Blaise, in the bow, was still steadily plying his blade, when, through the blackness of the gathering night, he caught sight of a spark of light. He uttered an exclamation and pointed to the light with his paddle.
“A camp,” he said, speaking softly as if he feared being overheard even at that distance. “It is best to avoid it.”
As they went on, the light grew stronger and brighter. A fire was blazing in an open spot on an island or point. Tiny black figures became visible against the flames. The sounds of shouts and yells were borne across the water. Something out of the ordinary was going on. That was no mere cooking fire, but a huge pile, the flames lighting up the land and water. Around the blaze, the black figures were capering and yelling. Was it some orgy of devils? Had the place where the fire burned been near the Devil Track River, even Hugh might have thought this a feast of fiends. But it was some miles away from the Devil Track. Moreover, his ears assured him that the yells, sounding louder and louder, were from the throats of men, not of spirits.
Blaise had been considering his whereabouts. With the Indian’s keen sense of location and accurate memory of ground he has been over, he had concluded that the place where the fire burned was the rocky end of an island he remembered passing on the way down. The island lay close in, only a narrow waterway separating it from the heavily wooded main shore where trees grew down to the water’s edge.
Paddles dipped and raised noiselessly, the canoe slipped through the water. Blaise set the pace, and Hugh kept the craft close in the shadow of the wooded mainland. As they drew nearer the island, Blaise raised his blade and held it motionless. Hugh immediately did the same. The canoe, under good headway, slipped by, without a sound that could be distinguished from the rippling of the water on the rocks of the island. Hidden in the blackness beyond the circle of wavering firelight, the two gazed on a fear-inspiring scene.
Close to the leaping flames, lighted clearly by the glare, rose the white stem of a tall birch. Tied to the tree was a man, his naked body red bronze in the firelight and streaked with darker color. Five or six other figures were leaping and yelling like fiends about the captive, darting in on him now and again to strike a blow with club, knife or fire brand. The meaning of the horrid scene was plain enough. An unlucky Indian captive was being tortured to death.
It was not the tortured man, however, or the human fiends dancing about him that held Hugh’s fascinated gaze. Motionless, arms folded, another figure stood a little back from the fire, a towering form, gigantic in the flickering light.
Paddles raised, rigid as statues, scarcely daring to breathe, the two lads remained motionless until the slackening and swerving of their craft made it necessary for Blaise to dip his blade cautiously. They were beyond the fire now and still in the deep shadow of the overhanging trees. But the waterway between shore and island was narrow. Until they had put a greater distance between themselves and the hideous, fire-lit picture, they could feel no assurance of security. Keeping close to shore, they used the utmost caution. At last a bend in the mainland, with a corresponding curve in the island, hid the fire from sight. Looking back, they could still see the light of the flames through the trees and on the water, but the blazing pile itself was hidden from view.
Even then the two boys relaxed their caution but little. Near exhaustion though they were, they paddled on and on, with aching muscles and heads nodding with sleep. Not until they were several miles away from the island orgy of Ohrante and his band, did the brothers dare to land and rest. Too weary to cook a meal, each ate a lump of maple sugar, sucked a bit of the hard, unchewable, dried venison, rolled himself in his blanket and slept.
CHAPTER XII
THE HUNGRY PORCUPINE
Hugh was alone in a canoe struggling to make headway against the waves. Bearing down upon him, with the roaring of the storm wind, was an enormous black craft with a gigantic form towering in the bow and menacing him with a huge knife. The boy was trying to turn his canoe, but in spite of all his efforts, it kept heading straight for the terrifying figure.
From somewhere far away a voice shouted, “Hugh, Hugh.” The shouts grew louder. Hugh woke suddenly to find his half-brother shaking him by the shoulder. Storm voices filled the air, wind roared through the trees, surf thundered on the rocks. A big wave, curling up the beach, wet his moccasins as he struggled to his feet.
Wide awake in an instant, Hugh seized his blanket and fled up over the smooth, rounded pebbles out of reach of the waves. In a moment he realized that Blaise was not with him. He looked back—and then he remembered. The supplies, the canoe, where were they? He and his brother had unloaded the canoe as usual the night before, had propped it up on the paddles, and had crawled under it. But, overcome with weariness, they had left the packets of food and ammunition lying where they had been tossed, on the lower beach. Now, in the dull light of dawn, Hugh could see the waves rolling in and breaking far above where the packages had been dropped. The canoe had disappeared. It took him but a moment to grasp all this. He ran back down the beach to join Blaise, who was plunging in to his knees in the attempt to rescue what he could.
“The canoe?” Hugh shouted.
“Safe,” Blaise replied briefly, and made a dash after a retreating wave, seizing a skin bag of corn just as it was floating away.
At the same instant Hugh caught sight of a packet of powder, and darted after it, a bitter cold wave breaking over him just as he bent to snatch the packet.
The two worked with frantic haste, heedless of the waves that soaked them above the knees and sometimes broke clear over their heads as they stooped to seize bag or package. They saved what they could, but the dried meat, one sack of corn, Hugh’s bundle of extra clothing, the roll of birch bark and the pine gum for repairing the canoe, had all gone out into the lake. The maple sugar was partly dissolved. Some of the powder, though the wrapping was supposed to be water-proof, was soaked, and Hugh’s gun, which he had carelessly left with the other things, was so wet it would have to be dried and oiled before it could be used. Blaise had carried his gun to bed with him, and it was safe and dry.
Even the half-breed boy, who usually woke at the slightest sound, had been so tired and had slept so heavily that the rising of the wind and the pounding of the waves had not disturbed him. It was not until a strong gust lifted the canoe from over his head, and a falling paddle struck him sharply, that he woke. He had sprung up, seized the overturned canoe and carried it to the shelter of a large rock. Then he had returned, flung his gun and the paddles farther up the beach, and had aroused the still sleeping Hugh.
When everything they had rescued had been carried beyond the reach of the waves and placed in the lee of a rock out of the wind, the two boys skirted the beach in the hope that the meat, corn or clothes might have been cast up in some other spot. The beach, at the head of a small and shallow cove, was not long. When Hugh had gone as far over pebbles and boulders as he could, he scrambled up the rock point that bounded the cove on the north and followed it to the end, without seeing anything of the lost articles. As he reached the bare rock tip, the sun was just coming up among red and angry clouds across the water, flushing with crimson and orange the wildly heaving waves. The wind was a little east of north. No rain had fallen where the boys were camped, but Hugh felt sure from the clouds that a storm must have passed not many miles away. The little cove being open and unprotected to the northeast, the full force of the wind entered it and piled the waves upon the beach.
When Hugh returned to the camping place, he found that Blaise, who had gone in the other direction, had had no better luck. The strong under pull of the retreating waves had carried the lost articles out to deep water.
Going on with the journey in such a blow was out of the question. The boys made themselves as comfortable as possible behind a heap of boulders out of the wind.
“I wish we knew in which direction Ohrante is bound,�
� Hugh said, as he scraped the last morsel of his scanty portion of corn porridge from his bark dish, with the crude wooden spoon he had carved for himself.
“He went up the shore as we came down,” Blaise replied. “He is probably going down now. Somewhere he has met his enemies and has taken one prisoner at least.”
“I wish we might have travelled farther before camping,” Hugh returned.
Blaise shrugged in his French fashion. “He cannot go on in this weather, and we cannot either. Passing him last night was a great risk. I knew that all their eyes would be blinded by the fire glare, so they could not see into the shadows, else I should not have dared. All went well, yet we must still be cautious and make but small fires and little smoke.”
“No column of smoke can ascend high enough in this gale to be seen,” Hugh argued.
“But the smell will travel far, and the wind blows from us to them. Caution is never wasted, my brother.”
Forced to discontinue the journey for most of the day, the lads spent the time seeking food. They were far enough from Ohrante’s camp to have little fear that any of his party would hear their shots, yet they chose to hunt to the north rather than to the south. With some of the dry powder and the shot that had been saved, Blaise started out first, while Hugh spread the wet powder to dry on a flat rock exposed to the sun but sheltered from the wind. Then he cleaned and dried his gun and greased it with pork fat before leaving camp.
Hugh wandered the woods in search of game for several hours. He did not go far back from shore. Traversing the thick woods, where there was much undergrowth, was difficult and he did not greatly trust his own woodcraft. He had no wish to humiliate himself in his half-brother’s eyes by losing his way. Moreover, as long as he kept where the wind reached him, he was not much annoyed by the mosquitoes, at their worst in June. Whenever he reached a spot where the wind did not penetrate, the irritating insects came about him in clouds, settling on his hands, face, wrists and neck and even getting inside his rather low necked, deerskin shirt.
Whether he did not go far enough into the woods or for some other reason, his luck was not good. He shot a squirrel and a long-eared, northern hare or snowshoe rabbit and missed another, but did not catch a glimpse of deer, moose, or bear. Neither squirrel nor rabbit meat was at its best in June, but it was at least better than no meat at all. Carrying his meager bag, he returned late in the afternoon. He found Blaise squatting over a small cooking fire. The iron kettle gave out a most appetizing odor. The younger boy had secured three plump ruffed grouse. In the Lake Superior wilderness of that day no laws prohibited the shooting of game birds out of season. The stew which appealed so strongly to Hugh’s nostrils was made up of grouse and squirrel meat, with a very little salt pork to give it savor.
The wind had fallen and since noon the waves had been going down. By sunset, though the lake was by no means smooth, travel had become possible for skilled canoeists. Had Hugh and Blaise not been in such a hurry to put distance between themselves and Ohrante, they would have waited until morning. They were so anxious to go on that they launched the canoe while the afterglow was still reflected in pink and lavender on the eastern sky. A few miles would bring them to the Devil Track River, but, not choosing to camp in that evil spot, Blaise insisted on landing about a mile below the stream mouth.
Leaving their camp early next morning, the two started overland to the Devil Track. All day long they sought for some trace of the hidden cache. Not until after sunset did they cease their efforts. Weary and disheartened they returned to their camping place, Hugh in the lead. They had left the canoe turned bottom up over their supplies and well concealed by a thicket of red-stemmed osier dogwoods. The elder brother’s sharp exclamation when he reached the spot made the younger one hasten to his side.
“Look!” cried Hugh, pointing to the birch craft.
Blaise did not need to be told to look. The ragged, gaping hole in the bark was too conspicuous. “A porcupine,” he exclaimed.
“It was the devil in the form of a porcupine, I think,” Hugh muttered. “What possessed the beast?”
“He smelled the pork and gnawed his way through to it. The porcupine loves all things salt. We will see.”
Blaise was right. When the canoe was lifted, the boys discovered that the small chunk of salt pork was gone, taken out through the hole the beast had gnawed. Nothing else was missing.
“Either he didn’t like the other things or the pork was all he could carry away at one trip,” said Hugh. “If we had stayed away a little longer, he might have made off with the corn and the sugar as well.”
“The loss of the pork is bad,” Blaise commented gravely. “The hole in the canoe is bad also, and we must delay to mend it.”
The loss of the pork was indeed serious. The rabbit and the squirrel Hugh had shot the day before had been eaten, and nothing else remained but a few handfuls of corn and a little sugar. So once more, after setting some snares, the lads went to sleep supperless. They slept with the corn and sugar between them for protection.
Blaise might have suspected that the fiend of the river had put a spell on his snares, for in the morning he found them all empty. The dry, stony ground showed no tracks. If any long-legged hare had come that way, he had been wary enough to avoid the nooses.
After the scantiest of breakfasts the boys set about repairing the canoe. Luckily the ball of wattap, the fine, tough roots of the spruce prepared for use as thread, had not been lost when the waves covered the beach at their former camp. From a near-by birch Blaise cut a strong, smooth piece of bark without knotholes. With his knife he trimmed the ragged edges of the hole. Having softened and straightened his wattap by soaking it, he sewed the patch on neatly, using a large steel needle he had bought at the trading post at the Kaministikwia.
In the meantime Hugh sought a pine grove up the river, where he obtained some chunks of resin. The resin he softened with heat to a sticky gum and applied it to the seams and stitches. Blaise went over them again with a live coal held in a split stick, and spread the softened resin skillfully with thumb and knife blade. Then the canoe was left bottom side up for the gum to dry and harden.
In spite of the fact that the boys, on their way down the shore, had searched the land to the east of the Devil Track with considerable thoroughness, they were determined to go over it again. By means of a fallen tree and the boulders that rose above the foaming rapids, they crossed the river where it narrowed between rock walls. Late in the afternoon, Blaise, scrambling up a steep and stony slope well back from the stream, heard two shots in quick succession and then a third at a longer interval, the signal agreed upon to indicate that one or the other had come across something significant. The sounds came from the direction of the lake, and Blaise hastened down to the shore.
CHAPTER XIII
THE PAINTED THWART
Blaise found Hugh stooping over a heap of shattered, water-stained boards, crude planks, axe hewn from the tree.
“Can this be the boat, do you think?” Hugh asked.
Blaise shook his head doubtfully. “It was not here on the beach when we came this way before.”
“Yet it may be part of the wreck washed from some outer rock and cast here by that last hard blow,” reasoned the older boy.
“That is possible. If we could find more of it, the part that bears the sign——”
“What sign? You told me of no sign. I have often wondered how, if we found a wrecked boat, we should know whether it was the right one.”
“Surely I told you of the sign. The board that bears the hole for the mast is painted with vermilion, and on it in black is our father’s sign, the figure that means his Ojibwa name, ‘man with the bright eyes, the eyes that make sparks.’ Twice the sign is there, once on each side of the mast.”
Hugh was staring at his younger brother. Black figures on a vermilion ground! Where had
he seen such a thing, seen it recently, since he left the Sault? Then he remembered. “Show me, Blaise,” he cried, “what that figure looks like, that means father’s Indian name.”
Blaise picked up a smooth gray flake and with a bit of softer, dark red stone scratched the figure.
“That is it,” Hugh exclaimed. “I have seen that wrecked boat, a bateau with the thwart painted red and that very same figure drawn in black.”
“You have seen it?” The younger brother looked at the elder wonderingly. “In your dreams?”
“No, I was wide awake, but it was a long way from here and before ever I saw you, Blaise.” Rapidly Hugh related how he and Baptiste had examined the old bateau in the cleft of the rocks of the Isle Royale.
Blaise listened in silence, only his eyes betraying his interest. “Truly we know not where to search,” he said when Hugh had finished. “The bateau drifted far. How can we find where it went upon the rocks?”
“I don’t believe it drifted far. If it was so badly damaged father had to abandon it, could it have floated far? Surely it would have gone to the bottom. When that boat was carried across to Isle Royale, I believe father and Black Thunder were still in it with all their furs. The storm drove them out into the lake, they lost their bearings, just as we in the Otter did. They were borne away and dashed by the waves into that crack in the rocks. Near there somewhere we shall find the cache, if we find it at all.”
Hugh spoke confidently, very sure of his own reasoning, but the younger lad was not so easily convinced.
“How,” Blaise questioned, “did he come away from that island Minong if he was wrecked there? He could not come by land and the bateau is still there.”
The Third Western Megapack Page 17