The Long Portage Part 40

"It is," Garnet explained. "Think we're going to have was.h.i.+ng plant worth a good many thousand dollars left lying in the bush or dropped into rivers? You'll have to arrange for transport and break new trails. You can do it best when the snow's still on the ground, and that plant must start working soon after the thaw comes. We've got to justify our expenditure while the season's open."

"You haven't got your authority to buy the plant yet."

Garnet chuckled.

"It was ordered, provisionally, the day you came down; the makers are only waiting for a wire from the Board meeting. In fact, I shouldn't be astonished if some of the work isn't in progress now."

Lisle was quick of thought and prompt in action, but he sometimes felt as if Garnet took his breath away.

"If you have it all arranged, I may as well agree," he laughed. "I'll take Crestwick back."

"That reminds me; he said something about taking an interest--asked if I could get him shares at a moderate premium, though he owned that his trustees might make trouble about letting him have the money."

"He's not to have them!" Lisle replied emphatically. "What's more, the trustees won't part with a dollar unless I guarantee the project--I've been in communication with them. Rest a.s.sured that the idea won't get my endors.e.m.e.nt."

"I could never get at the workings of the English mind," Garnet declared.

"Now if my relatives had any money, I'd rush them all in. This is the safest and best-managed mining proposition on the Pacific Slope. What kind of morality is it that gathers in the general investor and keeps your friends out?"

"I don't know; it doesn't concern the point. I'm actuated by what you may call a prejudice. You can't remove it."

"Well," Garnet responded good-humoredly, "it's a pretty tough country up yonder and I suppose the lad's of some service. You're saving us a pile of money in experts' fees and I don't see why you shouldn't put him on the company's payroll. I mentioned the thing to Walthew; he was agreeable."

They talked about other matters and presently Crestwick came in, smartly dressed and looking remarkably vigorous and clear-skinned. There were many points of difference between his appearance now and when Lisle had first met him.

"Mr. Garnet has a proposition to make," Lisle informed him; and the Canadian briefly stated it.

Crestwick did not seem surprised, nor did he display much appreciation.

"To tell the truth, I thought you might have mentioned the matter before," he remarked. "Still, if you want my services, you'll have to go up twenty dollars."

"A week?" Garnet asked ironically. "You promise well; if you stay here a year or two you'll make a useful and enterprising citizen. We could get an experienced boss packer for what I offered you."

"Down here, yes. When he got to where the claims are, he'd almost certainly drop you and turn miner, and you couldn't blame him. A man deserves a hundred dollars a day merely for living up yonder. But it's a month I was speaking of. If you want me, you'll have to come up."

Garnet laughed.

"I guess I can fix it; but we'll get our value out of you."

"That's a compliment, if you look at it in one way," Crestwick grinned in reply.

When Garnet had left them, he turned to Lisle.

"Thanks awfully. Of course, it was your idea."

"Garnet suggested the thing; that's more flattering, isn't it?"

Crestwick looked at him, smiling.

"I'm not to be played so easily as I was when I first met you," he said.

"Of course, in a sense, the pay's no great inducement to me; it's the idea of being offered it. I'm going to advise old Barnes, my trustee; he was fond of saying that I was fortunate in being left well off because I'd never earn sixpence as long as I lived, until I stopped the thing by offering him ten to one I'd go out and make it in a couple of hours by carrying somebody's bag from the station. Anyhow, this is the first move."

"Then you're going farther?"

"Quite so," was the cheerful answer. "I'll be a director of this company before I've finished. You can't stop my buying shares when I come into my property."

Lisle was conscious of some relief. It was a laudable ambition and Crestwick promised to be much less of a responsibility than he had once antic.i.p.ated.

"I've a letter from Bella," Lisle told him. "She still desires to be informed if you're getting along satisfactorily. I think I can tell her there's no cause for uneasiness."

"Bella's a good sort," returned Crestwick. "She'll stop asking such questions by and by. At least, I think she'll have some grounds for doing so."

They went out into the city and a week afterward they sailed together for the North. It was still winter in the wilds, and though that made Lisle's work a little easier, because rivers and lakes and muskegs were frozen, he found it sufficiently arduous. He had to survey and break new trails suitable for the conveyance of heavy machinery, up rugged valleys and over high divides, and to arrange for transport--canoes here, a log-bridge there, relays of packers farther on. No man's efforts could be wasted, for time was precious and wages are high in the wilderness. Then, when at last the frost relaxed its grip and rock and snow and loosened soil came thundering down the gullies in huge ma.s.ses, the work grew more difficult as he began to build a dam.

Some of the men sent up to him, artizans from the cities, sailor deserters, dismayed by the toils of the journey and the nature of their tasks, promptly mutinied on arrival. Others dispatched after them failed to turn up, and Lisle never discovered what became of them. The camp-site was a sea of puddled mire with big stones in it; tents and shacks were almost continuously dripping; and every hollow was filled with a raging torrent. n.o.body had dry clothes, even to sleep in; the work was mostly carried on knee-deep in water, and at first things got little better as the days grew warmer. The hill-benches steamed and clammy mists wrapped the camp at night; the downward rush of melting snow increased, and several times wild floods swept away portions of the dam and half-built flume.

In spite of it all, the work went on: foot by foot the wall of pile-bound rock rose and the long wooden conduit curved away down the valley; and when at length the hydraulic plant began to arrive, piecemeal, Lisle found Crestwick eminently useful. He superintended the transport, patrolling the trails and keeping them repaired. His skill with shovel and ax was negligible, but he could send a man or two to mend the gap where the path had slipped away down some gully or to fling a couple of logs across a swollen creek that could not be forded. He got thinner and harder from constant toil and from sleeping, often scantily fed, unsheltered in the rain.

After a while, however, there was a pleasant change: the days grew hot, the nights were clear and cold, and the short, vivid summer broke suddenly upon the mountain land. Then it seldom rained, as the high seaward barrier condensed most of the Pacific moisture, but at times the clouds which crossed the summits unbroken descended in a copious deluge, and it was in the midst of such a downpour that Crestwick returned to camp one evening after a week's absence on the trail. His dripping garments were ragged, his boots gaped open, and his soft felt hat had fallen shapeless about his head. He found Lisle in a similar guise sitting at his evening meal.

"Have they got the pipes and those large castings across the big ravine?"

Lisle asked.

"Yes, that has been done," Crestwick answered. "By the way, one of the packers told me that the man who's coming up to run the plant--Carsley, isn't it?--has arrived. There were some fittings or something wrong and he stopped behind to investigate, but the packer seemed to think he'd get through soon after I did. That turns us loose, doesn't it?"

"I dare say I could hand things over to him in about a week," replied Lisle. "Then we'll clear out. I suppose you won't be sorry?"

Crestwick stretched out his feet to display his broken boots and rent trousers.

"Well," he said, "since I left here, I've spent a good deal of my time in an icy creek, and it's nearly a week since I had any sleep worth speaking of. We had to make a bridge for the freighters to bring those castings over and we'd no end of trouble to get the stringers fixed--the stream was strong and we had to build a pier in it. Not long ago, I'd have considered anybody who did this kind of thing without compulsion mad, but in some mysterious way it grows on you. I don't pretend to explain it, but it won't be with unmixed delight that I'll go back to the city."

He paused and fumbled in his pocket.

"I was forgetting your mail. I'm afraid it's rather pulpy, but I couldn't help that. By the way, I'd a letter from Bella, written at the Frontenac, Quebec. She's brought Carew out; they're going to Glacier very soon, and she still intends to look me up."

Lisle opened the letters handed him and managed to read them, though their condition fully bore out Crestwick's description. Two or three were on business matters, but there was one from Millicent, and he started at the first few lines.

"Miss Gladwyne and Miss Hume have sailed--they must have landed a week ago," he announced. "She wants to go over the ground her brother traversed--you have heard of that project. Nasmyth sailed a week earlier to arrange matters at this end; but I don't know how Miss Hume will get along."

"It's merely a question of transport," a.s.serted Crestwick with the air of an authority on the subject. "So long as you provide sufficient packers, with relays from supply bases, you can travel in comparative comfort, though it's expensive." Then an idea occurred to him. "They're pretty sure to run across Bella; Miss Gladwyne knows Carew."

Lisle sat silent a few minutes, conscious of a strong satisfaction.

Millicent was in Canada, and there was no mention of Gladwyne! Then it struck him as curious that Bella should have come over at the same time.

As Millicent knew Carew, it was very probable that Bella would insist on joining the expedition, which Millicent might agree to, if, as seemed likely, her rather elderly companion had to be left behind. Nasmyth had, no doubt, already reached British Columbia; and it looked as if those indirectly brought together by George Gladwyne's tragic death would be reunited at the scene of it. This was, Lisle reflected, merely the result of a natural sequence of events, but there was for all that something strangely significant about it.

"Well," he said, "it has been arranged that I'm to act as guide, and Miss Gladwyne says they'll wait for me. As that's the case, I don't see why I shouldn't start as soon as Carsley gets through. I shouldn't wonder if he brings a letter from Nasmyth. It will be a tough journey, and I'll have to break a new trail. Are you coming, or will you head for Vancouver to join Bella?"

"We'll stick together," replied the lad. "Bella's to stay over here some months, and if she decides to join Miss Gladwyne she'll leave Glacier long before I could reach the place."