For the Allinson Honor Part 16

She turned to Andrew. "This is a hard country in winter. I've seen the thermometer stand a week at fifty below."

"Don't be scared, Mr. Allinson," laughed the lad, as he closed the door. "It's not often too fierce, and in a place like the Landing there's generally something going on. Will the frost interfere with your mining?"

"Not underground," said Andrew. "I understand that nothing can be done on the surface, but we expect to send off a good lot of ore for experimental reduction in the next week or two. Then we'll have something to base our plans on."

"Mappin's going to handle the transport, I guess. That man's surely on to a soft thing. I s'pose you know he's making his pile out of the Rain Bluff?"

Mrs. Graham glanced at her son in rebuke.

"I don't think you should talk to Mr. Allinson in that manner, Jim.

He's a good deal older and more experienced than you are."

"Your ideas are out of date, Mother; we've grown ahead of them. Mr.

Allinson doesn't look as if he minded. Anyway, he doesn't know as much as I do about the Canadian contractor." He turned to Andrew. "Do you like it up yonder?"

"Yes," Andrew answered good-humoredly; "I like the work better than anything I remember having done."

"A matter of taste. Now, I can't see much amus.e.m.e.nt in rolling rocks about or standing in wet slickers in a dark pit watching the boys punch the drills."

"Mr. Allinson is not doing it for amus.e.m.e.nt," said his mother.

"Well, money isn't often made that way. You don't get rich by knowing how to use the hammer and giant-powder."

"I believe that's true," Andrew responded with a smile.

"A sure thing! Money is made by sitting tight in your office and hiring other fellows to do the rough work. They break up the rocks and cut the milling logs; you take the profit. It's business, first and last, for mine!"

"Then it's fortunate there are people with different views," his sister interposed. "If n.o.body were willing to live in the logging camps all winter and go prospecting in the bush, you would be badly off."

"But so long as there are people who like doing that kind of thing, we're glad to let them."

"This is a favorite pose of his," the girl explained to Andrew. "It's the latest fas.h.i.+on among the boys; they're afraid of being thought altruistic."

"Now that everything is controlled by mergers and they make all we need so dear, one is forced to be practical," Mrs. Graham remarked feelingly. "For all that, it jars on me to hear our young people talk as they do."

"We're realists, with no use for sentiment," Jim replied. "We don't let our imagination run away with us. It doesn't pay."

"You may be wrong in that," said Andrew, smiling, "I'm not much of a philosopher, but it seems to me that imagination's now and then a useful thing. I've seen it help a man through tight places. Take your prospectors, for example; they often face risks that couldn't be justified by a return in money. I heard of one fellow crossing a lake in a savage storm in a leaky canoe, to keep the time he'd allowed for his journey, because he wouldn't be beaten; and of another making two hundred miles on snowshoes with very little food, because a party he'd promised to meet was expecting him."

"That," said the lad, "is the kind of thing father would do; he's given to impractical idealism. There's a mine up in the barrens he has talked about as long as I remember; but if he found it I believe he'd be content with that and sell the claim to any one for a few hundred dollars. Getting yourself frozen for an abstract idea isn't good business."

Graham laughed and changed the subject, and soon afterward Andrew took his leave. He spent the next evening with Frobisher, whom he had now visited several times, and on the following morning set out for the mine, where he worked very hard for a few weeks. They were still using the old adit, though the new one was being driven toward the lower level. Then he and Carnally left the camp in a canoe to hurry forward some stores and, after arranging for their quicker transport, stood on a little promontory, looking down the river, late one gloomy afternoon.

Winter had set in with unusual rigor. The gray sky was barred with leaden cloud; the pines, which looked strangely ragged and somber, stood out with harsh distinctness against the first thin snow; and the river flowed, a dark-colored riband, through a clean-cut channel in the ice. A nipping wind blew down the gorge, and now and then light flakes of snow fell.

"We had better push on," Carnally suggested. "It looks as if the messenger hadn't got through, and we'll hardly make the mine before midnight. There's heavy snow coming and we have no provisions or camp outfit."

"Wait an hour," said Andrew. "The smelter people promised to let me know the results they got and the letter was due yesterday. I'm anxious about the thing."

Carnally agreed. They had sent out a quant.i.ty of ore for reduction, and particulars of the yield in refined metal would throw a useful light on the prospects of the mine. The last a.n.a.lysis of specimens selected to represent the bulk had not been encouraging, but this test was unsatisfactory because the ore was variable.

"Let's get out of the wind," Carnally said. "If I'd expected this kind of weather, I'd have brought my fur-coat along."

They found a sheltered spot among a clump of pines, where they sat down; but Andrew felt disturbed and apprehensive. The Company had spent money freely, the mine was expensive to work, and of late Watson had grown morose and reserved. Even when Andrew pressed him, he had avoided giving his opinion. The report of the smelting company would, however, show how matters stood, and Andrew looked out anxiously for the expected messenger.

It got dark, though they could still see the glimmer of the ice, and at length they heard a faint, regular splas.h.i.+ng, made by canoe poles.

A shout answered their hail, and when they ran down the bank a man came cautiously across the fringe of ice.

"Here's your mail," he said, handing Andrew some letters. "Now that I've given it to you, we'll get back."

"Won't you come on to the mine with us?"

"No, sir! It's steep chances you don't get there to-night and we can make a Mappin camp in about three hours down-stream."

"It would be wiser to follow him," Carnally suggested. "We'll have heavy snow before long."

"I'm going on," said Andrew doggedly. "I must compare the report with our books and get Watson to tell me what he thinks as soon as possible."

Launching their canoe, they poled her laboriously against the current, which ran fast between its banks of ice. Andrew was thankful that the snow on the frozen surface threw up a faint light and they could see the glimmer of the floes that drifted down, though it was not always possible to avoid them. Once or twice there was a crash as a heavy ma.s.s struck the canoe, which was too lightly built to stand much of this buffeting. Andrew had thick mittens, but they soon got wet and his hands grew numbed. He was not clad for rigorous weather, and his exertions failed to keep him warm.

Still, they were making progress, and they met with no serious difficulty until they entered a slacker reach. It had been open when they came down, but now the channel made by the current was glazed with thin ice, through which they could hardly drive the canoe.

Indeed, in some places Carnally was forced to break the crust with the pole while Andrew paddled.

"If there's much more of this, it will be late to-morrow before we make camp," Andrew remarked.

"We'll have to leave the river pretty soon, but we'll stick to it as long as we can," Carnally replied. "It's rough traveling through the bush, and the sh.o.r.e ice is hardly safe yet."

They got through the reach, paddled laboriously against a swifter stream, and dragged the canoe over a portage, stumbling among big stones and across frozen pools. During this pa.s.sage Andrew fell and hurt himself; but stopping was out of the question. Launching the craft on the upper edge of the rapid, they drove her out. For a minute or two they made no progress, and Andrew, straining at his pole, feared that they would be swept down the wild, foaming rush; but they found slacker water and the ominous roar of the rapid died away. Then snow began to fall, making it difficult to see, though they had the faint glimmer of the sh.o.r.e-ice for a guide. In the reach up which they were poling, it did not run out far because the stream was strong, and they had gone some distance when there was a heavy thud and a curious crunch at the bows.

"In with her!" cried Carnally. "Head for the slack behind the point!"

They ran in through crackling ice and had reached the thicker strip along the bank when Andrew felt his knees grow wet. Feeling with his hand, he found there was an inch or two of water in the bottom of the craft.

"Skin's punched through," Carnally explained. "We can't bale her and use the pole. You'll have to get out."

Andrew did so hastily, but the ice on which he landed cracked as he moved, and he had gone several yards before it seemed strong enough to bear him. Carnally dragged the canoe out, and then turned cautiously up-stream.

"We'll have to chance the ice for the next mile or two," he said.

"It's rough country--steep rock and very thick scrub--on this side."

As they moved forward Andrew noticed that the snow was falling faster and the wind freshening. The cold flakes drove into his tingling face and he had to brace himself against the gusts. The gorge they followed was wrapped in obscurity and filled with the roar of water and the wailing of the trees. However, he held on for some time; and then suddenly felt no support for his foot. It was too late to stop; the next moment he was in the water. The shock took his breath away; he had a horrible fear of being drawn under the ice, and it was with vast relief that he found he could stand up waist-deep. Moving cautiously, he got his knee upon the ice, but it broke away; then he saw that Carnally was lying down near the edge and holding out his hand.

"Get your arms on it, and catch hold," he said. As he obeyed, Andrew heard the ice crack, but his weight was now well distributed and he crawled forward, clutching Carnally's hand. Then he got up, dripping and shaking with cold.

"Thanks!" he said. "That's a risk I don't mean to run again. If it had been a foot deeper I'd never have got out."

Carnally turned toward the bank and, in thick darkness, they scrambled up a steep slope among stunted pines. Leaving its summit, they floundered over the rounded surfaces of outcropping rocks and plunged into hollows filled with thick brush. The pines were smaller farther on, which made things worse, for they had to force a pa.s.sage through the snow-laden needles. Some had been partly blown down and leaned on one another in tangles which would have been difficult to traverse in daylight. How Carnally kept his line Andrew could not tell, for they had lost the sound of the river, and the snow was thick; but he steadily pushed on and after a while the country grew more open. Here the wind was worse and Andrew, who was getting worn out, struggled forward stupidly with lowered head and labored breath. He could not remember how long he kept it up, but at last a light blinked among the trees and he recognized joyfully that it came from a shack at the mine.