The three men sleeping on the floor of the shack suddenly started up in their blankets.
"What was that?" they asked each other.
"A shout for help," said Jack.
Joe sprang up and opened the door. Some confused sounds from the direction of the creek reached his ears, but he had not enough woodcraft to distinguish them from the legitimate sounds of the night.
The fire was black now. Big Jack struck a match.
"Sam's gone!" he cried suddenly.
Shand felt around the floor with his hands. "His blankets, too!" he added.
"Treachery!" cried Joe with an oath. "You wouldn't believe me before. That's why he hid the guns. Come on, I heard something from the creek."
They pulled on their moccasins and, snatching coats, ran out. Husky remained on the bed, cursing. At the creek-mouth the sand-bank was empty. The last pallid rays of the moon revealed nothing.
They were accustomed to come there many times a day to wash or to draw water, and the welter of foot-prints in the sand gave no clue. Finally Joe, with a cry, pounced on a dark object at the water's edge and held it up. It was Sam's neck handkerchief.
"Here's the mark of a boat, too, in the sand," he cried. "I knew it! Gone together in her boat!"
"It was a man's voice I heard," objected Jack. "What for would he want to cry out?"
"Wanted to give us the laugh when he saw his get-a-way clear," said Joe bitterly. "Oh, damn him!"
"As soon as it's light——" muttered Shand, grinding his teeth.
"What'll you do then?" demanded Joe.
"I'll get him!" said the quiet man.
"We have no boat."
"Boat or no boat."
"Oh, you're going to do great things. He belongs to me."
Shand sneered. "Take it out on him with your tongue."
Joe replied with a torrent of abuse.
Big Jack laughed a harsh note.
"You fools!" he said. "Both of you. What do you think you're going to do so big? She's given us an answer sooner than we expected, that's all. If she prefers a cook to a man, that's her affair. All we got to do is shut up. I'm going back to the shack."
They would not confess the reasonableness of Jack's words. "Go where you like," muttered Shand. "I'll stick by myself."
Jack strode back along the path. Joe followed him, merely because he was one of those natures who will choose an enemy's company sooner than face the prospect of being left with his own.
They left Shand to his own devices. Husky greeted them with eager questions. Joe cursed him, and Jack clenched his teeth upon the stem of his pipe in grim silence.
They revived the fire and sat in front of it. Each man was jealous of his own rage and pain and refusedto share it. Joe and Husky bickered in a futile way. Big Jack, in spite of his philosophic protestations, kept the tail of an eye on the whitening window-pane. In the end he rose abruptly. Joe followed suit as a matter of course.
Jack turned on him, snarling. "Have I got to be followed by you like a dog everywhere I go?"
"What's the matter with you?" retorted Joe. "Do you own the whole out of doors?"
Jack halted outside the door. "You take one way; I'll go the other," he said grimly.
Jack returned to the creek, and crossing on the stepping-stones walked out on the point beyond and sat down on a boulder. From here he could see a long way down the lake shore.
At this season in the latitude of Caribou night is brief. The sun sinks but a little way below the horizon, and a faint glow hovers over his head all night, travelling around the northern horizon to the east, where it heralds his reappearance.
It was light in the east now and the lake was stepping into view. Big Jack searched its misty expanse with his keen little eyes.
By and by as the light strengthened, looking down-shore he saw a tiny, dark object steal beyond the next point and become silhouetted against the grey. There could be no doubt of what it was. The lust of pursuit flamed up in the man's heart. He forgot his prudent advice to his mates.
"Making for the foot of the lake," he thought. "And the wind's against them. It's rising. I could easy ride around the shore and cut them off."
He got up and made his way with energetic action back to the stable.
He had no sooner picked up a saddle than Joe came in. They looked each other over without speaking. Joe made for another saddle.
"You're free to go where you want," said Jack grimly. "I've only got to say I choose to ride alone."
"I don't care how you ride," retorted Joe. "Keep out of my business, that's all."
They saddled their horses in silence.
Joe said at last with a sneer: "Thought you told us to sit down and shut up."
Jack's face flamed suddenly.
"I promised him a beating if he interfered and, by God, I mean to give it to him before her eyes. That's what she's got to take if she picks a cook!"
He fixed Joe with blazing eyes. "And if any man comes between me and my promise, I'll take him first! As for the girl, she can go her way. I wouldn't take her for a gift!"
Joe laughed unpleasantly.
As Jack started to lead his horse out of the stable, he saw what he had not before noticed—several guns leaning in a corner of the stable. His eyes lighted up.
"Where did they come from?" he demanded, choosing his own.
"Shand found them under the sods of the stable roof," said Joe.
"Where is Shand?"
"He has already taken a horse and gone."
Sam was awakened by being violently rolled over on the sand. He felt human hands upon him, but he could not see his enemy. He struggled with a will, but his limbs were confined by the blanket. A heavy body knelt upon his back, and fetters were pulled around him, binding his arms and his legs inside the blanket.
It was then that he shouted lustily. It was cut short by a cotton gag in his mouth. He was ignominiously rolled down the sand to the water's edge. What with the darkness and the confusion of his faculties still, he could not see who had attacked him.
Inert as a log, he was lifted up, dragged away, and finally dropped in a boat. His captor stood away from him, panting. Sam rolled over on his back and saw—Bela.
For a moment he was paralyzed by astonishment—a woman to dare so! Without looking at him she quickly took her place in the stern and pushed off. Suffocating rage quickly succeeded his first blankness. Unable to move or to utter a sound, his heart nearly broke with it.
The black traitress! After all her professions of friendliness! After making her eyes so soft and her voice so sweet! She was worse than his ugliest suspicions had painted! He did not stop to guess why he had been attacked. She was his enemy. That was enough.
Sounds reached them from the direction of the shack, and Bela, lowering her head, paddled swiftly and silently for the point. Her face showed only a dim oval in the failing light. But there was grim resolution in its lines.
Only once did she open her lips. Sam was frantically twisting in his bonds, though owing to his position on the keel of the dugout he did not much threaten her stability.
Bela whispered: "If you turn us over you drown quick."
Angry as he was, the suggestion of being plunged into the lake bound hand and foot reached him with no little force. Thereafter he lay still, glaring at her.
They had no more than rounded the point when they heard the men come running down to the creek. Bela continued to hug the shore. They were soon swallowed in the murk. The moon went down.
By and by the first rays of light began to spread up the sky from the eastern horizon, and the earth seemed to wake very softly and look in that direction.
With the light came a breath from the east, cool as a hand on the brow of fever. Twittering of sleepy chickadees were heard among the pines, and out in the lake a loon laughed.
Day came with a swoop up the lake. The zephyr became a breeze, the breeze half a gale. The leaden sheet of water was torn into white tatters, and the waves began to crash on the ice-rimmed shore, sending sheets of spray into the trees, and making it impossible for Bela to land had she wished to.
This was a hard stroke of luck against her. She would have been out of sight of the point by the time it was fully light, had it not been for the head wind.
The dugout leaped and rolled like an insane thing. Having a well-turned hull, she kept on top, and only spray came over the bow. To Sam, who could see only the sky, the mad motion was inexplicable.
His anger gave place to an honest terror. If anything happened, what chance did he stand? Bela's set, sullen face told him nothing. Her eyes were undeviatingly fixed on a point a few feet ahead and to the right of the bow. Twisting her paddle this way and that, she snaked the dugout over the crests.
Though she seemed to pay no attention to him, she must have guessed what was passing in Sam's mind. Without taking her eyes from that point ahead where the waves came from, she felt in a bundle before her and drew out a knife. Watching her chance, she swiftlyleaned forward and cut the bonds around his legs. When another lull came she cut his arms free.
"Move careful," she said, without looking at him.
Sam did not need the warning. The icy quality of the spray in his face filled him with a wholesome respect for the lake. He cautiously worked his arms free of the blanket, and, raising himself on his elbows, looked over the gunwale. He saw the waves come tumbling clumsily toward them and gasped.
It seemed like a miracle the little craft had survived so long. One glance at the shore showed him why they could not land. He fell back, and his hands flew to the knot behind his head. He tore off the gag and threw it overboard. Bela looked at him for the fraction of a second.
"Well, what's your game?" he bitterly demanded. "It's pretty near ended for both of us. I hope you're satisfied. You savage!"
Bela's eyes did not swerve again from that point ahead. In one respect she was a savage; that was the extraordinary stolidity she could assume. For all the attention she gave him he might have been the wind whistling.
At first it fanned his anger outrageously. He searched his mind for cruel taunts to move her. It was all wasted. She paddled ahead like a piece of the boat itself, now pausing a second, now driving hard, as those fixed, wary eyes telegraphed automatically to her arms.
One cannot continue to rail at a wooden woman. Her impassivity finally wore him out. He fell silent, and covered his face with an arm that he might not have to look at her. Besides, he felt seasick.
East of Nine-Mile Point the lake shore makes in sharply, forming the wide, deep bay which stretchesall the way to the foot of the lake where Musquasepi, the little river, takes its rise. The stony, ice-clad shores, backed by pines, continued for a mile or so, then gave place to wide, bare mud-flats reaching far inland.
On the flats the ice did not pile up, but lay in great cakes where the receding waters stranded it. This ice was practically all melted now, and the view across the flats was unimpeded. It was nine miles from the point to the intake of the river by water and fifteen miles by land. The trail skirted inside the flats.
Bela kept to the shore until the increasing light made further concealment useless. She then headed boldly across for the river. It was at this time that the wind began to blow its hardest.
She could not tell, of course, if she had yet been discovered from the point. Not knowing the ways of white men, she could not guess if they were likely to pursue.
Under ordinary circumstances with a little start, she could easily have beaten a horse to the river, but the head wind reversed the chances. She might have landed on the flats, but there was not a particle of cover there, and they would have offered a fair mark to any one following by the trail. Moreover, Sam would have run away.
It was too rough for her to hope to escape across the lake in the trough of the sea. So there was nothing for her but to continue to struggle toward the river. A bank of heavy clouds was rising in the east. It was to be a grey day.
After a while Sam looked over the edge again. The dugout seemed scarcely to have moved. They were still but half-way across the wide bay. On the lake sidethey were passing a wooded island out in the middle. The wind was still increasing. It came roaring up the lake in successive gusts. It was like a giant playing with them in cruel glee before administering thecoup de grâce. Bela could no longer keep the crests of the waves out. Sam was drenched and chilled.
He stole another look in her face. The imminence of the danger threatening both forced his anger into the background for the moment. She never changed her attitude except occasionally to swing the paddle to the other side of the boat.
At the impact of each gust she lowered her head a little and set her teeth. Her face had become a little haggard and grey under the long continued strain. Sam chafed under his enforced inaction.
"You have another paddle," he said. "Let me help."
"Lie down," she muttered without looking at him. "You don' know how. You turn us over."
He lay in water impotently grinding his teeth. He could not but admire her indomitable courage, and he hated her for being forced to admire her. To be obliged to lie still and let a woman command was a bitter draft to his pride.
A wave leaped over the bow, falling in the dugout like a barrowful of stones. Sam sprang to a sitting position. He thought the end had come. The dugout staggered drunkenly under the additional load. But Bela's face was still unmoved.
"Lean over," she commanded, nodding toward the little pile of baggage between them. "Under the blankets, in the top of the grub-box, my tea-pail."
He found it, and set to work with a will to bail. As fast as he emptied the water, more came in over the bow. The foot of the lake and safety seemed torecede before them. Surely it was not possible a woman could hold out long enough to reach it, he thought, glancing at her.
"Why don't you turn about and run before the wind?" he asked.
"Can't turn now," she muttered. "Wave hit her side, turn over quick."
Sam looked ashore again. For upwards of a furlong off the edge of the flats the breakers were ruling their parallel lines of white. Above all the other noises of the storm the continuous roaring of these waters reached their ears.
"You could land there," he suggested. "What if we did get turned out? It's shallow."
She was not going to tell him the real reason she could not land. "I lose my boat," she muttered.
"Better lose the boat than lose yourself," he muttered sullenly.
Bela did not answer this. She paddled doggedly, and Sam bailed. He saw her glance from time to time toward a certain point inland. Seeing her face change, he followed the direction of her eyes, and presently distinguished, far across the flats, three tiny horses with riders appearing from among the trees.
They were proceeding in single file around the bay. Even at the distance one could guess they were galloping. So that was why she would not land!
Sam did not need to be told who the three riders were. His sensations on perceiving them were mixed. It was not difficult for him to figure what had happened when his absence had been discovered, and he was not at all sure that he wished to escape from his mysterious captor only to fall into those hands.
This line of thought suddenly suggested a possible reason why he had been carried off—but it was toohumiliating to credit. He looked at her with a kind of shamed horror. Her face gave nothing away.
By and by Sam realized with a blessed lightening of the heart that the storm had reached its maximum. The gusts were no longer increasing in strength; less water was coming over the bow. Not until he felt the relief was he aware of how frightened he had been.
Bela's face lightened, too. Progress under the cruel handicap was still painfully slow. The wind was like a hand thrusting them back; but every gain brought them a little more under the lee of the land. If Bela's arms held out! He looked at her wonderingly. There was no sign of any slackening yet.
"We not sink now," she said coolly.
"Good!" cried Sam.
In their mutual relief they could almost be friendly.
Bela was heading for the intake of the river. Along the tortuous course of that stream she knew a hundred hiding-places. The land trail followed the general direction of the river, but touched it only at one or two places.
The question was, could she reach the river before the horsemen? Sam watched them, trying to gauge their rate of progress. The horses had at least four miles to cover, while the dugout was now within a mile—but the horses were running.
Sam knew that the trail crossed the river by a ford near the intake from the lake, because he had come that way. If the horsemen cut off Bela at the ford what would she do? he wondered. The outlook was bad for him in either event. He must escape from both parties.
The horsemen passing around the bay became mere specks in the distance. Reaching the foot of the lake they had to cover a straight stretch of a mile and ahalf to the river. The trail lay behind willows here, and they disappeared from view. It was anybody's race.
Bela, the extraordinary girl, still had a reserve of strength to draw on. As they gradually came under the influence of the windward shore the water calmed down and the dugout leaped ahead.
Sam watched her with a cold admiration, speculating endlessly on what might be going on behind her mask-like face. With all her pluck, what could she hope to gain? Obviously it would be easier to escape from her than from three men, and he began to hope she would win.
They caught no further glimpses of the horsemen, and as they drew closer and closer to the river the tension became acute. Suppose they arrived simultaneously, thought Sam, would the men shoot?
Not Big Jack nor Shand, perhaps, but Joe was not to be trusted. But surely they would see he was a prisoner. Something of the kind must have been passing through Bela's mind. Putting down her paddle for a moment, she threw back the blankets and drew out her gun. It had been carefully protected from the water. She laid it on top convenient to her hand and resumed.
"She's a good plucky one," thought Sam grimly. "As for me, I play a pretty poor part in this affair, whichever way you look at it. A kind of dummy figure, it seems."
So low were its shores that the intake of the river was hidden from them until they were almost in it. Finally it opened up before them, with its wide reaches of sand stretching away on either hand, willows backing the sand, and a pine ridge rising behind the willows.
Here the wind whistled harmlessly over their heads, and the surface of the water was quiet except for the catspaws darting hither and thither. Before entering the river, Bela paused again, and bent her head to listen.
"Too late!" she said. "We can't pass!"
At the same moment the horses burst from behind the willows a quarter of a mile across the sand. They had the ford!
"We can't pass," Bela repeated, and then with a gasp, in which was more of anger than fear, she added: "An' they got guns, too!"
Seeing the dugout, the men raised a shout and bore down upon them across the sand. Bela was not yet in the river. She swiftly brought the dugout around and paddled down the lake shore across the river from the men.
They, suspecting her of a design to land on this side, pulled up their horses, and returning to the ford, plunged across. Whereupon Bela coolly paddled out into the lake. By this manœuvre she was enabled to get out of range of their guns before they got to the water's edge.
Holding her paddle, she turned to watch them. The sounds of their curses came down the wind. They were directed against Sam, not Bela.
Sam smiled bitterly. "I catch it both ways," he muttered.
"You want them catch you?" asked Bela, with an odd look.
Sam scowled at her helplessly.
She rested on her paddle, looking up and down the shore and out on the lake, manifestly debating with herself what to do. To Sam their situation seemed hopeless. Finally Bela took up the paddle with an air of resolution.
"Well, what the devil are you goin' to do?" demanded Sam.
"We go to the island," she answered coolly.
An island! Sam's heart sank. He saw his escape indefinitely postponed. To be kept prisoner on an island by a girl! Intolerably humiliating prospect! How would he ever be able to hold up his head among men afterward?
"What the devil are you up to, anyhow?" he broke out angrily again. "Do you think this will do you any good? What do you expect to gain by it?"
"What you want me do?" asked Bela sullenly, without looking at him.
"Land, and tell them the truth about what happened!"
"They too mad," said Bela. "Shoot you before they listen. Not believe, anyway."
Sam could not deny the reasonableness of this.
"Oh, damn!" he cried impotently. "You've got me into a nice mess! Are you crazy, or just bad? Is it your whole idea to make trouble between men? I've heard of women like that. One would think you wanted —— Say! I'll be likely to thank you for this, won't I? The sight of you is hateful to me!"
Bela made her face like a wall, and looked steadily over his head at her course. There is no satisfaction in flinging words against a wall. Sam's angry voice dwindled to a mutter, then fell silent.
The island lay about a mile offshore. In a chaos of lowering grey sky and torn white water, it seemed to hang like a serene and lovely little world of itself.
The distant shores of the lake were spectral in the whirl of the elements, and the island was the one fixed spot. It was as brilliant as an emerald in a setting of lead. A beach of yellow sand encircled it, with a border of willows, and taller trees sticking up in the middle.
Borne on the shoulders of the great wind, theyreached it in a few minutes. Bela paddled under the lee side and landed in quiet water. Sam rose on his chilled and stiffened limbs, and stepping ashore, stood off, scowling at her blackly.
There he was! He knew he couldn't escape alone in that cranky craft; certainly not while the wind blew. Nor could he hope to swim a mile through icy water. He wondered bitterly if ever a man before him had been placed in such a galling position.
Ignoring his black looks, Bela hastened to collect dry sticks.
"I mak' fire and dry everything," she said.
Sam cursed her and strode off around the beach.
"Tak' dry matches if you want fire," Bela called after him.
He would not give any sign that he heard.
He sat down on the other side of the island, as far away as he could get from her. Here he was full in the path of the driving, unwearied wind, which further irritated his exacerbated nerves.
He swore at Bela; he swore at the cold, at the wind, at the matches which went out one after another. He felt that all things animate and inanimate were leagued against him.
Finally, in the lee of some willows, he did get a fire going, and crouched in the smoke, choking and sneezing, as angry and unhappy a specimen of young manhood as might have been found in the world that morning.
Finally he began to dry out, and a measure of warmth returned to his limbs. He got his pipe going, and felt a little less like a nihilist.
Suddenly a new, ugly thought made him spring up. Suppose she took advantage of his absence to steal away and leave him marooned on the island? Anythingmight be expected of such a woman. He hastened back around the beach.
She had not gone. From a distance he saw her busy by a great fire, with the blankets, and all the goods hanging around to dry.
He squatted behind a clump of willows where he could watch her, himself unseen. Her attitude suggested that she was cooking something, and at the sight hunger struck through him like a knife. Not for worlds would he have asked her for anything to eat.
By and by she arose with the frying-pan in her hand, and looked up and down the beach.
"Oh, Sam!" she called. "Come and eat!"
He laid low, sneering miserably; bent on cutting off his nose to spite his face. He wondered if there were any berries on the island. No, it was too early in the season for berries. Edible roots, maybe. But he wouldn't have known an edible root from any other kind.
After calling awhile, Bela sat down in the sand and proceeded to satisfy her own appetite. Fresh pangs attacked Sam.
"Selfish creature!" he muttered. "That woman is bad through and through!"
She arose and, filling another plate, started toward him, carrying it. Her eyes were following his tracks in the sand. Sam instinctively sprang up and took to his heels.
His cheeks burned at the realization that she would presently discover that he had been sitting there watching her. He had not thought of the tell-tale sand. Wherever he might seek to hide, it would betray him.
He made a complete circuit of the little island, Bela presumably following him. The circumference of the beach was about half a mile. He ran as hard as hecould, and presently discovered her ahead of him. He had almost overtaken her.
Thereafter he followed more slowly, keeping her in sight from the cover of the bushes. The secret consciousness that he was acting like a wilful child did not make him any happier.
When he came around to Bela's fire again, seeing the dugout drawn up on the sand, his heart leaped at the chance of escape. If he could push off in it without capsizing, surely, even with his lack of skill, he could drive before the wind. Or even if he could keep it floating under the lee of the island, he could dictate terms.
He waited, hidden, until she passed out of sight ahead, then ran to it. But even as he put his hands on the bow, she reappeared, running back. He fled in the other direction.
The chase went on reversed. He no longer heard her coming behind him. Now he could not tell whether she were in front or behind. He passed the dugout and the camp fire again. No sign of her there. Rounding the point beyond, he came to the place where he had made his own fire.
Trying to keep eyes in every side of his head at once, he walked around a bush and almost collided with her. There she stood with dimpled face, like a child, behind the door.
She burst out laughing. Sam turned beet colour and, scowling like a pirate, tried to carry it off with dignity.
"Don't be mad at me," she begged, struggling with her laughter. "You so fonny, run away. Here's your breakfast. It's cold now. You can bring it to the fire."
There was bread and smoked fish on the plate shewas offering. Sam, though his stomach cried out, turned his back on her.
"You got eat," said Bela. "Tak' it."
"Not from you," he returned bitterly.
There was a silence. He could not see how she took it. Presently he heard her put the plate down on the sand and walk off. Her steps died away around the point.
Sam eyed the food ravenously and began to argue with himself. In the end, of course, he ate it, but it went down hard.
The day wore on. It continued to blow great guns. Sam wandered up and down his side of the island, meditating fine but impractical schemes of escape and revenge.
He might get away on a raft, he thought, if the wind changed and blew in a direction favourable to carry him ashore. The trouble was the nights were so short. He might build his raft one night, and escape on it the next. How to keep her from finding it in the meantime offered a problem.
He began to look about in the interior of the island for suitable pieces of dry timber. He could use a blanket for a sail, he thought. This reminded him that his blankets were at least his own, and he determined to go and get them.
Rounding the point, he saw her sitting in the sand, making something with her hands. Though she must have heard him coming, she did not look up until he addressed her. Sam, in his desire to assert his manhood, swaggered a bit as he came up.
She raised a face as bland as a baby's. Sam was disconcerted. Desiring to pick a quarrel, he roughlydemanded his blankets. Bela nodded toward where they hung and went on with her work. She was making a trolling spoon.
So much for their second encounter. Sam retired from it, feeling that he had come off no better than from the first.
Later, back on his own side, bored and irritated beyond endurance, he rolled up in his blankets and sought sleep as an escape from his own company.
He slept and dreamed. The roaring of the wind and the beating of the waves wove themselves into his fancies. He dreamed he was engulfed in a murky tempest, He was tossing wildly in a shell of a boat, without oars or sail. Sometimes green and smiling fields appeared close at hand, only to be swallowed up in the murk again.
The noise was deafening. When he endeavoured to shout for aid, his tongue was clamped to his jaw. Behind him was a terror worse than the storm, and he dared not look around. It seemed to him that he struggled for an infinity of time, a hopeless, heart-breaking struggle against increasing odds.
Suddenly the sun broke through, cheering his heart. It was a sun that came down close to him, warming him through and through. It was not a sun. It was a face—a woman's face. At first it was a face he did not know, but beautiful. Then it was Bela's face, and he was glad.
Closer and closer to his own face it drew, and he did not draw away. Finally she touched his lips with hers, and a wonderful sweetness pervaded his whole frame. He awoke.
For a moment he lay blinking, still wrapped in the dream. At any rate, the storm was real. The bushes still thrashed, and the waves beat. Before him stretchedthe same wide waste of grey water slashed with white.
The sight of the water brought full recollection back. He had been looking at it all day, and he hated it. It was the water that made his prison. He sat up swearing at his dream. It was a fine thing a man should have no better control over his emotions while he slept.
Beside him on the sand lay another tin plate, with bread and fish. Fresh fish this time, half a pink salmon trout lately pulled from the water. Touching the plate he found it warm. Was it possible——
Looking in the sand beside where he had lain he saw the rounded depressions made by two knees, on the other side of him was a hand-print. Sam scowled and violently scrubbed his lips with the back of his hand. Even so, he would not admit to himself that the hateful thing had happened.
Nevertheless he ate the fish.
"I've got to keep my strength up if I'm going to help myself," he excused it.
The sun was hidden, but he knew by that instinct which serves us when we give up mechanical contrivances, that it was no more than noon. Half of this hideous day remained to be got over.
He sat dwelling on his grievances until the top of his head seemed about to fly off. Then he set to work to search for and collect dry logs and stow them under the willows, and in so doing managed to tire himself out.
It was dusk, which is to say nearly ten o'clock, when he awoke from another nap. A silence, astonishing after the day-long uproar, greeted his ears. The wind had gone down with the sun, and the world was enfolded in a delicious peace.
The lake was like a polished floor. Above the tree-tops behind him the sky was still bright, while over across the water sat Night in robes, awaiting her cue. On the island there was not a cheep nor a flutter to break the spell.
Sam wondered idly what had aroused him. He saw with a frown that there was food beside him as before. But it had been there some time. It was cold, and sand had drifted into the plate.
At last he heard the sound which had awakened him. It was a strain of music which came stealing as gently on the air as the first breath of dawn. Sam's breast was like wax to music.
Without thinking what he was doing, he kicked himself free of the blankets, and arose to go closer. It was like a lovely incantation, drawing him irrespective of his will.
He did not instantly recognize the source of the music. It might have been the song of a twilight bird, a thrush, a mocking-bird. He forgot for the moment that there are no song-birds so far north.
Presently he knew it for the voice of a woman singing softly, and a good way off—Bela! Still he did not stop.
"I guess I can listen to her sing without giving anything away," he told himself. But his breast was dangerously seduced by the sweetness of the sound.
As he drew closer the detached notes associated themselves into a regular air. It had nothing in common with the rude, strident chants of the Indians that he had heard on the rivers. It was both familiar and elusive. It was like an air he knew, but with a wild, irregular quality different from our airs. It was mournful, sweet, and artless, and it made the heart swell in his breast.
As he progressed around the beach he saw her fire. It was dark enough now for the blaze to shine. Drawing still closer he saw her beside it, and frowned, remembering his injuries—but the song drew him still.
He began to listen for the words. Suddenly he recognized it—one of the loveliest of old English songs. Evidently it had been transmitted from ear to ear until it had acquired the character of a new race of singers.
He progressed from bush to bush. He wasn't going to have anything to do with her, he would have said, but she could sing. He came to a final stop only a few yards away, and watched her through the leaves with burning eyes. She was in her favourite attitude, sitting on her heels, her strong young back curving in to her swaying waist.
Her hair, all unbound, fell around her in shifting masses like smoke. While she sang she combed it with long strokes, holding her head now on this side, now on that, and ever revealing a lovelier pose of her round arms. The half light lent her an unearthly beauty.
The sight was no less affecting than the sound. A great pain filled Sam's breast, and the old inward struggle dragged him back and forth. She was at once so desirable and so hateful in his eyes. It was the cry of bewildered youth: "What right has anything so bad to be beautiful!"
No doubt of her badness occurred to him. Had she not ruined his chances in that country? The old antagonism was there, the readiness to believe ill of the other sex that is born of mutual fear. She had become the immemorial siren in Sam's eyes, and he was fighting to save his soul. But she was beautiful enough to make a man wish to be damned.
She came to the end of her song, and presently started another, a more rollicking air, but still charged with wistfulness. Who had taught her those hushed, thrilling tones? Sam recognized this air, too, and thought of the mother who had sung it to him years ago.
It was "Twickenham Ferry." Why that of all songs? he wondered rebelliously. It was not fair that she should be armed thus to seek out the weakest joints in his armour.
The desire to stop the song with his own mouth became more than he could bear. The struggle was almost over when she paused and bent her head to listen, and looked up and down the beach.
It broke the spell.
"She's just trying to bring you to her!" Sam told himself, aghast. "That's why her hair is down and all. And you're falling for it, you fool!"
He turned and fled back around the beach.
Whether or not she heard him run away, the song presently ceased, and troubled him no more that night. He returned to his blankets, but not to sleep again.
He built a fire and lay beside it smoking. He drove away the recollection of the disturbing loveliness he had seen by counting over his injuries at her hands, nourishing them and magnifying them in his mind until they filled it to the exclusion of everything else.
It became as dark as it would get. Midnight at that season is no more than an intensified twilight. By and by the moon arose far across the water, looking like an old-fashioned gas-globe, and set sail on her brief voyage low down in the sky from south-east to south-west.
Sam received the friend of lovers with a scowl. Hehad omitted her from his calculations. "The nights are short enough without that!" he thought.
Thinking of escape, a new idea caused him to sit up suddenly.
"Why bother with a raft?" he thought. "She's got to sleep sometime. If I could sneak around the beach and push the dugout in! No matter how quick she woke once I was afloat. Oh! it would do my heart good to float just out of her reach and tell her a few things. On a night like this I could paddle anywhere. She's got some food and a blanket. Serve her right, anyhow. I could send some one back after her."
To think of it was to desire to put it into instant action. The moon, however, forbade. Sam cursed her again, and sat down to wait with what patience he could muster until it should slowly sink out of sight.
When the bright scimitar edge sunk behind Nine-Mile Point he arose with a beating heart. Making his blankets into a bundle, he took his way once more around the strip of beach, his moccasined feet falling noiselessly on the sand.
It was about two o'clock, and the afterglow had moved around to the north-east. In an hour it would be light again. The island objects loomed twice their size in this dusk of dusk. Sam kept close under the willows to avoid making a silhouette against the sky. As he drew close to Bela's camp he saw that her fire was out, from which he argued that she had been asleep for some time.
Coming nearer still, he made out the form of the dugout against the pale sand. Bela had drawn it up higher, and had turned it over. Still hugging the willows, he paused, looking for her resting-place. He could not see her. He supposed she had made her bedunder the willows behind her fire. He dared not approach to make sure. Likely she was a light sleeper.
Following man's first instinct, he bent double, and crept across the open sand to the dugout. It lay on its side, the bottom turned toward him.
His heart was beating like a steam hammer. If with one quick movement he could turn it over and rush it into the water, let her wake as quick as she chose. If she attempted to stop him she must take the consequences. When a man's liberty was at stake he could not be too nice with the sex. He took a long breath and turned the canoe over.
Bela was lying beneath it.
"Sam!" she said softly.
The keyed-up Sam grunted at the suddenness of the shock and ran back for ten paces, gasping. Then he got command of himself, and came back ashamed and raging.
Bela stood up. "What you want?" she asked mildly.
"I want to get away from here!" cried Sam, "and, by George, I'm going to! If you try to stop me your petticoats won't protect you. Get back!"
Rather to his surprise she fell back without a word. He glanced at her uncertainly. Putting his hands on the canoe he started to shove it toward the water.
"How you goin' mak' it go?" asked Bela softly.
Sam came to a stop, swearing savagely. In his excitement he had neglected to think of paddles. They were not lying anywhere about.
"Where are the paddles?" he demanded.
"I hide 'em," she answered coolly.
"Where are they?" he cried.
She was silent.
"Tell me where they are or take the consequences!" he cried, approaching her threateningly.
"I not tell you if you kill me," she replied, standing fast.
This was an out and out challenge to him to strike her. When it came to the point he could not do it, of course. He turned away, wild with impotent rage. Must she always get the best of him? If there had only been a man of her people there that he could take it out on! He broke into passionate denunciations of her. It was a weird enough scene, there on the shore in the dim dusk.
"What are you keeping me here for, anyway?" was the burden of his cry. "What do you expect to gain by it?"
"You safe here," Bela muttered. "If we go to the shore those men kill you, I think."
This did not help soothe him.
"I'll take my chance of that!" he cried. "I know how to deal with men. I don't need a woman to look after me! Do you think you're going to keep me here all summer?"
"No," she returned. "The bishop and the police comin' pretty soon. Then you safe."
"It's all your fault anyhow!" cried Sam. "Why couldn't you let me alone in the first place? What's your game anyhow?"
Bela was silent.
"Give me a plain answer!" he cried. "What was your idea in carrying me off?" He blushed as he said it. "O Lord!" he added helplessly.
"I hear those men talk," Bela said sullenly. "Say they goin' kill you in the morning. I think if I tell you, you jus' laugh. So I tak' you away quiet."
It had not the ring of truth. "Rot!" exclaimed Sam. "Why should they want to kill me?"
Having no answer ready, she remained silent.
"You're lying now!" cried Sam. "The truth is, you were sore because I wasn't after you like the rest. I know women!"
Bela made an angry movement.
"What's the matter wit' you?" she said defiantly. "You t'ink you so big and clever! W'at you know about me? If you stop cursing me all the tam maybe you see w'at I am! If you act good to me I good to you!"
"Do you expect me to take off my hat and thank you for the privilege of being tied up and carried off?" demanded Sam.
She hung her head. "I sorry for that," she muttered sullenly.
"Huh! Sorry won't mend anything," said Sam.
"I want be friends," she murmured.
"If you're honest you'll get the paddles and put me ashore."
She shook her head. "Not let you go till you friends wit' me."
Sam laughed harshly. "That's good! You'll wait a long time. Hope you've got grub enough. Friendship! Rubbish! You let me go and we'll talk."
She stood in sullen silence. Sam abruptly picked up his blankets and turned to go.
At his move a different sound escaped her. Her hands went to her breast. "Sam—please——"
He paused. "What do you want?"
"Sam—I say I sorry. I say I a fool."
He stood in uncomfortable silence.
"I say I fool," she repeated. "That not easy to say."
Still he had no answer.
"Why you so hard to me?" she demanded rebelliously. "Can't you see in my heart? There is nothing butgood in there for you. I want you be good to me. I want you come wit' me so bad. So I act foolish."
Her simplicity surprised and suddenly softened him. Alone with her, and in the all-concealing dusk, his queasy pride was not obliged to take up arms. In return he was as simple and direct as she.
"Oh! I'm sorry, too," he said in an uncertain voice—and regretfully. "If you're like that—if you're on the square. Something might have come of it. But you've spoiled it. You've put me on my guard against you for ever. A man has his pride. A man has to choose. He can't submit to a woman. You wouldn't want a tame man. I'm sorry!"
They stood looking at each other with an odd wistfulness.
"Go back to your own fire," Bela said in a muffled voice.
Sam was awakened by the rising sun. He arose sore in spirit and unrefreshed. It promised to be a brilliant day, with a gentle breeze from the west. Such a wind would blow him to the foot of the lake, the nearest shore, and, observing it, he immediately started to drag the logs he had collected down to the water's edge, careless now if Bela discovered what he was about. Let her try to stop him if she dared!
Building a raft promised to be no easy task. He was without hammer and nails, and he had not been long enough in the country to learn how it might be done without. His only tool was a pocket knife.
After several fruitless experiments, he hit upon the scheme of lashing the logs together with withes of willow. It promised to be an all-day job, and a clumsy one at the best. Still, if the wind held fair and light, it might serve. Raising a mast presented another problem. He deferred consideration of that until he got the raft built.
After a while Bela appeared around the shore, bringing his breakfast. Sam essayed taking a leaf out of her book by making believe to be oblivious of her. She put the plate down and watched him for a while. Sam, under her gaze, became horribly conscious of the crudeness of his handiwork, but he worked ahead, whistling.
Finally she said scornfully: "You can't get to shore on that."
No answer from Sam.
"When you sit down, her bend in the middle. Water come over you. Raft got be hard lak a floor."
Another silence.
"W'en wind blow she all bus' up."
No answer being forthcoming, Bela shrugged and sat down in the sand as if she meant to spend the morning there. She gazed across the lake. Sam scowled and fidgeted. Something told him that when it came to holding one's tongue, Bela could beat him hollow. He worked doggedly on, careful never to look in her direction.
After a while the astonishing girl rose and said calmly: "I tak you to shore in my canoe now."
Sam dropped his willow strips and stared. "Eh?"
"I say I ready tak you to shore now," she repeated.
"What does this mean?" Sam demanded.
She shrugged slightly. "Ask no question. Come, if you want."
"To what shore?" he demanded suspiciously.
"Anywhere. Better go to little river, I guess. Wind blow us there to-day. Maybe blow hard after."
"What are you up to now?" he muttered.
She had already turned up the beach. "I go get ready," she said over her shoulder. "Better come quick."
She disappeared around the shore, leaving him much perturbed in mind. In a minute or two he stole after to see if she were indeed getting ready. It was true. Watching from behind the willows, he saw her tie a poplar pole in the bow of the dugout and stay it with a rope.
Upon this rude mast she bound a yard, from whichhung one of her blankets with a rope tied to each of the lower corners. Afterward she stowed her baggage in the boat. She worked with a determined swiftness that suggested some particular urgency.
Finally she started back along the beach, whereupon Sam turned and, hastening ahead of her, resumed operations on the raft as if he had never dropped them.
"Now I guess you know why we goin' to the shore," she stated abruptly.
"I'm hanged if I do!" returned Sam.
"You got strong eyes and not see not'ing?" she asked scornfully. "Look!"
Following the direction of her pointing finger across the lake, he made out a black spot on the water, between them and the head of the river.
"Those men comin' here," she said. "I am think before maybe come to-day. Yesterday I guess they ride down the river and get Johnny Gagnon's boat."
When she pointed it out, the object was clear enough. The rise and fall of oars was suggested. Sam watched it doubtfully. He was ready to welcome relief in any form from his hateful situation, but was this relief?
"How do you expect to sail to the river when they're coming from there?" he asked.
"I wait till come close," she replied eagerly. "Then go round ot'er side of island. They never catch me wit' my sail. Johnny Gagnon's boat got no sail."
Her eagerness made him suspicious. What had she up her sleeve now? he wondered. While he could scarcely regard Jack, Shand, and Joe in the light of deliverers, his galled pride forbade him to put himself in her hands again. He suddenly made up his mind.
"Go ahead!" he said harshly. "Go anywhere you like! I stay here!"
Bela changed colour, and a real fear showed in her eyes. She moved toward him involuntarily.
"They kill you if they find you here," she said.
"Not if they don't find you here, too."
"They kill you!" she insisted. "Two days they are after us. All tam talk together what they goin' do when they catch us, and get more mad. If they find me gone away, they get more mad again. W'en they catch you, they got kill you for 'cause they say so many times. You are on this little island. Nobody know. Nobody see. They are safe to kill you. You don' go wit' me, you never leave here."
Sam, knowing the men, could not but be shaken by her words. He paled a little, but, having announced his decision to her, pride would not allow him to take it back.
"Go on," he said. "I stay."
The old walled look came back over Bela's face. She sat down in the sand, clasping her knees.
"I not go wit'out you," she announced.
Sam affected to shrug.
"Just as you like. You won't help my chances any by staying here."
"They kill you, anyhow," she said in a level voice. "After they kill you they get me. They not kill me."
Sam started and looked at her aghast. A surprising pain stabbed him. He remembered the looks of the men upon Bela's first appearance in the cabin. Now, after two days' pursuit they would scarcely be more humane than then. The thought of that beautiful creature being delivered over to them was more than he could bear.
"Bela—for God's sake—don't be a fool!" he faltered.
A subtle smile appeared on her lips. She was silent.
His pride made another effort. "Ah, you're onlybluffing!" he said harshly. "You can't get me going that way."
She looked at him with a strange, fiery intensity. "I not bluffin'," she replied quietly. "I do w'at I say. If I want say I put my hand in the fire, I hold it there till it burn off. You know that."
In his heart he did know it, however he might rage at being forced to do what she wanted him to do.
"I don't care!" he cried. "You can't lead me by the nose! I'm my own master. I didn't get you into this. You'll have to take your chance as I take mine."
Bela said nothing.
Out of sheer bravado Sam set to work again to bind his logs together. His hand shook. There was little likelihood now that he would need a raft.
The approaching boat had already covered half the distance to the island. They could now make out three figures in it, one steering, each of the other two wielding an oar. The lake was glorious in the strong sunshine. All the little ripples to the east were tipped with gold.
Five minutes passed, while obstinacy contended silently with obstinacy. Bela sat looking at nothing with all the stoicism of her red ancestors; Sam maintained his futile pretence of business. Occasionally he glanced at her full of uncertainty and unwilling admiration. Bela never looked at him.
At the end of that time the boat was less than a quarter of a mile offshore. They saw the steersman point, and the two oarsmen stop and look over their shoulders. Evidently they had discovered the two figures on the beach, and wondered at their supineness. They came on with increased energy.
Bela held the best cards. Sam finally threw down his work with an oath.
"I can't stand it!" he cried shakily. "I don't care about myself, but I can't see a woman sacrificed—even if it's your own mulishness! I don't care about you, either—but you're a woman. You needn't think you're getting the best of me. I'll hate you for this—but I can't stand it!"
Bela sprang up swiftly and resolutely.
"Come!" she exclaimed. "I don' care what mak' you come, if you come!"
She pointed to the longest way round the shore. "This way," she directed. "I want them follow this way so I sail back ot'er side."
As they ran around the beach, a faint shout reached them from the water. As soon as they had passed out of sight of the boat, Bela pulled Sam into the bushes, and they worked back under cover to a point whence they could watch their pursuers in comparative safety.
"Maybe they goin' land this side," she suggested. "If they land, run lak hell and jomp in my boat."
Sam never thought of smiling.
Five minutes of breathless suspense succeeded. Suppose the men landed and, dividing, went both ways around the beach, what would they do? However, it appeared that they intended to row around the island and, as they thought, cut off Bela's escape by water. But the watchers could not be sure of this until the boat was almost upon them. Finally Bela looked at Sam, and they dashed together for the dugout.
All was ready for the start, the boat pointing, bow first, into the lake. In the excitement of the last few minutes they had forgotten Sam's blankets. It was too late to think of them now.
Sam got in first and, obeying Bela's instructions, braced his feet against the bottom of the mast. Shepushed off and paddled like a wild woman until she could weather the island under her square sail. They succeeded in making the point before the rowboat appeared from around the other side of the island. Finally the white blanket, with its wide black bars, caught the wind, and Bela ceased paddling.
To Sam it seemed as if they stopped moving upon the stilling of that vigorous arm. He looked anxiously over his shoulder. She was watching their progress through the water with an experienced eye.
"Never catch us if the wind hold," she said calmly. "Johnny Gagnon's boat ver' heavy boat."
They had a start of upward of a quarter of a mile when their perplexed pursuers, having almost completed a circuit of the island, finally caught sight of them sailing blithely down the lake. A great roar of anger came down the wind to them.
"Let them curse," said Bela. "Cursin' won't catch us. Already they rowin' half an hour. Get tire' soon."
"They've got a spare man to change to," Sam reminded her. He was now as keen to give them the slip as Bela. The mainland ahead promised freedom; not only freedom from his late masters, but freedom from her, too.
Looking over their shoulders, they saw the steersman change to one of the oars. Thereafter the rowboat came on with renewed speed, but the dugout seemed to draw steadily ahead.
Sam's heart rose. Bela, however, searching the wide sky and the water for weather signs, began to look anxious.
"What is it?" asked Sam.
"Wind goin' down," she replied grimly.
Sure enough, presently the heavy sail began to sag, and they could feel the dugout lose way under them. They groaned involuntarily. At the same moment their pursuers perceived the slackening of the wind and shouted in a different key.
The wind freshened again, and once more died away. Now the dugout forged ahead; now the rowboat began to overhaul them. It was nip and tuck down the lake between sail and oars.
The shore they were making for began to loom nearer, but the puffs of wind were coming at longer and longer intervals, and finally they ran into a glassy calm, though they could see slants of wind all about them, a situation to drive pursued sailors frantic.
Bela paddled manfully, but her single blade was no match for two long oars. The sail was a handicap now. Bela had staked everything on it, and they could not take it down without capsizing the dugout. The oarsmen came rapidly, with derisive shouts in anticipation of a speedy triumph.
"You've got your gun," muttered Sam. "You're a better shot than any of them. Use it while you have the advantage."
She shook her head. "No shoot. Too moch trouble mak' already."
"Plug their boat, then," said Sam.
She still refused. "They die in cold water if boat sink."
"We might as well jump overboard, then," he said bitterly.
"Look!" she cried suddenly. "Wind comin', too!"
Behind the rowboat a dark-blue streak was creeping over the surface of the lake.
"Ah, wind, come quick! Come quick!" Bela murmuredinvoluntarily. "A candle for the altar! My rabbit-skin robe to Père Lacombe!"
At the same time she did not cease paddling.
The rowers saw the breeze coming, too, and, bending their backs, sent the water flying from their oars. They managed to keep ahead of it. Both boats were now within a furlong of the river-head. The race seemed over. The rowboat drew even with the dugout, and they looked into their pursuers' faces, red with exertion and distorted in cruel triumph.
The steersman was Joe. "Don't stop," he yelled to the heaving oarsmen, "or she'll give us the slip yet! Get ahead and cut her off! You damned dish-washer, we've got you now!" he added for Sam's benefit.
With a sharp crack, Big Jack's oar broke off short. He capsized backward into Shand, knocking him off his seat as well. At the same instant the whispering breeze came up and the blanket bellied out.
Shand and Jack were for the moment inextricably entangled in the bottom of the boat. Emotional Joe cursed and stamped and tore at his hair like a lunatic. Loud laughter broke from Sam and Bela as they sailed away.
Joe beside himself, snatched up his gun and opened fire. A bullet went through the blanket. Bela and Sam instinctively ducked. Perhaps they prayed; more likely they did not realize their danger until it was over. Other shots followed, but Joe was shooting wild. He could not aim directly at Sam, because Bela was between. He emptied his magazine without doing any damage.
In the reaction that followed Bela and Sam laughed. In that moment they were one.
"Feels funny to have a fellow slinging lead at you, eh?" said Sam.
"Musq'oosis say after a man hear bullet whistle he is grown," answered Bela.
A few minutes later the river received them. There was a straight reach of a third of a mile, followed by innumerable, bewildering corkscrew bends all the way to the head of the rapids, thirty miles or more. Out in the lake behind them their pursuers were struggling forward, sculling with the remaining oar.
Bela watched anxiously to see what they would do when they got in the river. If they knew enough to go ashore and take to the land trail, it was possible that even on foot they might cut her off at a point below where the trail touched the river.
Apparently, however, they meant to follow by water. At the last sight she had of them before rounding the first bend they were still sculling.
The river pursued its incredibly circuitous course between cut banks fringed with willows. All the country above, invisible to them in the dugout, was a vast meadow. A steady, smooth current carried them on.
On the outside of each bend the bank was steep to the point of overhanging; on the inside there was invariably a mud flat made gay with water flowers. So crooked was the river that Jack-Knife Mountain, the only object they could see above the willows, was now on their right hand, now on their left.
On the turns they sometimes got a current of wind in their faces and came to a dead stop. Now that they no longer required it, the wind was momentarily strengthening.
"Wouldn't it be better to take the sail down?" Sam suggested.
"Can't tak' it down wi'out land on shore," Bela answered sullenly.
Sam comprehending what was the matter, chuckled inwardly. On the next bend, seeing her struggles with the baffling air-currents, he asked teasingly:
"Well, why don't you go ashore and take it down?"
"If I land, you promise not run away?" she said.
Sam laughed from a light heart. "Not on your life!" he said. "I'm my own master now."
Bela had no more to say.
"Where are you bound for?" Sam presently asked.
"Down river," she answered.
"I'll have to be leaving you," said Sam mockingly. "I'm going the other way. To the head of the lake."
"If you go back they catch you."
"I'll lie low till they're thrown off the scent. I'll walk around the north shore."
"If you stay with me little while, pretty soon we meet police comin' up," she suggested. "Then they can't touch you."
"Much obliged," replied Sam. "I've no fancy to be jumped on at night again and tied up like a roasting fowl."
"I promise I not do that again," said Bela.
"Sure!" retorted Sam. "No doubt you've got plenty other tricks just as good."
"If you look at me you see I speak truth," she murmured. "I your friend, Sam."
The threatened break in her voice brought all his old disquiet surging up again. As he put it, he suspected her of "trying to put one over on him again." "I don't want to look at you!" he returned with a harsh laugh.
An adverse puff of wind blew them into an overhanging willow-bush, which became entangled with the sail and the stay-rope. Sam saw his chance. Seizing the branches, he pulled himself to his feet and managedto swing ashore at the cost only of wet ankles.
A sharp cry was wrung from Bela. "Sam, don't go!"