The Third Western Megapack

by Barker, S. Omar

  “To be delivered to M. René Dubois, At Montreal. Of great importance.”

  Hugh turned over the packet. It was sealed, like the outer wrapper, with drops of pitch upon which Jean Beaupré’s seal had been pressed. For several minutes the boy sat considering what he ought to do. Then he looked up at his half-brother’s equally grave face.

  “I don’t like to open this,” Hugh said. “It is addressed to M. René Dubois of Montreal and it is sealed. I think father intended me to take it to Monsieur Dubois with the seals unbroken. Doubtless he will open it in my presence and tell me what it contains.”

  Blaise nodded understandingly. He had lived long enough in civilization to realize the seriousness of breaking the seals of a packet addressed to someone else. “That Monsieur Dubois, do you know him?” he inquired.

  “No, I didn’t know my father had any friends in Montreal. He never lived there, you know. His old home was in Quebec, where I was born. I don’t remember that I ever heard of Monsieur René Dubois, but my relatives in Montreal may know him. Probably I can find him. If I can’t, then I think it would be right to open this packet, but not until I have tried. Shall I take charge of this, Blaise?”

  “You are the elder and our father said you must take the packet to Montreal.”

  To the impatient Hugh the wait until the sun descended beyond the woods of the low point across the water seemed long indeed. He found it hard to realize that only two nights before he and Blaise had reached the point and had tied up there. They had surely been lucky to find the cache of furs so soon.

  Not until the shadows of the shore lay deep upon the water did the lads push off the bateau. They paddled silently out of the little cove and close under the abrupt, riven rocks, taking care not to let a blade splash as it dipped and was withdrawn. The water was rippled by the lightest of breezes, and the moon was bright. The deep cleft where Jean Beaupré’s wrecked boat lay was in black darkness, though. Hugh could not even make out the stern. His mind was busy with thoughts of the father he had known so slightly, with speculations about his coming to the island, about the way he had left it. Through what treachery had he received his death blow?

  Another rift in the rock was passed before the boys reached a wider, shallower cleft they felt sure was the one leading to the cache. Cautiously they turned into the dark mouth of the fissure and grounded the boat on the pebbles, water-worn and rounded here where the waves reached them. Overhead the moonlight filtered down among the thick sprays of the stunted cedars that grew along the rim and even down into the crack. But the darkness at the bottom was so deep the brothers could proceed only by feeling their way with both hands and feet. In this manner they went up over pebbles and angular rock fragments to the narrow slit in the wall, and squeezed through in pitch blackness to the circular hollow.

  There was moonlight in the pit, but the cache, close under the rock wall, was in the shadow. So difficult did the boys find it to remove the stones in the darkness, that they decided to risk lighting a torch. During the afternoon Blaise had made a couple of torches of spruce and balsam. He lighted one now and stuck it in a cranny of the rock just above the heap of stones. By the feeble, flickering and smoky light, the cache was uncovered. Pushing and hauling the bales through the narrow crack was difficult and troublesome. The larger ones would not go through, and had to be unwrapped and reduced to smaller parcels. Even by the dim light of the torch, the boys could see that the furs were of excellent quality. Before loading, the bateau had to be pushed out a little way, Blaise standing in the water to hold it while Hugh piled in the bales. Then both climbed in and paddled quietly out of the crack.

  There was not breeze enough for sailing. Hugh and Blaise were anxious to get away from the spot where they had found the furs and had heard the shout, but paddling the heavily laden bateau was slow work. Without a breeze to fill the sail, they were loth to start across the open lake, so they kept on along shore to the northeast. When they had put a mile or more between themselves and the place where they had found the furs, they would camp and wait for sunrise and a breeze.

  Slowly and laboriously they paddled on, close to the high shore. The calm, moonlit water stretched away on their left. The dark, forest-crowned rocks, huge, worn and seamed pillars, towered forbiddingly on the other side. At last the wider view of the water ahead and the barrenness of the tumbled rocks to the right indicated that they were reaching the end of the shore along which they had been travelling.

  “We’ll land now,” said Hugh, “as soon as we can find a place.”

  The abrupt, truncated pillars of rock were not so high here, but were bordered at the water’s edge with broken blocks and great boulders, affording little chance of a landing place. By paddling close in, however, slowly and cautiously to avoid disaster, the boys discovered a niche between two blocks of rock, with water deep enough to permit running the boat in. There they climbed out on the rock and secured the bateau by a couple of turns of the rope around a smaller block. In rough weather such a landing would have been impossible, but on this still night there was no danger of the bateau bumping upon the rocks. Farther along Blaise found a spot where the solid rock shelved down gradually. Rolling themselves in their blankets, the brothers stretched out on the hard bed.

  The plaintive crying of gulls waked Hugh just as the sun was coming up from the water, a great red ball in the morning mist. “I don’t like this place,” he said as he sat up. “We can be seen plainly from the lake.”

  “Yes,” Blaise agreed, “but we can see far across the lake. If a boat comes, we shall see it while it is yet a long way off. I think we need not fear anything from that direction. No, the only way an enemy can draw near unseen is from the land, from the woods farther back there.”

  “The water is absolutely still,” Hugh went on. “There isn’t a capful of wind to fill our sail, and we can’t paddle this loaded boat clear across to the mainland. We must find a better place than this, though, to wait for a breeze. I am going to look around a bit.”

  The lads soon found that they were near the end of a point, a worn, wave-eaten, rock point, bare except for a few scraggly bushes, clumps of dwarfed white cedar and such mosses and lichens as could cling to the surface. Farther back were woods, mostly evergreen. The two felt that they must find a spot where they could wait for a wind without being visible from the woods. Yet they wanted to remain where they could watch the weather and get away at the first opportunity. At the very tip of the point, the slate-gray rocks were abrupt, slightly overhanging indeed, but in one spot there lay exposed at the base a few feet of low, shelving, wave-smoothed shore, which must be under water in rough weather. On this calm day the lower rock shore was dry. There, in the shelter of the overhanging masses, the boys would be entirely concealed from the land side. A little farther along on the end of the point, rose an abrupt, rounded tower of rock. Between the rock tower and the place they had selected for themselves was a narrow inlet where the bateau would be fairly well hidden. They shoved the boat out from between the boulders, where it had lain safe while they slept, and paddled around to the little inlet. On the wave-smoothed, low rock shore, they kindled a tiny fire of dry sticks gathered at the edge of the woods, and hung the kettle from a pole slanted over the flames from a cranny in the steep rock at the rear.

  The wind did not come up as the sun rose higher, as the lads had hoped it would. The delay was trying, especially to the impetuous Hugh. They had found the cache, secured the furs and the packet, and had got safely away with them, only to be stuck here on the end of this point for hours of idle waiting. Yet even Hugh did not want to start across the lake under the present conditions. Paddling the bateau had been laborious enough when it was empty, but now, laden almost to the water-line, the boat was far worse to handle. Propelling it was not merely hard work, but progress would be so slow that the journey across to the mainland would be a long one, with always the chance that t
he wind, when it did come, might blow from the wrong quarter. The bateau would not sail against the wind. To attempt to paddle it against wind and waves would invite disaster. Sailing the clumsy craft, heavy laden as it was, across the open water with a fair wind would be quite perilous enough. There was nothing to do but wait, and this seemed as good a place in which to wait as any they were likely to find.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  THE FLEEING CANOE

  As the morning advanced, the sun grew hot, beating down on the water and radiating heat from the rocks. Scarcely a ripple wrinkled the blue surface of the lake, and the distance was hazy and shimmering. An island with steep, straight sides, four or five miles northeast of the point, was plainly visible, but Thunder Cape to the west was so dim it could barely be discerned. The day was much like the one on which the lads had come across from the mainland.

  Hugh grew more and more restless. Several times he climbed the only climbable place on the overhanging rock and peeped between the branches of a dwarfed cedar bush. He could see across to the edge of the woods, but he discovered nothing to either interest or alarm him. By the time the sun had passed the zenith, he could stand inaction no longer. He was not merely restless. He had become vaguely uneasy. The boat was hidden from his view by the rocks between. In such a lonely place he would have had no fear for the furs, had it not been for the shot and the call he and Blaise had heard.

  “Someone might slip out of the woods and down to the boat without our catching a glimpse of him,” Hugh remarked at last. “I’m going over there to see if everything is all right.”

  To reach the boat, he was obliged to climb to his peeping place and pull himself up the rest of the way, or else go around and across the top of the steep rocks. He chose the latter route. The boat and furs he found unharmed. The only trespasser was a gull that had alighted on one of the bales and was trying with its strong, sharp beak to pick a hole in the wrapping. He frightened the bird away, then stopped to drink from his cupped palm.

  A low cry from Blaise startled him. He glanced up just in time to see his brother, who had followed him to the top of the rocks, drop flat. Curiosity getting the better of caution, Hugh sprang up the slope. One glance towards the west, and he followed the younger lad’s example and dropped on his face.

  “A canoe! They must have seen us.”

  Cautiously Hugh raised his head for another look. The canoe was some distance away. When he had first glimpsed it, it had been headed towards the point. Now, to his surprise, it was going in the opposite direction, going swiftly, paddles flashing in the sun.

  “They have turned about, Blaise. Is it possible they didn’t see us?”

  “Truly they saw us. My back was that way. I turned my head and there they were. My whole body was in clear view. Then you came, and they must have seen you also. They are running away from us.”

  “It would seem so indeed, but what do they fear? There are four men in that canoe, and we are but two.”

  “They know not how many we are. They may have enemies on Minong, though I never heard that any man lived here.”

  “Something has certainly frightened them away. They are making good speed to the west, towards the mainland.”

  The boys remained stretched out upon the rock, only their heads raised as they watched the departing canoe.

  “They turn to the southwest now,” Blaise commented after a time. “They go not to the mainland, but are bound for some other part of Minong.”

  “They were bound for this point when we first saw them,” was Hugh’s reply. “We don’t know what made them change their minds, but we have cause to be grateful to it whatever——What was that?”

  He sprang to his feet and turned quickly.

  “Lie down,” commanded Blaise. “They will see you.”

  Hugh, unheeding, plunged down to the bateau. It was undisturbed. Not a living creature was in sight. Yet something rattling down and falling with a splash into the water had startled him. He looked about for an explanation. A fresh scar at the top of the slope showed where a piece of rock had chipped off. Undoubtedly that was what he had heard. His own foot, as he lay outstretched, had dislodged the loose, crumbling flake.

  Reminded of caution, Hugh crawled back up the slope instead of going upright. The canoe was still in sight going southwest. Both boys remained lying flat until it had disappeared beyond the low point. Then they returned to the low shore beneath the overhanging rock. For the present at least there seemed to be nothing to be feared from that canoe, but would it return, and where was the man who had fired the shot and later sent that call ringing through the woods? Did he belong with the canoe party? Had he gone away with them, or was he, with companions perhaps, somewhere on the wooded ridges? The boys did not know whether to remain where they were or go somewhere else.

  The weather finally brought them to a decision. All day they had hoped for a breeze, but when it came it brought with it threatening gray and white clouds. Rough, dark green patches on the water, that had been so calm all day, denoted the passing of squalls. Thunder began to rumble threateningly, and the gray, streaked sky to the north and west indicated that rain was falling there. The island to the northeast shrank to about half its former height and changed its shape. It grew dimmer and grayer, as the horizon line crept gradually nearer.

  “Fog,” remarked Blaise briefly.

  “It is coming in,” Hugh agreed, “and this is not a good place to be caught in a thick fog. Shall we go back into the woods?”

  “I think we had best take the bateau and go along the other side of this point. We cannot start for the mainland to-night, and we shall need a sheltered place for our camp.”

  The fog did not seem to be coming in very rapidly, but by the time the bateau had been shoved off, the island across the water had disappeared. The breeze came in gusts only and was not available for sailing. So the lads were obliged to take up their paddles again.

  Beyond the tower-like rock there was a short stretch of shelving shore, followed by abrupt, dark rocks of roughly pillared formation. Then came a gradual slope, rough, seamed and uneven of surface. It looked indeed as if composed of pillars, the tops of which had been sliced off with a downward sweep of the giant Kepoochikan’s knife. The shore ahead was of a yellowish gray color, as if bleached by the sun, slanting to the water, with trees growing as far down as they could find anchorage and sustenance. These sloping rocks were in marked contrast to those of the opposite side of the point, along which the boys had come the night before, where the cliffs and ridges rose so abruptly from the lake.

  After a few minutes of paddling, the brothers found themselves passing along a channel thickly wooded to the water-line. The land on the right was a part of the same long point, but on the left were islands with short stretches of water between, across which still other islands beyond could be seen. The fog, though not so dense in this protected channel as on the open lake, was thickening, and the boys kept a lookout for a camping place.

  When an opening on the left revealed what appeared to be a sheltered bay, they turned in. Between two points lay two tiny islets, one so small it could hold but five or six little trees. Paddling between the nearer point and islet, the boys found themselves in another much narrower channel, open to the northeast, but apparently closed in the other direction. Going on between the thickly forested shores,—a dense mass of spruce, balsam, white cedar, birch and mountain ash,—they saw that what they had taken for the end of the bay was in reality an almost round islet so thickly wooded that the shaggy-barked trunks of its big white cedars leaned far out over the water. The explorers rounded the islet to find that the shores beyond did not quite come together, leaving a very narrow opening. Paddling slowly and taking care to avoid the rocks that rose nearly to the surface and left a channel barely wide enough for the bateau to pass through, they entered a little landlocked bay, as secluded and p
eaceful as an inland pond.

  “We couldn’t find a better place,” said Hugh, looking around the wooded shores with satisfaction, “to wait for the weather to clear. We are well hidden from any canoe that might chance to come along that outer channel.”

  The little pond was shallow. The boat had to be paddled cautiously to avoid grounding. Below the thick fringe of trees and alders, the prow was run up on the pebbles.

  “We might as well leave the furs in the boat,” Hugh remarked.

  “No.” Blaise shook his head emphatically. “We cannot be sure no one will come in here. The furs we can hide. We ourselves can take to the woods, but this heavy bateau we cannot hide.”

  “I’m not afraid anyone will find us here.”

  “We thought there was no one on Minong at all. Yet we have heard a shot and a call and have seen a canoe.”

  “You’re right. We can’t be too cautious.”

  While Hugh unloaded the bales, Blaise went in search of a hiding place. Returning in a few minutes, he was surprised to find the boat, the prow of which had just touched the beach, now high and dry on the pebbles for half its length. Hugh had not pulled the boat up. The water had receded.

  “There is a big old birch tree there in the woods and it is hollow,” Blaise reported. “It has been struck by lightning and is broken. We can hide the furs there.”

  “Won’t squirrels or wood-mice get at them?”

  “We will put bark beneath and over them, and we shall not leave them there long.”

  “I hope not surely.”

  Blaise lifted a bale and started into the woods. Hugh, with another bale, was about to follow, when Blaise halted him.