"Under the greenwood treeWho loves to lie with me,And turn his merry noteUnto the sweet bird's throat,Come hither, come hither, come hither;Here shall we seeNo enemy,But winter and rough weather."
"Under the greenwood treeWho loves to lie with me,And turn his merry noteUnto the sweet bird's throat,Come hither, come hither, come hither;Here shall we seeNo enemy,But winter and rough weather."
"Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither;
Here shall we see
No enemy,
But winter and rough weather."
He smiled to himself, and a soft look came into his eyes. The girl was making a jest of a situation that would have appalled multitudes of her over-civilized sisters, and he marvelled at her courage. The glow in his eyes grew brighter as he stared into vacancy. Some day-dream softened the stern lines in his face, and for a few minutes the spell of it held him. Then suddenly he frowned, and a little harsh laugh broke from his lips.
"You fool!" he whispered to himself. "You fool!"
A moment later the girl entered the tent again. In her hand she carried a rather decrepit hussif and a hank of strong linen thread. She held them down for him to see.
"I am making free with your possessions, Mr. Stane, but there's no help for it. I simply must repair these rags of mine."
He looked at her and noticed for the first time that her blouse was badly torn. Half of one sleeve was ripped away, and there was a long tear through which he caught the gleam of a white shoulder. Her skirt he saw was in no better case. She caught his glance and laughed.
"I'm a perfect Cinderella! It will take me hours to sew up these rents."
"Do you think it is worth while?" he asked with a faint smile. "I'm not much of a tailor myself; and I should look at that job as wasted effort."
"But what else can I do?" she demanded. "I can't get in a taxi and run down to Bond Street on a shopping expedition."
"No," he answered slowly, "but you might look in the pack you carried today. There's a habit there that is better suited to the woods than the one you have."
"Oh!" she cried, her grey eyes alight with laughter, and a little flush in her cheeks. "You brought it along then?"
"I put it in your pack, because I knew that two days of trail in the forest would reduce your present costume to shreds."
She eyed the hussif distastefully. "I hate sewing," she said. "I think I will leave the repairs till morning. There is no immediate hurry that I know of."
"Not at all," he answered with a little smile, and divining that his advice would be accepted he turned to a fresh subject. "Where are you going to sleep? You ought not to have given me the tent."
She waved a hand airily. "Outside. There isn't much room here. Like R. L. S. sleeping out with his donkey I shall discover a new pleasure for myself."
A quick light leaped in Stane's eyes and a smile came on his wan face.
"What are you smiling at?" demanded the girl laughingly. But he did not tell her how his mind had recalled the context of the passage she had referred to, a passage which declared that to live out of doors with the woman a man loves is of all lives the most complete and free. His reply was a mere evasion.
"I am afraid you will find it an exaggerated pleasure, Miss Yardely."
"Then it will be strictly for one night only," she said. "Tomorrow I shall build a shack of boughs and bark like one I watched an Indian building, down on the Peace river. It will be exhilarating to be architect and builder and tenant all in one! But for tonight it is 'God's green caravanserai' for me, and I hope there won't be any trespassers, wolves or bears and such-like beasts."
"There may be mice!" laughed Stane.
"Mice!" A look of mock-horror came on her face. "I'm mortally afraid of mice!"
"And Meeko may pay you a visit."
"The Lord have mercy on me! Who is Meeko?"
"Meeko is the red squirrel. He abounds in these woods and his Indian name means the mischief-maker."
"I adore squirrels," laughed Helen.
"Upweekis will be away just now, so he won't disturb you with his screeching."
"And who may Upweekis be?"
"The lynx! He will have gone to the burned lands after the rabbits for the summer-hunting."
"Anything else on the forest visiting-list?" asked the girl merrily.
"Kookooskoss, the owl may hail you."
"Pooh! Who's afraid of owls?"
She laughed again, and then grew suddenly grave. "But we are talking too much," she said quickly. "There is a little-too-bright colour in your face. I think you had better try to sleep. I shall be just outside the tent, and if there is anything you need you must call me. Good night, Mr. Stane. In spite of the forest folk, I expect I shall sleep like a top."
"Good night, Miss Yardely."
The girl went outside, and after sitting for quite a long time looking in the fire, retired to the couch of spruce which she had prepared for herself, and almost instantly fell asleep.
Four hours afterwards she awakened suddenly and looked around her. A rosy glow through the trees proclaimed the dawn. The forest was wonderfully still, and there seemed no reason whatever for the sudden awakening. Then a stream of meaningless babble came through the canvas wall of the tent. She sat up instantly, and listened. Plainly, the patient was delirious, and the sound of his delirious babble must have broken through her sleep. Three minutes later she was inside the tent, her brow puckered with anxiety.
Stane lay there with flushed face, and wide-open eyes that glittered with a feverish light. He took absolutely no notice of her entrance and it was clear that for the present he was beyond all recognition of her. She looked at him in dismay. For the moment he was quiet, but whilst she still stood wondering what she should do, the delirium broke out again, a mere babble of words without meaning, some English, some Indian, in which she found only two that for her had any significance. One was Gerald Ainley's name, and the other the name of the beautiful Indian girl whom she had seen talking with the sick man down at Fort Malsun—Miskodeed.
Her face flushed as she recognized it, and a little look of resentment came in her eyes. She remembered what Ainley had hinted at about Stane and Miskodeed, and what others had plainly thought; and as she stood there it seemed almost an offence to her that the name should be mentioned to her even in the unconsciousness of delirium. Then she gave a hard little laugh at herself, and going outside once more, presently returned with water and with a couple of handkerchiefs taken from the sick man's pack.
She poured a few drops between his lips, and then after laving his face, she laid one of the wet handkerchiefs on his brow, renewing it, from time to time, in order to cool his head. After a little time the babble ceased, the restlessness passed away, and his eyes closed in natural slumber. Seated on the ground, she still watched him, her face the index of troublesome thoughts; but after a little time, she began to nod, her chin dropped to her chest, and she fell into a profound sleep.
"Miss Yardely! Miss Yardely!"
Stane's voice awakened her two hours and a half later. She looked round in some bewilderment, and as her eyes saw his tired, white face, she started up.
"I am afraid I must have fallen asleep," she began hurriedly. "I——"
"Have you been watching me all night?" he asked in a rather weak voice.
"No, not all night," she protested. "I awoke outside a little time ago, and heard you talking deliriously. I came in the tent to do what I could, and then seated myself to watch. I must have been very tired or——"
"Please, please, Miss Yardely. You must not reproach yourself. I cannot allow it! I blame myself for giving you so much trouble."
"How do you feel?" asked Helen, changing the subject.
"Rather groggy," he replied with a poor attempt at gaiety.
She stretched a hand and took his. The palm was moist.
"Ah," she said. "You feel weak no doubt, but the fever has left you. I will go and attend to the fire and prepare breakfast."
She turned a little abruptly and left the tent, and Stane looked after her with frowning eyes. Something had gone wrong. There was an air of aloofness and austerity about her that had not been there yesterday, and she had spoken in formal terms that had nothing of the camaraderie which had characterized their acquaintance until now. He could not understand it; in no way could he account for it; and he lay there puzzling over the matter and listening to the sound of her movements outside. Never for a single moment did it enter his mind that the daughter of civilization was jealous of that daughter of the wilds whose name he had uttered in the unconsciousness of delirious hours. Nor did it enter the mind of Helen herself. As she recalled the name she had heard on his lips in the night, whilst she busied herself with unaccustomed tasks, the feeling of resentment that was strong within her, to her appeared a natural feeling due to a sense of outragedconvenanceswhen in reality it had its origin in the strongest and deepest of primal passions.
CHAPTER X
A CANOE COMES AND GOES
Lying on his back, his head pillowed on a rolled-up blanket, Hubert Stane became aware that the sound of the girl's movements had ceased. He wondered where she had gone to, for it seemed clear to him that she had left the camp, and as the time passed without any sound indicating her presence he began to feel alarmed. She was unused to the woods, it would be easy for her to lose herself and if she did——
Before the thought was completed he heard the sound of a snapping stick, and knew that she had returned. He smiled with relief and waited for her appearance, but a few minutes passed before she entered the tent, bearing in her hand a tin cup. He looked at her inquiringly.
"What have you there, Miss Yardely?"
"Balsam," was the reply, "for the cut upon your head. It is rather a bad one, and balsam is good for healing."
"But where did you get it?"
"From I forget how many trees. There are quite a number of them hereabouts."
"I didn't know you knew so much of wood lore," he said smilingly.
"I don't," she retorted, quickly. "I am very ignorant of the things that really matter up here. I suppose that balsam would have been the very first thing an Indian girl would have thought of, and would have searched for and applied at once, but I only thought of it this morning. You see one of my uncle's men had a little accident, and an Indian went out to gather the gum. I happened to see him pricking the blisters on the trees and gathering the gum in a dish and I inquired why he was doing it. He explained to me, and this morning when I saw the cut, it suddenly came to me that if I could find balsam in the neighbourhood it would be helpful. And here it is, and now with your permission I will apply it."
"I wonder I never thought of it myself," he answered with a smile. "It is a very healing ungent. Apply to your heart's content, Miss Yardely."
Deftly, with gentle fingers, the girl applied the balsam and then bound the wound with a strip of linen torn from a handkerchief. When the operation was finished, still kneeling beside him, she leaned back on her heels to survey the result.
"It looks quite professional," she said; "there isn't an Indian girl in the North could have done it better."
"There isn't one who could have done it half as well," he answered with a laugh.
"Are you sure?" she asked quickly. "How about Miskodeed?"
"Miskodeed?" he looked at her wonderingly.
"Yes, that beautiful Indian girl I saw you talking with up at Fort Malsun."
Stane laughed easily. "I know nothing whatever about her capacity as a healer," he said. "I have only spoken to her on two occasions, and on neither of them did we discuss wounds or the healing of them."
"Then——" she began, and broke off in sudden confusion.
He looked at her in some surprise. There was a look on her face that he could not understand, a look of mingled gladness and relief.
"Yes?" he asked inquiringly. "You were about to say—what?"
"I was about to say the girl was a comparative stranger to you!"
"Quite correct," he replied. "Though she proved herself a friend on the night I was kidnapped, for I saw her running through the bushes towards my tent, and she cried out to warn me, just as I was struck."
"If she knew that you were to be attacked she ought to have warned you before," commented Helen severely.
"Perhaps she had only just made the discovery or possibly she had not been able to find an opportunity."
"She ought to have made one," was the answer in uncompromising tones. "Any proper-spirited girl would have done."
Stane did not pursue the argument, and a moment later his companion asked: "Do you think her pretty?"
"That is hardly the word for Miskodeed," answered Stane. "'Pretty' has an ineffective sort of sound, and doesn't describe her quality. She is beautiful with the wild beauty of the wilds. I never saw an Indian girl approaching her before."
Helen Yardely frowned at the frank enthusiasm with which he spoke.
"Wild? Yes," she said disparagingly. "That is the word. She is just a savage, with, I suppose, a savage's mind. Her beauty is—well, the beauty of the wilds as you say. It is barbaric. There are other forms of beauty that——"
She broke off abruptly, and the blood ran rosily in her face. Stane saw it and smiled.
"Yes," he answered gaily. "That is true. And I think that, however beautiful Miskodeed may be, or others like her, their beauty cannot compare with that of English women."
"You think that?" she cried, and then laughed with sudden gaiety as she rose to her feet. "But this is not a debating class, and I've work to do—a house to build, a meal to cook—a hundred tasks appealing to an amateur. I must go, Mr. Stane, and if you are a wise man you will sleep."
She left the tent immediately, and as he lay there thinking over the conversation, Stane caught the sound of her voice. She was singing again. He gave a little smile at her sudden gaiety. Evidently she had recovered from the mood of the early morning, and as he listened to the song, his eyes glowed with admiration. She was, he told himself, in unstinted praise, a girl of a thousand, accepting a rather desperate situation with light heart; and facing the difficulties of it with a courage altogether admirable. She was no helpless bread-and-butter miss to fall into despair when jerked out of her accustomed groove. Thank Heaven for that! As he looked down at his injured leg he shuddered to think what would have been the situation if she had been, for he knew that for the time being he was completely in her hands; and rejoiced that they were hands so evidently capable.
Then he fell to thinking over the situation. They would be tied down where they were for some weeks, and if care was not exercised the problem of food would grow acute. He must warn her to ration the food and to eke it out. His thought was interrupted by her appearance at the tent door. She held in her hand a fishing line that he had purchased at the Post and a packet of hooks.
"I go a-fishing," she cried gaily. "Wish me luck?"
"Good hunting!" he laughed back. "I hope there is fish in the stream."
"Herds! Flocks! Coveys! Schools! What you like. I saw them when I was hunting for the balsam."
"That is fortunate," he said quietly. "You know, Miss Yardely, we may have to depend on fin and feather for food. The stores I brought were only meant to last until I could deliver you to your uncle. We shall have to economize."
"I have thought of that," she said with a little nod. "I have been carefully through the provisions. But we will make them last, never fear! You don't know what a Diana I am." She smiled again, and withdrew, and an hour later returned with a string of fish which she exhibited with pride. "The water is full of them," she said. "And I've discovered something. A little way from here the stream empties into a small lake which simply swarms with wild fowl. There is no fear of us starving!"
"Can you shoot?" he inquired.
"I have killed driven grouse in Scotland," she answered with a smile. "But I suppose ammunition is valuable up here, and I'm going to try the poacher's way."
"The poacher's way?"
"Yes. Snares! There is a roll of copper wire in your pack. I've watched a warrener at home making rabbit snares, and as there's no particular mystery about the art, and those birds are so unsophisticated, I shall be sure to get some. You see if I don't. But first I must build my house. The open sky is all very well, but it might come on to rain, and then the roofless caravanserai would not be very comfortable. It is a good thing we brought an ax along."
She turned away, and after perhaps half an hour he caught the sound of an ax at work in the wood a little way from the tent. The sound reached him intermittently for some time, and then ceased; and after a few minutes there came a further sound of burdened steps, followed by that of poles tossed on the ground close to the tent. Then the girl looked in on him. Her face was flushed with her exertions, her forehead was bedewed with a fine sweat, her hair was tumbled and awry, and he noticed instantly that she had changed her torn blouse and skirt for the clothing which his foresight had burdened her pack with. The grey flannel shirt was a little open at the neck, revealing the beautiful roundness of her throat, the sleeves of it were rolled up above the elbows after the work-man-like fashion of a lumberman, and showed a pair of forearms, white and strong. His eyes kindled as he looked on her.
She was radiantly beautiful and strong, he thought to himself, a fit mate for any man who loved strength and beauty in a woman, rather than prettiness and softness, and his admiration found sudden vent in words.
"Miss Yardely, you are wonderful!"
The colour in her face deepened suddenly, and there was a quick brightening in her grey eyes.
"You think so?" she cried laughing in some confusion.
"I certainly do!" he answered fervently.
"Why?" she demanded.
"Well," he replied quickly, and not uttering what had been in her mind, "you adapt yourself to difficult circumstances so easily. I don't know another girl in the world who would so cheerfully do what you are doing."
"Oh," she retorted gaily, "needs must when the devil drives! But was that all you were thinking?"
She knew it was not, for she had seen the look in his eyes, and her question was recklessly provocative and challenging. She knew it was such as she had flung it at him; and Hubert Stane knew too. His face flushed, his heart pounded wildly; and for a moment there was a surging desire to tell her what he really had been thinking. The next moment he put the temptation from him.
"No," he answered with an attempt at laughter, "but the rest is not for publication."
There was a little tremor in his voice as he spoke which Helen Yardely did not fail to notice. For a moment she stood there undecided. She was conscious of an uplift of spirit for which there appeared no valid reason, and she visioned opening out before her a way of life that a week ago she had never even dreamed of. Three days in the solitude of the wilderness with Hubert Stane had brought her closer to him than an acquaintance of years could have done, and she was aware of wild impulses in her heart. As she stood there she was half-inclined then and there to challenge fate, and to force from him the words that he withheld. Then, with a great effort, she checked the surging impulses, and gave a tremulous laugh.
"That is too bad of you," she cried. "The unpublished thoughts are always the most interesting ones.... But I must away to my house-building or I shall have to spend another night under the stars."
She turned and walked abruptly away. In her eyes as she went was a joyous light, and her heart was gay. As she swung the ax upon her shoulder and moved towards the trees she broke into song, the words of which reached Stane:
"It was a lover and his lassWith a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,That o'er the green cornfield did passIn the spring time, the only pretty ring time,When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding,Sweet lovers love the Spring."
"It was a lover and his lassWith a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,That o'er the green cornfield did passIn the spring time, the only pretty ring time,When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding,Sweet lovers love the Spring."
"It was a lover and his lass
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
That o'er the green cornfield did pass
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding,
Sweet lovers love the Spring."
He lay there beating out the melody with his fingers. A musing look came in his eyes that remained there when once more the sound of her ax came through the forest stillness. Then it died away and his face grew grim.
"It's nonsense, the merest madness!" he whispered to himself. "And even if it were not—a man can't take advantage of such circumstances. It would be too caddish for words——"
For a long time he lay there listening to the sound of her movements, which told him when she was near and when further away, and presently he heard her fixing the lean-to of her improvised hut. She worked steadily, sometimes singing to herself, but she did not enter the tent again until noon, when she came in to inquire if he were comfortable and to say that a meal would be ready shortly.
"How does the hut go?" he asked.
"Oh, finely!" she cried with enthusiasm. "The framework is up, though I've used all the pack-ropes over the job. I wish I had some nails. I'm sure I could drive them straight."
"I'm sure you could," he replied laughingly.
"Girls are not nearly so incapable as they let men make them out to be. I never built a house before, but I am sure this one of mine is going to be a success. After we have eaten I am going to look for birch-bark to make the covering, but there's one thing that is worrying me."
"What is that?" he asked.
"I am wondering how to fasten the bark together. I shall have to get it in strips, I know, and the strips will have to be sewn together. I know that, but the question is—how? If I had stout twine and a packing needle it would be easy, but——"
"It is still easy," he interrupted. "You will have to get the roots of the white spruce, and sew with that, as a cobbler sews, using a knife for awl."
"Oh," she laughed, "I never thought of that, and it is so simple. I shall manage all right now."
After the meal of fish and beans and coffee, she disappeared once more, and later he heard her busy outside again. From the sounds he judged that she had found the bark and the other materials that she needed, and was busy sewing the covering for her tepee, and presently he heard her fixing it. The operation seemed to take quite a long time and was evidently troublesome, for once or twice sounds of vexation reached him and once he heard her cry roundly: "Confound the thing!"
He laughed silently to himself at the heartiness of her expression, then wished that he could go out and help her; but as he could not, and as she did not come to him in her difficulty he refrained from asking what the difficulty was, and from offering advice. Half an hour later she stood in the tent doorway, flushed but triumphant.
"Finished," she cried, "and Sir Christopher Wren was never more proud than I am."
"I should like to see your castle," laughed Stane.
"You shall, sir," she cried gaily. "You shall. I will lift the canvas of the tent that you may feast your eyes on my handiwork."
A moment later she was busy rolling up the canvas at one side of the tent, and presently he found himself looking out on a very fair imitation of an Indian hunting tepee. He gave the work his ungrudging admiration.
"It is a very creditable piece of work, Miss Yardely."
"Yes," she responded lightly, "and I'm not going to pretend that I'm not proud of it. I am, and having done that, I don't think Robinson Crusoe was so very wonderful after all! I think that I could have managed as well as he did on his desert island. But here's a fanfare on my own trumpet! And I've work yet to do, and I must do it before my doll's house goes completely to my head."
She dropped the canvas of the tent, fastened it into its place, and then proceeded to arrange a bed of young spruce boughs for herself. That done to her satisfaction, she prepared the last meal of the day and then in the stillness of the bright Northland evening, she went off towards the lake she had discovered in the morning, with the intention of setting the snare that she had spoken of.
But she did not do so that night, for before she came in sight of it she was aware of an alarmed clamour of the water-fowl, and wondering what was the cause of it, she made her approach with caution. The stream, which she had followed fell over a small cliff to the shore of the lake and as she reached the head of the fall she became aware of two men beaching a canoe. Instantly she slipped behind a tree, and from this point of vantage looked again. The men had lifted the canoe clear of the water and were now standing upright with their faces to her not twenty-five yards from the place of her concealment. On this second glance she recognized them instantly. One of the men was Gerald Ainley and the other was the Indian, Joe.
For a moment she stood there without moving, then very cautiously she drew back into the wood behind her, and gradually worked her way to a place along the lakeside where the undergrowth was very thick, and where she could watch without fear of discovery. She was less than a quarter of a mile away from the place where the two had landed, and as she watched them making camp, the smell of their fire was blown across to her. Neither of the two travellers showed any disposition to leave the lakeside, and she watched them for quite a long time, a look of deep perplexity on her face.
They were friends! She had no doubt that they were looking for herself. They represented ease and safety, and a quick return to the amenities of civilization, but she had no desire to discover herself to them. She thought of the injured man lying in the tent a mile away. It was possible that the coming of these two, if she made her presence known, might prove to be beneficial for him. She weighed that side of the matter very carefully, and her eyes turned to the canoe in which the men travelled. It was, she recognized, too small to carry four people, one of whom would have to lie at length in it; and she knew instinctively that Ainley would propose to leave the Indian behind to look after Stane whilst he took her back to her uncle. And she was conscious of a surprising aversion to any such course; aware that she was satisfied with things as they were. She crouched there for quite a long time, then a whimsical smile came on her face, and without a regret she crept quietly away through the forest, leaving the two searchers unaware of her presence.
When she reached the encampment she looked into the hut and found that Stane was fast asleep. She smiled to herself, and instead of replenishing the failing fire, carefully extinguished it with earth, that neither the glare nor the smoke of it might reach the two searchers and so lead to the discovery of the camp. Then, having done all she could to ensure Stane and herself remaining undisturbed in their wilderness seclusion, she looked in the tent again, smiled once more, and dropping the fly of the tent, went to her own tepee. Though she lay long awake, she was up betimes next morning, and after one glance into the tent to assure herself that her patient was yet sleeping, she moved off in the direction of the lake. When she came in sight of it she looked towards the foot of the waterfall for Ainley's camp. It was no longer there, but a mile and a half away she descried the canoe making down the lake. As she did so, she laughed with sudden relief and gladness, and hurried back to the camp to light the fire and prepare breakfast.
CHAPTER XI
A FOREST FIRE
Sir James Yardely sat in the shelter of his tent looking anxiously at Gerald Ainley.
"Then you have not found my niece, Ainley?"
"No, Sir James! But I have news of her, and I am assured she is alive."
"Tell me what gives you that assurance."
Ainley thereupon described the search he had made, and produced the swastiki brooch, explaining the circumstances under which he had found it, and then gave an account of the meeting with the half-breed and of the latter's declaration that he had seen Helen going up the main river in a canoe with a white man.
"But why on earth should Helen go up there?" asked Sir James wonderingly.
"I cannot say, Sir James! I can only guess, and that is that Miss Yardely knew that we were making for the old Fort Winagog, and mentioned it to her rescuer who was probably journeying that way. Anyhow I went up to the Fort. The Indians there had not seen nor heard of any white girl in the neighbourhood, but I gave them instructions to look for her, promising a reward if she were found, then I hurried back here by the shorter route in the hope that possibly Miss Yardely might have returned in the meantime."
Sir James stared through the tent-door at the wild landscape before him. His face showed a lightening of his anxiety, though it was clear that the turn of events puzzled him.
"I can't understand it," he said. "Why shouldn't Helen have made her way straight back here?"
"Can't say, Sir James! Possibly the man who helped her doesn't know the country, and of course Miss Yardely is quite ignorant of it."
"And here she is, lost in the wilderness, careering round the compass with heaven knows what come-by-chance fellow!" commented Sir James, adding quickly, "Ainley, she has got to be found!"
"Yes, Sir James!"
"This unfortunate affair has upset me. It has quite disarranged my plans. We have lost five days here, and I shall be compelled to curtail my journey. I have decided to cut out the visits to the posts north of this, and to work across to the Peace River, and so southward."
"You are going back?" cried Ainley in some consternation. "You are going to leave Miss Yardely——"
"No, my dear fellow," interrupted Sir James, anticipating the conclusion of his subordinate's sentence. "I am not going to leave her to her fate. I am going to leave you to find her. I have thought the matter out very carefully. I shall leave four Indians with you, and shall establish a camp at this point, so that in the event of Helen returning here you will not miss her by any chance. I shall send a messenger to Rodwell, at Fort Malsun, instructing him to send you down an outfit that will last the winter if necessary, and you will havecarte blancheto follow your own plans, only you must understand, Ainley, my niece must be found. Even though you have to comb this country through with a dust-comb she must be found."
"She shall be, Sir James," answered Ainley with conviction.
"It is, of course, just possible that the man with whom your half-breed saw her was making north to the post at Lobstick Creek, and it will be as well to make an early inquiry there."
"Yes, Sir James, I have thought of that."
"By the way, did you get any description of the man whom my niece was with?"
"Yes. You remember that man who was at Fort Malsun, and who departed quietly one night?"
"You mean that fellow whom you knew at Oxford, and who has since gone under?"
"That is the man, Sir James; I am convinced of it, from the half-breed's description."
A look of anxiety came on the great man's face. "A discharged convict, wasn't he, Ainley?"
"Yes, Sir James. He is of good family, and I fancy he is wealthy, for he succeeded to the estate whilst he was in prison, and came out here I imagine, because the old country was impossible to him."
"What was the crime that knocked him out of things?"
"Forgery!"
"Um!" was the reply. "Things might have been worse. Possibly the fellow will remember that he used to be a gentleman."
"Possibly," agreed the younger man.
"Anyhow, you know exactly who you have to look for and that ought to make your task much easier. Rodwell will instruct all the Indians who show up at Fort Malsun to keep a bright look-out and no doubt in a few days you will get track of her. But as I said just now, she must be found, at all costs she must be found!"
"Yes, Sir James! I shall spare no effort to that end, and I may say that, if possible, I am even more anxious about her than you."
A half-smile came on the great man's face, as he nodded: "I understand, Ainley; I am not blind. It was for that reason I decided that you should have charge of the search-party, seeing that you have—er—extra inducements. Find my niece, bring her back to me, and then we can talk over the matter. And now you had better go and think out your plans carefully. I shall have to leave here in the morning, but now that I know Helen is alive, I shall go with a comparatively easy heart."
Gerald Ainley went to his own tent with a smile on his face. For the furtherance of his ultimate plans things could scarcely have fallen out better. It was true that Helen yet remained to be found; but he was to be left to find her, and was to have a free hand in the matter. After a week or two in the wilderness Helen would be glad enough to meet with an old friend bringing deliverance, and the intimacy of daily travel together would inevitably bring her to his arms. His brow darkened a little as he thought of her present protector. Then it cleared again. Helen was very proud. Circumstances for the present had thrown her into Stane's company, but she was the last person in the world to forget that Stane was an ex-convict, and as he thought of that, all apprehension of possible complications in that quarter vanished instantly.
Had he known all, or had he even at that moment been granted a vision of the camp by the great deadfall, he would scarcely have been so complacent of mind. For at the very time when he was congratulating himself on the opportunity opening out before him, Helen Yardely was seated on a log by the side of the man whom he hated. There was a high colour in her face and she was laughing a little nervously as she looked at the astonished face of the sick man who had been her rescuer and was now her patient.
"Miss Yardely," cried Stane, "do you really mean what you say?"
"Of course I do," replied the girl lightly.
"And Gerald Ainley with another man camped within two miles of here two nights ago?"
"I should say the distance to the lake is even less than that," replied Helen with a little laugh.
"And you let them go without a sign."
"I hid myself in the bushes," replied the girl, gaily.
"But do you realize that they were probably, searching for you?"
"Yes! And I was afraid that they might find me. I even put out the fire that they should not discover our camp and come up to investigate. When I saw them going away yestermorning I could have clapped my hands for gladness."
Stane looked at her incredulously. Here was something that was beyond him.
"Why—why did you let them go?" he cried sharply.
"You wish I had revealed myself?" she asked with compunction, misunderstanding his question. "You think I ought to have brought them up here?"
"That was for yourself to decide," he answered quietly, adding with a little laugh. "I am well content with things as they are. But I am curious to know why you let deliverance from the hardships of this situation pass by on the other side."
"Oh," replied Helen in some confusion, "I remembered that you did not like Gerald Ainley!"
"But," he protested, "there was yourself to think of."
"Yes," was the reply, given with laughter, "and I was doing so—if you only knew it."
"How? I cannot see it."
"You forget my pride as amateur surgeon and nurse," she retorted. "I like to see the end of things that I begin, and if I had brought Mr. Ainley up here he would have wanted to take me away, and leave you with the Indian." She broke off, and looked at him with a gay smile. "Perhaps you would have preferred——"
"No! No!" he interrupted protestingly.
"And there is another reason—quite as selfish as the last. You see, Mr. Stane, I have been delicately reared; boarding-school, Newnham—the usual round you know! London in the season, Scotland in the autumn, and the shires for the hunting months. It is an inane sort of life, as I have always felt, pleasant enough at first, but inane for all that, and after a time rather a bore. Can you understand that?"
"Yes," he said, with a nod, "I think I can."
"Most of the men of our set have something to do! Either they are in the army, or in Parliament, or managing estates, but the women—well, they live a butterfly life. There seems to me no escape for them. Do what they will, unless they become suffragettes and smash windows or smack fat policemen, their life drifts one way. Charity?—it ends in a charity ball. Politics?—it means just garden-parties or stodgy week-ends at country houses, with a little absurd canvassing of rural labourers at election times. Sometimes I used to consider it, and with that bus-driver of Stevenson's who drove to the station and then drove back, cry 'My God is this life!' There was nothing real anywhere. Nobody ever expected a woman in our set to do anything worth doing." She broke off, and gave a little laugh, then continued: "Now I have my chance to prove I'm something better than a doll, and I'm not going to be robbed of it by Gerald Ainley, my uncle, or any one else! This camp depends on me for a time at least, and I'm going to make good; and prove myself for my own satisfaction. Do you understand?"
"Yes," answered Stane, his eyes shining with admiration.
"That is what I meant when I said that if you only knew it, I was thinking of myself. It would strike some people as a little mad. I know some women who in a situation like this would have sat down and just cried themselves to death."
"So do I. Lots of them."
"I don't feel that way. I feel rather like a man I know at home who was brought up on the sheltered life system, nursery governess, private tutor, etc., who when he came of age just ran amok, drank, fought with the colliers on his own estate, and then enlisted in an irregular corps and went to fight the Spaniards in Cuba, just to prove to himself that he wasn't the ninny his father had tried to make him. He shocked his neighbours thoroughly, but he's a man today, listened to when he speaks and just adored by the miners on his estate.... I want to make good, and though Mrs. Grundy would chatter if she knew that I had deliberately chosen to remain and nurse a sick man in such conditions, I don't care a jot."
"You needn't worry about Mrs. Grundy," he laughed. "She died up here about 1898, and was buried on the road to the Klondyke."
Helen Yardely joined in his laughter. "May she never be resurrected—though I am afraid she will be. Where there are half-a-dozen conventional women Mrs. Grundy is always in the midst. But I'm free of her for the time, and I'm just going to live the primitive life whilst I'm here. I feel that I have got it in me to enjoy the life of the woods, and to endure hardships like any daughter of the land, and I'm going to do it. Not that there is much hardship about it now! It is just an extended pic-nic, and I wouldn't have missed it for anything."
Stane smiled. "I am very glad you feel like that," he said. "I myself shall be much happier in mind and I count myself lucky to have fallen in such capable hands!"
"Capable!" she looked at her scratched and rather grimy hands. "A kitchen-maid's are more capable! But I can learn, and I will, however much I bungle. Now, as the universal provider, I am going out to look at my snares."
She rose, and left the tent, and he heard her pass into the wood singing to herself. A thoughtful look came on Stane's face, and presently gave place to a smile. "Happy in these circumstances!" he murmured to himself. "What a treasure of a girl!"
And there was no question that Helen Yardely was happy. She radiated gladness as she made her way towards the lake carrying an express rifle in the crook of her arm. Except for the barking of squirrels, and the distant cry of waterfowl the land was very still, the silence that of an immense solitude. But it affected her not at all, she was not even conscious of loneliness, and she hummed gaily to herself as she went along the path which now was beginning to define itself.
As she reached the lakeside, however, her song was suddenly checked, and she looked round sniffing the air thoughtfully. There was a fire somewhere, for there was the smell of burning spruce in the atmosphere. She thought of her own camp-fire, and looked back in the direction of it. Never before had the aromatic odour reached her so far away, and she was a little puzzled that it should do so now. There was little movement in the air, and in order to discover the direction of it she wet her hand and held it up, and as one side grew cooler than the other, looked southward. The slight wind was blowing from that quarter towards the camp and not away from it, so it could not be her own fire, which thus filled the air with odour. There was another encampment somewhere in the neighbourhood.
Having reached that conclusion, she looked about her carefully for any revealing column of smoke, and found none. She examined the shore of the lake expecting to discover a canoe or canoes beached there, but there was nothing of the sort to be seen. For a time she stood there frankly puzzled, wondering what was the explanation of the smell of fire which was in the air, but the reason for which did not appear. Then, after searching the lake bank once more, she gave up the problem and addressed herself to the task which had brought her from the camp. There was nothing in her snares, but as she approached a large patch of water-reeds, a flock of wild geese rose into the air, "honking" in alarm.
Instantly the rifle was at her shoulder, and as she fired, a gander jerked in the air, and then fell like a stone back into the reeds. It took her some time to retrieve it, and when she had done so, she looked round again. The sound of her rifle in that great stillness would travel a long way, and if there had been any traveller camped in the neighbourhood he must have heard it! But there was no one to be seen anywhere, though the smell of fire was as strong as ever. Puzzled, she returned to the camp, looked at her own fire which was burning low and which could not possibly be the explanation of that which was perplexing her, and without saying anything to her companion about it, turned in for the night.
She awoke early to find a wind humming in the tree-tops and immediately there impinged upon her nostrils the odour of burning wood. She rose instantly and dressing hastily went to the tent and looked in. Stane was still sleeping, and without awakening him she hurried down to the lakeside, very conscious that the smell of fire was much stronger than on the previous night. When she reached the shore she looked southward in the direction from which the wind was blowing. As she did so, for one brief moment her heart seemed to stop and a great fear leaped up within her.
Up the lake-side the shore was hidden under rolling clouds of smoke, the dark green of the woods was shrouded by the same bluish veil, and the air seemed full of distant crackling. Out of the veil of smoke as she watched broke a long leaping tongue of yellow flame, and the air blowing towards her seemed hot as a furnace. Her face paled before the terror in front. Though she had never seen the like before, on the way up to Fort Malsun, she had seen the blackened patches where such fires had been. She had heard stories of men surprised by them, and she knew that the forest full of dry deadfall and resinous trees, was on fire. Her first thought was for the sick man who was in her care. The camp was directly in the line of fire, and, if the wind kept up, must inevitably burn. She would have to get him away. But how?
The question was beating in her brain as she hurried back, and through the reiteration of it she became conscious of moving life about her. A weasel almost crossed her foot without a glance at her, and she saw others moving in front of her. Small wood-mice swarmed, fleeing from the terror they could not see; and a great timber-wolf followed by a couple of cubs fled by without more than a sidelong look. The squirrel in the trees screeched alarm and once she caught sight of a big, dark lumbering body crashing through the undergrowth to the left of her, and divined that it was a bear. All the creatures of the wood had taken the alarm and were fleeing before the fiery horror against which none could stand.
When she reached the camp she went straight to the tent. Stane was awake, lifted up on one elbow, an anxious look upon his face. As his eyes saw her pallor, he knew that a fear which in the last few moments had come to him was not groundless.
"Ah!" he cried, "the timber is on fire! I thought I could smell it."
"Yes," she answered, "and the wind is driving the fire this way."
"How far away?" he inquired calmly.
"Two or three miles."
"You will have to go, Miss Yardely," he answered quickly. "The fire travels quickly in such timber as this. You must not mind me——"
"You want me to run away and leave you to die," cried the girl. "I shall do nothing of the kind. I would sooner die myself! I could never respect myself again. There must be some way out of this difficulty, only I don't know it. But you are used to the ways of this wilderness. You must tell me what to do, and quickly, and I will do it. Oh—if we only had a canoe!"
"We haven't," he answered thoughtfully, "but the next best thing, we could make, and——"
"What is that?"
"A raft!"
"A raft?" she echoed, hope lighting her face.
"Yes. If by any means you could get me down to the lake-side, I could instruct you in the construction. But how you are going to do that——"
"I shall carry you," interrupted the girl. "It will be very painful for you, but there is no other way."
"But how——?"
"On my back! I am strong, thank Heaven! And as we have no time to waste I will make arrangements at once. I'll take our things down to the shore, and then come back for you. You don't mind being left for a little while?"
"Of course not."
"There'll be no breakfast this morning, but I can't help that. A forest fire is no help to housekeeping."
She forced a little laugh as she spoke the words, but once outside the tent, a look of deepest anxiety clouded her beautiful face.