Here where deer were plentiful and hunters scarce, Mac's jack light should prove effective. Sportsmen and the law have quite properly united in condemning killing deer by jack light; but the boys felt that their need of food justified their course.
After adjusting the torch, Mac cut a birch sapling about eight feet long, and trimmed off the twigs. Bending it into a semicircle, he fitted the curve into the bottom of the canoe, close to the bow; then he hung the blanket by its corners upon the projecting tips of the sapling, and thus screened the bow from the rest of the canoe.
As it had already become dark, and the shores were now black with the indistinct shadows of the spruces, Fred and Horace set the canoe gently into the water. When it was afloat, Mac lighted the pine splinters, which crackled and flared up like a torch.
"You'd make a better game poacher than I, Horace," he said. "You take the rifle, and I'll paddle."
Horace accordingly placed himself just behind the blanket screen, with the weapon on his knees. Mac sat in the stern, and Fred, who did not want to be left behind, seated himself amidships.
"Keep a sharp lookout, both of you," Mac said. "Watch for the light on their eyes, like two balls of fire."
The canoe, keeping about thirty yards from shore, glided silently down the long lake. The "fat" pine flamed smoky and red, and it cast long, wavering reflections on the water. Once an animal, probably a muskrat, startled them by diving noisily. A duck, sleeping on the water, rose with a frantic splutter and flurry of wings. Then, fifty yards farther, there was a sudden splash near the shore, then a crashing in the bushes, and a dying thump-thump in the distance.
Horace swung his rifle round, but he was too late. The deer had not stopped to stare at the light for an instant. A jack light ought to have a reflector, but the boys had no means of contriving one.
Unspeakably disappointed, they moved slowly on again. They started no more game, and at last reached the lower end of the lake. Here Mac stopped to renew the torch, which had almost burned out.
Then they turned up the other side of the lake, on the home stretch. No living thing except themselves seemed to be on the water that night. The shore shoaled far out. Once the keel scraped over a bottom of soft mud. Lilies grew along the shore, and sometimes extended out so far that the canoe brushed the half-grown pads.
Suddenly Fred felt the canoe swerve slightly, and head toward the land. Horace raised the rifle. Fred had seen nothing, but after straining his eyes ahead, he made out two faint spots of light in the darkness, at about the height of a man's head. Could it be a deer? The balls of light remained perfectly motionless.
Without a splash the canoe glided closer. Fred thought that he could make out the outline of the animal's head, and clenched his hands in anxiety. Why did not Horace shoot?
Suddenly a blinding flash blazed out from the rifle, and the report crashed across the water. There was a splash, followed immediately by a noise of violent thrashing in the water near the land.
Fred and Mac shouted together. With great paddle strokes, Mac drove the canoe forward, and at last Horace leaped out. The others followed him. The deer was down, struggling in the water. It was dead before they reached it. Horace's bullet had broken its neck.
"Hurrah!" Fred cried. "This makes us safe. This'll last us all the way home."
It was a fine young buck—so heavy that they had hard work to lift it into the canoe. Far up the lake they could see their camp-fire, and they paddled toward it with the haste of half-starved men.
Without stopping to cut up the animal, they skinned one haunch and cut off slices, which they set to broil over the coals. A delicious odor rose; the boys did not even wait until the meat had cooked thoroughly. They had no salt, but the venison, unseasoned as it was, seemed delicious.
The food gave them all more cheerfulness and energy. The prospect of a hard ten days' journey did not look so bad now. At any rate, they would not starve.
"I wonder if the foxes would eat it. They ought to have something," said Fred, and he dropped some scraps of the raw venison into the cage.
As he stooped to peer more closely at the animals, he made a startling discovery. During their absence on the hunt, the mother fox had been gnawing vigorously at the willow cage, particularly at the rawhide lashings that bound the framework together. She had loosened one corner, and if she had been left alone for another hour, she might have escaped with her cubs. It gave the boys a bad fright. Mac refastened the lashings with strips of deer-hide, and strengthened the cage with more willow withes. But the boys realized that in the future one of them would have to stand guard over the cage at night.
The foxes refused to touch the raw meat.
"I didn't expect them to eat for the first day or two," said Horace. "Don't worry. They'll eat in time, when they get really hungry."
"Let's get this buck cut up," said Mac. "It'll soon be moonrise, and we must be moving."
In order to get more light for their work, they piled pitch pine on the fire; then they hung the deer on a tree, and began the disagreeable task of skinning and dressing the animal. When they had finished, they had a good deerskin and nearly two hundred pounds of fresh meat.
They would gladly have slept now, but the sky was brightening in the east with the rising moon, and there was no time for rest. No doubt the trappers were on their trail, somewhere behind them. Hastily the boys loaded the foxes and the venison into the canoe, and as soon as the moon showed above the trees paddled down the lake. They soon found that the moonlight was not bright enough to enable them to run rapids safely, and they consequently had to make frequent carries. Between the rapids they shot swiftly down the current, but the river was so broken that they made no great progress that night.
Northern summer nights are short, and soon after two o'clock the sky began to lighten. By three o'clock the boys could see well, and they went on faster, shooting all except the worst stretches of rough water. Shortly after six o'clock they came out from the Smoke River into the Missanabie.
"Stop for breakfast?" asked Mac.
"Not here," said Horace. "We must be careful not to mark our trail, especially at this point. They won't know for sure whether we turned up the Missanabie or down, and they may make a mistake and lose a lot of time. A canoe doesn't leave any track, and we mustn't land until we have to."
Now the hard work of "bucking the river" began again. The Missanabie had lowered somewhat since the boys had come down it, but it still ran so strong that they could not make much progress by paddling. Their canoe poles were far back on the Smoke River, and they did not dare to land in order to cut others, for in doing so they would mark their trail.
Straining hard at every stroke, they dug their paddles into the water; but they made slow work of it. The least carelessness on their part would cause them to lose in one minute as much as they had gained in ten.
A stretch of slacker water gave them some respite; but then came a long, tumbling, rock-strewn rapid.
"We'll have to portage here," said Mac.
"It'll be a long carry," Horace said. "We'd lose a good deal of time over it. I think we can track her up."
Mac and Horace carried the cage of foxes along the shore to the head of the broken water, and Fred carried up the guns. Returning to the foot of the rapid, they prepared to haul the canoe against the stream. Luckily the tracking-line had always been kept in the canoe. Horace tied it to the ring in the bow, took the end of the rope and, bracing himself firmly, waded into the water; Macgregor and Fred, on either side, held the craft steady.
The bed of the river was very irregular. Sometimes the water was no more than knee-deep; sometimes it reached their hips. The water was icy cold, and the rush and roar of the current were bewildering. Once Mac lost his footing, but he clung to the canoe and recovered himself. Then, when halfway up the rapid, Horace stepped on an unsteady stone and plunged down, face forward, into the roaring water.
As the towline slackened, the canoe swung round with a jerk against Macgregor, and upset him. Fred tried to hold it upright, but the unstable craft went over like a shot.
Out went the venison and everything else that was in her. Fred made a desperate clutch at the stern of the canoe, caught it and held on. As the canoe shot down the rapid, he trailed out like a streamer behind it. He heard a faint, smothered yell:—
"The venison! Save the meat!"
Almost before he knew it, Fred, half choked, still clinging to the canoe, drifted into the tail of the rapid. He found bottom there, for the water was not deep, and managed to right the canoe. By that time Macgregor had got to his feet, and was coming down the shore to help Fred. They were both dripping and chilled; but they got into the canoe, and poling with two sticks, set out to rescue what they could.
They must, above everything else, recover the venison, but they could see no sign of it. Some distance down the stream they found both paddles afloat, and they worked the canoe up and down below the rapid. On a jutting rock they found the deerskin. Finally they came upon one of the hindquarters floating sluggishly almost under water. They rescued it joyfully; but although they searched for a long time, they found no more of the meat.
They had left the axe in the canoe, and it was now somewhere at the bottom of the river. They could better have spared one of the guns, but they were thankful that their loss had been no greater.
"If we had left the foxes in the canoe," said Fred, "they'd have been drowned, sure!"
Horace had waded ashore, and now had a brisk fire going. Fred and Macgregor joined him, and the three boys stood shivering by the blaze, with their wet clothes steaming.
"We're well out of it," said Horace, with chattering teeth. "The worst is the loss of the axe. It won't be easy to make fires from now on."
Once more the problem of supplies loomed dark before the boys. They had nothing now except the haunch of venison, which weighed perhaps twenty-five pounds; unless they could pick up more game, that would have to last them until they reached civilization. However, they were fairly confident that they could find game soon, and meanwhile they could put themselves on rations.
"We've marked our trail all right now," said Mac. "These tracks and this fire will give it away. We may as well portage, after all."
Their clothing was far from dry, but they were afraid to delay longer. None of them felt like trying to wade up the rapid again, and so they carried the canoe round it. At the head of the portage they cut several strong poles to use in places where they could not paddle.
They soon found that without the poles they could hardly have made any progress at all; and even with them they moved very slowly. About noon they landed, broiled and ate a small piece of venison, and after a brief rest set out on their journey again.
By five o'clock they were all dead tired, wet, and chilled, and Mac and Fred were ready to stop. Horace, however, urged them to push on. He felt that perhaps the beaver trappers were not many miles behind. After another day or two, he said, they could take things more easily, but now they ought to hurry on at top speed.
Just before they were ready to land in order to make camp, three ducks splashed from the water just in front of the canoe. Fred managed to drop one of them with each barrel of the shot gun. Thus the boys got their supper without having to draw on their supply of venison; but the roasted ducks proved almost as tough as rawhide and, without salt, extremely unpalatable. But they were all so hungry that they devoured the birds almost completely; they put the heads into the willow cage, but the foxes would not touch them.
For three hours more they pushed on up the river, tired, silent, but determined. At last it began to grow dark. The boys had reached the limit of their endurance, for they had had no sleep the night before. They landed and built a fire. It was hard work to get enough wood without the axe, but fortunately the night was not cold.
Exhausted as the boys were, they knew that one of them would have to stand watch to see that the foxes did not gnaw their way out of the cage, and that the trappers did not attack the camp. They drew lots for it; Macgregor selected the short straw and Fred the long one, and they arranged that Mac should take the watch for two hours, then Horace, and lastly Fred.
The mosquitoes were bad, and there were no blankets, but Fred seemed to go to sleep the moment he lay down on the earth. He did not hear Horace and Mac change guard at midnight, and it seemed to him that he had scarcely done more than close his eyes when some one shook him by the arm.
"Wake up! It's your turn to watch!" Horace was saying.
Half dead with sleep, Fred staggered to his feet. Moonlight lay on the forest and river.
"Take the rifle," said Horace. "There's not been a sign of anything stirring, but keep a sharp eye on the foxes."
Horace lay down beside Mac and seemed to fall asleep at once. Fred would have given black foxes and diamonds together to do likewise, but he walked up and down until he felt less drowsy. The foxes were not trying to get out, and he saw that they had gnawed the duck heads down to the bills.
He sat down against a tree, close to the cage, with the loaded repeater across his knees. For some time the mosquitoes, as well as the responsibility of his position, kept him awake.
Every sound in the forest startled him; through the dash of the river he imagined that he heard the sound of paddles. But by degrees he grew indifferent to the mosquitoes, and his strained attention flagged. Drowsiness crept upon him again; he was very tired. He found himself nodding, and roused himself with a shock of horror. He thought that he would go down to the river and dip his head into the water. He dozed while he was thinking of it—dozed and awoke, and dozed again.
Then after what seemed a moment's interval he was awakened by a harsh voice shouting:—
"Hands up! Wake up, and surrender!"
Half awake, Fred made a blind snatch at the rifle that had been across his lap. It was gone.
The sky was bright with dawn. Ten feet away stood three men with leveled rifles. Horace and Mac were sitting up, holding their hands above their heads and looking dazed.
"I said you pups wouldn't bark so loud next time," remarked one of the newcomers. It was the man that had pretended to be a ranger. With him was the slim, dark fellow whom they had seen outside the trappers' shack, and the third was a tall, elderly, bearded man, who looked more intelligent and more vicious than the others.
None of the boys said anything, but Horace gave Fred a reproachful glance that almost broke his heart. It was his fault that this had happened, and he knew it. Tears of rage and shame started to his eyes. He looked about desperately for a weapon. He would gladly risk his life to get his companions out of the awkward scrape into which his negligence had plunged them. But the ranger had taken the boys' rifle, and the half-breed had picked up the shotgun.
With a grin of triumph the trappers went to the fox cage, peered at the animals, and talked eagerly in low voices. The boys watched them in suspense. Were they going to kill the foxes?
Presently two of the men picked up the cage and carried it down to the river. The light was strong enough now so that Fred could see the bow of a bark canoe drawn up on the shore. They put the cage into the canoe. Then the half-breed laid his rifle and the stolen shotgun beside it, and paddled down the river. The other two men lifted the boys' Peterboro into the water.
"You aren't going to rob us of our firearms and our canoe, too, are you?" cried Horace desperately. "You might as well murder us!"
"Guess you won't need the guns," said the third trapper. "You've got grub, I see, and we durstn't leave you any canoe to foller us up in."
The two men pushed off the Peterboro and followed the birch canoe down the river at a rapid pace. In two minutes they were out of sight round a bend.
There was a dead silence. Fred could not meet the eyes of his companions. He turned away, pretended to look for something, and fairly broke down.
"Brace up, Fred!" said his brother. "It can't be helped, and we're not blaming you. It might have happened to any of us."
"If you'd been awake you might have got shot," said Mac, "and that would have been a good deal worse for every one concerned."
But Fred was inconsolable. Through his tears, he stammered that he wished he had been shot. They had lost the foxes, they were stranded and destitute, and they stood a good chance of never getting out alive.
"Nonsense!" said Mac, with forced cheerfulness. "We were in a far worse fix last winter, and we came out on top."
"The first thing to do is to have some grub," added Horace. "Then we'll talk about it."
Looking with calculating eyes at the lump of meat, he cut the slices of venison very thin. There was about twenty pounds left. They roasted the meat he had cut off, and ate it; then Horace unfolded his pocket map and spread it on the ground.
They were probably forty miles from the Height of Land. It was twelve miles across the long carry, and at least forty more to the nearest inhabited point—almost a hundred miles in all. There was a chance, however, that they might meet some party of prospectors or Indians.
"It's terribly rough traveling afoot," said Horace. "We could hardly make it in less than two weeks. Besides, our shoes are nearly gone now."
"And that piece of venison will never last us for two weeks!" cried Macgregor.
"Oh, you can often knock down a partridge with a stick," said Horace.
"If we only had a canoe!" Mac exclaimed, with a burst of rage. "I'd run those thieves down if I had to follow them to Hudson Bay!"
They all agreed on that point, but it was useless to think of following them without a canoe. The boys would have all they could do to save their own lives; a hundred-mile journey on foot across that wilderness, without arms and with almost no provisions, was a desperate undertaking.
"Well, we've got no choice," said Horace, after a dismal silence. "We must put ourselves on rations of about half a pound of meat a day, and we'll lay a bee-line course by the compass for the trail over the Height of Land."
He marked the course on the map, and the boys studied it in silence. The sun had risen by this time, but the boys were not anxious to break camp and start on that journey which would perhaps prove fatal to all of them. They lingered, talking, discussing, hesitating, reluctant to make the start.
Fred had not contributed a single word to the discussion. He had barely managed to swallow a little breakfast, and was too miserable to join in the talk. He knew how slim their chances were; he imagined how the party would struggle on, growing weaker daily, until—
If only they had a canoe! If only they could run the robbers down and ambush them in their turn! And as he puzzled on the problem, an idea—an inspiration—flashed into his mind.
He bent over, and studied the map intently for a second.
"Look! Look here!" he cried, wildly. "What fools we are! We can overtake those fellows—catch 'em—cut 'em off before they get anywhere—and get back our grub, and the foxes, and the canoe—everything—why—"
"What's that? What do you mean?" cried Horace and Mac together.
Fred placed a trembling finger on the map.
"See, this is where we are, isn't it? Those thieves will go down here to the mouth of the Smoke River, and turn up it to their camp. They didn't have much outfit with them; so they'll go back to their shanty. It's about fifty miles round by the way they'll go, but if we cut straight across country—this way—we'd strike the Smoke in twenty-five miles, and be there before them."
"I do believe you've hit something, Fred!" Mac exclaimed.
In fact, the Smoke and the Missanabie Rivers made the arms of an acute angle. Between twenty and thirty miles straight to the northwest would bring them out on the former stream somewhere in the neighborhood of "Buck Rapids."
"Let's see!" calculated Horace hurriedly. "They can run down to the mouth of the Smoke in a few hours from here. After that it'll be slower work, but they'll have the portage trails that we cut, and they ought to get up beyond the long lake by this evening. Can we get across in time to head 'em off?"
"We must. Of course we can!" Fred insisted. "It's our only chance, and you both know it. We never could get home with our boots gone, and with the food we have, but this venison will last us across to the Smoke."
"Patch our boots up with the deerskin!" cried Mac. "We'll ambush 'em. We'll catch 'em on a hard carry. Only let me get my hands on 'em!"
"Then we haven't a minute to lose!" said Horace.
"Let's be off!" cried Fred, springing up.
First of all, however, they repaired their tattered boots by folding pieces of the raw deerhide round them and lashing them in place with thongs. It was clumsy work at the best; but Mac rolled up the rest of the hide to take with him, in case they should have to make further repairs.
Horace consulted the map and the compass again, and picked up the lump of venison, which, with the deerskin, constituted their only luggage. In less than half an hour from the time Fred had hit upon his plan they were off, running through the undergrowth on the twenty-five-mile race to the Smoke River.
None of them knew what sort of country the course would pass over. The map for that part of the region was incomplete and no more than approximately accurate, so that the boys were not at all sure that their guess at the distance to the Smoke River was correct. But they did know that now that they had started on the race, their lives depended upon their winning it. Fred took the lead at once, tearing through the thickets, tripping, stumbling.
"Easy, there!" called Horace. "We mustn't do ourselves up at the start."
Fred slackened his pace somewhat, but continued to keep in front. For nearly a mile from the river the land sloped gently upward through dense thickets of birch. Then the birches thinned, and finally gave way to evergreen, and the rising ground became rough with gravel and rock. The slope changed to undulating billows of hills, covered with stone of every size, from gravel to small boulders, and over it all grew a stubbly jungle of cedar and jack-pine, seldom more than six feet high.
It was a rough, broken country, and the boys had to slacken their pace somewhat; to make things worse, it presently began to rain. First came a driving drizzle, then a heavy downpour, with a strong southwest wind. The rocks streamed with water, and the boys were drenched; but the heavy rain presently settled again to a soaking drizzle that threatened to continue all day.
Through the rain they struggled ahead; sometimes they found a clear space where they could run; sometimes they came upon wet, tangled shrubbery that impeded them sadly. They kept hoping for easier traveling; but those broken, rocky hills stretched ahead for miles. At last the trees became even more sparse, and the boys encountered a whole hillside covered with a mass of split rock.
Over this litter of sandstone they crawled and stumbled at what seemed a snail's pace. They were desperately anxious to hurry, but they knew that a slip on those wet rocks might mean a broken leg.
A rain-washed slope of gravel came next; they went down it at a trot, and then encountered another hillside covered with huge, loose stones. They scrambled over it as best they could, and ran down another slope; then trees became more abundant, and soon they were again traveling over low, rolling hills clothed in jack-pine scrub.
With marvelous endurance Fred still held the lead. He went as if driven by machinery, with his head down and his lips clenched; he did not speak a word. He was supposed to be the weakest of the party, but even Macgregor, a trained cross-country runner, found himself falling farther and farther behind.
At eleven o'clock Horace called a halt. The rain had almost stopped, and the boys, lighting a small fire, roasted generous slices of venison. There was no need of sparing the meat now. Either plenty of food or death was at the end of the journey.
No sooner had they eaten it than Fred sprang up again.
"How you fellows can sit here I can't understand!" he exclaimed, nervously. "I'm going on. Are you coming?"
Mac and Horace followed him. The land seemed to be sloping continually to lower levels; the woods thickened into a sturdy, tangled growth of hemlock and tamarack that they had hard work to penetrate. They presently caught a glimpse of water ahead, and came to the shore of a small, narrow lake that curved away between rounded, dark hillsides. They had to go round the lake, and lost two or three miles by the détour. As they hurried up the shore a bull moose sprang from the water, paused an instant to look back, and crashed into the thickets. It would have been an easy shot if they had had the rifle.
Round the end of the lake low hills rose abruptly from the shore. After scrambling up the slippery slope of the hills they reached the top, and saw ahead of them an endless stretch of wild hills and forests; there was not a landmark that they recognized.
Horace guessed that they had come about fifteen miles. Mac thought that it was much more. They agreed that they had broken the back of the journey, and that if their strength held out, they could reach the Smoke that day.
"Suppose we were—to find the diamond-beds now!" said Mac, between quick breaths.
"Don't talk to me about diamonds!" said Horace. "I never want to hear the word again."
On they went, up and down the hills, through the thickets and over the ridges; but they no longer went with the energy they had shown in the morning. With every mile their pace grew slower, and they were all beginning to limp. Fred still kept in front, with his face set in grim determination. About the middle of the afternoon Horace came up with him, stopped him with a hand on his shoulder, and looked into his face.
Fred's eyes were bright and feverish. His face was pale and spotted with red blotches, and he breathed heavily through his open mouth.
"You've got to stop!" said his brother firmly. "You're going on your nerves. A little farther, and you'll collapse—go down like a shot."
"I—I'm all right!" said Fred thickly. "Got to get on—got to make it in time!"
But Horace was firm. First they built a smudge to keep off the flies; then they made fresh repairs to their shoes; and finally they stretched themselves flat to rest. But in spite of their fatigue, they were too highly strung to stay quiet. They knew that a delay of an hour might lose the race for them. After resting for less than half an hour, they got up and went plunging through the woods again.
They believed now that the Smoke River could not be more than five or six miles away. From every hilltop they hoped to catch sight of it, or at least to see some spot that they had passed while prospecting.
But although all the landscape seemed strange, they doggedly continued the struggle. The sun was sinking low over the western ridges now; toiling desperately on, they left mile after mile behind, but still the Smoke River did not come into sight. At last Macgregor sat down abruptly upon a log.
"I'd just as soon die here as anywhere," he said.
"You're right. We'll stop, and go on by moonrise," said Horace. "Grub's what we need now."
"Why, we're almost at the end! We can't stop now!" Fred cried.
"We won't lose anything," said his brother. "The trappers will be camping, too, about this time. If we don't rest now we'll probably never get to the Smoke at all."
Staggering with fatigue, he set about getting wood for a fire. Mac and Fred helped him, and when they had built a fire they broiled some of the deer meat. Fred could hardly touch the food. Horace and Macgregor ate only a little, and almost as they ate they nodded, and dropped asleep from sheer fatigue.
Fred knew that he, too, ought to sleep, but he could not even lie down. His brain burned, his muscles twitched, and he felt strung like a taut wire. Leaving his companions asleep, he started to scout ahead. He went like one in a dream, hardly conscious of anything except the overwhelming necessity of getting forward. His course took him over a wooded ridge and down a hillside, and at last he came upon a tiny creek. Stumbling, sometimes falling, but always pushing on, he followed the course of the creek for a mile or two; suddenly he found himself on the shore of a large and rapid river, into which the creek emptied.
Furious at the obstacle, he looked for a place where he could cross the river.
It was too deep for him to wade across it, and too swift for him to swim it. He hurried up the bank, looking for a place where he could ford it, and at last came to a stretch of short, violent rapids.
He was about to turn back when he caught sight of axe marks in the undergrowth. Some one had cut a trail for the carry round the rapid. He stared at the axe marks, and then at the river. Suddenly his dazed brain cleared.
He recognized the spot. He recognized the trail that he himself had helped to cut. He had found the Smoke River!
Fred never quite knew how he got back to camp after he had found the river. He found his companions still sound asleep, but it did not take him long to rouse them and to tell them the news.
"I couldn't see any tracks on the shore. I don't think any one has passed," Fred said.
In less than a minute the boys, wild with joy, were hurrying through the woods again. It was almost dark when they reached the river; peering close to the ground they examined the trail carefully, to make sure that the trappers had not already passed.
The heavy rain had washed the shores, and no fresh tracks showed in the mud. The men had not been over the portage that day, and they could hardly have passed the rapids without making a carry. They had evidently camped for the night at some point below, and would not come up the river until morning.
After piling up some hemlock boughs for a bed, the boys lay down, and dropped into a heavy sleep. Now that the strain was over, Fred slept, too. In fact, for the last quarter of an hour he had hardly been able to stay on his feet.
In the gray dawn Horace awakened them. They were stiff from their thirty-mile race of the day before, and their feet were swollen. Hot food—especially hot tea—was what they longed for; but they were afraid to make a fire, and they had to content themselves with a little raw venison for their breakfast.
Horace thought that they could make their ambush where they were as well as anywhere else. The portage was about thirty yards long, and the narrow trail passed over a ridge and ran through dense hemlock thickets. If the trappers came up the trail in single file, carrying heavy loads, they could not use their rifles against a sudden attack.
The boys armed themselves each with a hardwood bludgeon; then they ensconced themselves in the thickets where they could see the reaches of the river below—and waited.
An hour passed. It was almost sunrise, and there was no sign of the trappers on the river. The boys grew nervous with dread and anxiety. The tree-tops began to glitter with sunlight. It was almost six o'clock.
"Could they have gone some other way?" asked Fred uneasily, staring upstream.
At that very moment Macgregor grasped his arm and pointed down the river. Two small objects had appeared round a bend, half a mile below. They were certainly canoes, making slow headway against the stiff current, but they were too far away for the boys to make them out plainly. Minute by minute they grew nearer.
"The front one's a Peterboro!" said Mac. "There's one man in it, and two in the other. I think I can see the fox cage."
Without doubt it was the trappers. The young prospectors slipped back through the thickets, almost to the upper end of the trail, and concealed themselves in the hemlocks.
"Above all things, try to get hold of their guns!" said Horace.
For a long while they waited in terrible suspense. They could not see the landing, nor at first could they hear anything, for the tumbling water of the rapids roared in their ears. After what seemed almost an hour, stumbling footsteps sounded near by on the trail, and the bow of the Peterboro hove in sight. A man was carrying it on his head; he steadied it with one hand, and in the other grasped a gun—Horace's repeating rifle.
When he was almost within arm's reach, Mac sprang and tackled him low like a football player. The trapper dropped the gun with a startled yell, and went over headlong into the hemlocks—canoe and all.
Horace leaped out to seize the gun that the man had dropped. Before he could touch it, the second trapper rushed up the trail with his rifle clubbed. Fred struck out at him with his bludgeon. The blow missed the fellow's head, and fell on his arm. Down clattered the rifle, discharging as it fell. The trapper made a frantic leap aside, and disappeared into the bushes.
As Fred snatched up the rifle, he caught a glimpse of the third trapper, the wiry half-breed, hastening up the path.
"Halt! Hands up!" shouted Horace, raising the repeater.
The man stopped, fired a wild shot, turned and bolted back toward the landing. Fred and his brother rushed after him; they reached the landing just in time to see him leap into the birch canoe, which still held the fox cage, shove off, and digging his paddle furiously into the water, shoot down the stream.
"After him! The canoe! Quick!" shouted Horace.
They dashed back. The man that Fred had struck was nowhere to be seen. Macgregor had pinned his antagonist to the ground, and seemed to have him well subdued.
"Never mind him, Mac!" Fred cried. "Pick up that canoe in a hurry! One of the scoundrels has got away with the foxes!"
All three of them seized the canoe and rushed it down to the landing. There they found the shore strewn with articles of camp outfit where the men had unloaded the canoes.
"Load it in, boys!" cried Horace. "Take what we need. We're not coming back."
They pitched an armful or two of supplies into the canoe. Fred's shotgun was there, and several other articles that the boys recognized as their own. The rest was a fair exchange for the outfit that they had abandoned in their tent.
They shoved the canoe off. The half-breed had gained a long lead by this time. He was nearly a quarter of a mile ahead, paddling frantically; he did not even stop to fire at the boys. But there were three paddles in pursuit, and the boys began to gain on him noticeably. More than two miles flashed by, and then the roar of rapids sounded ahead.
"Got him!" panted Mac. "He'll have to land now."
Round another bend shot the birch canoe, with the Peterboro three hundred yards behind, and now the broken water came in sight. It was a long, rock-staked chute, and the boys thought it would be suicidal to try to run it. But the half-breed kept straight on in mid-channel.
"He's going to try to run through!" Horace cried. "He'll drown himself and the foxes!"
The boys yelled at him; but the next instant the man's canoe had shot into the broken water. For a moment they lost sight of him in a cloud of spray; then they saw him half-way down the rapids, going like a bullet. With incredible skill, he was keeping his craft upright.
The boys drove their canoe toward the landing, and still watched the man. When he was almost through the rapids, they saw his canoe shoot bow upward into the air, hang a moment, and then go over.
Shouting with excitement, they dragged the canoe ashore, picked it up, and went over the portage at a run. Far down the stream they saw the birch canoe floating on its side, near the fox cage. They had just launched the Peterboro at the tail of the rapids, when they saw something black bobbing in the swirling water.
It was the head of the half-breed. He was swimming feebly, and when they hauled him into the canoe, was almost unconscious. He had a great bleeding gash just above his ear, where he had struck a rock; but he was not seriously injured. The boys paid little attention to him, but hastened to rescue their treasure. When they came up with the birch canoe, they found that the fox cage had been lashed to it with a strip of deerskin, and, to their great relief, that the foxes were there, all four of them, alive and afloat.
They got the cage ashore as quickly as possible. The foxes were dripping with water, but looked as lively as ever. To all appearances, the ducking had not hurt them.
The canoe itself had not come off so well. It had a great rent in the bottom, and Horace stamped another hole through the bow. Then the boys examined their new outfit. From their own former store they had a kettle, a frying-pan, a box of rifle-cartridges, and a sack of tea. They had taken from the trappers' supplies half a sack of flour, a lump of salt pork, two blankets, and two rifles.
The half-breed had recovered his wits by this time; sitting on the bank, he glared savagely at them.
"You'll find your partners waiting for you up the river," Horace said to him. "We've got what we need, and you'll find the rest of your kit on the shore where you unpacked it. As for your rifles—"
He picked them up and tossed them into six feet of water. "By the time you've fished them out and mended your canoe I guess you won't want to follow us. If you do, you won't catch us napping again, and we'll shoot you on sight.Savez?"
The half-breed muttered some sullen response. The boys loaded the fox cage into the Peterboro, got in themselves, and shot down the river again in a fresh start for home. They left the trapper sitting on the rock, glaring after them.
Now that the strain was over and the fight won, the boys felt utterly exhausted. They kept on at as fast a pace as they could, however, and reached the Missanabie River a little after noon. There they stopped to cook dinner.
Once more they had hot, blackvoyageurs'tea, and fried flapjacks, and salt pork. It seemed the most delicious meal they had ever eaten; but when they had finished, they felt too weary to start up the Missanabie, and reckless of consequences, they lay down and slept for almost two hours.
Then they continued their journey with double energy, and made good progress for the rest of the day.
They were entirely out of fresh meat, and had nothing whatever to give the foxes, but fortunately Mac shot three spruce grouse that evening. They dropped the heads of the birds into the cage; the foxes devoured them with a voracity that indicated that the trappers had fed them nothing. Early the next morning Horace by a long shot killed a deer at the riverside.
It was a rough journey up the Missanabie, but not nearly so hard as the trip up the Smoke River had been. For eight days they paddled, poled, tracked, and portaged, until they came at last to the point where they had first launched the canoe.
The "long carry" over the Height of Land now confronted them. It is true that they had by no means so much outfit to carry now, but, on the other hand, they had no packers to help them. They had to make two journeys of it, and, as a further difficulty, one of the boys had to remain with the fox cage. As they reached the top of the ridge on their first journey, Macgregor turned and looked back over the wild landscape to the northwest.
"Somewhere over there," he murmured, "is the diamond country."
"Shut up!" exclaimed Horace, in exasperation.
"I never want to hear the word 'diamond' again," added Fred.
They left the foxes together with the rest of their loads at the end of the "carry," and Fred remained to guard them, while Peter and Horace went back for the remainder of the outfit. While they were gone Fred noticed that one of the cubs was not looking well. It refused to eat or drink; its fur was losing its gloss, and it lay in a sort of a doze most of the time. Plainly captivity did not agree with it.
Horace and Peter were much concerned about its condition when they came back. None of them had any idea what to do; in fact it is doubtful if the most skilled veterinary surgeon could have prescribed.
"The real trouble is their cramped quarters, of course," said Horace. "We must get home as quickly as possible, and get them out of this and into a larger cage. Some of the others will sicken if we don't look sharp."
They made all the speed they could, and, now that they were fairly on the canoe route south of the Height of Land, they felt that they were well toward home. It was downstream now, and portages grew less and less frequent as the river grew. They did not stop to hunt or fish; the paddled till dusk, and were up at dawn. They felt that it was a race for the life of the valuable little animal, and they did not spare themselves. Two days afterward, late in the afternoon, they came to the little railway village that had been their starting-point.
The cub seemed no better—worse, if anything. There was a train for Toronto at eight o'clock that night. The boys hurried to the hotel where they had left their baggage, and changed their tattered woods garments for more civilized clothing. There was time to eat a civilized supper, with bread and vegetables and jam,—almost forgotten luxuries,—and time also to send a telegram to Maurice Stark.
They carried the cage of foxes to the hotel with them, for they were determined henceforth not to let the animals out of their sight for a moment. The unusual spectacle of the three boys with their burden attracted much attention, and when the contents of the cage became known, nearly the whole population of the village assembled to have a look.
The crowd followed them to the depot, and saw the foxes put into the baggage-car. They had secured permission for one of them to ride with the cage and stand guard, and the boys took turns at this duty. The other two tried to snatch a few hours of rest in the sleeper; but the berths seemed stifling and airless. Accustomed to the open camp, they could not sleep a wink, and were rather more fatigued the next morning than when they had started. It was still four hours to Toronto, but they reached the city at noon. Macgregor was standing the last watch in the baggage-car, and as Fred and Horace came down the steps of the Pullman they saw Maurice Stark pushing through the crowd.
"What luck?" Maurice demanded anxiously, lowering his voice as he shook hands. "Did you find the—the—?"
"Not any diamonds," replied Fred, with a laugh. "But we brought back some black gold. Come and see it."
They went forward to the platform where the baggage was being unloaded. Macgregor was helping to hand out the willow cage. It looked strangely wild and rough among the neat suit-cases and trunks.
"What in the world have you got there?" cried Maurice, peering through the bars.
Fred and Horace were also looking anxiously to learn the condition of the sick cub.
"Why, he's dead!" exclaimed Fred, in bitter disappointment.
"Yes," said Mac; "the little fellow keeled over just after I came on guard. I didn't send word to you fellows, for I knew there was nothing to be done."
The rest of the family were alive and looked in good condition. The boys had already decided what they would do immediately, and, calling a cab, they drove with the foxes to the house of a well-known naturalist connected with the Toronto Zoölogical Park. He was as competent as any one could be, and he readily agreed to take care of the foxes till they should be sold.
Naturally, however, he declined to be responsible for their safety, and Horace at once attempted to insure their lives. No insurance company would accept the risk, but after much negotiation he at last managed to effect a policy of two thousand dollars for one month, on payment of an exorbitant premium. He was more successful in getting insurance against theft, and took out a policy for ten thousand dollars with a burglar insurance company, on condition of a day and night watchman being employed to guard the animals.
It was plain that the foxes were going to be a source of terrible anxiety while they remained on the boys' hands. Horace at once telegraphed to the manager of one of the largest fur-breeding ranches in Prince Edward Island, and received a reply saying that a representative of the company would call within a few days.
The man turned up three days later, and inspected the foxes in a casual and uninterested way.
"We'd hardly think of buying," he remarked. "We've got about all the stock we need. I was coming to Toronto just when I got your wire, and I thought I'd look in at them. What are you thinking of asking for them?"
"Fifty thousand dollars," said Horace.
The fur-trader laughed heartily.
"You'll be lucky if you get a quarter of that," he said. "Why, we bought a fine, full-grown black fox last year for five hundred. Your cubs are hardly worth anything, you know. They 're almost sure to die before they grow up."
"Professor Forsythe doesn't think so," replied Horace.
"Well, I'm glad I saw them," said the dealer. "If I can hear of a buyer for you I'll send him along, but you'll have to come away down on your prices. You might let me have your address, in case I hear of anything."
"It doesn't look as if we were going to sell them!" said Fred, who was not used to shrewd business dealing. "Perhaps we can't get any price at all."
Horace laughed.
"Oh, that was all bluff. I saw the fellow's eyes light up when he saw these black beauties. He'll be back to see us within a day or two."
Sure enough, the man did come back. He scarcely mentioned the foxes this time, but took the boys out motoring. As they were parting he said carelessly, "I think I might get you a buyer for your foxes, but he couldn't pay over fifteen thousand."
"No use in our talking to him then," replied Horace, with equal indifference.
That was the beginning of a series of negotiations that ran through fully a week. It was interspersed with motor rides, dinner parties, and other amusements to which the parties treated one another alternately. The Prince Edward Island man brought himself to make a proposal of twenty thousand, and Horace came down to thirty-five thousand, and there they stuck. Finally Horace came down to thirty.
"I'll give you twenty-five," said the furbreeder at last, "but I think I'll be losing money at that."
"I'll meet you halfway," replied Horace. "Split the difference. Make it twenty-seven thousand, five hundred."
Both parties were well wearied with bargaining by this time, and the buyer gave in.
"All right!" he agreed. "You'll make your fortune, young man, if you keep on, for you 're the hardest customer to deal with that I've met this year."
The dealer went back next day to the east, taking the foxes with him, and leaving with the boys a certified check for $27,500. It was not as much as they had hoped to clear, but it was a small fortune after all.
"Comes to nearly seven thousand apiece," Fred remarked.
"Not at all," remonstrated Maurice. "I don't see where I have any share in it."
"Oh, come! We're rolling in money. You must have something out of it. Mustn't he, Horace?"
They knew that Maurice really needed the money, and it was not by his own will that he had failed to go with the expedition. In the end he was persuaded to accept the odd five hundred dollars, but he refused to take a cent more. The remainder made just nine thousand dollars apiece for each of the three other boys.
"I've lost a year's varsity work," said Peter, "but I guess it was worth it. Nine thousand is more than I ever expect to make in a year of medical practice. Besides, we know there are diamonds in that country. Horace found them. Why can't we—"
"Shut up!" cried Fred.
"Take his money away from him!" exclaimed Horace. "I don't want to hear any more of diamonds."
"—And why can't we make another expedition," continued Peter, "and prospect for—" But Fred and Horace pounced on him, and after a violent struggle got him down on the couch.
"Prospect for what?" cried Fred, sitting on his chest.
"Ow—let me up!" gurgled Mac. "Why, for—for more black foxes!"