There was no time to be lost. Instinctively he picked the beast’s lolling red mouth. Twang! The arrow sped. The next instant, to his vast astonishment, he saw the beast rear high, utter one wild roar and drop backward dead.
Three shots from the hunchback’s bow silenced the two younger bears forever. Then it was time for investigation. The arrow that Johnny shot had entered the bear’s mouth, had pierced the thin bone at the top and had entered the brain.
As the hunchback realized this, he turned and looked at Johnny. A smile overspread his face and he patted the boy clumsily on the shoulder.
After that, leaving the old bear where she lay, he partially skinned one of the cubs and, after slinging a good hundred pounds of meat across his shoulder, beckoned the boy to follow.
CHAPTER XXII
THE HUNCHBACK LEADS ON
Someone else saw the light of Faye’s fire against the sky. Sitting crosslegged on their deerskins, the two Indians squinted at it for a time in stolid silence. After that a few guttural exclamations passed between them. Then, having drawn their moccasins on, they hurried away down the river, leaving Gordon Duncan asleep by the fire.
What words had they spoken? Had they judged the girl too long gone from camp? Did they fear for her safety? Or did they suspect a hostile encampment?
Whatever it may have been, they traveled rapidly. Passing through a clump of pine trees they chose two hard knots, then hurried on. By the time they came within sight of the island Faye’s clothes were dry. She had donned them again, and might be seen moving about replenishing the fire. Accustomed as they were to accurate observation of living things at a distance, the Indians had no trouble in recognizing her.
At once they lighted their torches. The girl saw, and her heart leaped with joy. Her plight had been discovered. Here was hope.
Noting that the ice fragments that drifted by were growing larger, she endeavored to calculate the possibility of riding one to safety.
“Won’t do,” she told Tico. “Not yet.”
* * * * * * * *
Though Johnny Longbow had seen the light of his good friend’s fire, and she in turn had heard the noise of his battle with the bears, morning was destined to find them once more far apart. To Johnny’s great surprise the hunchback, after replenishing their larder, did not lead the way back to the cabin where they had last slept.
Instead he struck away across the hills. When they had traveled for the greater part of an hour and had come to a barren and rocky dry ravine, he piled a heap of large stones in the form of a rude oven. Beneath this he kindled a fire and roasted meat.
After giving Johnny a liberal supply of bear meat and devouring great quantities himself, he again took up his burden and led away over other hills.
“How is this all to end?” Johnny asked himself. “It doesn’t much matter where we go. I haven’t the slightest notion which direction would lead me to my friends.”
That the hunchback was pleased with him was shown by his actions as they paused now and then to rest. At such times he went through the motions of a charging bear. Opening his mouth wide he acted a pantomime of receiving a mortal wound in the mouth, and falling backward dead. These actions were followed by loud laughter.
“This,” Johnny told himself, “probably indicates approval.”
He was not the least bit displeased that the hunchback held a friendly feeling for him; yet he was led to wonder many times and how long he was to wander and how the affair was to end.
* * * * * * * *
Faye’s escape from her island was less dramatic than that of the Indians she had saved. As she waited, a surprisingly large cake of ice drifted by. Seizing the opportunity, she sprang once more into the chilling waters, swam a few strokes, clambered aboard, drifted close to shore, was caught and dragged to land by the husky natives. Then, followed by the dripping Tico, she raced away to camp.
For a second time that night her garments were hung by a fire to dry. This time, however, she did not dance away the chill, but creeping deep down among the blankets and deerskins, fell asleep to dream of towering icebergs and racing floods.
* * * * * * * *
As he tramped on and on, mile after mile over low ridges, down narrow valleys, through sparse growth of fir and tangled masses of willows, following his strange guide through the night, Johnny wondered over and over what their destination might be.
More than this, his mind was filled with wild speculations regarding the future. What were the plans that revolved in the mind of this hunchback? Had he any plans? His attitude amused Johnny. Of course he was only a boy, but in the wilds where he so often takes a man’s part a boy soon enough gets to rate himself as a man.
“He seems to think of me as a child,” he told himself after the strange being had finished patting him on the head. “No, not quite that either; more like a cub. That’s it, a bear cub.”
In a park where bears were protected and tame, Johnny had often amused himself by watching the actions of mother bears and their cubs.
“He seems a great hunter of bears,” Johnny told himself. “No doubt, living as he does in such isolation, he knows more about bears than human beings. But am I to be his cub weeks on end?”
He pictured himself living in the wilderness with this curious wanderer, dressing in skins, hunting with bow and arrow, fishing with crude nets, living the life of a savage.
“No,” he told himself. “It can’t be.”
The hunchback heard. Turning about, he leered at him in a strange fashion. Then they tramped on.
Just as dawn was breaking they came upon a thick growth of fir trees crowning the crest of a hill. At the very center of this they found a cabin.
This cabin was much more perfectly built than the other. The stones for its chimney were cut in squares. The logs had been hewn off on two sides. And beside the fireplace hung two heavy iron skillets and three stew-pans.
“Did he build it, or appropriate it after some trapper or prospector had left it?” the boy asked himself.
Too weary for thought, he went about the business of frying bear steak over the fire kindled by his companion. After eating, he buried himself in a great heap of furs and lost himself in the land of dreams.
CHAPTER XXIII
THREE BEAR SKINS
Early next morning, before Gordon Duncan was astir, and while the girl still slept the sleep of exhaustion, the Indians crept from beneath their caribou skins and journeyed forth in quest of food.
Within the hour they returned. And such a load as they carried on their backs! Three bear skins and two hundred pounds of meat they cast down upon the ground. Then kicking off the hungry dogs, they cut away broad slices to throw them in the midst of the fighting pack.
“Three bears!” said Faye when she saw them. “How can they have killed them so soon?”
“Not kill,” said the Indian who understood English. “Dead, that one, two, three bear.”
“Dead! Then there is someone about.”
“No. Not anyone.”
“Then who killed them?” She was examining one of the skins. The marks she found there had not been made by bullets, but by arrows.
“White man no save,” said the Indian, shaking his head. “That one Indian,” nodding to his companion, “how you say it? Him one doctor, one shamin. Plenty spirits help him. Spirit eagle, spirit white fox, spirit old man, long time dead, never shoot rifle, always bow and arrow, that one help him.
“So this one morning he say, that one (another nod toward his companion), that one say, ‘Spirit of old man, kill bear for my dinner. Kill one, two, three bear. Kill him.’ That’s all. See old man’s tracks, mine. So big!” He stretched out his arms at full length.
“He is trying to tell you,” said Gordon Duncan, “that his companion has a familiar spirit; that he is in league with the ghost of an old man and that the ghost, at his request, has killed three bears.”
Faye shook her head. She did not believe it.
“Neither do I.” Her grandfather smiled. “But we have the meat. It is enough. Now we may resume our journey in search of Timmie and the green gold.”
Had Faye been alone she most certainly would have visited the valley of dead bears. Had she done so, she must surely have recognized at once the footprints of her lost pal and the “great banshee.”
But, looking at the drawn face of her aged sire and realizing what long miles must still lie before him, she permitted him to have his way without a word.
All day the dogs followed the faint trail left by the fleeing Timmie and his wolfhounds. That night they camped beneath a sheltering cliff that lay at the foot of a heavily timbered hill. At the crest of that hill was a cabin, and in that cabin Johnny Longbow slept. Had a shot been fired by one of the Indians he must have heard it. No shot was fired. There was food in abundance. Besides, there was nothing to kill.
So, early next morning, they prepared again for the trail.
“Wonder why they carry those raw skins along,” Faye said to Gordon Duncan as the natives lashed the three bear pelts to their sled. “They weigh as much as our whole kit. And what possible good can they be?”
“Faye,” the old man rumbled, “to a native of this land a pelt of any kind is a precious thing. All year round he dresses in skins, always he sleeps beneath them. His home in summer is built of them, and in winter they form the floor mat which protects his feet from the cold earth. His dog harness is made of skins, his sled lashed together with them. To these Indians a pelt is a thing of great value. To cast it away is to offend the spirit of the dead bear.”
All that he said was true enough. Too soon he was to discover the real reason these sturdy little brown men were willing to put their own shoulders to the harness that the skins might remain upon the sled.
As they broke camp that day, Faye found herself wondering about many things. Would they come up with Timmie? Did he carry on his sled the strange collection of green gold antiques? Was he truly attempting to run away with the gold? If so, why? And what of Johnny, her good pal of the long trail? They had experienced many adventures together. Would their trails ever cross again? She could not quite believe him dead.
“Adventures,” she thought. “How little enjoyment one gets from an adventure when he has no one to share it!”
Adventure came soon enough that day. But first they arrived at that which appeared to be an impasse in their journey.
The trail that morning led for three miles across a barren tundra. There it lost itself in a tangled wilderness of trees and bushes. The trusty dogs did not so much as falter. Their senses were sure; their aim true.
But what was this? After an hour of travel through the silent forest they came to an abrupt halt. Before them lay a tangled mass of freshly cut boughs.
“He made camp here last night,” said Faye as her heart gave a great leap. “Per—perhaps he is still here.”
Certainly she hoped this might be true. The trail had been long, very, very long, and she was weary. It was not the weariness that comes from one day of strenuous toil, but the bone weariness of the long, long trail.
“He’s gone!” Gordon Duncan said a moment later. “Gone down the river.”
“Not—not down the river!” Faye passed round the pile of brush, to drop weakly to earth as she read unmistakable signs of a raft built and pushed off from the shore.
“To think,” she said, her eyes reflecting the tragedy of her heart, “he was here working while we slept! And now he is gone; gone forever. And we have come all this way but to know defeat!”
“We must follow,” said Gordon Duncan.
“The break-up will come. We will perish!”
“We must trust God, and go.”
“But how?”
The Indians answered this question. Producing their bear skins they began cutting willows.
“We make skin boat,” they said. “Tie wood together so; stretch skin so; sew it this way; not leak. Very good boat. Ride water. Ice not break. Very strong. Very good.”
“Wonderful!” said Gordon Duncan. “God sent you to us.”
“Eh-eh, the Great Spirit,” said the Indian.
Late that afternoon, in a boat that might have been made by some primitive man three thousand years before, they glided from the shore and away through the water that ran above the surface of six foot ice which, soon enough, would rise and go booming and crowding and grinding toward the sea.
Faye’s heart missed a beat as she took her place in the prow. They were facing grave dangers. Would this be her last ride?
And yet it was to be a race, a race between a raft and a skin boat on a turbulent river. Races are always thrilling. Soon her nerves were all a-tingle.
CHAPTER XXIV
LEFT BEHIND
That the hunchback was a great sleeper Johnny was soon enough to know. After their long journey he slept far into the day. Even after he awoke he appeared to be in a dull stupor, produced, Johnny supposed, by eating great quantities of bear meat.
Grateful as he was for the rest, the boy found himself growing restless. Longing to know more about his strange surroundings and especially eager to discover whether or not he was in a region visited at times by white men, he slipped out of the cabin, then went slipping and sliding down the steep hill.
He discovered little enough. In the scrub forest he found no mark of the white man’s axe. Had he chanced to go down the other slope he would have seen plenty, as you well know. For two days, the while preparing his raft, the aged recluse had camped at the far end of that slope.
After a two-hour ramble, Johnny returned to the cabin. In one pocket was a double handful of last year’s blueberries. In one hand he carried two grouse which had fallen before his bow.
“These,” he told himself, “will make a more appetizing meal than greasy bear meat.”
The hunchback sat just as he had left him, doubled up in the corner, asleep or at least dozing.
“He hibernates like a bear,” the boy told himself in disgust.
“I could leave him,” he thought later as he plucked the feathers from his two birds. “Strike right away into the wilderness, be gone so far and so fast that he’d never find me.”
There was a thought for you. But did he want to leave? Crude and repulsive as the creature was, he had beyond doubt saved his life. Then, too, he knew the ways of the country, was used to procuring food in it. With no companion one might easily meet up with starvation on the trail.
“Anyway,” he concluded, “if he keeps this up, at least I will get out and see more of the country. May find a way out. To-morrow I will go toward the river.”
Had he but known it, at that very moment Gordon Duncan was lighting his campfire at the foot of the hill. He did not know it. Since the scrub forest was dense here, no gleam of firelight, no whiff of smoke announced to him the presence of his friends. So once more, in the midst of rich furs he fell asleep.
Before his strange host was up and about the boy crept from the cabin to go tramping away through the silent forest. The rise on which the cabin stood was more a ridge than it was a hill. It ran for miles along the river.
The slope on the river side was steep and rocky. In places there were sheer precipices of forty or fifty feet. To avoid a dangerous fall, he continued along the crest of the ridge.
Having caught a gleam of water far below, he realized that he was following down the stream. At last, wearying of continual attempts to find a way down, hoping to discover a pass, he climbed a steep rocky pinnacle that gave him an unobstructed view of the river.
There he saw that which brought an exclamation to his lips and set his heart beating wildly. A boat had just pushed off from the bank and was swinging out into mid-channel. Lacking efficient paddles, the men at prow and stern were managing the craft with poles. A curious sort of boat it was, crudely built and hard to navigate; yet these Indians managed it well.
“Indians,” Johnny thought. “But the two in the center of the boat. One’s a girl. The other’s too tall. He—”
Of a sudden, like a revelation it came to him. The man was Gordon Duncan, the girl Faye.
With a sudden headlong rush, he was off the rocky tower and away down the hill. Little matter now that the way was steep and rocky. This was a race, a hurdle race for a precious prize.
“If only they stall the boat. If only they turn back,” he panted as, gripping the bough of a spruce tree, he fairly hurled himself to the next tree. Down, down, down. Now a rocky ledge, now a glistening bank of snow, now a clump of trees, over, under, through he went until at last, ragged, torn, bleeding, he reached level land and in time the river’s brink.
“Too late,” he groaned as his eyes swept the river. Not a moving thing was to be seen on its surface.
“It—it—why, it’s as if I dreamed that I saw them,” he said aloud.
As if to convince himself that he had not been dreaming, he followed along the bank to the spot where the crude bearskin boat had pushed off. There he found unmistakable signs; footprints told who had been there but an hour before.
“Left behind!” He buried his face in his hands.
At that instant a sound from behind him caused him to start. Turning quickly about, he found himself staring into the beady eyes of the hunchback.
CHAPTER XXV
ADVENTURE IN PANTOMIME
On a river ever broadening as it made its way toward the far distant sea, rode a crude skin canoe. In the canoe rode Gordon Duncan, his granddaughter Faye and the two Indians. They had not left that canoe since they entered it, and that had been sixteen hours back.
To the white man and the girl this wild journey had been a constant strain; to the Indians it was but the day’s work. Many times before for twenty, thirty hours they had ridden thus without sleeping.
To land now was impossible; to turn back was out of the question. Besides, who would turn back? Had they not, but a quarter of an hour ago, caught a glimpse of that which they sought?
They had rounded a rocky ledge where the river ran between low hills and had come upon a long, straight stretch of water. At the end of that stretch a dark object specked the water.
Gordon Duncan had lifted the glass once to his eyes and said:
“It’s Timmie.”
The raft and the man had disappeared at once beyond a bend in the river; yet there was now ground for hope. And here they were still driving their boat forward, still hoping that before disaster befell that aged recluse and his crazy craft, they might overtake him and save him from a terrible death. For, should they fail, disaster from crowding ice, rushing rapids and the mad spring upheaval must surely overtake him.
“And he once saved my life,” said Gordon Duncan. “We may have been hasty, followed him too far. It’s too late to think of that now. We can only follow on.”
The journey thus far had been exciting, but quite safe. There was a wild charm about it all, the racing water, the black, brown and green of fleeting landscape, the occasional flocks of wild ducks that shot by them, and the smell of spring everywhere charmed the young Scotch girl.
Yet it was dangerous. They might meet disaster at any turn. Her grandfather had told Faye this, and she believed it. The water they passed over at first had seemed white. That was because the winter ice still lay still beneath the surface water that had rushed down from hills and mountains.
“If it should rise beneath us!” she said with a shudder.
When, after a half hour of dreamy half-sleeping, she looked at the water, it was black.
“Ice has gone out down here,” her grandfather explained.
“Then we are safe?”
“Far from it. The ice before us may jam at any point. It will then pile mountain high. If there are steep banks as here, we will face disaster.”
The girl did not say, “Then why not turn back?” She knew the man too well. He had seen what seemed to him a duty. He could but go on.
“If only Johnny Longbow were here!” she thought.
* * * * * * * *
Johnny Longbow was surprised and not a little frightened on seeing the hunchback close beside him.
“What now?” he thought as his heart skipped a beat. “He was not so sleepy as I supposed. He’s followed me. Did he believe me to be running away? If so, what then?”
Whatever might be the strange creature’s feelings in the matter, the grin he bestowed upon Johnny was friendly enough. His actions during the next few minutes showed plainer than words that he knew more than Johnny did about the whole affair.
Selecting a smooth surface of snow, he scooped out a channel for a distance of twenty feet. This channel was a foot wide and two inches deep. Next, having searched out a bundle of brittle twigs, he began breaking one up and laying the pieces side by side in the bottom of the channel. When he had constructed a rude square some eight inches across, he selected certain bent and twisted bits of wood and, with a skill that seemed extraordinary, created a tiny image of a man with a paddle in his hand. This he placed well to the front upon the small platform. Back of this he built up a miniature sled and four dogs.
All this was Greek to Johnny. When, however, with a few clever twists the man had made a small boat and, after placing four figures within it, had dropped it in the shallow channel, it all came to Johnny like a flash.
“The snow channel represents the river,” he told himself. “The figures in the skin boat are my friends and the two Indians. But that before them must be a raft. What of that?”
He studied over this for some time without reaching a conclusion. That a raft was passing on before his friends, and that it carried a man, a sled and four dogs, this much was certain. But who was the man?
“Don’t matter,” he told himself. “Might be anyone, a trapper, a prospector, a lone Indian. But my comrades have gone ahead. How am I to overtake them?”
In his eyes as he tried in vain to catch some glimpse of those who had glided from his field of vision was a glint of despair.
The hunchback, who during all this time had been studying his face, did not appear satisfied.
Selecting larger sticks, he constructed on the ground a larger raft. With infinite pains he built up a new wooden man, four dogs and a sled.
Then, with equal care he began moulding small models from snow. One was a rude cooking pot, another a flat pan, a third a prehistoric lamp. Other figures were added. When all these were done, he piled them on the newly made raft, and atop them all, a disc of metal taken from a pocket of his skin trousers.
Still Johnny did not understand. When he shook his head, the hunchback seized the metal affair and pressed it into his hand.
“Green,” he told himself as he turned it over, “Green like copper, but heavy as lead. What can it be? What—
“Green gold!” he cried excitedly. “And now I understand. It is Timmie and his green gold they are following. He rides ahead on a raft.”
Seeing that he was at last understood, the hunchback roared with hoarse laughter.
After that, having seized Johnny’s hunting knife, with a few clever strokes he shaped a miniature canoe. In this he placed two sticks. After pointing to one, he struck Johnny a light blow. Then, after touching the other, he smote his own breast.
Dropping the toy canoe in the snow channel, he moved it along until it was abreast the skin boat. Then both boats overtook the raft.
“That’s plain enough,” the boy told himself. “We are to get into a boat and pursue them. We will overtake my friends. Then together we will overhaul Timmie and his raft load of dogs and green gold. Only question is, where’s our boat?”
As if understanding the question, the hunchback laid heavy hands upon him, turned him half about and marched him down the river.
CHAPTER XXVI
INTO THE ICE JAMB
“Ah!” sighed Gordon Duncan, as once more they caught sight of Timmie’s raft. “We shall be up with him soon. Once we are close, when he sees my face he will know it is I, his friend Gordon Duncan. We will bring him and his treasure to the outside world. His last days shall be happy ones after all.”
“But look!” exclaimed the girl, gripping his arm.
One look, and he started to his feet. The white-haired man before them appeared to leap and dance upon the water. Appearances were deceiving. The raft leaped and danced over rapids. And mingled with the rapids were broken fragments and great heaps of ice. Here the water boiled and foamed, there it rushed like mad.
“We shall all be drowned!” said the girl, gripping the old man’s arm.
“Trust God,” the man murmured. “I only fear for Timmie.”
Then, of a sudden, things happened. They had been coming nearer and nearer to the clumsy raft when, as they turned a sharp bend in the river, they saw that the aged recluse faced disaster. Stretching all the way across the river was ice piled forty feet high. Jambing, screeching, rolling and tumbling, it threatened all life that came near. And there was the white haired recluse headed straight for it.
“He has only a pole. He can’t guide the thing. He’s lost!” groaned Gordon Duncan.
He did not know the skill of the man. Poking at a cake of ice here, fanning the water with his pole there, jabbing, poling, fighting his best, the raftsman drove his clumsy craft toward the western bank. It seemed that he would make the bank before the gurgling waters drew him into that maelstrom. Faye held her breath and hoped.
Now he was thirty feet from the bank, now twenty, now—now he rose to his feet as if for a try at a leap. His four dogs howled dismally. He looked at them in dismay. That look was his undoing. An eddy caught his raft and carried it toward midstream. The next instant a redoubled pull of current shot him forward.
Only one hope remained. By the left shore, crowding thirty feet out over the water, was a glacier-like snowbank. Solidly joined to the shore as it was, this bank did not heave and roll as did the free ice. Only beneath it the black waters raced. Between the hard packed snow and the river’s surface was a broad dark line. This was an air space where the snow had been worn away by higher water.
“He can’t go under,” Gordon Duncan breathed. “He’d be killed. He must jump for the solid snow. It’s his only hope.”
The Indians in the skin canoe were battling the current to bring their canoe ashore. As for Gordon Duncan and Faye, they had eyes only for the drama that was being enacted there before them.
“Bravo!” murmured Gordon Duncan as a great dog, leaping far and wide, made the snow bar in safety. One, two, three, four, the dogs were away.
And now, now! Faye breathed in little gasps. The recluse, standing erect, motionless, prepared to leap. Now he bent low, now he sprang straight up and away.
“He—he’s safe!” breathed Gordon Duncan.
But now. What happened? Did the current give the raft a sudden turn? Did the old man’s strength suddenly fail? His leap fell short. He struck the snow, tottered there for a second; then, as the raft with its load of precious green gold shot into the darkness beneath the overhanging snowbar, he tottered and fell full into the raging flood.
“He’s gone!” exclaimed Gordon Duncan. “Lost! Lost forever!”
The next instant their boat, guided by the trusty natives, bumped on a shelving bank and they were quickly drawn up to safety.
In the meantime, as if to veil the catastrophe, a fog drifting down over all, hid all, ice, snow and rushing river, from their view. Ten minutes later a resounding roar told them that something terrific was happening on the river.
“The ice jamb is broken,” Gordon Duncan said quietly. “The current is now free. It came too late. We have lost!”
* * * * * * * *
Urged on by the impatient hunchback, Johnny fought his way forward through tangled willows, over rock piles and down treacherous slopes of melting snow until of a sudden, with an involuntary shout of joy, he came plump against a large dugout turned upside down upon the ground.
To launch this craft, clumsy as it was, required but a moment’s time. Such was the magnificent strength of the hunchback.
And now they had entered the race. With a paddle twice the size and strength of the white man’s canoe paddle, the hunchback drove the dugout forward in the rushing waters at a terrific pace.
It was Johnny who first heard the roar of the bursting ice jamb. They were nearly two miles away, but it filled his breast with a wild terror. That his friends rode the torrent before him he knew. What had happened to them? What was about to befall him?
The current was swift. It bore them on rapidly. When the fog dropped down upon them he realized that safety lay in seeking out shelter in some quiet eddy close to the bank.
That this thought was in the hunchback’s mind soon became evident. He began hugging the shore.
So intent were they upon reaching a place of safety that they failed to note a picture framed in fog that for ten seconds flashed into view, then was lost forever.
Without knowing why they did so, both Faye Duncan and her grandfather stood upon the bank as they passed. It was Faye’s keen eyes that caught sight of the racing dugout.
“Look!” she cried, quite beside herself. “Johnny, Johnny Longbow and the great banshee!” She was quite beside herself with excitement.
“Calm yourself,” said Gordon Duncan. “You must be dreaming. A bad dream. I see nothing.”
“I did see them!” she insisted vehemently. “They passed, they passed in the fog!”
“Then,” said Gordon Duncan, “we shall doubtless see them later.”
“But will we? They are riding the flood. The ice jamb is gone. But there may be others. And, he is with that terrible creature.”
“Humanity,” said Gordon Duncan quietly, “is everywhere very much alike. He is in God’s hands. Beyond doubt the All Seeing One has provided him a friend in this vast wilderness.”
“And to think,” said the girl more calmly, a great joy expressed in her tones, “he is alive! He is not dead. Johnny Longbow is not dead!”
She did such a wild dance in the snow that Gordon Duncan could well have believed they were home again and all their troubles over.
* * * * * * * *
In the meantime Johnny and his strange pilot had passed on into the fog. They traveled a good three miles before they came to the haven of refuge they sought, a quiet eddy by the bank of the stream.
With a sigh of relief Johnny unbent his cramped limbs and went ashore.
To his surprise he found the earth soggy with seeping water.
“Been a flood,” he thought.
This was true. The breaking of the ice jamb had momentarily clogged the stream. Water had risen rapidly. The bayou had been flooded. Sudden as it had come, so sudden it receded. Not, however, until something had happened. What this was, Johnny was soon to know.
As he climbed the slope in search of a dry spot, to his vast astonishment, stranded high and dry, he came upon a crude raft laden with strange packages bound up in skins. And clinging to the raft, as if it were still in motion, was a white haired old man.
Johnny wondered at the packages and the man, but he did not wonder long.
“This,” he told himself, “is Timmie, the recluse. And the packages on the raft!” His heart beat wildly.
“But first this old man’s needs must be attended to.”
After disengaging his hands from the raft, Johnny helped the hunchback carry the old man up the hill to a dry spot. There they soon had him stripped of his sodden garments and wrapped in their own deerskins before a roaring fire.
There, for the first time, he opened his eyes and murmured something about “Green gold.”
It was four hours later that the boy was wakened from a short doze by the fire by the ring of a rifle shot close at hand.
“Someone near,” he told himself. “Wonder who?”
“Hello! Hello there!” he shouted.
“Hello yourself,” came back from the hills above.
Three minutes later the boy stood staring in astonishment at four persons who had just emerged from the brush, two Indians, a white man and a girl. There were tears of real joy in his eyes, for the man and girl were his long lost friends Gordon Duncan and Faye.
Their story was quickly told. No longer daring to trust themselves to the treacherous waters, the party had pushed forward on foot in the hope, as had been their good fortune, though in a manner quite unexpected, of finding some trace of the aged recluse and his craft.
As they followed an animal trail a young caribou had appeared before them. One of the Indians had shot it. This shot had told Johnny of their presence.
So now, here they were all together again. And Timmie was with them. What a joyous reunion it was! Even Timmie, who recognized his pal of other days, seemed happy.
CHAPTER XXVII
GREEN GOLD AT LAST
The story of the aged recluse, Timmie, was soon told. After his companion Gordon Duncan had left him, more than twenty years before, the caribou had come and a fresh supply of provisions was at hand. That spring too, other prospectors had come up the river. In return for his services as a guide, they had supplied him with white man’s food.
As the years passed, he had given up hope that Gordon Duncan would return; but even so, he guarded their secret well.
Ever a lover of nature and her solitary haunts, he was content to dwell alone at the foot of the smoking mountains. Every year, as the winter’s snow melted away, as the honking geese passed above the rivers and a million flowers bloomed, he had shouldered pick and pan to begin one more search for the mine of green gold.
“I never found it,” he whispered as, buried deep in warm deer skins, he told his story. “But yonder on the raft, just as I was carrying it, you will find the green gold, every piece. Every piece. Just as we found it so many years ago.
“Take it, Gordon Duncan.” His whisper came from deep in his throat. “For many years I have prized and guarded it. Now it must be entrusted to your hands. I am soon to pass to that happy land where there are no spring torrents, no snow, no cold, no smoking mountains and no night.”
“No! No!” said Faye Duncan, pressing his hand. “You are going to find health in the spring sunshine. We will carry you from this dreary land to the place where yellow roses bloom and the air is heavy with the fragrance of daffodils.”
Timmie read the distress in her tone. He smiled and said no more. Yet he knew what he knew, and was content.
“But why did you run from us?” Gordon Duncan asked.
A pained, puzzled look came over the face of the aged recluse. “I do not know. I am growing old. When one is old he becomes afraid of many things.”
The hoard of green gold on Timmie’s raft was indeed a great treasure. Johnny, who had traveled much and knew the value of such things coming from a very remote past, reckoned their value in many thousands of dollars.
One day, two weeks later, having buried Timmie among the hills he had loved so long, bidding an affectionate farewell to their Indian guides and the strange hunchback, the party of three, Gordon Duncan, Faye and Johnny, put off from shore in a new dugout which their friends had made for them.
Three days later, as they drifted down the silent river which was now quite free from ice, to their great surprise they caught the distant drum of an airplane.
Straining their eyes, they saw it at last just clearing the mountains to the north. Imagine their surprise when it went out of sight behind the timber not five miles from where they were.
When, two hours later, on rounding a bend in the river, they sighted the camp of more than a hundred white men, their joy knew no bounds.
Soon enough they were told of a fresh gold strike on these upper reaches of the river. The passenger airplane which was bringing men into the country was to start on the return journey in two hours. It was nearing the lunch hour now. They might have dinner at the outskirts of the white man’s land if they liked.
Their decision was quickly reached. After a royal feast of white man’s food, they bundled their precious relics of green gold aboard the plane and, climbing in, sailed away.
A week later Johnny stood in the doorway of a cabin. Before the cabin yellow roses bloomed and the air was laden with the scent of spring blossoms.
Beside him stood Faye Duncan. No longer garbed in the dull brown and gray of the trail, but in a gay red dress, she was the picture of health and beauty.
Much had been done in these days. A mystery had been cleared up and a fortune assured.
From Faye’s own lips Johnny had learned the secret of their hiding away in the north woods so many weeks before. Her grandfather was to have been a witness in a murder trial. He believed the man being tried was innocent, yet he realized that his own testimony would go far toward convicting him. In order to avoid being called as a witness and in order to give time for hot anger to cool and the real culprit to be found, he had hidden away in the forest.