While Dick had been talking, Toma paced restlessly back and forth near the campfire. For some unexplainable reason, he felt uneasy. For several minutes now, he had been watching closely a thicket of elders as a cat might watch a mouse. On two different occasions the leaves and branches of the elders had stirred gently. A light breeze flowed down along the river valley, yet it was so vagrant and listless that it scarcely could be felt fanning one’s cheek. Yet he had distinctly seen the elders moving. His quick eye had noted this and his first thought had been that possibly a squirrel was playing there. Catching up his rifle, he strode straight over to the clustered thicket and parted the branches. As he peered within, for one fleeting moment he was under the impression that he had caught sight of something brown. Then he heard a stealthy movement, followed, by the unmistakable crackling of dry branches.
Pushing his way within the thicket, he paused to listen. He could hear no further sound. Yet something told him that that fleeting glimpse of something brown had not been of an animal but of a man—Wolf Brennan or McCallum!
He took a few steps forward, critically examining the ground. A barely audible sound escaped his lips. He stooped quickly over the faint imprint of a moccasined foot. Satisfied, his suspicions confirmed, he dashed on through the thicket, emerging at its farther side, just as two figures topped a low hill not thirty feet ahead. Toma raised his rifle to his shoulder in a lightning motion, then came a blinding explosion and the two men ducked their heads as a bullet whistled between them.
The skulkers did not hesitate for even a fraction of a second. They dashed down the hill toward the thicker growth just below. Just as they entered this welcome barrier, a second bullet clipped the leaves above their heads.
In the wild scramble that followed, Wolf Brennan lost his hat. Cursing, he started back for it when still another lead pellet whizzed past, so close to his face that he thought better of it, turned and plunged on after his companion.
Soon afterward, Toma strode back into camp as calmly as if nothing happened. His expression was reserved and dignified. Except for a faint sparkle in his eyes, one could never have guessed that only a short time before he had been so busy.
“What were you shooting at?” Dick and Sandy demanded.
The young Indian smiled faintly.
“A wolf,” he answered.
“Where did you see it? Pshaw, you’re joking,” accused Sandy. “A wolf! One seldom sees a wolf during the summer.”
“I see ’em wolf,” declared Toma, “an’ I shoot at him one, two, three times.”
“Yes, we heard you,” said Dick. “Hit him?”
“I not try very hard. I have lots fun scare that wolf. Wolf no good to eat unless one pretty near starve. Why for I kill him?”
“I’d kill a wolf any time I had a chance,” declared Dick. “I hate them.”
Sandy started to say something, then suddenly paused. Of a sudden his eyes had grown very round and he stared at Toma as if fascinated. He was looking straight at the young Indian’s hip pocket. From it a bulky object protruded. The object was brown and it was a little difficult to tell just what it was, nevertheless, Sandy had his suspicions. He strode forward quickly and yanked it from his chum’s pocket. He smoothed it and held it out for better inspection.
“Where did you get it?” he demanded.
At the sharp question, Dick turned and he, too, stood goggling.
“I no tell you a lie,” Toma explained. “That fellow him wolf all right—Wolf Brennan.”
Dick turned pale. “Did you kill him?” he cried in horror. “Tell the truth, Toma, you didn’t hit him, surely? You wouldn’t do that.”
“I just tell you I like make ’em run. Wolf Brennan, Toby McCallum do very fast run back there in the trees,” Toma pointed away in the direction he had just come. “Mebbe next time them fellows think twice before they try spy on our camp.”
For a brief interval, Dick and Sandy grinned over the mental picture of those two racing figures, but their mirth was short-lived. The same thought came to each at the same time.
“I’ll bet they heard what we were talking about,” gasped Sandy.
“Sure they did,” said Dick.
“In that case, no use going to Clear Spring River. Might as well go on the way we planned in the first place”—dolefully.
“Might as well.”
Toma, who had been gazing up and down along the shore, suddenly broke forth:
“What you think them fellows do with our canoe?”
“Set it adrift, of course,” grunted Sandy. “It’s probably miles away by this time. Might even have reached the Lake of Many Islands.”
Toma rubbed his forehead with a grimy hand.
“Mebbe not. Mebbe current take it close in to shore an’ that canoe not very far away this minute.”
“Possible, I’ll admit,” agreed Dick, “but not very probable. More likely they took it out here in mid-stream and sunk it.”
“If you fellow stay here,” suggested Toma, “I very willing to walk back to see if mebbe I find it.”
“No,” said Dick, “I wouldn’t want you to do that. I mean it isn’t fair that you should take all the risks and do all the work, Toma. Let’s toss a coin to see who goes.”
It was agreed. They tossed the coin and Dick lost. A few minutes later, carrying his rifle and a few emergency rations, he waved good-bye to his two chums and started out.
Dick had no definite plan in mind other than to proceed down the river in search of their missing canoe. As Toma had suggested, there was a possible chance that the unscrupulous Wolf Brennan and his partner had set the craft adrift, believing that it would be carried by the current into the Lake of Many Islands—out of sight and out of reach of their three young opponents. If this was the plan that Wolf had actually put into effect, there was still a frail chance for its recovery. It might have floated out of the main current and subsequently been washed ashore. If Dick were lucky, he might come upon it. It was a somewhat hopeless quest yet, under the circumstances, it might be well worth the effort.
“I won’t waste more than a few hours,” Dick decided, as he picked his way along the rock-strewn shore. “If I don’t find it within five miles from camp, I’ll give up.”
At the end of an hour, his patience was rewarded. Turning a bend in the stream, his heart gave a quick leap. Two hundred yards ahead was what looked to be very much like the thing he sought. It was a canoe—that much he knew. It was close to shore, drifting idly, round and round a circular pool on his own side of the river. He emitted a fervid sigh of satisfaction and relief and bounded forward. Fifty feet from his objective he stopped short, his breath catching.
It was not their canoe at all. It was the one in which only the day before, he had seen Wolf Brennan and Toby McCallum pass by the island of the dinosaur. The realization had come so unexpectedly that, for a time, Dick was almost too dazed and bewildered to collect his scattered wits.
So Brennan and his partner had lost their canoe, too? How had that happened? Had they left it partly in the water and partly on shore, and had the current succeeded in tugging it away? It seemed probable. The river played no favorites.
And then Dick saw something that caused his pulses to leap with excitement. In the white sand, twenty feet from where the craft was bobbing idly, were the marks made by the canoe when it had been beached, and around these marks were the unmistakable imprints of moccasined feet.
Dick could not suppress a grin of appreciation. Well-trained canoe that! A very obliging current! Caught in a net-work of in-shore eddies, moving round and round in a circle, the canoe was nearly as safe as if it had been dragged clear of the water and deposited in the white sand along the beach.
Coincident with this discovery, there came the realization that he was treading on dangerous ground. Having left their canoe here, very naturally the partners would return. Perhaps they already had. For all Dick knew to the contrary, right at this moment from behind some leafy ambuscade they might be watching his approach. The thought frightened him. He paused dead in his tracks, undecided what to do. After the reception Wolf had received back there at the boys’ camp, it was only reasonable to suppose that neither of the partners would hesitate about using their own weapons. On the other hand, if they were still lingering in the vicinity of the other camp or had paused to rest somewhere, he would be missing a golden opportunity if caution or the fear of a bullet kept him from making a closer approach.
Come to think of it, he was in as much danger here, a mere fifty yards from his goal, as he would be if he were actually at the side of the canoe. Already he was within rifle range. But they hadn’t fired. Were they waiting for him to come just a wee mite closer, or was it really true that they hadn’t yet arrived upon the scene?
For a full minute Dick stood there, unable to decide. His heart pounded like a trip-hammer. Three times he took a step forward and thrice he stopped short, in panic at the thought of what might happen to him if he could command the courage to go on.
And then, almost beside himself from the inactivity and suspense, he gathered together the fluttering, loose ends of a waning decision, gritted his teeth, and darted forward. Bounding along at top speed, in a few seconds he came abreast of the canoe, checked himself, then splashed out waist-deep into the water and clambered aboard.
He dropped his rifle, frantically seized one of the paddles and was half way out into the river before he was sufficiently recovered from his fright to realize that he had actually made good his escape. Yet he continued to paddle furiously. Never before had he bucked a current with such fierce and desperate ardor. He swept round the bend in the river, perspiration pouring from every pore, working with a dogged, automatic, machine-like regularity. Seemingly he could not, dare not ease up for even as much as a split-second.
On and on he raced. A thin, white line of foam trailed off in his wake. Now and again in his eager haste, his paddle scooped the water in the air behind him, where the freshening breeze caught it and whirled it away.
He was limp as a rag and utterly spent when he reached camp. Toma and Sandy, who stood watching him as he glided up to shore, blinked in amazement.
He had not the breath to answer their eager questions. He lay back in the stern, puffing, gasping, while the blood throbbed in his head with such insistence that for a time he actually believed that his temples would burst. His vision was somewhat obscured, too. Through a sort of haze he could perceive Sandy dancing wildly like a jungle savage.
“Dick, you lucky beggar!” shrieked the suddenly daft and madly plunging young maniac. “What’s the meaning of this? O boy! Cracky! If you haven’t turned the tables after all. What a come-back! I’ll bet if either one of ’em had gold teeth you’d have stolen them, too. Where’d you get it?”
Not yet able to speak intelligently, Dick pointed down the river.
“You did, eh?”
Dick nodded.
“Fight ’em?” Sandy persisted.
Dick shook his head.
“Well, that’s too bad. I was hoping that you had left them back there to nurse a couple of broken heads. Serve ’em right after what they did to our canoe.”
Dick sat up, his breathing now less violent.
“Ju—just what do you mean, Sandy? Have you found it?”
“You bet we have. Toma and I found it in your absence. It’s not down the river at all. It’s over there in the brush, just where they carried it after smashing it up with rocks. We must have slept like logs not to have heard them.”
Dick thrust his two arms into the water over the side of the canoe and commenced to bathe his hot, sweat-streaked face.
“Well, it doesn’t matter now. We have this.”
“Yes, thanks to you. What do you say we leave this accursed place before something else happens? Toma and I can bring over the luggage while you sit there and rest a bit. You need it. When we saw you first, I’m only exaggerating a little when I say you were travelling at the rate of twenty knots an hour.”
“I’ll admit I was frightened.”
“You must have been. Next time we want to get a little speed in a pinch, I’m going to frighten you myself.”
“Cut out the talking, Sandy, and let’s start. I’m afraid to linger here much longer. Don’t forget that we’ve stirred up a hornets’ nest by taking a flying shot at Messrs. Brennan and McCallum, and now have added insult to injury by appropriating their canoe.”
“Serves ’em right.”
“Please——”
Dick did not finish the sentence. A warning shout from Toma was followed instantly by a sinister crack of a rifle and the whine of a bullet. The young Indian came running, carrying part of the luggage. Dazed by the suddenness of the attack, they could not determine at first from whence the murderous leaden messenger had come. A second puff of smoke revealed the place the two outlaws were hiding. Sitting in the canoe, Dick returned their fire, while Sandy, strangely calm for him, sprang up the bank to fetch what remained of their provisions.
When they were ready to embark, the firing had ceased. But it was only a lull before the storm. Changing their position, this time creeping down closer to the shore, Wolf Brennan and his companion blazed away at the speeding, bobbing mark out there in the water. In order to save themselves, the three boys dropped their paddles and sprawled at full length in the bottom of the canoe.
“Whatever you do—keep down!” panted Dick.
Crack! Crack! Crack! Wood splintered around them. Running wild in the current now, their craft started down stream. Suddenly, water commenced pouring in through one side. They were sinking—and drifting as they sank. Calm though he was, Dick had a feeling that they were irretrievably lost. The water was like ice, chilling one to the marrow. The opposite shore was still a long distance away.
“Be ready!” Dick called sharply. “Swim! Keep under as much as possible!”
Like a man dying, the canoe gurgled and went down. A bullet spat in the water where it had been. A yell of triumph sounded from the shore.
“Dive!” shivered Dick. “We’ll make it!”
Drenched and exhausted, they waded ashore. They wrung the water out of their dripping garments, eyeing each other soberly. His mouth grim, Toma turned and waved defiance at their two enemies, who stood watching them from the opposite side.
Dick was too overcome, too utterly sick at heart even for speech. His mind dwelt upon their awful plight. No catastrophe, except death itself, could have been more terrible. Canoe, supplies, guns—everything they possessed—had gone to the bottom of the river. In one stroke, fate had delivered a fearful blow. They were face to face with starvation, that grimmest of all spectres of the wild. They were two hundred miles from the nearest trading post—and food. The country through which they must pass was unsettled, except for roving bands of Indians, and here and there, probably, a white hunter or prospector. Without rifles, it would be very difficult to obtain game. They had not even matches with which to light a fire.
Standing there, shivering and despondent, Sandy addressed his chums:
“We’re alive, and that’s about all. An hour ago the odds were in our favor. Not now. The tables have been turned. The advantage is theirs. At least, they have rifles and matches.”
Despondently, they turned out their pockets. Each of the boys had a hunting knife. Dick had three fish hooks and a line. Sandy produced a watch, compass, and an emergency kit containing bandages and medicine. Toma pulled out an odd assortment of articles, including three wire nails, a mouth-organ, a bottle of perfume, a mirror, and a package of dried dates. That was all, not counting a small amount of money which each one carried.
“The prospect doesn’t look very bright,” sighed Dick. “Fish will have to keep us alive until we get back to the post. Toma,” he turned eagerly upon the young Indian, “do you know how to start a fire without matches?”
“Yes,” Toma nodded.
“Well, that will help some. We haven’t any salt to eat with our fish, but in this sort of emergency I guess we can’t complain. One thing that pleases me, that makes all this endurable, is that Wolf Brennan and Toby McCallum are not apt to bother us any more. We’re on opposite sides of the river, and by the time they can build a raft, we’ll be a good many miles ahead of them. If you fellows are willing, I’d just as soon walk all night.”
“But we can’t walk without food,” Sandy reminded him. “We must stop, catch a few fish, and make a fire. In time the sun will dry out our clothing, so we don’t need to worry about that.”
Toma led the way as they pushed on. It was late when they stopped. Dick immediately repaired to the river, where he caught four trout. In the meantime, Sandy watched Toma making a fire. It was a slow process. The young Indian walked up through the woods, and from the stem of a number of weeds he gathered a handful of pith. Next he procured dry moss, and, from the shore of the river, a hard rock about the size of a man’s hand. Proceeding with these materials to a place sheltered from the wind and handy to fuel, he squatted down, holding the rock in one hand and his knife in the other. With the ball of pith on the ground in front of him, working with incredible speed, he struck knife and rock together, sending a shower of red sparks upon the inflammable substance below.
Presently, it began to smoulder. Lying prone, he blew upon it gently. Delicate, fine pencils of smoke arose, then a tiny flame, no larger than that made by a match, flamed up from the pith. With a quick motion, still continuing to blow, Toma sprinkled over his embryo fire a quantity of dry moss. The little flame rose higher. He added a few tiny twigs and the outer husks of the weeds, from which he had taken the pith. Within five minutes their campfire was blazing brightly, and when Dick returned with the trout, he stood there staring in wonderment.
“Did you do that, Toma?”
“Yes, I do ’em.”
“What with?” Dick inquired curiously.
“The steel of his hunting knife and an ordinary rock,” explained Sandy. “Struck them together and made sparks. The sparks ignited a little ball of fluff he gathered from some weeds in the woods.”
“That not ordinary rock,” Toma pointed out. “That what Indian call fire-rock. Make spark easy. Not always you find rock like that. If I use different kind of rock, it take much longer.”
When they had eaten their supper, consisting of the four trout, baked over the fire, they all felt much more cheerful. Dick and Sandy spent an interesting half-hour receiving instructions in the art of fire making. Both soon discovered that it was not as easy as it looked. Each made several futile attempts before he finally succeeded. When they left camp, setting out upon their lonely night’s journey, much to the young Indian’s amusement, Dick took the fire-rock with him.
“We find plenty more rock like that along the river,” Toma told him. “Why you carry that extra load?”
“It’s not heavy,” Dick grinned. “Besides it fits nicely into my left hip-pocket. I don’t intend to take any chances about finding another rock as good as this. I know I can make a fire with this one and I might not be so fortunate with some other kind.”
Toma laughed again as they made their way through the enveloping spring twilight. The air was exhilarating and the quiet earth was touched with a solemn beauty. Not a breath of air stirred through the fir and balsam along the slope. A fragrant earth smell uprose from the rich soil. They passed shrubs that flamed with white and crimson flowers. Dick became so impressed with the loveliness of it all that for a time he quite forgot about their dilemma. Later, when he did remember it, it didn’t seem so terrible after all.
“We’ll fool them yet,” he announced cheerily. “If we can manage to get food as we go along, there’s no reason why we can’t arrive at Half Way House in time to upset Frazer’s plans.”
“We must do it,” replied Sandy soberly.
“It won’t be easy,” warned Dick.
“I know that. It makes me all the more anxious to succeed. I’m not very apt to forget this experience for a long time. If the factor really is up to some underhanded work—and the actions of Brennan and McCallum have indicated that pretty plainly—I, for one, intend to get to the bottom of it.”
“That’s the spirit,” applauded Dick. “We’ll show him. We’ll go till we drop. If anything happens to one of us, the other two must carry on.”
They paused at that and shook hands all around. Then they went on more grimly and doggedly. All night they tramped. When the early morning sun blazed a new trail across the blue field of the sky, they made a second camp, started another fire with flint and steel and devoured hungrily, almost ravenously, the six trout which Dick had the good fortune to catch in a deep, quiet pool near the shore of the river.
In catching the trout, Dick had used clams for bait. Watching him, the operation had given Sandy an idea. He set out along the shore, returning at the end of an hour with thirty large clams, which he placed in a hole he had scooped out in the sand.
“When we’ve had a few hours sleep,” he told Dick and Toma proudly, “I’ll roast these fellows in the hot ashes and we’ll have a change of diet.”
“Not a bad idea,” Dick rejoined. “I’m almost hungry enough to eat them right now.”
They slept longer than they had intended. It was late afternoon when they awoke. The warm sun, beating down upon their tired bodies, had kept them as warm and comfortable as if they had been wrapped in blankets. So refreshed were they when they had clambered up from their couches of white sand that Toma was moved to remark:
“Not bad idea to sleep daytime an’ travel night. At night fellow sleep by campfire with no blankets get cold. No rest good.”
“True,” agreed Dick. “We’ll do most of our travelling at night. Wish I knew what time it was. Too bad the water spoiled Sandy’s watch. By the look of that sun, I’d say it was about three o’clock in the afternoon.”
Toma squinted up at it and shook his head.
“Five o’clock,” he corrected. “Soon as we get something to eat, better tramp some more. Dick, you give ’em me fishhook and line an’ mebbe by time you an’ Sandy get fire ready an’ bake clams, I catch some more fish.”
Toma had better luck even than Dick. A few minutes before the clams were baked, he appeared upon the scene with eight speckled beauties, none of which weighed less than two pounds. They cleaned and baked them all, wrapped up five in Dick’s moose-hide coat, made a pack of it, and started out upon their journey.
They went jubilantly. It was many hours before the sun swung down toward the northwestern horizon. Just as the twilight waned and the half-night of the Arctic dropped its mantle over the earth, Toma, who was twenty yards in the lead, suddenly stopped short and threw up his hands, shouting for his two companions to hurry. When they reached his side, he pointed down at the loose sand at his feet.
“Go—ood Heavens!” stammered Dick.
In the sand, plainly distinguishable, were the imprints of naked human feet.
Who made those naked footprints in the sand? For hours afterward the boys puzzled over it, but could come to no satisfactory conclusion. Indians, as they well knew, seldom went barefoot. If, on the other hand, the tracks had been made by a white man, who was he and from whence had he come? Though they searched long and diligently for the remains of a campfire or other evidences of the stranger’s presence, none was to be found. The tracks could be followed for a distance of nearly a quarter of a mile along the shore, after which they turned away from the river and became lost in the thick moss that carpeted the woods.
Nor could they pick up the tracks again. Toma, whom nature and training had specially fitted for this kind of work, was forced to admit, finally, that even he was baffled. Given a little more time, he believed that he could find other imprints, but inasmuch as Sandy and Dick chafed at the delay already caused by the mysterious, barefoot stranger, he decided to concur with popular sentiment and try to think no more about it.
But it was not thus to be dismissed so lightly. The passing of time seemed only to add fresh interest to the puzzle. During the next two days it was the popular topic of discussion. New theories were advanced by one or other of the boys, argued over sometimes for hours, then relegated to the limbo of dead and forgotten things.
On the morning of the third day, however, while travelling over a rough section of country near the winding, interminable river, Dick was reminded again of the tracks. His own toes had worn through his moccasins. There was a hole about the size of a silver dollar in each one of his heels. In another day or so, he, too, would be walking barefoot, much as he dreaded to think of it, making those peculiar and tragic marks in the sand.
He glanced over at Sandy’s moccasins and noted with a sinking of the heart that his were even in worse condition than his own. Toma’s were in better shape, but also very badly worn. Soon they must all endure the torture of going unshod, or else cut up their moosehide coats and make new footgear.
None of the three wanted to part with his coat. The nights were often chilly and it would be a positive hardship to do without them.
“I’d almost as soon go barefoot,” declared Sandy.
“Yes, I know,” Dick’s face clouded, “but do you think we can endure these forced marches if our feet are cut and bruised? Mine are beginning to cause me untold suffering now. You, Sandy, are limping. No! Don’t try to deny it. I’ve been watching you. A few more bruises, a few more scratches and cuts, and we won’t be able to walk five miles a day. You may not have noticed it, but already we have begun to slacken down. I don’t believe we made more than eighteen miles yesterday. We put in the hours but we don’t seem to get the results. I’ll admit that it’s tough going through here, but we won’t find anything better until we reach the seventh portage.”
“I know it,” sighed the other. “Yet I hate to part with my coat. Say—where in the dickens has Toma gone?”
“I saw him around here only a few minutes ago,” Dick answered absent-mindedly, still absorbed with the pressing problem of footgear.
“No, you didn’t,” his chum flatly contradicted. “He’s been away a long time now—over an hour, I’m sure. I’m beginning to worry about him.”
“Probably away somewhere getting fish for breakfast,” Dick decided.
“He’s done that already.”
“You couldn’t lose that restless scamp if you tried, so stop worrying.”
“I can’t help it,” grumbled Sandy.
Dick suddenly sat up straight, the perplexed lines vanishing from his forehead.
“Say, I’ll bet I know. He’s gone off to snare rabbits. He’s been complaining a lot lately about our fish diet. I recall now that when we were walking along together early this morning he informed me that at our next stop he intended to set out some snares.”
“Don’t blame him one bit. I’m tired of this fish diet myself. Every time I wake up, I examine my body to see if I haven’t started to grow scales.”
Dick laughed. “Fish are called brain-food, Sandy. Don’t forget that. By the time we reach Half Way House, we’ll all be very learned and wise.”
“I much prefer to wallow along in ignorance,” Sandy retorted. “I hate fish. When we get home I never want to see another. Lately, about all I can think about is flapjacks and coffee and thick slices of white bread with a top covering of butter. Last night, or to be more exact, yesterday afternoon while I slept, I dreamed that Uncle Walter had just received one of those big plum puddings from England and that he made me a present of the whole of it.”
Sandy paused to moisten his lips.
“I never had such a vivid dream,” he went on. “At one sitting I ate the whole of it. It had dates and raisins in it, and currants and nuts, and there was a rich sauce that I kept pouring over it and—yum, yum—”
“Stop! Stop!” Dick shouted, vainly trying to shut out the appetizing picture. “You can tell the rest of that some other time when I’m in a better condition to appreciate it.”
“Well, if you won’t listen to me,” Sandy said aggrievedly, “I’m going to curl up here in the sun and go to sleep. Maybe I’ll dream about another plum pudding.”
“Think I’ll roll in too,” said Dick, smiling at the idiom.
Sansblankets or covering of any kind, even a coat, there was, of course, nothing to roll into. One simply stretched out in the sunshine, covered one’s face with a handkerchief to keep away the flies and fell away into deep slumber. He felt particularly tired today and decided that, as soon as Toma returned, he’d follow Sandy’s example. He lay back, his arms pillowed under his head, watching a few widely scattered fleecy clouds floating lazily along under the deep blue field of the sky.
He did not hear the young Indian steal quietly into camp more than two hours later, having fallen asleep in spite of himself. But when he did recover consciousness, Toma was the first person his eyes lighted upon. The Indian was standing less than twenty feet away, his back toward him, and he was busily absorbed in feeding a freshly-kindled fire. Something unusual about the native boy’s appearance immediately attracted Dick’s attention. He saw what it was. Toma, apparently, had rolled up his moose-hide trousers and had gone wading for clams. From his ankles to his knees his legs were bare.
“Did you get any clams, Toma?” Dick inquired sleepily. “How long have you been back? Why didn’t you wake me, Toma?”
The young Indian answered none of Dick’s questions. However, he smiled somewhat sheepishly as he turned around and faced his chum. Then Dick gave utterance to a prolonged exclamation of genuine astonishment. His eyes widened perceptibly. He sat up very quickly, contemplating Toma as one might contemplate a man from Mars.
“What in blue blazes have you done with the bottom of your pants?” gasped Dick.
“I cut ’em off,” answered Toma, flushing.
“Yes, I see you have—but why?”
By way of explanation, and not without a touch of the Indian’s native dignity, he strode over to a pile of driftwood and fished out of it two new moccasins. Excellent work, Dick could see at a glance; moccasins of which anyone might have been proud.
“Sew ’em all same like squaw,” said Toma.
“But you had no needle.”
“Make ’em needle out of stick,” came the prompt reply.
“But what about the sinew, Toma? You had no thread. How could you sew without thread?”
Toma hung his head. He hated to make this admission, but the truth must come out. Toma was always truthful.
“I use part of fish-line,” he explained.
“Part of the fish-line?” gurgled Dick.
“Yes, I use ’em part of the fish-line.”
“Well, I must admit that you madegooduse of it. There is really more than we require anyway. I’m glad for your sake, Toma. Who, beside yourself, would ever have thought of a stunt like that? They’ll come in mighty handy for you, of course, but won’t you feel cold, Toma? When the winds are chilly I’m afraid you’ll suffer.”
Toma shook his head, bit his lips and stared very hard at some imaginary object across the river. It was plain that he was keenly embarrassed and quite at a loss to know what to say. Finally, he found the words that he had been vainly striving for and quickly blurted them out:
“Dick, I no can stand it any longer to see Sandy all time limp. Mebbe two, three more days Sandy sit down and feet swollen so bad not walk any farther.”
He gulped, averted his eyes, then tossed the result of his handiwork over at the sleeper’s side. Dick took in the little tableau, feeling suddenly very sick and mean and miserable and selfish. He did not try to hide the tears that came into his eyes. Through a sort of mist he saw Sandy’s blurred form stretched out there on the sand. Then he glanced at Toma, who looked very ludicrous and silly standing there in his abbreviated trousers, the cool night wind blowing over his bare legs.
At that instant there popped into his mind the sarcastic utterance of one Toby McCallum:
“Breeds don’t count!”
Neither that day nor the following did the boys succeed in getting a single trout. It was an unforeseen calamity and they were wholly unprepared for it. At first, they could not understand it. They knew that the river teemed with fish. Up to this time, they had had no trouble in catching all they had required. That blazing hot noon when Sandy returned to camp empty-handed and reported that not one member of the countless schools of trout and white-fish, that literally darkened the stream, would rise to his bait, Dick could not believe his ears.
“You couldn’t have tried very hard, Sandy,” he chided him. “Here, give me that line. You never were much of a fisherman, that is the trouble with you. You haven’t the patience, Sandy.”
The young Scotchman relinquished the line, his eyes stormy.
“I’ll admit I’m no fisherman,” he blurted, “but please don’t tell me that I didn’t try, because I did, or that I haven’t the patience because I have. I’ve caught nearly as many trout on this trip as you have. But they aren’t biting today at all. I think the river must be bewitched.”
Dick smiled knowingly and confidently, unsheathed his hunting knife and cut a long alder pole. Then, winking at Toma, he hurried over to the river, sure in his belief that he’d show Sandy a thing or two about the gentle art of fishing.
He baited his hook and cast his line. Repeatedly he whipped the swift water, grinning. In a moment he’d feel that sharp tug, experience that old familiar thrill. Poor Sandy! At best, he was only a half-hearted fisherman, had never learned to love the sport, had never entered into it with the enthusiasm and spirit that made for proficiency. The minute passed, but he was not discouraged. Back and forth his line flipped over the water. The smile left his face. He scowled, swung in his line, walked fifty or sixty yards upstream and tried again.
An hour—two hours—he was very grim now, but he just couldn’t give up. There were fish here. He must get fish. They had no other food except clams and it was not possible to get many of them. Good Lord, what would happen if their one heretofore unfailing source of sustenance were cut off? Following their long tramp that previous night, they were all weak from hunger. He was so famished right now that he could even relish eating a dead crow. Despondently, he sat down on a rock, still whipping the water. A shadow appeared from behind him and he heard a voice:
“What’s the matter, Dick? No catch ’em one yet?”
Dick turned his head. He looked up into Toma’s serious face and gulped down a lump in his throat.
“I don’t understand it. I don’t understand it!” he wailed.
The young Indian regarded the river with a sober, thoughtful face.
“Long time I been ’fraid about this,” he sighed. “All the time I hope mebbe I’m wrong. River too swift here to get many fish. No pools along here. Trout keep in central current an’ hurry on to better feeding place down the river.”
“So that’s the reason. But, Toma, what are we going to do? We must eat, somehow, and for nearly thirty miles the river is just like this. Is it starvation? Has it come to that?”
“Mebbe not starve, but get mighty hungry.”
“Perhaps we could kill a few birds with stones,” Dick suggested hopefully.
“I know better plan than that. We do like Indians before white men come. I make ’em bows an’ arrows. Only trouble is we no shoot straight at first.”
“But what about the strings for our bows?”
“We use fish-line.”
Dick slid off the rock, his expression more hopeful.
“All right, let’s set to work. I’ll help you, Toma. We’ll eat birds for dinner, squirrels—anything! Perhaps we might even be lucky enough to get a rabbit. If we don’t find something to eat pretty soon we’ll——”
The words died in his throat. On that instant back at camp, Sandy let out a scream—a ringing, pulsating, vibrant, piercing scream of terror. Looking back, they perceived Sandy tearing along toward them, arms and legs swinging, hat gone and the loose sides of his unbuttoned jacket billowing up in the wind.
While Dick stood there, wondering what it was all about, Toma stooped swiftly then straightened up, a rock in either hand, his cheeks the color of yellow parchment. At that moment, Dick caught sight of the apparition himself. His eyes popped and unconsciously he made a queer, choking noise in his throat. A thing that looked like a beast and yet, somewhat resembled a man, was making its way slowly down the steep bank toward their campfire. The horrible creature’s face was covered with a long black beard and the hair of his head straggled down over his eyes and fluffed out in a sinuous black wave around his shoulders.
It was a man undoubtedly—but what a man! A skin of some sort had been wrapped and tied around his torso, but both his arms and legs were quite naked. In every sense—a wild man. His huge frame supported bulging muscles. His chest expanded like a barrel. He walked with a gliding motion. His head rotated from side to side and, during the breathless silence that followed Sandy’s arrival, they could hear him clucking and grunting to himself.
The three boys waited there, rigid with terror. Never before had they seen a wild man. His awful appearance, his constant gibbering, his bobbing head and fearful eyes reminded Dick of gorillas and huge hairy apes, whose pictures he had often studied in his natural history book at school. When the hideous creature had turned from a momentary inspection of their campfire and commenced gliding toward them, with one accord they shrieked and fled.
They had no thought of their sore feet now, neither were they aware of the incessant, gnawing pains of hunger. In a great crisis of this sort, the mind has a peculiar tendency to become wholly subjective to the feelings of instinct. Instinct inherited from a thousand generations of jungle-prowling ancestors, told them to flee—and they fled.
Soon they headed away from the shore into the thickets of willow and jack-pine and began to climb the ascent that led away from the river, up and up, until right ahead they could see the somber, interminable green of the forest. It was cool here, a welcome coolness after the stiff climb. They were all panting for breath, fearful lest the wild man be still in pursuit of them. None of the boys wanted to meet him, cared about engaging in a hand to hand fight with that gorilla-like monster. So, plunging in the forest, they continued on, leaving the river far behind. At the end of a half hour, they swung south, guided by the sun, and continued their difficult journey in the direction of Half Way House.
When Dick felt perfectly sure that they were no longer being followed, he called a halt and brought up the subject closest to all of them.
“What about something to eat?” he inquired. “This will never do. We must eat. Toma, let’s put your plan into execution.”