151CHAPTER XIVTHE HIRED TEAMSTER
Speaking generally, winter is much less severe in British Columbia, especially near the coast, than it is on the prairie, though it is sufficiently trying high up among the mountains, where as a rule little work is done at that season. Still, though the number of the track-layers was largely reduced, the inhabitants of the mining region had waited long enough, and so, in spite of many hardships, slowly, fathom by fathom, we carried the rail-head on.
Now and then for several days together we sat in our log-built shelter while a blinding snowstorm raged outside and the pines filled the valley with their roaring. Then there were weeks of bitter frost, when work was partly suspended, and both rock and soil defied our efforts. One of our best horses died and another fell over a precipice. Hay was hardly to be bought with money, provisions only at an exorbitant cost, and though we received a few interim payments it was, as Johnston said, even chances either way if we kept on top, because every day of enforced idleness cost us many dollars. However, floundering through snow-slush, swinging the axe in driving sleet and rain, or hauling the mossy logs through the mire of a sudden thaw, we persisted in our task, though often at nights we sat inside the shanty, which was filled with steaming garments, counting the cost, in a state of gloomy despondency. Except for the thought of Grace, there were moments when I might have yielded; but we were always an obstinate race, and seeing152that I was steadfastly determined to hold out to the last, the others gallantly aided me. Now, when the time of stress is past, I know how much I owe to their loyalty.
At length, however, the winter drew to an end, and the whole mountain region rejoiced at the coming of the spring. A warm wind from the Pacific set the cedars rustling, the sun shone bright and hot, and the open fringe of the forest was garlanded with flowers, while a torrent made wild music in every ravine. I was sitting outside our shanty one morning smoking a pet English briar, whose stem was bitten half-way, and reveling in the warmth and brightness, when the unexpected happened. By degrees, perhaps under the spell of some influence which stirs us when sleeping nature awakens once more to life, I lost myself in reverie, and recalled drowsily a certain deep, oak-shrouded hollow under the Lancashire hills, where at that season pale yellow stars of primroses peeped out among the fresh green of tender leaves. Then the bald heights of Starcross Moor rose up before me, and Grace came lightly across the heather chanting a song, with her hat flung back, and the west wind kissing her face into delicate color, until a tramp of footsteps drew nearer down the track.
A man, who evidently was neither a bush-rancher nor a railroad hand, approached and said with a pure English accent:
“I’m in a difficulty, and it was suggested that Contractor Lorimer might help me. I presume I have the pleasure of addressing him? My name is Calvert.”
“I will if I can,” I answered, and the stranger continued:
“It’s my duty to escort two ladies from the main line into the Lonsdale valley. They have a quantity of baggage, and I have no confidence in the half-starved Cayuse ponies the Indians offered me. The trails are hardly safe just now, and the regular freighters hadn’t a beast to spare. It would153be a favor if you came with yours, and we should, of course, be glad to recoup you for the time you lose.”
His manner was pleasant, money was very scarce then, and as it happened we had been compelled to lay off for a day or two, awaiting material; so I arranged to start with him.
“A little change will be good for you,” Harry said, when the man departed. “You have been looking as grim as a hungry bear lately. Jim Lawrence, I dare say, would lend you his sisters’ saddles.”
The outward journey, made partly under cover of darkness, was arduous, for each torrent came roaring down swollen by melting snow almost bank-full, and portions of the trail had been washed away; but we reached the station settlement in safety, and after a few hours’ sleep there we turned out to meet the west-bound train. It came thundering down the valley presently with the sunlight flashing upon burnished metal and the long car windows, and when amid a roar of blown-off steam it rolled into the station, I wondered with mild curiosity what kind of women the new arrivals would be. The next moment my pulse quickened as a gray-haired lady stepped down from the platform of a car, for when my companion hurried forward with uplifted hat I saw that it was Miss Carrington, while fresh and dainty, as though she had not traveled at all, Grace followed her.
Then I remembered that my place was that of hired teamster, and I stood waiting outside the baggage-car until Calvert gave me the brass checks, after which I assisted the man who came with me to cinch a surprisingly heavy load on our two pack-horses. The battered felt hat probably concealed my face, all I had on was homely and considerably the worse for wear, and it was scarcely surprising that they did not recognize me. Presently, leading Jasper’s bay154horse forward, I stooped and held out my hand for Grace to rest her little foot on, and when she swung herself lightly into the saddle, Calvert said:
“The sooner we start the better, the trails are positively awful. Contractor Lorimer, you will no doubt take especial care of Miss Carrington.”
Swinging low the broad hat, I looked up and saw a faint tinge of crimson mantle in the face of the girl, while again a thrill went through me when she said simply, “Ralph!” for that name had never passed her lips before in my hearing.
Then, while Calvert looked hard at me and the elder lady bowed, she patted the bay horse’s neck, saying frankly:
“It’s an unexpected pleasure, and I have often been thinking about you, but never expected to meet you here. What a handsome beast you have brought me!”
Grace seldom showed all her feelings, for a sweet serenity characterized her, but this time I fancied that our relative positions both puzzled and troubled her, and I regretted my own stupidity in not asking who the ladies were. Still, I managed to answer that Cæsar should be proud of his burden.
That was a memorable journey in various ways. In places, beaten by the hoofs of many pack-horses, the trail was knee-deep in mire, and in others it was lost under beds of treacherous shale. But Cæsar was used to the mountains, and I strode beside his head, heeding neither slippery shingle nor plastic mud, for Grace chatted about her English visit, and with such a companion I should have floundered contentedly over leagues of ice and snow.
The valleys were filled with freshness, and the air was balmy with scents, while every bird and beast rejoiced with the vigor of the spring. Now and then a blue grouse broke out drumming from the summit of a stately fir, white-headed155eagles and fish-hawks wheeled screaming above the frothing shallows on slanted wing, and silently, like flitting shadows, the little wood-deer leaped across the trail, or amid a crash of undergrowth a startled black bear charged in blind panic through the dim recesses of the bush. Once, too, with a snarl, a panther sprang out from a thicket, and Calvert’s rifle flashed; but the only result was that Cæsar tried to rear upright. With fear I clutched at his rein, and it was a pretty sight to see the big, rough-coated horse settle down as if ashamed of his fright when the fair rider spoke soothingly to him. All dumb creatures took kindly to Grace, and, though Cæsar could show a very pretty temper in ungentle hands, he yielded to the caressing touch of her soft fingers. Then he turned his eyes upon me with a look that seemed an apology for dividing his allegiance, while Grace smiled under lowered lashes, as though she did not wish to meet my gaze. It was a trifling incident, but inwardly I thanked the good horse for it. Later, when we came up out of a roaring ford, through which I carefully led Cæsar, with the stream boiling about my waist, into a dim avenue, she looked down at me as she said:
“This is a dream-like country, and I never imagined anything so beautiful. And yet it is familiar. Do you remember what you once said to me at Lone Hollow?”
The question was wholly unnecessary, for I could remember each moment of that night, and any one in touch with nature could understand her comment. It was a great forest temple through which we were marching, where the giant conifers were solemn with the antiquity of long ages, for it had taken probably a thousand years to raise the vaulted roof above us, with its groined arches of red branches and its mighty pillars of living wood. Nature does all things slowly, but her handiwork is very good.
“Yes,” Grace continued, “it seems familiar—as though156you and I had ridden together through such a country once before; I even seem to know those great redwoods well. I—I think I dreamed it, but there is another intangible memory in which you figured too.”
“I could not be in better company,” I answered, smiling, though my heart beat. “We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep, you know; and here among the mountains it seems borne in on one forcibly that, as I told you my partner said, man’s intellect is feeble and we do not know everything.”
Grace sighed, and then, though she answered lightly, there was the same puzzled look on her face that I had seen for a moment at Cypress Hollow. It seemed as if her mind reached forward toward something that eluded its grasp, until we both broke into laughter as a willow-grouse disturbed by the horse’s feet rose whirring to a redwood branch and perched there, close within reach, regarding us with an assurance that was ludicrous.
“It thinks it is perfectly safe,” I said. “You might shoot until you hit it, or knock it down with a stick, and yet there is no more timorous creature among the undergrowth, unless it has a brood of chicks, when it will attack any one.”
At noon we rested for luncheon in an open glade, where bright sunlight beat down upon the boulders of a stream which surged among them, stained green by the drainage from a glacier; and there was merry laughter over the viands Calvert produced from his pack.
“I did my best, Miss Carrington,” he said, “but as yet they’re a primitive people among these mountains—and it’s not to be wondered at, with that huge rampart between them and civilization. ‘Something nice for a lady?’ the storekeeper said. ‘Guess I’ve just got it.’ And he planked down a salmon-fed reistit ham and this bottle of ancient candy, with the dead flies thrown in. Still, one can’t help157admiring them for the way they’ve held on, growing stuff they cannot sell, building stores where few men come to buy, and piling up low-grade ore that won’t pay its pack-freight to the smelter. Also I’ve seen work that three men spent a year over which a hydraulic monitor would have done in a few days, while the rocks seem bursting with riches and the valleys with fertility; but they can get neither produce out nor mining plant in. Their greatest hero now is a certain enterprising director, and they’d decline an angel’s visit at any time for that of a railroad builder.”
“I sometimes wish I had been born a man, with work of that kind to do,” said Grace, with a fire in her eyes. “We hear of the old romance and lost chivalry, but there was never more than in these modern days, only it has changed its guise. If we haven’t the knight in armor or the roystering swashbuckler, we have the man with the axe and drill; and is it not a task for heroes to drive the level steel road through these tremendous mountains? You are smiling, Mr. Calvert. I read the papers—Colonial and British, all I can come across—and I know that some day England will need all her colonies. You cannot deny that this is a sensible question: Which is the better for an English gentleman, to use all the strength and valor that is entrusted him—we are taught there will be a reckoning when he must account for them—subduing savage Nature, that the hungry may eat cheaper bread, or lounging about a racecourse, shooting driven pheasants—I know it needs high skill—or wasting precious hours in the reeking smoke-room of his club? If I had a brother I should sooner see him working as a C. P. R. track-shoveler.”
“Grace has strong opinions,” said the old lady. “I think she is right, in a measure.”
Calvert bowed. “It’s in the Carrington blood. Miss Grace, I once heard one of your father’s old comrades say158that the Colonel could keep no officers because he wore them out, and he might have ended as General but that he reversed the positions and wanted to instruct the War Office. However, you mustn’t be too hard on the poor loungers; they eat the things the other fellows grow, and some of them subscribe the money to make the new railroads go—they don’t always get dividends on it either. Besides,”—and there was a twinkle in his eyes—“you are making my new friend uncomfortable. He is a railroad builder. Are you working for philanthropic notions, Mr. Lorimer?”
“No,” I answered soberly; and the rest of the party laughed as I added: “Only to pay back what I owe; and we are making slow progress in that direction. Still, the work has its fascination, and it will last and be useful after we are gone.”
Then, while Calvert spoke to Miss Carrington, Grace turned toward me with a sudden look of interest.
“You are not exactly prospering, I gather,” she said, “and I am very sorry. Please commence when you left Fairmead and tell me all the story.”
I did so—perhaps not very clearly, for she asked many questions during the course of the narrative; and her eyes sparkled at the story of our profitless struggle in the coulée.
“Flour—poor thirds; whose brand?—local pork—and doubtless the cheapest tea, you lived on. I manage the affairs of the Manor, and may I ask what your grocery list came to? How much maize and oats for the horses? Thank you. It was just as one might have expected. No, I have never been disappointed in either Harry Lorraine or you.”
She dragged the particulars from me—and no one, much less Ralph Lorimer, could refuse to answer Grace Carrington—with a skill that came from practical knowledge159of such details, before I even guessed what she wished to arrive at. Then she laughed at my confusion.
“You have no need to blush. Starved yourselves and fed the cattle. It was well done. And didn’t the new partner grumble?”
“No,” I answered, glad to change the subject. “Johnston never grumbled at anything in his life, I think. It was he who managed the commissariat.”
“Do you realize, Mr. Lorimer, that you are in many ways a lucky man?” she added. “I understand perfectly what it means to lose a crop and carry out an unprofitable contract. But it is in reference to your comrades I speak. Fearless, loyal partners are considerably better than the best of gear with half-hearted help, and it is evident that you have them.”
“Yes,” I said. “No man ever had better; and it is quite true what you say. With a loyal partner a man may do very much, and, if he is sure of himself, with a higher mind to show him the way, he might reach out toward the heavens and—”
Here I stopped abruptly. Wild thoughts were crystallizing into words I might not speak, and I grew hot with the struggle to check them, while I fancied that Grace blushed before she turned her face away. I know my brow was furrowed and my fingers trembled, so that it was a relief presently to hear her musical laugh.
“You are not an orator,” she said, turning around calmly; “and perhaps it is as well. It is not orators who are wanted in this country. Your eloquent beginning too suddenly breaks away. But don’t you think we are in the meantime drifting into idle sentiment? And you have asked me neither where I am going nor about Colonel Carrington.”
It was true; the first would have seemed presumptuous160and I did not care greatly about the redoubtable Colonel’s health.
“He has invested some money in a new mine in the Lonsdale district,” she said; and there was a slight cloud on her brow as she continued: “The Manor farm has lately cost us, through bad seasons, more than we made from it. So, while Foster takes charge, we are going to live in a ranch up here this summer, in order that my father may assist in the development of the mine. He is practically the leading partner, and until your railroad is finished there will be serious transportation difficulties. I hope you will come to see us often.”
“Time is up!” said Calvert.
I helped Grace into the saddle, and the rest of the perfect afternoon passed like a happy dream. Even if alone, at that season the mere sounds and scents of reawakening Nature would have elated me; but then I strode on, holding Cæsar’s rein, lost in the golden glamour of it all, until snow peak and solemn forest seemed but a fitting background for the slender figure swaying to the horse’s stride, while the pale, calm face brought into the shadowy aisles a charm of its own. Once—and I could not help myself—a few lines written by a master who loved Nature broke from me, and for a moment Grace seemed startled. It was a passage from the first home-coming of Queen Guinevere.
“Shall we thank Providence for a good conceit of ourselves?” she said lightly, a little later. “You are hardly a Lancelot, Sir Railroad Builder; and she—is it a compliment to compare me with Arthur’s faithless Queen?”
Thereupon I lapsed into silence, feeling like one who has blundered on the edge of a precipice; and Grace was silent too, for the day drew toward its close, and a red glare of sunset came, slanting in among the massy trunks, striking strange glints of color from her hair, while winsome and161graceful to the tiny foot in the stirrup, her lissom shape was outlined against it. Then for a while we left the woods, and rode down the hillside under the last of the afterglow, which blazed, orange, green and crimson, along the heights of eternal snow, calling up ruby flashes from the ragged edge of a glacier, while Grace seemed lost in wonder and awe. I do not think there are any sunsets in the world like those of British Columbia.
“It is unearthly—majestic!” she said half to herself. “And once I almost felt inclined to sympathize with a Transatlantic scribbler, who compared the Revelation to what he termed a wholesale jewelry show. He was a townsman who had never crossed the Rockies—and if there are glories like this on earth, what must the everlasting city be?”
The weird fires paled and faded, and the peaks were coldly solemn under their crown of snow, while a little breeze awoke strange harmonies among the cedars, and there was no more talking. Perhaps we were physically tired, though that day’s march was a very slight task for me, but I felt that after what we had seen silence became me best. It was dark long before we rode into Cedar Crossing, and Grace was worn-out when I helped her from the saddle. Miss Carrington apparently found some difficulty in straightening herself, and when Calvert had installed them in the one second-rate hotel, after a visit to an acquaintance there, I sat smoking beneath a hemlock most of the night keeping guard over it. This was, of course, palpably absurd; but I was young, and from early ages many others have done much the same, while, though it seems the fashion to despise all sentiment now, it is probable that future generations will show traces of equal foolishness.
We finished the journey on the third day, but I did not see Colonel Carrington. He was busy at the mine, and it was not worth while wasting precious time in the really162comfortable ranch he had hired, awaiting his return for the mere pleasure of exchanging greetings with him, while Grace was far too tired to entertain anybody.
Calvert looked awkward when he shook hands with me. “I don’t quite know how to put it,” he said, “but you will understand we can’t take you away several days from your work gratuitously, and all transport is charged to the Syndicate. Being a trained engineer, I’m working manager, and, as a matter of business, what do I owe you?”
“Nothing!” I answered shortly. “I could take no payment for assisting Miss Carrington. If you like, you can send five dollars to the Vancouver hospital.”
“I trust we’ll be friends” said Calvert. “Hope I didn’t offend you. Meant it in the best of faith. I’m coming round to see you, and whenever you have leisure you must look upon my quarters yonder as your own.”
I rode back wondering whether the work had suffered during my absence, though I knew my partners would not complain, and when I reached camp Harry said:
“I hardly thought we’d set up as packers, but in the meantime all is fish that comes to our net. I’m getting quite a mercenary character. You had a long journey—how much did you get?”
“Nothing,” I answered, “except a gift of five dollars for the Vancouver hospital. It was Miss Carrington.”
Harry made no articulate comment at first, though his whistle, which from any one else would have been impertinence, was eloquent, while some moments elapsed before he spoke.
“Then it’s Colonel Carrington who is running the Day Spring mine. I’ve heard the free prospectors talking about the new Syndicate. They opine there’s nothing in it, and that somebody is going to be hard hit.”
163CHAPTER XVUNDER THE SHADOW OF DEATH
In spite of the many new hands who flocked in with the spring, the line progressed slowly. This was quite comprehensible, and when I traveled over it afterward as a passenger I wondered how we had ever built it at all. Portions were hewn out of the solid rock, of a hardness that was often too much for our most carefully tempered drills; others were underpinned with timber against the mountain side, or carried across deep ravines on open trestles; while much of it had to be roofed in by massive sheds, so that the snow-slides might not hurl it into the valley.
On several occasions we were almost checkmated in our efforts to supply and clear a way for the builders. There was, of course, no lack of timber, but the difficulty was to get it out of the forest and into position, for we often spent days building skidways or hewing roads to bring the great logs down, after which it cost us even a longer time rigging gear to lower them over dangerous ledges to those who worked below. Still, we made progress, and the free miners or forest ranchers who trudged behind their weary pack-horses down the trail that crossed the track encouraged us in their own fashion, which was at times slightly eccentric; while now and then a party of citizens from the struggling town rode over to inspect the new road they hoped would do so much for them.
Sometimes they brought small presents with them, and I remember one who watched our efforts admiringly said:164“You must be clearing your little pile by the way you’re rustling,” and looked blankly incredulous when I answered: “No; we’re only trying to pay back other men their own.”
Nevertheless, on occasions when the work was suspended temporarily, I made a two days’ journey to Colonel Carrington’s ranch, and spent a few blissful hours there beneath the cedars with his sister and Grace. Both seemed pleased to see me, and I managed to console myself for the absence of the Colonel and Ormond. They returned at sunset, when I took my departure, and even Ormond was usually disreputable of aspect. Many difficulties were connected with the development of the Day Spring mine, and when there was need for it Ormond showed himself a capable man of action. Night and day the freighters met him riding along the heavy trails, hurrying in tools and supplies, and the shaft-sinkers said that he was always foremost when there was risky work to be done. Once also, when I sat smoking in Calvert’s shanty, the latter, who was freely smeared with the green mountain clay, said:
“We are none of us exactly idlers, but Geoffrey Ormond is tireless. In fact, I hardly recognize him as the same man, and it is just as well. We have sunk a good deal in this undertaking, and it will go hard with some of the Syndicate if we don’t get out rich quartz. Ormond in particular invested, I think, almost recklessly. He’s a distant connection of our leader’s, you know, and it’s probable he’s hoping for Miss Carrington’s hand. There’s no doubt that the irascible Colonel would be glad to have him for a son-in-law, and he is really a very good fellow, but I’m not sure that Miss Carrington likes him—in that way.”
Here Calvert flicked the ash off his cigar, and looked at me before he continued: “It’s not my business, and perhaps I’m gossiping, but Colonel Carrington is not addicted to changing his mind, and I anticipate a dramatic climax some165day. In any case, she will never with his consent marry a poor man. You can take my word for it—I’m speaking feelingly.”
When, after exchanging a few words of cold politeness with the Colonel, I rode homeward the next morning I wondered whether Calvert, who certainly was not given to gossiping, had intended this as a friendly warning. Every one in their own manner seemed bent on warning me, and yet, as long as Grace remained Miss Carrington, I could not give up hope, and it was that very hope that added force to every stroke of the glinting axe or another hour of toil to the weary day. And so, while spring melted into summer, I worked and waited until fate intervened.
Now between the mining town and Cedar the river loses itself in a gloomy cañon, one of those awful gorges which are common among the mountains of British Columbia. Two great rocks partly close the entrance, and beyond this the chasm is veiled in spray, while its roar when the floods race through it can be heard several miles away. Scarcely a ray of sunlight enters its shadowy depths, and looking up from beside the entrance one can see the great pines that crown the sheer fall of rock looming against the skyline in a slender lace-like filigree. Sometimes, when frost bound fast the feeding snows, the Siwash Indians ran their light canoes through, but I never heard of a white man attempting the passage, and one glance was sufficient to show the reason. I understood it better when as by a miracle I came alive out of the cañon.
It was a still evening, and again the afterglow flamed behind the western pines, when, holding Cæsar’s rein, I stood under a hemlock talking to Grace Carrington. We had been compelled to wait for more ironwork, and I made the long journey on the specious excuse of visiting a certain blacksmith who was skilled in sharpening tools. Calvert’s166offer of hospitality was now proving an inestimable boon. Harry pointed out that we had a man in camp who could do the work equally well, but I found a temporary deafness convenient then.
“It was very kind of you to suggest it, and if you could get the things in by your supply train we should be very glad,” she said. “I really do not know whom to write to, and the pack-horse freighters often wet or spoil them. Aunt and I intend to spend a few days at the Lawrences’ ranch, and you could meet us with the package at the cañon crossing on Thursday morning.”
I glanced at the list she handed me, and wondered what Harry, who had to visit Vancouver, would say when he found I had pledged him to ransack the dry-goods stores for all kinds of fabrics. Still, I felt I should have faced much more than my comrades’ remonstrances to please Grace Carrington then, as she stood beside me, glorified as it were by the garish sunset.
“My aunt will be especially grateful,” she added. “And now, good-bye. She will never forgive you if you damage her new dress.”
She spoke with a half-mocking and wholly bewitching air, for when Grace unbent she did it charmingly, holding out a shapely hand, while the light sparkled among the glossy clusters above her forehead. Grace’s hair might have been intended for a net in which to catch stray sunshine. Then while I prepared to take up the challenge the slender fingers tightened on my own.
“What was that?” she asked with a start, for a wild shrill cry rang suddenly out of the stillness, and the hillside returned the sound in a doleful wailing before it died away.
“Only a loon, a water-bird!” I said, though the cry had also startled me.
Grace shivered as she answered: “I have never heard it167before, and it sounded so unearthly—almost like a warning of some evil. But it is growing late, and you have far to go. I shall expect you at the crossing.”
She turned back toward the house, and I laughed at my momentary confusion as I rode on through the deepening shadow, for though it is strangely mournful the loon’s shrill call was nothing unusual in that land. Still, mere coincidence as it was, remembering Grace’s shiver it troubled me, and I should have been more uneasy had I known how we were to keep that fateful tryst.
It was a glorious morning when, with a package strapped to the saddle, I rode down between the pine trunks to the crossing. The river flashed like burnished silver below, and the sunlight made colored haloes in the filmy spray that drifted about the black mouth of the cañon, while rising and falling in thunderous cadence the voice of many waters rang forth from its gloomy depths. The package was a heavy one, for there were many domestic sundries as well as yards of dry-goods packed within it, and Harry assured me it had taken him a whole day to procure them, adding that he was doubtful even then whether he had satisfactorily filled the bill.
I had loitered some time on the hillside until I could see the party winding down the opposite slope. Then the forest hid them, and it appeared that, perhaps because the waters were high, they were not going straight to the usual ford, but intended first to send the ladies across in a canoe which lay lower down near a slacker portion of the rapid stream. The slope on my own side was steep, but, picking my way cautiously, I was not far above the river, which boiled in a succession of white-ridged rapids, when I saw Grace seat herself in the stern of the canoe, which Ormond thrust off until it was nearly afloat. Then he returned for her aunt, while Colonel Carrington and rancher Lawrence168led the horses toward the somewhat risky ford up-stream. The river was swollen by melting snow, and it struck me that they would have some difficulty in crossing.
Then a hoarse shout rang out, “The canoe’s adrift!” followed by another from the Colonel, “Get hold of the paddle, Grace!—for your life paddle!”
It had all happened in a moment. Doubtless some slight movement on the girl’s part had set the light Indian craft afloat, and for another second or two I stared aghast upon a scene that is indelibly impressed on my memory. There was Ormond scrambling madly among the boulders, tearing off his jacket as he ran, Colonel Carrington struggling with a startled horse, and his sister standing rigid and still, apparently horror-stricken, against the background of somber pines. Then forest and hillside melted away, and while my blood grew chill I saw only a slender white-robed figure in the stern of the canoe, which was sliding fast toward the head of the tossing rapid that raced in a mad seething into the cañon.
Then I smote the horse, gripped the rein, and we were off at a flying gallop down the declivity. A branch lashed my forehead, sweeping my hat away; for an instant something warm dimmed my vision, and as I raised one hand to dash it away a cry that had a note of agony in it came ringing down the valley.
“Make for the eddy, Grace! For heaven’s sake, paddle!”
How Cæsar kept his footing I do not know. The gravel was rattling behind us, the trunks reeled by, and the rushing water seemed flying upward toward me. Even now I do not think I had any definite plan, and it was only blind instinct that prompted me to head down-stream diagonally to cut off the approaching canoe; but I answered the Colonel’s shout with an excited cry, and drove the horse headlong at a shelf of rock. I felt his hoofs slipping on169its mossy covering, there was a strident clang of iron on stone, and then with a sudden splash we were in the torrent together. Cæsar must have felt the bottom beneath him a moment or two, for I had time to free my feet from the stirrups before he was swimming gallantly; but one cannot take a horse on board a birch-bark canoe, and the light shell shot down the green and white-streaked rush toward me even as I flung myself out of the saddle. And, staring forward with drawn-back lips and eyes wide open, I could see the white face in the stern.
Thanking Providence that I could swim well, I swung my left arm forward with hollowed palm, and shot away from the beast with head half-buried under the side-stroke’s impetus, making a fierce effort to gain the center of the flow in time. Something long and dark swept past me. With an inarticulate gasp of triumph I seized it, managed to fall in head foremost over the stem, which in a tender craft of that beam is a difficult thing to do, and then, snatching the second paddle, whirled it madly. I felt the stout redwood bend at every stroke, my lungs seemed bursting, and there was a mist before my eyes, but it was borne in on me that I had come too late, and that already no earthly power could snatch us from the cañon.
Hemlock and boulder, stream-hammered reef and pine, flitted by, closing in on one another along the half-seen shore. The river frothed white about us in steep boiling ridges as it raced down the incline, and nearer and nearer ahead tossed the ghostly spray cloud that veiled the mouth of the chasm. As we lurched broadside to the rapid each steeper liquid upheaval broke into the canoe; for every foot I won shoreward the stream swept us sideways two; and when, grasping the pole, I thrust against a submerged boulder with all my strength, the treacherous redwood snapped in half. Then there was a bewildering roar, a blinding170shower of spray, and we were out upon the short slide of glassy green water which divided the tail of the rapid from the mouth of the cañon. As I flung away the broken pole and groped for the paddle I saw with eyes that were clouded by blood and sweat Grace raise her hand as though in a last farewell, and then as she faced round once more our glances met. She said no word. I could not have heard if she had, for all sound was swallowed up in one great pulsating diapason; but she afterward said that she felt impelled to look at me, and knew that I would turn my head. And so for an instant, there where the barriers of caste and wealth had melted away before the presence of death, our two souls met in a bond that should never be broken.
Now there are occasions when even the weakest seem endowed with a special strength, while a look of blind confidence from the woman he loves is capable of transforming almost any man, and I knew in the exaltation of that moment, for my own sake, I had no fear of death. If I could not save her, I felt it would be a good end to go down into the green depths attempting it.
Then the canoe lurched forward half its length clear of the water, a white haze eddied about us, the sunlight went out, and we were in the cañon, shooting down the mad rush of a rapid toward eternity. I plied the paddle my hardest to keep the frail craft head on, that she might not roll over by sheering athwart the stream, not because I had any hope of escape, but that it seemed better to go under fighting. The work was severe enough, as, not having learned the back-feather under water, I must dip the blade on either side alternately, while each time that I dare turn my eyes backward a moment the sight of Grace kneeling with set white face in the stern further strengthened me. The pace grew a little easier as we drew out into a somewhat slacker171flow, and I made shift with an empty fruit-can to free the craft of water, until Grace spoke, and her words reached me brokenly through the deeper growling of the river:
“Do you think there is any chance of safety?”
“Yes,” I answered stoutly, though it is probable my voice belied me. It was so strained I could hardly recognize it. “The canoe may keep afloat until we reach the other end, or perhaps we can find a bar to land on and climb up somewhere.” Then I felt glad that my shoulders were turned toward her as she said:
“I am afraid it is a very small one. There is a fall and a whirlpool ahead, and no one could climb that awful precipice—look!”
The canoe was shooting onward through dim shadow very fast but more steadily, and raising my eyes from the dull green water before us—these craft are always paddled with one’s face toward the bow—I looked about me hopelessly. In these days of easy travel there are doubtless many who have from a securely railed-off platform gazed down into the black depths of a Pacific Slope cañon upon a river that seems a narrow thread in the great gulf below. These will have some idea of what I saw, but they may take the word of one who knows, which is easier than making the experiment, that such places look very much worse from the bottom. Those who have not may try to picture tremendous—and the word is used with its amplest significance—walls of slightly overhanging rock, through which aided by grinding boulders and scoring shingle, the river has widened as well as deepened its channel a little every century, while between the white welter at their feet lies a breadth of troubled green where the stream flows heaped up, as it were, in the center.
In places it roared in filmy wreaths about a broken mass of stone that cumbered the channel, but elsewhere the172hollowed sides, upon which the smallest clawed creature could not have found a foothold, had been worn down into a smooth slipperiness.
“It is all so horrible,” said Grace, bending back her head, so that as I glanced over my shoulder I could see her firm white neck through the laces as she stared upward at the streak of blue sky so far above. Then she turned her face toward me again, and it seemed to my excited fancy that it had grown ethereal.
“We may pass the whirlpool, and—if not—death can come no harder here than in any other place,” she added.
I tried to answer, and failed miserably, feeling glad that an increasing tumult covered my silence, for I could not drive out a horrible picture of that fair face with the gold bronze hair swept in long wet wisps across it washing out, frozen still forever, into the sunlit valley, or the soft hands I should have given a life to kiss clutching in a last vain agony at the cruel stones which mocked them. Then I set my teeth, clenching the paddle until each muscle swelled as though it would burst the skin, and, with something that was divided between an incoherent prayer and an imprecation upon my lips, I determined that if human flesh and blood could save her she should not perish.
The roar of water grew louder and louder, rolling in reverberations along the scarped rock’s side, until it seemed as if the few dwarf pines which clung in odd crannies here and there trembled in unison, and once more the white smoke of a fall or rapid rose up close before us. Then I could see the smooth lip of the cataract held apart, as it were, by one curved glittering ripple from the tumult beneath, and I remembered having heard the Indian packers say that when shooting a low fall one has only to keep the craft straight before the current, which is not always easy, and let her go.173
“Sit quite still, Grace,” I cried. “If the canoe upsets I will at once take hold of you. We shall know the worst in another few minutes now.”
Her lips moved a little, and though I heard no words I fancied it was a prayer, then I turned my head forward and prepared for the struggle. I had small skill in handling canoes, but I had more than average strength, and felt thankful for it as, lifting the light cedar at every wrenching stroke, I drove it toward the fall. Then a whirling mist shot up, there was a deep booming in my ears, the canoe leaped out as into mid-air, and I could feel her dropping bodily from beneath us. A heavy splash followed, water was flying everywhere, and a boiling wave lapped in, but the paddle bent under my hand, and breathless and half-blinded we shot out down the tail rush into daylight again. One swift glance over my shoulder showed the slanting spout of water behind Grace’s pallid face. The fall apparently must have been more than a fathom in three yards or so, and I wondered how we had ever come down it alive.
Then, with labored breathing and heart that thumped painfully, I plied the paddle, while the craft swung off at a tangent across the dark green whirling which, marked by white concentric rings, swung round and round a down-sucking hollow in the center. Twice we shot past the latter, and had time to notice how a battered log of driftwood tilted endways and went down, but as on the second revolution we swept toward a jutting fang of quartz I made a fierce effort, because here the stream had piled a few yards of shingle against the foot of the rock. The craft yielded to the impulse and drove lurching among the backwash. Then there followed a sickening crash. Water poured in deep over her depressed side as she swayed downward and over, and the next moment, with one hand on the ragged quartz and another gripping Grace’s arm, I was174struggling in the stream. Fortunately the dress fabric held, and my failing strength was equal to the strain, for I found a foothold, and crawled out upon the shingle, dragging her after me. Then rising, I lurched forward and went down headforemost with a clatter among the stones, where I lay fighting hard for breath and overcome by the revulsion of relief, though it may have been the mere physical overpressure on heart and lungs that had prostrated me.
175CHAPTER XVIWHEN THE WATERS ROSE
Presently, while I lay upon the shingle panting, a wet hand touched my head, and looking up with dazzled eyes I saw Grace bending down beside me. The water drained from her garments, she was shivering, but at least she had suffered no injury.
“Ralph! Ralph! tell me you are not hurt!” she said, and something in her voice and eyes thrilled me through, but, though I struggled to do so, I could not as yet overcome the weakness, and lay still, no doubt a ghastly half-drowned object, with the blood from the wound the branch made trickling down my forehead, until stooping further she laid her hand on my shoulder, and there was more than compassion in the eyes that regarded me so anxiously.
Then, slowly, power and speech came back together, and covering the slender fingers with kisses I staggered to my feet.
“Thank God, you are safe!” I said, “and whatever happens, I have saved you. You will forgive me this last folly, but all the rest was only a small price to pay for it.”
She did not answer, though for a moment the hot blood suffused her cheek, and I stood erect, still dazed and bewildered—for the quartz reef had cruelly bruised me—glancing round in search of the canoe. Failing to find it, I again broke out gratefully:
“Thank heaven, you are safe!”
Grace leaned against a boulder. “Sit down on that176ledge. You have not quite recovered,” she said; and I was glad to obey, for my limbs were shaky, and the power of command was born in her. Then with a sigh she added very slowly: “I fear you are premature. Still, I think you are a brave man, and no Carrington was ever a coward. Look around and notice the level, and remember the daily rise.”
Stupidly I blinked about me, trying to collect my scattered wits. The strip of shingle stood perhaps a foot above the river and was only a few yards wide. In front, the horrible eddy lapped upon the pebbles at each revolving swirl, and behind us rose a smooth wall of rock absolutely unclimbable, even if it had not overhung. That, however, was not the worst, for a numbing sense of dismay, colder far than the chilly snow-water, crept over me as I remembered that most mountain streams in British Columbia rise and fall several feet daily. They are lowest in early morning, because at night the frost holds fast the drainage of snow-field and glacier which feeds them on the peaks above; then, as the sun unchains the waters, they increase in volume, so that many a ford which a man might pass knee-deep at dawn is swept by roaring flood before the close of afternoon.
“Watch that stone,” said Grace with a stately calmness, though first she seemed to choke down some obstruction in her throat. “There! the last wash has buried it, and when we landed the one with the red veins—it is covered several inches now—was bare.”
A sudden fury seized me, and raising a clenched hand aloft I ground my heels into the shingle, while Grace looked on pityingly.
“I was almost afraid to mention it at first,” she said. “I—I hoped you would take it differently.”
Then at last I began to understand clearly. I flung177back my head as I answered: “It is not for my own miserable safety that I care one atom. Neither if we had gone down together in the fall would it have seemed so hard; but after bringing you in safety so far it is horrible to be held helpless here while inch by inch the waters rise. Great God! is there nothing I can do? Grace, if I had ten lives I would gladly give them all to save you!”
Again the tell-tale color flickered in her face; then it vanished, and her voice shook a little.
“I believe you,” she answered. “Indeed, it seems only too probable that you gave up one when you leaped the poor horse into the river. It was done very gallantly, and now you must wait as gallantly for what that great God sends.”
She seemed so young and winsome and beautiful that suddenly in place of rage a great pity came upon me, and I think my eyes grew dim, for Grace looked at me very gently as she added: “No; death comes to all of us some time, and you must not grieve for me.”
But because I was young and the full tide of lusty life pulsed within me, I could not bear to think of what must follow. Again, it seemed beyond human comprehension that she, the incarnation of all that was fair and lovable, must perish so miserably, and once more I had to struggle hard to restrain a fresh outbreak of impotent fury. Presently, however, her great fortitude infected me, and with the calmness it brought there came a feeling that I must tell her all now or never. Nevertheless, I felt that she knew it already, for one glance had made many things manifest when we first entered the cañon.
“Grace,” I said huskily, “I want you to listen while I answer a question which, without speaking, you asked me—Why should I, a rough railroad contractor, esteem it an inestimable privilege to freely lay down my life for you?178It is only because I love you, and have done so from the day we talked together on Starcross Moor—it seems so long ago. Listen yet. I meant never to have told you until I had won the right to do so, and had something to offer the heiress of Carrington, and I fought hard for it, toiling late and early, with a dead weight of adverse fortune against me; but all that was little when every blow was struck for your sweet sake. And, if you had chosen another, I should have kept my secret, and prayed that you might be happy. Now when, so far as worldly rank goes, we stand as equals in the valley of death, I dare open all my heart to you; and, if it must be, I should ask no better end than to enter eternity here holding your hand.”
She trembled a little, great tears were brimming in her eyes, but again I read more than pity or sorrow in their liquid depths, and the next moment I had spread my wet arms about her and her head rested on my shoulder. There are some things that concern but two souls among all those on earth, and the low answer that came for the first time falteringly through her lips is to be numbered among them; but a little later, with my arm still about her, Grace smiled up at me wistfully as the remorseless waters lapped nearer.
“I loved you because you were steadfast and fearless,” she said. “Sweetheart, it will not be so hard to die together now. Do you know this is all a part of the strange memories, as though I had learned somewhere and somehow what was to be. Either in dreams or a mental phantasy I saw you riding across the prairie through the whirling snow. When you strode with bronzed face, and hard hand on my bridle through the forest, that was familiar too, and—you remember the passage about Lancelot—I knew you were my own true knight. But this is not the last of the dream forecasts or memories, and there was something brighter beyond it I could not grasp. Perhaps it may be the glories179of the hereafter. I wonder whether the thought was born when that sunset flamed and flashed?”
I listened, tightening my grasp about her and shivering a little. This may have been due to physical cold, or a suggestion of the supernatural; but Grace spoke without terror, reverently, and ended:
“Ralph, have you ever thought about that other world? Shall we be permitted to walk hand in hand through the first thick darkness, darling?”
“Don’t!” I cried, choking. “You shall not die. Wait here while I try to climb round those boulders; there might be a branch that would float us, or a log of driftwood in a lower eddy,” and leaving her I managed with much difficulty to scale a few great water-worn masses that had fallen from above and shut out the view of the lower river. Still, though I eagerly scanned the boulders scattered here and there along the opposite bank, there was only foam and battered stone, and at last I flung myself down dejectedly on a ledge. I dare not go back just then and tell her that the search was quite hopeless, and it may have been inherited obstinacy, but I would not own myself quite beaten yet. So I lay watching the cruel water slide past, while a host of impossible schemes flashed through my bewildered brain. They all needed at least a rope, or a few logs, though one might have been rendered feasible by a small crowbar. But I had none of these things.
Meantime a few white cloudlets drifted across the rift of blue above, and a cool breadth of shadow darkened the pine on the great rocks. Something suggested a fringe of smaller firs along the edge of a moor in Lancashire, and for a moment my thoughts sped back to the little gray-stone church under the Ling Fell. Then a slow stately droning swelled into a measured boom and I wondered what it was, until it flashed on me that this was a funeral180march I had once heard there on just such a day; and it was followed by a voice reading something faint and far away, snatches of which reached me brokenly, “In the sure and certain hope,” and again, “Blessed are the dead.”
There was, perhaps, a reason for such fancies, though I did not know it at that time, for, as I found afterward by the deep score across the scalp, my head must have been driven against the stone with sufficient violence to destroy forever the balance of a less thickly covered brain. However, it could not have lasted more than a few moments before I knew that the funeral march was only the boom of the river, and if I would not have it as sole requiem for one who was dearer far than life to me I must summon all my powers of invention. The waters had risen several inches since I first flung myself down. Great events hang on very small ones, and we might well have left our bones in the cañon, but that when crawling over a boulder I slipped and fell heavily, and, when for a moment I lay with my head almost in the river, I could see from that level something in the eddy behind a rock on the further shore which had remained unnoticed before.
It was a dark object, half-hidden among grinding fragments of driftwood and great flakes of spume, but I caught hard at my breath when a careful scrutiny showed that beyond all doubt it was the overturned canoe. Still, at first sight, it seemed beyond the power of flesh and blood to reach it. The rapid would apparently sweep the strongest swimmer down the cañon, while the revolving pool span suggestively in narrowing circles toward the deadly vortex where the main rush from the fall went down. Second thought, however, suggested there might be a very small chance that when swept round toward the opposite shore one could by a frantic struggle draw clear of the rotary swirl into the downward flow, which ran more slackly close181under the bank. I came back and explained this to Grace, and then for the first time her courage gave way.
“You must not go,” she said. “No one could swim through that awful pool, and—I am only a woman, weak after all—I could not stay here and see you drown. Ralph, it was the thought of having you beside me that gave me courage—you must not leave me alone to the river.”
“It is our last chance, sweetheart,” I said very slowly, “and we dare not neglect it, but I will make a promise. If I feel my strength failing, when I know I can do no more, I will come back to you. Standing here you could reach my hand as the eddying current sweeps me round. Now, wish me good fortune, darling.”
Grace stooped and kissed my forehead, for even as I spoke I knelt to strip off the long boots. This was no time for useless ceremony. Then with a faint ghost of a blush she added, “You must not be handicapped—fling away your jacket and whatever would hamper you,” after which, standing beside me at the edge of the water, she said very solemnly, “God bless and keep you, Ralph.”
Then I whirled both hands above my head, leaped out from the quartz shelf, and felt the chilly flood part before me until, instead of dull green transparency, there was daylight about me again, and my left hand swept forward through the air with the side-stroke which in younger days I had taken much pains to cultivate. Now there was the hardness in muscles which comes from constant toil behind it, besides a force which I think was not born altogether of bodily strength, and even then I could almost rejoice to feel the water sweep past me a clear half-fathom as the palm drove backward hollowed to the hip, while the river boiled and bubbled under my partly submerged head. But I swung right around the eddy, and almost under the tail rush of the fall, while once for a moment I caught sight of Grace’s182intent face as, husbanding my strength for a few seconds, I passed tossed about on the confused welter close by the quartz shelf. Then, as the circling waters hurried me a second time round and outward toward the further shore, I made what I knew must be the last effort, made it with cracking sinews and bursting lungs, and drew clear by a foot or two of the eddy’s circumference. A few more strokes and an easy paddling carried me down-stream, and a wild cry of triumph, which more resembled a hoarse cackle than a shout, went up when at last I drew myself out of the water beside the canoe.
I lay on the cold stone breathing hard for several minutes; then I managed to drag the light shell out and empty her, after which I tore up a strip of the cedar flooring to form a paddle, and found that though one side was crushed the damage was mostly above flotation level. It would serve no purpose to narrate the return passage, and it was sufficiently arduous, but a man in the poorest craft with a paddle has four times the power of any swimmer, and at last I reached the shingle, which was almost covered now. Grace stood on the brink to meet me with a cry of heartfelt relief when I ran in the bows, then a momentary dizziness came upon me, as, all dripping as I was, I lifted her into the stern. After I thrust off the craft, and, struggling clear of the eddy, we shot away on the outgoing stream, she smiled as she said:
“It was splendidly done! Ralph, is it foolish—I once supposed it would be so—that because you have the strength to do these things you make me proud of you?”
There is little more to tell, and that passage through the cañon left behind it an unpleasant memory. Though it was rising all the time, the stream ran more evenly, there were no more cataracts or whirlpools, and while Grace was obliged to bail hard with—so closely does burlesque183follow on tragedy—one of my long boots, she could keep the leaks under. I did my best with the paddle, for I could see the tension was telling on her, and at last the great rock walls fell back on either hand, and dwarf pines and juniper climbed the less precipitous slopes, until these too opened out into a wide valley, and we slid forth safely into clear sunlight. Never had brightness and warmth so rejoiced me as they did after the cold damp horror of that passage through the dark rift in the earth.