FLUNG THE SACK INTO THE MAN'S LAPFLUNG THE SACK INTO THE MAN'S LAP
FLUNG THE SACK INTO THE MAN'S LAPFLUNG THE SACK INTO THE MAN'S LAP
The outlaw looked utterly bewildered.
"Ain't them diamonds?" he exclaimed.
"Fool's diamonds," Horace replied. "Maybe you can get five dollars for the lot. If they were real diamonds, you might be a millionaire now."
Mitchell was evidently convinced, for he swore bitterly.
"I'm curious to know," Horace said, "how you came to hear that you might expect to find diamonds hereabouts?"
"One of these breeds," said Mitchell sullenly, "got it from a brother of his down by Hickson that a prospector had died here with a pocketful of shiny stones that he'd picked up. I've prospected some myself. I thought what these stones likely was, and I got together this crowd, and—"
"We know the rest," said Peter. "You came on the same false scent that we did." Then he turned to Horace, and whispered, "What in the world are we going to do with these fellows?"
Horace wrinkled his brows in perplexity, and shook his head. "I don't know," he said.
But whatever they did, they must first of all sleep. The fire in the cabin had indeed burned out, but the place was so charred and smoky as to be uninhabitable; so they built a huge camp-fire of logs on the snow. Here they all passed the night,—there was not much left of it,—and Peter, Fred, and Maurice took turns in staying awake in order to watch the prisoners.
The next morning the boys prepared a great breakfast from the recaptured provisions. They released the right hands of the captives, to enable them to eat; the men showed no hostile spirit. Mitchell only was sullen, as usual; the three French Canadians chattered gayly; they had quite recovered from their suffocation. Four of the dogs were lively, too; but one was dead.
After breakfast the boys inspected the cabin, and carried out the rest of the supplies. Most of these were badly damaged. All the blankets had been destroyed; the rifles were charred about the stocks, but could still be used; the kettles and tinware were not much injured; but the boys found only one box of cartridges that had not exploded. Mitchell's dog harness was burned to pieces. Both the sledges had been left outdoors, and were unhurt.
As they looked over the outfit, the boys discussed their plans. They agreed that they should start for home at once. They were all anxious to have the diamonds appraised, and there was not the slightest reason for remaining. But the question what to do with the prisoners perplexed them. They could not take them along, could not leave them bound, and did not dare to set them free and restore their weapons.
Finally, however, the boys found a way out of the difficulty. They divided the provisions and ammunition into two equal parts, and loaded their toboggan with one of them. Peter then cut the four men loose.
"We'll treat you better than you did us," he said. "We're leaving you half the grub, and there are some old deerskins here from which you can make a new dog harness. We'll carry your snowshoes with us for two miles down the river, and leave them there. We'll carry your rifles three miles farther, and leave them in a conspicuous place, too."
Then the boys set out on their homeward journey. One of the Frenchmen immediately started after them in order to pick up the snowshoes and the rifles, but the boys soon left him far behind. They saw no more of any of the outlaw gang, although, for fear of an attack, they kept watch for the next two nights in camp.
None of the boys were in condition for fast travel, and the question of supplies was a serious one. Horace thought it best to make straight for the lumber camp where he had been so kindly received, and they reached it on the third day. Here they spent a couple of days in rest and recuperation, and were lucky enough to be able to buy enough beans, flour, and bacon to last them to the railway. Again they set off, and, after four days of hard tramping in bitter cold weather, they heard the whistle of a train, faint and far away through the trees.
They all yelled with joy. It was like a voice from home. They began to run, and in a short time they came to iron rails running north and south through the snowy forest. Following up the line, they found themselves at Ringwood, three stations north of Waverley, where they had gone in.
The next train took them down to that point, and they went back to the hotel, recovered their suit-cases, and put on town clothes again. It seemed a long time since they had passed that way before, and collars and cuffs were hard to wear. A great many curious eyes followed them about the little hotel.
"Find any gold?" the landlord asked them, in an offhand manner.
"No," said Maurice. If he had inquired about diamonds, the boys would have been puzzled what to say.
For the last time they packed their dunnage sacks on the battered toboggan, and shipped it to the city. They traveled on the same train themselves, and were in Toronto the next morning.
The boys parted with hearty farewells—Maurice going home, Macgregor to his rooms, and Horace accompanying Fred to his boarding-house, where he intended to find quarters for himself.
"And now for the great question!" said Horace, when they were once indoors. "Are the diamonds worth anything, or are they not? I can't think of anything else till I find out."
"Why, I thought you were sure—" began Fred.
"So I am—in a general sort of way. But I'm not a diamond expert, and I may be deceived. It's just possible that the things may not be real diamonds at all.
"But don't worry," he added, seeing his brother's startled face. "I'm pretty sure they 're all right. But I'm going to take them at once to Wilson & Keith's and get them appraised. They're the best diamond firm in the city, and they'll treat me honestly."
Horace dressed himself very carefully, took his little sack of jewels, and departed. He was gone fully three hours, and Fred waited in almost sickening impatience. At last he heard Horace's step on the stairs, and rushed out to meet him.
"What luck?" he cried eagerly.
"S-sh!" said Horace, drawing him back into the room. "It's all right. They're diamonds!"
"Hurrah!" Fred shouted wildly.
"They were awfully keen to know where I got them, but of course I wouldn't tell, except that it was in Ontario. They would have bought the lot, I think, but I wasn't anxious to sell at once. They wanted me to make a price, and I wanted them to make an offer, and both of us were afraid, I guess. However, they're going to take care of the stones for me and think it over."
"We must tell the other boys!" exclaimed Fred. "Can you make the slightest guess at what the stones are worth?"
"Hardly—at present. Maybe a thousand or two. Three of them are too small to be of any use at all, too small to be cut. The biggest has a bad flaw in it; it could be used only for cutting up into what they call 'commercial diamonds,' for watch-movements, and such things. Yes, give Peter and Maurice the news, certainly, but do it by word of mouth. Don't 'phone them. You don't know who may be listening.
"And be sure to warn them to keep the whole affair the closest kind of secret. Wilson & Keith are going to exhibit the stones in their show window, and you've no idea what an excitement will be stirred up. We'll all be watched. People will try in every possible way to find out where we got them. The newspapers will be after the story, and there'll be all kinds of underhand tricks to trap us into letting out something. Not that it would do much good, for none of you know enough to be dangerous, but we don't want a dozen parties going up the Nottaway River next spring. We 're going there ourselves."
Fred promised secrecy, and presently found that his brother had hardly exaggerated the sensation caused by the little pile of dull stones on a square of black velvet in the jeweler's window, labeled "Canadian Diamonds." The newspapers were unremitting; Horace gave them a brief and circumspect interview, and thenceforth refused to add another word to his statement. He was besieged with inquiries. He had all sorts of proposals made to him by miners and mining firms. One group of capitalists made him an offer that he thought good enough to consider for a day, but he ultimately rejected it.
Fred had his share of glory too, as the brother of the diamond finder. It leaked out that Maurice and Peter had also been on the expedition, and they were so pestered with inquiries and interviewers that it seriously interfered with their collegiate work. But by degrees the excitement wore off, for lack of anything further to feed upon. The diamonds were withdrawn from exhibition, and the jewelers at last made up their minds to offer Horace seven hundred dollars for the lot.
It was rather a disappointing figure. Horace took his diamonds to Montreal and submitted them to two jewel experts there, who advised him that they were probably worth little more, in their uncut form. The cutting of them might develop flaws, or it might bring out unexpected luster; it was taking a chance.
Returning to Toronto, he announced that he would take eight hundred and no less; and after some arguing Wilson & Keith consented to pay that price. The boys had a grand dinner at a downtown restaurant that night to celebrate it. It was far from the fortune they had hoped to gain, but they still had great hopes of discovering that fortune.
"It's more than enough to cover the expenses of your trip into the woods this winter, and our next trip in the spring, too," said Horace, "for of course this eight hundred is going to be divided equally between us."
"Not a bit of it!" protested Mac. "You found the stones. They're yours. We won't take a cent of it, will we, Maurice?"
"I should think not!" Maurice exclaimed.
Horace tried to insist, but the two boys stood firm. At last he persuaded them to agree that the expenses of the expedition should be defrayed out of the diamond money. As for their coming trip next season, the matter was left to be settled later.
There was plenty of time to think of it, for it would be months before the woods would be open for prospecting.
Nearly the whole winter was before them, but it was none too long a time to consider their plans. Horace had found diamonds, it is true, but they had been found miles apart, one at a time, in the river gravel. This is not the natural home of diamonds, which are always found native to the peculiar formation known in South Africa as "blue clay." Nobody had ever found a trace of blue clay in Ontario, yet Horace felt certain that the blue-clay beds must exist. They were the only thing worth looking for. To poke over the river gravel in hopes of finding a chance stone would be sheer waste of time. Hundreds of men had done it without lighting on a single diamond.
Horace was a trained geologist, and that winter he spent much time in study, without saying a word even to Fred as to what he was meditating. He pored over geological surveys, and went to Ottawa to consult the departmental maps at the Legislative Library. By slow degrees he was working out a theory, and at last, one February evening, he came into his brother's room.
"Just look at this, Fred, and see what you think of it," he remarked casually.
It was a large pen-and-ink map, skillfully drawn, for Horace was a practiced map-maker.
"It's the country of the Abitibi and Missanabie Rivers," Horace explained. "These red crosses show where I found my diamonds—see, in the Whitefish River, the Smoke River, and another river that hasn't any name, so far as I know. Right here is the trappers' cabin where you boys found me. My bones might have been up there now but for you, old boy!"
And he thumped Fred's back affectionately.
"If you hadn't come along when you did I'm pretty certain our bones would be there, anyway," said Fred.
"Well, let's hope we all saved one another. But see, most of these diamonds were found many miles apart. They didn't grow where I found them. They must have been washed down, perhaps from the very headwaters of the river. Now look at the map. Do you see, all these three rivers rise in pretty much the same region."
"So they do," said Fred, his eyes fixed on the paper. "Then you think—"
"The stones were probably all washed down from that region. The blue-clay beds, the diamond field, must be up there, somewhere within this black circle I've drawn."
Fred's heart began to throb with excitement.
"But some prospector would have hit on them before now," he said.
"I doubt if any prospector has ever gone in there. They say it's one of the roughest bits of country in the North, and no mineral strikes have ever been made in that region. I've never been up there myself. It's up in the hills, you see; the rivers are too broken for a canoe, and the ground is too rough to get over on foot, except in the winter. The Ojibwas hunt there in the winter, they say, and I dare say there's plenty of game."
"But if it's so rough to get into, how can we travel?"
"Oh, often those bad places are not so bad when you get there. I'd like to see the place I couldn't get into if there were diamonds there! We'll get into it somehow, for the diamond-beds must surely be there if they're anywhere. But there's no doubt it'll be a rough trip."
"Rough? What of that?" cried Fred. "If your theory is right we'll make our fortunes—millions, maybe! Of course you'll let me go, won't you? And Maurice, and Mac?"
"I couldn't manage without you. But mind, not a word to anybody else!"
They telephoned the other boys that day, and in the evening a meeting was held in Fred's room, like the previous time when the first expedition had been so hurriedly planned. But this was to be a different affair, carefully thought out and equipped for all sorts of possibilities.
"Of course you'll both be able to go?" said Fred.
"I certainly will," answered Peter. "I've lost so much time this winter already, with our other trip, and then having my mind on the diamonds and dodging newspaper reporters and things, that I've got hopelessly behind. My laboratory work especially has gone all to pieces. I'm bound to fail on next summer's exams, anyway, so I'm going to let it slide and make the trip, on the chance that I'll make such a fortune that I won't have to practice medicine for a living at all. How about you, Maurice?"
"I wouldn't miss it for anything—if I could help it," Maurice replied. "I don't know, though, whether I can afford it."
Maurice's parents were not in rich circumstances, and Horace hastened to say—
"I'm paying for this expedition, you know, out of the diamond money. There'll be plenty, and some to spare."
"Well, it isn't exactly the cost," said Maurice, "but my father is awfully anxious for me to make an honor pass next summer. I couldn't afford to fail, and have to take another year at the work. I don't know, though,—I'll see. I'd be awfully disappointed if I had to stay out of it."
Under the circumstances they could not urge him to say more. As for Horace and Fred, they had very few family ties. Their closest relatives were an aunt and uncle in Montreal. The trip was quite in the line of Horace's profession, and Fred did not mind resigning the post he held in the real estate office. The firm was shaky; it was not likely to continue in business much longer, and he would be likely to have to look for another position soon in any event. As they had feared, Maurice was obliged to announce his inability to go with them. His professors thought that an absence of two months would be a handicap that he could never make up. In the eyes of his parents the expedition was no more than a hare-brained expedition into the woods, that would cost a whole year of collegiate work. To his bitter disappointment, he had to give it up.
Fred and Macgregor at once began to train as if for an athletic contest. They took long cross-country runs in the snow and worked hard in the gymnasium. They introduced a new form of exercise that made their friends stare. They appeared on the indoor running track bent almost double; each carried on his back a sack of sawdust, held in place by a broad leather band that passed over the top of his forehead. Thus burdened they jogged round the track at a fast walk.
They were the butt of many jokes before the other men at the gymnasium discovered the reason for this queer form of exercise. It had been Horace's idea. He knew that there would be long portages where they would have to carry the supplies with a tumpline; and he also knew that nothing is so wearing on a novice.
Fred and Peter found it so. Strong as they were, they discovered that it brought a new set of muscles into play, and they had trouble in staggering over a mile with a fifty-pound pack; but they kept at it, and before the expedition started, Fred could travel five miles with a hundred pounds, and big Macgregor could do even better.
As soon as the ice on Toronto Bay broke up, they bought a large Peterboro canoe, which Horace inspected thoroughly. He was a skilled canoeman; Fred and Peter could also handle a paddle. When the ice went out of the Don and Humber Rivers, the boys began to practice canoeing assiduously. The streams were running yellow and flooded, and they got more than one ducking, but it was all good training.
They decided to start as soon as the Northern rivers were navigable, for at that early season they would escape the worst of the black-fly pest, and the smaller streams would be more easily traveled than when shallow in midsummer. Besides, they all felt anxious to get on the ground at once. But although the streams were free in Toronto, in the Far North winter held them locked. It was hard to wait; but not until May did Horace think it safe to start.
Since Maurice was not going, the boys decided to take only one canoe. It was impossible to say how long they might be gone, but Horace made out a list of supplies for six weeks. It was rather a formidable list, and the outfit would be heavy to transport. They carried a tent and mosquito-bar, and a light spade and pick for prospecting the blue clay, besides Horace's own regular outfit for mineralogical testing work. For weapons they decided upon a 44-caliber repeating rifle and a shotgun, with assorted loads of shells. It was not the season for hunting, but they wished to live on the country as far as possible to save their flour and pork. Fish should be abundant, however, and they took a steel rod with a varied stock of artificial flies and minnow-baits.
It was warm weather, almost summery, when they took the northbound express in Toronto; but when Fred opened the car window the next morning, a biting cold air rushed in. Rough spruce woods lined the track, and here and there he saw patches of snow.
It was almost noon when they got off at the station that was a favorite starting-point for prospectors. Here they had to spend two days, for Horace wished to engage Indian packers to help them portage over the Height of Land. As it was early in the season, they had their pick of men, and obtained three French half-breeds, who furnished their own canoe and supplies.
The boys' canoe and duffel sacks had come up by freight. All was ready at last. The next morning they put the canoes into the water; the paddles dipped, and the half-dozen houses of the village dropped out of sight behind the pines.
The first week of that voyage was uneventful, except for hard work and considerable discomfort. It rained four days in the seven, and once it snowed a little. They were going upstream always, against a rushing current swollen with snow water. Sometimes they could paddle, more often they had to pole, and frequently they were forced either to carry, or else to wade and "track" the canoes up the current. The nearer they came to the head of the river, the swifter and more broken the stream became. At last they could go no farther in the canoes. Then came the long portage. In order to reach the head of the Missanabie River, which flowed in the opposite direction, they had to carry the canoe and over six hundred pounds of outfit for about twelve miles, across the Height of Land.
Here they camped for one night. At daylight next morning they started over the long portage, heavily burdened, and before the first hour had passed they were thankful that they had brought along the half-breed packers, who strode along sturdily under a load that made Fred stare. It is only fair to say, though, that the half-breeds were almost equally surprised at the performance of the boys, for their previous experience with city campers had not led them to expect anything in the way of weight-carrying. Thanks to their gymnasium practice, however, Fred and Macgregor were able to travel under a sixty-pound load without actually collapsing.
The trail was rough and wound up and down over rocky ridges, through tangles of swamp-alder and tamarack, but continually zigzagged up toward the hills. It was a chilly day; the streams had been rimmed with ice that morning, but after a few miles the boys were dripping with perspiration.
That was a killing march. If it had not been for their weeks of hard training the boys could never have stood up under it, and they had all they could do to reach the topmost ridge of the Height of Land by the middle of the afternoon.
Fred slipped the tumpline from his head, slung the sixty-pound pack on the ground, and sat down heavily on the pack.
"That part's over, anyway!" he gasped.
"There won't be anything much rougher, old boy," replied Horace, as he came up and threw off his own burden.
Staggering through the underbrush, slipping on the wet, mossy stones of the slope, came a queer procession. In front was a bronze-faced half-breed, bent double, with the broad tump-line over the top of his head, and a mountainous pack of blankets and food supplies on his back. Behind him came two more half-breeds, each with a heavy pack of camp outfit. Macgregor brought up the rear; he carried a Peterboro canoe upside down on his shoulders, and steadied it with his hands.
They all sat down on the top of the hill to rest. The three white boys, although trained athletes, were pretty well at the end of their strength; but the half-breeds seemed little the worse for their labor.
They were on the top of the Height of Land, which divides the flow of the rivers between the Great Lakes and Hudson Bay. Behind them was the long, undulating line of hills and valleys they had just crossed.
Before them the land fell away sharply. In the clear May sunshine they could see for miles over the tree-tops until the dark green of the spruce and tamarack faded to a hazy blue. A great ridge showed a split face of gray granite; in the distance a lake glimmered.
About two miles away to the northwest a yellowish-green strip showed here and there through the trees. It was a river—one of the tributaries of the Missanabie, which was to take them North.
The descent on the other side of the ridge was almost as hard as the ascent had been. The northern slope was wet and rocky; in the hollows were deep banks of snow. The rocks were loosened by the frost, which made the footing dangerous. But it was only two miles now to the river, and they reached it in time to camp before dusk. The next morning they paid off the half-breeds, who returned over the ridges southward. The boys were left alone; the real expedition had begun.
The work now looked easy, but dangerous. The river was narrow, swollen; its tremendous current, roaring over rocks and rapids, would carry them along at a rapid pace. They would have to do some careful steering, however, if they did not wish to upset.
As the most skillful canoeman, Horace took the stern; Macgregor sat in the bow, and Fred in the middle behind a huge pile of dunnage.
For a quarter of a mile they shot down the river; then they had to land and make a fifty-yard carry. Another swift run in the canoe followed, and then another and longer portage.
It was like that for about fifteen miles. Then they caught sight of wider water ahead, and the little river poured into a great, brown, swift-flowing stream a hundred yards wide. It was the Missanabie.
During the rest of that day they ran over forty miles. The current carried them fast, and the river was so big and deep that it was seldom broken by dangerous rapids.
The country grew lower and less hilly; it was covered with a rather stunted growth of spruce, tamarack, and birch. Ducks splashed up from the water as the canoe came in sight; and when the boys stopped to make camp for the night they found at the river's edge the tracks of a moose.
It was wintry cold in camp that night, and there was ice in the pools the next morning. Shortly after sunrise the boys launched the canoe again, and it was not much more than an hour later when a sound of roaring water began to grow loud in their ears. With vast commotion and foam a smaller stream swept into the Missanabie from the southwest.
"Hurrah! I've been here before!" cried Horace. "It's the Smoke River. Up here real work begins."
"And up here," Peter said, gazing at the wild, swift stream, "is the diamond country."
The mouth of the Smoke River was so rough that the boys could not enter it in the canoe; and the dense growth of birch and willow along the shores would make portaging difficult.
"We'll have to track the canoe up," Horace decided.
They got out the "tracking-line"—a long, stout, half-inch rope—and attached one end of it to the bow of the canoe. Peter Macgregor harnessed himself to the other end, and started up the narrow, rocky strip of shore; Horace waded beside the canoe in order to fend her off the boulders. Fred, carrying the fire-arms and a few other articles that a wetting would have ruined, scrambled through the thickets.
The water was icy cold, but it was never more than hip-deep. Fortunately, the very broken stretch of the river was only a hundred yards long; after that, they were able to pole for a mile or so, and once indeed, the stream broadened so much that they could use the paddles. Then came a precipitous cascade, then a difficult carry, and then another stretch of poling.
They had gone about five miles up the river when Horace, who had been watching the shores carefully, pointed to a tree and gave a shout. It was a large spruce, on the trunk of which was a blazed mark that looked less than a year old.
"It's my mark," said Horace. "I made it last August. Right here I found one of the diamonds."
"We must stop and do some prospecting!" cried Fred.
"No use," replied his brother. "I prospected all round here myself, and for a mile or so up the river. I didn't go any farther, but I've a notion that we'll have to go nearly to the head of the river to find the country we want."
On they went, shoving the canoe against the current with the iron-shod canoe poles. They had all been looking up the kind of soil in which diamonds are usually found, and now they closely observed the eroded banks on both sides of the river. According to Horace's theory, the river, or one of its tributary streams, must cut through the diamond-beds of blue clay. But as yet the shores showed nothing except ordinary sand and gravel.
Two miles farther the river broadened into a long, narrow lake, surrounded by low spruce-clad hills and edged with sprouting lily-pads. It was a great relief to the boys to be able to paddle, and they dashed rapidly to the head of the lake. There, rapids and a long carry confronted them! They had made little more than fifteen miles that day when finally they went into camp; they were almost too tired to cook supper. And they knew that that day's work was only a foretaste of what was coming, for from now on they would be continually "bucking the rapids."
The next day they found rapids in plenty, indeed. They seemed to come on an average of a quarter of a mile apart, and sometimes two or three in such close succession that it was scarcely worth while to launch the canoe again after the first portage. It was slow, toilsome work; they grew very tired as the afternoon wore on, and shortly before sunset they came to one of the worst spots they had yet encountered.
It was a pair of rapids, less than a hundred yards apart. Over the first one the water rushed among a medley of irregular boulders, and then, after some ten rods of smooth, swift current, poured down a cataract of several feet. Huge black rocks, split and tumbled, broke up the cataract, and the hoarse roar filled the pine woods with sound.
"I move we camp!" said Fred, eyeing this obstacle with disgust.
"Let's get over the carry first and camp at the top," Peter urged. "Then we'll have a clear start for morning."
Fred grumbled that they would certainly be fresher in the morning than they were then, but they unpacked the canoe, and began to carry the outfit around the broken water, as they had done so many times that day. Once at the head of the upper rapid Horace began to get out the cooking-utensils.
"I'll start supper," he said. "You fellows might see if you can't land a few trout. There ought to be big fellows between these two cascades."
It did look a good place for trout, and Mac had an appetite for fishing that no fatigue could stifle. He took the steel fly-rod, and walked a little way down the stream past the upper rapid. Fred cut a long, slender pole, tied a line to it and prepared to fish in a less scientific fashion. As his rod and line were considerably shorter than Mac's, he got into the canoe, put a loop of the tracking-rope around a rock, and let himself drift for the length of the rope, nearly to the edge of the rough water. Hung in this rather precarious position, he was able to throw his hook into the foamy water just at the foot of the fall, and had a bite almost instantly, throwing out a good half-pound fish whose orange spots glittered in the sunlight.
Peter meanwhile was fishing from the shore lower down. The thickets were farther back from the water than usual, and he had plenty of room for the back cast. He was kept busy from the first, and when he had time to glance up Fred seemed to be having equally good luck.
But at one of these hurried glances his eye caught something that appalled him. The looped rope that held the straining canoe seemed to be in danger of slipping from its hold on the rock.
He shouted, but the roar of the water drowned his voice. He started up the bank, shouting and gesticulating, but Fred was busy with a fish and did not hear or see. Horace was cutting wood at a distance. And at that moment the rope slipped free. The canoe shot forward, and before Fred could even drop his rod he was whirled broadside on into the rapid.
Instantly the canoe capsized. Fred went out of sight in the foam and water, and then Macgregor saw him floating down on the current below the rapid. He was on his back, with his face just above water, and he did not move a limb.
Mac yelled at him, but got no answer. Fred had not been under long enough to be drowned. He had evidently been stunned by striking his head against a rock.
Then Mac realized the boy's new and greater danger. Fred was drifting rapidly head first toward the second cataract, and no one could dive over that fall and live. The rocks at the bottom would brain the strongest swimmer.
Mac instinctively dropped his rod and rushed into the water. The strength of the swirling current almost swept him off his feet. It was too deep to wade, and he was not a good swimmer. He could never reach Fred in time. They would go over the fall together.
Fred was more than thirty feet from shore. Mac thought of a long pole, and splashed madly ashore again. He caught sight of his fishing-rod, with its hundred yards of strong silk line on the reel.
Fred was now about twenty yards above the cascade when Mac ran into the river again, rod in hand, as far as he dared to wade. He measured the distance with his eye, reeled out the line, waving the rod in the air, and then, with a turn of his wrist, the delicate rod shot the pair of flies across the water.
Mac was an expert fly-caster. The difficulty was not in the length of the cast; it was to hook the flies in Fred's clothing. They fell a yard beyond the boy's body. Mac drew them in. The hooks seemed to catch for an instant on his chest, but came free at the first tug.
Desperately Mac swished the flies out of the water for another cast. He saw that he would have time to throw but this once more, for Fred was terribly near the cataract, and moving faster as the pull of the current quickened. Mac waded a little farther into the stream, leaning against the current to keep his balance.
The line whirled again, and shot out, and again the gut fell across Fred's shoulders with the flies on the other side. With the greatest care Mac drew in the line. The first fly dragged over the body as before. The other caught, broke loose, and caught again in Fred's coat near the collar, and then the steel rod bent with the sudden strain of a hundred and fifty pounds drawn down by the strong current.
Mac knew that the rod was almost unbreakable, but he feared for his line. The current pulled so hard that he dared not exert much force. Fred's body swung round with his head upstream, his feet toward the cataract, and the current split and ripped in spray over his head.
The lithe steel rod bent hoop-like. There was a struggle for a moment, a deadlock between the stream and the line, and Mac feared that he could not hold it. The light tackle would never stand the strain.
Mac had fought big fishes before, however, and he knew how to get the most out of his tackle. With the check on the reel he let out line inch by inch to ease the resistance; and meanwhile he endeavored to swing Fred across the current and nearer the shore.
As he stood with every nerve and muscle strained on the fight he suddenly saw Horace out of the corner of his eye. Horace was beside him, coat and shoes off, with a long hooked pole in his hands, gazing with compressed lips at his brother's floating body.
There was not a word exchanged. Under the steady pull Fred came over in an arc of a circle, but for every foot that was gained Mac had to let out more line. His legs were swinging already within a few yards of the dangerous verge, but he was getting out of the center of the stream, and the current was already less violent.
Inch by inch and foot by foot he came nearer, and all at once Horace rushed forward, nearly shoulder-deep, and hooked the pole over his brother's arm. At the jerk the gut casting-line snapped with a crack, and the end flew back like a whip into Peter's face. But Horace had drawn Fred within reach, had gripped him, and waded ashore carrying him in his arms.
"I'll never forget this of you, Mac!" he ejaculated as he passed the medical student.
Fred had already come half to himself when they laid him on the bank. He had not swallowed much water, but had been merely knocked senseless by concussion with a boulder.
"What's—matter?" he muttered faintly, opening his eyes.
"Keep quiet. You fell in the river. Mac fished you out," said Horace.
Fred blinked about vaguely, half-attempted to rise and fell back.
"Gracious! What a head I've got!" he muttered dizzily.
They carried him up to the camp, put him on the blankets and examined his cranium. The back of his neck was skinned, there was a bleeding cut on the top of his head and a big bruise on the back, but Mac pronounced none of these injuries at all serious. While they were examining him Fred opened his eyes again.
"Fished me out, Mac? Guess you saved my life," he murmured.
"That's all right, old fellow," replied Peter; and then he gave a sudden start.
"The canoe!"
In the excitement over Fred's rescue they had entirely forgotten it. It had drifted downstream. If lost or destroyed they would be left stranded in the wilderness—almost as hopelessly as castaways at sea.
Without another word Mac began to run at full speed down the bank in the deepening twilight. If the canoe had drifted right down the stream, he might never have overtaken it, but luckily he came upon it within a mile, lying stranded and capsized. By the greatest good luck, too, it was not ruined. It had several bruises and a strip of the rail was split off, but it was still water-tight.
The next morning Fred was fairly recovered of his hurts, but felt weak and dizzy, so that not much progress was made. During the whole forenoon they remained in camp. Horace went hunting with the shotgun and got a couple of ducks. None of them felt much inclined for any more fishing in that almost fatal spot.
On the following day, however, Fred was able to take his share of the work again, and the party proceeded. That day and many days after were much alike. They tracked the canoe up long stretches of rough water, where two of them had to wade alongside in order to keep it from going over. They made back-breaking portages over places where they had to hew out a trail for a quarter of a mile. At night when they rolled themselves into their blankets they were too tired to talk. But the hard training they had undergone before they started showed its results now. Although they were dead tired at night, they were always ready for the day's work in the morning. They suffered no ill effects from their wettings in the river, and their appetites were enormous.
The supplies, especially of bacon and flour, decreased alarmingly. Although signs of game were abundant, they did not like to lose time in hunting until they reached the prospecting grounds; but a couple of days later meat came to them. They had reached the foot of the worst rapid they had yet encountered. It was a veritable cascade, for the river, narrowing between walls of rock, leaped and roared over fifty yards of boulders. The portage led up a rather steep slope. The three boys, each heavily burdened, were struggling along in single file, when Horace, who was in front, suddenly sank flat, and with his hand cautioned the others to be silent.
"S-s-h! Lie low!" he whispered. "Give me the rifle!"
Macgregor passed the weapon to him, and then he and Fred wriggled forward to look.
Eighty yards away Fred saw the light-brown flank of a doe, and beside her, partly concealed by the underbrush, the head and large, questioning ears of a fawn. The animals were evidently excited, for as Horace lowered his rifle, not wishing to kill a mother with young, they bounded a few steps nearer, and stood gazing back at the thicket from which they had come. The wind blew toward the boys, and the roar of the cataract had drowned the noise of their approach.
Suddenly there was a commotion in the thicket, and two young bucks burst from the spruces and dashed past the doe and fawn toward the boys. At the same instant the lithe, tawny form of a lynx leaped out. It struck like lightning at the fawn, but the little fellow sprang aside and bounded after its mother. The lynx gave a few prodigious leaps and then stood, with tufted ears erect, glaring in disappointment. It had all happened within a few seconds, and the deer were disappearing behind some rocks and stunted spruces fifty yards to the right before the boys thought again of their need of meat.
At that moment, one of the bucks wheeled at the edge of the tangle behind which the other deer had passed. For an instant he presented a fair quartering shot.
"Shoot quick!" whispered Macgregor, excitedly.
As the repeater in Horace's hands cracked, the buck whirled round in a half-circle, leaped once, and fell.
Fred uttered a wild shout, slipped the tumpline from his head, and ran forward. He was carrying the shotgun and held it ready; but the buck, shot behind the shoulder, was virtually dead, although he was kicking feebly.
The lynx had vanished; there was no sign of the other deer. Only the rush of the water in the river-bed now disturbed the forest stillness.
The dressing of the game was no small task. It was late in the afternoon when the boys had finished it and had brought up the rest of their outfit to the head of the cataract. "Buck Rapids" they named the place. There was enough meat on the deer to last them for the next week at least. The slices they cut and fried that night, although not tender, were palatable and nourishing.
The weather had been warmer that day, and for the first time mosquitoes troubled them. The boys slept badly, and got up the next morning unrefreshed and in no mood to "buck the river" again.
"Why not stop here a couple of days and prospect?" Mac suggested at breakfast.
The proposal struck them all favorably. It was the real beginning of the search for fortune. Fred in particular was fired with instant hope, and immediately after breakfast he set out to explore the country north of the river; he intended to make a wide circle back to the Smoke River and to come homeward down its bank. He carried a compass, the shotgun, and a luncheon of cold flapjacks and fried deer meat. Horace went off to the south; Macgregor remained in camp, to jerk the venison by smoking it over a slow fire.
It was a sunny, warm day. Spring seemed to have come with a bound, and the warmth had brought out the black flies in swarms. All the boys had smeared themselves that morning with "fly dope" that they had bought at the railway station, but even that black, ill-smelling varnish on their hands and faces was only partly effectual. Great clouds of the little pests hovered round them.
Fred struck straight north from the river, and then turned a little to the west. He examined the ground with the utmost care. The land lay in great ridges and valleys, and he soon found that prospecting was almost as rough work as fighting the river. In the valleys the earth was mucky with melting snow water; on the hills it was rocky, with huge boulders, tumbled heaps of shattered stone, slopes of loose gravel; everywhere was a tangle of stunted, scrubby birch and poplar, spruce and jack-pine.
After half an hour he came upon a small creek that flowed from the northwest. With a glance at his compass, he started to follow it. For nearly three hours he plodded along the creek, digging into the banks with a stick and examining every spot where there seemed a chance of finding blue clay; but he found nothing except ordinary sand and gravel. At last, disappointed and disheartened, he turned back toward the Smoke River. After a mile or so he stopped to eat his luncheon, and built a smudge to keep the flies away; then he proceeded onward through the rough, unprofitable country.
But if he did not find diamonds, he came on plenty of game. Ruffed grouse and spruce partridges rose here and there and perched in the trees. He saw many rabbits, and there were signs where deer or moose had browsed on the birch twigs. Once, as he came over a ridge, he caught a glimpse of a black bear digging at a pile of rotten logs in the valley. The animal evidently had not been long out of winter quarters, for it looked starved, and its fur was tattered and rusty. The moment the bear caught sight of him, it vanished like a dark streak.
Fred found no trace that afternoon of blue clay, or, indeed, of any clay, but he happened upon something that caused him some apprehension. It was a steel trap, lying on the open ground, battered and rusted as if it had been there for some time. Scattered round it were some bones that he guessed had belonged to a lynx. Apparently the animal had been caught in the trap, which was of the size generally used for martens, had broken the chain from its fastening, and had traveled until it had either perished from starvation or had been killed by wolves.
Although rusty, the trap was still in working condition, and Fred, somewhat uneasy, took it along with him. Some one had been trapping in that district recently, perhaps during the last winter; was the stranger also looking for diamonds?
With frequent glances at his compass Fred kept zigzagging to and fro, and finally came out on the river again; but he was still a long way from camp, and he did not reach the head of the cataract until nearly sunset.
Horace had already come in, covered with mud and swollen with fly bites.
"What luck?" cried Fred, eagerly.
His brother shook his head. He had encountered the same sort of rough country as Fred; and to add to his troubles, he had got into a morass, from which he had escaped in a very muddy condition.
Then Fred produced the trap and told of his finding it and of his fears. The boys examined it and tested its springs. Horace took a more cheerful view of the matter.
"The Ojibywas always trap through here in the winter," he said. "The owner of that trap is probably down at Moose Factory now. Besides, the lynx might have traveled twenty or thirty miles from the place where it was caught."
In spite of the failure of the day's work they all felt hopeful; but they resolved to push on farther before doing any more prospecting.
The next morning they launched the canoe, and for four days more faced the river. Each day the work was harder. Each day they had a succession of back-breaking portages; sometimes they were able to pole a little; they hauled the canoe for hours by the tracking-line, and in those four days they traveled scarcely thirty miles.
On the last day they met with a serious misfortune. While they were hauling the canoe up a rapid the craft narrowly escaped capsizing, and spilled out a large tin that contained twenty-five pounds of corn meal and ten pounds of rice—their entire stock. What was worse, the cover came off, and the precious contents disappeared in the water.
About fifteen pounds of Graham flour and five pounds of oatmeal were all the breadstuffs they had left now, and they had to use it most sparingly.
But they were well within the region where Horace thought that the diamond-beds must lie. On the map it had seemed a small area; but now they realized that it was a huge stretch of tangled wilderness, where a dozen diamond-beds might defy discovery. Even Horace, the veteran prospector, admitted that they had a big job before them.
"However, we'll find the blue clay if it's on the surface—and the supplies hold out," he said, with determination.
The next morning each of the boys went out in a different direction. Late in the afternoon they came back, one by one, tired and fly-bitten, and each with the same failure to report. The ground was much as they had found it before, covered with rock and gravel in rolling ridges. Nowhere had they found the blue clay.
They spent two more days here, working hard from morning to night, with no success. The next day they again moved camp a day's journey upstream; that brought them into the heart of the district from which they had expected so much. The river was growing so narrow and so broken that it would be almost impossible for them to follow it farther by canoe. If they pushed on they would have to abandon their craft, and carry what supplies they could on their backs.
But they intended to spend a week here. They set out on the diamond hunt again with fresh energy. A warm, soft drizzle was falling, which to some extent kept down the flies.
Horace came back to camp first; he had had no success. He was trying to find dry wood to rekindle the fire when he saw Fred coming down the bank at a run. The boy's face was aglow.
"Look here, Horace! What's this?" he asked, as he came up panting. In his hand he held a large, wet lump of greenish-blue, clayey mud. Horace took it, poked into it, and turned it over. Then he glanced sympathetically at his brother's face.
"I'm afraid it isn't anything, old boy," he said. "Only ordinary mud. The real blue clay is more of a gray blue, you know, and generally as hard as bricks."
Fred pitched the stuff into the river and said nothing, but his face showed his disappointment. He had carried that lump of clay for over four miles, in the conviction that he had discovered the diamond-bearing soil.
Macgregor came in shortly afterward with nothing more valuable than two ducks that he had shot.
The boys were discouraged that evening. After the rain they could find little dry wood. It was nearly dark before Fred began to stir up the usual pan of flapjacks, and "Mac" set himself to the task of cutting up one of the ducks to fry. They were too much depressed to talk, and the camp was quiet, when suddenly a crackling tread sounded in the underbrush.
"What's that?" cried Horace sharply. And as he spoke, a man stepped out of the shadow, and advanced into the firelight.
"Bo' soir! Hello!" he said, curtly.
"Hello! Good evening!" cried Fred and Mac, much startled.
"Sit down. Grub'll be ready in a minute," Horace added. Hospitality comes before everything else in the North.
"Had grub," answered the man; but he sat down on a log beside the fire, and surveyed the whole camp with keen, quick eyes.
All the boys looked at him with much curiosity. He was apparently of middle age, with a tangled beard and black hair that straggled down almost to his shoulders. He wore moccasins, Mackinaw trousers shiny with blood and grease, a buckskin jacket, and a flannel shirt. He was brown as any Ojibwa, and he, carried a repeating rifle and had a belt of cartridges at his waist.
"Hunting?" he asked presently, with a nod at the deerskin that was hanging to dry.
"Now and again," said Horace.
"Well, ye can't hunt here," said the man deliberately, after a pause. "Don't ye know that this is a Government forest reserve? No hunters allowed. Ye'll have to be out of here by to-morrow."