It was Sat.u.r.day evening, and Weston sat on a ledge of the hillside above the silent construction camp, endeavoring to mend a pair of duck trousers that had been badly torn in the bush. He held several strips of a cotton flour-bag in one hand, and was considering how he could best make use of them without unduly displaying the bold lettering of the brand, though in the bush of that country it was not an unusual thing for a man to go about labeled "Early Riser," or somebody"s "Excelsior." His companions had trooped off to the settlement about a league away, and a row of flat cars stood idle on the track which now led across the beaten muskeg. On the farther side of the latter, the tall pines lay strewn in rows, but beyond the strip of clearing the bush closed in again, solemn, shadowy, and almost impenetrable. There was a smell of resinous wood-smoke in the air, but save for the distant sound of the river everything was very still.
Weston looked up sharply as a patter of approaching footsteps rose out of the shadows behind him. Some of the men were evidently coming back from the settlement earlier than he had expected. In a few minutes three or four of them appeared among the trees, and he recognized them as some of his friends, small ranchers who had, as often happens on the Pacific Slope, been forced to leave their lonely, half-cleared holdings and go out to earn the money that would keep them through the winter. Two of them were apparently a.s.sisting another man along between them, and when they drew nearer Weston saw that the latter was Grenfell, the cook.
"Guess it"s "bout time somebody else took care of you," said one, when they came up. "Sit right down," he added, neatly shaking Grenfell off his feet and depositing him unceremoniously at Weston"s side.
Another of the men sat down close by, and Grenfell waved his hand to the others as they moved away.
"Bless you! You"re good boys," he said.
The man who remained grinned at Weston.
"We"ve packed the blame old deadbeat "most three miles. If Tom hadn"t promised to see him through I"d have felt tempted to dump him into the river. The boys were trying to fill him up at the Sprotson House."
Grenfell, who did not appear to hear him, thrust a hand into his pocket, and pulling out a few silver coins counted them deliberately.
"Two--four--six," he said. "Six dollars to face an unkind world with.
It isn"t very much."
He sighed and turned to Weston.
"You know I"ve got to quit?"
"That"s right," interposed the other man. "Ca.s.sidy"s had "most enough of him. He never could cook, anyway, and the boys are getting thin.
Last thing he did was to put the indurated plates on the stove to warm. Filled the thing right up and left them. When he came back the plates had gone."
Weston, who had been sent to work some distance from the camp that day and had not heard of this mishap, felt sorry for Grenfell. The man evidently had always been somewhat frail, and now he was past his prime; indulgence in deleterious whisky had further shaken him. He could not chop or ply the shovel, and it was with difficulty that his companions had borne his cooking, while it seemed scarcely likely that anybody would have much use for him in a country that is run by the young and strong. He sat still regarding the money ruefully.
"Six of them--and they charge you one for a meal and a drink or two,"
he said. "If I hadn"t known where there was quartz streaked right through with wire gold I might have felt discouraged." Then he straightened himself resolutely. "Seems to me it"s time I went up and looked for it again."
"How can you know where it is when you have to look for it?" the other man inquired.
Grenfell glanced at him severely.
"I"m not drunk--it"s my knees," he pointed out. "Don"t cast slurs on me. I was once Professor of--mineralogical chemist and famous a.s.sayer too. Biggest mining men in the country consulted me."
The track-grader nodded as he glanced at Weston.
"I guess he was," he said. "We had a man from back east on this section who had heard of him."
Then he turned to Grenfell.
"Go ahead and explain about the mine."
"I"m not sure that that"s quite straight," Weston objected. "If he does know anything of the kind----"
"Oh," said his companion, "I"m not on. If he ever did know I guess he has forgotten it long ago. He has been forgetting right along whether he put salt in the hash or not, and each time he wasn"t sure he did it again. That"s one of the things that made the trouble."
Grenfell stopped him with a gesture.
"I"m going to talk. Don"t interrupt. Mr. Weston was once or twice a good friend to me, and you have seen me through a few times lately.
Now I know a quartz lead that"s run through with wire gold quite rich enough to mill at a profit, but I can"t go up and look for it in the bush myself. When I walk any distance my knees get shaky. Make you firm offer--even shares to come up with me."
"Where is it?"
Grenfell turned and glanced toward the dim line of snow that gleamed high up above the forests in the north.
"There"s a lake--the Lake of the Shadows--Verneille called it that,"
he said dreamily. "It lies in a hollow of the range with the black firs all round. There"s a creek at one side, with a clear pool where it bends, and I came there one day very hot and hungry with the boots worn off me. I think"--and by his tense face he seemed to be trying earnestly to remember something--"we were quite a few days crossing that range, and our provisions were running put when we hit the valley."
"Well?" prompted the track-grader when he stopped.
"I crawled down to the pool to drink. There were pebbles in it and a ledge above. There were specks in the pebbles, and specks that showed plainer in the ledge. The stones were shot with the metal when I broke one or two of those I took out."
He fumbled inside his pocket and produced a little bag from which he extracted a few broken bits of rock. Weston, to whom he pa.s.sed them, could see that little threads of metal ran through them. "You"re quite sure it"s gold?" the other man inquired.
"Am I sure!"
Grenfell smiled compa.s.sionately.
"I was Professor--but guess I"ve told you that already."
"The lead?" inquired the other man.
"Outcrop, a few yards of it. Then it dips on a slight inclination, and evidently runs back toward the range. An easy drive for an adit.
Stayed there two days, Verneille and I. Quite sure about that gold."
Weston"s face grew intent.
"You recorded it?"
"We staked a claim, and started back; but Verneille couldn"t find a deer, and when we first hit the valley provisions were running out.
There was a mist in the ranges, and whichever way we headed we brought up on crags and precipices. Then we went up to look for another way across and got into the snow. I never knew how I got out--or where Verneille went, but when I struck a prospector"s camp--he wasn"t with me."
The track-grader nodded. He had been born among the ranges, and knew that the prospectors who went out on the gold trail did not invariably come back. He had heard of famishing men staggering along astonishing distances half-asleep or too dazed to notice where they were going. He and Weston had done so themselves, for that matter.
"You told the prospector about the lead?" Weston inquired.
"If I did he never found the mine. I was scarcely sensible when I reached his camp, and I lay there very ill until he went on and left me with half a deer he"d shot. After that I nearly gave out again making the settlements."
"Well," said the track-grader, "where"s the lake?"
Grenfell spread out his hands.
"I don"t know. I went up to look for it three or four times several years ago."
He broke off abruptly, and there was silence for a minute or two.
Strange as the thing appeared, it was not altogether an unusual story.