[Contents]CHAPTER XXIXA DISCOVERYRay at once made his older brother comfortable by placing a rolled blanket under his head. “Good gracious, Bruce!” he exclaimed, “you certainly look as if you had been in a fight.” And with these words he began to wash the blood from Bruce’s face, and Bruce came to very soon. But he could not tell how his left hand had become lacerated, nor did he even know that he had several bad scratch-wounds on his legs and body. Ray washed the wounds with warm water, dressed them with softened moose tallow and bandaged them with strips of clean bandanna handkerchiefs, the only thing in camp suitable for this purpose.Ganawa had rushed out with his gun, and in a few minutes Ray heard him shoot. “I killed two,” he reported when he returned.[229]“The others ran away, and I think they will not trouble us again.”The wolf which Bruce had killed was very lean. Bruce estimated that he weighed at least seventy pounds, ten pounds more than a bushel of wheat. In good condition he would have weighed about ninety pounds.Fortunately the wounds which Bruce had received in his fight with the wolf did not fester, and a week later the campers had boiled wild chicken with wild rice and hominy for their Sunday dinner. It was Bruce who had brought a little hominy from the “Soo” to be used on very special occasions. Bruce had not found it very difficult to secure three grouse with blunt arrows, but he had not forgotten to take his gun and knife along, although no wolves had been seen or heard near the camp since he had had his great fight.Ganawa was very proud of the victory of his white son. “If you were a Chippewa,” he told Bruce, “you would be allowed to[230]wear an eagle feather for killing mahungeen. I know of only one Indian who killed mahungeen in a hand-to-hand fight, but he had a knife.”Winter lasts a long time in the North Country, but the campers always found something to do, and as Ganawa could tell stories and Indian legends by the hour, the lads had no time to be unhappy, although they eagerly watched and waited for signs of spring. From time to time they tried fishing through the ice, but by the middle of February the ice was three feet thick and cutting a hole through it meant a great deal of labor.At last, about the middle of April, the margins of the lakes began to thaw, ducks and geese began to come north, and on warm, sunny days the sap of the white birches ran freely. The sap of birch-trees runs as freely in spring as the sap of maples, but it contains so little sugar that it is not suitable for the making of syrup or sugar.It was on a warm afternoon late in April,[231]when Ray came to camp greatly excited by something he had discovered.“Father,” he called out of breath to Ganawa, “I have found a log cabin. It is a very small cabin. Nobody lives in it, but it must have been built by a white man.“Come along, Bruce; let me show it to you. It is in the Wolf Swamp, only about a hundred yards from the spot where you killed the wolf.”This was indeed real news to the camp. Could this be the clue to Jack Dutton’s camp? Why should anybody want to hide himself in the Wolf Swamp, as Ray had called the place, when there was a good camping-place on Lake Anjigami?Ray proudly led the way to his discovery. Sure enough, there was the log cabin, but it was not a cabin any man had lived in.“It was a cache,” Ganawa told the lads. “A place where somebody kept fur. But they must have had a camp close by,” he added. A dim trail led away from the cache to the other side of the narrow swamp,[232]and there was the camp-site plain enough, and several signs indicated that the campers had been white men. The camp showed a larger outside fireplace than Indians would have used, and they had cut much wood.Bruce began at once to examine the cuts on the stumps near the camp-site, and very soon the young man, who was generally very calm, sprang up, swung his arms around and called: “I have found it, Father! I have found it! Look, here is the same ax-mark we found last fall at the camp-site on Lake Anjigami. I noticed the same marks on the logs in the cache cabin.”“No, Bruce, you are mistaken,” Ray argued. “The ax-marks are not the same. The ax at this camp had a much smaller nick.”“It had a smaller nick,” Bruce admitted, “and I can tell you why. The campers, of course, had no grindstone. They may have had a file or a small whetstone, or they may have used an ordinary rock to keep their ax in fair condition. Had they had a grindstone,[233]they would have given their ax a complete keen edge, but as it was they only reduced the nick in size. But you will notice that the nick is in the same place, near the front part of the ax.”Both Ganawa and Ray were convinced that Bruce was right, but the question who these mysterious campers were was not at all solved by what they had found. Were they Jack Dutton and his partner or some unknown strangers? Perhaps two adventurous Frenchmen had penetrated into this region while it still contained an abundance of the most valuable fur-bearers: marten, beaver, and otter. All three of them searched carefully for signs to solve this riddle, but darkness came on before they had discovered any further clues to the solution of their problem.“If this was Jack Dutton’s camp,” Bruce remarked as they walked along the trail, “something must have muddled his head. He does not meet us at Mackinac nor at the Soo, and he leaves no letter or word[234]with anybody. If there were whales in Lake Superior, I should say he suffered the fate of Jonah. A trader at the Soo told us that a man cannot disappear in the Indian country. It seems to me Jack Dutton did the trick to perfection.“If the camp-sites we have found belonged to him, why didn’t he leave some kind of message? I have had a vague hope that we might find him in this region. It is the kind of country he and I used to talk and dream about when we were boys on the farm. But now I begin to fear that Jack is dead. Perhaps the wolves finished him as they came near doing with me. Jack was always a dare-devil and he would not realize that the wolves in this wild country are much bolder than they are in Vermont.”Soon after daylight, the three hunters were again diligently searching for some clue that might point to the identity of the mysterious campers. Ray was the first who pointed out something that aroused some discussion. Who tore off half of the birch-bark[235]roof of the log cabin cache? A bear might have done it, but no claw-marks were visible. If it had been done by a storm, why were there no indications of a violent wind on the trees close by?“Somebody tore off the roof,” Ganawa gave as his opinion, “but I cannot tell why he did not open the cache by pulling out the logs that were put in loose to serve as a door.”Bruce followed a plan of his own in the search for a clue. He slowly walked around the old tepee poles of the camp-site in a gradually enlarging spiral. “If there is anything,” he thought, “I am bound to find it in this way.” And he did find a broad blaze on a rough old birch-tree and on the blaze was some lettering, but it was hard to read. The letters seemed to have been scratched in with the point of a knife and then blackened, or rather made dull gray, with a piece of pointed lead. Bruce’s heart beat fast and he forgot to call his friends as he tried to decipher the scrawls, and no[236]discoverer of long buried records has ever been more absorbed in deciphering their meaning than Bruce was in reading the words on the blaze:GONEAWEATHIEFSTOLE MARTENFYRROTTENLVCK LOOKYOVNGBIRCHTREEBruce could make nothing out of the lettering until he discovered that the writer had run two or three words together and had misspelled “week”; after that the message suddenly flashed out plainly enough.“Gone a week. Thief stole marten fur. Rotten luck. Look young birch-tree.”It took Bruce but a moment to find the young birch-tree with smooth white bark, on which a longer message was written a little more plainly.[237]“We go back to lake,” read the message. “Bad luck here. Intend to go to Michipicoten Island, and to Island of Yellow Sands. Rotten luck here. Maybe the yellow sand is gold. If we catch the thief, he will never steal again.J. D.”And then Bruce gave a yell. “Come here, friends!” he called. “I have found a message from Jack Dutton.”[238]
[Contents]CHAPTER XXIXA DISCOVERYRay at once made his older brother comfortable by placing a rolled blanket under his head. “Good gracious, Bruce!” he exclaimed, “you certainly look as if you had been in a fight.” And with these words he began to wash the blood from Bruce’s face, and Bruce came to very soon. But he could not tell how his left hand had become lacerated, nor did he even know that he had several bad scratch-wounds on his legs and body. Ray washed the wounds with warm water, dressed them with softened moose tallow and bandaged them with strips of clean bandanna handkerchiefs, the only thing in camp suitable for this purpose.Ganawa had rushed out with his gun, and in a few minutes Ray heard him shoot. “I killed two,” he reported when he returned.[229]“The others ran away, and I think they will not trouble us again.”The wolf which Bruce had killed was very lean. Bruce estimated that he weighed at least seventy pounds, ten pounds more than a bushel of wheat. In good condition he would have weighed about ninety pounds.Fortunately the wounds which Bruce had received in his fight with the wolf did not fester, and a week later the campers had boiled wild chicken with wild rice and hominy for their Sunday dinner. It was Bruce who had brought a little hominy from the “Soo” to be used on very special occasions. Bruce had not found it very difficult to secure three grouse with blunt arrows, but he had not forgotten to take his gun and knife along, although no wolves had been seen or heard near the camp since he had had his great fight.Ganawa was very proud of the victory of his white son. “If you were a Chippewa,” he told Bruce, “you would be allowed to[230]wear an eagle feather for killing mahungeen. I know of only one Indian who killed mahungeen in a hand-to-hand fight, but he had a knife.”Winter lasts a long time in the North Country, but the campers always found something to do, and as Ganawa could tell stories and Indian legends by the hour, the lads had no time to be unhappy, although they eagerly watched and waited for signs of spring. From time to time they tried fishing through the ice, but by the middle of February the ice was three feet thick and cutting a hole through it meant a great deal of labor.At last, about the middle of April, the margins of the lakes began to thaw, ducks and geese began to come north, and on warm, sunny days the sap of the white birches ran freely. The sap of birch-trees runs as freely in spring as the sap of maples, but it contains so little sugar that it is not suitable for the making of syrup or sugar.It was on a warm afternoon late in April,[231]when Ray came to camp greatly excited by something he had discovered.“Father,” he called out of breath to Ganawa, “I have found a log cabin. It is a very small cabin. Nobody lives in it, but it must have been built by a white man.“Come along, Bruce; let me show it to you. It is in the Wolf Swamp, only about a hundred yards from the spot where you killed the wolf.”This was indeed real news to the camp. Could this be the clue to Jack Dutton’s camp? Why should anybody want to hide himself in the Wolf Swamp, as Ray had called the place, when there was a good camping-place on Lake Anjigami?Ray proudly led the way to his discovery. Sure enough, there was the log cabin, but it was not a cabin any man had lived in.“It was a cache,” Ganawa told the lads. “A place where somebody kept fur. But they must have had a camp close by,” he added. A dim trail led away from the cache to the other side of the narrow swamp,[232]and there was the camp-site plain enough, and several signs indicated that the campers had been white men. The camp showed a larger outside fireplace than Indians would have used, and they had cut much wood.Bruce began at once to examine the cuts on the stumps near the camp-site, and very soon the young man, who was generally very calm, sprang up, swung his arms around and called: “I have found it, Father! I have found it! Look, here is the same ax-mark we found last fall at the camp-site on Lake Anjigami. I noticed the same marks on the logs in the cache cabin.”“No, Bruce, you are mistaken,” Ray argued. “The ax-marks are not the same. The ax at this camp had a much smaller nick.”“It had a smaller nick,” Bruce admitted, “and I can tell you why. The campers, of course, had no grindstone. They may have had a file or a small whetstone, or they may have used an ordinary rock to keep their ax in fair condition. Had they had a grindstone,[233]they would have given their ax a complete keen edge, but as it was they only reduced the nick in size. But you will notice that the nick is in the same place, near the front part of the ax.”Both Ganawa and Ray were convinced that Bruce was right, but the question who these mysterious campers were was not at all solved by what they had found. Were they Jack Dutton and his partner or some unknown strangers? Perhaps two adventurous Frenchmen had penetrated into this region while it still contained an abundance of the most valuable fur-bearers: marten, beaver, and otter. All three of them searched carefully for signs to solve this riddle, but darkness came on before they had discovered any further clues to the solution of their problem.“If this was Jack Dutton’s camp,” Bruce remarked as they walked along the trail, “something must have muddled his head. He does not meet us at Mackinac nor at the Soo, and he leaves no letter or word[234]with anybody. If there were whales in Lake Superior, I should say he suffered the fate of Jonah. A trader at the Soo told us that a man cannot disappear in the Indian country. It seems to me Jack Dutton did the trick to perfection.“If the camp-sites we have found belonged to him, why didn’t he leave some kind of message? I have had a vague hope that we might find him in this region. It is the kind of country he and I used to talk and dream about when we were boys on the farm. But now I begin to fear that Jack is dead. Perhaps the wolves finished him as they came near doing with me. Jack was always a dare-devil and he would not realize that the wolves in this wild country are much bolder than they are in Vermont.”Soon after daylight, the three hunters were again diligently searching for some clue that might point to the identity of the mysterious campers. Ray was the first who pointed out something that aroused some discussion. Who tore off half of the birch-bark[235]roof of the log cabin cache? A bear might have done it, but no claw-marks were visible. If it had been done by a storm, why were there no indications of a violent wind on the trees close by?“Somebody tore off the roof,” Ganawa gave as his opinion, “but I cannot tell why he did not open the cache by pulling out the logs that were put in loose to serve as a door.”Bruce followed a plan of his own in the search for a clue. He slowly walked around the old tepee poles of the camp-site in a gradually enlarging spiral. “If there is anything,” he thought, “I am bound to find it in this way.” And he did find a broad blaze on a rough old birch-tree and on the blaze was some lettering, but it was hard to read. The letters seemed to have been scratched in with the point of a knife and then blackened, or rather made dull gray, with a piece of pointed lead. Bruce’s heart beat fast and he forgot to call his friends as he tried to decipher the scrawls, and no[236]discoverer of long buried records has ever been more absorbed in deciphering their meaning than Bruce was in reading the words on the blaze:GONEAWEATHIEFSTOLE MARTENFYRROTTENLVCK LOOKYOVNGBIRCHTREEBruce could make nothing out of the lettering until he discovered that the writer had run two or three words together and had misspelled “week”; after that the message suddenly flashed out plainly enough.“Gone a week. Thief stole marten fur. Rotten luck. Look young birch-tree.”It took Bruce but a moment to find the young birch-tree with smooth white bark, on which a longer message was written a little more plainly.[237]“We go back to lake,” read the message. “Bad luck here. Intend to go to Michipicoten Island, and to Island of Yellow Sands. Rotten luck here. Maybe the yellow sand is gold. If we catch the thief, he will never steal again.J. D.”And then Bruce gave a yell. “Come here, friends!” he called. “I have found a message from Jack Dutton.”[238]
CHAPTER XXIXA DISCOVERY
Ray at once made his older brother comfortable by placing a rolled blanket under his head. “Good gracious, Bruce!” he exclaimed, “you certainly look as if you had been in a fight.” And with these words he began to wash the blood from Bruce’s face, and Bruce came to very soon. But he could not tell how his left hand had become lacerated, nor did he even know that he had several bad scratch-wounds on his legs and body. Ray washed the wounds with warm water, dressed them with softened moose tallow and bandaged them with strips of clean bandanna handkerchiefs, the only thing in camp suitable for this purpose.Ganawa had rushed out with his gun, and in a few minutes Ray heard him shoot. “I killed two,” he reported when he returned.[229]“The others ran away, and I think they will not trouble us again.”The wolf which Bruce had killed was very lean. Bruce estimated that he weighed at least seventy pounds, ten pounds more than a bushel of wheat. In good condition he would have weighed about ninety pounds.Fortunately the wounds which Bruce had received in his fight with the wolf did not fester, and a week later the campers had boiled wild chicken with wild rice and hominy for their Sunday dinner. It was Bruce who had brought a little hominy from the “Soo” to be used on very special occasions. Bruce had not found it very difficult to secure three grouse with blunt arrows, but he had not forgotten to take his gun and knife along, although no wolves had been seen or heard near the camp since he had had his great fight.Ganawa was very proud of the victory of his white son. “If you were a Chippewa,” he told Bruce, “you would be allowed to[230]wear an eagle feather for killing mahungeen. I know of only one Indian who killed mahungeen in a hand-to-hand fight, but he had a knife.”Winter lasts a long time in the North Country, but the campers always found something to do, and as Ganawa could tell stories and Indian legends by the hour, the lads had no time to be unhappy, although they eagerly watched and waited for signs of spring. From time to time they tried fishing through the ice, but by the middle of February the ice was three feet thick and cutting a hole through it meant a great deal of labor.At last, about the middle of April, the margins of the lakes began to thaw, ducks and geese began to come north, and on warm, sunny days the sap of the white birches ran freely. The sap of birch-trees runs as freely in spring as the sap of maples, but it contains so little sugar that it is not suitable for the making of syrup or sugar.It was on a warm afternoon late in April,[231]when Ray came to camp greatly excited by something he had discovered.“Father,” he called out of breath to Ganawa, “I have found a log cabin. It is a very small cabin. Nobody lives in it, but it must have been built by a white man.“Come along, Bruce; let me show it to you. It is in the Wolf Swamp, only about a hundred yards from the spot where you killed the wolf.”This was indeed real news to the camp. Could this be the clue to Jack Dutton’s camp? Why should anybody want to hide himself in the Wolf Swamp, as Ray had called the place, when there was a good camping-place on Lake Anjigami?Ray proudly led the way to his discovery. Sure enough, there was the log cabin, but it was not a cabin any man had lived in.“It was a cache,” Ganawa told the lads. “A place where somebody kept fur. But they must have had a camp close by,” he added. A dim trail led away from the cache to the other side of the narrow swamp,[232]and there was the camp-site plain enough, and several signs indicated that the campers had been white men. The camp showed a larger outside fireplace than Indians would have used, and they had cut much wood.Bruce began at once to examine the cuts on the stumps near the camp-site, and very soon the young man, who was generally very calm, sprang up, swung his arms around and called: “I have found it, Father! I have found it! Look, here is the same ax-mark we found last fall at the camp-site on Lake Anjigami. I noticed the same marks on the logs in the cache cabin.”“No, Bruce, you are mistaken,” Ray argued. “The ax-marks are not the same. The ax at this camp had a much smaller nick.”“It had a smaller nick,” Bruce admitted, “and I can tell you why. The campers, of course, had no grindstone. They may have had a file or a small whetstone, or they may have used an ordinary rock to keep their ax in fair condition. Had they had a grindstone,[233]they would have given their ax a complete keen edge, but as it was they only reduced the nick in size. But you will notice that the nick is in the same place, near the front part of the ax.”Both Ganawa and Ray were convinced that Bruce was right, but the question who these mysterious campers were was not at all solved by what they had found. Were they Jack Dutton and his partner or some unknown strangers? Perhaps two adventurous Frenchmen had penetrated into this region while it still contained an abundance of the most valuable fur-bearers: marten, beaver, and otter. All three of them searched carefully for signs to solve this riddle, but darkness came on before they had discovered any further clues to the solution of their problem.“If this was Jack Dutton’s camp,” Bruce remarked as they walked along the trail, “something must have muddled his head. He does not meet us at Mackinac nor at the Soo, and he leaves no letter or word[234]with anybody. If there were whales in Lake Superior, I should say he suffered the fate of Jonah. A trader at the Soo told us that a man cannot disappear in the Indian country. It seems to me Jack Dutton did the trick to perfection.“If the camp-sites we have found belonged to him, why didn’t he leave some kind of message? I have had a vague hope that we might find him in this region. It is the kind of country he and I used to talk and dream about when we were boys on the farm. But now I begin to fear that Jack is dead. Perhaps the wolves finished him as they came near doing with me. Jack was always a dare-devil and he would not realize that the wolves in this wild country are much bolder than they are in Vermont.”Soon after daylight, the three hunters were again diligently searching for some clue that might point to the identity of the mysterious campers. Ray was the first who pointed out something that aroused some discussion. Who tore off half of the birch-bark[235]roof of the log cabin cache? A bear might have done it, but no claw-marks were visible. If it had been done by a storm, why were there no indications of a violent wind on the trees close by?“Somebody tore off the roof,” Ganawa gave as his opinion, “but I cannot tell why he did not open the cache by pulling out the logs that were put in loose to serve as a door.”Bruce followed a plan of his own in the search for a clue. He slowly walked around the old tepee poles of the camp-site in a gradually enlarging spiral. “If there is anything,” he thought, “I am bound to find it in this way.” And he did find a broad blaze on a rough old birch-tree and on the blaze was some lettering, but it was hard to read. The letters seemed to have been scratched in with the point of a knife and then blackened, or rather made dull gray, with a piece of pointed lead. Bruce’s heart beat fast and he forgot to call his friends as he tried to decipher the scrawls, and no[236]discoverer of long buried records has ever been more absorbed in deciphering their meaning than Bruce was in reading the words on the blaze:GONEAWEATHIEFSTOLE MARTENFYRROTTENLVCK LOOKYOVNGBIRCHTREEBruce could make nothing out of the lettering until he discovered that the writer had run two or three words together and had misspelled “week”; after that the message suddenly flashed out plainly enough.“Gone a week. Thief stole marten fur. Rotten luck. Look young birch-tree.”It took Bruce but a moment to find the young birch-tree with smooth white bark, on which a longer message was written a little more plainly.[237]“We go back to lake,” read the message. “Bad luck here. Intend to go to Michipicoten Island, and to Island of Yellow Sands. Rotten luck here. Maybe the yellow sand is gold. If we catch the thief, he will never steal again.J. D.”And then Bruce gave a yell. “Come here, friends!” he called. “I have found a message from Jack Dutton.”[238]
Ray at once made his older brother comfortable by placing a rolled blanket under his head. “Good gracious, Bruce!” he exclaimed, “you certainly look as if you had been in a fight.” And with these words he began to wash the blood from Bruce’s face, and Bruce came to very soon. But he could not tell how his left hand had become lacerated, nor did he even know that he had several bad scratch-wounds on his legs and body. Ray washed the wounds with warm water, dressed them with softened moose tallow and bandaged them with strips of clean bandanna handkerchiefs, the only thing in camp suitable for this purpose.
Ganawa had rushed out with his gun, and in a few minutes Ray heard him shoot. “I killed two,” he reported when he returned.[229]“The others ran away, and I think they will not trouble us again.”
The wolf which Bruce had killed was very lean. Bruce estimated that he weighed at least seventy pounds, ten pounds more than a bushel of wheat. In good condition he would have weighed about ninety pounds.
Fortunately the wounds which Bruce had received in his fight with the wolf did not fester, and a week later the campers had boiled wild chicken with wild rice and hominy for their Sunday dinner. It was Bruce who had brought a little hominy from the “Soo” to be used on very special occasions. Bruce had not found it very difficult to secure three grouse with blunt arrows, but he had not forgotten to take his gun and knife along, although no wolves had been seen or heard near the camp since he had had his great fight.
Ganawa was very proud of the victory of his white son. “If you were a Chippewa,” he told Bruce, “you would be allowed to[230]wear an eagle feather for killing mahungeen. I know of only one Indian who killed mahungeen in a hand-to-hand fight, but he had a knife.”
Winter lasts a long time in the North Country, but the campers always found something to do, and as Ganawa could tell stories and Indian legends by the hour, the lads had no time to be unhappy, although they eagerly watched and waited for signs of spring. From time to time they tried fishing through the ice, but by the middle of February the ice was three feet thick and cutting a hole through it meant a great deal of labor.
At last, about the middle of April, the margins of the lakes began to thaw, ducks and geese began to come north, and on warm, sunny days the sap of the white birches ran freely. The sap of birch-trees runs as freely in spring as the sap of maples, but it contains so little sugar that it is not suitable for the making of syrup or sugar.
It was on a warm afternoon late in April,[231]when Ray came to camp greatly excited by something he had discovered.
“Father,” he called out of breath to Ganawa, “I have found a log cabin. It is a very small cabin. Nobody lives in it, but it must have been built by a white man.
“Come along, Bruce; let me show it to you. It is in the Wolf Swamp, only about a hundred yards from the spot where you killed the wolf.”
This was indeed real news to the camp. Could this be the clue to Jack Dutton’s camp? Why should anybody want to hide himself in the Wolf Swamp, as Ray had called the place, when there was a good camping-place on Lake Anjigami?
Ray proudly led the way to his discovery. Sure enough, there was the log cabin, but it was not a cabin any man had lived in.
“It was a cache,” Ganawa told the lads. “A place where somebody kept fur. But they must have had a camp close by,” he added. A dim trail led away from the cache to the other side of the narrow swamp,[232]and there was the camp-site plain enough, and several signs indicated that the campers had been white men. The camp showed a larger outside fireplace than Indians would have used, and they had cut much wood.
Bruce began at once to examine the cuts on the stumps near the camp-site, and very soon the young man, who was generally very calm, sprang up, swung his arms around and called: “I have found it, Father! I have found it! Look, here is the same ax-mark we found last fall at the camp-site on Lake Anjigami. I noticed the same marks on the logs in the cache cabin.”
“No, Bruce, you are mistaken,” Ray argued. “The ax-marks are not the same. The ax at this camp had a much smaller nick.”
“It had a smaller nick,” Bruce admitted, “and I can tell you why. The campers, of course, had no grindstone. They may have had a file or a small whetstone, or they may have used an ordinary rock to keep their ax in fair condition. Had they had a grindstone,[233]they would have given their ax a complete keen edge, but as it was they only reduced the nick in size. But you will notice that the nick is in the same place, near the front part of the ax.”
Both Ganawa and Ray were convinced that Bruce was right, but the question who these mysterious campers were was not at all solved by what they had found. Were they Jack Dutton and his partner or some unknown strangers? Perhaps two adventurous Frenchmen had penetrated into this region while it still contained an abundance of the most valuable fur-bearers: marten, beaver, and otter. All three of them searched carefully for signs to solve this riddle, but darkness came on before they had discovered any further clues to the solution of their problem.
“If this was Jack Dutton’s camp,” Bruce remarked as they walked along the trail, “something must have muddled his head. He does not meet us at Mackinac nor at the Soo, and he leaves no letter or word[234]with anybody. If there were whales in Lake Superior, I should say he suffered the fate of Jonah. A trader at the Soo told us that a man cannot disappear in the Indian country. It seems to me Jack Dutton did the trick to perfection.
“If the camp-sites we have found belonged to him, why didn’t he leave some kind of message? I have had a vague hope that we might find him in this region. It is the kind of country he and I used to talk and dream about when we were boys on the farm. But now I begin to fear that Jack is dead. Perhaps the wolves finished him as they came near doing with me. Jack was always a dare-devil and he would not realize that the wolves in this wild country are much bolder than they are in Vermont.”
Soon after daylight, the three hunters were again diligently searching for some clue that might point to the identity of the mysterious campers. Ray was the first who pointed out something that aroused some discussion. Who tore off half of the birch-bark[235]roof of the log cabin cache? A bear might have done it, but no claw-marks were visible. If it had been done by a storm, why were there no indications of a violent wind on the trees close by?
“Somebody tore off the roof,” Ganawa gave as his opinion, “but I cannot tell why he did not open the cache by pulling out the logs that were put in loose to serve as a door.”
Bruce followed a plan of his own in the search for a clue. He slowly walked around the old tepee poles of the camp-site in a gradually enlarging spiral. “If there is anything,” he thought, “I am bound to find it in this way.” And he did find a broad blaze on a rough old birch-tree and on the blaze was some lettering, but it was hard to read. The letters seemed to have been scratched in with the point of a knife and then blackened, or rather made dull gray, with a piece of pointed lead. Bruce’s heart beat fast and he forgot to call his friends as he tried to decipher the scrawls, and no[236]discoverer of long buried records has ever been more absorbed in deciphering their meaning than Bruce was in reading the words on the blaze:
GONEAWEATHIEFSTOLE MARTENFYRROTTENLVCK LOOKYOVNGBIRCHTREE
Bruce could make nothing out of the lettering until he discovered that the writer had run two or three words together and had misspelled “week”; after that the message suddenly flashed out plainly enough.
“Gone a week. Thief stole marten fur. Rotten luck. Look young birch-tree.”
“Gone a week. Thief stole marten fur. Rotten luck. Look young birch-tree.”
It took Bruce but a moment to find the young birch-tree with smooth white bark, on which a longer message was written a little more plainly.[237]
“We go back to lake,” read the message. “Bad luck here. Intend to go to Michipicoten Island, and to Island of Yellow Sands. Rotten luck here. Maybe the yellow sand is gold. If we catch the thief, he will never steal again.J. D.”
“We go back to lake,” read the message. “Bad luck here. Intend to go to Michipicoten Island, and to Island of Yellow Sands. Rotten luck here. Maybe the yellow sand is gold. If we catch the thief, he will never steal again.
J. D.”
And then Bruce gave a yell. “Come here, friends!” he called. “I have found a message from Jack Dutton.”[238]