Chapter 16

ON THE TRAIL

Daylight was just creeping through the rain, and thin mist rolled about the pines, when early one morning Alton, who was setting out to find the silver, stood upon the verandah of Somasco ranch. The trickle from the eaves dripped upon two pack-horses waiting in the mire below, and Tom of Okanagan, the big axeman who had been hewing with Alton when Deringham first met him at the ranch, stood motionless with their bridles in his hand, apparently as oblivious of the rain as the pines behind him. Seaforth was at the head of the stairway with a pack upon his back, and the barrel of a Marlin rifle sloped across his shoulders. Beyond lay a blurred vista of driving rain and dripping trees.

Early as it was, Deringham and his daughter were also upon the verandah, and the girl shivered a little as she gazed northwards into the mist. It was a very wild and lonely region the rolling vapours hid, and she knew the men who ventured into it at that season of the year would find their courage and endurance tested to the uttermost. There were but three of them, but she had discovered already that they were a little more than average men, and a glance at their burdens and those of the dripping beasts was as reassuring as their bearing. It was evident that they knew what their task would be, and had prepared for it with a thoroughness that overlooked nothing. Tents, blankets, flour-bags, cooking utensils and hide packages were hung where man and horse could carry them with a minimum of effort. The place for every strap had been exactly determined, and there was an absence of concern, and a quietness about the men that had its meaning.

Presently Seaforth descended the stairway with Deringham, Tom of Okanagan moved forward with the horses, and Alton was left alone with Alice Deringham. Neither of them spoke for a moment, and it was noticeable that the girl, who knew that silence is often more expressive than speech and had acquired some skill in avoiding unpleasant situations, was for the moment unable to break it. It was, Alton who spoke first, and his voice was a trifle too even.

"You will be gone when we come back?" he said.

The girl noticed he did not look at her, and fancied she understood the reason. This was a strong man, but it seemed he knew there were limits to his strength.

"Yes," she said. "The time we spent at Somasco has passed very pleasantly, but we shall go down to Vancouver in a day or two."

It seemed very trivial, for Alice Deringham was quite aware that this might be the last time she would look upon her companion, but she had bidden farewell to men of his kind before. They had worn their nation's khaki, and Alton wore deerskin and jean, with the shovel girded about him in place of the sword; but she knew there was in him the same spirit that animated them, and that it was a silent spirit made most terribly manifest in action.

"I hope you will have a good time down there," he said.

The girl glancing at him in sidelong fashion noticed his curious little smile. "Oh, yes, I think I shall," she said. "I shall expect to hear you have come back with the silver."

Alton nodded. "Yes," he said. "When I come back I shall have found the silver."

He spoke quietly, and there was nothing unusual in his voice, but glancing at his eyes the girl understood what he had left unspoken. If this man did not return with his object accomplished, she felt it would be because he would not come back at all.

Then there was another silence more oppressive still, until Alton held out his hand. "I must be going," he said.

Alice Deringham was conscious of a little thrill as her fingers rested in his big, hard palm, and when he released them waited for a moment with a curious expectancy.

"You will take my good wishes with you," she said.

Alton bent his head. "I am doing this thing because I feel I have to," he said very slowly. "I could come and see you at Vancouver when I come back?"

The light was dim, but the girl moved her head a little so that the man did not see her face. "Yes," she said; "if it would please you."

Alton smiled gravely as he swung down his wet hat. "Then," he said, "I will come."

He went down the stairway next moment, there was a soft thud of hoofs splashing in the mud, and in another minute he had gone, and Alice Deringham glancing towards the bush saw only sliding mist and driving rain, until her father stopped close by her. "There is evidently a good deal in heredity," he said. "Our rancher kinsman occasionally makes it very evident that he is Alton--of Somasco--but there are also times when he appears to understand what would be becoming in Alton of Carnaby."

Now Deringham may have been right, and he may equally have been wrong; for, while Alton of Somasco had doubtless inherited something from the generations of land-holders who had gone before him, the man animated by a single purpose who has grappled with untrammelled nature, subduing the weaknesses of his body, and bearing hardship, peril, and toil, not infrequently attains to something of the greatness which is the birthright of humanity, and not confined to the English gentleman.

Alice Deringham, however, smiled ironically at her father. "Did you expect anything else from him?" she said. "I wonder how long it will be before he comes back again."

Deringham did not answer her, but there was a curious look in his face, and he seemed to shiver. It was, however, very cold, and the rain drove into the verandah.

It was ten days later and the little party, clearing a path for the horses through a chaos of fallen trunks and thickets, had made with difficulty some six or eight miles a day, when Alton was awakened one night by the trampling of the beasts. He sat up in his blankets and listened intently, but could only hear the hoarse roar of a river and the little cold breeze moaning in the pines. A man new to that region would have lain down again, but Alton had taught himself to understand a little of the nature of the beasts that worked for him, and when he heard another movement crept to the tent door.

Looking out he could see the pines lifting their spires of blackness against the night where they followed the ridge of a hill. That was on the one hand, but on the other they rolled, vague and blurred, down into a vast hollow from which the mist was drifting. The sound of the river rose reverberating from its profundity of shadow, for it had cost the party most of a day to climb to the height they had pitched the camp upon. There was but little light overhead, though here and there a star blinked fitfully, and Alton shivered again, for it was very cold and but little past the hour when man's vitality sinks to its lowest.

Raising himself a trifle he listened again with ears that could distinguish each component of the nocturnal harmonies. No one but a bushman could have heard them, but to those who toil in the stillness of that forest-shrouded land the silence is but the perfect blending of musical sound. There was the faintest of crisp rattles as the withered needles shook down from a twig, and then a sigh and a whisper along the dim black vault above, as though a spirit hovered above the sleeping earth. Alton heard, and knew it was not the wind, for the little breeze had paused while the river made it answer in subdued antiphones. He had dwelt in close contact with the soil he sprang from, and there were times when he felt his nature thrill in faint response to the life there is in what the men of the cities deem inanimate things.

Then a leaf sailed past the tent, and he knew what tree it came from as it touched the earth, and strained his ears the more, wondering what he listened for, as he, and others of his kind, had done in the bush before. It could be, he almost felt, nothing material, and yet, though they did not move now, he knew the horses were also listening. That had its meaning, for man cannot measure his keenest senses with those of the beasts of the field. The little breeze awoke again, and shook fantastic harmonies out of the shivering trees, and one horse stamped. The other wheeled and snorted, and Alton sprang back into the tent, as somewhere in the bushes there commenced a sound that suggested the snarling of a great cat. It was possibly unfortunate he was not a trifle less prompt, because otherwise he might have noticed something slightly unusual in the sound.

As it was, however, he fell over Okanagan Tom, who being a very similar man to him, and not as yet wholly awake, asked no questions but gripped him silently, and proceeded to crush the breath out of him. Alton was sinewy, but he was almost choking before he freed one hand, and drove it into a tender portion of his assailant's frame. Then with a little laugh Tom of Okanagan flung him across the tent.

"Great Columbus! It's good I found out in time," he said.

Alton was almost speechless still, and, while he gasped, the object he had fallen on moved strenuously beneath him.

"You might get up," it said. "It's a somewhat unprotected place you're sitting on."

"Confound you both," said Alton. "Hand me the rifle."

Seaforth afterwards remembered that he did not ask where the rifle was, which would have been the question put by most men, and as he held it out felt the stock touch Alton's hand. Then there was a little rattle, and as Seaforth floundered to his feet a weird snarling cry broke out. Alton was out of the tent in a moment, but Seaforth afterwards recalled the fact that they were all moving when he heard the sound, and Tom of Okanagan apparently groping for his axe and throwing things about. He also decided that it might have been better if one had sat still and listened, but it is not given to human beings to always do the most appropriate thing.

Alton instinctively avoided the tent-line nearest the opening, which was unfortunate, because the peg had drawn a trifle, and Seaforth had moved it after his comrade had driven it. It therefore came about that the line was not where he had last seen it, and he went down headlong, while the rifle rolled away from him. Just there, there was a rush and a drumming of hoofs, and before Alton could pick himself up the horses were sweeping in a panic through the shadowy bush.

"Anything the worse, Harry?" said Seaforth. "We had better get off at once while there's the sound to guide us."

Alton laughed softly, as he did now and then when he might have been disconcerted. "I can't beat a Cayuse, Charley, and I don't think you'll hear them very long," he said.

Tom of Okanagan grunted approval, and the three stood still, until the drumming of hoofs was lost in the silence of the bush.

"They're gone," said Seaforth. "Do you mean to do nothing?"

"Yes," said Alton. "I am going to stop right where I am until there's light enough to trail them by. Do you know anything better, Tom?"

"No," said the man from Okanagan. "Still, I'm not quite as good at thinking just now as I would like to be. The last time I felt like this was when Siwash Bob took the back of the axe to me. I figure that was a panther."

"Yes," said Alton; "it was a panther."

"Well," said Okanagan, "did you ever hear of one that went for a horse close up with a tent before?"

"I have," said Alton, "seen a panther that turned on a man who wanted to get a shot at it in the undergrowth."

"Oh, yes," said Okanagan. "He'd got something he'd caught for dinner in the bushes, but it's kind of curious that beasts come round and howl at us. Anyway, we can't find out nothing until the daylight comes."

They crawled back into the tent, and it was characteristic of them that although the loss of the horses might traverse all their plans they went to sleep again, and awakened as the beasts do, instinctively, when the first light crept over the shoulder of the hill. Ten minutes later Alton had the fire lighted, and sat down beside it with the frypan in his hand. The recovery of the horses was a question of importance, but it might well entail a day's journey, and he knew that to commence it without his breakfast would be distinctly unwise of him. Accordingly he tranquilly held the pan, while as the mists melted and the awakening earth put on shape and form there was unrolled before him a wondrous transformation scene.

When he had last awakened the wilderness had lain formless, wrapped in blackness, primitive and pagan. Now the great pines rising row and row from the hollow pointed heavenwards with all their sombre spires, and led the eye upwards ever over the rock that lost its greyness and glinted to the gleam of snow far up in the empyrean that was sundered from earth by the vapours and wholly spiritual. Alton realized dimly a little of the motive of the scene, and felt that the world was good, for, laying down the frypan, he stood up stretching his arms above his head as he rejoiced in the strength of his vigorous manhood. Still, like most of the bushmen, he did not express his feelings in speech.

"Charley, you'll be slow for your wedding. Turn out, the pork's done," he said.

They lost no time, but they did not eat in haste, and Alton glanced at Seaforth when the meal was done. "You'll stop right here, Charley, by the tent," he said. "I can't quite tell when Tom and I will be back again."

Then without another word he strode into the bush, and Seaforth, who first washed the breakfast-cans, proceeded to make a circuit of the camp. He found the spot where the horses had been tethered with but little difficulty, and also the hole out of which one of them had drawn the picket-peg. The redwoods which towered above him were vast of girth, and it would have needed a long halter to encompass them, while there was no branch for sixty feet or so. Still, though he searched diligently, he did not find any print which might have been left by the paw of a panther, and regretted that there was a ridge of rock outcrop behind the camp.

"That beast was hungry, or he wouldn't have come so near," he said.

It was near dusk when Alton came back leading one weary horse, and darkness had closed down before Tom of Okanagan strode in with nothing but the pack-rope he had set out with. Seaforth had supper ready, and no questions were asked until they had eaten. Then Alton, stretching himself at full length beside the fire, lighted his pipe.

"You found nothing after I left you where the trail split tip?" he said.

"No," said Okanagan. "Anyway, not for more than a mile. Ran into rock and gravel, and lost the trail. Crawled round in rings most of the day, and couldn't strike it again. Guess the beast swam the river and lit out for home."

"Well," said Alton dryly, "I found more than that, for I ran into a man's trail, and it wasn't very old. I think he had long boots on and one was down at the heel. I spent an hour over it, and when it led me into rock came back again."

"A man?" said Seaforth. "I fancied there was nobody but ourselves between here and Somasco. What could he be doing?"

"I don't know," said Alton. "Did you find the panther's trail?"

"No," said Seaforth. "Rock again!"

Alton said nothing for a minute, and when he spoke his voice had a curious tone. "Well," he said gravely, "the rock belongs to this place and we don't, so there's no use kicking, but it would have been convenient if there had been less of it. Now it's quite possible that a few pounds of grub and a load of blankets may make a big difference before we get home again, and if we can't trail that horse to-morrow you'll go back to Somasco for another one. We'll cache the load somewhere here and make a big smoke for you at every camping."

"That means the loss of a fortnight, anyway," said Seaforth. "Time is valuable with the winter coming on."

Alton nodded. "Still, it can't be helped," he said.

"I'll lose no time," said Seaforth, who had been watching his comrade. "Are you quite sure you have told us all, Harry?"

Alton slowly drew a strip of hide from beneath him, and passed it across. Seaforth and Okanagan bent over it together, their faces showing intent in the light of the fire, while Alton laughed softly as he watched them.

"What do you make of that?" he said.

Seaforth glanced round sharply. "It's a trifle curious. That hide's thick, and yet the beast has evidently broken it, but it pulled up the peg."

"Did you find the peg?" said Alton, and Okanagan swept his glance across the faces before him. Seaforth's expressed bewilderment, Alton's was grim.

"I found one," said Seaforth--"Julius Caesar's."

"Yes," said Alton dryly. "There should have been another, and a horse that breaks his tether can't pull out the peg. Still, I don't think he broke it."

"But," said Seaforth, "the thing is broken."

Tom of Okanagan smiled in a curious fashion while Alton reached out and laid his finger on the hide. "One can't be sure of anything," he said. "Still, one could fancy that had felt the knife before it snapped."

There was silence for almost a minute, and the shadows of the great firs seemed to close in upon the camp. Then Alton rose up and stretched his limbs wearily.

"I am kind of tired," he said. "There's a good deal to be done to-morrow."