Kitabı oku: «Stranded in Arcady», sayfa 7

XV
JEAN BA'TISTE

On a morning which Prime, consulting his notched stick, named as the twenty-fourth of July, they gave the canoe patches another daubing of pitch for good luck, relaunched their argosy, loaded the dunnage, and began to learn the art of paddling anew – the relearning being made strictly necessary by the new green-wood paddles.

From a boisterous mill-race in its upper reaches, their river had now subsided into a broad stream with a current so leisurely that they had to paddle continuously to make any headway. With this handicap their progress was slow, and it was not until the afternoon of the second day that they began to see signs to hint that they were approaching the settlements.

The signs were neither numerous nor indicative of any recent habitancy: a few old clearings with their stumps weathered and rotting; here and there a spot luxuriantly green to mark an area where slashings had been burned; in one place a decaying runway to show where the logs had been skidded into the river; all these proved that they were not pioneers; but withal they saw no human being to dispute possession with them.

In the evening of this second day they camped on the right-hand bank a short distance below one of the old clearings, kindling their night fire a few yards from the river in a small grove of second-growth pines. The place was not entirely to their liking; the river-bank was high, and they could not draw the canoe out without partially unloading it. While Lucetta was busying herself with the supper, Prime, as a precautionary measure, made a porter of himself to the extent of carrying a good part of the dunnage up to the fire, and after thus lightening the canoe he hauled it out of water as far as the steep bank would permit.

While they were eating supper an unexpected guest turned up. Lucetta was the first to hear the dip of a paddle in the stream, and a moment later they both heard the grating of a boat bottom on the sand. Prime sprang up, rifle in hand, and went to meet the newcomer, prepared to do battle if needful. When he returned he was followed by a small man, dark, bearded, and with bead-like black eyes roving and shifty. He was dressed more like an Indian than a white man; there were fringes on his moccasins and also on the belted coat, which was much the worse for wear and hard usage.

"Moi, Jean Ba'tiste; I mek you de good evenin', m'sieu' et madame," he said, introducing himself brusquely, and as he spoke the roving eyes were taking in every detail of the bivouac camp. Then, with no more ado, he squatted beside the fire and became their supper guest, saying simply: "You eat? – good; moi, I eat, too."

Since there seemed to be no question of ceremony, Prime made the guest welcome, heaping his tin plate and pouring tea for him in the spare cup. The small man ate as if he were half starved, and was saving of speech during the process, though the roving eyes seemed to be doing double duty. The meal devoured, he produced a black clay pipe with a broken stem and uttered a single word, "Tabac'?" and when the want was supplied he crumbled himself a pipeful from the twist which Prime handed him.

Prime filled his own home-made pipe, and at its lighting the guest began a curt inquisition.

"W'ere you come from?"

Prime explained without going into any of the kidnapping details.

"You campin' out for fon, mebbe, yes?" was the next query.

"A little that way," said Prime.

"You shoot wiz ze gon? W'ere all dat game w'at you get?"

"It isn't the game season," Prime parried. "We haven't tried to shoot anything."

"But you 'ave ze gon. Lemme see 'um," holding out a hand for the rifle.

Prime passed over the gun nearest at hand and drew the other one up within reach. The inquisitive supper guest looked the weapon over carefully and seemed to be trying to read something in the scratches on the stock.

"Vraiment! she's one good gon," he commented, passing it back. "W'ere you get 'um?"

Prime did not answer the question. He thought it was high time to ask a few of his own.

"What river is this?" he wanted to know.

"You make canoe on him and you not know dat? She is Mishamen; comes bimeby to Rivière du Lièvres."

"How far?"

"One, two, t'ree day; mebbe more."

"You mean that we will reach a town in two or three days?"

"Mebbe so, if you don' get los'."

Prime exchanged a quick glance with his fellow castaway. Lucetta signalled "Yes," and he acted accordingly.

"What will you charge to show us the way to the nearest town?" he asked.

The small man did not seem especially eager for money. He was examining the gun again. "Moi, I can't go – too bizzee. W'ere you got dis gon?"

"It came with our outfit," said Prime shortly. "We got it when we got the canoe."

"And w'ere you got dat canoe?"

The inquisition was growing rather embarrassing, but Prime answered as best he could.

"We got the outfit up at the big lake where we started from. We have come all the way down the river."

With this the restless-eyed querist appeared to be satisfied. At all events he did not press the questioning any further, and was content to take another pipe-filling from Prime's tobacco twist and to tell a little more about himself. He was "one ver' great trapper," in his own phrase, and was also a "timber looker" for a lumber company. Lucetta had withdrawn to the privacy of her tent, and Prime could not divest himself of the idea that the small man whose tongue had been so suddenly loosened was merely sparring for time, time in which to accomplish some end of his own. In due course the battery was unmasked.

"You say you begin voyageur on ze big lake. W'ere you leave Jules Beaujeau an' Pierre Cambon, eh, w'at?"

"I don't know them," said Prime, telling the simple truth.

"Dis Pierre Cambon's gon," said the little man, suddenly tapping the weapon he had been inspecting. "She 'ave hees name on ze stock. An' ze birch-bark down yonder; she's belong' to Jules Beaujeau. You buy 'um?"

Prime scarcely knew what to say; whether to tell the truth, which would not be believed, or to make up a lie, which might be believed. As a compromise he chose a middle course, which is always the most dangerous.

"I don't know these two you speak of, by name; but the two men who owned the canoe and the guns are both dead."

The supper guest sprang up as if a bomb had been exploded under him and quickly put a safe distance between himself and the camp-fire.

"You – you kill 'um?" he demanded.

"No; come back here and sit down. They had a fight and killed each other."

The man returned hesitantly and squatted beside the fire to press another live coal into the bowl of his pipe. Prime switched the talk abruptly.

"You'd better change your mind about the offer I made you and pilot us to the nearest town. We will pay you well for it."

"You got money?" was the short question.

"Plenty of it."

At this the "ver' great trapper" assumed to take the proposal under consideration, smoking other pipes, chaffering and bargaining and prolonging his stay deep into the night. When he finally took his leave, saying that he must go on to his camp, which was a few miles up one of the smaller tributaries of the main stream, it was with a half promise to come back in the morning for the piloting.

Prime took counsel of prudence and did not settle himself for the night immediately after the sharp-eyed one had gone. Laying his pipe aside, he crept cautiously out to the river-bank and assured himself that his late visitor was doing what he had said he would do, namely, heading off up the river with clean, quick strokes of the paddle, which soon sent his light craft out of sight. Prime climbed down the bank, satisfied himself that the patched canoe and its partial lading had not been disturbed, and then went back to the fire to roll himself in his blankets. The incident, with its inquisitorial pryings, had been rather disturbing, in a way, but it was apparently an incident closed.

Turning in so late after a laborious day on the river, Prime overslept the next morning, and when he awoke he found Lucetta already up and frying the bacon.

"Your man didn't stay all night?" she questioned, after Prime had scolded her for not making him get up and do his part.

"No; he sat here until between ten and eleven o'clock and gave me two or three bad minutes. He recognized our canoe and one of the guns, told me the names of the dead men, and wanted to know what had become of them."

"You didn't tell him?" she gasped.

"In the cold light of the morning after, I am afraid I told him too much or too little. I told him the men who owned the canoe and its outfit were dead; that they'd had a fight and killed each other. Candidly, I don't think he believed it. It scared him until I thought he was going to have a fit. I had to jolly him up a bit before he would come back to the fire and talk some more."

"What does he believe?" she inquired anxiously.

"He wouldn't tell me, and I couldn't decide by merely looking at him. I hope I've hired him to pilot us to the nearest town. When he went away he intimated that he might be back this morning."

"Shall we wait for him?"

"No; if he isn't here by the time we are ready to start, we'll go on and take our chance of 'gettin' los',' as he put it. I think that was a bluff, anyway."

They breakfasted leisurely, and Prime even took time to smoke a pipe before beginning to break camp. But his first trip to the river-bank with a load of the dunnage brought him back on a run.

"Our canoe's gone!" he announced breathlessly. "That little wretch came back and stole it while we were asleep!"

Lucetta sat down and propped her chin in her hands.

"This is the beginning of the end, Donald," she said quite calmly and with a touch of resignation in her voice. "Do you know why he took the canoe?"

"Because he's an infernal thief!" Prime raged hotly.

"No," she contradicted. "It is because he thinks we have murdered the two owners of the canoe, and he wanted to make sure that we wouldn't run away while he went after help to arrest us."

XVI
MARCHONS!

Prime leaned against a tree and took a full minute for a grasping of the new situation.

"I more than half believe you are right," he admitted at length. Then, with a crabbed laugh: "If there is any bigger dunce on earth than I am I should like to meet him – just as a matter of curiosity. I'll never brag on my imagination after this. I could see plainly enough that the fellow was fairly eaten up with suspicion, and it would have been so easy to have invented a plausible lie to satisfy him."

"Don't be sorry for that," the young woman put in quickly. "If they arrest us we shall have to tell the truth."

Prime was frowning thoughtfully. "That is where the shoe pinches. Do you realize that the story we have to tell is one that no sane magistrate or jury could ever believe, Lucetta? These two men, Beaujeau and Cambon, must have started from some known somewhere, alive and well. They disappear, and after a while we turn up in possession of their belongings and try to account for ourselves by telling a fantastic fairy-tale. It's simply hopeless!"

"You are killing the only suggestion I had in mind," was the dispirited rejoinder. "I was going to say that we might wait here until they came for us, but that won't do at all. We must hurry and disappear before they come back and find us!"

"I think it will be best," Prime decided promptly. "If we had a reasonable story to tell it would be different. But we haven't, and the chances are that we should get into all sorts of trouble trying to explain for other people a thing that we can't explain for ourselves. It is up to us to hit the trail. Are you fit for it?"

"Why shouldn't I be?" she asked, but there was no longer the old-time buoyancy in her tone.

"I have had a notion the last day or two that you were not feeling quite up to the mark," Prime explained soberly. "It is something about your eyes; they look heavy, as if you hadn't had sleep enough."

"I can do my part of anything that we have to do," she returned, rising; and together they made a judicious division of the dunnage, deciding what they could take and what they must leave behind.

The uncertainties made the decision hard to arrive at. If the tramp should last no more than three or four days they could carry the necessary food without much difficulty. But they could scarcely afford to give up the blankets and the shelter-tent, and Prime insisted that they must take at least one of the guns and the axe. These extras, with the provisions and the cooking-utensils, made one light load and one rather heavy one, and under this considerable handicap the day's march was begun.

The slow progress was difficult from the very outset. Since the river was their only guide, they did not dare to leave it to seek an easier path. By noon Prime saw that his companion was keeping up by sheer force of will, and he tried to get her to consent to a halt for the afternoon. But she would not give up.

"No," she insisted. "We must go on. I am tired; I'll admit it; but I should be something worse than tired if we should have to stop and be overtaken."

From the beginning of the day's march they seemed to have left behind all of the former hopeful signs, and were once more making their way through a primeval forest, untouched, so far as they could see, by the woodsman's axe. Their night camp was made among the solemn spruces by the side of a little brook winding its way to the nearby river. Prime made a couch of the spruce-tips, the folded tent cloth, and the blankets, and persuaded Lucetta to lie down while he prepared the supper.

When the meal was ready the substitute cook was the only one who could eat. Lucetta said she didn't care for anything but a cup of tea, and when Prime took it to her he saw that the slate-gray eyes were unnaturally bright and her face was flushed. Whereat a great fear seized upon him.

"You are sick!" he exclaimed, grappling helplessly with the unnerving fear. "Why didn't you tell me before? I thought – I hoped you were just tired out with the long tramp."

"I shall be better in the morning," she answered bravely. "It has been coming on for a day or two, I think. Why did we camp here in this close place, where it is so hot?"

Prime gripped his fleeting courage and held it hard. It was not hot under the spruces; on the contrary, the evening was almost chilly. Bestirring himself quickly to do what little he was able to do, he moved the sick one gently and set up the tent to shelter her, dipped the remaining bit of the soft deerskin into the brook and made a cold compress for the aching head, and then sat down with a birch-bark fan to keep the mosquitoes away.

As the night wore on he realized more and more his utter helplessness. He had had no experience with sickness or with the care of the sick, and if the remedies had been at hand he would not have known how to use them. Time and again, after Lucetta had fallen into a troubled sleep, he made his way to the riverbank to stare anxiously in the darkness up and down the stream in the faint hope that help might appear. But for all his longings the silent river gave back neither sight nor sound.

In the morning Lucetta's fever had abated, but it had left her weak and exhausted; much too weak to continue the march, though she was willing and anxious to make the trial. Prime vetoed that at once and tried his best to concoct something out of their diminished store of provisions that would prove appetizing to the invalid. She ate a little of the broth prepared from the smoked deer meat merely to please him, and drank thirstily of the tea; but still Prime was not encouraged.

During the afternoon Lucetta's temperature rose again, and, harassed and anxious as he was, Prime was thankful that the fever did not make her delirious. That, he told himself, would be the final straw. So far from wandering, she was able to talk to him; to talk and to thank him gratefully for his earnest but skilless attempts to make her more comfortable.

"It is simply maddening to think that there isn't anything really helpful that I can do," he protested, at one of these pathetic little outbreaks of gratitude. "What do they do for people who have fevers?"

"Quinine," she said, with a twitching of the lips which was meant to be a smile. "Why don't you give me a good big dose of quinine, Donald?"

"Yes, why don't I?" he lamented. "Why do I have to sit here like a bump on a log and do nothing!"

"You mustn't worry," she interposed gently. "You are not responsible for me and my aches and pains. You must try to remember that only a little more than three weeks ago we were total strangers to each other."

"Three weeks ago and now are two vastly different things, Lucetta. You have proved yourself to be the bravest, pluckiest little comrade that a man ever had! And I – I, whose life you have saved, can do nothing for you in your time of need. It's heartbreaking!"

The night, which came on all too slowly for the man who could do nothing, was even less hopeful than the previous one had been. Though he had no means of measuring it, Prime was sure that the fever rose higher. For himself he caught only cat-naps now and then during the long hours, and between two of these he went to the river-bank and built a signal-fire on the remote chance of summoning help in that way.

Between two and three o'clock in the morning the fever began to subside again, and the poor patient awoke. She was perfectly reasonable but greatly depressed, not so much over her own condition as on Prime's account. Again she sought to make him take the purely extraneous view, and when that failed she talked quite calmly about the possibilities.

"I have had so little sickness that I hardly know whether this is really serious or not," she said. "But if I shouldn't – if anything should happen to me, I hope you won't – you won't have to bury me in the river."

"For Heaven's sake, don't talk that way!" he burst out. "You're not going to die! You mustn't die!"

"I am sure I don't want to," she returned. "Especially just now, when I was beginning to learn how to live. May I have a drink of water?"

He went to the brook and got it for her, raging inwardly at the thought that he could not even offer her a drink out of a vessel that wouldn't taste tinny. When her thirst was quenched she went on half musingly.

"I am glad there isn't any one to be so very sorry, Donald. I know it must be fine to have a family and to be surrounded by all kinds of love and affection; but those things carry terrible penalties. Did you ever think of that?"

"I hadn't," he confessed. "I've been a sort of lonesome one, myself."

"The penalties work both ways," she went on. "It breaks your heart to have to leave the loved ones, and it breaks theirs to have you go. I suppose the girls in the school will be sorry; they all seem to like me pretty well, even if I am a 'cross old maid,' as one of them once called me to my face."

"I can't imagine you cross; and as to your being old, why you're nothing but a kid, Lucetta – just a poor little sick kiddy. And, goodness knows, you've had enough to knock you out and to make you think all sorts of grubby thoughts. You mustn't; you are going to get well again, and we'll march along together the same as ever. Or perhaps the sheriff will find us, after all. I've kindled a big fire down on the river-bank so that he won't have any excuse for overlooking us. Day before yesterday I would have tramped twenty miles to dodge him, but to-night I'd welcome him with open arms."

"We were foolish to try to run away," she said. "And that was my fault, too. The – the next time you are kidnapped, you must be careful not to let yourself be tied to a petticoat, Cousin Donald. They are always in the way."

"If I hadn't been tied to a petticoat that could swim, I shouldn't be here to-night fanning the mosquitoes away from you," he retorted, with a laugh that was meant to be cheering. And then he reverted to his one overwhelming and blankly insoluble problem: "If I only knew what to do for you!"

"When I was a little girl we lived in the country, and my mother doctored the entire neighborhood with roots and herbs. It is a pity I haven't inherited a little of her skill, isn't it?"

"There are lashings of pitiful things in this world, Lucetta, and we are getting acquainted with a few of them right now. But I mustn't let you talk too much. Try to go to sleep, if you can, and get a little rest before the fever comes on again."

She closed her eyes obediently, and after a time he knew by her regular breathing that she was asleep. For a patient hour he kept the birch-bark fan in motion and with the first streakings of dawn got up stiffly to make his way to the river-bank, dragging with him a half-rotted log to turn the pillar-of-fire signal into a pillar of smoke.