Cæsar Cascabel/Part 1/Chapter VII

CHAPTER VII. THROUGH CARIBOO.
GOOD honest Cascabel, why had you not come a few years sooner, and visited then the country you are about to travel through in this part of British Columbia? Why had not the ups and downs of your nomadic life brought you here when gold lay on the ground, and all that was needed was to stoop and pick it up! Why should the tale, told by John to his father, concerning that extraordinary period, be the story of the past, not the history of the present!

“This, now, is the Cariboo, father,” said John, that day; “but you may not know, perhaps, what the Cariboo is?”

“Not the slightest idea,” answered Mr. Cascabel. “Is it a biped, or a four-footed animal?”

“An animal?” exclaimed Napoleona. “Is it a large one? And is it very cruel? And does it bite?”

“Cariboo is indeed the name of an animal,” replied John; “but in this instance it is simply a district bearing that name; it is the gold country, the Eldorado of Columbia. What wealth it contained once! And how many people it has enriched!”

“And how many it has beggared at the same time, I guess!” added Mr. Cascabel.

“No doubt, father, and, we may be sure, that was the majority. Still, there were miners' associations whose takings went up to two thousand marks a day. In a certain valley of this Cariboo, William Creek valley, gold was picked up in handfuls.”

And yet, considerable as was the yielding of this auriferous valley, too many people had come to work it. And so, owing to the accumulation of gold-seekers and the mob they attract along with them, life soon became a matter of difficulty there, not to speak of the prodigious rise in the price of everything. Food was priceless; bread was a dollar a pound. Contagious diseases broke out in the midst of these unhealthy surroundings. Finally came misery, and, in its train, death, for the greater number of those who had flocked to this spot. Was this not a repetition of what had taken place, a few years before, in Australia and in California?

“Father,” said Napoleona, “all the same it would be nice to find a big lump of gold on our road!”

“And what would you do with it, pet?”

“What would she do with it?” Cornelia replied. “She would bring it to dear little mother and she, I guess, would very soon have it exchanged for its value in current money!”

“Well, let us have an eye open,” said Clovy, “and for sure, we can't but find something, unless—”

“Unless we find nothing, you were going to say,” said John. “And that is just what will happen, my poor Clovy; the gold box has been emptied,—regularly emptied clean out.”

“Well!—Well!” replied Sander, “we shall see!”

“That's enough, children!” exclaimed Mr. Cascabel, in his most imperative tone of voice. “I forbid any of you to enrich himself in that manner. Gold picked up on English soil! Fie! Let us pass on,—let us pass on, I say, without stopping, without stooping to pick up a nugget, even if it were the size of Clovy's head! And when we get to the frontier, should there be no card stuck up, with the words ‘Please wipe your feet,’ we shall give ours a good wiping, my children, so as to take away no part or parcel of this Columbian soil with us!”

Always the same Cæser Cascabel! But let him be easy in his mind! It is probable that not one member of his family will have the least chance of picking up the smallest particle of gold.

For all that, and notwithstanding Mr. Cascabel's prohibition, many a side glance was cast on the ground, along the road. A pebble of any sort seemed to Napoleona, and especially to Sander, as though it should be worth its weight in gold. And why not? In the list of auriferous countries, does not North America hold the foremost rank? Australia, Russia, Venezuela, China, are only next to her.

Meanwhile, the rainy season had set in. Every day heavy showers came down, and progress became the more arduous.

The Indian guide spurred the horses onward. He feared lest the rios or creeks, affluents of the Fraser, hitherto almost dry, should suddenly fill up; and, how would they be crossed over if no fords could be found? The Fair Rambler would run the risk of standing still, in distress, for the several weeks that the rainy season lasts. All speed then should be made to get out of the valley of the Fraser.

We said the natives in these parts were no longer to be dreaded since the Chilicots were driven to the east. This was quite true; but there were certain formidable animals—bears amongst others—an encounter with which would have proved really dangerous.

This fact Sander learned by experience, on an occasion when he well-nigh paid dearly the fault he had committed of disobeying his father.

It was on the afternoon of the 17th of May. A halt had been made some fifty paces beyond a creek that the party had just crossed dry-footed. This creek, deeply buried as it was, would have proved an insurmountable obstacle, if perchance a sudden rise of the waters had transformed it into a torrent.

The halt was to be of a couple of hours' duration. John went ahead in search of game; and Sander, although ordered not to leave the encampment, crossed back the creek unnoticed and went back along the road, carrying nothing with him but a rope, about a dozen feet long, coiled around his waist.

The lad had an idea in his head: he had noticed, by the roadside, a beautiful bird with many-colored plumage; he meant to chase it home so as to find out its nest; then with the help of the rope, he would have little trouble in climbing up any tree to possess himself of it.

In thus betaking himself away Sander committed an error all the greater as the weather was threatening. A dark cloud was gathering overhead. But what will stop a lad running after a bird?

In a few moments Sander was rushing down a thick forest, the first trees of which bordered the left bank of the creek. The bird fluttering, from branch to branch, seemed to take a delight in enticing him along.

Sander, his mind full of his chase, was forgetting that the Fair Rambler should start off again in two hours' time; and, within twenty minutes of his leaving the camp, he had dived a couple of miles into the depths of the forest. Here no roads, nothing more than narrow paths, netted over with brushwood, at the foot of the cedars and the pine trees.

The bird, with many a merry twitter, winged it lightly from tree to tree, and Sander ran and leaped like a young wild-cat. Such efforts, however, were doomed to be fruitless: the bird eventually disappeared in the undergrowth.

“Well, go to Jericho!” exclaimed Sander, as he stopped short, annoyed at his failure.

Then, only, through the foliage, he noticed the cloudy sky above. Sheets of light fitfully brightened the darkened verdure around.

They were the first flashes of lightning, quickly followed by long peals of thunder.

“It is high time to go home,” the young lad thought to himself, “and what will father say?”

Just then his attention was attracted by a singular-looking object, a peculiarly shaped stone, of the size of a pine-cone, and bristling with metallic points.

Of course, in our youth's mind, this was a nugget, forgotten by somebody in this part of Cariboo. And with a cry of joy, he stoops for it, weighs it in his hand, and consigns it to his pocket, promising himself not to breathe a word about it to anybody.

“We shall see what they will say about it some day, when I have changed it for fine gold coins!”

Sander had scarcely pocketed his precious stone, when the storm burst with a terrific thunderclap. And its last echoes still lingered in the air, when a wild roar was heard.

At a distance of twenty paces, in the middle of the thicket, stood up a huge grizzly bear.

Full of courage as he was, Sander took to flight with all his might, in the direction of the creek. Instantly, the bear was after him.

If Sander could only reach the bed of the stream, get to the other side and away to the camp, he was saved. His people would be well able to keep the grizzly at a respectful distance on the left bank of the creek, or perhaps to level him to the ground and make a bed-room rug of him.

But the rain now fell in torrents, the flashes of lightning were more frequent, and the heavens shook with the roars of thunder. Sander, drenched to his skin, hindered in his flight by his wet garments, was in danger of stumbling at every step, and a fall would have left him at the mercy of the brute. Still he managed to keep his distance, and in less than a quarter of an hour he was on the bank of the creek.

Here he now faced an insurmountable obstacle. The creek, transformed into a veritable torrent, whirled along stones, trunks and stumps of trees torn away by the violence of the flood. The waters had risen to the level of the banks. Plunging into this whirlpool was rushing to death without a chance of escape.

To return on his steps, Sander dared not venture. He felt the bear on his heels, ready to take him in his grasp. And the Fair Rambler was hardly visible, yonder under the trees; letting its occupants know of his presence here was out of the question.

Almost without a thought on his part, instinct suggested to him the only thing that might save him perhaps.

A tree stood there, within five paces of him, a cedar, the lowest branches of which overhung the creek.

Making a dart for it, clasping its trunk in his arms, hoisting himself up to the fork with the help of the bumps on the bark, and gliding along through the inferior horizontal branches, all this was for the lad the work of an instant. An ape would not have been more clever or more supple. Nor was this surprising on the part of a little clown; and now, he could think himself safe.

Alas, it was not for long. The bear, who had taken up a position at the foot of the tree, was preparing to climb up, so that it would be very hard to escape him, even by taking refuge among the highest branches.

Sander lost none of his presence of mind. Was he not the worthy son of the famous Cascabel, with whom getting safe and sound through the hardest passes had grown into a habit?

Leave the tree, he should, of necessity; but how? And afterward, get across the torrent; but in what way? Thanks to the rise occasioned by the deluge of rain, the creek was now overflowing, and its waters spread over the right bank in the direction of the camp.

Calling for help?—His cries could not possibly be heard in the deafening crash of the furious storm. Besides, supposing that Mr. Cascabel, John or Clovy had set out in search of the missing youth, they must have gone on ahead along the road. How could they have guessed that Sander had gone back across the creek?

Meanwhile the bear was climbing up—slowly; still he was gradually coming up, and he soon would reach the fork of the cedar whilst the boy endeavored to make his way to the top.

It is at this moment an idea struck the lad. Seeing that some of the branches stretched for a distance of some ten feet over the creek, he quickly got out the rope he had brought around his waist, and, with a loop at the end of it, skillfully lassoed the extremity of one of these horizontal branches; the latter he bent upward by hauling the rope toward himself and maintained it in this vertical position.

All this had been done cleverly, quickly and with the utmost coolness.

There was no time, indeed, to be lost. The bear was hugging the fork and thence smelling his way among the boughs.

But just then, firmly grasping the top of the strained branch, Sander let it go back like a spring, and he himself was hurled over the creek like a stone shot by a catapult. Then, turning a splendid somersault, he landed himself on the edge of the right bank of the creek, while the bear, in silly amazement, looked at his prey escaping him in mid-air.

“You rascally boy!” It was thus Mr. Cascabel greeted the thoughtless youth on his “landing,” just as he himself arrived at the creek with John and Clovy, after looking in vain for the lad round about the camp.

“You rascal!” he repeated. “How anxious you made us!”

“Well, father, do pull my ears!” answered Sander. “I have deserved it richly!”

But instead of settling accounts with his ears, Mr. Cascabel could not resist kissing both his cheeks, saying:

“Well, don't do it again, or, if you do—”

“You'll kiss me again!” said Sander, giving a hearty kiss to his father.

Then he added:

“I say!—What a sell for the bear! Doesn't he look sheepish, eh?—for all the world as if he came out of the damaged goods department of a grizzly store!”

John would have dearly liked to have a shot at the bear, who had climbed down and was now skulking away; but going after him was not to be thought of. The flood was still rising; there was nothing more urgent than to avoid it; and all four returned to the Fair Rambler.

César Cascabel/Première partie/Chapitre VII