Vane of the Timberlands Part 31

"I'll be content if we can keep this up," he said.

"It isn't likely," Carroll replied with a trace of dryness, glancing down at a big rent in his jacket.

A little farther on, they waded with difficulty through a large stream, and Carroll stopped and glanced round at a deep rift in a crag on one side of them.

"I don't know whether that could be considered a valley; but we may as well look at it."

They scrambled forward, and reaching gravelly soil where the trees were thinner, Vane surveyed the opening. It was very narrow and appeared to lose itself among the rocks. The size of the creek which flowed out of it was no guide, for those ranges are scored by running water.

"We won't waste time over that ravine," Vane concluded. "I noticed a wider one farther on. We'll see what it's like; though Hartley led me to understand that he came down a straight and gently sloping valley. The one we're in answers the description."

It was two hours before they reached the second opening, and then Vane, unstrapping his pack, clambered up the steep face of a crag. When he came back, his face was thoughtful. He sat down and lighted his pipe.

"This search seems likely to take us longer than I expected," he said.

"To begin with, there are a number of inlets, all of them pretty much alike, along this part of the coast, but I needn't go into the reasons for supposing that this is the one Hartley visited. Taking it for granted that we're right, we're up against another difficulty. So far as I could make out from the top of that rock, there's a regular series of ravines running back into the hills."

"Hartley told you he came straight down to tidewater, didn't he?"

"That's not much of a guide. The slope of every fissure seems to run naturally from the inland watershed to this basin. Hartley was sick and it was raining all the time, and coming out of any of these ravines he'd only have to make a slight turn to reach the water. What's more, he could only tell me that he was heading roughly west. Allowing that there was no sun visible, that might have meant either northwest or southwest, which gives us the choice of searching the hollows on either side of the main valley. Now, it strikes me as most probable that he came right down the main valley itself; but we have to face the question as to whether we should push straight on, or search every opening that might be called a valley?"

"What's your idea?" Carroll rejoined.

"That we ought to go into the thing systematically, and look at every ravine we come to."

Carroll nodded agreement.

"I guess you're right."

They strapped their packs about them and struggled on again. Stopping half an hour for dinner, they plodded all the afternoon up a long hollow, which rose steadily in front of them. It was narrow, and in places the bottom of it was so choked with fallen trunks that they were forced for the sake of a clearer pa.s.sage to take to the creek, where they alternately stumbled among big boulders and splashed through shallow pools. The water, which was mostly melted snow, was very cold.

The light was fading down in the deep rift when, winding round a spur through a tangle of clinging underbrush, they saw the timber thin off ahead. In a few minutes Vane stopped with an exclamation, and Carroll, overtaking him, loosened his pack. They stood upon the edge of the timber, but in front of them a ma.s.s of soil and stones ran up almost vertically to a great outcrop of rock high above.

"If Hartley had come down that, he'd have remembered it," Vane remarked grimly.

"It's obvious," Carroll agreed, sitting down with a sigh of weariness.

"We'll try the next one to-morrow; I don't move another step to-night."

Vane laughed.

"I've no wish to urge you. There's hardly a joint in my body that doesn't ache." He flung down his pack and stretched himself with an air of relief. "That's what comes of civilization and soft living. It would be nice to sit still now while somebody brought me my supper."

As there was n.o.body to do so, he took up the ax and set about hewing chips off a fallen trunk while Carroll made a fire. Then he cut the tent poles and a few armfuls of twigs for a bed, and in half an hour the camp was pitched and a meal prepared. Darkness closed down on them while they ate, and they afterward lay a while, smoking and saying little, beside the sinking fire, while the red light flickered upon the ma.s.sy trunks and fell away again. Then they crawled into the tent and wrapped their blankets round them.

CHAPTER XVII

VANE POSTPONES THE SEARCH

When Vane rose early the next morning, there was frost in the air. The firs glistened with delicate silver filigree, and thin spears of ice stretched out from behind the boulders in the stream. The smoke of the fire thickened the light haze that filled the hollow, and when breakfast was ready the men ate hastily, eager for the exertion that would put a little warmth into them.

"We've had it a good deal colder on other trips. I suppose I've been getting luxurious, for I seem to resent it now," observed Vane. "There's no doubt that winter's beginning earlier that I expected up here. As soon as you can strike the tent, we'll get a move on."

Carroll made no comment He had a vivid recollection of one or two of those other journeys, during which they had spent arduous days floundering through slushy snow and had slept in saturated blankets, and sometimes shelterless in bitter frost. Carroll had endured these things without complaint, though he had never attained to the cheerfulness his comrade usually displayed. He was willing to face hards.h.i.+p, when it promised to lead to a tangible result, but he failed to understand the curious satisfaction Vane a.s.sumed to feel in ascertaining exactly how much weariness and discomfort he could force his flesh to bear.

Vane, however, was not singular in this respect; there are men in the newer lands who, if they do not actually seek it, will seldom make an effort to avoid the strain of overtaxed muscles and exposure to wild and bitter weather. They have imbibed the pristine vigor of the wilderness, and conflict with the natural forces braces instead of daunting them. One recognizes them by their fixed and steady gaze, their direct and deliberate speech, and the proficiency that most display with ax and saw and rifle. But the effect of this Spartan training is not merely physical; the men who leave the bush and the ranges, as a rule, come to the forefront in commerce and industry. Endurance, swiftness of action and stubborn tenacity are apt to carry their possessor far anywhere.

Vane and his comrade needed these qualities during the following week.

The valley grew more wild and rugged as they proceeded. In places, its bottom was filled with muskegs, c.u.mbered with half-submerged, decaying trunks of fallen trees; and when they could not spring from one crumbling log to another they sank in slime and water to the knee. Then there were effluents of the main river to be waded through, and every now and then they were forced back by impenetrable thickets to the hillside, where they scrambled along a talus of frost-shattered rock. They entered transverse valleys, and after hours of exhausting labor abandoned the search of each in turn and plodded back to the one they had been following. Their boots and clothing suffered; their packs were rent upon their backs; and their provisions diminished rapidly.

At length, one lowering afternoon, they were brought to a standstill by the river which forked into two branches, one of which came foaming out of a cleft in the rocks. This would have mattered less, had it flowed across the level; but just there it had scored itself out a deep hollow, from which the roar of its turmoil rose in long reverberations. Carroll, aching all over, stood upon the brink and gazed ahead. He surmised from the steady ascent and the contours of the hills that the valley was dying out and that they should reach the head of it in another day's journey.

The higher summits, however, were veiled in leaden mist, and there was a sting in the cold breeze that blew down the hollow and set the ragged firs to wailing. Then Carroll glanced dubiously at the dim, green water which swirled in deep eddies and boiled in white confusion among the fangs of rock sixty or seventy feet below. Not far away, the stream was wider and, he supposed, in consequence, shallower, though it ran furiously.

"It doesn't look encouraging, and we have no more food left than will take us back to the sloop if we're economical. Do you think it's worth while going on?"

"I haven't a doubt about it," Vane declared. "We ought to reach the head of the valley and get back here in two or three days."

Carroll fancied they could have walked the distance in a few hours on a graded road; but the roughness of the ground was not the chief difficulty.

"Three days will make a big hole in the provisions," he pointed out.

"Then we'll have to put up with short rations."

Carroll nodded in rueful acquiescence.

"If you're determined, we may as well get on."

He stepped cautiously over the edge of the descent, and went down a few yards with a run, while loosened soil and stones slipped away under him.

Then he clutched a slender tree, and proceeded as far as the next on his hands and knees. After that it was necessary to swing himself over a ledge, and he alighted safely on one below, from which he could scramble down to the narrow strip of gravel between rock and water. He was standing, breathless, looking at the latter, when Vane joined him. The stones dipped sharply, and two or three large boulders, ringed about with froth, rose near the middle of the stream, which seemed to be running slacker on the other side of them.

There was nothing to show how deep it was, and Carroll did not relish the idea of being compelled to swim burdened with his pack. No trees grew immediately upon the brink of the chasm, and to chop a good-sized log and get it down to the water, in order to ferry themselves across on it, would cost more time than Vane was likely to spare for the purpose.

Seeing no other way out of it, Carroll braced himself for an effort and st.u.r.dily plunged in.

Two steps took him up to the waist, and he had trouble in finding solid bottom at the next, for the gravel rolled and slipped away beneath his feet in the strong stream. The current dragged hard at his limbs, and he set his lips tight when it crept up to his ribs. Then he lost his footing, and was washed away, plunging and floundering, with now and then one toe resting momentarily upon the bottom. Sweeping rapidly down the stream he was hurled against the first of the boulders with a crash that almost drove the little remaining breath out of his body. He clung to it desperately, gasping hard; then, with a determined struggle, he contrived to reach the second stone, but the stream pressed him violently against this and he was unable to find any support for his feet. A moment later Vane was washed down toward him and, grabbing at the boulder, held on by it. They said nothing to each other, but they looked at the sliding water between them and the opposite bank. Carroll was getting dangerously cold, and he felt the power ebbing out of him. He realized that if he must swim across he would better do it at once.

Launching himself forward, he felt the flood lap his breast, but as his arms went in he struck something with his knee and found that he could stand on a submerged ledge. This carried him a yard or two, but the next moment he had stepped suddenly over the end of the ledge into deeper water. Floundering forward, he staggered up a strip of shelving s.h.i.+ngle and lay there, breathless, waiting for Vane; then together they scrambled up the slope ahead. The work warmed them slightly, and they needed it; but as they strode on again, keeping to the foot of the hillside, where the timber was less dense, a cold rain drove into their faces. It grew steadily thicker; the straps began to gall their wet shoulders, and their saturated clothing clung heavily about their limbs.

In spite of this, they struggled on until nightfall, when with difficulty they made a fire and, after a reduced supper, found a little humid warmth in their wet blankets.

The next day's work was much the same, only that they crossed no rivers.

It rained harder, however, and when evening came Carroll, who had burst one boot, was limping badly. They made camp among the dripping firs which partly sheltered them from the bitter wind, and shortly after their meager supper Carroll fell asleep. Vane, to his annoyance, found that he could not follow his friend's example. He was overstrung, and the knowledge that the morrow would show whether the spruce he sought grew in that valley made him restless. The flap of the tent was flung back and resting on one elbow he looked out upon shadowy ranks of trunks, which rose out of the gloom and vanished again as the firelight grew and sank.

He could smell the acrid smoke and could hear the splash of heavy drops upon the saturated soil, while the hoa.r.s.e roar of the river came up in fitful cadence from the depths of the valley.

In place of being deadened by fatigue, his imagination seemed quickened and set free. It carried him back to the lonely heights and the rugged dales of his own land, and once more in vivid memory he roamed the upland heath with Evelyn. She had attracted him strongly when he was in her visible presence; but now he thought he understood her better than he had ever done then. He had, he felt, not grasped the inner meaning of much that she said. Words might convey but little in their literal sense and yet give to a sympathetic listener an insight into the depths of the speaker's nature, or hint at a thought too finely spun and delicate for formal expression.

The same thing applied to her physical personality. Contours, coloring, features, were things that could be defined and appraised; but there was besides, in Evelyn's case, an aura that only now and then could dimly be perceived by senses attuned to it. It enveloped her in a mystic light.

Again he remembered how he had sought her with crude longing and cold appreciation. He had failed to comprehend her; the one creditable thing he had done was the renouncing of his claim. Then the half-formed idea grew plainer that she would understand and sympathize with what he was doing now. It was to keep faith with those who trusted him that he meant stubbornly to prosecute his search and, if the present journey failed, to come back again. That Evelyn would ever hear of his undertaking, appeared most improbable; but this did not matter. He knew now that it was the remembrance of her that had largely animated him to make the venture; and to go on in the face of all opposing difficulties was something he could do in her honor. Then by degrees his eyes grew heavy, and when he sank down in his wet blankets sleep came to him. Perhaps he had been fanciful--he was undoubtedly overstrung--but, through such dreams as he indulged in, pa.s.sing glimpses of strange and splendid visions that transfigure the toil and clamor of a material world are now and then granted to wayfaring men.