The Sphinx, Vol. 14, No. 214

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THE SPHINX.
March 9, 1907.
[all rights reserved]
HELD UP.
By HAROLD BINDLOSS,
Author of “In the Niger Country,” “A Wide
Dominion,” “Ainslie’s Ju-Ju,” “Life and Death
in the Delta,” “The Kingdom of Courage,” etc.
It was a still, cool night late in the fall when two men, clad in ragged blue canvas and jackets of deerskin stained with green stains by glacier clay, came plodding down a trail which winds through the ranges of British Columbia into the wilds of Caribou. Forty years ago that trail was worn deep by the feet of a multitude pressing feverishly northwards in search of gold, and the bones of dead men and horses were strewn along it. To-day the forest has reclaimed much of its own, and portions of the road are covered with willows, for the alluvial diggings are worked out now, and the precious metal islwon in a few places by hydraulic monitors whose owners are joint-stock companies. Still, men of experience say there is more treasure yet hidden in the wilderness between Quesnelle and the Peace river than ever was taken out, and at intervals detachments of the unfortunate go up in search of it. Some come back with a little, and some never come back at all.
Carson, the Englishman, and Cedar Crossing Lee had, however, been unusually successful, and now, with shoulders aching under their burdens, trudged behind the weary pack-horse on their homeward journey. By the next nightfall, if all went well, they should reach a log-built settlement from which a waggon road led to the post where a stage would bear them swiftly south to civilisation again, and for this reason they had determined to cover at least another league before they camped.
Carson’s feet were bleeding, and the straps had eaten raw wounds in his shoulders; but these were minor discomforts, for the treasure of the north is not to be lightly won, so he whistled odd snatches of English ballads while the stately pines loomed up out of the dimness and vanished again behind. On either hand the huge, tapered trunks rose like mighty columns, their great branches meeting as though they were arches of the groined roof above, while stray shafts of moonlight filtering through cast patches of shimmering radiance athwart the trail ahead. Also, as usual in that region, the boom of a glacier-fed river rose from unseen depths below, and in places framed by festoons of whispering needles there opened up before him a majestic vista of everlasting snow. He halted for a moment to adjust his burdens, two blankets, an axe, and a heavy packet in wrappings of hide, white the moonlight beat down upon his bronzed faSs- Kith the long hair falling about it, and keen, fearless eyes.
“We might hold out tor another hour, but that’s the most,” he said. “The poor Cayuse is dead beat, too. I don’t know why, but up there I hadn’t a care, while now I feel strangely anxious to make the settlement. Well, no one can march tor ever, and we’ll start with sunrise.”
Lee, of Cedar Crossing, who was similarly caparisoned, laughed as he smote the horse’s flank, and there was a clattering of shovels, axes, tin pans, and kettles as the tired beast blundered on again. He was a forest rancher, who, like others of his kind, spent much of his time wandering through the wilderness in search of minerals which he did not often find.
“I guessed you were getting jumpy,” he said. “One usually feels that way towards the end of a lucky journey, especially if he’s young. Thinking of that girl in the old country, say ? Well, you’ve
enough to go home and see her. I’m too old for such fooling even if I hadn’t Eliza. Going to start a store at the crossing and indent for a post-office instead.”
He started,for as if in answer a weird,unearthly laugh rang out of the stillness, and changing into a mournful wail died out far up in the silence of the black hillside: then smiled feebly as he said : “Only a loon. Never liked to hear it. That blamed distressful bird seems to know when there’s trouble coming. Guess we’ll get on a last rustle.”
They quickened their pace, brushing through the dewy coolness while the scent of pine and cedar heavy in the air, but Carson hardly noticed it. Already in fancy he breathed the fragrance of English roses, while the sombre conifers gave place to sunny meadows ridged with whitening hay. Also the faces of his kinsfolk rose up before him, and among them one which was not that of a relative smiled at him wistfully with tear-dimmed eyes, as it did the day he turned his back on the Mother Country. Now he could go back and see them all, while even after that his share of the gold would enable him to seize upon one of the openings which present themselves to the adaptable man with a few dollars irpthe seaboard towns. He was entitled to a space of leisure, he thought, after four weary yearsofdisappointment and ill-paid labour in the Dominion, and he had won it hardly enough, facing snow-slide, starvation and death in the northern wilderness.
Then he shook the reverie from him when the trail wound along the edge of a slope of shale which dropped steeply to the river whose road reached them more hoarsely. White mist curled up towards them from below, and on the other hand the climbing pines seemed spires of blackness, while the moon, which now hung over their shoulder clear of the trees, cast long shadows down the trail. Caution was needed here, and Carson wished his comrade had not talked so freely before the loungers in the store of the first outpost of civilisation where they had slept two nights earlier. It stood at the branching of the ways where one trail led north-west towards the desolations of Cassiar. and sometimes'desperate, broken men who had lost their all came back at that season along it. Still, he knew the most part of the free prospectors were honest as the day, and tried to forget his growing uneasiness as he listened to the calling of the river and the whisper of the pines, until Lee, grasping the Cayuse’s rein, stopped suddenly.
“Stand fast !”xaid a hoarse voice. “We’ve got you covered. Hold your hands up !”
Then Carson, who set his teeth, staring into a thicket of sal-lal and withered fern, saw the end of a rifle barrel that glinted under the moon. He was by no means a timid man, but he knew that sudden death would overtake him at the first move, and clenching his fingers hard raised both hands above his head.
“That’s better,” said an unseen man, ironically. “Thought you were going to be too late with it. Don’t want any useless unpleasantness, and we’ll be satisfied with what you have got with you.
; Now, one at a.time; the short man first. Slip the straps off your shoulders and let those packages go. You can unbuckle the sling of the rifle, too.”
Lee growled something which was not a blessing, but his Winchester fell clattering on the trail, and the hide package followed with a thud. Meantime Carson, whose nerves were tingling with the effort to restrain himself, moved one foot softly into the shadow that crept towards him. Another few inches and he would be out of the hateful moonlight, when there might be a chance for a bold dash for liberty. Already balancing himself on the other heel he prepared for
a spring, and then the tension on his muscles slackened again, for a second voice said :
“Stop right where you are. Another move and you won’t know what’s hurt you. I’m watching you.”
The sprays above a low cedar branch rustled, and Carson, who caught the dim outline of another barrel turned upon him, did as he was bidden. After this, while Lee stood up unloaded, looking badly ashamed of himself, the first speaker said :
“Stand there against the hemlock while we tend to you. Drop all those things about you— so ! The Cayuse ? Guess we’ve no use for muling round a camp outfit, and we’ll leave him with you. He’s branded, with a bite on the off ear, too. Got anything else of value ? No! Then march out straight before you, and something will happen to the first who looks behind him.
Lee struck the Cayuse pony savagely with his fist, and when he moved dejectedly up the trail Carson strode behind him white-faced with dismay and fury, for the gold they had earned so hardly, floundering through snow-choked passes, and swinging the shovel from early dawn until starlight shimmered on the spectral glaciers, lay in the red dust behind. Worse still, the long expected journey home and the chances of a future had gone with it. So once more he clenched his right hand until the nails bit into his hardened skin as he remembered that he must begin the weary struggle penniless again, while there was one at home who had waited long, hoping against hope, for good tidings from him. For perhaps half a mile they continued silently, until where the trail dipped the noisy river and the roar among the boulders drowned the sound of their spiritless steps Carson sat down on a fallen hemlock.
“You had better rest a while, Lee, and talk things over ; there’s no hurry now,” he said, bitterly. “Good Heavens! What pitiful cowards we were to let ourselves be robbed of all we had without a blow, by men we couldn’t even see.”
“That’s just it!” was the answer. “You couldn’t see them; they could see you, and it’s no use arguing with the man who’s watching you over the foresight with a steady squeeze on the trigger. No; it’s safer to do just whatever he asks you. I’m feeling it, too, and Eliza will talk considerable when I come back again with nothing—and youi English shot-gun hanging all the time against the Cayuse’s near side, out of their sight but just where I couldn’t get it. Say, do you figure on spending all the night here ?”
Carson’s eyes glittered with a dangerous light as lifting the weapon down he opened the breach. Two cartridges filled the chambers, but these he slipped out, replacing them with others whose wads bore the letters B.B.
“No,” he answered, grimly. “You see, I want that gold particularly. As I think I told you, there’s a girl in the old country who expected great things of me, and has been disappointed— badly. Somehow, I missed my chances hitherto, and now, for her sake, I’m going to make a last effort. We’ve had an object-lesson of the fact that the man with his finger on the trigger is master. Well, it’s a trick that two can play at, and it’s no great matter if it doesn’t succeed. I’m tired of being a failure, and it will be better, perhaps, for her.”
The stalwart axe-man from Cedar Crossing glanced at him with sympathy. “Maybe you’re right. I’m coming along,” he said. “They have got my gun, but if I can jump in before I’m expected, I guess this will do.”
Lifting the big, double bitted axe from its resting-place on the saddle, he swept the keen-edged blade, which made flashes in the moonlight, in a