The Gold Trail

Harold Bindloss

Informations

• Publié par: iwlo
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 14
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Gold Trail, by Harold Bindloss This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Gold Trail Author: Harold Bindloss Release Date: April 23, 2007 [eBook #21205] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLD TRAIL*** E-text prepared by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) T H E G O L By HAROLD BINDLOSS AUTHOR OF THE CA TTLE BARON’S DAUGHTER, THE GREA TER POWER, WINSTON OF THE PRAIRIE, etc. NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1910, by FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY All rights reserved May, 1910 CONTENTS CHAPTER I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. XII. XIII. XIV. XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII. XIX. XX. XXI. XXII. XXIII. XXIV. XXV. XXVI. XXVII. XXVIII. XXIX. XXX. XXXI. XXXII. BOTTOMLESS SWAMP THE PACKER THE MODEL IDA’S FIRST ASCENT IDA’S CONFIDENCE KINNAIRD STRIKES CAMP GRENFELL’S MINE IN THE RANGES A FRUITLESS SEARCH THE HOTEL-KEEPER IN THE MOONLIGHT THE COPPER-MINE STIRLING LETS THINGS SLIDE IDA ASSERTS HER AUTHORITY THE ROCK POOL ON THE LAKE SCARTHWAITE-IN-THE-FOREST WESTON’S ADVOCATE ILLUMINATION IDA CLAIMS AN ACQUAINTANCE THE BRûLéE GRENFELL GOES ON THE LODE A QUALIFIED SUCCESS STIRLING GIVES ADVICE THE JUMPERS SAUNDERS TAKES PRECAUTIONS WESTON STANDS FAST THE FIRE DEFEAT HIGH-GRADE ORE GRENFELL’S GIFT 1 T H E CHAPTER I G O L D T R BOTTOMLESS SWAMP IT was Construction Foreman Cassidy who gave the place its name when he answered his employer’s laconic telegram. Stirling, the great contractor, frequently expressed himself with forcible terseness; but when he flung the message across to his secretary as he sat one morning in his private room in an Ottawa hotel, the latter raised his eyebrows questioningly. He knew his employer in all his moods; and he was not in the least afraid of him. There was, though most of those who did business with him failed to perceive it, a vein of almost extravagant generosity in Stirling’s character. “Well,” said the latter, “isn’t the thing plain enough?” The secretary smiled. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Still, I’m not sure they’ll send it over the wires in quite that form.” His employer agreed to the modification he suggested, and the message as despatched to Cassidy read simply, “Why are you stopping?” After that the famous contractor busied himself about other matters until he got the answer, “No bottom to this swamp.” Then his indignation boiled over, as it sometimes did, for Stirling was a thick-necked, red-faced man with a fiery temper and an indomitable will. He had undertaken a good deal of difficult railroad work in western Canada and never yet had been beaten. What was more to the purpose, he had no intention of being beaten now, or even delayed, by a swamp that had no bottom. He had grappled with hard rock and sliding snow, had overcome professional rivals, and had made his influence felt by politicians; and, though he had left 2 3 4 5 middle-age behind, he still retained his full vigor of body and freedom of speech. When he had explained what he thought of Cassidy he turned again to his secretary. “Arrange for a private car,” he said. “I’ll go along to-morrow and make them jump.” The secretary, who fancied there would be trouble in the construction camp during the next few days, felt inclined to be sorry for Cassidy as he went out to make the necessary arrangements for his employer’s journey west. Stirling had spent a busy morning when he met his daughter Ida and her friends at lunch. He did not belong to Ottawa. His offices were in Montreal; but as Ottawa is the seat of the government he had visited it at the request of certain railroad potentates and other magnates of political influence. With him he had brought his daughter and three of her English friends, for Ida had desired to show them the capital. He had no great opinion of the man and the two women in question. He said that they made him tired, and sometimes in confidence to his secretary he went rather further than that; but at the same time he was willing to bear with them, if the fact that he did so afforded Ida any pleasure. Ida Stirling was an unusually fortunate young woman, in so far, at least, as that she had only to mention any desire that it was in her father’s power to gratify. He was a strenuous man, whose work was his life; subtle where that work was concerned when force, which he preferred, was not advisable, but crudely direct and simple as regards almost everything else. “I’m going west across the Rockies to-morrow,” he said. “We’ll have a private car on the Pacific express. You’d better bring these folk along and show them the Mountain Province.” Ida was pleased with the idea; and Stirling and his party started west on the morrow. In the meanwhile, Construction Foreman Cassidy was spending an anxious time. He was red-haired and irascible, Canadian by adoption and Hibernian by descent, a man of no ideas beyond those connected with railroad building, which was, however, very much what one would have expected, for the chief attribute of the men who are building up the western Dominion is their power of concentration. Though there were greater men above Cassidy who would get the credit, it was due chiefly to his grim persistency that the branch road had been blasted out of the mountainside, made secure from sliding snow, and flung on dizzy trestles over thundering rivers, until at last it reached the swamp which, in his own simple words, had no bottom. There are other places like it in the Mountain Province of British Columbia. Giant ranges, whose peaks glimmer with the cold gleam of never-melting snow, shut in the valley. Great pine forests clothe their lower slopes, and a green-stained river leaps roaring out of the midst of them. The new track wound through their shadow, a double riband of steel, until it broke off abruptly where a creek that poured out of the hills had spread itself among the trees. The latter dwindled and rotted, and black depths of mire lay among their crawling roots, forming what is known in that country as a muskeg. There was a deep, blue lake on the one hand, and on the other scarped slopes of rock that the tract could not surmount; and for a time Cassidy and his men had floundered knee-deep, and often deeper, among the roots while they plied the ax