behind him, but it was dulled by the roar of the river, which he realized would drown the faint rustle he made, and, when the fern grew scantier, dragged himself across an opening and crawled in amidst the raspberry briars on the other side.

The thorns scarred his face and ripped his hands, but he moved amidst them to clear space for his arms, and then lay still with the big knife beneath him. A shaft of moonlight shone down a few yards away, and he had no desire to betray his hiding-place by the glint of steel. It was also possible that he might have crawled away beyond the reach of discovery into the shadows, but that was not his intention, for, though he could never decide afterwards whether he acted from instinct or reasoned his course out, he was bent on waiting for, and not escaping from, his pursuer. Nor did he know how long he waited, but it seemed a very long while before he saw a shadowy object move round and afterwards into the opposite side of the thicket.

Then the man's face became visible as he moved across the shaft of moonlight. It was set and grey, the mouth was awry, and there was fear in the staring eyes. It also seemed to Alton curiously familiar, but his brain was scarcely capable of receiving many diverse impressions just then, and he only realized that it was reluctantly and because his safety demanded it, the man was looking for him. Alton felt a little relief at that. He was growing colder, and there was a bewildering dimness in his eyes, but he stiffened the muscles of his arms and tightened his grasp on the knife, wondering if his strength would last until he had his hands upon his enemy.

The man swayed forward as he crossed the strip of moonlight with a little spring, then came on again with both hands on the rifle, waist-deep in the fern, glancing down momentarily at the trail his victim had made, and then about him again. Alton's face was drawn up into a very grim smile as he lay amidst the raspberries watching him, for it was evident that the assassin fancied he had crawled straight on. The latter stopped once for several seconds, and Alton heard his heart thumping while the sound of the river seemed to grow bewildering. He stiffened his fingers upon the knife-haft savagely, for the horrible faintness he could not shake off was growing upon him.

Then with a little jerk of his shoulders the man who caught sight of the opening moved again, faster than he had done, and the watcher surmised that fear and savagery struggled for the mastery within him. The latter apparently rose uppermost, for he came straight on through the thicket, sprang across the clear space, and would have plunged into the bush beyond it but that Alton, reaching out caught him by the ankle. Then he lurched forward with a hoarse cry, went down, and rolled over with Alton's hand at his throat, and the blade of the knife driven through the inner side of the sleeve of his jacket.

That was the commencement of a very grim struggle. The stranger was wiry and vigorous, but the terrible hard fingers clung to his throat, and a leg was wound about him, while as he panted and smote he felt something was ripping his clothing. Instinctively he jammed the hand that held it down, rolled over on his antagonist, and then shook himself almost free again half-choked, as something that stung it sank into his shoulder. Next moment he smote fiercely at a dim white face, knowing that a bone had turned the blade, but that the result would have been different had it entered a few inches lower.

His fist came down smashing, but the terrible fingers were clinging still, and the man's face was purple when they rolled together out of the briars and into the widening strip of radiance where the moon shone down. Alton's hand was free now, and with arm bent between his enemy and the ground he thrust upwards with the last of his strength. There was a crash, the man writhed backwards, the rancher's fingers slipped from their grasp, and a figure that rose partly upright reeled into the fern, while Alton felt the barrel of a rifle under him. He rolled on his side, and clawed for it, almost sightless, with one hand, and laughed harshly as he raised himself a trifle. There was a flash and a concussion, the trigger-guard sank into his nerveless finger, and a smashing amidst the undergrowth was followed by footsteps that were presently lost in the roar of the river.

Alton drew one knee under him, and listened until the sound grew altogether bewildering and the dim trunks reeled about him. Then he lurched over and lay where he fell, sensible only that it was bitterly cold. It was still night when he awakened from sleep or stupor, but the moon shone down and he saw that there was white frost on the fern. His hands were also stiffened, and there was a horrible ache in every limb, while he groaned as the cold struck through him. Twice he essayed to raise himself and fell back again, but at last by an effort crawled towards a tree and leaned his back against it while he stretched out one numbed and useless limb into the silver light. The long boots were curiously smeared, the overalls above them stiffened and crusted, while following the movement he made there was a swift spreading of the stain.

Alton shivered and set his lips as he groped for his handkerchief, then groaning the while dragged at it until it was knotted above his knee. After that he laid his finger on the overalls and saw that the stain spread past it more slowly. Then he felt for the matches in one pocket, and finding them, turned over cautiously and dragged himself towards a fallen fir. He knew where to find the resin, and tore at the smaller branches fiercely, flung them together, and striking a match, watched the flame that spread from splinter to splinter and crawled amidst the twigs. At last it sprang aloft in a great crackling blaze, and Alton swayed unevenly and fell over on his side again. After that he remembered nothing until he saw that the sun was in the sky, and dragged himself to the thicket for an armful of frosted fern. When he had piled it on the fire a gauzy blue column that rose straight between the firs replaced the flame, and the man who watched it vacantly for a while dragged himself back groaning for another armful of the fern.

He afterwards fancied that he spent most of the day crawling between the fire and the thicket, but was never very sure of anything he did just then. Nor did he feel hungry, though now and then he clawed up and sucked a handful of snow, but he remembered that he was lying in the smoke when the bush grew dimmer and the red blaze more brilliant as darkness crept down. Presently he fancied that something broke through the monotone of the river, and after listening to it vacantly groped for the rifle. He clutched it, and raising himself a trifle with difficulty, blinked at the darkness that hemmed in the fire until footsteps came out of it. They were not furtive, but apparently those of somebody coming straight towards the light in haste. Alton smiled curiously, and wriggled until he was out of the strongest light, and found support for the barrel of the rifle. Then a cry came out of the shadows, "Is it you, Harry?"

Alton did not answer, for his voice seemed to fail him, and he blinked at the man who bent over him.

"You have been a long while, Charley, and I came very near putting a bullet into you just now," he said.

"Well," said Seaforth, "I did my best, and Tom's coming along behind me. What are you doing here anyway?"

Alton glanced at him bewilderedly. "I don't quite know, but I got the deer. It's somewhere around here," said he.

Seaforth's face grew suddenly grave as he stopped and shook his comrade, then let his hand drop as he saw a red trickle spreading across the crusted overalls.

"Good Lord! Are you hurt, Harry, and what's all this?" he said.

Alton glanced up at him with dimming eyes. "The thing's broken out again. I think it's blood," he said, and while his arm slipped from under him, slowly rolled over with his feet in the smoking fern.