VIII.--IRON
A year later a prospector was slowly pushing his way through thewilderness some seventy miles northward of St. Marys. It wasspringtime and the air was mild, but, while the ridges were alreadybare, great banks of snow still lay in the deep folds of the hillswhere the sun but touched them at noon hour. The endless lacework ofnaked branches now began to be feathered with tender green, andeverywhere the bush was alive with the voices of wild things whoseblood was stirred to mating by the soft caresses of the southerly wind.Thrusting through a patch of tangled undergrowth, the man reachedhigher ground and, advancing to a hillock, stood with his hat off andhis brown face steaming with sweat.
He was of middle age, with short, sturdy frame, a broad face of pale,copper color, swarthy black brows and a small, stringy mustache. Hisfeet were enclosed in shoepacks, soggy with water, and he was otherwiseclad in the nondescript fashion of old bushmen. Around his shoulderswere strung a compass, binoculars and map case, and at his belt dangleda small ax and a prospector's hammer pick. He was torn, scratched, andin a general way disheveled, but the clear glance of the black eyes andthe easy grace of his pose proclaimed him fit for action.
He stood for some time while his keen glance searched the countryahead--a frozen sea in which congealed billows of rock thrust up theirtumbled heads in a gigantic confusion. Here and there were moredefinite ridges that took a general trend, but for the most part it wasa chaos of rock and timber, slope and swamp, the refuse from theconstruction of a more attractive country which had been assembledelsewhere.
Presently Fisette took out his compass, balanced it in the palm of hissinewy hand and glanced at the needle. As he glanced, this filament ofsoft iron began to tremble and swing. He stood fascinated. Slowly atfirst, but gradually with more active and jerky motions, the thingbecame possessed. It vibrated as though in doubt, then moved off incontinued restlessness. Not by any means could Fisette end thesevagaries. After a little, a slow light grew in his eyes, his strongface broadened into a smile and, snapping back the compass lid, hestrode down hill.
A quarter of an hour later he was chipping the edges of a ridge ofblackish-gray rock from which he had stripped great rolls of damp,green moss. The rock lay exposed and glistening, its polished surfacescarred with the scratches of hard stones that once lay embedded in thefeet of prehistoric glaciers, but Fisette, screwing his bushy browsover a tiny magnifying glass and peering at the sparkling fragments inhis palm and balancing their weight, cared nothing for glaciers. Heonly knew he had found that which he had been seeking for more than ayear.
There is no measuring device for joy, and no foot-rule one can lay onemotion, but it is questionable if to the heart of any man comesgreater lightness than to that of the one who by stress and endurancein the wilderness, upturns the treasure he has so arduously sought.These moments are few and rapt and precious, and they glowed in theslow brain of the half-breed Fisette as nothing else had ever glowed.It was true that he stood to do well and earn independence out of thisdiscovery, but he was conscious at the instant of a reward greater thanease and comfort and money to spend. He had backed himself,single-handed, against the wilderness, and he had won. Again heunrolled from a strip of caribou skin the fragment of ore Clark hadgiven him--the fragment he was to match--and laid it amongst the freshchippings at his feet. Only by size and shape could he distinguish it.
Now it may be assumed that Fisette forthwith threw his tattered hatinto the air and gave way to noisy manifestations of joy. He didnothing of the kind, for in his hairy breast were combined thepractical side of his French father and the noiseless secrecy of anIndian mother. There was much to be done, and he went about it withvoiceless determination. First of all he blazed a jack pine whoseknotted roots grasped nakedly at the ridge, and marked it boldly withhis name and the number of his prospecting license and the date, whichlatter, he remembered contentedly, was the birthday of his youngestchild.
This accomplished, he disappeared in the bush and two hours laterreappeared bending forward under a pack strap whose broad centerstrained against his swarthy forehead. And in the pack were a smallshed tent and his camping outfit. Making a tiny, smokeless fire of drywood, he cooked and ate, stopping now and again to listen intently.But all he heard was the chuckle of a hidden spring and the insolentfamiliarity of a blue jay, which, perched in a branch immediatelyabove, eyed the prospector's frying pan with a bright inquiring gaze.
By noon of the second day Fisette had blazed the enclosing boundariesof three claims, along the middle of which for three quarters of a milehe had traced the ridge of ore, and when corner posts were in, heshouldered his pack and, stepping quietly to the river where his canoewas hidden three miles away, began his homeward journey. He paddledeasily, squatting in the middle like his ancestors, and feeling a newpleasure in the steady pressure of his noiseless blade. He did notexperience any particular sense of triumph, but when, six hoursafterward, he saw the glint of Lake Superior around a bend in the riverhe laughed softly to himself.