“Then, see here!” Gordon Duncan unbound his bundle of bows. “They’ll all shoot true and strong,” he said. “Just give me the right man to draw them. There are old men among you?”
“Three,” said the Eskimo. “Kit-me-suk, Teragloona, Omnakok.”
“Send for the wisest of them all.”
The man was brought in. There followed two hours of talking, relating, explaining, planning. Through the young interpreter the aged Eskimo related adventures of long ago, tales of mighty caribou hunts he had known before the white man came with his firearms.
Gordon Duncan in his turn outlined a hunt for the caribou that were yet to come, which, if his dream came true, was to be the mightiest hunt of all time.
In the end, with their splendid imaginations on fire, the old man and the young interpreter returned to their people to inspire them in turn with high hope and with dreams of wild adventure.
A long time that night Johnny lay awake among his deerskins. There were thoughts enough to keep him awake. A whole tribe of little brown people now were dependent upon the skill and prowess of Gordon Duncan in organizing a hunt. Most of the actual execution must fall upon Johnny’s young shoulders, for Gordon Duncan was old. Little wonder, then, that he did not sleep.
“We are trusting all to this one grand endeavor,” he told himself. “Little of our caribou meat is left. If the next drove does not pass this way, if we fail in the hunt, then we too must starve.” He thought of Faye Duncan and her aged grandsire and wished they had not chosen to come.
“We must succeed,” he told himself. “We must! MUST!”
The plan they were to follow, the ancient plan used by the Eskimos, was not a complicated one. Yet it required skill and prowess. As the drove came in from the rolling hills to the south they were to be directed by native drivers on a course that would take them across a narrow, shallow stretch of water that lay between two lakes.
As they neared this narrow stretch of water the caribou would find themselves cut off by native drivers and imaginary natives built of stone piles and deerskins. They would then take to a deeper, broader stretch of water which would force them to swim. At the far bank, in ambush the hunters would wait with drawn bows.
“If we succeed,” Johnny thought. “If we do.” He had visions of a long journey over hard packed snow with meat aplenty on Tico’s sled, and after that a long, long rest in a cabin somewhere on at the back of beyond.
“And after that?” He thought of Timmie, the old man’s one time pal, and his green gold. The season would not be over until that mystery was solved or abandoned forever.
“If we succeed?” he thought again. He remembered the fear that Gordon Duncan and Faye had shown on meeting white men. Would they return to that cottage that Faye called home? Who could tell?
CHAPTER X
TREACHERY IN THE NIGHT
“I hear them! They are coming! Oh, Grandfather! Johnny Thompson! They are coming! The caribou are coming!”
As on that other occasion, the girl’s words were uttered in a low whisper, yet so tense were her feelings that her whispered words left in Johnny Thompson’s mind the impression of a sharp, shrill cry.
At once the boy’s mind was in a whirl. Had she heard them? Were they truly coming? Faye Duncan’s ears were keen as a fox’s. Her imagination also was keen. Had imagination deceived her? He had heard nothing.
“If they are coming, they may not pass this way.” This he whispered to the girl. “We must not hope too much.”
“No, we must not,” she answered quietly. “But I did hear it distinctly, the crack-crack of their hoofs! The wind brought in the sound. It’s died down now. I can hear it no longer. But,” she whispered tensely, “they must come! They must!”
To this Johnny agreed. Three days had passed since they arrived at the Eskimo camp. In that time, enheartened and strengthened by the white man’s caribou meat, the Eskimo had killed with bow and arrow five rabbits, three foxes and eight ptarmigan. But what were these among so many? The caribou meat was gone. Rabbit, fox, ptarmigan, all were gone, and starvation stared both Eskimos and whites in the face.
As the caribou had delayed their coming, there had been grumbling among the Eskimos. An aged witch doctor had said that the presence of the white men in the village had offended the spirits of all dead caribou and that they had told the living caribou to go north over some other route.
“We shall all starve,” the Eskimo had said, shaking with fear of the future.
“If only they were not such children!” the old Scot had said to Johnny. “If they had more courage and determination they might live a long time on small game. But, having become accustomed to living upon game taken by the rifle, they see only death ahead when no ammunition is to be had.”
In the midst of all this waiting and doubting an Eskimo had come running in from a long hunt in the distant hills. He had seen a band of caribou. They were coming.
“How many?” Johnny had asked eagerly.
“Desra! Desra!” (plenty! plenty!) The man had spread his arms wide.
At once all was noise and confusion. It had been with the greatest difficulty that Gordon Duncan had silenced their noisy chatter and had organized the hunt that was to mean life or death to the whole band.
Women and children were sent away into the hills. One band of men was stationed at the right of the lakes. These were to rush in at the proper time and urge the caribou on. A second group was concealed in a clump of willows close to the narrow neck of water which the caribou would expect to cross. These, at the proper time, would turn them to another course and force them to a swimming passage.
Carefully concealed in a second clump of willows on the opposite bank were the true hunters. Seven Eskimos, the older men who retained some skill with bow and arrow, were here. So too were the three whites.
“It’s not going to be easy,” Johnny told himself, “especially for the girl. We will be wading deep in stinging water. And these natives have been able to provide us with no waterproof skin garments for our protection. The sea Eskimos could have given us hip boots of sealskin.”
With this thought he was led to wonder that a people who had dwelt for so long a time upon the border of the sea should have come inland to live.
“It’s not so strange, after all,” he told himself. “It is so in other lands. In Borneo there are the sea dwellers and the mountain tribes. In Siberia are the Reindeer Chukchees and the Sea Hunting Chukchees. It seems—”
His thoughts were broken off by a sharp whispered,
“There! There! Don’t you hear them?”
Johnny listened and, as he held his breath, above the dry rustle of dead willow leaves, he did catch the unmistakable crash and rattle of an oncoming army of caribou.
“God grant that they may not turn back!” said Gordon Duncan as he whispered a fervent prayer to his God that He might prove that day that He, the great Father, and not the spirit of some dead animal, directed the flight of wild birds and the courses of the herds of all wild creatures.
Johnny thought again of the chilling water where a film of thin ice was forming, and shuddered.
Knowing that their wait might be long, he had spent much time in preparing a comfortable place of concealment. He had cut armfuls of slender willow shoots to which the dry leaves still clung. From these he had made a soft cushioned resting place. About this he had built a tight wall of leafed branches. This wall kept out the wind. Here, huddled close together, they were comfortable indeed. Compared to this, the very thought of the sweeping north wind and the cold black water sent a chill to his very marrow.
“Perhaps,” he whispered hesitatingly, “perhaps it might be that you’d do well to stay here.” He was speaking to the girl.
“Stay here?” The girl’s tone showed surprise.
“It—it’s going to be hard out there, and—and a bit dangerous. There are enough native hunters. We have supplied them with weapons.”
“I—” The girl hesitated. There can be no doubt but that there was an angry retort upon her lips. She, after all, was but human, and the moments that had just passed had been tense ones.
One look at Johnny’s honest, earnest face, and the remark died unuttered.
“I would not be worthy of my Scotch ancestry,” she said after a moment of silence, “nor of my grandfather, if I did not go when the call comes.”
After that, for a long time, as the click of hoofs and clash of antlers grew louder, there was silence in the place of hiding. As the girl sat half hidden by willow branches the dry leaves rustled to the time of her wildly beating heart.
“There!” Johnny whispered at last. “There! They have taken to the water. Now is the time.”
Creeping through the bushes until they were at the brink of the water, they plunged silently in.
“Good!” Johnny exclaimed hoarsely, “The Eskimos are doing their part nobly.”
It was true. A thin line of hunters, hip deep in the water, stood awaiting the great drove of caribou who had come too far to turn back.
A half minute more, and an arrow sped; another and yet another. Came a great splashing and thrashing of waters. In his dying frenzy a caribou beat an Eskimo into the freezing water. The Eskimo, bow in hand, was up in an instant and drawing to shoot again.
So went the battle. Drenched to the skin by water thrown upon him by the rushing herd, the vanguard of which had even now reached the bank, the old Scot stood his ground and drew such a bow as never in his life had he drawn before, while back to back with him the girl did her part.
Ten minutes of nerve wrecking strain, and all was over. Not, however, until food for many a long moon was supplied for every member of the strange little band.
“We-e-l-l,” said the old Scot as a half hour later, dressed in dry fur garments, loaned him by an Eskimo, he sat beside a willow bush fire, “with God’s help we won. And our God must be thanked.”
At that he dropped upon his knees and offered up a prayer of thanks to the God who provides all that is good. The Eskimos saw and marveled, though perhaps not one of them all understood. To this remote tribe no missionary had ever come.
It was during the feast following the hunt that a surprising and disturbing drama was played out before the great roasting fire of the tribe.
A hammer of perfectly good American make lay upon the ground at Johnny’s feet. He sat munching a delicious bit of broiled steak and wondering how that hammer had come all the way to these barren lands, what dog team or boat had brought it, how many fox skins it had cost the Eskimo owner, and what use it had ever been put to in a land where there are neither boards nor nails, when of a sudden he conceived of an immediate use for it. A young Eskimo was attempting to obtain the juicy marrow from the bones of a roast leg of caribou. He was pounding the bone with a round stone. The stone slipped from his grip. The bone did not break. Again he tried without success.
“Here, let me have it.” Seizing the bone, Johnny laid it upon a flat rock and crushed it with a single blow of the hammer.
But what was this? As Johnny glanced about him, he found a dark frown upon the face of every Eskimo. As he offered the broken bone with its rich marrow exposed to the Eskimo boy, who a moment before had appeared so eager to possess it, he was met with a sudden;
“No me! No me!” Then the boy turned and walked away.
It was strange. Johnny could not fathom the mystery of the tribe’s actions. From that very moment they stood aloof. The joyous noise and chatter of feasting was at an end. They gathered in little groups, to speak to one another in mumbled gutturals. Soon they went to their tents, leaving only the three whites by the dying embers of the feast fire.
“What did I do?” Johnny asked. “Crushed a bone with a hammer, tried to do the boy a kindness, that was all.”
“You may never know,” the old Scot’s tone was low and serious. “We’d better be getting away. Morning will do. We’ll sleep. Then we’ll go.”
“It’s a queer way to treat us,” Johnny grumbled. “Here we have saved their lives, helped them secure food to tide them over, and at once they turn their backs upon us.”
“You must not judge them,” said Duncan slowly. “Let God do that. They are but children. To them every living creature and every dead one too has a spirit. If you offend the spirit of a dead caribou or a musk-ox or wolf, he may do you great harm. There are a hundred things you must do and a hundred others you must not do. You who have lived all your life in the light of civilization know little enough of the torment that comes from being a heathen. But we must sleep if we are to travel to-morrow.”
Faye Duncan realized the truth of these last words quite as well as her grandfather did. Yet, for some reason, as she lay among the deerskins with her grandfather breathing in peaceful slumber nearby, she found herself unable to sleep. The day had been an exciting and trying one. The great crisis, in so far as the Eskimos’ needs were concerned, had been reached and passed.
She was about to fall asleep when she thought again of Johnny’s strange experience with the young Eskimo and the hammer.
At that very moment she caught a slight sound outside the tent. The sound, coming as it did in the silence of the night, was disturbing. Parting the tent flaps, she looked out. The next moment she barely suppressed a scream. The tent in which Johnny slept was not ten feet from their own. Moonlight made all bright as day. At that very moment an Eskimo with a long knife in his hand was lifting the skins at the back of Johnny’s tent. As he turned half about the girl recognized the young Eskimo of the evening, he who had refused to accept the marrow bone crushed by Johnny’s hammer.
CHAPTER XI
THE DANCING SHADOW
The tent Johnny slept in was a small one. He slept in it alone. There could be no mistaking the intent of the Eskimo with the long knife.
“He will kill Johnny,” the girl told herself, gripping at her heart.
Her first impulse was to cry out. The cry was stifled by the thought that the whole village would be awakened.
“They might all turn upon us. Then what chance have we?”
All this flashed through the girl’s mind. The next instant she shot silently out of the tent. Her bare feet left tracks in the snow but made no sound.
Just as the Eskimo was creeping into Johnny’s tent, he felt himself seized from behind and dragged violently backward. The next instant a heavy body came crashing down upon him. The knife flew from his hand. His breath was knocked from him. He uttered one low grunt and that was all.
Thirty seconds later, powerful hands gripped his shoulders while in a hoarse whisper a voice spoke.
“What was he doing?” It was the old Scot.
“Try—trying—” The girl struggled hard to retain her composure. “He had a long knife. He was trying to kill Johnny.”
For a moment the old Scot sat in silent meditation.
“They are ungrateful beasts!” The girl’s low whisper was tense with indignation.
“No, no, girl, you must not think that! They are but children, frightened children. Afraid, that’s what they are. Afraid of the trees in the forest, of spirits that do not exist at all, afraid, afraid. You must not blame them.”
Lifting the young Eskimo to his feet, he pointed away toward the little village of native tents, then gave him a gentle shove.
“Johnny!” he called in a low tone.
There came no answer.
A new terror gripped the girl’s heart. What if, after all, she had been too late?
“Slept through it all!” the old Scot grumbled. “Have to shake him a bit.”
He disappeared within the tent. A moment later, to her intense relief, Faye heard the two conversing in low tones.
“We’ll pack up,” said the grandfather as he emerged from the tent. “Something has gone amiss. Can’t tell what. There’s no use to stay. Let’s get away as soon as we can.”
An hour later, with a glorious yellow moon hanging low in the sky to light their way, and with Tico to lead them on, the little party pushed off into the night.
All through the remainder of the night and the greater part of the day they moved forward. A strange spectacle, a dog, an old man, a young man and a girl moving over an endless expanse of white, doing a forced march to escape from those whom they had come to save. They were following an entirely new course, one which Johnny believed would bring them to their journey’s end, Timmie’s cabin and green gold.
“Forgive them, child. Forgive them,” the old Scot said as he read the look of unhappiness on his granddaughter’s face. “Learn to pray the prayer of one much more worthy than we, ‘Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.’ Some day a missionary will come to them. He will teach them. Then they will understand.”
Strange to say, as they traveled away from the tundra toward the forest at the foot of the mountain, a brown spot like a drifting shadow or prowling wolf followed them. When at last they came to the edge of the forest and began making camp, this shadowy figure did not enter the forest, but sought out the shelter of a cut bank of earth, to drop down upon a flat rock and remain quite motionless for many hours.
Later he wakened and prowled as a wolf would have prowled. He did not come too near the party of three, for all through the long hours, as the girl slept curled up in her blankets, the old man and the young man took turns at making fire and guarding camp.
Toward dawn as Johnny sat half asleep by the fire, the girl, waking from refreshing slumber, sat up blinking at the fire to talk softly of a vine clad cottage where squirrels came to eat from one’s hand, where daffodils cast their fragrance to the air in the springtime, and old fashioned roses bloomed in summer.
“I hope I may see you there some day,” said Johnny huskily. But as he recalled the way they had come, it seemed very, very far away.
CHAPTER XII
THE GREAT BANSHEE
Next day they marched straight away over the white expanse. A fog, hanging low over the tundra, hid all but a narrow circle from view. They traveled by the compass and the ancient map Johnny had found in the cabin by the river. That it was a long chance the boy admitted to himself. What if the map were wrong? Few maps of this country are accurate.
“Can’t turn back now,” he told himself. “Have to take a chance. Take a chance.” As he repeated the words, to his surprise he found that he was beginning to hate them. All his life, so it seemed as he looked back upon it, he had been taking chances. And what had he gotten out of it? Precious little.
He thought of the cozy cottage the girl had described to him so often. “That’s the life,” he told himself. “And yet they left it for this. They took a chance. And here they are.” For the hundredth time he wondered why.
The land became more rolling as they advanced. The tundra was left behind. This the boy took for a good sign. “Coming to the mountains,” he told himself. But were they?
As night fell the fog thickened. “Going to be dark as a dungeon,” Gordon Duncan mumbled. “Tough luck. No wood for a fire. No place to camp.”
What he said was true. For the first time Johnny felt regret for the course they had taken. All about them was rolling ground. Snow blanketed all. Cropping out here and there were bunches of last year’s grass, but these poor wisps of wind-shrouded straw would provide neither fire nor bed.
When darkness had fully come, they yielded to the inevitable. Having scooped away the snow as best they could from a narrow patch of turf, they spread out their blankets, sat upon them while they ate a cold and cheerless supper; then with Tico in their midst, huddling together as best they could, they prepared to defy the damp chill of a late winter night in the Arctic.
It must have been some time past midnight that Johnny, wakened by a low growl from Tico, sat up to peer into the inky darkness and listen.
What he heard caused his blood to run cold. A faint chopping sound drifted in from the dark. Now coming from the right, the left, before him, behind, it seemed all about him at once.
Putting out a hand, he shook the shoulder of Gordon Duncan.
“Listen! Wolves!” he said in a tone that was low and deep.
“What is it?” the girl asked, sitting up.
“Listen! Wolves!” Johnny repeated.
At once, above the chop-chop of the distant enemy, he heard the girl’s teeth chatter.
“Get out the bows and arrows,” said Gordon Duncan. “If only we had a fire.”
“If we only had!” the girl echoed.
“But we’ll do for ’em!” the old man declared stoutly.
“Here! There! Stop him!” The girl sprang to her feet.
She was too late. Tico had leaped away into that darkness and fog.
A moment of suspense, then from out that shadow-land came sounds of a terrific encounter.
With a cry of dismay the girl leaped to her feet and would have gone to the aid of her faithful friend. But Gordon Duncan pulled her back.
“No! No! child!” he exclaimed. “It won’t do. We must stay together. It’s our only chance.”
“There are many,” he rumbled on. “More than I have ever known before. They do not as a rule travel in packs, these white phantoms of the Arctic. They go about in families. But when caribou are passing they are sometimes thrown together in packs. This is the time when they are most dangerous.”
“Listen!” Faye caught her breath as the growl and howl of Tico was blended with the yip-yip of wolves. “They’ll kill him. What can we do?” She gripped Johnny’s arm until it hurt.
Fortunately this question did not need answering. Fierce as the battle in the dark was, it ended quite suddenly. A moment later the dog came limping back. One shoulder was terribly torn. His strength was completely gone.
Torn and bloody as he was, the girl gathered him in her arms to wrap him in a blanket and lay him down beside her.
“Brave old boy!” she murmured.
For a half hour after that they sat there back to back waiting, listening, staring into the dark, but seeing nothing.
Then a sudden gust of wind sweeping in from the great unknown before them rolled the fog away, to leave them gasping at the size and ferocious appearance of the gray-white creatures that surrounded them, a grim, silent circle.
As if this were the sign for an advance, the wolves rose each in his place and began a slow advance.
“Now!” said Gordon Duncan. “When I give the word, shoot the one before you, and for the good of all, don’t miss. It may mean death.”
Poised each on a knee, back to back, they set their bows and nocked their arrows, then waited breathless for the old Scot’s whispered command.
To Johnny it seemed that he caught the glint of a gray beast’s eye before the whisper came:
“Now!”
Five seconds of suspense for steadied nerves, then Johnny’s arrow sped. Before him a gray streak reared in air to fall sprawling and clawing at nothing. The arrow had gone clean through him, then glanced away over the snow.
“What luck for her and for the old man?” he asked himself. There was no time for looking.
In this warfare there was no frightening din. The wolves who had escaped the biting arrows came straight on. A particularly ferocious creature came stealing upon the boy. Now he was ten paces away, now five, now three. A spring and—
Again his bow twanged low. A second arrow found its mark.
But now, before he could turn, before he could as much as realize his danger, a gray streak launched itself upon him.
Down he went. Snapping teeth and tearing claws, and after that a shock. He was beneath a combat, not a part of it. One frenzied effort and he was free.
A glance told him much. The wolf had leaped upon him. Maimed as he was, Tico had come to his aid. The brave dog was down now, the wolf at his throat.
Lacking better weapons, the boy seized the wolf by the throat and gripped him hard. Trained as they were for every form of combat, the grip of the boy’s hands was like steel.
The struggle that followed was a terrific one. Not daring to release his hold, yet fearing every instant that he would be frightfully torn by the beast’s claws, Johnny hung on like grim death.
Of a sudden the sight that appeared before him drove him to desperation. As the girl sprang back, a wolf leaped for her throat. They went down together.
Quite forgetting self he released his hold on the first wolf to seize the axe that in the struggle had been thrown from their kit, and with a single blow dispatched the beast that threatened Faye Duncan’s life.
And through it all, like the ancient warrior he was, Gordon Duncan remained in his place calmly nocking arrows and sending them crashing into the ribs of his enemies.
“There are more,” Johnny panted, helping the girl to her feet.
“More,” she panted, “More!”
But what was this? Just when the tide seemed set against them there came a strange roaring sound from the distance. This resembled more than any other the call of a wild beast, a challenge to battle.
Pausing, the gray streaks appeared to listen. Then, one by one, they went trotting away into the night.
Hardly a moment had elapsed before there came a sharp yip of pain, another and yet another. A moment of silence, then the night was made hideous by the noise of battle.
“Wha—what can it be?” The girl’s words came in stifled whispers.
“Can’t tell,” said Johnny.
“Get your bows and arrows,” commanded Gordon Duncan. “They may be back upon us at any moment.”
“And—and that other monstrous thing!” Faye Duncan’s nerves were shattered.
“Five out there.” Gordon Duncan’s voice was calm. He was pointing in the direction his arrows had sped.
Johnny was feeling a little ashamed of his record when his eyes fell upon the wolf that had attacked Tico. He was dead, strangled.
“Not so bad,” he thought as he once more gripped his bow and sought out an arrow.
There was, as it turned out, no need for further worry. As they sat there shivering, gripping bows with hands benumbed with cold, they listened to the distant tumult rise, then fade away into the night.
“All over,” Johnny said at last, rising to ease his stiffened limbs.
“Who—what could it have been?” The girl gripped his hand hard as he assisted her to rise.
“That,” said Johnny, “as far as I can tell was the great banshee.”
“But look,” he said suddenly. “Over there not a quarter of a mile away is a small forest.”
What he had said was true. Had they marched but a quarter of a mile farther they might have slept warm by a roaring fire which would have served to keep the wolves away.
Needless to say, they were not long in packing up and moving to this place of greater safety and comfort.
A half hour later, seated before a fire that fairly blistered their cheeks, the boy and girl, conversing in awed whispers, discussed the strange happenings of the night. In the meantime, rolled in his blankets, and quite as if nothing had happened, Gordon Duncan slept the sleep of the just.
“Heart, did you say?” Johnny nodded toward the sleeping one. “Did you say his heart was bad? Mine was in my throat all the time.”
“So was mine. But he—he’s different. He—he’s a Bruce,” the girl whispered back. “His ancestry goes back to the famous Bruce of old Scotland.”
CHAPTER XIII
THE ANSWERED CHALLENGE
Had one chanced to have been passing over that vast white expanse over which the three, Johnny, Faye and Gordon Duncan, traveled next day; had his eye caught sight of the dark figure that, ever pressing forward in the fog, continually dogged their footsteps, he must have paused in amazement. A stranger creature could scarcely be imagined.
Stooping low, lurching forward, moving in little jerks, perhaps on four legs, perhaps on two, his form at times seemed grotesquely human. At others it seemed that the impossible had happened, that some huge gorilla from tropical wilds had found his way to this land of ice and snow.
Had curiosity led one to inspect his footprints in the snow, his amazement must have grown. Measuring full twenty inches from toe to heel, they resembled nothing quite so much as the footprints of a fair sized polar bear. Yet as everyone knows, the polar bear lives upon the ice of the ocean. Seldom does he wander more than a dozen miles inland. To look for him here some hundreds of miles inland was to give credence to that which has never been.
This fearsome creature it was that uttered a challenge to the wolves who were rapidly getting the upper hand in the battle with Johnny and his friends.
What was it that had turned them away? Was this challenge but a call telling of the past? Did the memory of other bloody frays spur the wolves on? Or did they see in this lone figure an easy victory and a toothsome feast?
Whatever their hopes, they were soon enough dashed to earth, for hardly had they arrayed themselves in a grinning circle than one after another of their number began biting, clawing, snapping and yip-yipping in mortal pain. When, in mad desperation they charged, it was no better. Two of their number, being seized by their bushy tails, had their brains speedily dashed out against a rock. A third was thrust through, and a fourth trampled into pulp. Whereupon those few who remained found safety in flight.
After tramping about for some little time in what appeared to be wild fury, the strange and terrible creature had seized five dead wolves by their tails and, turning sharply to the right, climbed the hill.
Before entering the dark fringe of scrub forest, he had paused to stand blinking at the campfire some distance away. Dropping the wolves, he had taken a dozen steps toward the fire. Then, appearing to take other counsel, he had returned to his dead wolves, had given them a vicious kick, had seized them again by the tails, then disappeared into the dark depth of the evergreen thicket.
As for the trio by the fire, they had realized that some strange creature was afoot; but being once more in possession of strong bows and plenty of arrows, with bright flames dispelling the darkness about them, they had felt quite at ease and secure from any manner of sudden attack. How little they really knew of the ways of the wild in this strange wilderness!
Next evening, as they lay before a roaring campfire, chins propped on elbows, watching, dreaming, half asleep, the two of them, the boy and girl, they heard the old man stirring in his sleep. Of a sudden he sat up. By his staring eyes they knew that he spoke as one in a dream.
“I told him the things were copper.” His voice was pitched and strained. “But Timmie said ‘No, they are green gold.’ And he must have been right, for he had worked with a silversmith and had helped make alloys.
“He said they were copper, gold and silver, melted together.
“I said the natives had melted them together.
“He said ‘No, they’re too ignorant for that. God and nature made the alloy. Somewhere in a great caldron of a volcano, long ago when the earth was new, gold, silver and copper were melted together and poured away in a stream of green gold. And somewhere in the hills there is a placer mine of green gold. We’ll find it.’
“Timmie said that, and he’s back there behind the hills waiting still, and he knows where the mine is. I’ve dreamed that many times, and it’s true.”
Johnny’s lips were open for a question, but the girl held up a hand for silence.
“The day has been hard,” she whispered. “He is half asleep. Don’t excite him.”
A moment later the old man had dropped to his place deep among the blankets and save for the crackling of the fire silence lay upon hills and tundra.
CHAPTER XIV
A MYSTERIOUS VISIT IN THE NIGHT
Next morning they opened their eyes to a new world. The fog was gone, the sun shone bright. Up from the south had come a gentle wind that brought with it the breath of spring.
Far away before them, like the jagged teeth of a worn out saw, was a range of mountains. The tops of these mountains still appeared to smoke with the snow swept over the summits.
“I wonder what it’s like up there,” the girl said to Johnny.
“In time you are sure to know,” he said. “Our trail leads over that range. May God grant us a low pass.”
“You may well say that.” Gordon Duncan’s eyes seemed to see things far distant and remote. “But as you say, the trail leads over those mountains. There is no other way.”
The week that followed will linger long in the memory of Johnny Longbow and his smiling companion of the trail, for it was spring, and who could forget such an occasion?
In the Arctic winter lingers long. Spring is thrice welcome. This year, creeping up behind a veil of fog, it appeared to burst upon them like a revelation.
The snow grew soft beneath their feet. Little rivers began coursing away to the north. The surfaces of lakes, long locked with ice, glistened with water that buried the solid depths of ice that still lingered.
Little snow-buntings, silent for long, began their cheerful chee-chee, and far above in the bluest of skies an early covey of wild ducks winged their silent way.
The first touch of spring brought out small game in abundance. Snowshoe rabbits, leaving their hiding places, hopped about in a leisurely fashion. Ptarmigan were so numerous that the wandering bowmen grew expert in the art of beheading them with a well shot broadhead arrow. And what could be sweeter than a ptarmigan roasted over a glowing bed of coals?
Once, creeping through tall dead grass of a year’s standing, they came upon a flock of gray ducks that had come all the way from the southland.
As he smiled over the breast of a fine duck that evening Johnny’s face suddenly sobered. He had bitten upon something that had nearly cost him a tooth.
“A shot,” he said as he produced a mashed bit of lead. “Someone shot at him way down there where there is no ice and snow, and he brought this, a message from another land.”
For a moment as he sat dreaming, eyes half closed, he thought of himself as a young native of the land, the old man the last patriarch of his tribe and the girl the last link of a vanishing race.
“Huh!” he smiled as he wakened from his revery. “Strange world! In a month we will be with white men, living as they live.” But would they?
With all the hunting and their keen enjoyment of the spring, they did not neglect the trail. Each day brought them nearer to the range of snow blown mountains. Each hour hastened the time when they must try the pass.
Sometimes at night by the campfire they spoke of it in awed whispers. At other times, under bright midday skies, they laughingly talked of the long slide they would take when they reached the other side. How little they knew of that which lay before them.
Gordon Duncan thought only of Timmie and his green gold. Faye Duncan lived most for the care and protection of the kindly old man she loved more than her own life. Johnny dreamed strange dreams of gold, fortune, and a dark haired handsome Scotch girl. At times he wondered why they had feared to meet a fellow human being. That wonder was fading. Growing ever stronger was his desire to solve the mystery of Timmie and his green gold.
“Just over the mountains, and we’ll know,” he told himself many times.
So at last they reached the foothills of those vast and silent mountains, and their troubles began.
As they passed the lower levels game vanished. Only once in two days did they see a rabbit. Then it escaped into the brush.
At the end of three days, after skirting many a spring-born freshet and creeping about a score of cliffs, they arrived at the base of a mountain, the lowest of all the range, but startling in its whiteness and immensity. There, sore footed and weary, they built another campfire and sat down to a meal of steaming coffee and frozen berries.
The girl looked at Johnny. There was a question in her eyes. “Dare we try the mountain?”
“It is three days’ travel back to the land of game,” he replied. “Can it be worse ahead? Will he turn back?”
He looked at the grizzled old Scot, who as ever sat dozing by the fire.
“He will not.”
“Will he live to—to see the other side of the mountain?”
“We can only hope.”
For a long time after that they sat there in silence. What were the girl’s thoughts? Johnny would gladly have known. As for himself, he was thinking of the possibility of sudden tragedy for the old Scot and of their battle to win their way back to the haunts of civilized man.
“What a burial place for such a man!” he thought to himself. “A whole unmolested mountain for a tomb!
“But,” he thought a moment later, “as she has said, we must hope. It would break her heart.”
Next day they started early. There was hope in each heart that they might make the pass before sunset and camp for the night on the other side.