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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Gabriel Conroy," Bret Harte weaves a compelling narrative set against the backdrop of the California Gold Rush, exploring themes of ambition, identity, and moral ambiguity. Harte employs a rich, descriptive literary style, marked by his characteristic use of regional dialects and vivid imagery, which serves to immerse the reader in the rugged landscape and complex social dynamics of 19th-century frontier life. The novel's nuanced characterizations and intricate plot development reflect Harte's keen observation of human nature, while simultaneously addressing broader societal questions about wealth and ethics during this transformative period in American history. Bret Harte, a pivotal figure in American literature, is known for his ability to capture the spirit of the West through storytelling. His experiences in California, coupled with his background in journalism and acute social commentary, deeply influenced his writing. "Gabriel Conroy" emerges from a period in which Harte sought to reconcile his observations on the moral landscape of American society with the inescapable allure of gold fever and the conflicting ambitions of its people. This novel is highly recommended for readers interested in American literary history, as it offers profound insights into the cultural and ethical complexities of the era. Harte's masterful storytelling and intricate character development ensure that "Gabriel Conroy" remains a resonant exploration of the human condition amidst the challenges of an evolving society. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Gabriel Conroy
Table of Contents
Introduction
Gabriel Conroy explores how fortune, identity, and conscience collide on the California frontier. Bret Harte’s long novel, published in the mid-1870s, brings the social and moral texture of the American West into focus at a moment when the boom of the Gold Rush was giving way to a more settled, unevenly ordered society. Set in California’s mining districts and growing towns, the book combines frontier drama with the reflective tone of post–Civil War American fiction. Readers encounter landscapes shaped by extraction and risk, as well as communities improvising rules, customs, and allegiances in the rush from makeshift camps toward civic life.
Working within the traditions of regional realism and the romance-adventure novel, Harte situates his story amid rugged mountains, claim-studded valleys, and fledgling municipalities where law is present but not always decisive. The period backdrop is the decades following 1849, when rapid migration, volatile markets, and shifting social hierarchies defined daily experience. As a prominent voice of American local-color writing, Harte extends the settings he made famous in short fiction into a broader canvas, attentive to work routines, rough hospitality, and the uneasy overlap between personal codes and public institutions. The result is a Western narrative that also functions as a social study.
The premise follows a plainspoken, duty-bound young man whose name gives the novel its title as he struggles to secure a stable life amid uncertainty. Early episodes emphasize survival, family responsibility, and the fragile claims that hold people and property together in isolated settlements. A chance alteration in his circumstances pushes him from the periphery into denser networks of influence, exposing him to competing interests and expectations. Without revealing later turns, it is safe to say the plot traces his attempts to reconcile obligation with opportunity, while testing how far integrity can carry someone when legal frameworks, fortune, and reputation do not neatly align.
Harte’s voice is omniscient and flexible, balancing descriptive sweep with close attention to gesture and talk. The narrative cadence moves from brisk, incident-driven scenes to reflective pauses that take stock of character and place. Dialogue often carries the flavor of regional speech without sacrificing clarity, and the prose lingers on the physicality of labor, weather, and terrain. Readers can expect an episodic structure typical of nineteenth-century novels, where intersecting subplots gradually assemble a panorama. Humor and tenderness temper the harsher aspects of frontier life, while melodramatic flourishes and coincidences—familiar to the era—serve as engines for moral testing rather than mere sensational turns.
Among the central themes are the tensions between law and justice, luck and labor, and community responsibility and individual aspiration. The novel probes how reputations are made and unmade in places where history is recent, records are scant, and possession may outrun proof. It portrays the West as a crucible for reinvention, but also as a setting where past choices and structural inequities persist. Family ties and makeshift kinships matter as much as contracts, and characters must navigate competing moral codes. The book thus interrogates the ideals of opportunity and fairness by showing how they collide with contingency, prejudice, and the pressures of rapid change.
For contemporary readers, Gabriel Conroy resonates in its study of mobility, precarity, and the ethics of belonging. Its world of speculative ventures, informal power, and contested rights parallels ongoing debates about migration, extractive economies, and the reach of institutions. The novel’s attention to how communities improvise rules under stress feels timely, as does its interest in the stories people tell to justify possession, status, or mercy. Harte’s blend of irony and sympathy invites readers to question romanticized frontier myths while recognizing the human needs—security, dignity, recognition—that those myths attempt to satisfy, sometimes at the expense of others.
This book matters as a substantial extension of Harte’s California project and as a representative artifact of nineteenth-century American regionalism. Readers drawn to historical fiction that marries place-based detail with moral inquiry will find a layered portrait of a society inventing itself in real time. It offers a counterpoint to more satiric or picaresque treatments of the West by foregrounding ordinary persistence alongside sudden turns of fate. At the same time, it rewards critical engagement with its period conventions and representations. For anyone interested in how American literature shaped—and questioned—the national imagination of the West, it remains a consequential, compelling read.
Synopsis
Set in Gold Rush–era California, Gabriel Conroy follows a plainspoken, conscientious young miner who becomes the guardian of his much younger sister after early hardships on the frontier. The novel opens with scenes of rugged camps and mountain trails, sketching a society in motion as fortune-seekers, stage drivers, gamblers, and speculators cross paths. Gabriel is portrayed as steady, generous, and slow to judge, a figure shaped by labor and responsibility rather than ambition. His bond with his sister provides his purpose, and his desire to secure a stable future for her brings him into contact with the wider world beyond the mining claims.
The narrative establishes the mining community’s routines and tensions, emphasizing rough camaraderie, fluctuating luck, and the precariousness of property. Gabriel’s modest successes and setbacks are presented without romantic gloss, underscoring the practical challenges of extracting wealth from uncertain ground. He becomes a trusted presence among neighbors, yet remains outside the easy bravado of more flamboyant camp characters. Quietly, he plans for his sister’s education, viewing learning as a safeguard against the volatility that defines his life. His efforts provide a steady counterpoint to the speculative fever around him, and they set the stage for choices that will draw him toward the coast and its institutions.
A promising discovery and the need to formalize ownership pull Gabriel into California’s emerging legal and financial structures. He encounters attorneys adept at oratory, businessmen who read opportunity in every rumor, and a press eager for personalities to champion or condemn. The novel uses these encounters to trace a shift from hands-on mining to capital, charters, and claims adjudication. Gabriel’s straightforwardness puts him at a disadvantage in offices and parlors where words carry more weight than picks. Yet he finds unlikely allies, including a world-wise figure from the gambling halls, who values plain dealing, and a lawyer whose theatrical style masks a shrewd sense of strategy.
Parallel to Gabriel’s advance is the introduction of a cultivated woman whose past is closely guarded and whose manners open doors in San Francisco society. Her presence introduces a thread of urban refinement, social expectation, and concealed history. She becomes a focal point for conflicting interests, admired in drawing rooms yet watched skeptically by those who trade in gossip and influence. The narrative signals a connection between her story and events unfolding around Gabriel’s claim, but withholds key details. Scenes of receptions, promenades, and patronage contrast with the camps, highlighting the state’s swift transformation and the uncertain place of character in a world governed by appearances.
Gabriel’s sister moves into view as a figure bridging these spheres. Sent to school with his savings, she encounters the allure of the city—its fashions, opinions, and ambitions—while measuring them against the blunt virtues of the mountains. Suitors and mentors present competing visions of advancement, some generous and others self-serving. Her education becomes both an opportunity and a test, teaching discernment as much as letters. Through her, the book explores the promises and pressures facing those who would join the new society emerging on the coast. Family loyalty anchors her choices, even as the distance between classroom and camp complicates her understanding of obligation.
Questions of property and standing intensify into a public contest. Papers take sides, committees convene, and a courtroom becomes a stage where documents, recollections, and reputations are weighed. The legal struggle reflects California’s broader effort to impose order on the rush’s improvisations. Gabriel’s claim is challenged by interpretations of survey lines, prior rights, and technicalities, while his character is quietly scrutinized for signs of weakness. His advocate uses rhetoric to counter procedural maneuvers, and a hardened observer from the gaming tables offers unvarnished counsel. Throughout, the narration remains focused on process rather than sensational outcomes, emphasizing the slow aggregation of facts and the cost of each delay.
Amid these proceedings, a thread of older history surfaces, linking frontier episodes to San Francisco drawing rooms. Letters, tokens, and unguarded remarks suggest that past decisions, made under duress, have shaped present entanglements. The refined woman’s guarded composure is tested by insinuations of mistaken identity, prior commitments, and obligations that may not be extinguished by distance or time. Gabriel, cautious yet constant, encounters dilemmas where kindness and prudence do not always align. The book develops these tensions without unveiling decisive answers, presenting crossed signals and partial disclosures that bring characters nearer to the truth while preserving the uncertainty around final ties and titles.
The strands converge in formal settings—hearing rooms, parlors, and a place of worship—where declarations must be entered and choices fixed. There are confrontations that recalibrate alliances, acknowledgments that clarify boundaries, and decisions that turn on more than statutes or etiquette. Without detailing the resolutions, the narrative marks a passage from rumor to testimony, from supposition to recognized status. Gabriel’s steadiness guides his conduct, while his sister’s clearer sense of herself informs her path. The woman at the center of speculation addresses the claims upon her with composure, accepting that answers carry consequences. Public judgment gives way to private reckonings that frame the closing movement.
In the aftermath, the novel emphasizes adjustment over triumph. Estates, names, and futures are set on firmer ground, though not without cost. The Sierra’s frank economy of labor and trust meets the city’s intricate web of institutions, and neither is declared superior; instead, both are shown to shape the destinies of those who navigate them. Gabriel Conroy presents a message about integrity sustained amid shifting circumstances, family ties tested by distance and ambition, and a society moving from improvisation to order. By tracing a miner’s ascent into legal and social complexity, it conveys California’s transformation while maintaining a restrained focus on duty, resilience, and earned belonging.
Historical Context
Bret Harte sets Gabriel Conroy in the mining districts and growing towns of California from the late 1840s into the 1860s, when the Sierra Nevada foothills, Sacramento Valley, and San Francisco were transformed by the Gold Rush. Camps clustered along rivers like the American, Yuba, and Feather, while supply lines ran through Sacramento to the Pacific. The novel’s action moves between isolated mountain settlements, rough county seats, and an increasingly stratified San Francisco, mirroring the state’s passage from frontier improvisation to formal institutions after statehood in 1850. Seasonal extremes, difficult travel over the Sierra, and improvised law shape the characters’ lives and the economic choices before them.
The California Gold Rush began with James W. Marshall’s discovery at Sutter’s Mill, Coloma, on January 24, 1848, drawing some 80,000 Forty-Niners in 1849 and swelling the non-Native population from roughly 14,000 in 1848 to more than 200,000 by 1852. Camps like Placerville, Nevada City, and Downieville emerged overnight, governed by miners’ meetings and rough codes. Prices spiked, fortunes turned on claims inches apart, and violence or solidarity could decide outcomes. Gabriel Conroy reflects this milieu in its depictions of claim-working, camp sociability, and the precariousness of subsistence mining, where a sudden strike or a legal dispute could reconfigure entire communities and personal destinies.
Overland migration and perilous Sierra crossings provide a crucial backdrop. The Truckee and Carson routes funneled emigrant wagons toward California, yet the mountains claimed lives, most infamously in the Donner Party disaster of 1846–47 at present-day Donner Lake, where 48 of 87 survived the winter. Recurrent blizzards trapped later parties as well, with deadly seasons recorded in 1849–50 and 1852. Harte draws on this collective memory in the novel’s snowbound opening tableau, where isolation, hunger, and moral decisions in extremis shape the origins of key relationships. The Sierra’s hazards are not incidental scenery but forces that mark characters with trauma and duty.
The legal transformation following California’s admission on September 9, 1850, framed conflicts over property and mining. The Land Act of 1851 created a Board of Land Commissioners to adjudicate Spanish and Mexican grants, spawning decades of litigation. Meanwhile, miners’ district codes governed placer and lode claims until the federal Mining Acts of 1866 and 1872 standardized rights on public lands. Claim-jumping, speculation, and courthouse wrangling were endemic, as survey lines, prior occupancy, and paper titles collided. Gabriel Conroy mirrors this contested terrain through disputes over ownership, the reliance on miners’ courts and local juries, and the vulnerability of modest holders to well-connected adversaries.
San Francisco’s Vigilance Committees of 1851 and 1856 exemplified frontier extrajudicial governance. In 1856, after the shooting of reformist editor James King of William on May 14, the Committee under merchant William T. Coleman mobilized thousands, seized prisoners, and hanged James P. Casey and Charles Cora, overshadowing elected authorities. Such episodes echoed through the mining counties, legitimizing communal justice when formal courts seemed corrupt or distant. The novel’s settings draw upon this ethos: reputations are tried in public, oaths carry binding force, and collective sanction can protect or ruin an individual, underscoring the ambiguous boundary between civic order and vigilantism in the goldfields’ moral economy.
The Pacific Railway Acts of 1862 and 1864 authorized the transcontinental railroad, completed on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, linking Sacramento’s Central Pacific (Stanford, Huntington, Hopkins, and Crocker) to the Union Pacific. Ten to twelve thousand Chinese laborers blasted the Sierra tunnels; rail lines integrated markets, lowered freight costs, and funneled capital into urban San Francisco. Simultaneously, mining shifted toward capital-intensive hydraulic methods, concentrating wealth. Gabriel Conroy reflects the resulting spatial and class reordering: characters move between camp and city, smallholders confront corporate leverage, and the tempo of life accelerates as news, money, and legal power flow rapidly along steel rails into once-remote valleys.
Violence against Indigenous peoples and racialized labor policies shadow the novel’s world. The 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians enabled coerced indenture; unratified 1851–52 treaties left tribes landless; massacres, including the Wiyot killings at Tuluwat (Indian Island) near Eureka on February 26, 1860, scarred the North Coast. As a young editor in Humboldt County, Harte condemned the 1860 atrocity, risking his position. Concurrently, discriminatory taxes targeted nonwhite miners: the Foreign Miners’ Tax of 1850 (repealed, then reinstated in 1852) burdened Mexicans, Chinese, and Chileans; anti-Chinese agitation culminated later in the 1877 Sand Lot rallies. The novel’s social frictions and appeals to common humanity register this contested moral landscape.
Gabriel Conroy operates as a critique of a society racing from improvisation to plutocracy. It exposes how ad hoc justice, while protecting communities, also enables partiality against the poor and the socially marginal. The novel contrasts self-reliant miners with urban capital and legal machination, indicting the ease with which paper titles, influence, and speed of information overrun lived equity. By invoking Sierra catastrophes and migrant precarity, it challenges triumphalist narratives of opportunity. Its attention to racialized exclusions and to those erased by expansion acknowledges the costs of state-building, pressing readers to weigh security, prosperity, and fairness in a California convulsed by rapid change.
Gabriel Conroy
BOOK I.
ON THE THRESHOLD.
CHAPTER I.
WITHOUT.
Snow. Everywhere. As far as the eye could reach—fifty miles, looking southward from the highest white peak,—filling ravines and gulches, and dropping from the walls of cañon[2]s in white shroud-like drifts, fashioning the dividing ridge into the likeness of a monstrous grave, hiding the bases of giant pines, and completely covering young trees and larches, rimming with porcelain the bowl-like edges of still, cold lakes, and undulating in motionless white billows to the edge of the distant horizon. Snow lying everywhere over the California Sierras[1] on the 15th day of March 1848, and still falling.
It had been snowing for ten days: snowing in finely granulated powder, in damp, spongy flakes, in thin, feathery plumes, snowing from a leaden sky steadily, snowing fiercely, shaken out of purple-black clouds in white flocculent masses, or dropping in long level lines, like white lances from the tumbled and broken heavens. But always silently! The woods were so choked with it—the branches were so laden with it—it had so permeated, filled and possessed earth and sky; it had so cushioned and muffled the ringing rocks and echoing hills, that all sound was deadened. The strongest gust, the fiercest blast, awoke no sigh or complaint from the snow-packed, rigid files of forest. There was no cracking of bough nor crackle of underbrush; the overladen branches of pine and fir yielded and gave way without a sound. The silence was vast, measureless, complete! Nor could it be said that any outward sign of life or motion changed the fixed outlines of this stricken landscape. Above, there was no play of light and shadow, only the occasional deepening of storm or night. Below, no bird winged its flight across the white expanse, no beast haunted the confines of the black woods; whatever of brute nature might have once inhabited these solitudes had long since flown to the lowlands.
There was no track or imprint; whatever foot might have left its mark upon this waste, each succeeding snow-fall obliterated all trace or record. Every morning the solitude was virgin and unbroken; a million tiny feet had stepped into the track and filled it up. And yet, in the centre of this desolation, in the very stronghold of this grim fortress, there was the mark of human toil. A few trees had been felled at the entrance of the cañon, and the freshly-cut chips were but lightly covered with snow. They served, perhaps, to indicate another tree "blazed" with an axe, and bearing a rudely-shaped wooden effigy of a human hand, pointing to the cañon. Below the hand was a square strip of canvas, securely nailed against the bark, and bearing the following inscription—
"NOTICE.Captain Conroy's party of emigrants are lost in the snow, and camped up in this cañon. Out of provisions and starving!Left St. Jo[3], October 8th, 1847.Left Salt Lake, January 1st, 1848.Arrived here, March 1st, 1848.Lost half our stock on the Platte.Abandoned our waggons, February 20th.HELP!Our names are:Joel McCormick, Jane Brackett,Peter Dumphy, Gabriel Conroy,Paul Devarges, John Walker,Grace Conroy, Henry March,Olympia Conroy, Philip Ashley,Mary Dumphy.(Then in smaller letters, in pencil:)Mamiedied, November 8th, Sweetwater.Minniedied, December 1st, Echo Cañon.Janedied, January 2nd, Salt Lake.James Brackettlost, February 3rd.HELP!"
The language of suffering is not apt to be artistic or studied, but I think that rhetoric could not improve this actual record. So I let it stand, even as it stood this 15th day of March 1848, half-hidden by a thin film of damp snow, the snow-whitened hand stiffened and pointing rigidly to the fateful cañon like the finger of Death.
At noon there was a lull in the storm, and a slight brightening of the sky toward the east. The grim outlines of the distant hills returned, and the starved white flank of the mountain began to glisten. Across its gaunt hollow some black object was moving—moving slowly and laboriously; moving with such an uncertain mode of progression, that at first it was difficult to detect whether it was brute or human—sometimes on all fours, sometimes erect, again hurrying forward like a drunken man, but always with a certain definiteness of purpose, towards the cañon. As it approached nearer you saw that it was a man—a haggard man, ragged and enveloped in a tattered buffalo robe[4], but still a man, and a determined one. A young man despite his bent figure and wasted limbs—a young man despite the premature furrows that care and anxiety had set upon his brow and in the corners of his rigid mouth—a young man notwithstanding the expression of savage misanthropy with which suffering and famine had overlaid the frank impulsiveness of youth. When he reached the tree at the entrance of the cañon, he brushed the film of snow from the canvas placard, and then leaned for a few moments exhaustedly against its trunk. There was something in the abandonment of his attitude that indicated even more pathetically than his face and figure his utter prostration—a prostration quite inconsistent with any visible cause. When he had rested himself, he again started forward with a nervous intensity, shambling, shuffling, falling, stooping to replace the rudely extemporised snow-shoes of fir bark that frequently slipped from his feet, but always starting on again with the feverishness of one who doubted even the sustaining power of his will.
A mile beyond the tree the cañon narrowed and turned gradually to the south, and at this point a thin curling cloud of smoke was visible that seemed to rise from some crevice in the snow. As he came nearer, the impression of recent footprints began to show; there was some displacement of the snow around a low mound from which the smoke now plainly issued. Here he stopped, or rather lay down, before an opening or cavern in the snow, and uttered a feeble shout. It was responded to still more feebly. Presently a face appeared above the opening, and a ragged figure like his own, then another, and then another, until eight human creatures, men and women, surrounded him in the snow, squatting like animals, and like animals lost to all sense of decency and shame.
They were so haggard, so faded, so forlorn, so wan,—so piteous in their human aspect, or rather all that was left of a human aspect,—that they might have been wept over as they sat there; they were so brutal, so imbecile, unreasoning and grotesque in these newer animal attributes, that they might have provoked a smile. They were originally country people, mainly of that social class whose self-respect is apt to be dependent rather on their circumstances, position and surroundings, than upon any individual moral power or intellectual force. They had lost the sense of shame in the sense of equality of suffering; there was nothing within them to take the place of the material enjoyments they were losing. They were childish without the ambition or emulation of childhood; they were men and women without the dignity or simplicity of man and womanhood. All that had raised them above the level of the brute was lost in the snow. Even the characteristics of sex were gone; an old woman of sixty quarrelled, fought, and swore with the harsh utterance and ungainly gestures of a man; a young man of scorbutic temperament wept, sighed, and fainted with the hysteria of a woman. So profound was their degradation that the stranger who had thus evoked them from the earth, even in his very rags and sadness, seemed of another race.
They were all intellectually weak and helpless, but one, a woman, appeared to have completely lost her mind. She carried a small blanket wrapped up to represent a child—the tangible memory of one that had starved to death in her arms a few days before—and rocked it from side to side as she sat, with a faith that was piteous. But even more piteous was the fact that none of her companions took the least notice, either by sympathy or complaint, of her aberration. When, a few moments later, she called upon them to be quiet, for that "baby" was asleep, they glared at her indifferently and went on. A red-haired man, who was chewing a piece of buffalo hide, cast a single murderous glance at her, but the next moment seemed to have forgotten her presence in his more absorbing occupation.
The stranger paused a moment rather to regain his breath than to wait for their more orderly and undivided attention. Then he uttered the single word:
"Nothing!"
"Nothing!" They all echoed the word simultaneously, but with different inflection and significance—one fiercely, another gloomily, another stupidly, another mechanically. The woman with the blanket baby explained to it, "he says 'nothing,'" and laughed.
"No—nothing," repeated the speaker. "Yesterday's snow blocked up the old trail again. The beacon on the summit's burnt out. I left a notice at the Divide. Do that again, Dumphy, and I'll knock the top of your ugly head off."
Dumphy, the red-haired man, had rudely shoved and stricken the woman with the baby—she was his wife, and this conjugal act may have been partly habit—as she was crawling nearer the speaker. She did not seem to notice the blow or its giver—the apathy with which these people received blows or slights was more terrible than wrangling—but said assuringly, when she had reached the side of the young man—
"To-morrow, then?"
The face of the young man softened as he made the same reply he had made for the last eight days to the same question—
"To-morrow, surely!"
She crawled away, still holding the effigy of her dead baby very carefully, and retreated down the opening.
"'Pears to me you don't do much anyway, out scouting! 'Pears to me you ain't worth shucks!" said the harsh-voiced woman, glancing at the speaker. "Why don't some on ye take his place? Why do you trust your lives and the lives of women to that thar Ashley?" she continued, with her voice raised to a strident bark.
The hysterical young man, Henry March, who sat next to her, turned a wild scared face upon her, and then, as if fearful of being dragged into the conversation, disappeared hastily after Mrs. Dumphy.
Ashley shrugged his shoulders, and, replying to the group, rather than any individual speaker, said curtly—
"There's but one chance—equal for all—open to all. You know what it is. To stay here is death; to go cannot be worse than that.[1q]"
He rose and walked slowly away up the cañon a few rods to where another mound was visible, and disappeared from their view. When he had gone, a querulous chatter went around the squatting circle.
"Gone to see the old Doctor and the gal. We're no account."
"Thar's two too many in this yer party."
"Yes—the crazy Doctor and Ashley."
"They're both interlopers, any way."
"Jonahs."
"Said no good could come of it, ever since we picked him up."
"But the Cap'n invited the ol' Doctor, and took all his stock at Sweetwater, and Ashley put in his provisions with the rest."
The speaker was McCormick. Somewhere in the feeble depths of his consciousness there was still a lingering sense of justice. He was hungry, but not unreasonable. Besides, he remembered with a tender regret the excellent quality of provision that Ashley had furnished.
"What's that got to do with it?" screamed Mrs. Brackett. "He brought the bad luck with him. Ain't my husband dead, and isn't that skunk—an entire stranger—still livin'?"
The voice was masculine, but the logic was feminine. In cases of great prostration with mental debility, in the hopeless vacuity that precedes death by inanition or starvation, it is sometimes very effective. They all assented to it, and, by a singular intellectual harmony, the expression of each was the same. It was simply an awful curse.
"What are you goin' to do?"
"If I was a man, I'd know!"
"Knife him!"
"Kill him, and"——
The remainder of this sentence was lost to the others in a confidential whisper between Mrs. Brackett and Dumphy. After this confidence they sat and wagged their heads together, like two unmatched but hideous Chinese idols.
"Look at his strength! and he not a workin' man like us," said Dumphy. "Don't tell me he don't get suthin' reg'lar."
"Suthin' what?"
"Suthin' TO EAT!"
But it is impossible to convey, even by capitals, the intense emphasis put upon this verb. It was followed by a horrible pause.
"Let's go and see."
"And kill him?" suggested the gentle Mrs. Brackett.
They all rose with a common interest almost like enthusiasm. But after they had tottered a few steps, they fell. Yet even then there was not enough self-respect left among them to feel any sense of shame or mortification in their baffled design. They stopped—all except Dumphy.
"Wot's that dream you was talkin' 'bout jess now?" said Mr. McCormick, sitting down and abandoning the enterprise with the most shameless indifference.
"'Bout the dinner at St. Jo?" asked the person addressed—a gentleman whose faculty of alimentary imagination had been at once the bliss and torment of his present social circle.
"Yes."
They all gathered eagerly around Mr. McCormick; even Mr. Dumphy, who was still moving away, stopped.
"Well," said Mr. March, "it began with beefsteak and injins—beefsteak, you know, juicy and cut very thick, and jess squashy with gravy and injins." There was a very perceptible watering of the mouth in the party, and Mr. March, with the genius of a true narrator, under the plausible disguise of having forgotten his story, repeated the last sentence—"jess squashy with gravy and injins. And taters—baked."
"You said fried before!—and dripping with fat!" interposed Mrs. Brackett, hastily.
"For them as likes fried—but baked goes furder—skins and all—and sassage and coffee and flapjacks!"
At this magical word they laughed, not mirthfully perhaps, but eagerly and expectantly, and said, "Go on!"
"And flapjacks!"
"You said that afore," said Mrs. Brackett, with a burst of passion. "Go on!" with an oath.
The giver of this Barmecide feast saw his dangerous position, and looked around for Dumphy, but he had disappeared.
CHAPTER II.
WITHIN.
The hut into which Ashley descended was like a Greenlander's "iglook," below the surface of the snow. Accident rather than design had given it this Arctic resemblance. As snow upon snow had blocked up its entrance, and reared its white ladders against its walls, and as the strength of its exhausted inmates slowly declined, communication with the outward world was kept up only by a single narrow passage. Excluded from the air, it was close and stifling, but it had a warmth that perhaps the thin blood of its occupants craved more than light or ventilation.
A smouldering fire in a wooden chimney threw a faint flicker on the walls. By its light, lying on the floor, were discernible four figures—a young woman and a child of three or four years wrapped in a single blanket, near the fire; nearer the door two men, separately enwrapped, lay apart. They might have been dead, so deep and motionless were their slumbers.
Perhaps some fear of this filled the mind of Ashley as he entered, for after a moment's hesitation, without saying a word, he passed quickly to the side of the young woman, and, kneeling beside her, placed his hand upon her face. Slight as was the touch, it awakened her. I know not what subtle magnetism was in that contact, but she caught the hand in her own, sat up, and before the eyes were scarcely opened, uttered the single word—
"Philip!"
"Grace—hush!"
He took her hand, kissed it, and pointed warningly toward the other sleepers.
"Speak low. I have much to say to you."
The young girl seemed to be content to devour the speaker with her eyes.
"You have come back," she whispered, with a faint smile, and a look that showed too plainly the predominance of that fact above all others in her mind. "I dreamt of you, Philip."
"Dear Grace"—he kissed her hand again. "Listen to me, darling! I have come back, but only with the old story—no signs of succour, no indications of help from without! My belief is, Grace," he added, in a voice so low as to be audible only to the quick ear to which it was addressed, "that we have blundered far south of the usual travelled trail. Nothing but a miracle or a misfortune like our own would bring another train this way. We are alone and helpless—in an unknown region that even the savage and brute have abandoned. The only aid we can calculate upon is from within—from ourselves. What that aid amounts to," he continued, turning a cynical eye towards the sleepers, "you know as well as I."
She pressed his hand, apologetically, as if accepting the reproach herself, but did not speak.
"As a party we have no strength—no discipline," he went on. "Since your father died we have had no leader. I know what you would say, Grace dear," he continued, answering the mute protest of the girl's hand, "but even if it were true—if I were capable of leading them, they would not take my counsels. Perhaps it is as well. If we kept together, the greatest peril of our situation would be ever present—the peril from ourselves!"
He looked intently at her as he spoke, but she evidently did not take his meaning. "Grace," he said, desperately, "when starving men are thrown together, they are capable of any sacrifice—of any crime, to keep the miserable life that they hold so dear just in proportion as it becomes valueless. You have read in books—Grace! good God, what is the matter?"
If she had not read his meaning in books, she might have read it at that moment in the face that was peering in at the door—a face with so much of animal suggestion in its horrible wistfulness that she needed no further revelation; a face full of inhuman ferocity and watchful eagerness, and yet a face familiar in its outlines—the face of Dumphy! Even with her danger came the swifter instinct of feminine tact and concealment, and without betraying the real cause of her momentary horror, she dropped her head upon Philip's shoulder and whispered, "I understand." When she raised her head again the face was gone.
"Enough, I did not mean to frighten you, Grace, but only to show you what we must avoid—what we have still strength left to avoid. There is but one chance of escape; you know what it is—a desperate one, but no more desperate than this passive waiting for a certain end. I ask you again—will you share it with me? When I first spoke I was less sanguine than now. Since then I have explored the ground carefully, and studied the trend of these mountains. It is possible. I say no more."
"But my sister and brother?"
"The child would be a hopeless impediment, even if she could survive the fatigue and exposure. Your brother must stay with her; she will need all his remaining strength and all the hopefulness that keeps him up. No, Grace, we must go alone. Remember, our safety means theirs. Their strength will last until we can send relief; while they would sink in the attempt to reach it with us. I would go alone, but I cannot bear, dear Grace, to leave you here."
"I should die if you left me," she said, simply.
"I believe you would, Grace," he said as simply.
"But can we not wait? Help may come at any moment—to-morrow."
"To-morrow will find us weaker. I should not trust your strength nor my own a day longer."
"But the old man—the Doctor?"
"He will soon be beyond the reach of help," said the young man, sadly. "Hush, he is moving."
One of the blanketed figures had rolled over. Philip walked to the fire, threw on a fresh stick, and stirred the embers. The upspringing flash showed the face of an old man whose eyes were fixed with feverish intensity upon him.
"What are you doing with the fire?" he asked querulously, with a slight foreign accent.
"Stirring it!"
"Leave it alone!"
Philip listlessly turned away.
"Come here," said the old man.
Philip approached.
"You need say nothing," said the old man after a pause, in which he examined Philip's face keenly. "I read your news in your face—the old story—I know it by heart."
"Well?" said Philip.
"Well!" said the old man, stolidly.
Philip again turned away.
"You buried the case and papers?" asked the old man.
"Yes."
"Through the snow—in the earth?"
"Yes."
"Securely?"
"Securely."
"How do you indicate it?"
"By a cairn of stones."
"And the notices—in German and French?"
"I nailed them up wherever I could, near the old trail."
"Good."
The cynical look on Philip's face deepened as he once more turned away. But before he reached the door he paused, and drawing from his breast a faded flower, with a few limp leaves, handed it to the old man.
"I found the duplicate of the plant you were looking for."
The old man half rose on his elbow, breathless with excitement as he clutched and eagerly examined the plant.
"It is the same," he said, with a sigh of relief, "and yet you said there was no news!"
"May I ask what it means?" said Philip, with a slight smile.
"It means that I am right, and Linnæus, Darwin, and Eschscholtz are wrong. It means a discovery. It means that this which you call an Alpine flower is not one, but a new species."
"An important fact to starving men," said Philip, bitterly.
"It means more," continued the old man, without heeding Philip's tone. "It means that this flower is not developed in perpetual snow. It means that it is first germinated in a warm soil and under a kindly sun. It means that if you had not plucked it, it would have fulfilled its destiny under those conditions. It means that in two months grass will be springing where you found it—even where we now lie. We are below the limit of perpetual snow."
"In two months!" said the young girl, eagerly, clasping her hands.
"In two months," said the young man, bitterly. "In two months we shall be far from here, or dead."
"Probably!" said the old man, coolly; "but if you have fulfilled my injunctions in regard to my papers and the collection, they will in good time be discovered and saved."
Ashley turned away with an impatient gesture, and the old man's head again sank exhaustedly upon his arm. Under the pretext of caressing the child, Ashley crossed over to Grace, uttered a few hurried and almost inaudible words, and disappeared through the door. When he had gone, the old man raised his head again and called feebly—
"Grace!"
"Dr. Devarges!"
"Come here!"
She rose and crossed over to his side.
"Why did he stir the fire, Grace?" said Devarges, with a suspicious glance.
"I don't know."
"You tell him everything—did you tell him that?"
"I did not, sir."
Devarges looked as if he would read the inmost thoughts of the girl, and then, as if reassured, said—
"Take it from the fire, and let it cool in the snow."
The young girl raked away the embers of the dying fire, and disclosed what seemed to be a stone of the size of a hen's egg incandescent and glowing. With the aid of two half-burnt slicks she managed to extract it, and deposited it in a convenient snow-drift near the door, and then returned to the side of the old man.
"Grace!"
"Sir!"
"You are going away!"
Grace did not speak.
"Don't deny it. I overheard you. Perhaps it is the best that you can do. But whether it is or not you will do it—of course. Grace, what do you know of that man?"
Neither the contact of daily familiarity, the quality of suffering, nor the presence of approaching death, could subdue the woman's nature in Grace. She instantly raised her shield. From behind it she began to fence feebly with the dying man.
"Why, what we all know of him, sir—a true friend; a man to whose courage, intellect, and endurance we owe so much. And so unselfish, sir!"
"Humph!—what else?"
"Nothing—except that he has always been your devoted friend—and I thought you were his. You brought him to us," she said a little viciously.
"Yes—I picked him up at Sweetwater. But what do you know of his history? What has he told you?"
"He ran away from a wicked stepfather and relations whom he hated. He came out West to live alone—among the Indians—or to seek his fortune in Oregon. He is very proud—you know, sir. He is as unlike us as you are, sir,—he is a gentleman. He is educated."
"Yes, I believe that's what they call it here, and he doesn't know the petals of a flower from the stamens," muttered Devarges. "Well! After you run away with him does he propose to marry you?"
For an instant a faint flush deepened the wan cheek of the girl, and she lost her guard. But the next moment she recovered it.
"Oh, sir," said this arch hypocrite, sweetly, "how can you jest so cruelly at such a moment? The life of my dear brother and sister, the lives of the poor women in yonder hut, depend upon our going. He and I are the only ones left who have strength enough to make the trial. I can assist him, for, although strong, I require less to support my strength than he. Something tells me we shall be successful; we shall return soon with help. Oh, sir,—it is no time for trifling now; our lives—even your own is at stake!"
"My own life," said the old man, impassively, "is already spent. Before you return, if you return at all, I shall be beyond your help."
A spasm of pain appeared to pass over his face. He lay still for a moment as if to concentrate his strength for a further effort. But when he again spoke his voice was much lower, and he seemed to articulate with difficulty.
"Grace," he said at last, "come nearer, girl,—I have something to tell you."
Grace hesitated. Within the last few moments a shy, nervous dread of the man which she could not account for had taken possession of her. She looked toward her sleeping brother.
"He will not waken," said Devarges, following the direction of her eyes. "The anodyne still holds its effect. Bring me what you took from the fire."
Grace brought the stone—a dull bluish-grey slag. The old man took it, examined it, and then said to Grace—
"Rub it briskly on your blanket."
Grace did so. After a few moments it began to exhibit a faint white lustre on its polished surface.
"It looks like silver," said Grace, doubtfully.
"It is silver!" replied Devarges.
Grace put it down quickly and moved slightly away.
"Take it," said the old man,—"it is yours. A year ago I found it in a ledge of the mountain range far west of this. I know where it lies in bulk—a fortune, Grace, do you hear?—hidden in the bluish stone you put in the fire for me last night. I can tell you where and how to find it. I can give you the title to it—the right of discovery. Take it—it is yours."
"No, no," said the girl, hurriedly, "keep it yourself. You will live to enjoy it."
"Never, Grace! even were I to live I should not make use of it. I have in my life had more than my share of it, and it brought me no happiness. It has no value to me—the rankest weed that grows above it is worth more in my eyes. Take it. To the world it means everything—wealth and position. Take it. It will make you as proud and independent as your lover—it will make you always gracious in his eyes;—it will be a setting to your beauty,—it will be a pedestal to your virtue. Take it—it is yours."
"But you have relatives—friends," said the girl, drawing away from the shining stone with a half superstitious awe. "There are others whose claims"——
"None greater than yours," interrupted the old man, with the nervous haste of failing breath. "Call it a reward if you choose. Look upon it as a bribe to keep your lover to the fulfilment of his promise to preserve my manuscripts and collection. Think, if you like, that it is an act of retribution—that once in my life I might have known a young girl whose future would have been blessed by such a gift. Think—think what you like—but take it!"
His voice had sunk to a whisper. A greyish pallor had overspread his face, and his breath came with difficulty. Grace would have called her brother, but with a motion of his hand Devarges restrained her. With a desperate effort he raised himself upon his elbow, and drawing an envelope from his pocket, put it in her hand.
"It contains—map—description of mine and locality—yours—say you will take it—Grace, quick, say"——
His head had again sunk to the floor. She stooped to raise it. As she did so a slight shadow darkened the opening by the door. She raised her eyes quickly and saw the face of Dumphy!
She did not shrink this time; but, with a sudden instinct, she turned to Devarges, and said—
"I will!"
She raised her eyes again defiantly, but the face had disappeared.
"Thank you," said the old man. His lips moved again, but without a sound. A strange film had begun to gather in his eyes.
"Dr. Devarges," whispered Grace.
He did not speak. "He is dying," thought the young girl as a new and sudden fear overcame her. She rose quickly and crossed hurriedly to her brother and shook him. A prolonged inspiration, like a moan, was the only response. For a moment she glanced wildly around the room and then ran to the door.
"Philip!"
There was no response. She climbed up through the tunnel-like opening. It was already quite dark, and a few feet beyond the hut nothing was distinguishable. She cast a rapid backward glance, and then, with a sudden desperation, darted forward into the darkness. At the same moment two figures raised themselves from behind the shadow of the mound and slipped down the tunnel into the hut—Mrs. Brackett and Mr. Dumphy. They might have been the meanest predatory animals—so stealthy, so eager, so timorous, so crouching, and yet so agile were their motions. They ran sometimes upright, and sometimes on all fours, hither and thither. They fell over each other in their eagerness, and struck and spat savagely at each other in the half darkness. They peered into corners, they rooted in the dying embers and among the ashes, they groped among the skins and blankets, they smelt and sniffed at every article. They paused at last apparently unsuccessful, and glared at each other.
"They must have eaten it," said Mrs. Brackett, in a hoarse whisper.
"It didn't look like suthin' to eat," said Dumphy.
"You saw 'em take it from the fire?"
"Yes!"
"And rub it?"
"Yes!"
"Fool. Don't you see"——
"What?"
"It was a baked potato."
Dumphy sat dumfounded.
"Why should they rub it? It takes off the cracklin' skins," he said.
"They've got such fine stomachs!" answered Mrs. Bracket, with an oath.
Dumphy was still aghast with the importance of his discovery.
"He said he knew where there was more!" he whispered eagerly.
"Where?"
"I didn't get to hear."
"Fool! Why didn't ye rush in and grip his throat until he told yer?" hissed Mrs. Brackett, in a tempest of baffled rage and disappointment. "Ye ain't got the spunk of a flea. Let me get hold of that gal—Hush! what's that?"
"He's moving!" said Dumphy.
In an instant they had both changed again into slinking, crouching, baffled animals, eager only for escape. Yet they dared not move.
The old man had turned over, and his lips were moving in the mutterings of delirium. Presently he called "Grace!"
With a sign of caution to her companion, the woman leaned over him.
"Yes, deary, I'm here."
"Tell him not to forget. Make him keep his promise. Ask him where it is buried!"
"Yes, deary!"
"He'll tell you. He knows!"
"Yes, deary!"
"At the head of Monument Cañon. A hundred feet north of the lone pine. Dig two feet down below the surface of the cairn."
"Yes!"
"Where the wolves can't get it."
"Yes!"
"The stones keep it from ravenous beasts."
"Yes, in course."
"That might tear it up."
"Yes!"
"Starving beasts!"
"Yes, deary!"
The fire of his wandering eyes went out suddenly, like a candle; his jaw dropped; he was dead. And over him the man and woman crouched in fearful joy, looking at each other with the first smile that had been upon their lips since they had entered the fateful cañon.
CHAPTER III.
GABRIEL.
It was found the next morning that the party was diminished by five. Philip Ashley and Grace Conroy, Peter Dumphy and Mrs. Brackett, were missing; Dr. Paul Devarges was dead. The death of the old man caused but little excitement and no sorrow; the absconding of the others was attributed to some information which they had selfishly withheld from the remaining ones, and produced a spasm of impotent rage. In five minutes their fury knew no bounds. The lives and property of the fugitives were instantly declared forfeit. Steps were taken—about twenty, I think—in the direction of their flight, but finally abandoned.
Only one person knew that Philip and Grace had gone together—Gabriel Conroy. On awakening early that morning he had found pinned to his blanket a paper with these words in pencil—
"God bless dear brother and sister, and keep them until Philip and I come back with help."
With it were a few scraps of provisions, evidently saved by Grace from her scant rations, and left as a parting gift. These Gabriel instantly turned into the common stock. Then he began to comfort the child. Added to his natural hopefulness, he had a sympathetic instinct with the pains and penalties of childhood, not so much a quality of his intellect as of his nature. He had all the physical adaptabilities of a nurse—a large, tender touch, a low persuasive voice, pliant yet unhesitating limbs, and broad, well-cushioned surfaces. During the weary journey women had instinctively entrusted babies to his charge; most of the dead had died in his arms; all forms and conditions of helplessness had availed themselves of his easy capacity. No one thought of thanking him. I do not think he ever expected it; he always appeared morally irresponsible and quite unconscious of his own importance, and, as is frequent in such cases, there was a tendency to accept his services at his own valuation. Nay more, there was a slight consciousness of superiority in those who thus gave him an opportunity of exhibiting his special faculty.
"Olly," he said, after an airy preliminary toss, "would ye like to have a nice dolly?"
Olly opened her wide hungry eyes in hopeful anticipation and nodded assent.
"A nice dolly, with real mamma," he continued, "who plays with it like a true baby. Would ye like to help her play with it?"
The idea of a joint partnership of this kind evidently pleased Olly by its novelty.
"Well then, brother Gabe will get you one. But Gracie will have to go away, so that the doll's mamma kin come."
Olly at first resented this, but eventually succumbed to novelty, after the fashion of her sex, starving or otherwise. Yet she prudently asked—
"Is it ever hungry?"
"It is never hungry," replied Gabriel, confidently.
"Oh!" said Olly, with an air of relief.
Then Gabriel, the cunning, sought Mrs. Dumphy, the mentally alienated.
"You are jest killin' of yourself with the tendin' o' that child," he said, after bestowing a caress on the blanket and slightly pinching an imaginary cheek of the effigy. "It would be likelier and stronger fur a playmate. Good gracious! how thin it is gettin'. A change will do it good; fetch it to Olly, and let her help you to tend it until—until—to-morrow." To-morrow was the extreme limit of Mrs. Dumphy's future.
So Mrs. Dumphy and her effigy were installed in Gracie's place, and Olly was made happy. A finer nature or a more active imagination than Gabriel's would have revolted at this monstrous combination; but Gabriel only saw that they appeared contented, and the first pressing difficulty of Gracie's absence was overcome. So alternately they took care of the effigy, the child simulating the cares of the future and losing the present in them, the mother living in the memories of the past. Perhaps it might have been pathetic to have seen Olly and Mrs. Dumphy both saving the infinitesimal remnants of their provisions for the doll, but the only spectator was one of the actors, Gabriel, who lent himself to the deception; and pathos, to be effective, must be viewed from the outside.
At noon that day the hysterical young man, Gabriel's cousin, died. Gabriel went over to the other hut and endeavoured to cheer the survivors. He succeeded in infecting them so far with his hopefulness as to loosen the tongue and imagination of the story-teller, but at four o'clock the body had not yet been buried. It was evening, and the three were sitting over the embers, when a singular change came over Mrs. Dumphy. The effigy suddenly slipped from her hands, and looking up, Gabriel perceived that her arms had dropped to her side, and that her eyes were fixed on vacancy. He spoke to her, but she made no sign nor response of any kind. He touched her and found her limbs rigid and motionless. Olly began to cry.
The sound seemed to agitate Mrs. Dumphy. Without moving a limb, she said, in a changed, unnatural voice, "Hark!"
Olly choked her sobs at a sign from Gabriel.
"They're coming!" said Mrs. Dumphy.
"Which?" said Gabriel.
"The relief party."
"Where?"
"Far, far away. They're jest setting out. I see 'em—a dozen men with pack horses and provisions. The leader is an American—the others are strangers. They're coming—but far, oh, so far away!"
Gabriel fixed his eyes upon her, but did not speak. After a death-like pause, she went on—
"The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the grass is springing where they ride—but, oh, so far—too far away!"
"Do you know them?" asked Gabriel.
"No."
"Do they know us?"
"No."
"Why do they come, and how do they know where we are?" asked Gabriel.
"Their leader has seen us."
"Where?"
"In a dream."[1]
Gabriel whistled and looked at the rag baby. He was willing to recognise something abnormal, and perhaps even prophetic, in this insane woman; but a coincident exaltation in a stranger who was not suffering from the illusions produced by starvation was beyond his credulity. Nevertheless, the instincts of good humour and hopefulness were stronger, and he presently asked—
"How will they come?"
"Up through a beautiful valley and a broad shining river. Then they will cross a mountain until they come to another beautiful valley with steep sides, and a rushing river that runs so near us that I can almost hear it now. Don't you see it? It is just beyond the snow peak there; a green valley, with the rain falling upon it. Look! it is there."
She pointed directly north, toward the region of inhospitable snow.
"Could you get to it?" asked the practical Gabriel.
"No."
"Why not?"
"I must wait here for my baby. She is coming for us. She will find me here."
"When?"
"To-morrow."
It was the last time that she uttered that well-worn sentence; for it was only a little past midnight that her baby came to her—came to her with a sudden light, that might have been invisible to Gabriel, but that it was reflected in her own lack-lustre eyes—came to this poor half-witted creature with such distinctness that she half rose, stretched out her thin yearning arms, and received it—a corpse! Gabriel placed the effigy in her arms and folded them over it. Then he ran swiftly to the other hut. For some unexplained reason he did not get further than the door. What he saw there he has never told; but when he groped his fainting way back to his own hut again, his face was white and bloodless, and his eyes wild and staring. Only one impulse remained—to fly for ever from the cursed spot. He stopped only long enough to snatch up the sobbing and frightened Olly, and then, with a loud cry to God to help him—to help them—he dashed out, and was lost in the darkness.
CHAPTER IV.
NATURE SHOWS THEM THE WAY.
It was a spur of the long grave-like ridge that lay to the north of the cañon. Up its gaunt white flank two figures had been slowly crawling since noon, until at sunset they at last stood upon its outer verge outlined against the sky—Philip and Grace.
For all the fatigues of the journey, the want of nourishing food and the haunting shadow of the suffering she had left, the face of Grace, flushed with the dying sun, was very pretty. The boy's dress she had borrowed was ill-fitting, and made her exquisite little figure still more diminutive, but it could not entirely hide its graceful curves. Here in this rosy light the swooning fringes of her dark eyes were no longer hidden; the perfect oval of her face, even the few freckles on her short upper lip, were visible to Philip. Partly as a physical support, partly to reassure her, he put his arm tenderly around her waist. Then he kissed her. It is possible that this last act was purely gratuitous.
Howbeit Grace first asked, with the characteristic prudence of her sex, the question she had already asked many days before that day, "Do you love me, Philip?" And Philip, with the ready frankness of our sex on such occasions, had invariably replied, "I do."
Nevertheless the young man was pre-occupied, anxious, and hungry. It was the fourth day since they had left the hut. On the second day they had found some pine cones with the nuts still intact and fresh beneath the snow, and later a squirrel's hoard. On the third day Philip had killed the proprietor and eaten him. The same evening Philip had espied a duck winging his way up the cañon. Philip, strong in the belief that some inland lake was the immediate object of its flight, had first marked its course, and then brought it down with a long shot. Then having altered their course in accordance with it suggestion, they ate their guide next morning for breakfast.
Philip was also disappointed. The summit of the spur so laboriously attained only showed him the same endless succession of white snow billows stretching rigidly to the horizon's edge. There was no break—no glimpse of watercourse or lake. There was nothing to indicate whence the bird had come or the probable point it was endeavouring to reach. He was beginning to consider the feasibility of again changing their course, when an unlooked-for accident took that volition from his hands.
