The Protector Part 35

"It answers Hartley's description," he said. "After all, I don't think it's extraordinary we should have taken so much trouble to push on past the right place."

"How's that?" Vane demanded.

Carroll sat down and filled his pipe. "It's the natural result of possessing a temperament like yours. Somehow, you've got it firmly fixed into your mind that everything worth doing must be hard."

"I've generally found it so."

"I think," said Carroll, grinning, "you've generally made it so. There's a marked difference between the two. If any means of doing a thing looks easy, you at once conclude it can't be the right way, which is a mode of reasoning that has never convinced me. In my opinion, it's more sensible to try the easiest method first."

"As a rule, that leads to your having to fall back upon the other one; and a frontal attack on a difficulty's often quicker than considering how you can work round its flank. In this case I'll own we have wasted a lot of time and taken a good deal of trouble that might have been avoided. But are you going to sit here and smoke?"

"Until I've finished my pipe," Carroll answered. "I expect we'll find tobacco, among other things, getting pretty scarce before this expedition ends."

He carried out his intention, and they afterwards pushed on up the valley during the rest of the day. It grew more level as they proceeded, and in spite of the frost, which bound the feeding snows, there was a steady flow of water down the river, which was free from rocky barriers.

Vane, who now and then glanced at the latter attentively, stopped when dusk was drawing near, and fixed his gaze on the long ranks of trees that stretched away in front of him; fretted spires of sombre greenery lifted high above a colonnade of mighty trunks.

"Does anything in connection with this bush strike you?" he asked.

"Its stiffness, if that's what you mean," Carroll suggested, smiling.

"These big conifers look as if they'd been carved. They're impressive, in a way, but they're too artificial."

"That's not what I mean," Vane informed him impatiently.

"To tell the truth," said Carroll, "I didn't suppose it was. Anyway, these trees aren't spruce. They're red cedar, the stuff they make the roofing s.h.i.+ngles of."

"Precisely. Just now, s.h.i.+ngles are in good demand in the Province, and with the wooden towns springing up on the prairie, Western millers can hardly send roofing material across the Rockies fast enough. Besides this, I haven't struck a creek more adapted for running logs down, and the last sharp drop to tidewater would give power for a mill. I'm only puzzled that none of the timber-lease prospectors has recorded the place."

"That's easy to understand," said Carroll. "Like you, they'd no doubt first search the most difficult spots to get at."

They went on in another minute, and pitched their light tent beside the creek when darkness fell.

"By the by, I thought you were disappointed when you got no mail at Comox," Carroll remarked at length, feeling that he was making something of a venture.

"I was," said Vane.

This was not encouraging, but Carroll persisted. "That's strange, because your hearing nothing from Nairn left you free to go ahead, which, one would suppose, was what you wanted."

Vane, as it happened, was in a confidential mood; though usually averse from sharing his troubles, he felt he needed sympathy. "I'd better confess I wrote Miss Chisholm a few lines from Nanaimo."

"Ah!" said Carroll softly; "and she didn't answer you. Now, I couldn't well help noticing that you were rather in her bad graces that night at Nairn's. No doubt, you're acquainted with the reason?"

"I'm not," Vane replied. "That's just the trouble."

Carroll reflected. He had an idea that Miss Horsfield was somehow connected with the matter, but this was a suspicion he could not mention.

"Well," he said, "as I pointed out, you're addicted to taking the hardest way. When we came up here before, you marched past this valley, chiefly because it was close at hand; but I don't want to dwell on that.

Has it occurred to you that you did something of the same kind when you were at the Dene? The way that was then offered you was easy."

"This is not the kind of subject one cares to talk about; but you ought to know I couldn't allow them to force Miss Chisholm upon me against her will. It was unthinkable! Besides, looking at it in the most cold-blooded manner, it would have been foolishness, for which we'd both have to pay afterwards."

"I'm not so sure of that," said Carroll thoughtfully. "There were the Sabine women among other instances. Didn't they cut off their hair to make bow-strings for their abductors?"

His companion made no answer, and Carroll, deciding that he had ventured as far as was prudent, talked of something else until they crept into the little tent, and soon afterwards they fell asleep.

They started with the first of the daylight next morning, but the timber grew denser and more choked with underbrush as they proceeded, and for several days they wearily struggled through it and the clogging ma.s.ses of tangled, withered fern. Besides this, they were forced to clamber over fallen trunks, when the ragged ends of the snapped-off branches caught their loads. Their shoulders ached, their boots were ripped, their feet were badly galled; but they held on stubbornly, plunging deeper into the mountains all the while.

Soon after setting out one morning, they climbed a clearer hillside to look about them. High up ahead, the crest of the white range gleamed dazzlingly against leaden cloud in a burst of suns.h.i.+ne; below, dark forest, still wrapped in gloom, filled all the valley; and in between, on the middle slopes, a belt of timber touched by the light shone with a curious silvery l.u.s.tre. Though it was some distance off, probably a day's journey, allowing for the difficulty of the march, Vane gazed at it earnestly. The trees were bare--there was no doubt of that, for the dwindling ranks, diminished by the distance, stood out against the snow-streaked rock like rows of rather thick needles set upright. Their straightness and the way they glistened suggested the resemblance.

"Ominous, isn't it?" Carroll said at length. "If this is the valley Hartley came down, and everything points to that, we should be getting near the spruce."

Vane's face grew set. "Yes," he agreed. "There has been a big fire up yonder; but whether it has swept the lower ground or not is more than I can tell. We'll find out early to-morrow."

CHAPTER XXVII

THE END OF THE SEARCH.

The two men made a hurried breakfast in the cold dawn and not long afterwards they were struggling through thick timber, when the light suddenly grew a little clearer. Carroll remarked upon the fact and Vane's face hardened.

"We're either coming to a swamp, or the track the fire has swept is close in front," the latter said.

A thicket lay before him, but he smashed savagely through the midst of it, the undergrowth snapping and crackling about his limbs. Then there was a network of tangled branches to be crossed, and afterwards, reaching slightly clearer ground, he broke into a run. Three or four minutes later, he stopped, breathless and ragged, with his rent boots scarcely clinging to his feet; and Carroll, who came up with him, gazed eagerly about.

The living forest rose behind them, an almost unbroken wall, but ahead the trees ran up in detached and blackened spires. Their branches had vanished; every cl.u.s.ter of sombre-green needles and delicate spray had gone; the great rampikes, as they are called, looked like shafts of charcoal. About their feet lay crumbling ma.s.ses of calcined wood which grew more and more numerous where there were open s.p.a.ces farther on and then the bare, black columns ran on again, up the valley and the steep hill benches on either hand. It was a weird scene of desolation; impressive to the point of being appalling in its suggestiveness of widespread ruin.

For the s.p.a.ce of a minute the men gazed at it; and then Vane, stretching out his hand, pointed to a snow-sheeted hill.

"That's the peak Hartley mentioned," he said in a voice which was strangely incisive. "Give me the axe."

He took it from his comrade and, striding forward, attacked the nearest rampike. Twice the keen blade sank noiselessly overhead, scattering a black dust in the frosty air; and then there was a clear, ringing thud.

After that, Vane smote on with a determined methodical swiftness, until Carroll grabbed his shoulder.

"Look out!" he cried. "It's going."

Vane stepped back a few paces; the trunk reeled and rushed downwards: there was a deafening crash, and they were enveloped in a cloud of gritty dust. Through the midst of it they dimly saw two more great trunks collapse; and then somewhere up the valley a series of thundering shocks, which both knew were not echoes, broke out. The sound jarred upon Carroll's nerves, as the thud of the felled rampike had not done, but Vane picked up one of the chips and handed it to him.

"We have found Hartley's spruce," he said.

Carroll did not answer for a minute. After all, when defeat must be faced, there was very little to be said, though his companion's expression troubled him. Its grim stolidity was portentous.

"I suppose," he remarked at length, "nothing could be done with it?"

Vane pointed to the b.u.t.t of the tree, which showed a s.p.a.ce of clean wood surrounded by a blackened rim.

"You can't make marketable pulp of charcoal, and the price would have to run pretty high before it would pay for ripping most of the log away to get at the residue," he answered harshly.