The next moment his legs were wet, and he set off for the shaft, knee-deep in a rushing flood. There was a confused uproar behind him: stones falling, timber breaking; and then the last of the lamps went out. It cost him an effort to keep his head. Hurrying men jostled him; he struck his feet against sharp stones and was thankful that he did not fall. While he battled with a growing horror, he made for the feeble glimmer which marked the bottom of the shaft. It was a short distance, and he presently stood in the gathering water among a group of half-seen men, watching one being slowly drawn up toward the brighter light above. Another was hurriedly climbing the ladder, while a comrade waited to follow as soon as he was high enough. Then Andrew felt a hand on his arm.
"I was looking for you," Carnally said. "You had better get up. Take the rope as soon as it drops."
Andrew felt a strong desire to do so, but he mastered it.
"No," he returned calmly; "not yet. In a sense, it's my mine; I must see the boys out."
A man near him raised a shout.
"What's the matter with the winch! Can't you heave on it?"
A deepening rush of water swirled about them and there were sharp cries:
"You above, get on to the handles! When's that rope coming? She ought to carry two!"
A man clutched at the rope, which fell among them but when another grasped it Andrew interfered.
"Steady, boys!" he said. "The winch won't lift you both. Being heaved up is too slow. Tell them to make the rope fast, and then climb; it's strong enough to carry two or three."
There was a growl of approval; instructions were shouted up; and while the water rapidly deepened, the group at the foot of the shaft decreased. Andrew, however, was above his waist before he clutched the ladder, while Carnally seized the rope. There was a man above him whose feet he must avoid, and he felt the timber shake, but it was with vast relief that he climbed out of the flood. He was near the top when a cross-batten broke and Grennan, the fellow above him, slipping down a foot or two, bruised Andrew's fingers with his heavy boot. For a brief moment Andrew clung by one hand, and then, his overtired arm suddenly relaxing, his fingers loosed their grasp and he fell, half dazed from pain and horror, into the swirling flood below. A crash of the timbers somewhere in the shaft preceded a fresh onrush of water. The flood was neck-deep and rapidly rising.
CHAPTER VIII
THE ISLAND OF PINES
When Carnally crawled out, wet and breathless, into the open air with the last of the men, he turned to speak to Andrew.
"Where's the boss?" he demanded quickly of Grennan.
Just then the roar of a fresh rushing of waters was borne up to them, and Carnally was filled with anxiety as he leaned over the edge of the pit.
"Allinson!" he shouted.
No answer came, and before the scared miners could fully realize what had happened, Carnally was sliding down the rope. In the feeble light at the bottom he saw Andrew's arms reaching above his head grasping desperately on to the ladder. He seemed unable to pull himself up, but held on with a vise-grip.
"All right, Allinson!" Carnally called across reassuringly.
Letting go of the rope, a few strokes in the water brought him to the ladder.
"My knee!" explained Allinson, his face gray with pain. "Struck a sharp ledge at the bottom!"
With Carnally's assistance, he managed to climb to the top of the ladder, where a dozen arms were extended to pull him to safety. He had a bad gash on his knee, his fingers on one hand were bruised and bleeding, and there was a large welt on his head where the cross-beam had struck him; but there seemed to be nothing serious.
He held out his hand to Carnally, and they gripped in silence. Words were unnecessary.
"The cross-pieces of the ladder could not have been properly notched in," Andrew said after a while. "I think it was supplied by Mappin?"
"Yes," answered Carnally; "and it's a rough job!"
"I must endeavor to see that Mappin does his work better. But what's to be done about the flooded level?"
"Try to pump it out; it's fortunate that with a wood-burning engine fuel costs you nothing. I expect Watson will start all the boys at the new heading as soon as he gets back."
They discussed the mine until Yan Li called them to supper, and for the next two weeks they worked very hard. Then Andrew went down to the Landing on business, and one day he sat lazily in a rowing skiff on the Lake of Shadows. A blaze of sunshine fell upon the shimmering water, which farther on was streaked with deep-blue lines, but close at hand it lay dim and still, reflecting the somber pines. The skiff was drifting past the shore of a rocky island, on which a few maples, turning crimson, made patches of glowing color among the dusky needles, when Andrew saw a girl sitting on the shore. She was near when he noticed her, and it struck him that she was remarkably pretty. The thin white dress, cut in the current American fashion, left her finely molded arms uncovered to the elbow and revealed her firm white throat. Her hands were shapely; and, for her hat lay beside her, he noticed the warm coppery tones in her hair. She had gray eyes and her face pleased him, though while observing the regularity of her features, he could not clearly analyze its charm. Then feeling that he had gazed at her as long as was admissible, he dipped his oars, but, somewhat to his astonishment, she called to him.
"Did you see a canoe as you came?" she asked.
"No," Andrew answered. "Have you lost yours?"
"It floated away; I didn't notice until it was too late. It went toward the point."
She indicated the end of the island, and Andrew nodded.
"It would drift to leeward. I'll go and look for it."
As he swung the skiff round it struck him that she had kept curiously still. Her pose was somewhat unusual, for she sat with her feet drawn up beneath her skirt, and skirts, as he remembered, were cut decidedly short. He rowed away and presently saw the canoe some distance off. On running alongside, he noticed a pair of light stockings in the bottom, and laughed as the reason for the girl's attitude became apparent. Pulling back with the canoe astern, he loosed the light craft and drove it toward the beach with a vigorous push.
"Thank you," said the girl, and he tactfully rowed away.
He had not gone far when he heard a hail and saw her standing on the point, waving her hand. For a moment or two he hesitated. As the canoe had grounded within her reach, he could not see what she wanted; and, in view of the discovery he had made, he had imagined that she would have been glad to get rid of him. Still, she had called him and he pulled back.
"Can I be of any further assistance?" he asked, noticing with some relief that she now had her shoes on.
"Yes," she said frankly. "I am marooned here; there's no paddle in the canoe."
"No paddle? But how could it have fallen out?"
"I don't know; and it doesn't seem an important point. Perhaps the canoe rocked, and it overbalanced."
"I could tow you to the Landing," Andrew suggested.
His manner was formally correct and she felt half amused. This young man was obviously not addicted to indiscriminate gallantry.
"I don't want to go to the Landing, and the canoe would tow easier with no one on board. Your skiff should carry two."
He ran the craft in, made fast the canoe, and then held out his hand. When she was seated, he pushed off.
"Where shall I take you?" he asked gravely.
"To the large island yonder – the Island of Pines," she said, indicating it; and he knew that this was Geraldine Frobisher, whom Mappin had discussed. Andrew admitted that his description of her was warranted.
"You have been unlucky," he remarked.
"I've been careless and have had to pay for it. We got breakfast early and I've missed my lunch."
"It's nearly three o'clock," said Andrew, pulling faster. "But how is it no one came to look for you?"
"My aunt goes to sleep in the afternoon; my father had some business at the Landing – if he had been at home it would have taken him some time to find me. He would have searched the nearer islands first, systematically and in rotation." She smiled. "That's the kind of man he is. I suppose you have guessed who I am?"
"Miss Frobisher?"
"And you're Mr. Allinson. It wasn't hard to identify you. Perhaps you know that your doings are a source of interest to the people at the Landing."
"I can't see why that should be so."
"For one thing, they seem to think you are up against what they call 'a tough proposition'."
Andrew's face grew thoughtful. Since the collapse of the heading, he had spent a fortnight in determined physical toil, as his scarred hands and broken nails testified. It had been a time of stress and anxiety, and during it he had realized that the mine would be a costly one to work. The ore must carry a high percentage of metal if it were to pay for extraction.
"I'm afraid that's true," he said.
"Then you won't get much leisure for hunting and fishing?"
Andrew laughed.
"After all, those were not my objects in coming out, though you're not the only person who seems to have concluded that they were."
"I have no opinion on the matter," Geraldine declared. "But at the Landing you are supposed to be more of a sportsman than a miner – isn't it flattering to feel that people are talking about you? Then you are really working at the mine?"
"So far, I've saved the Company about two dollars and a-half a day."
"But isn't your voice in controlling things worth more than that?"
"No," Andrew replied; "I'm afraid it isn't."
"Then you don't know much about mining?"
"I believe," Andrew answered dryly, "I know a little more than I did."
Geraldine was pleased with him. The man was humorously modest, but he looked capable and resolute.
"Well," she said, "it can't be easy work; though one understands that getting the ore out is not always the greatest difficulty."
"It's hard enough when the roof comes down, and the props crush up, and the water breaks in. Still, I believe you're right."
"I know something about these matters," she said, and then surprised him by a sudden turn of the subject. "There's one man you can trust. I mean Jake Carnally."
"Do you know him?"
"He built our boat pier and cleared the bush to make our lawn. We often made him talk to us; and I know my father, who's a good judge, thought a good deal of him."
"Jake," said Andrew cautiously, "rather puzzles me: I can get so little out of him, though I like the man. As you seem to know the people I have to deal with, is there anybody else whose trustworthiness you would vouch for?"
Geraldine's face hardened.
"No, I don't know of anybody else; but you will soon be able to form your own opinion."
This struck Andrew as significant, because she must have heard of his connection with Mappin, who visited the house. Just then he caught sight of a boat that swung around the end of an island and headed toward them with bows buried in foam.
"A gasoline launch," he said. "She's traveling very fast."
"It's ours," explained Geraldine. "My father must have got back from the Landing and has come to look for me."
The launch was soon abreast of them and stopped near the skiff. A man of middle age, in light clothes, held the tiller and looked at Geraldine inquiringly.
"I suppose you have been dreadfully worried," she said with a smile at him. "I was cast away on a desolate island when the canoe went adrift, and should have been there still, only that Mr. Allinson came to my rescue." She turned to Andrew. "My father, Henry T. Frobisher."
Andrew noticed that Frobisher glanced at him keenly when he heard his name, but he started the engine and ran the launch alongside.
"Come on board and see our island," he said. "I'll take you back to the Landing afterward."
Andrew followed Miss Frobisher into the craft and made the skiff and canoe fast astern, and they set off and presently reached a short pier which ran out into still, clear water. A lawn stretched down to the shore, bordered with flowers, and at the end of it a wooden house stood against a background of somber pines. A veranda ran across the front, the rows of slender columns braced by graceful arches; above were green-shuttered windows, steep roofs, and gables. Moldings, scrolls and finials had been freely and tastefully used to adorn the building, though Andrew understood that Frobisher used it only occasionally as a summer resort.
Andrew was taken in and presented to Frobisher's sister, Mrs. Denton, a lady with a languid expression and formal manners. Then tea was served in artistic china, and after some general conversation Frobisher led Andrew to a small room on the upper story, which looked out upon the lake, and gave him an excellent cigar. Noticing him glance at the maps unrolled on a table, he smiled.
"I find that I can't get away from business," he explained. "It follows me down here; and in a new country like this there's generally some interesting project cropping up. I go off into the bush hunting, and see something that looks like an opportunity; the idea sticks to me and begins to develop."
"So far, I haven't found the prospects here very encouraging; but I suppose mining's slow," Andrew responded. "What do you deal in?"
"Land, lumber, waterfalls that will drive turbines – anything in the shape of natural resources. But how are you getting on at Rain Bluff?"
Andrew reflected that as the Company's operations would be freely discussed at the Landing, there was no reason why he should be reticent. Besides, he felt inclined to trust his host. The man had a keen, thoughtful face, but its seriousness was relieved by his genial smile.
"I'm afraid we're not getting on very fast," he said, and related the mishaps they had met with.
"You seem to find the work harder than you expected."
"I must admit it," said Andrew. "If it were merely a question of propping up the roof, getting rid of the water, and cutting out the ore, I'd feel less diffident. It's the business complications that I have the most trouble in understanding."
Frobisher gave him a keen glance.
"That side's generally involved. Rain Bluff, however, has a good big capital, I understand."
"Which means big liabilities. We're naturally expecting to pay dividends on it."
"It's an expectation that's not invariably realized," Frobisher remarked dryly. "You feel that your shareholders ought to be satisfied?"
"Of course. That's why I'm here."
"Our acquaintance is short, but if you don't feel that I'm too much of a stranger, I might perhaps be able to throw some light on any points that you're puzzled about. I've had a pretty extensive experience in these matters."
He was mildly gratified by his guest's ready confidence, but Andrew had been endowed with a quick and accurate judgment of character. He talked without reserve as Frobisher drew him out; and the American listened with unusual interest. The affairs of the Rain Bluff Company were no concern of his, but the working of Allinson's mind fixed his attention. Allinson was obviously a novice in such matters, but, for an untrained man, he showed a grasp of the salient points and a boldness in attacking difficulties which Frobisher thought remarkable. Lighting a fresh cigar when Andrew had finished, he smoked a while in silence. With a few words he might explain the Company's situation in a manner that would fill his guest with astonishment and perhaps dismay, but on the whole it did not seem advisable that they should be spoken. It would be better that Allinson should find out for himself how matters stood. Frobisher felt strongly curious about what he would do then.
Andrew presently looked up, as if he expected some comment.
"There are one or two suggestions I might make," said Frobisher.
They were not of much moment, though they promised to save Andrew some time and trouble, and after discussing them he rose to go. When they reached the hall Geraldine met them.
"If you are going to the Landing, I'll come with you," she said. "There are a few things I want from the stores."
"Then if Mr. Allinson will excuse me, I'll let you take him. I have some matters to consider before the mail to-morrow; and waiting while you buy millinery is a tedious business."
Frobisher shook hands with Andrew cordially.
"Come back to the Island of Pines whenever you feel inclined," he said, and Andrew and Geraldine walked down to the pier.
She started the engine and stood aft, holding the helm, while Andrew sat on a locker, looking about while the launch swept noisily away. The days were rapidly getting shorter and the sunlight had faded off the lake. The breeze had fallen and the water lay gleaming, smooth as oil, with the shadow of the rocks and trees floating on it. Here and there a clump of pines to the westward stood out, black and rugged, against a glow of pink and green; the air was cold and filled with a resinous fragrance. But Geraldine occupied most of Andrew's attention. She stood, gracefully poised, her light dress fluttering in the draught made by the launch's speed, and a clear warm color glowing in her face. Fine spray leaped about the bows, around which there curled a wisp of foam, and the froth streamed back far across the lake.
Andrew was inclined to be sorry the launch was so fast: it was not far to the Landing, and he could have spent an hour or two pleasantly on board. Miss Frobisher was not the first attractive young woman he had met, and she had neither said nor done anything in particular to excite his admiration. Indeed, when he came to think of it, she had said little to him; but somehow she impressed him as no other girl had done. When presently she made some remark which demanded an answer, they chatted gaily until she ran the launch alongside the wharf. There Andrew left her and went to his hotel.
After making her purchases, Geraldine returned to the island, where she found her father sitting on the pier with a notebook in his hand.
"You landed your passenger safely, I see. What did you think of him?"
"He didn't give me much opportunity for forming an opinion, except that he's rather serious," Geraldine answered with a smile. "Besides, I don't suppose my opinion would be worth as much as yours."
"That's a very modest admission; I thought you imagined yourself a good judge of young men. Anyway, I'm interested in this one; perhaps because he has upset the ideas I had about him."
"How?"
"For one thing, he's straight – straight as a plumb-line, which isn't altogether what I expected. Then, for a man engaged in business, he's a type that's new to me."
"Are those remarks connected?" Geraldine asked with a laugh. "You're in business and nobody could be straighter than you are."
Frobisher looked at her with appreciation.
"I'm afraid there have been occasions when I had to sail dangerously near the wind; but that's outside the question. I'm sorry for this young fellow – there's trouble ahead of him."
"You mean financial trouble? Of course, I've heard people talking about the mine."
"Not altogether; anyway, if I'm right about him, I don't think he'll find that the worst." Frobisher broke into a thoughtful smile. "After all, I have met business men who didn't consider their money the most important thing they could lose. But I'm inclined to think the people who sent Allinson over here have made a mistake."
Geraldine was unwilling to betray too great an interest in the man; and, indeed, her curiosity about him did not go very far.
"Oh, well," she said, "it really doesn't concern us."
She turned toward the house, and Frobisher looked out across the water. From what he knew about Rain Bluff Mine he had concluded that Allinson must be either a clever and somewhat unscrupulous exploiter of such ventures, or a guileless ignoramus who could be made a tool of. Now, having met him, he was convinced that the man was neither of these. However, he had other things to think about; and opening the notebook he busied himself with a scheme for utilizing some water-power.
CHAPTER IX
AMONG THE ICE
Graham was sitting on the veranda of his house at the Landing after supper one evening when Andrew joined him. The veranda was broad, and covered with mosquito-netting, and furnished with a table and one or two chairs; the wooden house was small but pretty. In front a plot of grass, kept green throughout the hot summer by an automatic sprinkler, ran, unfenced, to the edge of the dusty road. Across this a belt of blackened fir stumps stretched back to the stacks of lumber by the sawmill, and beyond that the lake lay shining in the evening light.
A window was open and Andrew could hear a girl singing. A rattle of crockery which suggested that Mrs. Graham was busy with domestic duties also reached him now and then; and a lad who had greeted him pleasantly as he passed sat on the nearest fir stump talking with a companion. Graham seemed to indicate it all with a movement of his pipe as he turned to Andrew.
"My world, Mr. Allinson," he said. "A happy one, but narrow."
"I feel inclined to envy you," Andrew replied.
"I am to be envied; I admit it with gratitude." Graham glanced half wistfully at a map on the table. "For all that, I remember the wide spaces up yonder now and then."
"If I were in your place, I wouldn't study that map too much."
"Ah! It isn't an amusement that I often indulge in; but sometimes, when I've spent a week making up trumpery lumber bills or getting in five-dollar accounts, I find it a solace to recall what I used to do. However, I've inconsistently practised prudent self-denial in other ways. There was a moose head – a beast I shot – I took off its stand and gave to the Institute; an old pair of snowshoes that hung above the mantel I gave my boy. He said they were very poor things and sadly out of date."
Andrew glanced at the map and noticed the lines penciled across it. He felt that he was not acting considerately in tempting Graham, but he could not resist.
"Those marks show the marches you have made?" he asked.
Graham laid his finger on the map, moving it from spot to spot.
"Yes. I don't need a diary; I can see it all again. We started here one winter and made three hundred miles on half rations, with wind and snow ahead all the way. There we camped three days in a blizzard among a clump of willows, while the snow piled up six feet deep to lee of us. I made this line through a country new to me; two hundred miles over soft snow, with the dogs playing out and the timber wolves on my trail for the last few days. This lake ends in a big muskeg, and we snagged our canoe there one fall. As she'd ripped her bilge open, we left her and spent a day and a half floundering through two or three feet of water and tall reeds, and carrying loads of sixty pounds." He paused and indicated a line that broke off abruptly in a wide bare space. "The lode lies south of here, and I believe I'm the only survivor of the few who knew of it. One half-breed was drowned in a rapid, another lost in a blizzard; the agent, so I heard afterward, left the factory to visit some Indians three or four miles off and they found him next day in a snowdrift, frozen to death."
"A grim country," Andrew said thoughtfully, "One to make a man afraid, and yet – "
Graham laughed, rather harshly.
"Yes; I think you know! Well, I'm glad that for twenty years I've mastered the longing and kept my head. Now, however, my children have made a fair start, with prospects of going farther than I have done, and my responsibility is lightening. A winter up there would satisfy me – I'm afraid it would be all I could stand now – and though it's still out of the question, I've a feeling that a way may be found before I grow too old."
He rolled up the map resolutely and laid it aside, and soon afterward Mrs. Graham's voice reached them.
"Bring Mr. Allinson in. It's getting chilly."
Andrew rose and followed Graham into his sitting-room. It was very small and there were signs of economy in its appointments, but it had a homelike charm. Two or three sketches in color which showed some talent hung on the varnished board walls. The lamp, though obviously cheap, was of artistic design; the rug on the stained floor and the hangings were of harmonious hue. Mrs. Graham, a little, faded woman with a cheerful air, sat sewing at a table, and opposite her a girl was busy with some papers. Both greeted Andrew cordially, and a few minutes later the young man he had seen outside came in with a humorous tale he had heard.
He was a handsome lad, quicker of speech and more assertive than his father, and the girl, who now and then made a remark, had a decided air. Though Graham would occasionally talk without reserve, he was as a rule quiet and dreamy. It was not from him that his children had acquired a trace of the somewhat aggressive smartness which characterizes the inhabitants of the new western cities: he had more in common with the silent dwellers in the lonely wilds. These are, for the most part, sentimentalists of a kind; loving the wilderness, not for what can be made out of it, and untouched by the materialistic ideas of the towns, where the business chance is the chief thing sought. Their gifts become most manifest when the ice breaks up on the rivers across which they must get the dog-sleds, and when all the powers of mind and body are taxed to traverse the frozen waste before starvation cuts short the march. It struck Andrew that Graham, dressed in shabby clothes, listening good-humoredly while his children talked, had somehow the look of a captive eagle, conscious of crippled wings, though the simile was a bad one because there was no predatory fierceness in him.
"One of you might shut the door," said Mrs. Graham. "The nights are getting colder fast; we'll soon have to light the basement heater." She turned to Andrew. "This is a hard country in winter. I've seen the thermometer stand a week at fifty below."
"Don't be scared, Mr. Allinson," laughed the lad, as he closed the door. "It's not often too fierce, and in a place like the Landing there's generally something going on. Will the frost interfere with your mining?"
"Not underground," said Andrew. "I understand that nothing can be done on the surface, but we expect to send off a good lot of ore for experimental reduction in the next week or two. Then we'll have something to base our plans on."
"Mappin's going to handle the transport, I guess. That man's surely on to a soft thing. I s'pose you know he's making his pile out of the Rain Bluff?"
Mrs. Graham glanced at her son in rebuke.
"I don't think you should talk to Mr. Allinson in that manner, Jim. He's a good deal older and more experienced than you are."
"Your ideas are out of date, Mother; we've grown ahead of them. Mr. Allinson doesn't look as if he minded. Anyway, he doesn't know as much as I do about the Canadian contractor." He turned to Andrew. "Do you like it up yonder?"
"Yes," Andrew answered good-humoredly; "I like the work better than anything I remember having done."
"A matter of taste. Now, I can't see much amusement in rolling rocks about or standing in wet slickers in a dark pit watching the boys punch the drills."
"Mr. Allinson is not doing it for amusement," said his mother.
"Well, money isn't often made that way. You don't get rich by knowing how to use the hammer and giant-powder."
"I believe that's true," Andrew responded with a smile.
"A sure thing! Money is made by sitting tight in your office and hiring other fellows to do the rough work. They break up the rocks and cut the milling logs; you take the profit. It's business, first and last, for mine!"
"Then it's fortunate there are people with different views," his sister interposed. "If nobody were willing to live in the logging camps all winter and go prospecting in the bush, you would be badly off."
"But so long as there are people who like doing that kind of thing, we're glad to let them."
"This is a favorite pose of his," the girl explained to Andrew. "It's the latest fashion among the boys; they're afraid of being thought altruistic."
"Now that everything is controlled by mergers and they make all we need so dear, one is forced to be practical," Mrs. Graham remarked feelingly. "For all that, it jars on me to hear our young people talk as they do."
"We're realists, with no use for sentiment," Jim replied. "We don't let our imagination run away with us. It doesn't pay."
"You may be wrong in that," said Andrew, smiling, "I'm not much of a philosopher, but it seems to me that imagination's now and then a useful thing. I've seen it help a man through tight places. Take your prospectors, for example; they often face risks that couldn't be justified by a return in money. I heard of one fellow crossing a lake in a savage storm in a leaky canoe, to keep the time he'd allowed for his journey, because he wouldn't be beaten; and of another making two hundred miles on snowshoes with very little food, because a party he'd promised to meet was expecting him."
"That," said the lad, "is the kind of thing father would do; he's given to impractical idealism. There's a mine up in the barrens he has talked about as long as I remember; but if he found it I believe he'd be content with that and sell the claim to any one for a few hundred dollars. Getting yourself frozen for an abstract idea isn't good business."
Graham laughed and changed the subject, and soon afterward Andrew took his leave. He spent the next evening with Frobisher, whom he had now visited several times, and on the following morning set out for the mine, where he worked very hard for a few weeks. They were still using the old adit, though the new one was being driven toward the lower level. Then he and Carnally left the camp in a canoe to hurry forward some stores and, after arranging for their quicker transport, stood on a little promontory, looking down the river, late one gloomy afternoon.
Winter had set in with unusual rigor. The gray sky was barred with leaden cloud; the pines, which looked strangely ragged and somber, stood out with harsh distinctness against the first thin snow; and the river flowed, a dark-colored riband, through a clean-cut channel in the ice. A nipping wind blew down the gorge, and now and then light flakes of snow fell.