III
SENSIBLE SHOES
THE dawn of the second morning was much like that of the first, cool andcrystal clear, and with the sun beating out a pathway of molten goldacross the mirror-like surface of the solitary lake.
Prime bestirred himself early, meaning to get the breakfast under waysingle-handed while Miss Millington slept. But the young woman who haddescribed herself as being "fit" had stolen a march upon him. He wasfrying the bacon when she came skimming up the beach with her hairflying.
"I got up early and didn't want to disturb you," she told him. "There isa splendid swimming place just around that point; I don't know when I'veenjoyed a dip more. Wouldn't you like to try it while I dry my hair andmake some more of the homicidal bread?"
Prime went obediently and took the required bath, finding the waterbracingly cold and scarcely shallow enough to be reassuring to anon-swimmer. Over the breakfast which followed, the picnic spirit stillpresided, though by now it was beginning to lose a little of the lilt.For one thing, the bacon and the pan-bread, though they were amelioratedsomewhat by the tinned things, were growing a trifle monotonous; foranother, the limitless expanse of lake and sky and forest gave forth nosign of the hoped-for rescue.
After breakfast they made a careful calculation to determine how longtheir provisions would last. This, too, was unhopeful. With reasonableeconomy they might eat through another day. Beyond that lay a chance offamine.
"Surely Grider will come back for us to-day," Prime asserted whenDomestic Science had done its best in apportioning the supplies. But atthis the young woman shook her head doubtfully.
"I have had time to think," she announced. "It is all a guess, youknow--this about Mr. Grider--and the more I think of it the moreincredible it seems. Consider a moment. To make the kidnapping possiblewe must both have been drugged. That is a serious matter--too serious tohave a part in the programme of the most reckless practical joker."
Prime looked up quickly. "I might have been drugged very easily. Butyou?"
The young woman bared a rounded arm to show a minute red dot half-waybetween wrist and elbow. "I told you about the young woman who stumbledand turned her ankle: when I took hold of her to help her, somethingpricked my arm. She said it was a pin in the sleeve of her coat andapologized for having been so careless as to leave it there."
Prime looked closely at the red dot.
"A hypodermic needle?" he suggested.
She nodded. "That is why I became so sleepy. And your potion was put inthe wine, which you say tasted so bad."
Prime admitted the deduction without prejudice to his belief that Griderwas the arch-plotter, saying: "Grider is quite capable of anything, ifthe notion appealed to him. And, of course, he must have had hiredconfederates; he couldn't manage it all alone."
"Still," she urged, "it seems to me that we ought to be trying to helpourselves in some way. It doesn't seem defensible just to sit here andwait, on the chance that your guess is going to prove true."
Prime laughed. "You are always and most eminently logical. Where shallwe begin?"
"At the geography end of it," she replied calmly. "How far could anaeroplane fly in a single night?"
Prime took time to think about it. He had never had occasion to use along aeroplane flight in any of his stories; hence the specialinformation was lacking. But common sense and a few figures helpedout--so many hours, so many miles an hour, total distance so much.
"Two hundred miles, let us say, as an extreme limit," he estimated, andat this the young woman gave a faint little shriek.
"Two hundred miles! Why, that is as far as from Cincinnati to Lake Erie!Surely we can't be that far from Quebec!"
"I merely mentioned that distance as the limit. We are evidentlysomewhere deep in the northern woods. I don't know much about thegeography of this region--never having had to stage a story in it--but alake of this size, with miles of marketable timber on its shores, arguesone of two things: it is too far from civilization to have yet temptedthe lumbermen, or else it has no outlet large enough to admit of loggingoperations. You may take your choice."
"But two hundred miles!" she gasped. "If some one doesn't come after us,we shall _never_ get out alive!"
"That is why I think we ought to wait," said Prime quietly.
So they did wait throughout the entire forenoon, sitting for the mostpart under the shade of the shore trees, killing time and talkinglight-heartedly against the grim conclusion that each passing hour wasforcing upon them. They contrived to keep it up to and through thenoonday _seance_ with the cooking fire; but after that the barriers, onthe young woman's part, went out with a rush.
"I simply can't stand it any longer," she protested. "We must dosomething, Mr. Prime. We can at least walk somewhere and carry the bitsof provisions along with us. Why should we stay right in this one spotuntil we starve?"
"I am still clinging to the Grider supposition," Prime admitted. "If wemove away from here he might not be able to find us."
"It is only a supposition," she countered quickly. "You accept it, but,while I haven't anything better to offer, I cannot make it seem real."
"If you throw Grider out of it, it becomes an absolutely impossibleriddle."
"I know; but everything is impossible. We are awake and alive and lost,and these are the only facts we can be sure of." Then she added: "Itwill be so much easier to bear if we are only doing something!"
Prime had an uncomfortable feeling that a move would be a definiteabandonment of the only reasonable hope; but he had no further argumentto adduce, and the preparations for the move were quickly made. Thoughthe young woman was the disbeliever in the Grider hypothesis, it was ather suggestion that Prime wrote a note on the back of a pocket-wornletter and left it sticking in a cleft stake by the waterside; the noteadvertising the direction they were about to take. They had no planother than to try to find the lake's outlet, and to this end they laidtheir course southward along the shore, dividing the small "tote-load"of dunnage at the young woman's insistence.
So long as they had the sandy lake margin for a path, the going waseasy, but in a little time the beach disappeared in a rocky shore, withthe forest crowding closely upon the water, and they were forced to makea long circuit inland. Still having the protective instinct, Prime"broke trail" handsomely for his companion, but, since he was somethingless than an athlete, the long afternoon of it told upon him severely;so severely, indeed, that he was glad to throw himself down upon thesands to rest when they finally came back to the lake on the shore of anarrow bay.
"I didn't know before how much I lacked of being a real man," headmitted, stretching himself luxuriously upon his back to stare up intothe sunset sky. Then, as if it had just occurred to him: "Say--it musthave been something fierce for you."
"I am all right," was the cheerful reply. "But I shall never get overbeing thankful that I put on a pair of sensible shoes, night beforelast, to walk to the Heights of Abraham."
After he had rested and was beginning to grow stiff, Prime sat up.
"We can't go much farther before dark; shall we camp here?" he asked.
The young woman shook her head. "We can't see anything from here; it isso shut in. Can't we go on a little farther?"
"Sure," Prime assented, scrambling up and stooping to rub the stiffnessout of his calves, and at this the aimless march was renewed, to enddefinitely a few minutes later at the intake of a stream flowingsilently out of the lake to the southeastward; a stream narrow and nottoo swift, but sufficiently deep to bar their way.
Twilight was stealing softly through the shadowy aisles of the forestwhen they prepared to camp at the lake-shore edge of the wood. Primemade the camp-fire, and, since the lake water was a little roiled atthe outlet mouth, he took one of the empty fruit-tins and crossed theneck of land to the river. Working his way around a thicket ofundergrowth, he came upon the stream at a point where the little river,as if gathering itself for its long jour
ney to the sea, spread away in aquiet and almost currentless reach.
Climbing down the bank to fill the tin, he found a startling surpriselying in wait for him. Just below the overhanging bank a largebirch-bark canoe, well filled with dunnage, was drawn out upon a tinybeach. His first impulse was to rush back to his companion with the goodnews that their rescue was at hand; the next was possibly a hand-downfrom some far-away Indian-dodging ancestor: perhaps it would be wellfirst to find out into whose hands they were going to fall.
The canoe itself told him nothing, and neither did the lading, whichincluded a good store of eatables. There was an air of isolation aboutthe birch-bark which gave him the feeling that it had been beached forsome time, and the dry paddles lying inside confirmed the impression.He listened, momently expecting to hear sounds betraying the presence ofthe owners, but the silence of the sombre forest was unbroken save bythe lapping of the little wavelets on the near-by lake shore.
Realizing that Miss Millington would be waiting for her bread-mixingwater, Prime filled the tin and recrossed the small peninsula.
"I was beginning to wonder if you were lost," said the bread-maker. "Didyou have to go far?"
"No, not very far." Then, snatching at the first excuse that offered: "Isaw some berries on the river-bank. Let me have the tin again and I'llsee if I can't gather a few before it grows too dark."
Having thus given a plausible reason for a longer absence, he went backto the canoe to look in the fading light for tracks in the sand. Nowthat he made a business of searching for them, he found plenty of them;heelless tracks as if the feet that had made them had been shod withmoccasins. A little farther down the stream-side there were brokenbushes and a small earth-slide to show where somebody had scrambled upto the forest level. Following the trail he soon found himself in anatural clearing, grass-grown and running back from the river a hundredyards or more. In the centre of this clearing he came upon the ashes offive separate fires, disposed in the form of a rude cross.
Still there was no sign of the canoe-owners themselves, and thediscovery of the curiously arranged ash-heaps merely added more mysteryto mystery. The fires had been dead for some time. Of this Prime assuredhimself by thrusting his hand into the ashes. Clearly the camp, if itwere a camp, had been abandoned for some hours at least. The gatheringdusk warned him that it would be useless to try to track thefire-makers, and he turned to make his way back to the lake shore andsupper.
It was in the edge of the glade, under the gloomy shadow of a giantspruce, that he stumbled blindly over some reluctantly yielding obstacleand fell headlong. Regaining his feet quickly with a nameless fearunnerving him, he stooped and groped under the shadowing tree, drawingback horror-stricken when his hand came in contact with the stiffenedarm of a corpse.
He had matches in his pocket, and he found one and lighted it. His handshook so that the match went out and he had to light another. By thebrief flare of the second match he saw a double horror. Lying in alittle depression between two spreading roots of the spruce were thebodies of two men locked in a death-grip. Another match visualized thetragedy in all its ghastly details. The men were apparently Indians, orhalf-breeds, and it had been a duel to the death, fought with knives.
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