Kitabı oku: «The Bungalow Boys North of Fifty-Three», sayfa 9

CHAPTER XXIX – SANDY HAS A NIGHTMARE

As the ruddy glow of the flames lighted up the rift in Sandy’s rock castle, the boy looked about him curiously before he began work on his scant stock of food. The place was about forty feet in length and not more than five in height, sloping down at each end like the roof in an old-fashioned farm bedroom.

He noted with some satisfaction that near the entrance there were masses of dead and dried up bushes, from which he thought he could contrive a mattress later on. But for the present he devoted himself to his meal.

Luckily, he had brought along a pannikin, and in this, when he had melted some snow for water, he made tea, without a small package of which the true adventurer of the northern wilds never travels. The hot liquid did him almost as much good as the food, and, as Sandy remarked as he gulped it down, it was “main filling.”

His supper disposed of, Sandy sat for some little time in front of the fire.

“Heaven be praised, there are no dishes to wash,” he said to himself in his whimsical way.

The time was a favorable one for thinking, and many thoughts ran through Sandy’s mind as he sat watching the flames. His chums, what were they doing? How little they imagined his predicament at that particular moment. Sandy found himself wondering whether he would ever see them again. The warmth of the fire circulated pleasantly through his veins. A delightful glow crept over him.

He was just about dozing off when a noise near the cave mouth startled him.

He looked up, but could see nothing. He thought, however, that in the darkness he could detect the sound of a furtive footfall.

It was creeping away as if in fear of him.

Sandy came back into the warmth and fire-glow of the rift and lay down at full length in front of the blaze. How long he lay there before he was again disturbed he had no means of knowing.

But suddenly he was attracted to the mouth of the rift once more by a recurrence of the noise. Once more he hastened to investigate, but with the same results as before.

He began to grow nervous. Although he could see nothing, he was sure that he had heard some mysterious sounds out there in the darkness. But when he got up to look nothing was to be seen. It was very perplexing and, considering his situation, not a little alarming. Lying down again by his fire, the boy made a determined effort to compose his nerves. But try as he would, he found his mind focused upon one subject, and one only: the wolves.

From time to time the night was tortured by their howls. It was as if they were trying to show the boy that although he was in hiding they had not forgotten him; that they would wait until he was forced to come off the rocks and make a final dash for freedom before they devoured him.

The soft footfalls that he was sure he had heard outside the rift, he was now almost certain had been made by the wolves. Some of the stronger of the pack had scrambled up on the rocks and were waiting outside his place of refuge till a favorable moment presented itself for an attack.

Sandy clutched his rifle nervously. He was determined when the moment came to sell his life as dearly as possible. How many in number his foes would be he had no means of telling. But he knew full well that his cartridges were all too few.

With his weapon gripped ready for instant action, Sandy waited the next move on the part of his implacable foes. But minute succeeded minute and the sounds from without the rift were not repeated.

The boy began to think that he might have been mistaken. Perhaps, after all, it was his excited imagination that had conjured up the sounds.

He rose and looked outside once more. It was a clear, starlit night. The rocks towered up blackly like some giant’s castle amidst the bluish-whiteness of surrounding snow wastes. A sensation of terrible loneliness ran through Sandy as he reflected that he was the only human being for miles and miles in that immense solitude. Probably the party in search of the thief were the nearest of his own kind within a great distance.

It was small wonder that the boy trembled a little as out there under the stars he revolved the situation. There was no use evading it, if help did not arrive, or the wolves retreat, he was doomed either to die by starvation on the rocks, or be rent by the teeth of the pack in the event of his attempting to escape.

Seasoned men of the northland might well have been dazed by such a prospect. There did not appear to be one chance in a hundred for the boy. Sandy looked the question fairly and squarely in the face. It is to his credit that by a supreme effort of pluck and grit he averted a second breakdown and retained a grip upon his nerves and courage.

As he stood there, the pack below him rent the air with their wild hunting cry. The sound chilled him to the marrow, and trembling despite himself, he crept back into the rift and sought the companionship of the fire.

About five minutes later there came a sort of scraping noise from the mouth of the rift. Sandy gazed up, and there, confronting him, with hungrily gaping jaws, and great, yellow, signal-lamps of eyes that flashed evilly in the firelight, were three huge wolves – the leaders of the pack. With a wild cry, Sandy sprang up with his rifle in his hand. He was ready for the fight.

The wolves dashed forward, and as he aimed and fired – !

The rifle turned into a stick of firewood. The wolves into three black rocks piled at the mouth of the rift.

Sandy had been dreaming. But it was a dream that might come true, as he realized with a sensation of helplessness.

CHAPTER XXX – THE LAW OF THE NORTH

Jack lay upon the snow with the ground about him dyed red from a badly crushed ankle. Tom and old Joe Picquet bent over him doing what they could to ease his pain, for he had now regained consciousness.

It was a wolf trap that the boy had blundered into; a cruel, ponderous affair with massive steel jaws, from whose grip it had been hard to release him.

“Is the ankle broken, do you think?” asked Tom of old Joe.

“Tiens! I can no say now. But I teenk not. Zee trap was old, zee spring was weak. Dat is good. Eef eet had been new, eet would have broken zee bone lak you break zee pipe stem. Voila!”

“How do you feel now, Jack?” asked Tom.

Jack made a brave effort to disguise his pain.

“I’ll soon be all right, I guess,” he said, “but, Tom, I’ll tell you one thing.”

“What is that?”

“I’ll never set another trap for a wild animal as long as I live. I know now how they must suffer.”

After a brief consultation, Tom and old Joe lifted the suffering boy and carried him back to the sled. A “snow-camp” had already been devised and Jack was made as comfortable as possible in this.

By the firelight old Joe examined his injury. The flesh was badly crushed and bruised, but so far as the old trapper could see there were no bones broken.

“Sacre! I weesh dat eet was summer!” breathed the old man. “In summer grow many herbs are good for heal. Zee Indians teach me many. But in winter dere ees notheeng lak dat. Moost use what we can.”

With bandages made out of a flour sack, which, luckily, was almost empty, old Joe dressed Jack’s injury after carefully bathing it. The boy declared that he felt better almost at once after Joe had completed his woodland surgery.

“It’s too bad that I should be giving all this trouble, especially right now,” muttered Jack as he lay back.

“Say, if you say anything like that again, I’ll forget you are sick and punch your head,” said Tom, with a look of affection, however, that belied his words.

After supper old Joe announced that he had decided on a plan that he thought would fit the exigencies of the situation. About ten miles from where they then were a friend of his, Pierre La Roche, like himself a trapper, had a hut. They must make their way there as quickly as possible and leave Jack in La Roche’s care till he was fit to travel, which might not be for some time. This done, they would go back to the camp of the Yukon Rover, tell what had happened, and seek the advice of Mr. Dacre and Mr. Chillingworth.

Tom felt that this was the best plan that could be evolved. After all, they had done all they could to recover the skins, and if he was blamed for not maintaining a better watch on the fox kennels, why he must face the music. Jack, too, thought the plan a good one, so that they were all satisfied, and, despite Jack’s injury, he slept as well that night as his two companions.

The next morning dawned bright and clear. They were up and about early, and Tom caught a good meal of fish for the dogs through the hole in the ice. When he returned to the camp he carried with him the old rusty trap that had caused Jack’s injury.

“Thought you might like this bit of jewelry for a souvenir,” he said dryly.

“So far as I am concerned you can throw it into the next county,” was the rejoinder.

No time was lost in despatching breakfast and getting an early start. The way to La Roche’s cabin was what is known as a “bad trail.” In fact, it would be necessary to break a path for a great part of the way. Jack was made as snug as possible on the top of the sled, and when old Joe’s whip cracked, he declared that he felt as luxurious as if he were riding in his own automobile.

Not long after leaving the night camp the party found themselves beginning to climb a steep and stony trail. It lay on the weather side of a small range of hills remarkable for their ruggedness, and in places where the wind had swept the snow clear, jagged masses of rock peeped blackly out of the prevailing whiteness.

It was rough traveling, with a vengeance. From time to time they had to stop and rest the dogs. By noon they had hardly made five miles and, according to old Joe, the worst still lay before them. However, bad as the trail was, it was preferable to taking Jack all the way back to Yukon Rover camp. That, in fact, would have been impossible, for the extra weight on the sled was already telling on the mamelukes. They went forward with drooping tails and sagging flanks.

But over that cruel road they showed how well old Joe’s faith in them was justified. Fagged as they were, they did not falter, and when they slacked pace a little the crack of old Joe’s whip in the frosty air never failed to send them forward once more at their ordinary pace.

Tom began to have an immense respect for the mameluke. He understood how it was that men paid large sums for such capable beasts. Savage, intractable, and, as a rule, responding to none but the harshest treatment, the mameluke dog is faithful unto death in only too many instances. A halt was made at midday to eat a hasty snack and to feed and rest the dogs. Then the journey was resumed once more.

It was not so cold as it had been, and in places the snow had softened, affording only a treacherous foothold for the animals. Now and then, too, the boys observed old Joe glancing upward at the precipitous walls that began to tower above the trail.

At length his observations grew so frequent that Tom had to ask him what it was that interested him so on the precipitous heights that overhung their path.

Old Joe shook his head.

“Zee snow, he soft. Dat plenty bad. Snow soften, rocks loosen. Bimeby maybe, one beeg rock come toomble down.”

“Gracious, one of those big fellows up there?” And Tom’s eyes roved upward to where huge black rocks, shaped in some instances like monstrous animals, could be seen sticking out of the snow field.

“Yes; eef no watch, one of dem might heet us when zee soft snow loosens zee earth,” declared Joe, without any more concern in his voice than if he were speaking of what they would have for supper.

“Well, if one of those ever struck this outfit, it would be the last of it,” declared Tom, alarmed at the prospect.

“Weezout doubt,” rejoined old Joe, with a shrug of his shoulders, “but for dat we moost watch all zee time. Dat ees zee law of zee north, to watch always.”

CHAPTER XXXI – A BOLT FROM THE BLUE

“To watch always!”

Old Joe’s words echoed in Tom’s mind. Yes, that was the law of the northland, and in some parts of it all the law that there was. Constant watchfulness was necessary to life itself in the frozen regions.

Tom’s cheeks flushed as he thought that if constant watchfulness had been observed at Camp Yukon Rover there would have been no necessity for their journey and all that it had led to.

The trail wound upward into country that grew more and more gloomy and dispiriting. There was something about the great rock masses poised above the trail, the slaty, leaden sky and the occasional gusts of wind-blown snow that struck a chill to Tom’s heart.

There was little to break the monotony of precipice and sky on the one side, while beside the trail on the other was a deep crevasse, and beyond another wall of rock. Tom peered over into the depths from time to time and thought, with a shudder, of the consequences of a fall. And that possibility was by no means remote. One slip on the treacherous foothold of the path that hung on the mountainside like an eyebrow on a face, and the victim of the accident would go sliding and plunging down the slippery slopes into that forbidding pit.

It was not a thought to inspire cheerfulness, and Tom refrained from speaking of it to his companions. But it might have been noticed that he kept to the inside of the trail. The mameluke dogs, too, by instinct avoided the outer edge and kept hugging the inside wall of the trail as far as possible from the gaping chasm.

It must have been toward mid-afternoon, as time is reckoned in those latitudes, that old Joe paused with a worried look on his face.

“Attendez!” he cried, holding up one finger.

The mamelukes stopped, their red tongues lolling out and their breath coming in long heaves. They were glad of the respite, whatever had caused it.

Tom halted behind the sled, and Jack turned his eyes on old Joe, whose face betokened the most eager attention. His body was tense with concentrated energy, as if he were putting every fiber of his being into what he was doing, which was listening.

Tom thought of the old man’s watchword, “To watch always.”

For some minutes they stood like this, and then old Joe signified that all was well and they went forward again. But ever and anon the old man cast an uneasy eye about him. It was plain that he was worried and wished the long trail were at an end.

In that gloomy canyon between the beetling walls that rose on either side seemingly straight up to the gray sky, the old trapper’s voice rang stridently as he called to his dogs or cracked his whip with loud words of encouragement.

“Courage, mes enfants!” he would cry to his struggling team. “Soon we be at Pierre La Roche’s; den plentee feesh for you – bien – Boosh! En avant!”

His words always had a magical effect on the drooping mamelukes. With stubborn determination they bent again to their task, their flagging spirits revivified by the cries of their owner.

Jack turned to Tom after one of these intervals.

“Gee whiz! but I feel like a useless log,” he exclaimed, “lolling here on a pile of soft blankets while those poor beasts are pulling me along at the expense of almost all their strength.”

“It can’t be helped,” rejoined Tom briefly. “No one supposes that you walked into that trap deliberately.”

“It’s just one of those accidents that have been happening to us right along,” rejoined Jack irritably. “We have had nothing but bad luck so far on this trip. It is too bad.”

“I agree with you,” rejoined Tom, “but, after all, whose fault is it?”

“Nobody’s, that I can see.”

“Think again.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“Just this, that it all comes from our not having forced ourselves, to use Joe’s words, ‘to watch always.’”

“Great Scott! we couldn’t have sat up all night to watch those foxes!”

“One of us could. We might have taken it in turns. However, it is too late to worry about that now. But we will have to face the music when we meet Uncle Chisholm and Mr. Chillingworth. I fancy they will have something to say on the subject.”

“Ouch! The thought of that hurts me worse than my foot,” exclaimed Jack. “I don’t much care about the idea of the explanations that will be up to us to make.”

“Yet they have to be made.”

“Er-huh,” gloomily.

“I fancy that is just the usual result of neglected duty,” responded Tom. “It is part of the price you have to pay for not being on the job.”

“Goodness, are you turning into a moralizer?”

“No. I’ve just been thinking things over. Somehow this canyon – ”

Above them there was a sudden sharp crackling sound, like the trampling of a thicket full of twigs. It was followed, or rather accompanied, by a yell from old Joe.

“Back! Get back!”

The next instant Tom echoed his cry.

Simultaneously old Joe sprang forward and tried to turn the mamelukes, but they, maddened by fright, plunged forward.

From above, loosened from its foundation by the softened snow, a huge rock was bounding down upon them. Had the mamelukes stopped where they were they might have been saved. As it was, their plunge forward had brought them directly in the path of the great boulder. The destruction of the sled appeared certain.

And on the sled was Jack, crippled and unable to make a move to save himself from the impending doom.

CHAPTER XXXII – A PROVIDENTIAL MEAL

Sandy’s nightmare had the effect of keeping him awake, save for spells of uneasy dozing, for the remainder of the night. It was one that he never forgot. There were times when he sank into a half waking stupor and allowed the fire to die low. Then, waking up, he would see crouching in the dark corners of the rift all sorts of fantastic shapes. At such times he hastened to hurl on more wood, and then, as the bright flames crackled up, the shadows fled away and he breathed more freely again.

Sometimes he would creep to the mouth of the rift and gaze down upon the snowy flat beneath. Each time he had a faint hope in his heart that the dark shapes that he knew were the watching wolves might have abandoned the siege and gone away.

But every time he was disappointed. Every fresh inspection showed him the dark forms massed beneath him. They were gazing upward at the glow of fire proceeding from the rift. Once Sandy hurled down a red-hot brand among them. With yelps and cries those whom it touched loped away from the main body, but they soon joined them again. As for the others, they never moved. There was something uncanny in this immobility. It expressed a calm determination to see the matter through to the bitter end, be that what it might, which was far from comforting to one in Sandy’s predicament.

At last, somehow, the night wore itself out. In the east, on one of his visits to the entrance of his hiding place, Sandy descried a faint gray light.

The coming of the day inspired him with a fresh hope. Perhaps with the light of day the wolves would betake themselves elsewhere. Night is their favorite hunting time and they do not usually go much abroad till at least the afternoon.

But as the light grew stronger, Sandy saw that hope, too, fade away. Far from expressing any intentions of deserting their posts, the wolves greeted the slow rise of the sun with a howl that echoed up to the heavens. It sent a shudder through Sandy as he stood there looking down upon the massed gray backs and the hungry upturned faces.

“Is this the end?” he found himself thinking.

But just then something occurred to divert his thoughts. Across the snow came winging, in full flight, a flock of fine, plump snow-grouse. The plumage of these birds changes in winter from its summer russet and brown to a snowy white. Except when in flight it is almost impossible to distinguish them against a white background.

The flight of the birds inspired Sandy with a sudden interest. And it was no wonder that it did, for grouse are excellent food and not wild or hard to shoot. If they landed upon his rocky fortress he was reasonably sure of being able to get one or two of them.

The wolves, too, saw the coming of the grouse, and watched them with almost equal interest. Wolves by no means despise grouse, and sometimes stalk a flock miles in the snowy wastes, seeking a chance to pounce on them. And so, as the flight came on, they were watched by the boy and his besiegers with equal interest.

Sandy ran within his shelter so as not to frighten the birds from alighting on the rocks, which appeared to be their intention. Some stunted bushes, covered with a sort of hard, red berry must have attracted them, so Sandy guessed, or perhaps the rocks were a regular feeding ground on account of these same berries. From the mouth of his rift Sandy could command a view of a patch of the berry-bearing bushes. If only the grouse would alight in that particular patch he would be sure of a good shot or two. But would they?

He watched their maneuvers with feverish interest. His very life might depend upon their actions within the next few minutes. On came the flock, and at last they were above the rock fort in which the boy had taken refuge. With burning eyes and rifle in hand, Sandy watched them from his place of concealment.

But they flew on over the mouth of the rift to alight in some other feeding place. Sandy might have risked a shot as they passed over him. But to hit a bird on the wing with a rifle is a feat so seldom performed as to be noteworthy, and Sandy did not dare risk frightening them away altogether by sending a useless shot among them.

After all, he conjectured, they would probably come to the patch he was watching in the course of their wanderings about their feeding grounds. Throughout a great part of the morning he watched for the birds, but none appeared. Below, the wolves from time to time gave tongue. Sandy would have liked to creep out and try the effect of a shot among them, but he did not dare to risk showing himself for fear of alarming any of the grouse that might be approaching.

All at once he noticed among the brush patch some white moving objects. He knew that these must be the grouse. They had wandered around below him without his seeing them and were now feeding in the patch upon which he had his rifle sights trained.

But there was a long wait, severely trying to the patience, before the grouse began to move upward, making their way toward the rift and approaching a position in which it would be possible to fire at them with a reasonable prospect of success. Sandy’s hands trembled with excitement as the grouse fluttered and stepped daintily among the berries, pecking them off right and left.

At last one of them, a fine, fat fellow, came into full view. Against the dark brown of the dead brush his body made a splendid target. Sandy set his teeth, steadied his aim and fired.

The grouse fluttered into the air and then fell back upon the snow, dead. The boy had time for one more shot before the flock took wing.

He could not refrain from a cry of joy as he dashed down the rocks to secure his game. For a time at least he could sustain life, even pent-up as he was in his rocky prison.