“Oh well,” he said to himself, “it is evident that they no longer fear me. I am from the United States and have not been long in Canada. That is enough.”
A half formed resolve entered his mind, a resolve that was to gain in strength as the days passed. He would not leave the company of this strange pair until he had solved the mystery that hung over them like a ghostly fog in the night.
The fire burned low. The north wind swept in sharp and chilling. Rising, he took a small axe that lay close by and went into the outer darkness. The girl rose and followed silently.
Soon they returned, dragging heavy pine logs after them. He had noted with admiration that she chose a log as large and heavy as his own.
Three times they retreated into the darkness; three times returned heavily laden. Then, each working at the end of a log, they replenished the fire. Logs were piled high. Small branches were thrown on. As the fire leaped up the girl spoke.
“Where were you going?” she asked.
“Why, nowhere in particular. Just bumming, you might say.”
She looked at him in a peculiar way.
“Well,” he said half apologetically, “it wasn’t exactly that. Been in the North before, but not with bow and arrow; not Canada either. Alaska. The North called me back.”
“I know.” Her voice was low and deep. “It always does.”
“As for the bow,” he spoke again, “I’m a mere novice. But there’s a charm to such hunting that does not come with firearms. And these primeval forests always have seemed to call to me. The wilderness has voices, a thousand voices.”
The girl nodded.
“I took the dare that nature threw down to me,” he said abruptly, “and here I am.”
“But your arrows? You had only one.”
“Lost the others yesterday in the river. It was deeper and swifter than I thought.”
Rising, she went into the birchbark cabin. She returned at once with an arrow. She held it out to him.
“This,” she said, “I believe is yours.”
“Yes,” said Johnny in great surprise. “You found it.”
“It came bobbing along to me on the surface of the river. It’s a fine arrow. I’ve asked the fairies of this northwood to bless it. Take it back; it may bring you good luck.”
“So that—” Johnny broke off abruptly. He was about to say, “So that is how you knew I was near?” He would make no attempt to surprise these new friends into divulging their strange secret. No. He would try to prove himself worthy of their friendship and confidence.
As if conscious of that which went on within his mind, the girl lapsed again into silence.
When at last she spoke again her tones were deep and mellow like the low notes of a cello.
“Grandfather and I,” she said, “have gone into the woods every year since I was ten. The bow and arrow are his hobby. They have become mine. He never uses firearms. He has dreadfully sensitive ears. The explosion of a shotgun drives him frantic.
“Always before,” she went on after a pause, “we have come to the wilderness for pure pleasure, the joy of the out-of-doors. But this year—” She paused again as if for reflection. “This year we have gone farther than before.”
Johnny caught his breath. He had thought she was about to reveal a secret, and didn’t more than half want to hear it. A mystery half ripened is no mystery at all. He need not have feared.
“To-morrow,” she said, “we will go farther north.”
“Why?” The word slipped out unguarded.
She looked at him in silence, then said quite calmly, “I don’t know why, not quite all together. This year Grandfather acts quite strangely. He tells me he sees signs.”
“Of what?”
“He—he doesn’t tell me that. Perhaps he doesn’t quite know. He is very old; yet his mind is bright, clear as a bell. He—”
Suddenly the girl put out a hand to touch Johnny’s lips. She had caught a sound that had escaped him. The old man was returning. Ten seconds later he came tramping in through the brush.
“Everything is splendid,” he beamed. “Been five miles downstream. The trail is good. Country is opening up. To-morrow we will go on.
“Ah!” he sighed as he dropped on a bed of pine needles. “You know how to make a fire, you two. It feels good!” He rubbed his hands together with great satisfaction.
That night, ere he made up his bed of pine needles before the fire and rolled up in his blanket for a few hours of perfect repose, Johnny witnessed a curious and impressive ceremony.
As they sat there before the fire, the three of them, Gordon Duncan took from his pocket a small, well worn volume. After thumbing its pages for a moment, he found a place and began to read. The words of a very ancient poet, who had learned centuries ago to place his trust in a power that was higher and greater than all earthly things, came from the lips of the venerable Scot like a benediction.
When at last he closed the book and lifted his voice in petition, it was as if they were savages, children of nature, an old man, a girl and a boy, as if the earth were new again and they were asking the All Seeing One to send caribou, rabbit and ptarmigan, to withhold the cunning of the wolf and the power of the bear, to hold the bitter north wind in check and send the gentle south wind to fan their cheeks.
When it was over, when the old man and the girl had retired to their frail shelter for the night, and Johnny had wrapped himself in blankets before the fire of pine logs, he felt within him a glow of warmth and a sense of security such as he had not experienced before in all his wanderings.
The next day a strange discovery was made. A fresh mystery pressed itself upon them. In the unraveling of this mystery, Faye Duncan was to take a fair part.
CHAPTER III
THE KNIFE IN THE TREE
Next morning as they sat munching corn bread and strips of caribou broiled on the coals, Gordon Duncan put down his coffee cup and turned to Johnny.
“Young man,” he began, “in the home of my childhood on the crags of the Scottish Highlands, the word stranger spelled welcome. Here we have no home worthy of the name. Even this we are leaving for the unknown that lies just beyond. Your way leads down the river; or if you can so shape your course that it may be so, we would be glad to have you join us.”
There was a gentleness and a warmth in the old man’s tone that went to the boy’s heart. Before making reply, however, he turned toward the girl. At once he was rewarded by that frank and friendly smile.
“I am going nowhere in particular,” he said. “I am thankful for human companionship, more thankful than I can tell. Yesterday I was in a bad way. It may be that you have come between me and starvation. I should be ungrateful indeed did I not remain with you with a hope that I might in some way repay your kindness.”
“Young man,” in Gordon Duncan’s eyes shone a gleam of light, “in this world one seldom repays a kindness, an act of courtesy or a friendly lift along the way, but one may always pass it on to some other member of the great human family. He—but we are talking too long. The trail beckons.”
Packs were soon made. Johnny was surprised at the lightness of the sleeping bags used by his friends. “Scarcely five pounds apiece,” he told himself. Bacon, cornmeal, coffee, a few dried beans, three cans of condensed milk, such was the food supply of these wanderers. Each took in his pack as much caribou as he could comfortably carry. When Johnny saw that the girl proposed to carry a full third of the load, he offered to carry her caribou meat.
As she received his offer, her face flushed and her lips parted as if with a quick retort. Then, seeming to sense the spirit in which the offer was made, she allowed those same lips to open in a friendly smile as she said:
“I am used to the load. Without it I should not be hungry at noontime. It is enough if you break trail for us.”
Johnny soon realized the truth of this last remark. The effect of the slight thaw of two days before was gone. The snow on the sloping hillside, hard packed as it was by many an Arctic blast, offered a surface so smooth and hard that more than once his feet shot from beneath him and he went speeding straight down to the gentler slopes a hundred feet below.
To avoid following his example the old man with his hunting knife cut steps across the perilous places.
Noon found them nearing a clump of pines. As they came close to it, some object quite like a rolling ball of snow moved swiftly before them.
At once Faye’s pack was off her shoulder and her stout arms stringing her bow as she whispered,
“Birds. Ptarmigan. A whole covey of them!”
Next moment she and Johnny were off in swift pursuit.
After a half hour’s exciting chase, they returned with four of these white quail of the Arctic. To Johnny’s chagrin, Faye had out-shot him three to one.
“But you are not used to these birds,” she said generously. “You’ll learn soon enough.”
The days were growing long. There seemed little reason for haste. For, where were they going, after all? They took time to build a fire and prepare a hearty meal. The birds they saved for supper. For the present they feasted on caribou meat.
“It is well,” said Gordon Duncan, “to build up muscle, fat and bone while you may. So you will be able in the time of want to withstand the pangs of hunger. Savage people everywhere know this. We in our sleek complacency of plenty too soon forget.”
It was mid-afternoon when the thing happened which was destined to change the entire order of their lives and carry them away on a mad quest that might well end in disaster and death.
It often happens as one travels along life’s pathway that he comes of a sudden to that which is to change the very nature of his being. But does he know it? More often than otherwise he does not. It was even so now. As the wandering trio came over the crest of a ridge and began to descend into a valley down a narrow run that led them back to the river, they saw before them a scraggy pine of unusual height. Surrounded as it was by a low growth of cottonwoods, it seemed a beacon.
To one member of the party it was a beacon. Hardly had Gordon Duncan’s eyes fallen upon it than he suddenly pressed a hand to his forehead to exclaim:
“The tree! As I live! The very tree!”
“Why Grandfather! What—” The girl looked at him in alarm.
He was gone. Leading on at a pace that was hard to follow, he headed directly for the lone pine.
Once there, he dropped on hands and knees to point at some object protruding from the gnarled trunk of the giant tree.
“The knife!” he said hoarsely. “The knife!”
At that he fell backward, panting for breath.
All the splendid color left Faye Duncan’s cheeks as she bent over his prostrate form and began struggling with the buttons of his mackinaw and shirt.
“It’s his heart,” she said. “There’s nothing much we can do. He’ll come round presently. But some day—”
She did not finish, but the wrinkles that came in her brow told all.
“But what does it mean?” said Johnny pointing to the hilt of a hunting knife that protruded a short two inches from the trunk of the pine. “Must have been there twenty years. A few years more and it would have been completely buried.”
If Faye Duncan knew what that knife meant and why it had stirred up such violent emotions in her grandfather’s breast, she did not say so. She sat staring at the thing that had brought tragedy so near.
Giving up the problem, Johnny kindled a small fire, then put water on to boil for coffee.
Presently the old man sat up to stare dully about him. The instant his eyes fell upon the knife hilt they were alight once more.
“Twenty-one years!” he muttered, pressing his forehead once more. “Twenty-one years! All these years, and now I have found it—perhaps too late.”
At that he began fumbling at an inside coat pocket. In the end he drew forth a small square packet. Having unrolled a wad of thin oiled cloth, he unfolded a square of soft white skin. On this, done perhaps in pencil and later traced with India ink, were many lines and strangely shaped figures. Here and there words were written.
Drawn involuntarily to his side, the boy and girl stared at the map with surprised and eager eyes.
Johnny read words written there: “The river,” “Mountains,” “The Pass,” “The cabin,” he read. And last, but not least, “Green Gold.”
Apparently quite unconscious of their presence, the old man placed a trembling finger on a certain spot and mumbled:
“We are here. The trail leads downstream, four miles perhaps. The river forks there. We cross the river below the fork, and ascend the upper fork. The trail leads over the mountains. The cabin lies beyond the mountain, the cabin and green gold. A mine of green gold. That was Timmie’s dream. But then, perhaps he was mad. But there was green gold, quantities of it, and so heavy, so—”
He looked up and for the first time became conscious of Faye and Johnny.
“We’ve found the tree,” he said simply, as if they should know all about it. “The trail leads downstream a little way, then across the river.”
By the haunted look in her eyes, Johnny read that Faye Duncan knew little regarding the strange turn affairs had taken.
“It’s his heart,” she whispered. “We must keep him quiet.”
“Yes,” she said to Gordon Duncan, “the trail leads downstream. We will take it to-morrow. For the night we will camp beneath this friendly old giant of a tree and rest.”
“Rest!” said Gordon Duncan, a great weariness overtaking him. “Rest. That’s what we need. And then,” with a fresh eagerness, “then the long, long trail. Green gold it was, green like the copper in the bed of the stream, but gold, real gold.”
Johnny assisted in arranging a comfortable resting place for him, then he nursed his small fire along until it was a laughing, roaring young conflagration.
“The trail leads downstream and across the river,” he thought to himself. “Fine chance!” He could catch the rush of waters a hundred yards away. That was the river. He had tried crossing that rushing torrent once, and had come near losing his life.
“Never again!” he told himself. “Unless in a boat. And where in all this wild land does one get so much as a birchbark canoe?”
As if reading his thoughts the old man sat up quite suddenly.
“Somewhere down the river,” he said, “the land slopes away into low hills. Here the river is less rapid. It freezes over. If we get there before the breakup, we may cross on the ice. But that,” he added, “is a long, long trail.”
CHAPTER IV
GREEN GOLD
“A long, long trail.” The old man’s words echoed in Johnny’s ears as half an hour later, he sat before the fire of great glowing logs. Chilled by the cold and the dark, warmed by the golden glow of human companionship, he sat there half asleep, when the girl spoke.
Strangely enough, her words echoed his thoughts.
“A long, long trail,” she was saying in a tone that was resonant with mystery and longing.
“He has come upon something,” she said after a moment of silence, “from out his past.” She turned to nod at the rude brush shelter beneath which, deep in his sleeping bag, the old man slumbered. Worn out by excitement and his sudden heart attack, he had yielded to his granddaughter’s entreaties, and retired early.
As for the girl and the boy, nothing was further from their thought than sleep. They had come to a valley of decision. This they knew.
“He will go,” the girl said, glancing again at the sleeping one. “That trail has to do with his past. More than twenty years ago, with a partner called Timmie, he went into these mountains prospecting. I know little enough about it. What I know my mother told me. She’s dead now; been dead eight years. He is all I have, and I am his only grandchild.”
Once more, save for the little circle of light sent out by the campfire, all was darkness. Save for the snap and crack of burning logs, all was silence.
A light wind stirred the branches of the giant pine beneath which they had camped. As if endeavoring to tell the secret of the hunting knife buried deep in its heart, it sighed and whispered with the breeze.
“He came back once, my mother told me,” the girl went on at last. “It was a whole year later. Someone found him wandering in the forest. He was snow-blind and delirious. In the long weeks of sickness that followed he babbled of Timmie, of a mine of green gold, and of a knife driven into a tree.
“That,” she said, pointing to the giant pine, “is the tree. It must be. And that is the knife.”
“But what of Timmie? What of green gold?” Johnny’s voice was low.
“I don’t know. I only know,” she said slowly, “that he will go all the way over that long, long trail. It is his last great adventure. He may not live to complete it. There is his heart. He may—”
She became silent. Cupping her chin in her hands, she stared at the fire.
“Do you know,” she said at last, without changing her position, “our home is a wonderful place. It’s only a cottage. But a cottage may be quite wonderful. In summer vines grow all over it, and old fashioned roses bloom by its side. The song sparrow, quite unafraid, builds her nest in the vines and squirrels come from the woods to sit on our doorstep. It’s home.”
She repeated the word softly, “Home. Nothing in the world could be more wonderful than a home.”
Again silence, and the night closed in upon them.
“You are thinking,” said the girl at last.
“I was thinking of you and of your grandfather.”
“Grandfather is well worthy of your thoughts. He gave his two sons to his country. The war, that terrible war! They never came back. One was my father. I—I think my mother died of grief. But Grandfather, he just carried on.”
Yes, Johnny believed Gordon Duncan worthy of his thoughts. For the moment, however, he was thinking of the girl, following her in his mind’s eye over that long, long trail marked out on Gordon Duncan’s map; saw her making her way forward staunchly, fearlessly into the great unknown with an old man as her only companion.
“And then death overtakes her grandfather,” he whispered to himself.
He tried to picture her making her way alone, back over those endless perilous miles.
“It can’t be done,” he told himself again.
A sudden resolve brought him sitting bolt upright.
“That green gold interests me,” he said in as quiet a tone as he could command.
“You don’t believe there is such a thing?”
He read incredulity in the girl’s words.
“Stranger things have been discovered.”
Of a sudden the meaning of his words came to her.
“You will go with us?”
Her hand was on his arm, her eyes searching his face.
“I have nothing more worth while to do.”
“Oh!” she breathed, and again, “Oh!” He felt the pressure of her hand on his arm, that was all.
For a long time after that there was silence.
The next day they took up that long, long trail, and the day following saw one member of the party very near to the end of all trails.
CHAPTER V
A MAD MOOSE
Johnny Thompson was tired. He was hungry, and was feeling down on his luck. He had hunted the rugged hills since early morning, yet no game had gone into his bag save one great white owl.
“I wonder where Faye is?” he thought to himself. “Hoped I’d meet her on this ridge.”
He still hoped this. It was a long, lonely tramp back to camp, and he was a sociable being. Besides, he felt rather sure that she, like himself, had met with little luck, and misery loves company.
On the morning of that second day after the momentous decision they found themselves below the fork of the river, standing on the bank of a tumultuous stream. Beyond this ice-rimmed torrent lay Gordon Duncan’s promised land. How were they to bridge the chasm? It seemed certain that Gordon Duncan was right. Once the stream left the high, rocky hills, its mad rush must be abated. They might then cross upon the ice, or at least on a raft.
But their supply of provisions was low. The way was long. Gordon Duncan was not yet restored to his full strength. Having found a rocky shelf walled in by nature on three sides, they decided to give the day over to hunting. Gordon Duncan would make camp and prepare a supply of wood. Johnny and the girl would hunt with bow and arrow. The ground seemed suited for the chase. Here and there were treeless spots overgrown with blueberry bushes. Where the wind had swept the snow, frozen berries clung stubbornly to their stems. Ptarmigan might be feeding here. Willow bushes close to the river bank showed fresh markings done by snowshoe rabbits. Once during the previous day they had chanced upon a spot where a caribou had come gliding down a steep slope to swim the river.
“He may have recrossed lower down,” Johnny had said.
So they had gone hunting, the two of them, but not together. A narrow run led away to the left from their camp. It was agreed that Johnny should take the left slope of this run and Faye the right. They might meet on the ridge above.
Since he was ready first, Johnny had struck out alone up the slope. He had heard nothing, seen nothing of the girl all day.
Little game had come his way. Once a ptarmigan had gone fluttering out from a clump of blueberries. He had lost himself at once in tall brush. A great white owl hooted at him. He had bagged him at once, not for food, but because of his broad feathers. He must make more arrows. There was an abundance of wood. Gordon Duncan had offered him steel points. He must provide his own feathers.
The land where he stood was rough, rocky and rolling. In places dark tamarack stood so thick in the narrow bottoms that it was impossible to pass. To his amazement, as he stood there looking, listening, the sound of a tremendous tearing and thrashing suddenly smote his startled senses. No sound came to him save the crashing of brush and rending of branches, yet even as he looked he caught a gleam of bright red among the tamarack trees.
“That’s strange,” he told himself, involuntarily tightening his grip on the six foot bow. “Can’t be a bird. Too big. I’ll see what’s going on.”
Catching at a branch here, another there, without a sound he let himself down the slope. As he dropped lower the spot of color was lost to his view. This did not disturb him. His sense of location was splendid. A tree taller than its fellows, a branch twisted off by some storm, a pine squirrel’s nest, these were his beacons. If he needed further guidance, the surprising tumult continued.
Then of a sudden as he rounded a clump of trees he saw it all at a glance. With a checked cry of surprise he stepped swiftly back to grip his bow and draw an arrow.
His movement was not missed. For a space of ten seconds silence reigned in that bit of northern wild. Then, as his bow sang taut a red-eyed fury, a giant of that wilderness, a bull moose, plunged head on, straight at him as he crouched for a shot.
A bull moose, interrupted in his display of anger, is a terrible creature to behold. As the boy looked into his bloodshot eyes, as he took in at once his huge head, his broad spiked antlers, his powerful neck, he wondered about his chances for life, and in the flash of a second knew as never before what a glorious possession life was. Yet he did not waver for an instant. Another life was at stake, the life of one without means of defense.
In that tense ten seconds before the moose charged he had seen that which caused him to doubt the accuracy of his vision. The flaming red spot in the top of the young tamarack tree was a red sweater worn by Faye Duncan. He had not seen that sweater before. She had worn a gray mackinaw in their travels.
But now, still crouching, he waited his shot. It must be well aimed, back of the shoulder, a perfect shot, or—
Twang! The arrow flew. The next instant, with agility born of long training, he dropped sideways and backward. He was not a second too soon. The terrible impact of that powerful head, the awful rending of those spiked antlers; what chance had a boy against these?
With all the force and fury of a crazed elephant, the moose went thundering straight on.
With his senses reeling, the boy fought his way into a standing position in the tangle of briars and young trees, then drew another arrow.
It was well that he found himself so prepared, for the moose, having checked himself in his mad career, turned and charged again. This time, only Providence could have saved him. Enmeshed as he was in the underbrush, he was in no position to dodge. A small tree, directly between him and the charging terror, saved him.
Blinded by rage, the moose charged straight into the tree. The sound of the impact was like the dropping of a pile driver. The stout tree snapped off at the roots. But the great beast was stopped.
It was enough. Again the bow twanged. A moment later the giant moose lay beating the brush in his death throes.
“Well,” Johnny said, turning to the girl, who by this time had climbed down from the tree, “that’s what I call close.”
The look on her sunbrowned face was deeply serious. “Yes, it was. I am sorry to put you in such grave danger.”
“Oh, that!” he said, shrugging. “It wasn’t great. I could have climbed a tree. Then there would have been two of us.” He laughed.
“But you didn’t.” The look on the girl’s face was still serious. “I have to thank you for that.”
“It’s all in a day’s adventure,” said Johnny. “Mystery and adventure add to the joy of life. Meanwhile, between us, we have a supply of food.”
“Yes, and such a supply!”
“We had better take as much as we can carry,” Johnny sighed. He was thinking of the weary trek back to camp. “The part we can’t carry away on our further journeys we can hide up in the rocks where foxes and wolverines can’t get at it. It’s a good thing to have a storehouse to which one may return.”
The girl agreed. Drawing her hunting knife, she assisted him quite skilfully in skinning the great beast and preparing the meat for packing.
Once as she straightened up, he read in her eyes a question. She was looking at the skin which he thought of only as waste product.
“I’ve seen pictures of boats made of skin drawn over a framework of wood,” she said.
“The Eskimos make them so. Large ones. Thirty-five feet long.”
“This skin is tough,” she said. “It’s large, too. I wonder—”
“Hate to trust it,” said Johnny. “Ice might cut a hole in it, then where’d you be? Fresh water ice isn’t like salt water ice. Salt water ice is crumbly. Fresh water ice is like flint. It gets a cutting edge.”
She said no more.
“Guess we’re ready,” Johnny said a few moments later.
Wrapping a great piece of dark red meat in a square of skin, he lifted it to her shoulders.
“Carry it?” he said.
“Easy.”
“All right. Let’s go.”
He felt like a brute, loading a girl so; yet in future their lives might depend upon that meat. Night was approaching. To return in the dark was out of the question. And who could say what the little foxes, the wolves and wolverines would do to that dead moose during the night?
So they trudged on with weary limbs, but light hearts. As the darkness deepened there came over Johnny a feeling that was hard to analyze. It was a pleasing sensation, and had to do with the girl. He was her guardian, her protector. This day, with his bow and arrow he had saved her life. There could be no question about that. The tree she had climbed was partially dead. In time, under the mad bull’s wild onslaught, it must have fallen.
“And then,” he shuddered at the thought.
“Do you know,” she said quite suddenly, “I didn’t do a thing to that moose? Not a thing.”
“Except invade his territory in a bright red sweater,” Johnny chuckled. “That was enough.”
CHAPTER VI
A STRANGE MEETING
“That moose was very far north,” said Gordon Duncan, as they sat dreaming by the fire after their first meal of moose steak. “One seldom finds them here. He was alone. Moose and men are like that sometimes. They prefer to live alone. Timmie was that way. He longed for solitude.”
The old man’s eyes were half closed. He appeared to be living in the past. “Yes,” he mused, “Timmie liked me. He promised to wait for me back there behind the mountains. But he liked to be alone. He’s waiting there still, behind the mountains.”
Johnny’s lips were parted for a question regarding this long lost partner and the green gold, but feeling the pressure of the girl’s hand on his arm, he left the question unasked.
“She’s afraid of getting him excited and bringing on another attack,” he thought to himself.
That night as he lay rolled in his blankets and the others slept farther back in the cave-like shelter, he fell to wondering about the strange pair. Why had they gone so far into the wilderness? Why had they appeared to be afraid of other human beings? Why, in the end, had they lost all their fear of him and accepted him as a traveling companion? How much was to be expected from the future? Was the old man’s partly told tale of a lost partner and the finding of green gold purely a work of the imagination, a fairy story, or was it all true? Would they find Timmie? Was he waiting still? Would the green gold be there? Was there much green gold? Was it valuable? Was—
So, wondering on and on, he fell asleep.
Next day, as they entered a narrow valley, after toiling down a treacherous slope, they came quite suddenly upon a well marked trail. Trees had been blazed here and there, and brush cleared away. True, there were no marks of recent travel. Only here and there were signs that told of someone passing weeks, perhaps months before. This trail came from the left, down a narrow ravine, then paralleled the river on its way northward.
For a long time after discovering this trail, Gordon Duncan stood quite motionless, apparently buried in deep thought.
When at last he led the way onward, it was to take up this trail. This he did in silence. Not a word was uttered by any member of the party.
To Johnny this silence was eloquent. What had passed in Gordon Duncan’s mind? Had he read in this freshly discovered trail signs of danger? Had he feared that his plans might be brought to nought? Had he, in the end, decided to risk it, to take the chance, to follow the trail? To all these questions Johnny could find no certain answer.
Noon came. They ate a cold lunch, then pressed forward. This day the old man seemed eager and tireless.
“There’s more to him than I thought,” Johnny told himself as he mopped his brow. “He may have a trick heart, but he certainly can cover the miles, may live to see us all in our graves yet.”
By mid-afternoon they were passing over a level stretch of forest. To the right, the left, before, behind, short stout fir trees stood like sentries. The silence about them was oppressive. Not a branch quivered, not a pine needle stirred. When a white owl rose and went flap-flapping away, his wings beat noisily.
In a moment he was gone, and only the steady pat-pat of feet on the trail was to be heard.
Then slowly, as in a dream, there came to their overstrained ears a sound. Faint, indistinct, it seemed at first but the approach of wind through the treetops.
As they marched straight on this sound took form, the sound of many small tinkling bells.
“Bells!” the girl whispered, stopping short in her tracks. “Sleighbells. A dog team.” She clutched at her mackinaw as if to still the beating of her heart.
Without a word, the old man turned and marched away at right angles to the trail. There was no concealing their tracks here. The ground was level, the soft snow ten inches deep. Soon, however, they came to a barren ridge. Here they might walk upon rocks. Soon they were lost from sight in a dark clump of fir trees.
There, breathing silently, uttering not a word, they waited.
“Why all this secrecy?” Johnny asked himself. “They know; I do not.” He felt annoyed by it all. He turned to the girl, and was about to speak when, putting one hand to her lips, she pointed with the other.
A stout dog team had appeared down the trail. Behind the sled, clad in the blue trousers and red jacket of the Mounties, trotted a strapping six-footer.
“It’s all right.” A look of relief spread over Gordon Duncan’s face. “It’s Corporal Simons of the Mounted. He has been in the wilderness for months. We’ll go to meet him. He may be able to tell us of a way across the river.”
“Queer business,” Johnny thought to himself as he followed Gordon Duncan back to the trail.
“My old friend Gordon Duncan, as I live!” exclaimed the sturdy Corporal as he caught sight of them. “And Faye. But Man!” he exclaimed. “Why so far back into this great beyond? Is it safe? You with your bows and arrows.”
“No place is far in this fair land of ours,” said Gordon Duncan. “As for the bows and arrows, you’ll find fresh meat in our packs.”
“That’s more than you’ll find in mine,” said the Corporal, “but I’ve been traveling light and fast on the King’s business. Sad business it is to be, I fear. But say! The sun is about down. Back on my trail a half mile or so is a cabin of a sort. There’s a rough fireplace and a Dutch oven on the hearth. I thought of putting up there for the night. Since you’re here I’ll turn back. When a man’s been on the trail among Indians and Eskimos he welcomes a woman’s hand at the cooking. I’ve a few supplies back there.” He gave Faye a warm smile.
“But who is this?” There was a note of distrust in his tone as he spoke. He had seen Johnny for the first time.
“Only another nimrod we picked up by the way,” said Gordon Duncan.
“Well, we’ll be getting on. Gee!” the Corporal spoke to his leader. The team whirled about. Grasping Faye’s pack, the driver dropped it on the sled, then tossed her after it.
“No sort of thing for a girl to be doing,” he grumbled, “packing her way through these wilds.”
An hour later Johnny found himself seated at the corner of a rude stone fireplace. Before the fire, enjoying their pipes, sat Gordon Duncan and the Corporal. From the hearth came delicious odors. From the Corporal’s meager supply of stores Faye had secured the proper ingredients for a cake. It was now browning to a turn in the Dutch oven.
As the boy sat there dreaming and wondering about many things he caught the voice of the Corporal. He was telling of some recent happening.
“What do you suppose happened to the trader?” he demanded of Gordon Duncan.
“Anything might. Snow-blindness, blizzard, wolves, an overflow on the river.”
“Fact is he didn’t arrive.” The Corporal’s voice rose. “Those Caribou Eskimos have come to depend upon him for ammunition. So there they are. And there they’ll be starved in their tents. I can do nothing for them. Should I try to return with supplies it would be too late.”
“It’s as I have always said,” Gordon Duncan’s tone was low and deep. “The natives are better off without us. They lived before we came. How? By the bow, the spear, the snare and the deadfall. But now we have taught them to use firearms and if there is no ammunition they must starve.
“Two hundred miles, did you say?” He rose and began pacing the cabin floor. “It is incredible that men should starve when we are so near. There must be a way.”
“But there is no food here,” said the Corporal. “A dozen rounds of provision here in this cabin. You chanced on a moose yesterday; otherwise you would be hungry, too.”
“But the caribou will be flooding in from the Southwest.”
“In another month, perhaps sooner. What does it matter? I do not have ammunition. Neither do you. You have only your bows and arrows.”
“Corporal Simons,” the old man paused to bang the table with his fist, “with bows and arrows we will save them. This young man, if he will, and Faye will go with me. We will show you what primitive weapons will do.”
“Calm yourself.” The Corporal’s tone showed consternation. “You wouldn’t drag a young woman into that barren land. I tell you they are starving. Desperate. Who can say what they might do? And after all,” he added, “they are but Eskimos, mere savages. It is sad, but the world will not miss them.”
“There are no savages,” said Gordon Duncan, resuming his place by the fire. “In the eyes of the All Seeing One, all men are the same. In the past many a white man, many a member of your force, has owed his life to these simple people. Is it not so? Then we owe them their lives in return.”
It was evident to Johnny that the Corporal knew something of Gordon Duncan’s state of health, for at a look from Faye he said no more.
A half hour later they were seated round a rough board table graced by such a feast as only a Scotch girl accustomed to the wilds could have spread before them.