One thing was in their favor; they soon passed from the zone of spring into the high level where winter still reigned. No longer was the snow soft under their tread, no longer were they obliged to skirt the banks of streams for a safe passage. There were no streams. All was ice and snow and barren rocks.
“Look at it,” Johnny said after an hour of desperate struggle up an all but perpendicular wall. “Not a shrub, not a scrub birch or fir. Barren as the hills of doom. No living creature could be here. Tonight we go supperless and without a fire.”
Faye Duncan shuddered. It was mid-afternoon, and the smoking mountain peak still loomed far above them.
“No wood, no food, no shelter!” Gladly would she have turned back. But one look at the grim look of determination on the old Scot’s face sealed her lips.
“He crossed these mountains in his prime,” she told herself. “He will cross them again or die.”
“Look!” Johnny pointed excitedly toward a sloping waste of barren rocks.
“What is it?”
“Something moving over there.”
“I can’t see—”
Turning her about and pointing over his shoulder, he said, “See! Just beyond that great boulder, something white.”
“It is!” she exclaimed. “A mountain goat! Oh, Johnny, can we?”
“We can, or my name is not Johnny Longbow.”
Vision of a feast of wild goat’s steak done to a turn floated before his eyes. In his excitement he quite forgot that they had no wood.
Carefully they prepared their attack. He would climb the narrow ledge to the right and come out above the goat. She would work round to the left and station herself among the rocks prepared to cut off his retreat up a narrow run.
For a half hour after that Johnny climbed from rock to rock until, with a deep intake of breath, he bent his bow, nocked his arrow, then of a sudden stood up.
His heart went wild as he saw the goat not fifty yards away. As he stood there hope, despair and high resolve fought for first place in his soul. The result was a bad shot. Or was it? He could not tell. All he knew was that the nimble beast leaped high in air, then went racing away.
A second arrow followed the first. On such slopes, among such rocks, there could be no hope of recovering an arrow.
Sitting limply down upon a rock, the boy watched the great bobbing horns disappear from sight.
“Missed!” he muttered, then turning, began making his way back.
Sitting in a sheltered spot at the back of a great rock that overlooked the narrow gorge, Faye Duncan, as she waited and watched, thought of many things, of her grandfather and Johnny Longbow, of Timmie and his mysterious green gold, of her home and her own cozy room there. Her heart warmed at this last thought, but chilled again as she looked up at the smoking crest which they must cross.
“Will we make it? Can we do it? Well—”
Of a sudden she sprang to her feet. There had come to her alert ears a sound. It seemed close at hand.
“The goat!” Seizing her bow, she nocked a broadhead and waited.
“Yes, there. There.” Her hand trembled. The great horned creature was making straight for her.
Not a hundred yards away, he was coming straight on.
“Has he seen me? Would a wild goat charge his enemy?” She did not know. Her heart stood still.
“Must be sure of my shot,” she told herself.
Bracing herself, she waited. Now he was eighty yards away, now sixty, now forty, and now—now—
A second more, and her broadhead arrow would have flown. But of a sudden the wild creature’s forelegs crumpled beneath him and he fell with a great rattling of horns, to go rolling over and over down a twenty-foot embankment.
Fleet as the wind, the girl leaped clear of her retreat and away down that slope. “He may merely have stumbled, may be up and away.” Little she knew of wild goats, whose feet are surer than any other thing in life. The goat was dead. Johnny’s first arrow had pierced him through and through.
One look at the fallen creature was enough. His eyes were glazed in death.
Climbing to the top of a boulder, she cupped her hands to give forth a long, shrill call.
“Who-hoo!”
Three times this was repeated. Then came the answer echoing back.
“He has heard. He will come.” She smiled.
That evening they ate goat’s meat prepared by cutting it into narrow strips and allowing it to freeze. That night they slept huddled together for warmth beneath a rude snow hut which Johnny, under the old man’s directions, was able to build against a wall of rock.
“One thing is sure,” Johnny said as he prepared for rest. “There is no need for maintaining a watch to-night.”
He was destined to have another thought regarding this next morning. Beside the pile of goat’s meat they had left carelessly on a rock, he saw a single footprint. The goatskin and a portion of the meat was gone.
“Did us no harm,” he told Faye as he pointed in astonishment at the footprint. “We still have more meat than we can carry. And the skin was worth nothing to us.”
“But that creature!” she said with a shudder. “Look! The footprint is twice the length of a man’s.”
“And there are no toe marks,” he added.
“Tell you what!” There was an air of mystery in his tone. “Remember that creature that defied the wolves that night?”
She nodded.
“It’s the same; the great banshee!”
Here indeed was a mystery. But graver matters called for their attention. In spite of all they could do they had come near perishing with cold. They must be off the mountain before the end of the day, or tragedy was sure to overtake them.
CHAPTER XV
ON THE TRAIL OF THE GREAT BANSHEE
Mid-afternoon of that day found them at the crest of the mountain, caught in the grip of such a storm as one dreams of but seldom meets in real life.
A sixty-mile gale drove particles of snow fine as white sand and cutting as steel into their burning cheeks. When they attempted to go forward it was as if they were leaping against a fine meshed but unbreakable net. They could but drop on hands and knees and crawl. When they went with the wind they were appalled by the push and drive of it and by the sweeping whirls of snow that leaping fifty, a hundred feet in air, appeared nearly to reach to the very sky.
“Now,” said the girl in a half sob, “I know why these mountains appear to smoke.”
“If only we could find a way down,” said Johnny as he lent an arm to Gordon Duncan, who was struggling against the wind.
Of a sudden a burst of wind more terrible than ever seized the girl and sent her whirling down the white slope toward the unknown abyss beyond.
In the nick of time Johnny grasped the belt of her mackinaw. Throwing himself flat behind a low rock, he clung there like grim despair until the wind lost its power and the girl was drawn back to safety.
“You—you remember,” the girl panted, “we were going to try to slide down on the o—other side. I nearly did.”
“Game to the last,” Johnny thought.
“But your face is freezing!” Snatching off her deerskin mittens, the girl held snow against his cheeks to draw out the frost.
“There,” she said, “that’s done for this time. And now—”
“Now we must find a way down,” said Johnny.
“Tico,” the boy said, speaking to the dog cowering at his feet, “show us the way.”
As if understanding his mission, the dog began creeping forward along the ridge. Knowing nothing better to do, his human companions followed.
Ten yards, twenty, thirty, battered at and buffeted, faces cut by snow, knees bruised from creeping over rocks and hard packed snow, they moved forward.
Now they paused to thaw cheeks and noses. And now, as a ruder blast struck them, they flattened themselves against the snow and clung together like grim death. But still they struggled on.
But what was this? The dog had disappeared in the snow fog before them. Plucking up hope, they redoubled their efforts. Another twenty yards found them half sheltered by a ledge; another, and they were standing on their feet pushing forward down a gentle incline.
“Hurray! We win!” the boy shouted. “Good for Tico!”
Ten minutes later, beneath a cave-like sheltering ledge they paused to rest their trembling limbs and to take counsel for the future.
They were resting there in silence when of a sudden, some distance away, they heard the dog growl.
“It’s something dangerous or he wouldn’t growl like that. Come on,” said the girl.
“Only a footprint in the snow,” said Johnny a moment later as they came to the spot where the dog stood.
“But such a footprint!” said the girl, shaking as if seized with a sudden chill. “What can it be?”
“It’s the same as before,” said Johnny. “It’s the great banshee!”
Then, seeing that the girl was truly frightened, he added: “That, I am convinced, is the footprint of a man.”
“But look! Twice the size of our own!”
“The Eskimos have many legends regarding giants. It has always been supposed that these legends had to do with white men from the south. But supposing—”
“You wouldn’t believe such things?”
“What is one to believe? There is the footprint in the snow.”
“Come,” said Gordon Duncan, who now joined them, “this is no time for fairy stories. The night will be upon us. Let’s be going down.”
As they descended they marveled more and more at the downward passage Tico had discovered.
“It is as if the giants had really cut the way through,” said Johnny.
“Look!” said the girl as they paused after an hour of steady tramping. “There is another footprint in the snow.”
At that they all fell silent. Night was descending upon them.
“If only we could have a fire to-night,” the girl said wearily. “I feel as if I should die of fear in the dark.”
“But look!” cried Johnny as they rounded a turn. “The good banshee has granted your wish. There is a scrub forest not ten minutes away.”
It was true. The gnarled trees, twisted and bent, were scarce six feet tall, but dead trunks were dry as tinder. Soon, in a sheltered spot, they had built a roaring fire and were preparing to boil coffee and roast the goat’s meat they had packed across the mountain.
“To-morrow,” said Gordon Duncan, “we shall see the valley of green gold.”
CHAPTER XVI
DOWN WITH THE AVALANCHE
The sun was setting over a wilderness of snow and winter-washed, bleak, bare land, as late next day the three travelers, rounding a towering granite crag, came at last into full view of all that lay beyond. It was the promised land, the valley of green gold.
For a full moment they stood there, motionless. The scene that lay before them, glistening snow turned to a rosy hue by the setting sun, crags, torrents, mists, rushing little streams, all that go to make mountains, valleys and rugged hills, all that is the spring break-up in a land of ice and snow was here. Many days before they had started for this divide. Weeks of toilsome travel, weeks of perils and adventure had come into their lives since Gordon Duncan had said, “There is the knife. The trail leads up this ridge.”
Now they were at the divide, ready to descend into a wild valley. And why? Perhaps Gordon Duncan knew all. Johnny and Faye knew little enough. Yet, with the tender feeling of youth for an old man who was perhaps on his last long journey, his final joyous adventure, they had followed his lead. Now here they stood.
“There’s a great river yonder,” said Johnny, lifting his field glasses to his eyes. “Wouldn’t be surprised if it were the headwaters of the Yukon.”
“But look!” he exclaimed. “There’s something moving down there. Here, tell me what it is. It seems to be marooned on that little island in midstream. Water’s overflowing the ice. Water must be rising. May flood the island.”
The girl took the glasses and with steady gaze studied the spot he pointed out.
As for Gordon Duncan, he stood there erect, motionless, seeing all that lay before him, mountains, rivers, hills and valleys. He appeared to search for that which he did not see.
“Should be to the right down there,” he mumbled once. “Can it be that I have mistaken the pass? No. That could not be. Yet if it were there one would see a curl of smoke. It is growing dusk. Time for the evening meal.” He shaded his eyes to look again.
“There is something moving there,” the girl said to Johnny. “I can’t make out what it is. Might be caribou; might be Indians. Can’t tell. In the morning light we can tell.”
“Indians.” The thought gave Johnny a start. Even today in this wild out-of-the-way corner of the world, Indians were not to be trusted too far. In a fit of anger, in a moment of greed, they might kill. And who would be the wiser?
“We can’t camp here,” Johnny said as a cold wind, sweeping across the perpetual snow of the mountain side chilled him to the bone. “Have to go on down. May find a sheltering ledge.” He slung his pack over his shoulder, then motioned the older man to guide them on.
“The way is down,” Gordon Duncan said huskily. “That’s all I know. Young man, your foot is surer than mine. Lead on.”
So Johnny took up the task of trail blazer, and even as his eyes worked out a passage here and a detour there, his mind went back to that day when he first met Faye Duncan, the day on which they killed their first caribou. Woven with his thoughts of that which had happened then were wonders regarding the creatures moving about on the river island, and Gordon Duncan’s purpose in bringing them on this wild chase into the unknown.
An hour later in a sheltered nook they pitched their small tents and built a crackling fire of scrub fir trees. Over the fire they cooked the last of their goat’s meat, and boiled coffee.
After that for a time they sat over their crude table of rocks to stare away over the moonlit mountains. Johnny and the girl were wondering about many things. The great river, the island with living creatures moving upon it, their strange mission in this stranger land, all these came in for their share of perplexing thought.
It was quite wonderful as they sat there thinking of all that had gone before, and that which lay about them. On the far side was a storm, on the crest a wild tumult, but down here was quiet and peace.
There were no clouds. The moon came up. Everywhere were purple shadows, silent and deep. Not a breath of air stirred. Not a wild creature in all that land but appeared to be at rest.
“It’s like all of life,” Gordon Duncan said solemnly. “At times we find ourselves in the midst of terrible trouble, storms of life. We may have companions in these troubles, or they may be hidden away, our own secret troubles. In any case, it is quite wonderful to feel that about us, standing shoulder to shoulder with us, are friends ready at an instant’s notice to reach out a helping hand.
“Much of the meaning of life is just here.” His tone became more thoughtful. “Life, after all, is a storm and in a way the worst of storms, for many of us haven’t the faintest notion whither we are bound. One thing alone we know, we must struggle on. The one thing that makes the struggle far more than worth while is the splendid human companionship we enjoy while we are in the midst of the storm. As we travel on, it seems there is always a hand outstretched to guide us home.”
“A hand outstretched,” Faye said, thinking out loud. Before her mind’s vision she saw again the glistening slope down which she had been about to glide when Johnny seized her and drew her back.
“Back from what?” she asked herself.
As if in answer, Johnny said, “Look!”
Her eyes followed the direction of his arm. Then her cheeks went white.
The moon, rising higher and higher, had brought out the upper ridges of the mountain they had crossed. At the point where she had lost her footing and had been saved from a sudden plunge by the boy, the snow, blown over and beaten down by countless storms, had taken on the form of an inverted saucer. The edge of this great saucer hung more than a hundred feet over the edge of a gigantic precipice. From the outer rim of this snow saucer to the rocky ridges below was thousands of feet. The girl’s head whirled, her heart went sick at thought of that which she had escaped by so little. One second more of downward glide over that glistening saucer, and she would have been lost forever.
“An arm reaching out to one during the storms of life,” she said in a tone that was deep with emotion.
“Let’s not think of it,” said Johnny. “See how the moonlight plays on the river far below. It has painted a path of gold, a path that leads beyond doubt to home and the little cottage you love.”
“If you’ll excuse me,” he said a moment later, “I think I’ll take a stroll along the ledge. Sort of want—want to think a little.”
For a considerable distance the shelving rocky ledge led upward. Johnny followed it, to find himself at last standing upon a natural platform twenty feet square.
From this point the whole world seemed spread out before him in the moonlight. White stretches of snow, black piles of rock, gleaming ribbons of water that were creeks and rivers, all these he saw as in a dream.
Throwing back his shoulders, he took in three breaths of fresh air. A whirring of wings told that wild ducks were passing. Spring was here. And with spring a young man dreams of work, success, power. The life he had lived during the past few weeks seemed, as he looked at it now, quite purposeless.
He had been helping someone else solve mysteries and run down one or two for himself. But one who spends his life running down mysteries gets nowhere. One must think of his future. True, no one was dependent upon his earnings. Yet, sometime, someone was likely to be. He meant to have a home of his own. Money earned and saved paved the way to such a future.
“And yet—” He saw the face of Gordon Duncan, and the eager, anxious look of the girl who, without perhaps knowing it, had come to depend upon his wisdom, skill and strength.
“Huh!” he grunted. “What’s the good of having a purpose to your every act? What’s youth for if not for adventure?”
Turning his back upon the moon and the shimmering valley below, he went tramping back toward camp.
As he rounded a rocky point he came in sight of the cheery glow of their campfire. He saw a short cut back.
“Right over there,” he said to himself, “straight across that broad stretch of winter packed snow. What could be sweeter? I’ll use my bow as an Alpine staff. Not a bit of danger. Be there in no time.”
Having been raised on the plains, Johnny knew little of the mountains. The great broad bank of snow he was to cross, ten feet deep here, twenty there, was indeed hard packed by beating winter winds. But beneath it, forces of nature had long been at work. Little trickles of melted snow, working from pebble to pebble, had worn narrow beds beneath the bank. These tiny trickles had become rushing rivulets. The great snowbank, clinging there to the steep mountain side, was gradually being undermined.
Totally unconscious of all this, Johnny marched blithely along down the white incline.
Here the grade was steeper and he was obliged to move with care. There the surface was like a great broad pavement. Here he paused to admire the reflection of the moon in a dark pool of water, and there stood staring away at a wavering light far out and below.
“Might be on that river island. May be Indians,” he thought.
Faint and from some distance down came a disturbing sound. It was like some heavy body plunging down.
“What could that have been?” He quickened his pace.
Coming to a broad break in the snow, he gripped his bow securely and leaped the chasm.
Was it the shock of his landing that loosened the avalanche? Who can say? Enough that at this precise moment there came a solemn threatening rumble, and the boy felt himself moving downward.
With one last effort, he threw himself flat, gripped his bow, then committed his spirit to the great Father of all. The next instant the cutting of cold air across his face told him he was going down, down, down—to what?
This lasted for a space of seconds that seemed years. Then came a sudden shock; after that silence and darkness.
Faye Duncan and her grandfather, as was their custom before retiring for the night, were partaking of a cup of tea when the sudden thunder of the avalanche reached their ears. A serious, questioning look passed from the girl to her grandsire as they sprang to their feet. The glance was returned. Not a word was spoken.
As they stood there listening, intent, motionless, a swift cold breath of air fanned their cheeks, a thin film of snow gathered on their garments. That was all.
It was all over in a moment. Once more the vast silence of the wilderness at night settled about them.
Gordon Duncan was by nature a silent man. Suspense only served to deepen that silence. For a full hour he sat there beside his granddaughter while the firelight played across his immobile face.
“If he comes to-night,” he said at last, rising slowly, “he’ll be late. We’ll heap the fire high. It will serve as a beacon. We—we can look in the morning,” he added slowly. “By night the mountain is treacherous. Nothing is to be gained.”
Faye Duncan lay beneath her blankets a long time before sleep came. In her mind many questions revolved themselves like the turn of a heathen prayer wheel. Where was Johnny Longbow? Why did he not return? What was it that had brought them so far into the wilderness? An old man’s dream of treasure. Her grandfather had said it should be near here. Was it? Was their search to end so soon? Would Johnny return? If not, what then? What of those moving creatures on the river island?
“The river is rising,” she told herself. “Soon that low island will be flooded. They must leave it. If they are human beings, I hope they have a boat.”
Then a thought struck her all of a heap. Her grandfather would find in the need of these people, if need there was, a mission. Would this delay their search, their return? She hoped not. Of late the wilderness had seemed to be closing in upon her, shutting her from the world she had known. She longed for the return to their cozy cabin where the first snowdrops would be blooming and all the air fragrant with spring.
“But I must see this through,” she told herself stoutly. “One can not—”
Her thoughts broke off. Gordon Duncan was talking in his sleep.
“We found it together.” His words were distinct. “I was sure it was a great discovery. I urged him to help me bring it out. I talked of money, of the name he would have. But he would not listen. He was a recluse. He would not come. I went for food. He’s there still—out there in the hills alone. For long years I could not recall the way. But now I know. It all came to me there by the tree of the knife. I shall see him soon. He will still be there. He is a recluse—a recluse—he—” His voice trailed off into nothingness, and again the oppressive silence of the mountains brooded over all.
CHAPTER XVII
THE GIANT HUNCHBACK
Before she fell asleep that night Faye found herself wondering about many things. Why had her grandfather brought her so far into the white wilderness? Why had he not told her of the earlier chapters of his life? Who was the man of mystery, her grandfather’s friend of other days? What was the treasure he had babbled of in his sleep? Above all, her mind was troubled by the strange disappearance of Johnny Longbow. Had the avalanche swallowed him up? Had he slipped from some ice encrusted ledge? Had he fallen into the hands of unfriendly whites or Indians?
In the midst of all these puzzlings she fell into troubled sleep to dream of bleak mountains, rushing floods and wild Arctic storms.
Day was breaking when on awakening she struggled to an upright position to gaze wildly about her.
Realizing at last where she was, she took a moment for recalling that which had befallen them on the previous day, then sprang into action.
After a hasty toilet she kindled a fire and put coffee on to boil.
Next she took up Johnny’s light field glass, and walking to a point of vantage, began sweeping the horizon.
She was searching for some sign of their lost companion. The wide circling of her glass continued for a full three minutes. Then of a sudden, as her lips parted and her face became tense, the glass remained directed at one spot, far off in the river valley.
“Grandfather! Grandfather!” she exclaimed after ten tense seconds, “Wake up! There are people on that river island. They are marooned! The river is rising. The floods will reach them and sweep them away unless help comes. We must go!”
Gordon Duncan was now on his feet. Seizing the glass, he studied the situation for a moment, then said quietly:
“You are right. We must help them. At once!”
“But how?” said the girl. “We have no boat.”
“God will show us the way.”
Three minutes later, disregarding the water boiling for coffee, carrying only their bow and quiver of arrows apiece, they went racing down the mountain side.
The memory of that race will remain long with Faye Duncan. Slipping, sliding, now racing, now gliding and now creeping, they made their way downward. Now their path was a plateau, now a cliff, and now the bed of a boiling, rushing stream. Now they seemed about to send an avalanche sweeping down. And now, as they attempted to cross a turbulent torrent they appeared in greater danger than those whom they would rescue.
In the end they won the race, only to find themselves standing at the river’s brink with a hundred yards of rushing water between them and those whom they would save, and with no apparent means of rendering any aid.
“Well,” said the girl, “what next?”
“What indeed?” said Gordon Duncan, a look of despair coming over his face.
Had Faye chanced to have wakened from her sound sleep of the previous night at a time shortly after one in the morning; had the moonlight been bright enough and her glass strong enough to enable her to see clearly for the distance of a mile, she might have witnessed as strange a drama as ever was played upon the white stage of the North. As it was, only the eye of the All-Seeing One witnessed that which passed at the end of the great snow pile created by the avalanche Johnny Longbow’s foot had loosened.
By some strange bit of Providence the boy was not buried by the avalanche that had carried him down. He was struck on the head by a block of hard packed snow ice, and rendered unconscious. After that he was pitched and tumbled, knocked, bumped and beaten until his body was a mass of bruises. He was left at last, still unconscious and half dead, at the foot of the now silent, inanimate avalanche that had been his undoing.
At this hour two figures, approaching from opposite directions, came near to the unconscious boy. One was a great gaunt brown beast. The other, a short, squat, powerful figure, might at a moment’s notice have puzzled a skilled man of science. Was he man or beast? Was he an Indian of these wilds, or was he some giant ape escaped from captivity?
He wore clothes. This marked him for a man.
Truth was, the creature was a man. Yet so bent and twisted was his body, so bowed his crooked legs, so ugly and distorted his visage that one might have traveled America from end to end without meeting with another being such as he.
As his small eyes caught sight of the unconscious boy, they gleamed like twin stars. Johnny’s stout hand still gripped his bow. This strong bow was a prize in any land. How much more in a wilderness! Not less valuable was the quiver of arrows that lay nearby. And if he were dead? But then, too often in wild lands it matters little that one is not dead. If he were to be found helpless, this is enough to excuse robbery.
The curious deformed creature was bending over the boy when of a sudden his alert ear caught some slight sound, a scraping perhaps, or a sniffing breath. Looking up quickly, he found himself staring into the burning eyes of a great gaunt bear which had, beyond doubt, been disturbed from his hibernating sleep by the thundering avalanche.
Some form of grizzly, a silver-tip perhaps, this bear promised to be a formidable foe. At such a time of half stupor and intense hunger he must be doubly dangerous.
The Indian took one step backward. Then he paused. The next instant, with hands that were as powerful as man has known, and fingers as cunning, he wrenched the bow from the unconscious boy’s grasp and sent an arrow crashing into the gaunt beast’s side.
For a period of five minutes after that he stood motionless, watching the dying throes of the bear.
Then, with no apparent effort, he lifted the boy to a position of ease across his deformed shoulders, picked up the bow and arrows, and went marching away.
He tramped doggedly on for the better part of the night. Just as dawn was breaking he arrived at the door of a long, low, crudely built cabin. Depositing his burden by the door, he went inside.
* * * * * * * *
Faye Duncan and her grandfather watched the movements of the frightened natives on the little island for some time before anything like a solution of the problem offered itself to their minds.
That these people were natives they did not doubt. Whether they were savage or half civilized they did not for a moment question. They were human. That was enough. If a way offered, they must be saved.
Racing along beside the men were several dogs. Close to the water’s edge were well packed sleds. The constant rising of the water was shown by the fact that twice the sleds had to be drawn back.
“It’s a matter of an hour,” said Gordon Duncan. “Perhaps not that. What’s to be done?”
Suddenly the girl’s face lighted with a gleam of hope. Quickly drawing off her sweater that had protected her from many an Arctic gale, she did a strange thing. Having cut the end of a sleeve squarely off at the lower end to break the binding stitches, she began rapidly unraveling it and dropping the yarn in a loose pile upon the ground.
Not understanding at all, her grandfather stood watching in unfeigned astonishment.
When the entire sleeve became a mere coil of yarn on the earth, she looked away at the rushing flood.
She seemed to measure the distance with her eye. Apparently satisfied with the results, she suddenly took up her quiver, selected an arrow, then began tying one end of the yarn tightly about it.
Then Gordon Duncan understood.
“Good girl!” he murmured. “May God grant you success!”
Setting the arrow to her bow, the girl, aiming high, sent the arrow with the slender line attached speeding across the flood.
That the keen eyed natives on the opposite shore saw and, to an extent, understood, was shown by their sudden grouping beside a long pine that grew at the water’s brink.
“Fell short,” the girl murmured, a note of despair creeping into her voice.
The distance was greater than she thought. The arrow, having curved to the flood, dropped with a splash and being caught in the grip of dark waters, went speeding downstream.
Faye drew the stout yarn line in slowly. It was wet now, heavy. No use to make another try.
But Gordon Duncan carried in his veins the blood of the mighty Bruce. He was engaged in the business of unraveling Faye’s other sleeve.
“You’re a fine shot, Lass,” he rumbled, “but for a burst of power take an arm of old hickory like Gordon Duncan’s own.”
It was a great deal for the modest old man to say. That it was not too much was proven when, a moment later, his arrow, with the last available coil of yarn sailing fast and low, lost itself in the branches of the lone pine on the opposite shore. A shout of admiration and triumph came from the distant shore.
That the natives knew what was expected of them was soon shown. After a moment of wild scrambling in which dogs were trampled upon and sleds overturned, they began the business of tying together a long cord of their own. And this was of strong rawhide.
“If only the yarn holds,” Faye murmured breathlessly.
“Never fear,” said the old Scot. “’Twas a present to your mother from a French Canadian granny. Homespun from native wool it is. Nae bit o’ shoddy there!”
That the curious creature who had sent Johnny’s arrows crashing into the gaunt bear’s side, and so beyond doubt saved the boy’s life, had not carried him that distance to his own rude cabin without purpose, was shown the moment he arrived there. What that purpose might be remained locked within his own misshapen breast.
Having entered his cabin, he took down first a rude soapstone jar of water, and second a skin bottle half filled with some liquid.
After feeling the boy over carefully, possibly for broken bones, he sat up with a grunt of apparent satisfaction. He next poured the water over Johnny’s neck and bare shoulders. And now, with beady eyes searching for signs of life, he removed the wooden stopper from the leather bottle and poured a part of its contents down the boy’s throat.
What was this strange liquid? Native medicine, beyond doubt. Carefully selected leaves, stems, roots and bulbs, boiled over a slow fire perhaps. Who knows? That it was a potent drug one was soon enough to know. Two minutes had not passed before the boy groaned, moved, sat up, stared about him, then asked in a dazed fashion:
“Where am I?”
Without answering his question, if indeed he understood it at all, the brawny hunchback lifted him from the earth and, with greatest care, carried him inside to deposit him upon a litter of skins in the corner.
Of a sudden, as Gordon Duncan waited the results of the preparations that were going forward on the river island, his eyes wandered to the mountainside, and his gaze became transfixed.
“The cabin!” he exclaimed. “Timmie’s cabin! And smoke is coming from the chimney! He is still there! Still there!” At once he became greatly agitated.
“He is a recluse!” he went on rapidly. “A natural recluse, but a good man and a faithful companion. He once saved my life. And to think—” he drew his hand across his eyes, “to think that this moment of all those long years I am able to look upon that cabin again!”
He took a step forward as if to scale the mountain. But Faye tugged at his arm.
“The natives,” she insisted. “Without our aid they may perish.”
“Ah, yes.” He became calm. “I must wait. Our duty is always to do the greatest good to largest numbers. It’s God’s law. All things in His good time.”
Turning, he watched with ever increasing anxiety the preparations that were going forward on the little island across the waters.
CHAPTER XVIII
SAVED BY A LINE
Exactly a quarter of an hour, measured by Gordon Duncan’s large and ancient timepiece, elapsed before the natives on the island announced by a wild burst of shouting that they were ready for Gordon Duncan and Faye to haul away on the line of homespun yarn.
Faye found her heart beating wildly as she seized the slender line that spanned the rushing water. Well enough she knew that should this line fail them, a half score of lives must be lost.
“And life,” she told herself as her lips moved in silent prayer, “life is such a precious heritage.”
Slowly, steadily, they began to haul away. Moment by moment the tug on that slender line grew stronger.
Now as the current rising in mad fury redoubled its efforts to defeat them, it seemed that surely the slender line must snap.
“It—it’s like landing a great trout,” the girl told herself.
And now, just as it seemed the line must break, the rush subsided. Hauling away with a will they at last gave forth an exultant shout. Gordon Duncan’s hand gripped the end of the stout rawhide rope that now spanned the flood.
“We have won, child! We have won!” he panted.
But had they? There was much work yet to be done. A stout line now connected them with the imperiled ones. How would these work out their salvation?
Gordon Duncan dragged the line to a stout tree and fastened it securely there. This done, his work for the time was over.
It will not seem strange that his eyes wandered once more to that mysterious cabin that had, beyond doubt, at one time been his home. Hardly had he done this than he leaped to his feet with a wild exclamation on his lips:
“He’s leaving! He—he—he’s running away!”
This seemed true. Certainly a tall, fur clad man, driving four huge wolfhounds hitched to a long sled, left the cabin and was now racing along a narrow plateau at top speed. And ever as he ran, he appeared to urge his dogs to greater effort.
“He’s leaving!” Gordon Duncan said more quietly. “He’s running away, and he has the treasure on his sled. You don’t think—” He turned troubled, questioning eyes on his granddaughter. “You don’t believe Timmie’d run away with the green gold?”
“No,” said the girl without knowing why, “No, I don’t think he would. He probably does not know you are Gordon Duncan.”