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The Trail of '98: A Northland Romance, a novel by Robert W. Service |
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Book 4. The Vortex - Chapter 15 |
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_ BOOK IV. THE VORTEX CHAPTER XV "There's something the matter with Jim," the Prodigal 'phoned to me from the Forks; "he's gone off and left the cabin on Ophir, taken to the hills. Some prospectors have just come in and say they met him heading for the White Snake Valley. Seemed kind of queer, they say. Wouldn't talk much. They thought he was in a fair way to go crazy." "He's never been right since the accident," I answered; "we'll have to go after him." "All right. Come up at once. I'll get McCrimmon. He's a good man in the woods. We'll be ready to start as soon as you arrive." So the following day found the three of us on the trail to Ophir. We travelled lightly, carrying very little food, for we thought to find game in the woods. On the evening of the following day we reached the cabin. Jim must have gone very suddenly. There were the remains of a meal on the table, and his Bible was gone from its place. There was nothing for it but to follow and find him. "By going to the headwaters of Ophir Creek," said the Halfbreed, "we can cross a divide into the valley of the White Snake, and there we'll corral him, I guess." So we left the trail and plunged into the virgin Wild. Oh, but it was hard travelling! Often we would keep straight up the creek-bed, plunging through pools that were knee-deep, and walking over shingly bars. Then, to avoid a big bend of the stream, we would strike off through the bush. Every yard seemed to have its obstacle. There were windfalls and tangled growths of bush that defied our uttermost efforts to penetrate them. There were viscid sloughs, from whose black depths bubbles arose wearily, with grey tree-roots like the legs of spiders clutching the slimy mud of their banks. There were oozy bottoms, rankly speared with rush-grass. There were leprous marshes spotted with unsightly niggerheads. Dripping with sweat, we fought our way under the hot sun. Thorny boughs tore at us detainingly. Fallen trees delighted to bar our way. Without let or cease we toiled, yet at the day's end our progress was but a meagre one. Our greatest bane was the mosquitoes. Night and day they never ceased to nag us. We wore veils and had gloves on our hands, so that under our armour we were able to grin defiance at them. But on the other side of that netting they buzzed in an angry grey cloud. To raise our veils and take a drink was to be assaulted ferociously. As we walked we could feel them resisting our progress, and it seemed as if we were forcing our way through solid banks of them. If we rested, they alighted in such myriads that soon we appeared literally sheathed in tiny atoms of insect life, vainly trying to pierce the mesh of our clothing. To bare a hand was to have it covered with blood in a moment, and the thought of being at their mercy was an exquisitely horrible one. Night and day their voices blended in a vast drone, so that we ate, drank and slept under our veils. In that rankly growing wilderness we saw no sign of life, not even a rabbit. It was all desolate and God-forsaken. By nightfall our packs seemed very heavy, our limbs very tired. Three days, four days, five days passed. The creek was attenuated and hesitating, so we left it and struck off over the mountains. Soon we climbed to where the timber growth was less obstructive. The hillside was steep, almost vertical in places, and was covered with a strange, deep growth of moss. Down in it we sank, in places to our knees, and beneath it we could feel the points of sharp boulders. As we climbed we plunged our hands deep into the cool cushion of the moss, and half dragged ourselves upward. It was like an Oriental rug covering the stony ribs of the hill, a rug of bizarre colouring, strangely patterned in crimson and amber, in emerald and ivory. Birch-trees of slim, silvery beauty arose in it, and aided us as we climbed. So we came at last, after a weary journey, to a bleak, boulder-studded plateau. It was above timber-line, and carpeted with moss of great depth and gaudy hue. Suddenly we saw two vast pillars of stone upstanding on the aching barren. I think they must have been two hundred feet high, and, like monstrous sentinels in their lonely isolation, they overlooked that vast tundra. They startled us. We wondered by what strange freak of nature they were stationed there. Then we dropped down into a vast, hush-filled valley, a valley that looked as if it had been undisturbed since the beginning of time. Like a spirit-haunted place it was, so strange and still. It was loneliness made visible. It was stillness written in wood and stone. I would have been afraid to enter it alone, and even as we sank in its death-haunted dusk I shuddered with a horror of the place. The Indians feared and shunned this valley. They said, of old, strange things had happened there; it had been full of noise and fire and steam; the earth had opened up, belching forth great dragons that destroyed the people. And indeed it was all like the vast crater of an extinct volcano, for hot springs bubbled forth and a grey ash cropped up through the shallow soil. There was no game in the valley. In its centre was a solitary lake, black and bottomless, and haunted by a giant white water-snake, sluggish, blind and very old. Stray prospectors swore they had seen it, just at dusk, and its sightless, staring eyes were too terrible ever to forget. And into this still, cobweb-hued hollow we dropped--dropped almost straight down over the flanks of those lean, lank mountains that fringed it so forlornly. Here, ringed all around by desolate heights, we were as remote from the world as if we were in some sallow solitude of the moon. Sometimes the valley was like a gaping mouth, and the lips of it were livid grey. Sometimes it was like a cup into which the sunset poured a golden wine and filled it quivering to the brim. Sometimes it was like a grey grave full of silence. And here in this place of shadows, where the lichen strangled the trees, and under-foot the moss hushed the tread, where we spoke in whispers, and mirth seemed a mockery, where every stick and stone seemed eloquent of disenchantment and despair, here in this valley of Dead Things we found Jim. He was sitting by a dying camp-fire, all huddled up, his arms embracing his knees, his eyes on the fading embers. As we drew near he did not move, did not show any surprise, did not even raise his head. His face was very pale and drawn into a pucker of pain. It was the queerest look I ever saw on a man's face. It made me creep. His eyes followed us furtively. Silently we squatted in a ring round his camp-fire. For a while we said no word, then at last the Prodigal spoke: "Jim, you're coming back with us, aren't you?" Jim looked at him. "Hush!" says he, "don't speak so loud. You'll waken all them dead fellows." "What d'ye mean?" "Them dead fellows. The woods is full of them, them that can't rest. They're all around, ghosts. At night, when I'm a-sittin' over the fire, they crawl out of the darkness, an' they get close to me, closer, closer, an' they whisper things. Then I get scared an' I shoo them away." "What do they whisper, Jim?" "Oh say! they tell me all kinds of things, them fellows in the woods. They tell me of the times they used to have here in the valley; an' how they was a great people, an' had women an' slaves; how they fought an' sang an' got drunk, an' how their kingdom was here, right here where it's all death an' desolation. An' how they conquered all the other folks around an' killed the men an' captured the women. Oh, it was long, long ago, long before the flood!" "Well, Jim, never mind them. Get your pack ready. We're going home right now." "Goin' home?--I've no home any more. I'm a fugitive an' a vagabond in the earth. The blood of my brother crieth unto me from the ground. From the face of the Lord shall I be hid an' every one that findeth me shall slay me. I have no home but the wilderness. Unto it I go with prayer an' fastin'. I have killed, I have killed!" "Nonsense, Jim; it was an accident." "Was it? Was it? God only knows; I don't. Only I know the thought of murder was black in my heart. It was there for ever an' ever so long. How I fought against it! Then, just at that moment, everything seemed to come to a head. I don't know that I meant what I did, but I thought it." "Come home, Jim, and forget it." "When the rivers start to run up them mountain peaks I'll forget it. No, they won't let me forget it, them ghosts. They whisper to me all the time. Hist! don't you hear them? They're whispering to me now. 'You're a murderer, Jim, a murderer,' they say. 'The brand of Cain is on you, Jim, the brand of Cain.' Then the little leaves of the trees take up the whisper, an' the waters murmur it, an' the very stones cry out ag'in me, an' I can't shut out the sound. I can't, I can't." "Hush, Jim!" "No, no, the devil's a-hoein' out a place in the embers for me. I can't turn no more to the Lord. He's cast me out, an' the light of His countenance is darkened to me. Never again; oh, never again!" "Oh come, Jim, for the sake of your old partners, come home." "Well, boys, I'll come. But it's no good. I'm down an' out." Wearily we gathered together his few belongings. He had been living on bread, and but little remained. Had we not reached him, he would have starved. He came like a child, but seemed a prey to acute melancholy. It was indeed a sad party that trailed down that sad, dead valley. The trees were hung with a dreary drapery of grey, and the ashen moss muffled our footfalls. I think it was the deadest place I ever saw. The very air seemed dead and stale, as if it were eternally still, unstirred by any wind. Spiders and strange creeping things possessed the trees, and at every step, like white gauze, a mist of mosquitoes was thrown up. And the way seemed endless. A great weariness weighed upon our spirits. Our feet flagged and our shoulders were bowed. As we looked into each other's faces we saw there a strange lassitude, a chill, grey despair. Our voices sounded hollow and queer, and we seldom spoke. It was as if the place was a vampire that was sucking the life and health from our veins. "I'm afraid the old man's going to play out on us," whispered the Prodigal. Jim lagged forlornly behind, and it was very anxiously we watched him. He seemed to know that he was keeping us back. His efforts to keep up were pitiful. We feigned an equal weariness, not to distress him, and our progress was slow, slow. "Looks as if we'll have to go on half-rations," said the Halfbreed. "It's taking longer to get out of this valley than I figured on." And indeed it was like a vast prison, and those peaks that brindled in the sunset glow were like bars to hold us in. Every day the old man's step was growing slower, so that at last we were barely crawling along. We were ascending the western slope of the valley, climbing a few miles a day, and every step we rose from that sump-hole of the gods was like the lifting of a weight. We were tired, tired, and in the wan light that filtered through the leaden clouds our faces were white and strained. "I guess we'll have to go on quarter-rations from now," said the Halfbreed, a few days later. He ranged far and wide, looking for game, but never a sign did he see. Once, indeed, we heard a shot. Eagerly we waited his return, but all he had got was a great, grey owl, which we cooked and ate ravenously. _ |
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