CHAPTER IX.
FAILURE.
We were up at dawn, and, as the sunshine crept down the low hills to the west we sorted out axes and picks and shovels and crowbars, and started up the creek.
The going was rough. The bush was thick, and there was down timber crisscrossed and piled at every angle by some big wind. Probably it had all been standing when Nitche and Joe Barbe packed in the furs. If not, they must have had a sweet job.
Soon the creek bottom narrowed. The sides became high, rocky, with much loose shale and many fractures. On the whole, it was about what the letter had led us to expect; and here and there, in the creek bed, there were reddish bowlders.
At the end of what we estimated to be half a mile, Mr. Fothergill called a halt. Sure enough, on the opposite side of the creek, high up near the rim of the bank, was a big, broken fir stub, surmounted by the rough, stick nest of a fish hawk.
"By George!" Mr. Fothergill exclaimed. "I've hit the very spot." He spoke as if he alone were responsible for our guidance.
"Looks like it," Jim Dunleath admitted. "But I don't see the bowlder."
"Hidden by second growth, likely. Anyway, there is the hawk's nest."
"And there is another," said Dunleath, pointing farther up the creek.
I looked, and saw a second hawk's nest. Indeed, these lakes seemed to be the habitat of many fish hawks. All along it were their nests, old and new. This bird returns to the same nest year after year. And I presume some instinct brings its offspring back to the district where they were hatched. These in turn build nests for themselves. But the fish hawk is somewhat exclusive of habit, each pair being jealous of infringement on their chosen fishing ground, and so the nests are rarely close together. Ordinarily they are near the water, though I have seen them miles inland against a mountainside, and the birds flapping heavily to them with their prey in their claws.
"Well," said Mr. Fothergill, "it's one or the other. We'll look here first for the bowlder."
We crossed the creek and climbed the opposite bank, which was the more sloping of the two, and covered with a tangle of small growth. Through this we pushed, quartering the ground like hunting dogs. But we found no bowlder.
"It's mighty funny," said Ballou. "This seems to be the place, all right."
"How old is that nest?" asked Dunleath.
"Hard to say. Them birds fix up their old nests every season. I guess they nest one place till they die. This looks pretty old. But then so does that other nest. I wish we could find that rock. Of course it may have loosened and rolled down into the creek bed. Well, let's look around the other nest."
But, though we subjected the vicinity of the other nest to a like careful search, we found no bowlder. We looked at every rock which seemed to have rolled down into the creek bed, and found several which might roughly answer the description, though we could find no line on any of them, and even if we had found the mark it would not have done us much good.
"Well," said Mr. Fothergill, "this is the place, without a doubt. One of those rocks is the bowlder Nitche speaks of. But, as it is out of place, it is not very important. The only thing to do is to pick out likely spots opposite each nest and excavate. In that way we are certain to find the cache, though it may take a good deal of work."
"I'm not satisfied that this is the right creek," said Dunleath. "I'm going to the end of the lake, just to make sure."
I went with him. We found one small creek, and followed it inland; but it merely ran along through brush, with sloping, couleelike sides, and no sign of a hawk's nest or bowlder. And so we came back convinced that Mr. Fothergill's plan was the only feasible one.
It was hard, monotonous labor. And after we had been at it for several days there grew the depressing feeling of futility. The men began to growl among themselves. They were not hired, they complained, to strip the whole country down to bed rock. And they began to scoff at the existence of a cache. However, they kept at it for a week, during which time they had really moved an immense amount of soil, gravel, and loose rock. And then old Hayes quit cold.
"I ain't no bohunk!" he declared, with an oath. "I'm a heap too old to use a muckstick, anyhow. You young fellers can keep on, if you like. I'm through."
"Me, too," said McGregor.
"Yas, by gar!" the half-breed declared.
"You see," Ballou explained to Mr. Fothergill, who was most indignant at this defection, "they don't take no stock in this Nitche yarn. The way they figger it out, there ain't no chance of findin' the cache. And then they say they was hired for canoemen, and not for a steady pick-and-shovel job. So they was, too, when you get right down to it. They didn't mind it first, but they say it's lastin' too long."
"Don't you consider McNab's letter genuine?" asked Mr. Fothergill.
"Well, of course I never seen no writing of Nitche's," Ballou replied. "By
the way it was found, I guess it's the real thing. There always was a yarn that he had furs cached some place, and this place fits all right. But the marks he speaks of ain't in place. There's two hawks' nests, and neither of 'em may be the right one. That may have blowed down. We've stripped off a lot of surface and found nothing, and it begins to look like a matter of luck. It's your shout, and far's I'm concerned I'll stay with you as long as you want, and so'll Louis. But the other boys won't. Maybe if you was to put a time limit on the digging, say three or four days or a week more, I might be able to talk 'em into giving you a run for your money. Would that be any use?"
To this Mr. Fothergill finally agreed, and Ballou interviewed the strikers. He had considerable difficulty persuading them to resume work, but at last they came around, agreeing to stay with the job for another week, but that, they said frankly, was the limit.
And they carried out their part of the bargain honestly. They worked hard, without shirking or grumbling. Even Mr. Fothergill had to admit that. But at the end of the week we had found absolutely no sign of the cache.
"The boys want to put a proposition up to you," said Ballou. "They want to do the fair thing, and if you was very strong for it they'd work another week, though they don't think it's no use. But if you're going to quit you won't need them no more. In that case, they figger they'd like to go over into the Pink. That breed has some yarn about placer ground. I don't s'pose there's a thing in it, but the boys wants to go. And they'd like to buy a couple of canoes and a grubstake from you and pull out. That way, of course, you'd save wages for the back trip. What do you think of it?"
"They've kept their bargain and we'll keep ours," said Dunleath. "We may as well quit now as a week from now. We may as well save what we can, Wally."
"They can take their wages and canoes and grub and go to the devil!" said Mr. Fothergill.
"They want to buy 'em straight, so's there'll be no kick nor obligation either way," said Ballou. "You put your price on 'em, and they'll take 'em at that."
"I'll leave it to you," Mr. Fothergill told him. "Sell them what they want for whatever it's worth."
"How many are going?" Dunleath asked.
"All but Louis and me," Ballou replied.
But the next day Ballou said that he was thinking of going with them himself.
"They want me to go," he explained, somewhat apologetically. "They say I know the country better than any of 'em. I dunno but I'd like to go. When a man's been a prospector, he never gets over it. You don't really need me no more. Louis will go along with you and cook, and get the home camp ready for winter if it should freeze up before we get back. What do you think?"
"It's your shout, Tom," said Mr. Fothergill. "There are no strings on you."
"Then I'll go with the boys," Ballou decided. "I've been sorter hankerin' for a little prospectin'. Not that I expect to find more'n colors, but I like the game."
On that basis matters were arranged. We retained the largest canoe, which would hold the four of us and our outfit very nicely. One canoe was cached, to be picked up by the men on their homeward way, and they took the others with them.
When they had gone, we lingered for a day, poking around, hoping against hope, which I suppose is human nature. But we found nothing whatever, nor could we avoid the irresistible conclusion of absolute failure which settled upon us.
"Oh, well," said Jim Dunleath, "what's the use of lingering over the grave? Let's get out of here."
"I hate to quit," growled Mr. Fothergill. "I'm dead sure that cache is here somewhere, and next year I'm going to come up with an outfit that will work and find it."
"You'll only throw good coin after bad," Dunleath told him. "It's a dead card. I'm sorry I let you in for it."
"What the devil do I care for the money?" Mr. Fothergill returned. "I hate to give up, that's all. And then I know you needed those furs in your business."
And so when we pulled out for home we were a very glum outfit. Mr. Fothergill nursed his grievance against the men. Dunleath was silent, evidently bitterly disappointed. Louis had nothing to say, but kept shaking his head and grumbling French oaths to himself without any apparent cause. And I was very down in the mouth, for my dreams of wealth were gone, and I did not believe that Mr. Fothergill would go to the expense of organizing a second expedition.
We cleared the lakes and got into the river, and were just going ashore for the night when a canoe with two white men appeared, coming upstream. It was a slim though weather-beaten craft, and by the way it lifted at every stroke it was plain that its occupants knew their business.
"Evenin', gents," said the man in the bow. He had a gray beard and childlike blue eyes, and I had a faint recollection of having seen him somewhere. But when I looked at his partner in the stern and saw red, curly hair and eyes of a hard, clear blue, with a mocking, whimsical devil looking out of them, I knew both of them.
"Dinny Pack!" I cried. He looked at me, his eyes puckering at the corners.
"That's who," he admitted. "But I can't make no come-back, young feller."
"Bob Cory," I told him, "on the Carcajou. You licked Nootka Charlie when he kissed Peggy."
"Well, I'm durned!" he exclaimed. "Are you that kid? You've shot up and filled out so I wouldn't have knowed you. How's chances to camp near here? Ike and me ain't seen no white folks for a month."
They came ashore with us and shared our supper and fire. They had been knocking around all summer, partly prospecting and partly looking for a good trapping country. Now they were on their way up to the lakes, where they expected to meet two friends of theirs named Rowan and Cass, who had gone over into the Pink or perhaps the Poorfish and had arranged to be back about that time.
Dinny Pack volunteered this information. His partner, old Ike Toft, kept silent, smoking contemplatively. Neither asked what we were doing or where we had been. But I told them we had been to the lakes and were on our way home, and that part of our outfit had gone on to prospect on the other side.
"May meet 'em," said Dinny. "This is sorter new country to me. Ike knows it, though, mighty well. Of course there ain't much country he don't know."
"Now, Dinny!" said his partner.
"Well, there ain't," said Pack. "You been travelin' her forty years, about."
"Oh, well, she's a big country," said Toft modestly.
"It was up here," said Pack to us generally, "that old Nitche McNab cached his furs when he had to make a get-away. Maybe you never heard about that." And, taking it for granted that we had not, he told us the story. "Ike," he concluded, "was with the bunch that was after Nitche."
"What? Is that so?" asked Mr. Fothergill.
"Yeh, I was along," Toft admitted.
"And nobody ever found the furs, to your knowledge?"
"Somebody got 'em. We found the cache, but she was empty."
"Have you any theory about that?"
"Well," said Toft, "I allus figgered that Nitche done that. While we was chasin' his gang he slipped in behind us and lifted the cache himself. That's what I think."
"But what did he do with them?"
"I dunno. I guess he'd cache them again somewheres till he got a chance to get out of the country with them."
This guess of Toft's tallied so exactly with the evidence which we possessed that my respect for him rose.
"Do you think he ever got them out?" Dunleath asked.
"Might have. I never heard no more about him. He seemed to disappear."
"He couldn't have moved the furs very far single-handed," Mr. Fothergill pointed out.
"No," Toft agreed. "But then he wouldn't need to. I guess he cached 'em again somewheres on them lakes. Pretty lakes, ain't they? Which one was you camped on?"
"On Ahtikamag."
"Nice place to camp."
"That's a curious island in it," said Dunleath. "I mean the one with the steep, rocky shores and the sink hole in the middle."
Toft shook his head.
"That island," said he, "ain't in Ahtikamag. That's in Shingoos."