“Unless it is the years. Man’s mind is queer,” said Gordon Duncan. “God knew best when he said, ‘It is not well for man to dwell alone.’”
“But see!” the girl exclaimed suddenly. She pointed across the flood.
A strange procession was taking off from the distant shore. Three dog teams drawing three loaded sleds, lashed one before the other, went fearlessly into the flood. Clinging to the sleds were ten or more human beings, men, women and children.
“Bravo!” exclaimed Gordon Duncan. “They will win yet. They can’t swim. No matter. Their dogs can. They will cling to the sleds. The rawhide line will save them from the terrible flood and land them safely on this shore.”
“But come on!” the girl shouted. “We must be downstream to help them.”
She sped downstream, closely followed by her sturdy grandfather whose eyes ever and anon looked longingly away to the spot where the team of great gray dogs was fast disappearing.
As for Faye, her thoughts were all for the little brown people who had put so boldly out into the racing white waters with only a slender cord to save them from certain destruction.
As the teams and sleds with their clinging human freight were caught by the flood, they swung squarely about, facing upstream. It was then that the little brown huskies proved themselves true heroes. Beaten back, carried off their feet, buffeted at, half drowned by the racing torrent, these dogs kept their small feet going at a feverish rate.
Had it not been for these many pairs of little brown feet, each doing its bit, there can be no doubt but that the rawhide rope must have snapped. As it was, it held and like a great pendulum, dogs, sleds, men and cord swung slowly, surely across the racing peril.
Faye’s heart stood still as, pausing at the point where they must arrive, if indeed they were to arrive at all, she caught the slow sweep that was bearing them on.
Would they make it? Could they? Would the little brown beasts give up in despair? Would the rope part?
Now they were a quarter way across, and now a half. Here at the very heart of the torrent, they appeared to hang suspended.
“They do not move,” she breathed.
And yet, yes, yes, they must be moving. A tree on the opposite bank, hidden ten seconds before, was visible now.
Of a sudden fresh peril appeared. Beneath the water was winter ice that had not yet thawed. Loosing its grip, a broad cake of this rose suddenly to the surface. Twenty yards above the drifting band it appeared about to ram them, to snap their support, to overturn their sleds and send them to the bottom.
But again, as if an invisible hand had reached down to shove them forward, the pendulum swung faster. The ice, missing them, raced harmlessly on.
A moment later Faye was lifting a laughing brown child from his mother’s arms, and a joyous group of nomad people were clambering up the shelving bank to safety.
Faye’s joy knew no bounds. They had been instrumental, with God’s help, in saving a half score of lives. While Gordon Duncan shared quietly in her joy, his heart was in the hills. His eyes followed the trail over which the four great dogs and their white bearded master had vanished.
Sensing all this, Faye resolved at once to enlist their new-found friends in a fresh endeavor to come up with her Grandfather’s former companion, and so to solve that which for her had become a great mystery.
“But first,” she told herself, with a fresh pang of pain throbbing at her heartstrings, “we must try to find some trace of Johnny Longbow.”
The little brown people they had saved proved to be Indians from the land of Little Sticks. In their search for food they had been forced farther and farther north until they came to the upper reaches of the mighty Yukon. Having killed three caribou, they had found their needs supplied for the moment. This was enough. They had pitched their tents on the little island. As they rested before the long journey back to their accustomed hunting grounds, they had been caught unawares by the flood.
Always a wandering people, ever grateful for kindness, they were ready for any undertaking or adventure. There was still a supply of caribou meat on their sleds. What next should be done?
To the one member of their company who could understand English, Faye explained the curious circumstances that had brought them so far north. She told also of the misadventure that apparently had befallen their traveling companion.
No sooner was a simple meal of stewed meat and tea over than the entire company spread out fan-shape in a search for the lost boy.
Four o’clock found them returning to camp one by one with reports of failure. Only one clue was brought to light. The three men of the Indian party returned bearing on their shoulders great pieces of bear meat. This bear, they explained, had been slain with a bow and arrow. They produced the arrow as proof. And they explained further with many a strange exclamation that the man who shot the arrow was the most powerful giant that ever lived. No Eskimo, no Indian, no white man they had ever known pulled a bow with such a force and power. They felt quite sure he must be some strange spirit being, not human at all.
“It is Johnny’s arrow,” said Faye at once. “But he was possessed of no such strength. Who could have shot the arrow?”
She suggested the aged recluse, but Gordon Duncan shook his head.
“He was a rather frail man. Now he is old. It is impossible.”
Here, then, was fresh mystery.
“We can do no more for Johnny Longbow,” said Gordon Duncan. “He is in another’s hands. To-morrow we will follow the trail of my ancient friend. Since this is true it is well that I tell you something of that which befell me on this very mountain many years ago.”
Dropping upon one of the Indians’ deerskins, Faye awaited eagerly the strange story which she believed was at last to be unfolded.
Gordon Duncan was slow in beginning. The girl’s heart was sore. It is little wonder that her mind should return to thoughts of her brave young companion and his tragic disappearance.
“Grandfather,” she said suddenly, “God is cruel.”
Knowing full well that she was seeing in her mind’s eye the tumbled heaps of snow, earth and rock piled up by the avalanche, Gordon Duncan spoke quietly.
“You are thinking of God as if he were all nature.
“God is not nature, and nature is not God. I think there can be no doubt but that God often works through nature to do His will. Perhaps no man living knows precisely God’s relation to nature. Of one thing we may rest assured, whatever God does through nature is sure to be just and kind.”
A hush settled over the mountain and something whispered to the girl that all would be well. So, once more in perfect calm, she settled back to await Gordon Duncan’s story.
In the meantime, in a far away cabin, still weak from his terrible experience, Johnny Longbow lay upon a bed of skins and watched a creature of prodigious strength and surpassing ugliness boil a pot of broth over a fire in a crude hearth set up in one corner of the cabin.
“Where am I?” he asked himself. “What has happened to me? Where are my friends? What is to become of me?”
To none of these questions did he find a satisfactory answer, so once more he gave himself over to thoughts of his strange host.
“This,” he told himself, “is the being we have called the great banshee.” A thrill coursed up his spine at the thought. Had other evidence been lacking, the size and shape of the man’s feet would be proof enough.
“They’d fit those tracks we have been seeing to perfection,” he told himself.
Truth was, the creature’s feet were so deformed and long as to suggest that a second foreleg which bent forward had taken the place of a foot.
Long and anxiously Johnny studied this strange being. That he was human there could be no question. Was he Eskimo, Indian or white man? There was something of all these in him. His skin was the brownish copper of an Indian. He dressed like an Eskimo. Yet he was a giant of a man in spite of his deformity.
“Were he able to stand erect as other men do, he would measure six feet six,” Johnny said to himself. “Who ever heard of an Eskimo that size?”
Once more he took to studying the man, his face, his actions.
“He seems bright enough and that stuff he’s boiling smells good,” he mused. “Hope he gives me some. Wonder how he lives? Hunting, I suppose. But what weapons?”
As if reading his thoughts, the hunchback stepped to a dark corner and brought forth two bows.
One Johnny recognized at once as his own.
“That’s fine,” he told himself. “When I am strong enough to leave this place I won’t starve at once. Shows some intelligence, his saving my bow for me.” His joy in this matter was destined to be short lived.
But now his eyes fell on the other bow.
“A back breaker,” he told himself. “Never saw such a bow. Must take a pull of eighty-five, perhaps a hundred pounds to shoot it. Man, Oh, man!” His knowledge of the hunchback’s powers was growing. Nor was it lessened when this strange man nocked an arrow fully thirty-six inches in length and, with the greatest ease, drew his bow to send the arrow crashing into the opposite wall.
The next move sent consternation into the boy’s heart. Seizing Johnny’s fifty pound yew bow, the hunchback picked up a second arrow of the same length and nocked it for a shot.
Now Johnny used twenty-eight inch arrows. To bend his bow for a thirty-six inch arrow was to court disaster. His mouth opened in a cry of alarm. But too late. The iron arm of his curious host drew back. For the fraction of a second the bow stood the strain, then, just as the arrow sped, there came a rending crash, and the bow broke.
Standing there, dazed, with the two fragments of the bow still in his hand, the giant hunchback, as if expecting an explanation to this startling affair, stared stupidly about him.
Of a sudden, dropping the shattered bow, he seized his own bow and, pointing at it, began jabbering in a tongue which Johnny understood not at all.
What he did understand was that the hunchback considered his own bow a very superior affair, and Johnny’s little more than a toy.
“Well, that puts a long question mark after the probability of my getting out of this land,” Johnny told himself.
“In the meantime,” he thought a moment later, “how about a little stew?”
He made some motions as of eating. The hunchback understood. Soon, like friends of long standing, they were eating out of a single huge wooden bowl.
There was little enough ceremony about this meal. With their fingers they took dripping morsels from the stew and ate them so. Ptarmigan and rabbit meat with some dried roots and seeds of native growth had gone into the stew. Yet Johnny thought he had not tasted a better one. When only the thick broth was left, they took turns at tipping up the bowl and drinking from its rim.
“It’s a curious world,” Johnny told himself, “a very strange and startling world. I wonder what is to become of me now?”
As he looked about the rude shelter he saw no signs of a food store. “My bow is broken,” he told himself. “Without this queer creature’s aid I shall starve.”
At that he forgot his troubles in watching the hunchback. He was beating his breast and repeating over and over, “Omnakok! Omnakok! Omnakok!”
“Perhaps he’s trying to tell me his name,” the boy thought. At this he pointed at the hunchback and said:
“Omnakok.”
The face of this queer being expanded in a crooked grimace which Johnny took to be a smile. Then, turning about, he took down a heavy slab of wood. Having grasped a sharp instrument similar to a carpenter’s drawshave, he began making the shavings fly.
“What now?” thought Johnny, as he dropped back to his place among the skins in the corner.
CHAPTER XIX
GORDON DUNCAN’S STORY
“It was years back, so many I have fairly lost track.” Gordon Duncan’s tone was deep and vibrant with emotion as he began his story of a recluse companion and the treasure of green gold. “There had been some discoveries of gold back of the Beyond among the hills and I went. I was younger then. Went alone. That was my way.
“I met with great misfortune. I found no gold. Food was scarce. I knew little of the longbow in those days. In making a try for a mountain goat, I fell over a ledge and broke a leg.
“I might have died there like some maimed wild creature, had it not been for him.” His eyes wandered to the mountain side, to the lone cabin and the trail that led away and away.
“He was a recluse then, but a kindly soul. He found me, carried me to his cabin and cared for me.
“When I was well, he hunted for us both. It was he who taught me to prize the longbow and arrow.
“In time I grew proficient in the use of these primitive weapons. Then, like him, I wandered far in search of food.
“It was on one of these hunting trips that I came upon a strange sort of grotto in the side of a cliff. There were ashes of a long burned out campfire near the entrance. My curiosity was aroused by this. Making a rude torch of dry willow twigs, I lighted my way back a hundred feet or more.
“There on a ledge, half buried in dust, I found some curious objects.
“‘Copper,’ I said at once. ‘Not worth much. Take some back for souvenirs.’
“I chose a crudely formed lamp for burning tallow, and a rudely fashioned bowl.
“But how heavy they were! I had not seen such copper before.
“I carried them to our cabin and set them upon the hand-hewn table. When Timmie returned, with half a caribou slung across his back, he looked at my find with interest.
“Once he had lifted them he became excited. Questions came thick and fast. Where had I found them? Was it far? Were there many such? How his words flew!
“‘Why?’ I asked at last. ‘They are only copper. There is no want of copper here; whole boulders of it in the beds of streams.’
“‘Copper!’ he exclaimed. ‘Copper! That’s not copper. Haven’t you lifted them? They’re made of green gold.’
“Green gold! I thought he was mad. But he was not.” Again Gordon Duncan’s eyes wandered to the hills. “He was sane enough. He’d had a course in such things at some University; worked in a jeweler’s place, too. Seems they mix some copper with gold. The result is a greenish combination called green gold.
“And there you are.” His words became deeply reminiscent. “I had been hunting gold for months, digging here, panning dirt there, but when I did find gold I needed neither pick nor pan. And I didn’t know it was gold.
“The next day we made three trips to that cave. Each time we brought back all the green gold we could carry. That cave must have been a goldsmith shop of some ancient tribe. Every nook and cranny was crowded with green gold.
“‘All we have to do now,’ I said, ‘is to take this out to civilization. We are rich.’
“‘Civilization?’ Timmie said, his eyes dreamy with thoughts of wide open spaces, ‘Who wants to go back to that?’ You see he was a born recluse. ‘Besides,’ he went on, ‘there’s the gold mine. We must find that.’
“Well, up to that time I hadn’t once thought of the mine from which this gold had been taken. But from that moment the finding of that mine became an obsession with both of us.
“We thought of nothing else until an unusually heavy snowfall drove all game away and left us facing starvation.
“I wanted him to come away then.” Once more Gordon Duncan’s tone was mellow with memories. “He wouldn’t come; but told me to go, to return with fairer weather, and carry away my share of the treasure.
“It was a hard trek back. I was lost many times. Then I went snow blind. Before my sight was gone I drove my knife in the tree, as you saw it back there.
“‘I’ll find that and be able to make my way back,’ I told myself.
“But I never did, until just the other day. I reached the shelter of civilization more dead than alive. My sight was a year coming back. Then all memory of trails was gone.
“Not until I saw that knife in the tree did it all come back to me. And now,” he said sadly, “he is gone!”
“We must follow,” said the girl. Her voice was husky.
“Yes, we must follow, not for the green gold, but for him,” said Gordon Duncan.
“I have learned since,” said the old man, after a long silence, “that those strange implements, dishes and ornaments, coming as they do from the long lost past, are worth many times their weight in yellow gold.
“It is this that I would tell him, and that it is not good for him to live alone; that in the end disaster must befall him here, just as it did to the lone moose back there in our native forest.”
Faye found herself greatly impressed by her grandfather’s story. She was as puzzled as he by the actions of the recluse, and as eager to follow his trail. Only one thought dampened her ardor. Every mile that led away from this mountain seemed to lessen their hopes of ever seeing Johnny Longbow again. Yet fate is often very strange.
She slept well that night, and woke early, to find herself on tiptoe, filled with a desire to be away. To their great joy they found their new found Indian friends eager to join them.
“Their dogs will be of great service in following the trail,” said Gordon Duncan as he hurried through final preparations for what, they both felt, was to be a long and dangerous march.
Dangerous indeed it proved in the end.
Dawn found Gordon Duncan and his granddaughter with two of the Indian men and their best dog team on the up-bound trail. The Indian women and children remained behind. They had a supply of food. Caribou would soon be trekking northward. The air would be full of wild fowl, geese, ducks, swans, cranes. Spring was on the way. They would not want.
For the first hour and a half of the journey the native dog-team lagged. They must be urged forward. But, of a sudden, as they reached a higher level, they put their noses to the earth, sniffed two or three times, then went straight away at a brisk trot.
“Good!” said Gordon Duncan as a satisfied smile overspread his wrinkled face. “They have found Timmie’s trail.” He always spoke of the recluse as Timmie, the only name he had known him by. “Now they will not pause nor lag until they have come up with him.”
All day they followed the team. Spring surely was coming. They saw it in little rushing streams. They smelled it in the moisture that rose from the rocky ledges. They heard it in the honking of the first flock of wild geese.
But the signs of spring only saddened Faye Duncan. “Spring means life,” she thought, “renewed life. And poor Johnny Longbow who came with us so far, who in such an unselfish way gave up his own plans to aid Grandfather in the realization of his life’s dearest dream, lies beneath the eternal snows.”
But did he? She could not be sure. She dared hope, for was not his arrow found piercing the carcass of that monstrous bear? If his arrow had escaped had not he? Who could have shot that arrow?
To this question she found no answer. Of one thing she was certain—if Johnny Longbow were free to come to them he would be at her side. Her heart swelled with undefinable emotion at the thought.
Still they traveled on. Over a ledge, down a ravine, across a plateau, the trail led.
At times they caught glimpses of the river, a bright blue ribbon, far below.
In places the river was white. This meant that ice had risen to the surface.
“Soon go out, that one ice,” said the Indian who spoke English. “Then, whooee! Big splash, big rush, plenty noise!”
Faye found herself hoping that they might be within sight of the river when the breakup came. That was one of Nature’s dramas she had long desired to see.
Just at sunset the dog team plunged down a steep embankment and piled up, sled and all, forty feet below.
From that time until dark they went down. Down, down, down the trail ran until, as camping time came, they were surprised to find themselves in a narrow valley on a level with the river.
“Can he be mad enough to take to the river?” Gordon Duncan asked.
“Surely not,” Faye answered.
Gordon Duncan shook his head.
As for the Indians, they looked from Gordon Duncan to the girl, then back to Duncan again. Whatever thoughts passed through their primitive minds remained unexpressed.
CHAPTER XX
ADRIFT IN THE NIGHT
The ways of the savage and the highly civilized man are vastly different. One is tempted to believe at times that the savage has the better end of the bargain. Civilized man, from the time he enters school at six or seven, until he is able to work no longer because of old age, rises at a certain time each morning, goes at a stated hour to an appointed place, stays a specified number of hours for study or work, then returns to his home. This program is seldom varied.
The savage has no program. He rises one morning, comes upon the track of game, begins a hunt that may lead him far and consume two days and a night. The game at last run down and captured, he eats, then lies down to sleep while the sun goes round the earth and returns to shine again. Waking, he eats again. Then finding that some part of his hunting tog requires attention, he consumes unlimited hours on the task.
It was so with Omnakok, the hunchback. Johnny, lying propped up among the deer skins, watched him shaving away at the slab of tough wood for two hours before he realized what he was about.
“He’s making a bow,” he told himself, “a bow, that’s it. Wonder what sort of wood it is?”
To this question he could find no answer. Many strange woods were found here. Besides, it is known that trade between the strange northern tribes extends over thousands of miles.
“May have come from Russia or Greenland,” he told himself.
When his bumps and bruises began to make themselves felt and his eyes grew heavy he dropped back among the deer skins and, entrusting himself to the One who notes the sparrow’s fall, passed into the land of dreams.
When he awoke, several hours later, the bow was fully fashioned but still the hunchback stood bending over it.
“He’s backing it with some tissue,” the boy told himself. “I know. It’s reindeer sinew. I’ve heard of that. A bow so backed will never crack.”
Then a thought struck him all of a heap.
“He’s making that bow for me!” His heart gave a great leap. Perhaps no boy in all the world ever felt such real joy over prospects of a new bow.
That it was intended for him he could not doubt for, though made on the same lines and in the identical manner of Omnakok’s own, it was much lighter.
“Fifty pounds, perhaps sixty,” he told himself. “How well he has judged my strength.”
Sitting up, he felt his bumps. “Not so bad. Guess I could walk.” He stood up, took a few steps, made a wry face, rubbed his legs, took a few more steps, then gave vent to a low laugh. He was getting fit; be able to travel soon.
Having placed the damp sinew, well mixed with fish glue, at the back of the bow, Omnakok placed the bow before the fire, then dropping into a corner, with legs crossed and long arms hanging down, he fell asleep.
On tiptoe Johnny wandered from corner to corner of the cabin. He had been right. There was no food. The hunchback had shared his last meal.
“Some old sport,” he thought. “Not so bad for a savage.”
“When he wakes,” he told himself, “my new bow will be dry. Then we will go for a hunt. Wonder what the game will be like?”
Had he known he surely must have shuddered. Had he known what was happening to his good pal Faye Duncan, he must have rushed from the cabin in a mad desire to reach her side and bring her aid. Knowing none of these things, he replenished the fire, then sat down patiently to wait the next move on the strange checkerboard of life.
Faye Duncan and her grandfather had joined the Indians in a meal of stewed bear meat. Gordon Duncan had taken his place by the fire for his evening nap, when Tico, who had been sleeping with nose on paws, suddenly rose to sniff the air, then to go away into the night.
Her fear of the unknown overcome by curiosity, the girl followed him. They had not gone a hundred paces before they came to a trail in the snow. Many hours old, even distorted as they were by the melting of the snow, the footprints were unmistakable.
“The—the great banshee!” the girl whispered under her breath.
As for the dog, he lifted up his voice in a howl which was an unmistakable plaint for a lost friend. Little wonder. The trail had been made by the hunchback as he had carried Johnny to his cabin.
Having completed his dirge of the night, Tico, nose to the snow, went trotting away.
“He’s on the trail of the great banshee!” The girl gripped her breast to still her heart’s wild beating. “Sha—shall I follow? Dare I?”
She answered her own question by again taking up the trail.
A quarter mile farther on, she came to that which made her start and stare. A little to one side of the trail, a dark spot stood out against the whiteness of the earth’s snow blanket.
“A—a mitten,” she said, picking it up. “It, why it—” again she strove in vain to still her heart. “It’s Johnny’s!”
Who can say what wild thoughts surged through her breast as she stood there in the snow beneath the starry heavens, alone in a vast hostile wilderness?
Whatever they may have been, they at last urged her on at redoubled speed. So, half walking, half running, she came at last to the brink of the river. And there catastrophe befell her.
At this point on his long journey the hunchback had descended a sloping bank of snow to travel for a time upon the river’s ice which was still frozen to the bank. Since his passing, the ice had broken away. Many yards of his trail had gone floating downstream.
Knowing nothing of this, the girl tried in vain to discover the way he had gone.
“He can’t have taken to the river,” she told herself. “Still, there may have been a boat. There—”
In leaning over the bank for a better look, she loosened the undermined mass of snow and together they plunged into the racing river.
“It’s the end,” she told herself in despair as she felt the sting of icy water. “No one can live in such a torrent.”
But what was this? Something touched her cheek. It was Tico. Seeing his mistress adrift, he had plunged boldly in, determined to live or die with her.
“Good old Tico!” Her voice choked. “We’ll die fighting.”
At that she put forth all her strength in an effort to regain the bank.
“But what’s the use?” she thought. “It’s only a steep bank of snow. No one could scale it.”
With that thought, hoping against hope that something might come her way, a log, a snag, an overhanging tree, she gave herself over to drifting and quiet strokes that kept her afloat.
CHAPTER XXI
THE BATTLE OF THE BEARS
Much sooner than Johnny expected, the hunchback awoke. Perhaps the pangs of hunger were making themselves felt. Be that as it may, the night was not half gone when, each armed with a stout bow and a quiver of arrows, they stole out into the vivid moonlight.
“Night hunting,” Johnny thought. “Wonder what sort of game will be afoot at such an hour? Have to be large. Can’t see well enough for snowshoe rabbit or ptarmigan.”
He was soon enough to know.
* * * * * * * *
As Faye drifted rapidly downstream, now threatened by floating fragments of ice, and now caught and whirled around by mad swirls of racing water, she expected every moment to reach the end of life. So long, however, as the faithful Tico swam at her side she could not give up hope. So, with the moon painting a mocking golden path to shore and all the starry reflections dancing about her, she drifted on.
But what was this? Something cut her face. Another. This time came a stinging blow. Putting up a hand to protect herself, she grasped something and held on for a second.
“Willows,” she told herself. “Overhanging willows. There’s a chance—”
Again her hand went up. At once it was struck a glancing blow.
“Oh—Oo!” The pain in her wrist for the moment was intense, yet she persevered. The next attempt was better. Arrested in her mad flight, she swung round and hung there for a second. Once more her hold was broken. Not however until her other hand had gone up. Before the current had gotten her under way, she had gripped a stouter, stiffer branch. With a supreme effort she threw herself half out of the water to grasp the branch with her free hand.
The branch was strong. It held her half free from the water. Another struggle and she was astride the branch. At once the branch was submerged. But riding so, she was able to look about her and to catch a few fleeting thoughts as to how the affair would end.
The branch, she discovered, had swung in quite close to shore. There was a rim of ice before her, but by working her way down the branch she could reach a position close to other and stronger branches.
“I’ll get hold of those and swing up,” she said aloud.
To her surprise she caught an answering sound.
“Tico!” she called as she caught the dog’s encouraging woof.
By the moonlight she made out his form, dancing on the shore. How had he made it? She was astonished. But leave it to a dog!
Ten minutes of heart-breaking struggle and her hands gripped a stronger branch. Even this dipped low, leaving her only abreast of the ridge of ice. With one hand she gripped the slippery surface. For a second she held on, then all but plunged head foremost into the tide.
“I must!” she told herself. “It’s my chance. My strength is leaving me.”
Once more she threw herself forward. This time as she felt herself slipping back she was seized by the collar of her stout mackinaw and pulled like a rag doll, up, up, up until she lay flat on the ice, completely exhausted, but safe.
“Good old Tico!” she breathed faintly. “Good Tico!”
The dog licked her cold cheeks.
When strength returned, she crept forward until she found herself on a bank of soft snow. There she stood up and looked about her. Matters did not seem much improved. She was on a narrow island in the midst of the river. The night was cold. It had been thawing during the day. Now it was freezing.
“Got—got to get these things off.” Her teeth were chattering.
Struggling with her sodden garments, she got them off one by one and, after wringing them out, hung them on the willows. At last, quite undressed, she danced about and beat off the dampness that still clung to her. Such garments as could be managed under the condition she drew on again.
As her hand touched the pocket of her mackinaw she felt something hard.
“Matches,” she laughed in spite of her despair. “And yet—”
It was a little wooden box of sulphur matches such as are used in the North. They had been wrapped in oiled cloth.
“Might be a chance,” she told Tico solemnly. “Nothing like hoping.”
After drying her hands on some dead willow leaves that still clung to the branches, she carefully unwrapped the little box.
“Seems dry.” Her heart beat faster.
With elaborate care she gathered willow leaves and small dry twigs, then laid on larger branches.
“If it works, Tico! If it only does!”
The first tiny match turned blue, sent up sulphurous fumes and went out. The second did the same. Hope was ebbing when the blue of the third match turned to red and the dry leaves were kindled.
“Whoops! Whoopee!” the girl shouted, dancing up and down. “We win! We win!”
So they did. Fifteen minutes later a roaring flame was mounting toward the sky. Dry leaves and green willows make a hot fire.
Before this fire, turning round and round like a top, was the girl, while on willow branches, close as she dared have them, were her steaming garments.
Johnny Longbow saw the light of that fire against the sky, but a hill lay between him and the river. He believed the reflection to be a display of Northern Lights.
They were hunting, he and the hunchback, when he saw that light. A moment after he saw it the hunchback showed him that which set his blood racing and drove all thoughts of the light out of his head.
It was strange, this hunting in the moonlight—strange and a bit uncanny. From over the silver crested hills, the moon shone upon them. Shadows black as ink were all about them. Every little depression in the snow seemed a deep well of mystery. Beneath their feet the snow, softened as it had been by the day’s thaw, gave forth not the slightest sound.
So, with bows unstrung and quivers swinging at their sides, they advanced upon a low hill. Mounting this, they dropped down upon the other side.
They were half way down the slope when the hunchback, stopping dead in his tracks, braced his bow and nocked an arrow. He stood there, a grotesque statue in the moonlight.
“What has he seen?” the boy asked himself. Then, without knowing the reason for it, he put the lower end of his bow against his instep and bent it. After that he selected a broadhead from his quiver. Still he saw nothing, heard nothing.
“It’s strange,” he thought, “Strange and—”
His thoughts broke short off. Down in the center of the valley, not fifty yards before them where the shadow of the hill plunged all in midnight blackness, something had stirred. After that had come a grunt.
“Like a pig,” Johnny thought. “But of course—”
Again his thoughts broke off. A head had risen above the shadow line, a great grizzly head with a red, lolling tongue. This was no pig.
One instant it was there, the next it was gone. But the boy had seen enough to set his heart racing. Squatting down with one knee on the snow, he swung his bow into place and waited.
He had not long to wait. The creature, a great northern grizzly bear, was moving now. She was coming out of the shadows. Johnny’s breath came hard as he saw the size of her. His heart stopped beating altogether when he realized that she was leading two half grown cubs.
“Bows and arrows,” he thought. Never had they seemed such frail weapons as now, yet he was prepared to do his best.
As these thoughts passed through his mind, the three bears moved out into the field of light.
Johnny felt a light pressure on his arm. He understood. They were to shoot. Once more his heart raced. Yet his hand was steady as he drew his bow. By instinct he seemed to understand that he was to shoot at the larger of the two cubs. The hunchback would aim at the great beast’s heart.
“Here’s hoping!” Johnny’s whole body stiffened. His arrow flew, and with it another.
In an instant there was tumult in the bears’ camp. Having neither seen nor smelled their enemies, both the cubs and the old one blamed his companion for the pain that had leaped upon them from the dark. At once they fell upon one another. Such growling and roaring, such cuffing and scratching Johnny had not known in his life.
It was all so ludicrous that he wanted to roll in the snow with laughter. Yet there was a more serious side. Neither of the bears had received a mortal wound. Tumbling about as they were now, there was little chance for a good shot. How long would it be before they discovered their mistake and came charging up the hill? Nocking a second arrow, he awaited the next turn of events.
* * * * * * * *
From her island fastness Faye Duncan heard the noise of battle, and shuddered. Growling savagely, the dog marched back and forth in the snow. But neither girl nor dog knew what it was all about.
One thought was uppermost in the girl’s mind. She must get off the island and rejoin her companions. But how was this to be done? She had saved her Indian friends from a similar predicament, but now there was no yarn to bring a rawhide rope to her. Besides, the rope was now far back in the camp of women and children.
A little ice was passing. Mere fragments, these would not support her weight. She was interested to note, however, that swinging round a sharp bend, the current brought these fragments very near the bank.
“If only they were large enough to support my weight!” she thought.
But the fire was burning low. The night chill was creeping in. Her clothing was not yet dry.
* * * * * * * *
“More wood,” she thought as she twisted away at a tough willow branch.
In the meantime the battle of bears was slowing down. Seeing an opening, the hunchback sent a second arrow crashing into the ribs of the old grizzly. Was it this arrow that suggested a foe from without? As the bear’s great head turned about, the bristle hair on her neck and shoulders began to rise.
Johnny saw it as in a dream. He woke from the dream with a start when the grizzly, at a pace not exceeded by the fastest horse, charged straight up the hill.
For this the hunchback was prepared. He had lain five of his best arrows, tipped with points of volcanic glass, side by side in the snow. Now, as if shot from some new form of repeating blowgun, one by one these arrows went crashing into the charging monster.
As for Johnny, his usually alert mind seemed frozen. Only after the hunchback’s third arrow had found its mark with the beast still plowing forward did he get into action. Then, realizing that his arrow, a good broadhead with razor edge, was in place, he wondered where to aim.