IV AN UNKNOWN LAND

WEIRD HOLLOW

The officers and crew of the Carillon, our three selves, with Inspector Hanafin and men of the Firefly, made a landing into the country of perpetual day.

It was severely cold, and rain fell, each drop stinging like ice, when we came upon a beach of vivid white sand, everywhere strangely marked with black fragments of petrified wood, which at a distance closely resembled rocks. Some ragged bush spread away to the north, and to the south dreary shallows, where large-leaved plants floated. Before us a razor-back succession of sand-hills, overhung by a clammy mist, hid all that was beyond.

“We must push along,” said Inspector Hanafin, gathering his fur-lined cloak about his uniform. “This is a malarial fever coast. Keep the mosquitos off as much as you can.”

The Firefly was anchored in the natural harbour made by a long reef.

Upon landing from our boats, most of the men went down on their stomachs, and sucked up the unwholesome water. They were surly after their dissipation, and awed by the presence of the inspector and his two troopers, who had pursued Redpath across so many leagues of land and lake.

We had released the sailors directly the police had come aboard; and when we had taken some provisions, MacCaskill and I loading ourselves with our tools and our packs, we made haste to desert the poisonous mud-flats.

While we were making our way towards the sand-hills I looked for Olaffson, whom I had seen on the boat; but the Icelander had already disappeared, and I guessed he would work his way along the shore to satisfy himself that Redpath was dead. I made no comment, because I was glad to be rid of him.

We were on our way to find a camping-place outside the miasma of the shore. MacCaskill, who had been tramping beside Lennie, joined me, and whispered:

“Rupe, this is the beach Redpath was makin’ for.”

I ought to have been surprised, but somehow I wasn’t. I was tired and indifferent.

“All right,” I said wearily.

As we toiled up the loose sand, I saw the red tops of the willow bush peeping out of the “smoke.” We came over, descended through the curiously thick fog, and suddenly walked right out of it into a pure and clear atmosphere and a much warmer temperature. Beyond the sun was shining; below spread a large hollow, its carpet a startling green, its slopes covered with a luxuriant vine, which crossed and tangled confusedly. The shifting sand changed to firm ground, which produced a tall, stiff grass, the stems of darkest green, the points hard and sharp, and black as ebony. The slope we were on resembled the back of an immense porcupine.

We had not gone far before the men began to curse.

“Poison-grass,” said the inspector carelessly, as well he might, because his own legs were protected by riding-boots. “We shall soon be away from it. Walk straight, men, and tread it down firmly.”

“The devil of a country!” muttered MacCaskill.

“I don’t hold wi’ the bugs,” complained Pete, who was fairly capable, but still nervous after his knock-down. “I don’t worry over grass-bite, I don’t; but I hate to watch these yer black bugs.”

Long narrow insects writhed everywhere between the grass stems; they were so numerous that we could not walk without treading across one or more, and they were pulpy and unpleasant to crush.

“Never mind the bugs,” said Hanafin, who, I learnt, was a genuine specimen of an English gentleman. “See that speckled plant, hemlock? Everything seems more or less poisonous upon this bit of British territory. By Jove, look here!”

The ground fell away suddenly, and we arrived above a succession of pools, joined one to another by belts of swamp, the latter decorated by luxuriant white moss. The black water was absolutely stagnant and unreflecting; large bubbles rose continually, to burst, upon reaching the surface, with a perfectly audible report. Stranger than these bubbles were numerous solid-looking globes—a few opal-white, the majority a very dark blue, others a dirty grey, all curiously marked with shifting designs of every imaginable colour, though the blue tint always predominated. These globes bounded over the pools without marking the surface with the smallest ripple, just like rubber balls bounding over the ground. Immediately a jumping globe touched the moss it vanished; if it safely negotiated the morass, it bounded hilariously over the next pool; if it fell short in its next jump, it invariably paid the penalty of failure by becoming extinct.

“The hell of a country!” muttered MacCaskill.

“Not at all,” said Hanafin, who knew everything. “Nature discovered in her own laboratory. We are near the magnetic circle, and I suspect two of the earth’s currents meet at this hollow. Dip your hand into that pool,” he said, turning to me.

“Do not,” said Akshelah.

I did not like the look of the thick, unmoving water. The inspector drew aside his cloak, passed down before me, and dipped in his own hand. I saw his shoulders lift, and his arm jerked back, before he drew up smilingly, letting loose a long breath.

“This water ought to cure the sickest man on earth,” he said.

Curiosity tempted me, so I slid down and cautiously inserted my fingers. The water was glutinous and tepid, but nothing happened. The inspector looked at me with a faint smile.

“Keep your hand in, but come off the rock.”

I stepped off, and, when my feet touched the wet moss a strong shock thrilled through my system, forcing back my arm, and passed in and out of my body and across my shoulders, making me tingle all over.

“An electric pool,” said Hanafin, when I gave a gasp of relief to find that the water showed no inclination to imprison my hand. “To-night the little globes will resemble so many arc-lights, and the black pools will be like mirrors with the sun upon them.”

Coming down into the hollow, towards the fringe of bush where we intended to make our camp, we became stopped by a ridge of blood-red rock, which rose abruptly like a wall. We thought nothing of the obstacle, until we made the discovery that the barrier was not rock, but a kind of slimy clay, which melted in the warmth of the hand, and left the fingers stained scarlet. MacCaskill muttered yet another reference concerning the country, while Lennie, who was utterly played out, suggested camping where we were.

“When you can’t face your enemy, find a way round,” said the inspector. “Norman, go and explore.”

The trooper swung round, astounding me by his ready obedience. He was soon back to report that he had found the way round.

We reached the edge of the bush, made a clearing and a fire, and spread open our packs.

The inspector selected the best-sheltered spot, called, “Norman, wake me when breakfast is ready,” rolled up his fur-lined cloak for a pillow, spread a silk handkerchief over his face, and went to sleep.

Lennie and the inspector intended to return to the pestilential shore to drag the Carillon, if possible, off the poisonous mud-flat. The ship was owned jointly by the Northern Fishing, the Outside Limit Lumber, and the Hudson Bay Companies—all wealthy corporations.

Later on, I ventured to ask Hanafin what Redpath had done to deserve the vengeance of the law, but the inspector only looked at me smilingly over his cigarette, and propounded a question of his own:

“I suppose not even a young and agile man could hope to escape out of that quagmire?”

I expressed my doubts, and the soldier-policeman went on:

“In that case, we won’t discuss the man or his doings. We have a theory that it is ungenerous to speak evil of the dead, who can’t hear, and who don’t care. If the same sentiment were extended to the living, who can hear, and who generally do care, there would be less work for my profession.”

However, MacCaskill spoke differently.

“He ain’t dead, Rupe. Folks like him never do die. Anyhow, when you make dead sure such a one’s snuffed out, he always comes up again. If Redpath had got to work, and run off into clean bush, maybe he’d have fell some place, and bruke a leg, and starved, just ’cause no one would have ever looked for it. It don’t look possible for him to escape outer that mud before he chokes, and that’s just the reason why I look for him to turn up again. Now, where’s that little skunk of an Olaffson?”

“Gone to find Redpath,” I said; but MacCaskill laughed.

“He don’t give a darn about Redpath. He’s gone inland, in the direction we oughter be a-going now.”

“He doesn’t know the way.”

“Redpath told him, likely. If he ain’t, Olaffson will smell it out for himself. Say! You and me must get a move to-night, and slip away quiet when the boys are asleep.”

We had supper at the usual hour of six, and afterwards gathered round the fire, to smoke and talk before sleep.

Inspector Hanafin warned us to prepare for a local thunderstorm, with other electric manifestations in the hollow; but Sandy, who held himself weather-wise, asserted that the “night” would be clear. Said the inspector:

“You forget that this hollow is apparently directly influenced by the magnetic North Pole. The magnetic change occurs once every twenty-four hours, as a result of the free electric currents in the atmosphere above, and so, directly the aurora rises, we shall have some kind of an electric display. Wait until the sun pretends to set.”

The sun left us about one hour before midnight, and straightway the trouble began. There was, of course, no darkness, yet the ghastly effulgence down the hollow could not have been mistaken for honest light; the atmosphere became frequently flooded by a curious radiance, grading from the palest to the darkest shade of blue, sometimes cross-hatched by shadows, which I could not help thinking had no natural right to be present. The bush behind our camp was “naked,” that is to say, the foliage was all overhead; there was no undergrowth; the bare slim boles supporting the fungus-like masses made the bluff resemble a cave filled with stalactites; a lambent light quivered and played away into the distance, running softly about this nakedness, changing its direction, intensity, and tint many times in a minute, while a series of diminutive explosions cracked here and there above. The vines spread along the open side, and the long runners now appeared to be rising and falling, like the surface of the lake when ruffled by wind. A vibration passed periodically through the ground. When I stood up I could sometimes see the arc-globes, whenever they jumped higher than usual, in their mad, irresponsible dance over the pools.

The men were as frightened as they could be, and one of Hanafin’s troopers expressed his opinion that the mouth of the pit lay in the immediate neighbourhood. What he meant I could not tell; but Akshelah assured us that the Evil Spirit always chose such a spot to disport himself in with his associates. We should be safe, she said, so long as we kept away from the water, and if we sought shelter upon rock, directly we saw any unnatural shape. There were rocks hard by.

These rocks were of pure silica, and as it had been observed that the factor and myself carried mining implements, Lennie linked the circumstances, and questioned my partner. MacCaskill confessed that he had tired of an unremunerative employment, and decided to make a prospecting trip, “the boy spoilin’ to get away after the ole man hopped.” He would not own that we knew anything, but while he talked I made the discovery that Leblanc and Morrison had broken themselves from the circle, and were listening as closely as they dared. I caught also the inspector’s keen eyes fixed upon me, and I had the sense to know that the clever Englishman was forming his own deductions from my partner’s speech and my manner. But he asked no question.

“I always wonderful well wanted to look for the dirt,” admitted Lennie; “but minin’ luck’s too queer, an’ a man gen’rally quits poorer than he started. I used to read that Garden of Eden mines chapter outer me Bible when I was a younker—read it hundreds of times, I guess I did. Used to make me mouth run to read all about the gold and the diamonds a-lying around Eden; an’ I guess Adam just loafed around sorter careless, an’ let all the stuff lie.”

“Bet you Eve didn’t,” said the factor, having his own ideas concerning women. “She’d pick up a chunk o’ yaller, and set it against her arm, and hello to Adam, ‘Say! how’s that?’—”

He was knocked off by a mighty explosion. The air became dense and very hot, and permeated by a sour odour, while an intense blue light glared strongly out of the bluff, and made every face ghastly. Our camp fire blazed up as though a blast of wind acted under it. For a minute all was shouting and confusion.

“I’d just as soon be on the Carillon,” said Lennie. “I’m out of this.”

The cold-blooded inspector laughed. The light thrilled again, a darker blue. Hardly had it gone when Pete, whom we considered stupid after his late ill-treatment, wiped his mouth and exclaimed:

“Captain, there’s a ter’ble nasty sorter black beast on yon tree a-watchin’ of us.”

We looked, in the spirit of unbelief, and I suppose we all saw a dark object, something a little thicker and blacker than the shadows surrounding it, slide noiselessly down the smooth tree. I know we rushed at once for the rocks, and I confess that I was one of the first to reach the shelter which Akshelah believed to be infallible. It says a good deal for our credulity when I say that in less than a minute we were all clambering over the quartz, the men who could not obtain a first footing literally blubbering with fear, all except Hanafin, who never shifted a muscle, and his troopers, who were forbidden by their discipline to leave the officer. The shapeless black object lay at the bottom of the tree like a heap of mud.

“Say!” muttered one of the men; “think it’s him?”

“Course it is, you fool,” answered the chorus.

Hanafin got up, the lights flickering around him, and a warning cry was issued by the choir upon the rocks. The figure stirred, and hopped queerly over the ground, stopping by the fire, and there warmed itself. Hanafin held out a biscuit; the creature grabbed furiously, and finished it with gulps like a dog.

The inspector spoke, but received no reply.

“I saw it a-settin’ up above quite a time,” said Pete unhappily. “It was a-settin’ lonesome, a-lickin’ its paws an’ watchin’. ’Tis one o’ they pesky things what looks for men sleepin’ out, an’ sucks ’em dry.”

It was not easy to tell the creature’s exact size, because it remained bent, and its face and body were thickly covered with hair. When Hanafin called again the creature yapped, and put out a hand for more food. The inspector complied with the demand, then turned to us with the grave assurance that the visitor had once been a fellow-man.

“Lost, gone crazy, and become a beast,” he said.

Nobody believed him, and Akshelah scoffed openly when asked if she knew what he was.

At that time, while surrounded by all the strange sights of that weird hollow, I was convinced with the others that the supernatural was enjoying full sway, and that what then occurred to us was entirely due to the mysterious appearance of the hairy, speechless being. A description may sound grotesque, but to me at the time it was more a thing to shudder at than laugh over.

A thunderstorm had been in operation for some time, the lightning being apparently flung just over the trees out of the low clouds which separated the hollow from the outer country. The thunder took the form of constant explosions, entirely different from the customary long-drawn-out rumbles and echoes. In addition to this intensely local storm, erratic sheets of light constantly flooded the bush, and the peculiar sour odour never failed to follow.

An unusually brilliant blue current thrilled, just as Hanafin walked round the fire to interview the monkey-like monster. Instantly the inspector vanished, and with him the entire camp. The fire, the bluff, the ground, everything was wiped out, even the rock we stood on; we might have been suspended on the edge of a precipice, peering hopelessly into a thick sea fog; the world seemed to have floated away from us, leaving us standing erect in space.

Whether the other men had any sensation beyond fright, I cannot say; but for my own part I felt mightily exhilarated, and with the elation of the sudden strength that thrilled into my body, as scores of minute blue sparks broke from our persons, I had a mad desire to relieve my energies by snatching up each one of my companions—Akshelah, who held to me, excepted—and hurling them one by one into the apparent abyss.

What would have happened had I attempted to do so is again impossible to say, because the gulf which had been so remarkably fixed about us, which entirely divided us from the planet our world, which blinded and deafened us, and made us helpless castaways upon the invisible rock, was purely magnetic. Backward we could move, but not an inch forward. There did not appear to be any particular resistance; it was not at all like trying to force a solid body; we were simply unable to move. The magnetic barrier was non-conducting; sound would not travel through it any more than eyesight. For all the assistance we could have rendered Inspector Hanafin, and for all our knowledge of what was happening on the other side of the current, we might have been placed respectively at the opposite poles of the earth.

The resisting fluid swept away with all the suddenness of its coming; and at the withdrawal of the magnetic force, the men scurried away from the rocks like so many jack-rabbits worried by a dog.

MacCaskill whispered to me hurriedly, and as we both preferred to face the chance of fever on the shore, rather than the unknown powers of natural forces, we made straight for our tools and packs, caught them up and ran, Akshelah leading our flight, away up the slope from the lights and explosions of the hollow, through the vines that caught at our legs and arms, and thrilled us like so many electric wires; past the pools that were black no longer, but living and dazzling, and where the gleaming balls were leaping excitedly; through the poison-grass, quivering and stiff in the electric air, and emitting bright sparks when touched by our hurrying legs; over the sand-dunes, and so out under the aurora, where the wind moaned out of the lake, and brought the foul odour of malaria through the “night.”

We looked down from the summit of the sand-hills, and, as in the early morning, the hollow was concealed by its roof of cloud, which spread beneath our feet like a smoky floor. We could make a good guess as to what was taking place in the depths by the manner in which the clouds were continually bathed in blue light, by the distant, but faintly audible, explosions, and the sour odour arising, until we turned to face the far more noisome miasma ascending from the beach of the great Lake Peace.

MATERIAL GHOSTS

On the day following our flight from the hollow, MacCaskill and I awoke with dry mouths, tormenting heads, and irritated bodies, the result of camping within the influence of the coast. Had Akshelah not been with us, we should have done no travelling that day. She collected some plants, squeezed their feeble juices into a tin mug, and made us swallow the abominable mixture. We were both violently sick, but at the end of an hour the fever left us. The exercise of walking restored us completely, though it was very possible that the healthy air, which met our faces as we ascended, had much to do with the cure.

For five days we journeyed over the Bad Lands, and during the whole of that time we did not sight a living thing, except insects in their millions, some white-headed eagles and magpies, and a few loons over the water, which was everywhere abundant. The country was heaped with rocks, interspersed with bluffs of arctic pine, and spruce, scraggy and stunted, the roots buried in thick tufts of the monotonous white moss. Only a few plants, resembling bunches of yellow feather, sucked an existence in sheltered niches; and a little bleached flowering grass, as dry as the rock, wearied our eyes all that journey.

At the end of the fifth day we came to the summit of an endless ridge, and looked down upon a gully, the sight of which made our hearts beat faster, because, by my father’s plan, we believed that we were then standing outside the door of Bonanza.

A narrow stream trickled among the rocks, and green banks of turf rose on each side invitingly. Here the vegetation was far more luxuriant; there were thickets of cranberry bush, hung with yellow and scarlet fruit, with raspberries nearer the water. Akshelah caught some arctic trout, strange-looking fish, having great fins like wings; we picked berries by handfuls, and fared luxuriously. When we settled to rest upon the cool, clean grass, I felt more content than at any time since our landing at Gull.

We noticed one curious thing while walking along the gulley to the camping-ground we had selected. We passed into a belt of cold wind, blowing strongly across the gulley, just as in swimming one enters an icy cold current of water. We escaped this wind almost directly, but we had time to observe that no vegetation flourished where it crossed. This wind cut a clean dry track across the coulee, and where it struck the rocks it was gradually wearing a cave by the power of its blast.

It was chilly, and as we sat round our fire after supper this passage of wind began to trouble me. I went on thinking, and presently exclaimed involuntarily, because I never liked to show that I cultivated an imagination:

“Is there anything in dreams?”

MacCaskill looked at me over his pipe, and I added:

“Can anyone dream of a place he has never seen?”

“Oh, no,” answered Akshelah. “When we sleep we see our people, who have gone to the Great Spirit’s country. Our people do not speak to us; but when they come they make signs, so that we may know that the season is good for them, and that they are having plenty of hunting. The ghost of the brave smokes the ghost of his pipe, but the man himself, and the pipe itself, have been destroyed in the fire.”

MacCaskill was no deep thinker. He merely discharged a cloud of smoke, grunted, and expressed his opinion that dreams were “no use anyhow.”

I saw before me two shining walls of rock, towering and shutting out the light, and I shivered, because the wind, which was whistling past, became very cold. I understood more than I could express, and when I tried to think again, my mind stopped short at an improvised bed in a cleft of the rock, a few bushes tossing just above, and the wind always pouring, and rushing, and moaning.

“I guess we’re almost there,” I said abruptly, and the factor started, looked at me curiously, and removed his pipe.

“I had a mind to say that.” He spoke more slowly than usual. “That yonder should be the Canyon of the North Wind, and up there we should strike Mosquito Pass. We’ll know to-morrow.”

Akshelah interposed. Without looking at us, she held out her arms against the faintly blue sky, and called:

“You see the ridge where the sun-colours are resting? I saw a man stand there, but while I looked he was gone. He is coming this way.”

We stood up and looked, straining our eyes along the defile, but could see nothing, and MacCaskill was disposed to think the girl mistaken.

“It’s no use shifting,” he said. “He will have seen our fire.”

“He is coming slowly,” said Akshelah.

Again she pointed, and now we saw the dark object crawling down the slope.

“See!” exclaimed the girl. “He is very weak.”

Directly the man entered the line of wind, the current swept him off his legs. We did not go out to help him, because we could not anticipate meeting a friend. Presently, the figure blundered up, and we recognised the ugly face of Jim Morrison. As usual, his own demands were uppermost.

“Gimme some grub; do ye now,” he whined, sinking upon the grass. “I’m ’most starved.”

“You have come through plenty of berries,” said Akshelah scornfully.

“And you can pick ’em for yourself,” added MacCaskill. “We ain’t runnin’ a gen’ral store to fellers that start trackin’ us. Your pard Leblanc with ye, I guess?”

The sailor blasphemously asserted that they had not followed, but had escaped from the hollow after us, and had not dared to return, because they feared punishment for their share of the work on the Carillon.

“All the boys have run,” declared Morrison, but we knew this was a lie. “We did track ye jest a piece,” he confessed at last.

“Ye don’t track another piece,” said the factor. “Ye get back to your pard, and sling yourselves out er this country before morning. We don’t call for a couple of dogs sniffin’ after us.”

At first, when a hoarse cry came along the defile, a distant human shout of undeniable fear, I suspected another plot; but Morrison, who had been stripping a bush with both hands, and gulping down the fruit in a beast-like manner, stopped and turned his head, blenching with unmistakable terror.

“’Twas Gedeon!” he gasped.

He went on to explain that he had left the half-breed, who had broken down with hunger and fever, upon the rocks on the far side of the ridge. Akshelah busily dispersed and stamped out our fire, and MacCaskill began to aid her, while I looked on stupidly, remembering that I was seeing how men live.

“Maybe he saw something to fright him,” muttered the factor, but not as though he believed in what he said; while Morrison forgot his own demands, and began to whimper.

We determined to go to Leblanc’s assistance, more, I fancy, because we were curious to discover what other force might be in the field, than from any desire to save the half-breed, whom we knew had been in this place twice before together with his master. We made a cache of our tools and supplies beneath a bush, scattered the dying embers of our fire, and began the ascent, passing on this occasion above the spot where the wind struck. The night was perfectly calm, the light soft and clear, although, it being well after midnight, a few shadows were faintly marked under the rocks. That the half-breed was alive soon became evident, because his shoutings and frightened appeals scarcely ceased for a moment. Presently Morrison sang out, and Leblanc’s note altered.

“Jim! Jim! I’ve ben hit wi’ a knife!”

Morrison was inclined to consider his own well-being, but we pushed him ahead of us. Hard by a patch of strong-smelling bush we found Leblanc, half in the light, half in the dim shadow, and writhing like a worm. An examination showed us that the man had been stabbed in the fleshy part of the shoulder; it was a very slight wound, the would-be murderer having evidently aimed at the back of the neck, and been frustrated by a sudden move.

“Who did it, pard?” Morrison called huskily, and backing away uselessly. “Who come to hit yer?”

“The country’s chocked wi’ ghosts!” wailed Leblanc, his face ghastly. “Old ghosts, an’ young ghosts, mostly old. One hit me dirty wi’ a knife as I set right here. I never see him. He hit quick, an’ was away. He’d have come to hit again if ye hadn’t scared him. Jim, I be bleedin’ dreadful!”

“Dirty coward!” muttered MacCaskill. “Ain’t nothing much worse’n a mosquito prick. Do ye good, ole woman. Let the fever outer ye.”

“I be dyin’,” went on Leblanc, blubbering. “I ain’t got religion. Jim, tell us if there’s a God.”

“There’s a God for decent folk. None for the like of you,” said the factor. “Shake yourself up, and tell who hit ye.”

“I didn’t see nobody. I heard a move, an’ made to turn, when it come right inter me shoulder all hot. A ghost it was, sure. They tell how awful some of ’em do bite. I don’t know where I be a-goin’, not havin’ religion, an’ don’t know whater say. Oh, Jim, tell us whater say!”

I stepped out.

“Tell what happened to old Fagge the last time you were here,” I said.

This was the first occasion I had actually spoken to the half-breed since the early morning at Gull, when I had mistaken him for the Icelander. The wounded man went on writhing, and tried to drag himself under cover by means of the long tufts of white grass.

“Is it a dyin’ confession, say?” he whined. “The last talk o’ me, Gedeon Leblanc, what never had no luck?”

“I guess you ain’t long for this world,” said the factor grimly.

“Talk at ’em, pard,” piped Jim Morrison. “Tell ’em what ye know.”

“We know you come here twice with ole man Fagge,” continued MacCaskill, smoothing the way for him. “We know you’ve been followin’ us. Well, I guess there’s lots of gold for the crowd, and if you talk straight, and don’t die quick, we won’t stop ye from stakin’ out your claim, after we’ve done first choosin’.”

Morrison was staggered by such generosity, which removed the necessity for much base plotting.

“Pard,” he exclaimed, “didn’t I talk to ye? Mister Petrie an’ Mister Factor MacCaskill ain’t Redpath, what can’t a-bear to share. Didn’t I talk to ye? Didn’t I? Gimme some eatin’ tobaccer,” he demanded, turning to me, considering himself admitted into our society by my partner’s concession.

Instead of the desired chew, he received a command to “quit his noise.”

Evidently the cowardly half-breed was in great fear of death.

“Mister Petrie,” he gasped, “your father never done it! No, sir. Ole man Fagge is planted not so far off. He was knifed, mister, an’ I’m the only man who knows who done it, ’cause I saw wi’ me own eyes. Yer father was a-standin’ close up when ’twas done, but he never done it.”

“Who killed Joe Fagge?”

The name of Redpath was shivering on my tongue.

“Olaffson,” blurted out the half-breed.

The Icelander again! Always Olaffson! I could have believed that Redpath had told me the truth, and that Olaffson was the originator of all the plots I had attributed to him.

By still playing upon the half-breed’s fear of death, we obtained the whole story. My father, Leblanc, and Fagge had passed into this defile, and had reached the Canyon of the North Wind, whose existence was at that time only known to us by the rushing breath below. The old man prowled about by himself, permitting no one to accompany him, as he would not give his secret away lightly, and in the course of his ramblings came across Redpath, whom he hated, and who had incautiously encamped just outside the canyon. Returning in a rage, the half-mad miner swore that he would abandon the expedition, and refused to give the key to the situation, which was the secret of the entrance into Mosquito Pass, the only way leading out from the canyon to the unknown land of Bonanza beyond. My father had seen the old man preparing a plan to aid his already failing memory, and he had acquainted Redpath with this fact.

One night—it was late in the season, and already some snow had fallen—Olaffson came up to the camp fire, where Fagge was sitting alone. My father was spreading his blanket under the shelter of the rocks; Leblanc, still farther away, was cutting logs for the fire. The Icelander flung himself suddenly upon the old man, stabbed him when he resisted; but before he could escape with the secret my father was upon him, and had knocked him down. Joe Fagge was dead. My father took the plan, which he kept with him the rest of his life; Olaffson picked himself up and went to report to Redpath, who came presently, and accused my father of having murdered the old miner for his own ends. They came to blows; my father had the best of matters there, and, after beating his late friend, went away, taking the secret with him, and Leblanc never saw him again. Redpath was left helpless, and when he failed to find the pass had to follow my father south. He only just escaped; had he remained another twenty-four hours, he would certainly have been frozen in and killed by the arctic winter.

Such was the story Leblanc told us, and when he had done, it must be owned that I spared a pitying thought for Redpath, who, according to the statement we had just heard, had cause to believe my father guilty. But had Olaffson attacked the old miner upon his own initiative, or had Redpath instructed him to obtain that plan at whatever cost?

Leblanc quickly reverted to his own condition.

“Be I a-goin’ to die soon, do ye think?” he went on whining. “I feel ter’ble queer-like.”

“Speakin’ the truth might make ye feel that, I guess,” said the factor, and with that we left the men, and made our way back to what had been our camp.

The invisible hand, which had tried to settle Leblanc, had passed there also, making a thorough sweep of our tools and our packs, even down to our one little tin mug, which I remembered having thoughtlessly left in the open.

I had never before seen MacCaskill in a thorough rage. His great body quivered with passion, and he put out his hammer-like fist, which anger caused him to move as though it had been a hammer.

“There’s no bit of mercy if we strike him. Golden gates o’ Jerusalem! If I get him into me hands, I’ll smash him up like a rotten melon.”

Akshelah was not one to waste time in threats; indeed, I have noticed that women always reserve their energies to meet a crisis. She was already upon her knees, patting the ground, as though it had been a rich fabric pleasant to the touch. Presently she stood up, and soon was walking, picking up a track which to me was invisible.

“You are wrong,” she said, as we followed. “The Iceland-man has a small foot. This is large.”

She tracked the footprints to the stream. We crossed by means of the rocks; and when on the opposite side, Akshelah was puzzled.

“I know,” she said presently; “he took off his moccasins. See! Here he put down the tools, and rested.”

We took her word for this, because not even my trained eyes could pick out the signs she tried to indicate. She took us along, and soon a deep, melodious sound came upon our ears, and the lights ahead shimmered before the shadows stopped them, as the haze shimmers on a hot day. We were near the mouth of the canyon, and soon we saw the narrow black entry, the straight cleft where the rocks lifted up to the clouds, with the torrent of wind booming forth. The air became moist, colder, and there was the smell of vegetation rotting in water.

Just outside, Akshelah stopped to announce that the tracks of the man who had robbed us went “up into the wind.”

It was the time of the shadow—the two hours after midnight when the light is perplexing. The canyon was very dark, because the summits almost touched far away overhead, horrifying, and very cold. We lost nerve; we were tired after a long day’s journey; we resolved to defer our entry into the north wind until the coming of the perfect day.

AN OLD CAMPAIGNER

I must have been dreaming, because I awoke with a cry upon my lips, and I thought I had exclaimed “Father!”

On one side MacCaskill breathed heavily, shifting often, as the ground chafed his bones through the white moss we had collected to lie upon; on the other Akshelah slept, her head upon her two hands, a pretty picture, and yet severe, for she might have been dead, so still was she, and so pale. Her little face was unhappy, and my heart reproached me, because I knew that she was enduring hardships for my sake. She understood more about my own people than I did myself. She thought that when I had found enough gold I should go away and find my own new place, perhaps in the world of that visionary London, where I had first seen the light, and she would see me no more. The unhappiness she would not betray by day Nature brought and left upon her face in sleep. She was young womanhood, I young manhood. If there was any gulf between us, she could not see it. Why should I try to find it?

The voice in which I had called “Father!” was not my own. It was a thin voice, peevish and frightened. “Take me away,” was my thought, before I entirely awoke; “I don’t like the wind and the noise.” But I was a grown man, abnormally strong, capable of protecting others. I could not understand my dream.

Certainly there was a noise which was not the work of imagination. I started up, wide awake; a few frogs whistled at the stream below—that was a natural sound. The wind brought a steady, metallic ring—that was not natural. It was the quick stroke of a mining tool upon rock. I rose quietly, and walked to the black mouth of the canyon; but a footstep followed, a hand touched me, and a voice spoke.

“Ah, you are going away!”

Akshelah had awoke after me, and had followed jealously.

“Don’t you hear that noise?” I whispered.

But the girl had no ears for it. She drew me away.

“See, he is sleeping, and will never know.”

“What do you mean, little squirrel?” I said, in the old foolish manner I had spoken to her at home, and she responded to my mood.

“I will find the trail across the Bad Lands. I will bring you down to the green country,” she whispered passionately. “We will go back to the Yellow Sands before the winds of Tukwaukin come. Your tepee will be ready. You can be happy there.”

“We will go together soon,” I said, wanting to make her happy, but not wishing to deceive. “I cannot leave him. It would be cowardly.”

“He does not care for you. It is the yellow dirt out of the ground that he loves. When he has plenty of that he will forget you, because when men find the yellow dirt they want no other friend. They do not know that the Bad Spirit makes the yellow dirt, and then hides it away in the ground, and watches. You shall hear him laugh at nights when he sees the men finding it.”

The ringing of metal upon the hard rock went on.

I could not conquer the impulse which bade me enter the dark canyon, and Akshelah would never let me out of her sight. The struggle against that wind put confidence into me, and I stepped out beside the cold, dripping wall, as sure of my way as though I had been walking from Yellow Sands up to my homestead. The ascent was very gradual.

Presently the loose rocks turned to shingle, hard to walk upon, but any noise we made in advancing was carried down by the wind.

“Take care!” I cried warningly. “The wall juts out here.”

I could see nothing, and yet I had spoken the truth. At the right moment I put out my hand and met the wet wall, and we went round, never making a mistake.

“Presently there will be a break,” I went on. “Right ahead is a bluff of spruce. It is always dark there, and damp, and full of mosquitos. Above us we shall find a shelf of rock which is protected from the wind. Once there was a camp here.”

“Your father has been with you,” said Akshelah fearfully, through the cold current. “He made signs to you to come. We must not disobey those who live with the Great Spirit. Your father will be pleased with me for coming with you.”

“Here!” I exclaimed, bending and feeling, but this time I was wrong; the clammy, inaccessible wall met my hands. The ringing of the mining pick had stopped.

We went on a few more paces, through gloom that brushed the face like cobwebs, and again I felt. I was right.

The straight wall broke, and there was a passage upward over the rocks.

We went up, with the speed and silence of forest-cats, until we came out of the wind, and a screen of bushes stopped us. No sound came from the ledge, which I knew went back and into the cliff on the other side of those bushes.

“There is a way round higher up,” I said, remembering.

But Akshelah caught and held me tightly.

“Do not move,” she whispered. “A man is coming up.”

Directly she had spoken I heard, and knew we could not get away. This was the man who had been working upon the rocks, and he would be carrying a pick, with which he could kill either of us at a blow.

My blood rose excitedly, and I determined that I would use Olaffson as he had wished to use me.

Drawing Akshelah back, I crawled upon a higher rock, while the man ascended slowly, as though short of breath, until I felt he was just upon me. Then I leant down, threw my arms out, and sprang forward. I had him fair; but he was a large man, and his clothes smelt abominably. His pick rattled upon the rocks as we fell together, crashing among the bushes.

My captive spoke gaspingly, but not in fear, nor yet in anger; but rather as a gambler who has played his one high card, and finds it no good:

“I’m afraid you have me, Hanafin.”

So soon as he had spoken he was a free man again. The voice was the voice of Redpath.

He picked himself up at once, and struck a match—probably one of ours he had lately stolen—and the spluttering light fell upon the loose, sick-looking face and the black, straight rocks behind him, where slime glistened, and water dropped like spots of tar.

“Ah, it is you, Petrie!” he said, with unmistakable relief. “Come inside.”

My strength departed from me.

“I thought you were dead,” I said feebly.

“Well, I suppose I ought to be,” said the adventurer, rather wearily. “I have been through terrestrial purgatories to retain life alight. I hardly know why. Come in,” he continued quite heartily. “You remembered the way. I wondered whether you would.”

I hesitated, and he went on:

“You know your strength, and you know my lack of it. I lost my pretty little shooter in the quagmire. I’m sorry I haven’t much to offer you, especially as it happens to be my birthday. I am sixty-seven to-day, my boy. By Gad! how the years do run!”

In spite of his friendly manner, I took care to keep myself between him and Akshelah.

“How do I know this place?” I asked my enemy. “I have come along without making a mistake, and I seem to have seen it all before.”

“You were here with your father. You were a very young child, and I remember you were terribly in the way,” said Redpath.

Strange that the truth had never occurred to me! So I had already seen more than a fair share of life. From London to outside Canada; from civilisation to the unknown lands; in scenes of fighting and madness; in gold-hunting, and murder, and flight. Truly an adventurous childhood!

When we had come upon the ledge and were out of the wind, Redpath lit a small lantern, which a few hours before had been MacCaskill’s property, and liberally offered us deer-pemmican, which he had stolen from our camp. The light glinted upon our unused tools lying at the back of the cave. Yet I could never have summoned the courage to accuse this calm gentleman.

“It is expedient for me to keep the light out of the canyon,” our host said carelessly. “Did Hanafin express any intention, that you remember, of tracking me?”

“He thought you could not escape from the mud,” I replied.

Redpath was sitting in darkness, and I could make out his outline, without being able to see his face. He changed the subject at once, and said, letting each syllable escape coldly:

“You will understand that in my dealings with you I have played my game according to my rules. I have generally found that where you cannot trust the father, neither can you trust the son. It was not many yards from this spot that your father chose to break the agreement between us.”

Then I spoke up and told him of the confession of Leblanc.

“It is a lie,” he said casually. “Don’t believe me unless you wish to; but Olaffson was with me while the deed was taking place. He never saw the end of Fagge, neither did I. Your father never denied the deed. Even now I do not say he struck with the intention of killing. The madman may actually have attacked him in the first place. It was Leblanc who called us, and I distinctly saw your father kneeling over the body, his blood-stained knife by his hand.”

“Why should Leblanc put it on to Olaffson?”

“The two men have always hated each other. I believe that Olaffson has quite recently made an attempt to silence the half-breed.”

“Why didn’t you prevent him?” I said boldly.

“I have no control over Olaffson.” The adventurer was smiling, I was sure. “He is physically far stronger than I am, and probably would kill me were he not such a coward, and were I not sometimes useful to him. Besides, why should I interfere? I should like the man out of the way.”

So far Akshelah had not spoken, though she was always looking towards Redpath, but now she said calmly:

“You want us far away.”

“You are quite correct,” said Redpath, with condescension.

“You have been to our tepee,” went on the girl. “You have taken our food and our tools.”

“Again correct,” said Redpath pleasantly. “My dear Petrie, the young lady does not, of course, understand the first principles of civilised warfare. I saw my opportunity for annexing your property, and I should have been a decidedly bad tactician had I neglected to take it.”

Akshelah had arisen. She collected together everything she could find in the cave, not only our own property, but the few little things belonging to Redpath, leaving only the small lamp smouldering in the centre of the rock floor. She arranged these things between us into two packs, the smaller for me to carry, the larger for herself.

“A clever girl,” said Redpath reflectively. “She is right. You have the upper hand, and you must take your advantage of the circumstance. Two small things I will plead for—the handkerchief and the old cashmere scarf. The possession of a handkerchief in these parts stamps one with the mark of the gentleman. The scarf once belonged to my mother, and is interesting as a reminiscence.”

“Put everything back that does not belong to us,” I ordered.

“No,” said Akshelah.

I reiterated my command almost angrily, and the girl obeyed, Redpath thanking me after his own manner.

“It is a mistake to return more than I asked for.”

I proposed going, lest MacCaskill should be hunting for us, but Redpath, to my surprise, requested me to favour him with a complete account of our doings since he had made his terrible plunge off the Carillon. After I had done so, he said softly:

“As usual, I failed to seize my opportunity. You wondered why I did not shoot you all down while we were waiting on deck for the smash?”

“The Firefly was coming up,” I suggested.

“I knew nothing of it until near the end, as my attention was given to other things,” he said. “To shoot down unarmed men, in a state of cold blood, requires an immense amount of nerve. I had not sufficient. That is the reason I failed. Then, when I had strung myself almost up to the desired pitch, I saw my pursuer, and knew I was too late.

“I asked the inspector why he wanted you, but he would not say,” I added, not without curiosity.

“Hanafin is a clever fellow, far too good for police work. He failed in the Indian Civil, I believe, and ultimately drifted out here, where he had the sense to keep sober. As an excellent illustration of my ill-luck, I may say that he is after me for unintentional homicide.” His dark shadow leaned forward to touch up the dim light of the lantern. “Everything had failed with me, and I turned to smuggling liquor across the boundary into a prohibition country. I was bound to fail again, as the police were very active; but I thought I might do well for a time, and slip away quietly when affairs should reach a crisis. One wet night, the load of hay which contained my barrels of smuggled spirit was surrounded unexpectedly, and I was forced to shoot, with no intention of injuring, but merely to make an opening for my escape. At my age a long term in the penitentiary is equivalent to a sentence of death. Bad fortune, not my aim, steered the lead into the stomach of a trooper. I got away, assumed the disguise of a priest, which I had successfully used before, and always carried to meet an emergency, and escaped into the wilds. Chance led me to the end of a search I had been making for years. I arrived just too late to find your father alive.”

There was a silent interval, awkward for me, but presently I said:

“What are you going to do now?”

“I do not propose showing you my hand,” said the adventurer curtly. “I have too many enemies on the other side of the coulee, without reckoning the two sailors, with Olaffson here after the gold, and Hanafin and his hounds after me.”

“I don’t wish to be your enemy,” I said, wondering whether I spoke the truth.

“Possibly, if you were alone, I might admit you to a small claim, though I should not permit you to go from here until I was satisfied,” went on Redpath. “Admit such men as MacCaskill, as Leblanc, and, before the fall, all the scum of the world would be swarming and sweating up this canyon, and I should have to rest content with a possibly dried-up claim. Here I have been puzzling my brains how to preserve the secret from Olaffson.”

If this were truth, his selfishness was something beyond belief.

“And all for nothing, after all,” he added coldly.

I asked him what he meant, and he said:

“Mosquito Pass has disappeared.”

I stared through the gloom towards the big, indistinct shape, which went on speaking:

“I have gone by Fagge’s plan. I have found the exact spot he there indicates, but the pass itself has vanished. I have worked ineffectually at the place where the opening ought to appear. There is no way round out of the canyon. Nothing short of a balloon could help us over the straight wall of rock that runs up to the sky.”

Again I did not believe him, but when I began to speak, his manner changed.

“You have been here long enough,” he said unpleasantly. “I have had no rest for hours.”

Akshelah was still undismayed. She picked up MacCaskill’s little lantern, extinguished its light, and added it to her pack without a word, but with a glance of contempt cast at the adventurer, sitting silent and cold in the gloom. Then together we went down again into the north wind.

THE SOONERS OF ELDORADO

While we ate our breakfast of bacon and biscuits a few ravens hovered, as though surprised to see us, and their hoarse croaking mingled dismally with the subdued roar of the wind from the great blow-pipe. Some chick-adees hopped about the grass and examined us fearlessly. The defile was filled with gossamers. A golden haze made it difficult to see any distance along the coulee, and out of this haze two figures loomed. Presently we discovered the rascally sailors.

“Didn’t I tell ye to keep away?” shouted MacCaskill.

“Captain,” called Jim Morrison, “them soldiers are a-comin’! I saw ’em on the flats, an’ Gedeon seen ’em too.”

“They’re a-comin’ for to take us,” began Leblanc, who was himself again; but MacCaskill began to growl.

“How many of ’em?” he demanded.

“All three, major,” answered Morrison, trying to wheedle himself towards our supplies.

“You two durned fellers have give us away!”

“We never did, colonel. Gospel! We never did. We wouldn’t want er—”

“Shut your stoke-hole. Make your own tracks!”

After which the factor addressed me.

“Let’s get, Rupe. If that Hanafin finds us, we’ll have the whole world buzzin’ around next week.”

We made a cache of our supplies, and tracked for the canyon. I had allowed MacCaskill to believe that Olaffson had been the thief of the previous day, and had instructed Akshelah not to speak of our visit to Redpath. Because I was myself young and strong, I pitied the old adventurer who had made such a complete failure of his life. I wanted the others to believe him dead.

We tracked along the canyon, through the semi-darkness and the moist wind, until we reached the spruce. The trees were skeletons, ragged and uncouth, and the logs very small. The hot air shrieked and crept with insects. I had never known mosquitos so large or so virulent, and they choked and blinded us with their millions. Akshelah wrapped up her head; MacCaskill cursed; my own tanned skin pricked in a thousand places. Suddenly we stumbled over a pile of stones.

Large water-worn pebbles, with pieces of rock as white as milk, had been heaped into a long mound. At one end faintly appeared a design, formed simply by a spruce divided some four feet above ground, with a smaller and shorter piece of the same tree tied by some rotten rope across.

“A grave,” said the factor, his voice barely audible through the mosquitos.

There was no need to say more, because we knew what lay buried there. We came out of the spruce, and over shingle, between the colossal walls, rounded a spur of rock, which jutted out like a horn, and were confronted by a wet precipice, honey-combed by small holes, each of which whistled and hissed as it discharged a separate volume of wind. Overhead we could just make out a fringe of spruce, like far-away storm-clouds.

“Wings for three,” said MacCaskill morosely.

“Can’t we find any way round?”

“Likely,” growled MacCaskill. “P’r’aps we’d best start right now, around by Alaska, and down the Yukon to the Porcupine, and out to M‘Pherson. Then come along the MacKenzie, till we strike the Slave and the Athabasca. Do it in a year, if we have luck.”

“Where’s Mosquito Pass?” I said, mindful of what Redpath had told me.

“Where? Right here, I guess.”

“Then where’s the hole?”

“Ask a prophet.”

I examined the face of the cliff, which was largely composed of streaked granite; near the ground moss grew to a depth of more than a foot, and a few small trees, very short and bushy, sprang out in clumps. I forced myself into one of the narrow inlets, where there was a strong odour of decayed matter, but I saw no signs of a way out, and the mosquitos covered my face. When I forced myself out, one of the small trees caught me. It must have been very lightly rooted, for when I pulled it came away from its crevice.

“We’ll be bit to the bone if we do strike the hole,” said MacCaskill, who was in the mood to grumble. “See them wind-pipes! If ye got inter one, ye might fancy yourself a durned shell inside a gun. Golden Jerusalem!” His face altered wonderfully, and his eyes began to stare. “Don’t drop it! You’re wastin’ it, ye fool! Look-a-here! Coarse, coarse as yaller sugar!”

When he gripped at the roots of the little tree I was still holding, I began to understand.

Golden grains gleamed about the brown dirt still adhering to the roots. The factor shook this dirt away, but there was no water handy to wash out the handful.

“There’s two dollars here, I guess,” he chuckled, while before my eyes was the vision of my father flinging the buckskin bag of stones and dirt into the Yellow Sands, and in my ears came his sad voice giving me my first and only lesson.

MacCaskill put the dirt into his hat, and scrambled about the precipice with the agility of a chipmunk.

“We must find that hole, Rupe!” he shouted through the hot wind. “And when we’re through, we’ll want to close the pass up, so as no one’ll be able to follow. See? Golden gates! Come over here and help look, you gal. You ain’t mope-eyed.”

Akshelah’s wonderful eyes looked back, and she called to me quietly. She directed my glance, and immediately I discovered Inspector Hanafin leaning against the spur of rock, watching us, and smoking his pipe.

He stirred when he caught my eye, and came towards us, his bright colours rather dingy after his rapid crossing of the Bad Lands.

“Hard at it, eh?” he said, in his delightful voice, while MacCaskill started round violently.

“I thought you had gone away on the Firefly,” I said, and MacCaskill growled.

“The Firefly hasn’t gone away,” said Hanafin. “Do you know that this is unexplored territory?” he went on, examining the contents of MacCaskill’s hat, and stirring the dirt lightly with a long finger.

My partner was sulky at having his plans spoilt, and admitted as much in his most morose fashion. But Hanafin laughed.

“You haven’t come here after Redpath,” complained MacCaskill. “You just came followin’ us.”

“I belong to the Force,” interrupted Hanafin, stroking the yellow stripe down his leg. “If I think you have made a discovery of gold, it is my duty to follow you. Now, you had better tell me what you know.”

“You’ll report it, and we’ll have half the world here.”

The inspector twirled a ring upon his third finger.

“You ought to be old enough to know that you can’t keep a gold-find private property. Let us suppose that you and Petrie strike something rich to-day. This is unexplored territory, and you are alone. Next week you would have seen fifty men here, the following week one hundred, the next a thousand, and next month a city. We don’t need wires to telegraph such news as a gold-find. As a matter of fact, it’s lucky for you that I have come, because I can establish you as legal miners. Are you going to tell me what you know?”

“I hate to do it,” muttered MacCaskill.

The inspector pulled out a note-book and made some entries. The bed of shingle on which we were standing lay outside the channel of wind. The heat, however, was terrible, and the mosquitos thick as dust. Hanafin turned abruptly.

“Heard anything of Redpath?”

I felt his eyes upon me, while I tried to think out a reply in my slow-witted fashion; but the next moment I heard his cheerful laugh.

“So he has got here,” said the soldier. Again he bent his head, but as he was writing, observed: “I’m ready to listen, MacCaskill.”

My partner still demurred.

“You three here; Redpath and his Icelander; the two sailors; my two boys and myself. Add them up. Ten already for the new mining camp. Lennie and company on their way. We shall soon be crowded.”

MacCaskill gasped.

“All that crowd comin’?”

“Of course,” said the inspector. “When we were camping in the electric hollow any half-blind fool could have seen that you knew of something. It wasn’t hard to understand that those two sailors were on the good thing, too, for they were hanging about you men like shadows. I didn’t talk. Lennie and his lot didn’t talk, but anyone could have told that they had made up their minds to desert the Carillon and follow you inside. By morning you had gone, following the tracks of Redpath and his blackguard; the two sailors had gone, following your tracks; I came, following their tracks; Lennie and Co. are following the tracks of all of us. That’s how a mining camp grows, my friend.”

“I pass,” said MacCaskill unhappily, and he told the inspector all the story.

“Good,” said the handsome Englishman, when he had done. He looked about, stroking his brown moustache, and went on: “This might be made a regular death-trap for us. Don’t you see?” He was addressing me. “One man hidden in that spruce could pick us off as he liked. We can only advance. Rock behind; the canyon upon either side. What a place to drive an enemy into!”

“Redpath has lost his shooter!” I exclaimed heedlessly. “It fell off him in the mud.”

“That is the information I wanted,” said Hanafin. “Don’t be alarmed,” he added to MacCaskill. “Norman is posted upon the far side of the spruce; Carey, my other boy, at the entrance into the canyon.” He gave a last pull at his pipe. “Now to find the pass.”

Akshelah had been standing beside me very quietly. Now she broke silence for the first time.

“Is it the Mosquito Hole?” she said composedly.

We all turned to her.

“There,” she said, pointing away to the far left side, where there was no moss and no small trees, but merely rugged rock.

“Well, you see more than I can, my girl,” said Hanafin.

We came across the shingle and a bed of sand to where there was thick wet moss. Under the cliff, streaked with its red and yellow rivulets of slime, we looked up from ledge to ledge, and from point to point. There was not the smallest indication of any hole.

MacCaskill began to growl again, and Hanafin was puzzled, but Akshelah looked at me and laughed.

“You see?” she said, making the slightest upward movement of her head.

I did not see, and I was about to confess as much, when the sound of a million insect trumpets reached my ears. Then I perceived a great boulder coming from the face of the cliff, like a misshapen nose, and to that I pointed with the cry of discovery. The other two remained as much in the dark as ever.

“Watch the mosquitos!” I called.

The insects were streaming steadily over the summit of the boulder, like smoke out of a stove-pipe.

“You’re a world-beater, girl!” exclaimed Inspector Hanafin.

The others helped me to ascend the almost perpendicular cliff, where it was very hard to find and secure a safe footing. However, I was doing something that I understood, and I soon attained the big boulder, which did not project as a part of the cliff, but merely reposed as a separate fragment within a cavity. It might have been lowered there to cover and conceal the entrance to the hole. I shouted down this information to my companions.

“See!” said the inspector, pointing over me. “That rock broke off, and fell exactly upon the hole, which caught it as a cup would catch a ball.”

I put my head back, and saw that he had hit on the truth. The scar made by the separation was obvious some way above. Behind the great fragment opened an aperture into which I might have inserted my head. Here the villainous mosquitos were pouring in and out.

“Could we work a lever?” called Hanafin.

It was impossible, because the force would have to be exerted against the opposite side, and there was no foothold there.

“Use your muscles, Rupe!” called MacCaskill.

He spoke half in jest, but I took the remark in earnest. Having secured safe foothold, I dug my hands into the crevices of the rock, and bent back with all my might. A movement followed, a sullen, shifting motion, and a wave of heat passed through me. Then the effort died out, the rock settled back grimly, and the air became solid with mosquitos.

“That boy could lift an ox!” I overheard Hanafin muttering.

MacCaskill was excited again.

“Stay with it, Rupe! Don’t be beat! He’s a bigger than Jake Peterssen, but he won’t scrap back!”

I was excited, too. I became far more anxious to shift that great rock than to enter the land of Bonanza. By that time I had learnt sufficient to be proud of my strength, because I understood that it was abnormal. I pulled off my coat, strapped my waist tighter, worked my feet into the ledge, dug my hands into the unyielding surface, and bent over the black monster, which was quite as black as the negro I had conquered at Gull, though far less terrible. I strained, until the surrounding atmosphere became dark, and something screamed into my ears.

There was again a motion, but whether the rock was coming to me or I moving to the rock, I did not know. Though I saw nothing, I became in some way aware that my muscles stood out themselves like projections of rock, and I felt that the sight was unnatural. Then the monster appeared to rise out of his bed and come upon me, with a rending and a tearing, threatening to crush me. Something was giving and parting. Was it from the roots of the boulder, or from my own vitals? I felt nothing whatever, no pain, not even an ordinary strain.

I understood the cause. Of course, it was because I had released my grip, and the great rock had conquered me. It would be impossible to try again, because my limbs were quivering, and there was no more strength left in my body than in that of an infant.

A ray of red light flashed out of the far-away darkness, and I understood that I had fallen to one side, in order that I might escape some terrible creature, which was crashing upon me to crush out my life. An avalanche swept past with a cold breath, and I began to fall, quite easily and contentedly, until something which I took to be a cloud received and held me, and floated away lightly, still holding me, and rocking gently up and down.

HOW JUSTICE WORKS

Varied were the sounds that reached my ears when I woke in the green coulee, to find my limbs limp and my head dizzy. I heard, above the hissing of the canyon, the stroke of a pick, the scrape of a spade, the blow of axe and hammer, and the snarl of a saw. I was lying upon a blanket, with Akshelah kneeling on the moss beside me, fanning away the insects. She smiled delightedly when I looked round, and commanded me not to move.

The two troopers were cutting and shaping logs of spruce. MacCaskill was digging foundations. On the other side, the idle Leblanc and the incorrigible Morrison were playing poker.

“Three queens is good, Jimmy,” I heard the former saying. “That’s fourteen dollars you’ve lifted, durn ye! Ye can have it, soon as I wash out me first pay-dirt.”

“Gimme a voucher,” demanded Jim Morrison.

Then Inspector Hanafin came down from the rocks, carrying a great load of white grass for thatching, his fur-lined cloak, his gaudy coat and sword put aside, the rings stripped from his fingers, his sleeves rolled up, his handsome face marked with dirt.

“Good man!” he exclaimed, when he saw me lift myself, and down he set his bundle. “Over-strain, but nothing damaged,” he said cheerily. “You’ll be all right to-morrow.”

MacCaskill heard his voice, and came tramping across.

“You’re the stuff, Rupe!” he called, in splendid spirits. “I’m makin’ our shanty. See?”

“Did I open the hole?” I asked eagerly, and both the men laughed.

“You and that rock come down together,” said MacCaskill.

“You pulled yourself round just in time, and I was able to catch you as you fell,” went on Hanafin. “The hole’s open; but we didn’t venture inside, because the place was solid with mosquitos, and the tunnel was as black as tar. We started a smudge with dry grass and damp moss on the inside, and the pass may be fairly clear by morning. Ever seen a mining town start?”

Before I could reply, he saw the two sailors, and his anger came out.

“You idle hounds!” he exclaimed, and going up, deliberately kicked each man. “Put up those cards, and set down to work, or I’ll pass you out of this camp before morning.”

The worthless creatures cringed, and swore, and rose reluctantly.

“Norman!” called the inspector, “give these men some work, and if they don’t stay with it report ’em, and I’ll prescribe something for their health. We’re not going to have a bad crowd here our first week,” he added threateningly, and then turned back to me to add: “A mining town begins, continues, and ends in gambling.”

MacCaskill was chuckling as he made mighty strokes with his spade.

“Say, Rupe, you and me’ll be Bonanza kings in a year, maybe,” he said. “We’ll be havin’ our pictures stuck inter papers.”

He burst into laughter.

“You old fool,” said Hanafin; but the infection reached him. “My ambition is to get married, and there’s little chance of that on my pay.”

He passed on at once, with his load of dry grass, as though ashamed of the confession, and I understood what it was that inspired the Englishman. Somebody with bright eyes was waiting for him at home! The chance of his life had come, and he was not the one to miss it. I wondered if she would care for him as Akshelah liked to care for me.

Working hours were long, because there was no darkness to trouble us, and the soldiers made great progress with their building, while Akshelah did the cooking, and the two sailors the growling. The latter had come in with the idea of picking up gold, not of working for other people; but as they had no supplies, they had to make their choice between working or starving.

Our camp fire burnt redly in the defile during the time of the shadow, which began half an hour after midnight and lasted until sunrise, two hours later. When we had done eating, the troopers sang us songs of the plains and told us yarns of the prairie; and later on, Hanafin spoke to me of great London, and listened sympathetically to my story, and the tragedy connected with my father. By that time MacCaskill, Norman, and the two sailors were asleep; but Akshelah sat opposite, her fine eyes glowing in the firelight. Outside the light of the fire, Carey, the tall trooper, did patrol duty. My heart went out to Hanafin, as he talked to me as an equal, and treated me as such. Hanafin and Redpath were the two English gentlemen of my acquaintance, and my father was the only other I had known.

“I have an idea that I can name the man who killed the discoverer of this place,” said the inspector musingly, but he would say no more. “What do I think of Redpath? An old and slimy villain, who has reached bed-rock, and who will now stick at nothing, because he has no lower to fall. Don’t pity him, my boy. His smooth tongue and his oily manner are his two strongest weapons. I suppose he is sitting up in his cave now, rehearsing the details of some new plot with that infernal Icelander.” He paused, then added: “My duty is divided. I ought to arrest Redpath, and deliver him at Regina, and I must administer the law here, if our discovery is what we believe it to be.”

A figure loomed large into the firelight, and Carey saluted.

“A stranger coming up, sir. Maybe a native. Made no reply to my challenge.”

“Go out and bring him in.”

The disciplined trooper wheeled round and was gone.

Presently he accompanied a very old man, bent and wrapped in an aged blanket, presenting a weird sight in the glow of the fire. His face was like a piece of cracked leather, but his teeth, when he grinned in greeting, were white and sound.

“Ho!” he exclaimed, “white great boy!”

“Ho!” replied Hanafin. “You speak English, do you?”

It was difficult to extract any meaning out of the jargon of mangled words and distorted sentences which the ancient proceeded to deliver. He sought to tell us the history of himself, and of his fathers, of their long struggles with the extinct Iroquois; but when Hanafin questioned him concerning the adjacent country, the old man became mysterious. He knew nothing of the land of Bonanza, nor had he ever heard of Mosquito Pass. His innocence was wonderful; his lying palpable! He demanded “tobak” as a solace for his old age; and when this was given him he became bold, a wild longing crossed his aged face, and he prayed for “the water that burns a man inside.”

“Carey!” exclaimed Hanafin, fingering the fur on his cloak, “you are sure this is unexplored territory?”

“Yes, sir. It is so marked on all our maps.”

The inspector coughed.

“That civilising agent whisky has evidently preceded us.”

“He may have been inside, sir,” suggested the trooper.

Hanafin put the question in many different ways and dialects; but from the answers given, he was satisfied that the old native had never been inside—that is, to civilisation.

“I could almost swear that he came out of the canyon, sir,” said Carey.

I caught Hanafin’s arm, and said unguardedly:

“He comes from Redpath!”

The inspector never glanced at me, but said quietly:

“Thank you for an idea, Petrie.”

He leaned towards the ancient, and in his clear, strong voice pronounced the following names: “Petrie! Redpath! Leblanc! Joe Fagge! Olaffson!”

“You hit him every time, sir!” exclaimed Carey, forgetting himself in his admiration.

“So it was Redpath who gave you whisky years ago! I might have guessed it,” said Hanafin.

MacCaskill was snoring behind me, and beyond Norman slept quietly in his blanket. They had not been disturbed by the arrival of the native. Two dark shapes heaved close to the rocks, themselves like rocks. These shapes represented Leblanc and Morrison. I saw Hanafin’s eyes fixed that way.

He went on with his examination of the ancient. Did he know anything concerning the death of the old half-mad miner? Did he know who killed him? Had he been present at the time? What talk had he heard? The weird creature poured forth a flood of negatives, without waiting to listen to any particular question, and quite obviously without taking in any part of its meaning.

“I’ll use this old parrot as a test,” said Hanafin grimly. “Carey!”

The trooper stiffened at once.

“Take a light. Lead this old man up to the half-breed yonder. Make him kneel down and look at the sleeper.”

Hanafin, I fancy, shivered at his own plan, but the night was cold.

“Hold the light just above the old man’s head. We will see if the half-breed recognises him.”

A thrill passed through me. Over the great cliffs a faint aurora burnt blue. MacCaskill snored on; Norman never stirred; the two shapes remained like the rocks behind them. During the silence I heard the hoarse croak of the ravens I had seen that morning. They were returning to the defile.

The fire darted up hotly, and a red shower of sparks went aloft and vanished. Carey’s face looked like bronze as he drew a flaming brand from the fire. He gripped the ancient with his free hand, and pulled him along. Hanafin in his long black cloak went on the other side. Akshelah and I followed. It was like a funeral procession.

We reached the side of the sleepers. A magnetic storm breaking overhead would scarcely have aroused them. Carey forced the shivering Indian upon his knees, close to the left shoulder of Leblanc; standing behind, he held the flaring spruce so that the light fell full upon the pinched and withered face, weird in age and horrid with fear, while the holder of the light remained himself invisible. Hanafin passed round to the half-breed’s right shoulder, and stood between the sleepers.

The light moved this way and that, as the hand of him that held it shook, and my own breath began to quicken. Hanafin seized Leblanc and shook him violently. At the same time, his strong voice pealed out among the cliffs:

“Who was it killed Joe Fagge?”

A scream of awful terror met the startled echoes of that question.

Leblanc had opened his eyes to see a blaze of light, and below the wizened face and bloodshot eyes of the silent witness—the ghost-like witness of the deed done twenty years before. The thin lips before him never stirred while that question rang into his awakened ears. Leblanc was little better than a beast, and a beast goes mad easily.

Jim Morrison awoke shouting, in time to see his associate leaping away over the rocks like a huge monkey, making the country horrible with yells.

Carey dropped his hand, and the sparks again leapt aloft.

The other two sleepers awoke, and called out.

“Guilty,” said Hanafin, in answer to their question.

We saw the poor wretch disappear into the canyon.

Carey and Norman followed a little way, but they soon lost sight of what had lately been Leblanc, the murderer of half-mad Joe Fagge, and now, by the working of Justice, a madman himself. They did not go up to the hot insect-filled cemetery among the spruce.

The strong light began to break, making the cold patches of quartz like snow, and under the heaving clouds the gossamers lifted and flickered. The ravens were croaking in the direction of Eldorado. Mosquito Hole lay that way.

Hanafin turned the ancient Indian out of the camp, and Norman accompanied the unhappy creature some distance along the defile.

I thought the inspector severe upon that occasion; but he knew his duty, and I knew nothing. Akshelah declared that the departed was a bad man, and I expect she was right.

Though I had very little sleep, I felt my strength again when the sun became strong and hot.

We were a silent party at breakfast—Hanafin grave, MacCaskill subdued, and Morrison blenching.

After eating, we took up our tools and prepared to start for the unknown land of treasure.

“Anything to report, Norman?” asked the inspector, as he rolled a cigarette.

“Nothing, sir.”

But we found the half-breed at Mosquito Hole, or rather that which the insects had done with and left for a husk. He must have scrambled up to the hole, certain that his pursuers were upon him, and had slipped while descending, and fallen, bruising his head. There the enemy would have been upon him before he could recover—a relentless, poisonous enemy, in numbers only to be estimated by millions, trumpeting, stabbing, stifling. Its sightless eyes were filled; the host swarmed in and out of its mouth, its nose and ears; yet an unimportant fraction only of that mighty host of mosquitos which had overwhelmed this big, strong man, and had smothered him to his death.

My father was innocent.

Old man Fagge, the crazy miner, the discoverer of Bonanza, had been avenged at last by Justice and Inspector Hanafin.

“Bury it among the spruce,” ordered the representative, and his men averted their heads and carried it away.