Chapter VII: Bonanza (6)

“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.

V

HANAFIN CITY

BONANZA

Before making our entry into Mosquito Pass, which was a passage through the cliff, worn probably by water in prehistoric times, we tried to fan a volume of smoke ahead of us, but the effort was useless, as the strong wind poured it back into our faces. Lowering ourselves to bed-rock, we began the advance, the glow from our lanterns falling upon the saltpetre that coated the rocks, and lighting the mazy clouds of insects that were always busy about our faces. The sides of the tunnel, which was some forty feet in length, were smooth and very wet; a few stalactites pointed from the unseen roof; bunches of moss and some pink fungus spread over the stones; around our feet were numbers of big-eyed frogs, bloated and too indifferent to move. The passage curved sharply at the finish, and we were short of breath by the time we saw the light.

The inspector, my partner, Akshelah, and myself stepped out into the sunlight which poured over the seamed rocks. The troopers and Morrison had been left behind to keep guard and to work. The blue sky ahead floated in vapour, but the tunnel brought out among a wilderness of huge rocks, so that we could see nothing of the unknown land.

“Frightful hole!” said Hanafin, looking back. “Anyhow, a big smudge this end will clean out the mosquitos, because the wind will carry the smoke through from end to end.”

“Where in Jerusalem does the wind come from?” said the factor.

The precipice leaned over slightly, as it towered away some hundreds of feet above us.

“This wall is the wind-break of the country,” said the inspector. “All the currents from the north concentrate here, and are forced through the vent-holes, to make a single volume in the canyon.”

We climbed upward for another hundred yards, and then entered a channel, about three-eighths of a mile long, with a circular dip in the centre. From the dip we descended, the channel curving every few yards.

“Columnar basalt,” Hanafin observed, indicating the perpendicular sides. “The dark grain is magnetic iron. Here we have hornblende. When I have found mercury I shall be content.”

“Platinum?” queried MacCaskill, whose knowledge of mining was equal to mine.

“Platinum and gold lie together,” said Hanafin.

Then the channel made its last curve. Below us, unpromising and bare, and pent in on all sides by chains of strong mountains, spread out--

Bonanza!

I noticed a stronger flush upon Hanafin’s face. He was thinking of that somebody at home! The muscles down my partner’s neck swelled out. Two of our small party were excited; two were not. I thought I had never looked upon a more desolate tract of country.

Away to the south-west went a narrow lake of a dirty-grey colour. A stream flowed into this lake, and had shoaled a large part of it near its mouth. Before us a dreary succession of rounded hills rose and fell, all of the same height, shape, and appearance, very thinly covered with scraggy spruce and a little black poplar, with some white birch and pitch-pine. In a very few spots we found a couple of inches of loam under the moss, the sub-soil being invariably gravel, but the surface was more usually composed of rock, with sand intervening.

A wide river cut its curving channel between the dreary hills and its own flats of beach. We could see that this river was very shallow, because long bars of gravel or silt lifted along mid-stream, and the “ripple” betrayed other spots where the wash had just sufficient depth to pass. The stream was reddish in places, probably owing to a rock bottom of granite, where the gravel had been washed away.

“Bad for boats,” said MacCaskill.

“Chiefly gravel,” said Hanafin. “Sand-bars shift, and gravel doesn’t. What would you call the temperature of that water?”

MacCaskill looked puzzled. It was a warm day, well over seventy in the shade. He hazarded:

“Sixty-four.”

“I’ll say fifty-three,” said Hanafin; and when he came to take the temperature with a little spirit thermometer, he found he was only one degree out.

Not a bird was to be sighted, not even a creeping thing upon the ground. It was a land of silence, and desolation, and hidden treasure.

Hanafin pointed out a clear-cut channel, which ran back from the river between the hills, curving south-easterly, and meeting a similar channel, which branched off sharply, and ran back, bending out of sight.

“Will you name the creek to the left?” he said, looking at me; then, seeing my puzzled expression, he added: “Will you give your name to it?”

I suggested that he should have it, but Hanafin replied:

“No. I am more ambitious.”

“Petrie Creek!” exclaimed MacCaskill. “I’ll have the other creek and valley. Golden gates! MacCaskill Gulch! What?”

“Am I to have nothing?” said Akshelah.

“You shall have the river, my girl,” said Hanafin kindly.

The features of the landscape began to stand out as we crossed the hills.

“MacCaskill is a great creek,” said Hanafin, with a trace of excitement; and the old man between us grinned foolishly in the delight of having his name recorded geographically.

“I don’t know the first thing ’bout minin’,” he admitted. “I guess I can wash out dirt, but any galoot can do that. What’s that you’ve picked up?”

“Galena,” said the inspector. “Lead ore.” He began to punish it with his little hammer, and indicated a tiny white seam with the word, “Silver.”

MacCaskill snatched at it.

“Let’s feel. How much is it worth?”

“Possibly two-thirds of one cent,” said Hanafin drily, and the factor flung away the lump in disgust.

While we were walking towards the Akshelah, Hanafin began to reply at length to one of MacCaskill’s questions.

“How to prospect, eh? Well, we have a theory that the deposits of gold are stored in certain unknown places, and are distributed about the main bed of a river by means of the creeks or gulches. When we have selected a creek, we look for the spot where it bends or slants under the side of the rock, because, if there is gold to be found in that particular creek, we shall find it there, though it does not by any means follow that the bend will prove to be the richest spot in the valley. We prospect at the angle merely to ascertain whether there is any gold in the creek or not. The next thing to do is to strike a hole to bed-rock, and that’s where the work begins. It is best done in the winter, when the water is frozen.”

Hanafin broke off, and looked straight ahead with anger upon his face.

We were close to the river, near a shallow part where a bar of gravel made a bridge across three-fourths of the stream. Hanafin turned to Akshelah.

“Do you see those stakes, my girl? There!”

“Yes,” said Akshelah, and when she spoke I saw them, too.

“They mean that we are not the first here. Some miner has been before us, and has staked out the claim below the forks.”

“Then we’ll get to work, and pull up his posts,” suggested MacCaskill.

“So there is at least one experienced miner already in Bonanza,” began Hanafin.

“And his name is Redpath,” I added.

“What an indomitable man!” exclaimed Hanafin. “Directly Petrie had opened the hole, he must have fought his passage through the mosquitos, and here he is, washing out for all he’s worth.”

“There are no men,” said Akshelah.

“Not likely. Directly they saw us come out of the channel they would have escaped into their holes,” said Hanafin. “Well, let’s make a raft.”

We cut down the three largest spruce trees we could find, lopped them, and dragged the logs thus made across the bar to the water. While I cut the notches in these logs, the others went for the smaller trees, and when we had sufficient, our raft was quickly afloat and across the narrow channel, which was nowhere more than four feet in depth, MacCaskill pushing with a white birch pole on one side and I upon the other. We went up to the side of the hill and down to where the creeks forked, until we reached the claim which had just been opened.

“Two men!” cried Akshelah, pointing out the tracks.

Hanafin measured the distance with his eye, saying:

“A gulch claim is two hundred and fifty feet from post to post. Redpath is no amateur. A legal post stands four feet above ground, and is flat on both sides for at least one foot from the top. You see, these posts are perfectly legal.”

“Can’t we pull ’em up?” asked the factor, and when the inspector had replied in the negative, he objected:

“They ain’t legal miners.”

“Can you give me proof that the men do not hold free miners’ certificates?” said Hanafin sharply. “This claim cannot be touched unless the miner who has staked assigns, or allows his ownership to lapse.”

“And by all the gold of Jerusalem, here he comes!” shouted MacCaskill.

Down the hillside Olaffson proceeded unconcernedly, making a straight line for us, and presently we could hear him whistling.

“Mornin’!” he called insolently, when half-a-dozen yards away.

“Well?” said Hanafin, fixing him with his keen glance. “What’s your business?”

“With you, mister. You’re mining recorder of the district, I guess?”

“Yes; until the Department makes an appointment.”

“I want to take out a miner’s certificate, an’ I want to record a claim.”

“You do, eh?” called MacCaskill, moving out menacingly. “And what you’ll get is an everlastin’ poundin’ with a spruce stick--”

“If there’s anything personal between you and this man, wait till I have done with him,” interrupted Hanafin curtly.

The factor turned to me, growling and fuming, and I was hot enough to say:

“We’ve got a lot against him. He burnt my house at Yellow Sands. He tried to settle me at Gull--”

“I’ve not fallen in love with the man,” interposed Hanafin. “Anyhow, the charges you bring are rather outside my jurisdiction. This man is merely an agent. He is repeating the lessons his principal has taught him. Did Redpath ask you to take out a certificate for him as well?” he asked ironically.

The stunted figure held its ground.

“Redpath’s gone.”

“Who’s been working this claim with you?”

“An old Indian.”

“Lift up your foot,” ordered Hanafin.

The Icelander looked startled, but thought it best to obey.

Hanafin called Akshelah.

“Look at that boot. Now will you find me one of his partner’s tracks?”

Akshelah found it immediately upon the hard sand. Hanafin knelt by the impression, took a little tape-measure from his pocket, and measured it every way. When he had finished, he consulted his pocket-book. Then he smiled.

“When Redpath escaped me that night he shot the trooper, I took the precaution of measuring a footprint he left in the mud before mounting. Now I am able to prove that this man is a liar!”

MacCaskill chuckled. The scoundrels had met more than their match.

“You may carry a message from me to your master,” went on Hanafin, and he scribbled upon a leaf of the ever-present pocket-book, and gave the note into the Icelander’s short hand. Then he said: “Give me ten dollars.”

“Yes, mister,” said Olaffson, and his face became almost cheerful as he handed over the money, which he had ready in bills crushed up in his hand. Hanafin began to write again, and he spoke each word aloud as he set it down:

“Dominion of Canada. Free miner’s certificate. Non-transferable. Date. Number One. Valid for one year only. This is to certify that--What’s your first name?”

“Don’t know.”

“Olaffson,” wrote down the inspector. “Where do you come from?”

“Anywhere.”

“Of Hanafin City,” wrote the owner of the name, a smile about his mouth, “has paid me this day the sum of ten dollars, and is entitled to all the rights and privileges of a free miner for one year from the date of this certificate.” He wrote his signature, tore out the leaf, and gave it to the applicant. “Come to my office after noon to-morrow to record your claim. A grant for placer-mining is too lengthy to make out here. The fee will be fifteen dollars.”

“Here it is, mister!” exclaimed the Icelander, holding out his other hand.

“You have learnt your lesson well. I cannot take the money now. Bring it to-morrow to my office in Front Street. And remember,” he added curtly, “this is your claim, and any other man who works upon it without your consent renders himself liable to be arrested.”

As we turned away, MacCaskill began to complain.

“Why did you want to use him so good?” he demanded.

Hanafin answered contentedly: “I think I have checkmated Redpath. Wait until you see how Olaffson’s noble character develops under what I have said to him.” His manner changed, and he went on briskly: “Let’s prospect. If there is gold in the creek, we shall find surface indications beneath yonder rocks. I’ll wash out the first pan for luck.”

He stopped just under the bank, where the creek bent obliquely, and taking MacCaskill’s shovel, rapidly cleared away the surface accumulations, and turned up the coarse gravel and stones, throwing this waste aside with quick, easy motions.

“Now for pay-dirt!”

He lifted a little of the finer gravel into the pan, which MacCaskill held out with nervous hands.

“First we strike our bar,” said Hanafin, as we went down to where the water ran to the river, “then wash out a few panfuls of the gravel or sand, and watch for the colours. By the number we find it becomes easy after a little experience to calculate how much in cold cash the bar will yield daily.”

“This dirt’s awful rich!” gasped MacCaskill, shifting the pan from side to side. “Look at the specks a-glitterin’!”

“Wait until the water goes in. Give me the pan.”

Hanafin took the shallow steel dish, and inserted it into the water with a deft side motion, bringing it out again with the same movement.

A cry of admiration broke from the mercurial factor when a host of sparklets sprang towards the surface of the pan, and settled down slowly through the water, turning over and over.

“Look at that, Rupe!” he shouted, hitting me with his elbow.

“No good,” said Hanafin grimly; and MacCaskill’s joy departed from him.

“What! Ain’t that gold?” he asked angrily.

“Flake gold. There’s less than one cent’s worth there. Those specks are flatter than gold-leaf. If there is pay-dirt, it will be among the black sand at the bottom.”

The inspector continued to whirl the pan, and then he inclined it, still shaking, with a more gentle and rotary movement, and we saw the gravel washed out into the water of the creek, until nothing was left except a deposit of black sand, which we learnt was pulverised magnetic iron ore.

“Fine or coarse, or none at all?” the inspector muttered, bending low.

“I suppose fine dirt ain’t no pay?” suggested MacCaskill morosely.

“Yes, but it involves slow and laborious methods,” replied the man who shook the pan. “We should have to introduce a little mercury to form an amalgam with the gold. This amalgam we should then heat on a shovel, until the mercury had been given off in vapour, and the gold would remain in a lump. Look there!”

He had washed away nearly all the black sand, and now pointed to some tiny specks nestling by themselves in a corner of the pan.

“Coarse--ten cents at the least.”

“Golden gates!” exclaimed MacCaskill. “You call this gold-minin’! I wouldn’t a-troubled to have picked out that little bit of stuff.”

“Ten cents to one pan is excellent pay. Far less than that gives a grub stake,” said Hanafin. Then he looked up at MacCaskill’s dissatisfied countenance. “Nobody who has not been a miner understands anything about this business. Whenever the discovery cry gets heard, thousands come racing out of the world full of the idea that they are just going to stake, record, dig and pick out lumps of solid gold, which they will exchange for cash, and return to the world with a fortune. This is the reality. This is a rich country, boys, which is going to make millionaires. Now I’ll show you where to stake.”

We followed Hanafin to where the creeks joined, and below this junction, going in the direction of the running water, between Olaffson’s claim and the river, he stopped.

“The gold from both creeks should be held here. Number One claim may be the richest, as Redpath guessed. Cut your stakes, and I’ll measure out.”

When we had staked out Number Three, which was the factor’s, I went back to my own. On the flatted side of the post I saw that Hanafin had fastened a piece of paper, and I found to my great delight that I was able to read what he had written. The paper bore the name of my claim, “Number Two MacCaskill,” its length, the date, and my name in full.

But “Number Four MacCaskill” was being staked, and Hanafin smiled mysteriously as he affixed its description on the flat side of the near post.

“Mr. John Smith!” exclaimed MacCaskill, after reading. “Who in Jerusalem’s he?”

Hanafin’s mysterious smile continued.

“He’s something by necessity out of red-tape,” he said. “It’s not for me to break the letter of the law, but a man must help himself when he has nothing beyond his pay. I know, anyhow, that you won’t give ‘Mr. Smith’ away.”

“Good luck to ye!” exclaimed the factor heartily, and I endorsed his cry.

We ferried back across the Akshelah, climbed up the channel, and so back towards Mosquito Hole.

MacCaskill had one question to ask:

“What might that message have been you sent to Redpath?”

Hanafin replied:

“The man has gone too far. I am after him for the shooting of one of my own boys, and he stakes out a claim under my nose, and sends his partner to me to record for him. The message I sent was that I had given instructions for him to be shot on sight.”

And MacCaskill chuckled delightedly.

We reached the brow, where we could take our last look over Bonanza, and here Akshelah called out. Two pigmy figures were to be seen toiling and sweating upon “Number One MacCaskill.”

Hanafin broke the silence.

“One can’t help admiring sheer perseverance. We will leave him to his treasure-hunting now, but to-morrow we shall all be down there, and then--exit Redpath.”

We descended the canyon, but by the time we regained the defile, old friends were awaiting us--Lennie, Pete, Dave, and company, all with great packs containing supplies they had taken from the _Carillon_. They greeted us loudly, and not without a certain amount of chaff.

“So you have got here, you crowd!” said MacCaskill, very morosely.

“And we ain’t here for our health either,” piped Lennie joyously. “The ole boat can lie on the mud while I stake out me claim. I ain’t cheatin’ anyone. See? She belongs to rich companies, an’ ye can’t cheat companies.”

“Say! ain’t you ben hustlin’?” exclaimed Pete admiringly. “Run a big buildin’ up in jest no time, ye have!”

The soldiers had done their work quickly, and the log-house looked well upon the long green slope.

Suddenly Hanafin stepped out of the aperture left for the door, and fastened a notice outside.

We all gathered round to read:--

“Temporary Barracks and City Hall, Hanafin City.

Inspector, HENRY P. HANAFIN,
(North-West Mounted Police),
Temporary Acting Gold Commissioner
and Mining Recorder.”

The men took off their hats and gave three wild cheers for Hanafin City.

We had guarded our secret well, MacCaskill and I; and yet, despite our care, the population on the day of our arrival had numbered ten. Already it was eighteen.

DISQUALIFIED

It was noon, and there was not a sound in the city. Front Street consisted as yet of the log-built town hall, our own unfinished residence, and a tent brought from the mud-held ship. The population had gone through the tunnel into Bonanza, with the exception of Hanafin, Akshelah, and myself. MacCaskill had gone early to his claim, having the night before improvised, with Norman’s aid, a marvellous rocker. Even the uncouth Morrison had gone after the dirt. He had passed me earlier, and I had asked him whether he felt lonely now that justice had overtaken his late associate, only to receive the reply, which I might have looked for:

“Sure! Ye see, he owed me fourteen dollars.”

I had arranged with my partner to stay and complete our shanty, so that we might have shelter in case of bad weather. I had worked all morning, and had finished everything, except the thatching, when Hanafin came up and handed me the first official documents I had ever received, one being my free miner’s certificate, the other a grant for placer-mining over “Number Two MacCaskill.”