VI
CANOEDLINGS
ON the fifth morning--their third at the peninsula camp--Primeregistered a solemn vow to make this the last day of the entirelyunnecessary delay. More and more he was tormented by the fear that thedead men might escape from their weightings and rise to become a menaceto Lucetta's sanity or his own; and, though he had been given the bestpossible proof that his companion was above reproach in the matter ofcalm courage and freedom from hysteria, he meant to take no chances--forher or for himself.
At his suggestion they began the day by making another essay at thepaddling, embarking in the emptied canoe shortly after breakfast.Gaining a little facility after an hour or so, they headed thebirch-bark downstream past the point which they had reached the previousafternoon, and soon found themselves in a quickening current. Prime,kneeling in the bow, gave the word, and Lucetta obeyed it.
"We'll try the quick water," he flung back to her. "We'll have to havethe experience, and we had better get it with the empty canoe, ratherthan with the load."
This seemed logical, but it led to results. In a short time the shoresgrew rocky and there was no safe place to land. Moreover, the littleriver was now running so swiftly that they were afraid to try to turnaround. Rapid after rapid was passed in vain struggles to stop thetriumphal progress, and if the canoe's lading had been aboard, Primewould have been entirely happy, since every rapid they shot was takingthem farther away from the scene of the tragedy. But the lading was notaboard.
"We've got to do something to head off this runaway!" the bowman shoutedback over his shoulder in one of the quieter raceways. "We're leavingour commissary behind."
"Anything you say," chimed in the steers-woman from the stern of thedancing runaway. "My knees are getting awfully tired, but I can stand itas long as you can."
"That is the trouble," Prime called back.
"We're staying with it too long. The next pool we come to, you paddlelike mad, all on one side, and I'll do the same. We've simply _got_ toturn around!"
The manoeuvre worked like a charm. A succession of the eddy-pools camerushing up from down-stream, and in the third of them they contrived toget the birch-bark reversed and pointed up-stream. Then it suddenlyoccurred to the young woman that they had had their trouble for nothing;that the same end might have been gained if they had merely turnedthemselves around and faced the other way. Her shriek of laughter madePrime stop paddling for the moment.
"I need a guardian--we both need guardians!" he snorted, when she toldhim what she was laughing at, and then they dug their paddles in afrantic effort to stem the swift current.
It was no go--less than no go. In spite of all they could do thebirch-bark refused to be driven up-stream. What was worse, it began todrift backward, slowly at first, but presently at a pace which made themquickly turn to face the other way lest they be smashed in a rapid. Amile or more fled to the rear before they could take breath, and twomore rapids were passed, up which Prime knew they could never force thecanoe with any skill they possessed or were likely to acquire.
Taking advantage of the next lull in the unmanageable flight, he shoutedagain.
"We'll have to go ashore! We are getting so far away now that we shallnever get back. You're steering: try it in the next quiet place we cometo, and I'll do all I can to help."
The "next quiet place" proved to be a full half-mile farther along, andthey had a dozen hairbreadth escapes in more of the quick stretchesbefore they reached it. Prime lived years in moments in the swifterrushes. Knowing his own helplessness in the water, he was in deadly fearof a capsize, not from any unmanly dread of death but because he had avivid and unnerving picture of Lucetta's predicament if she shouldescape and be left alone and helpless in the heart of the forestwilderness. He drew his first good breath after the runaway canoe hadbeen safely beached on the shore of an eddy and they had totteredcarefully out of it to drag it still higher upon the shelving bank.
"My heavens!" he panted, throwing himself down to gasp at leisure. "Iwouldn't go through that again for a farm in Paradise! Weren't youscared stiff?"
"I certainly was," was the frank admission. The young woman had takenher characteristic attitude, sitting down with her chin propped in herhands.
"But, just the same, you didn't forget to paddle!" Prime exulted. "Youare a comrade, right, Lucetta! It's a thousand pities you aren't a man!"
"Isn't it?" she murmured, without turning her head.
"Do you know--I was simply paralyzed at the thought of what would happenif we should upset--not so much at the thought of what would be certainto happen to me, but on your account."
"The protective instinct," she remarked; "it is like a good many otherthings which we have outgrown--or are outgrowing--quite useless, butstubbornly persistent."
"You mean that you don't need it?"
"I haven't needed it yet, have I?"
"No," he admitted soberly. "So far, you have had the nerve, and morethan your share of the physique."
"I have had better training, perhaps," she offered, as if willing tomake it easier for him. "A little farther along you will begin todevelop, while I shall stand still."
But Prime would not let it rest at that.
"I have always maintained that most women have a finer nerve, and finercourage, than most men; I am speaking now of the civilized average. Youare proving my theory, and I owe you something. But to get back tothings present; doesn't it occur to you that we have gotten ourselvesinto a rather awkward mess?"
"It does, indeed. We must be miles from anything to eat, and if you knowof any way to take this canoe up-stream I wish you would tell me; Idon't."
"It will be by main strength and awkwardness, as the Irishman played thecornet, if we do it at all," Prime decided.
"And if, in the meantime, the owners come back and find it gone----"
Prime got up stiffly. "I have a feeling that they haven't come back yet,and it is growing fast into a feeling that they are not going to comeback at all. Shall we try a towing stunt?"
They tried it, though they had no towline and were reduced to thenecessity of dragging the canoe along in the shallows, each with a handon the gunwale. This did not answer very well, and after fighting for ahalf-hour in the first of the rapids and getting thoroughly wet andbedraggled they had to give it up and reverse the process, letting thebirch-bark drift down to the safe dockage again.
While they were resting from their labors, and the hampered half of thetowing squad was wringing the water from her skirts, Prime looked at hiswatch.
"Heavens and earth!" he exclaimed. "It is noon already! I thought I wasbeginning to feel that way inside. Why didn't we have sense enough totake a bite along with us when we left camp this morning?"
"Oh, if you are going into the whys, why didn't we have sense enough toknow that we couldn't handle the canoe? How far have we come?"
Prime shook his head. "You couldn't prove it by me. A part of the timeit seemed to me that we were bettering a mile a minute." He got up andhobbled back and forth on the little beach to work the canoe-cramp outof his knees. "It looks to me as if we are up against it good and hard;the canoe is here, and the dunnage is up yonder. Which do we do: carrythe canoe to the dunnage, or the dunnage to the canoe? It's a heavenlychoice either way around. What do you say?"
Lucetta voted at once for the canoe-carrying, if it were at allpossible. So much, she said, they owed to the owners, who had everyright to expect to find their property where they had left it. AgainPrime was tempted to say hard things about the ghosts which sostubbornly refused to be laid, and again he denied himself.
"The canoe it is," he responded grimly, but by the time they had draggedthe light but unwieldy craft out of the water and part way up the bankthey were convinced that the other alternative was the only one. Ashort portage they might have made, or possibly a long one, if they hadknown enough to turn the birch-bark bottom-side up and carry it on theirheads _voyageur_-fash
ion. But they still had this to learn.
"It's a frost," was Prime's decision after they had tugged and stumbleda little way with the clumsy burden knocking at their legs. "Themountain won't go to Mohammed--that much is perfectly plain. Are yougame for a long portage with the camp outfit? It seems to be the onlything there is left for us to do."
The young woman was game, and since they were on the wrong side of theriver they put the canoe into the water again and paddled to the otherside, leaving the birch-bark drawn out upon the bank of the eddy-pool.From that they went on, hunger urging them and the water-softenedmoccasins holding them back and making them pick their way like childrenin the first few days of the barefoot season. The distance proved to beabout three miles and they made it in something over an hour. The embersof their morning fire were still alive, and the belated midday meal wasquickly cooked and despatched.
"Now for the hard part of it," Prime announced, as he began to pack thecamp outfit. "You sit right still and rest, and I'll get things readyfor the tote."
"Then you have determined to ride roughshod over the rights of thepeople who own the things?" the young woman asked.
Prime turned his back deliberately upon the pool of dread.
"Necessity knows no law, and we can't stay here forever waiting forsomething to turn up. Somebody has given us a strong-hand deal, for whatreason God only knows, and we've got to fight out of it the best way wecan. We'll take these things, and we are willing to pay for them ifanybody should ask us to; but in any event we are going to take them,because it is a matter of life and death to us. I'll shoulder all theresponsibility, moral and otherwise."
She laughed a little at this. "More of the protective instinct? I can'tallow that--my conscience is my own. But I suppose you are right. Theredoesn't seem to be anything else to do. And you needn't fit all ofthose packs to your own back; I propose to carry my share."
He protested at that, and learned one more thing about LucettaMillington: up to a certain point she was as docile and leadable as thewoman of the Stone Age is supposed to have been, and beyond that she wasadamant.
"You said a little while ago it was a pity I wasn't a man: it is thewoman's part nowadays to ask no odds. Will you try to remember that?"
Here was a hint of a brand-new Lucetta, and Prime wondered how he hadcontrived to live twenty-eight years in a world of women only to bebrought in contact for the first time with the real, simon-pure articlein the heart of a Canadian wilderness. Nevertheless he took her at herword and made a small pack for her, with a carrying-strap cut from theremains of the deerskin. At the very best the portage promised to demandthree trips, which was appalling.
It was well past the middle of the afternoon when they reached the canoeat the end of the first carry. The three-mile trudge had been made insilence, neither of the amateur carriers having breath to spare fortalk. Since they had the tent and one of the blanket-rolls andsufficient food, Prime was for putting off the remaining double carry toanother day, but again Lucetta was adamant.
"If we do that we shall lose all day tomorrow," was the form her protesttook; "and now that we have started we had better keep on going."
"Oh, what is the frantic hurry?" Prime cut in. "You said your schooldidn't begin until September. Haven't we the entire, unspoiled summerahead of us?"
"Clothes," she remarked briefly. "Yours may last all summer, but minewon't--not if we have to go on tramping through the woods every day."
Prime's laugh was a shout. "We'll be blanket Indians, both of us, beforewe get out of this. I feel that in my bones, too. But about the secondcarry; we'll make it if you say so. It will at least give us a goodappetite for supper."
They made it, reaching the end of the six-mile doubling a short whilebefore the late sunset. Prime was all in, down, and out, but he wouldnot admit it until after the supper had been eaten and the shelter-tentset up over its bed of spruce-tips. Then he let go with both hands.
"I'm dog-tired, and I am not ashamed to admit it," he confessed. "Butyou--you look as fresh as a daisy. What are you made of--spring steel?"
"Not by any manner of means; but I wasn't going to be the first to sayanything. I feel as if I were slowly ossifying. I wouldn't walk anothermile to-night for a fortune."
Prime stretched himself lazily before the fire with his hands under hishead. "Luckily, you don't have to. You had better turn in and get allthe sleep that is coming to you. I'm going to hit the blankets after Ismoke another pinch of this horrible tobacco."
As he sat up to roll the pinch a rising wind began to swish through thetree-tops. A little later there was a fitful play of lightning followedby a muttering of distant thunder.
"That means rain, and you are going to get wet," said the young woman,as she was preparing to creep under her canvas. An instant later a gustyblast came down the river, threatening to scatter the fire. Prime sprangup at once and began to take the necessary precautions against aconflagration. In the midst of the haste-making he heard his companionsay: "We might drag the canoe up here and turn it over so that you couldhave it for a shelter."
With the fire safely banked they went together to the river's edge tocarry out her suggestion. By this time the precursor blast of the showerwas lashing the little river into foam, and the spray from the rapidjust above them wet their faces. One glance, lightning assisted, at thelittle beach where they had drawn up the canoe was enough. Thebirch-bark was gone.
The young woman was the first to find speech. At another lightning-flashshe cried out quickly:
"There it is! Don't you see it?--going down the river! The wind isblowing it away!"
Immediately they dashed off in pursuit, stumbling through the forest indarkness, which, between the lightning-flashes, was like a blanketing ofinvisibility. The race was a short one. One flash showed them the canoedancing down the raceway of a lower rapid, and at the next it haddisappeared.
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