The Gold Trail - Harold Edward Bindloss

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old English idea. Water evidently used to be scarcer there, and even now there are places where good wells aren't plentiful. You go along with a hazel twig, and it dips when you cross water running underground. That is, if you have the gift in you. Anybody can't do it. You think that quite foolish, don't you?"

      Ida really did, though she did not seem to admit it.

      "Have you ever tried the gift out here?" she asked.

      "On the prairie, quite often. A good deal of it is burnt up and dry. I generally found water."

      "You turned the—power—to account? I mean—you made—money out of it?"

      There was a sudden change in Weston's face.

      "No," he said, "I never took a cent."

      "But why?"

      "Well," replied the man slowly, "my mother had some old-world belief, and she said it was a special gift. She knew I had it. She said a thing of that kind should never be used for money."

      "But haven't all those who claimed special powers—priests, magicians, medicine-men—always been willing to sell them?"

      Her companion's eyes twinkled.

      "Well, I dare say they have. Still, you see, it's possible that they never really had the gifts they claimed at all. Now I—can—find water, and I have a notion that I can find the precious metals too. Quite absurd, isn't it?"

      Ida thought it was, but the quiet confidence behind his whimsical manner appealed to her. He was, it seemed, a man of simple character and few ideas, but she knew that he had nerve and vigor, and, after all, the western Dominion is the land of strenuous, all-daring, simple men. Besides, she had watched the resolution flash into his young face when he stood facing the angry crowd of track-graders with the ax in his hand, and she had seen very much the same tenacity and steadfastness stamped on the faces of successful men. Her father was one, and he was a man who had scarcely been educated, and was certainly devoid of any complexity of character. Stirling had made his mark by smashing down opposition, and, when that was not possible, grimly holding on and bearing the blows dealt him. There was, as she recognized, something to be said in favor of that kind of man.

      Then Kinnaird came up through the bush with his rod and a few troutlings, dry-shod and immaculate in a jacket that fitted him like a uniform, and Ida went back to camp with him. She fancied, however, that her father or Weston, who sat still and filled his pipe again, would have come back with a heavy fish, or at least thorn-rent and dripping wet.

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      The party had spent another day or two beside the lake when, one drowsy afternoon, Kinnaird, who sat on the hot, white shingle by the water's edge, with a pair of glasses in his hand, sent for Weston. Miss Kinnaird and Ida Stirling were seated among the boulders not far away.

      "I understand that the river bends around the range, and the crest of the first rise seems no great height," he said. "There is evidently—a bench I think you call it—before you come to the snow, and the ascent should be practicable for a lady. Take these glasses and look at it."

      Weston, who took the glasses, swept them along the hillside across the lake. It rose very steeply from the water's edge, but the slope was uniform, and as a good deal of it consisted apparently of lightly-covered rock and gravel the pines were thinner, and there was less undergrowth than usual. Far above him the smooth ascent broke off abruptly, and, though he could not see beyond the edge, there certainly appeared to be a plateau between it and the farther wall of rock and snow.

      "I think one could get up so far without very much trouble, sir," he said.

      "That," replied Kinnaird, "is how it strikes me. My daughter is rather a good mountaineer, and Miss Stirling is just as anxious to make the ascent. I may say that we have had some experience in Switzerland, not to mention the hills among the English lakes. Do you know anything about climbing?"

      "No, sir," said Weston; "not as it is understood in Switzerland, anyway. I don't suppose there's an ice-ax in the country, and I never saw a party roped. Still, I have been up seven or eight thousand feet several times."

      "What were you doing?" asked Miss Kinnaird.

      Weston saw the faint twinkle in Ida Stirling's eyes, and fancied that he understood it. Very few of the inhabitants of that country climb for pleasure, and it is difficult to obtain any of the regulation mountaineering paraphernalia there; but when the wandering prospector finds a snow-crested range in his way he usually scrambles over it and carries his provisions and blankets along with him. The fact that there are no routes mapped out, and no chalets or club shelters to sleep in, does not trouble men of that kind.

      "Once or twice we were on the gold trail," he said. "Another time I packed for a couple of Englishmen who were looking for mountain goats."

      "Get any?" Kinnaird asked sharply.

      "No, sir. We didn't even see one," said Weston; and again he noticed Miss Stirling's smile.

      "Well," said Kinnaird, "we are breaking camp tomorrow, and my idea is that Mrs. Kinnaird should go on with the baggage in the canoes. The rest of us will follow the bench, and after working around the head of the big spur yonder come down again to the water by the other slope. You are, of course, willing to make the ascent with us?"

      "I am under your orders," said Weston. "Still, I shouldn't advise it."

      "Why?"

      It was rather difficult to answer. Weston could not tell the major that he considered him a little too old for that work, or that he was dubious about his daughter's stamina and courage. He had seen self-confident strangers come down from those mountains dressed in rags, with their boots torn off their bleeding feet. Besides, he felt reasonably sure that, as he was not a professional guide, any advice that he might feel it wise to offer would not be heeded.

      "I have heard that there is thick timber on the other slope," he said. "It's generally rather bad to get through."

      Kinnaird, who never had been in really thick timber, dismissed the matter with a smile.

      "We will start at six to-morrow, and endeavor to get down to camp again on the other side in the afternoon. You will arrange about provisions."

      Weston said that he would do so, but he was not exactly pleased when he watched the major climb the hillside immediately behind them, with his glasses, to plot out the route. It seemed very probable that once he had fixed on one he would adhere to it at any cost, and, perhaps, the more persistently if the course in question appeared inadvisable to his companions. Weston did not pretend to be a great judge of character, but Kinnaird, who, it seemed, had held command in India, struck him as that kind of man. His wife was a little, placid lady, whose bodily vigor and any resolution of character she might once have possessed had apparently evaporated under the Indian sun, and, as far as Weston had noticed, she invariably agreed with whatever was said. When he waited on them at supper their talk was of the easier ascents in Switzerland, and in the mountains of his own land, whose names rang like music in his ears—the Striding Edge, the Great Gable Needle, and Saddleback Crags. The Needle was certainly difficult to climb, but the Striding Edge on a still day was a secure promenade compared with some of the ledges along which he had seen western prospectors struggle with a month's supplies.

      Supper, which as usual was prepared about six o'clock, had been over an hour or two, when, after waiting for an opportunity, he found Ida alone beside the lake.

      "Can't you persuade these people not to go, Miss Stirling?" he asked.

      The girl smiled.

      "No," she said, "I think you ought to recognize that."

      "Then can't you make some excuse, for stopping behind with Mrs. Kinnaird?"

      "Why?"

      Weston made a little gesture.

      "It will

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