COVERING HIS TRAIL
It was bitterly cold in the log-walled room at the back of the
settlement store where Gerald Mowbray sat by the red-hot stove. His
deerskin jacket and moccasins were much the worse for wear, and his face
was thin and darkened by the glare of the snow. For the past month he
had been traveling with a survey party through the rugged forest-belt of
Northern Ontario, living in the open in Arctic weather, until the
expedition had fallen back on the lonely settlement to get fresh
supplies.
All round the rude log-shacks, small, ragged pines, battered by the
wind, and blackened here and there by fire, rose from the deep snow that
softened the harsh contour of the rocky wilderness. This is one of the
coldest parts of Canada. The conifers that roll across it are generally
too small for milling, and its penetration is remarkably difficult, but
a silver vein accounted for the presence of a few hard-bitten miners.
Occasionally they ran some risk of starving when fresh snow delayed the
transport of provisions, and it was only at irregular intervals that a
mail reached them. An Indian mail-carrier had, however, arrived shortly
before the survey party, and Gerald had a letter in his hand, and a
Montreal newspaper lay beside him. The letter troubled him. He was
thankful to be left alone for a few minutes, for he had much to think
about.
Hardship and fatigue had no attractions for him, but he had grown tired
of the monotony of his life at the Grange, and as qualified surveyors
were not plentiful in the wilds, the authorities had been glad to obtain
the services of an engineer officer. Though he was only an assistant,
the pay was good, and he had thought it wise to place himself out of his
creditors' reach. Unfortunately, some of the more persistent had learned
where he had gone, and the letter contained a curt demand for the
settlement of an account. Gerald could not pay it, but the newspaper
brought a ray of hope. He had speculated with part of the money his
father had once given him to pay his debts, and the mining shares he
bought had turned out worthless. Now, however, they were unexpectedly
going up; it seemed that the company had at last tapped a vein of
promising ore. If he could hold out, he might be able to liquidate his
most pressing debts. But this creditor's demand was peremptory and he
could not see how he was to gain time. He wished the men whose harsh
voices reached him from the store would stop talking. They were rough
choppers, of whose society he had grown very tired; and the taciturn
surveyor was not a much better companion.
The surveyor came in before Gerald found a solution of his difficulties.
He was a big, gaunt man. Throwing off his ragged furs he sat down in a
broken chair and lighted his pipe.
"Thermometer's at minus fifty, but we must pull out at sun-up," he
remarked. "Now, as I have to run my corner-line as ordered and the grub
we've been able to get won't last long, I can't take all the boys and
hunt for that belt of farming land."
"Supposititious, isn't it?" Gerald suggested. "We've seen nothing to
indicate there being any soil up here that one could get a plowshare
into. Still, the authorities have rather liberal ideas of what could be
called cultivatable land."
"That's so," the surveyor agreed. "Where I was raised they used to say
that a bushman can get a crop wherever he can fire the seed among the
rocks with a shotgun. Anyway, the breeds and the Indians talk about a
good strip of alluvial bottom, and we've got to find out something about
it before we go back."
"It will be difficult to haul the stores and camp truck if you divide
the gang."
"Sure; but here's my plan." The surveyor opened a rather sketchy map. "I
take the sleds and follow the two sides of the triangle. I'll give you
the base, and two packers. Marching light, by compass, you'll join me
where the base-line meets the side; but you'll do no prospecting survey
unless you strike the alluvial bottom."
"What about provisions?"
"You can carry enough to see you through; the cache I made in advance is
within a few marches of where we meet."
It was not a task that appealed to Gerald. It would be necessary to
cross a trackless wilderness which only a few of the Hudson Bay
half-breeds knew anything about. He must sleep in the snow with an
insufficient camp outfit, and live on cut-down rations, with the risk of
starving if anything delayed him, because the weight he could transport
without a sledge was limited.
He would have refused to undertake the journey only that a half-formed
plan flashed into his mind.
"Suppose I miss you?" he suggested.
"Well," said the surveyor dryly, "that might mean trouble. You should
get there first; but I can't stop long if you're late, because we've got
to make the railroad while the grub holds out. Anyhow, I could leave you
rations for two or three marches in a cache, and by hustling you should
catch up."
Gerald agreed to this, and soon afterward he went to sleep on the floor.
It was early in the evening, but he knew that the next eight or nine
days' work would try him hard.
It was dark when the storekeeper wakened him, and after a hasty
breakfast he went out with the surveyor. Dawn was breaking, and there
was an ashy grayness in the east, but the sky was barred with clouds.
The black pines were slowly growing into shape against the faint glimmer
of the snow. The cold was piercing and Gerald shivered while the
surveyor gave him a few last directions; then he slung his heavy pack
upon his shoulders and set off down the unpaved street. There were
lights in the log shacks and once or twice somebody greeted him, but
after a few minutes the settlement faded behind and he and his
companions were alone among the tangled firs. No sound but the crunch of
snow beneath their big shoes broke the heavy silence; the small trees,
slanting drunkenly, were dim and indistinct, and the solitude was
impressive.
Gerald's lips were firmly set as he pushed ahead. Theoretically, his
task was simple; he had only to keep a fixed course and he must cut the
surveyor's line of march, but in practise there were difficulties. It
is not easy to travel straight in a rugged country where one is
continually forced aside by natural obstacles; nor can one correctly
allow for all the divergences. This, however, was not what troubled
Gerald, for the plan he had worked out since the previous night did not
include his meeting the surveyor. It was the smallness of the quantity
of provisions his party could transport that he was anxious about,
because he meant to make a much longer march than his superior had
directed.
His companions were strong, stolid bushmen, whose business it was to
carry the provisions and camp outfit. They knew nothing about
trigonometry; but they were at home in the wilds, and Gerald was glad
the weather threatened to prove cloudy. He did not want them to check
his course by the sun. Properly, it was northwest; and he marched in
that direction until it was unlikely that anybody from the settlement
would strike his trail; then he headed two points farther west, and,
seeing that the packers made no remark, presently diverged another
point.
Traveling was comparatively easy all day. Wind and fire had thinned the
bush, cleaning out dead trees and undergrowth, and the snow lay smooth
upon the outcropping rock. Here and there they struck a frozen creek
which offered a level road, and when dark came they had made an
excellent march. Gerald was glad of this, because all the food he could
save now would be badly needed before the journey was finished. For all
that, he felt anxious as he sat beside the camp-fire after his frugal
supper.
A bank of snow kept off the stinging wind; there was, fortunately, no
lack of fuel, and, sitting close to the pile of snapping branches, the
men were fairly warm; but the dark pines were wailing mournfully and
thick gloom encroached upon the narrow ring of light. The eddying smoke
leaped out of it and vanished with startling suddenness. Gerald's
shoulders ached from the weight of his pack, and the back of one leg was
sore. He must be careful of it, because he had a long way to go, and men
were sometimes lamed by snowshoe trouble.
The two packers sat, for the most part, smoking silently. Gerald now and
then gave them a pleasant word, but he did not wish their relations to
become friendly, as it was not advisable that they should ask him
questions about the march. Indeed, he shrank from thinking of it as he
listened to the savage wind in the pine-tops and glanced at the
surrounding darkness. The wilderness is daunting in winter, even to
those who know it best; but Gerald with his gambler's instincts was
willing to take a risk. If he went home with the surveyor, ruin awaited
him.
For a time he sat drowsily enjoying the rest and warmth, and then, lying
down on a layer of spruce-twigs, he went to sleep. But the cold wakened
him. One of the packers got up, grumbling, and threw more branches on
the fire, and Gerald went to sleep again.
Starting shortly before daylight, they were met by blinding snow, but
they struggled on all day across a rocky elevation. The snow clogged
their eyelashes and lashed their tingling cheeks until the pain was
nearly unbearable; still, that was better than feeling them sink into
dangerous insensibility. They must go on while progress was possible.
The loss of a day or two might prove fatal, and there was a chance of
their getting worse weather.
It overtook them two days later when they sat shivering in camp with the
snow flying past their heads and an icy blizzard snapping rotten
branches from the buffeted trees. Twigs hurtled about their ears; the
woods was filled with a roar like the sea; the smoke was blinding to lee
of the fire, and its heat could hardly reach them a yard to windward.
Gerald drank a quart of nearly boiling black tea, but he could not keep
warm. There was no feeling in his feet, and his hands were too numbed to
button his ragged coat, which had fallen open. When he tried to smoke,
his pipe was frozen, and as he crouched beneath the snow-bank he
wondered dully whether he should change his plans and face the worst his
creditors could do.
By altering his course northerly when he resumed the march he might
still strike the surveyor's line, but after another day or two it would
be too late. Still, he thought of his father's fury and the shares that
were bound to rise. If he were disowned, he must fall back upon
surveying for a livelihood. It was unthinkable that he should spend the
winter in the icy wilds, and the summer in portaging canoes over rocky
hills and dragging the measuring chain through mosquito haunted bush. He
could not see how he was to avoid exposure when Davies claimed his loan;
but something might turn up, and he was sanguine enough to be content if
he could put off the day of reckoning.
The blizzard continued the next morning and no one could leave camp;
indeed, Gerald imagined that death would have struck down the strongest
of them in an hour. But the wind fell at night, and when dawn broke
they set out again in Arctic frost. One could make good progress in the
calm air, though the glitter was blinding when the sun climbed the
cloudless sky as they followed a winding stream. Then a lake offered a
smooth path, and they had made a good march when dark fell.
In the night it grew cloudy and the temperature rose, and when they
started at daybreak they were hindered by loose, fresh snow. At noon
they stopped exhausted after covering a few miles; and the next day the
going was not much better, for they were forced to flounder through a
tangle of blown-down trees. It was only here and there that the pines
and spruces could find sufficient moisture among the rocks, and they
died and fell across each other in a dry summer.
On the seventh day after leaving the settlement the three men plodded
wearily through thin forest as the gloomy evening closed in. Their
shoulders were sore from the pack-straps, the backs of their legs ached
with swinging the big snowshoes, and all were hungry and moody.
Provisions were getting low, and they had been compelled to cut down
rations. Now the cold was Arctic, and a lowering, steel-gray sky showed
between the whitened tops of the trees. The packers had been anxiously
looking for blaze-marks all afternoon; and Gerald, knowing they would
not find them, felt his courage sink. He was numb with cold, and he
dully wondered whether he had taken too great a risk.
Presently one of the men, who had been searching some distance to the
right, joined his comrade. They spoke together and then turned back to
meet Gerald.
"Say, boss, isn't it time we struck the boys' tracks?" one asked.
"Yes," said Gerald, recognizing that much depended on how he handled the
situation. "We should have picked them up this morning."
The men were silent for a moment.
"Looks as if we'd got off our line," one of them then said resolutely.
"How were you heading?"
"Northwest, magnetic."
"No, sir. You were a piece to the west of that."
"You think so?"
The man laughed harshly.
"Sure! I was raised among the timber; guess I've broken too many trails
not to know where I'm going."
"Well," said Gerald in a confidential tone, "I didn't mention it before
because I didn't want to make you uneasy, but I'm afraid this compass is
unreliable. It hasn't been swiveling as it ought; oil frozen on the cap,
perhaps, or the card warped against the glass. I tried to adjust it once
or twice, but my fingers were too cold." He held it out awkwardly for
them to examine, and it dropped from his mittens. Clutching at it, he
lost his balance and crushed the compass beneath the wooden bow of his
shoe.
Then he stepped back with an exclamation, and the packer, dropping on
his knees, groped in the snow until he brought out the compass with its
case badly bent.
"You've fixed her for good this time; there's an old log where she
fell," he said; and he and his comrade waited in gloomy silence while
Gerald watched them.
They did not suspect him: the thing had passed for an accident; but
Gerald felt daunted by the deadly cold and silence of the bush. His
companions' faces were indistinct and their figures had lost their
sharpness; they looked shaggy and scarcely human in their ragged
skin-coats.
One of the packers suddenly threw down his load.
"We're going to camp right here and talk this thing out," he said, and
taking off his net shoe began to scrape up the snow.
Half an hour later they sat beside a snapping fire, eating morsels of
salt pork and flinty bannocks out of a frying-pan, with a black pannikin
of tea between them. The smoke went straight up; now and then a mass of
snow fell from the bending needles with a soft thud, though there was
scarcely a breath of wind.
"I reckon we've been going about west-northwest since we left the
settlement," one of the men said to Gerald. "Where does that put you?"
"Some way to the south of where I meant to be. Twenty degrees off our
line is a big angle; you can see how it lengthens the base we've been
working along while McCarthy makes his two sides. That means we've lost
most of our advantage in cutting across the corner. Then we were held up
once or twice, and we'll probably be behind instead of ahead of him at
the intersection of the lines. Tell me the distances you think we have
made."
After some argument, they agreed upon them, and Gerald drew a rude
triangle in the snow, though its base stopped short of joining one side.
"If you're right about course and distance, our position's somewhere
here," he said, indicating the end of the broken line.
This placed the responsibility for any mistake upon his companions; but
one of them had a suggestion.
"If we head a few points north, we'll certainly cut McCarthy's track."
"Yes; but we'd be behind him and he can't wait."
"Then if we stick to the line we're on, we'll join."
"If we run it far enough, but we'll have to go a long way first. It's
difficult to catch a man who's marching as fast as you are when you have
to converge at a small angle upon his track."
This was obvious as they looked at the diagram.
"What are you going to do about it?" one of the packers asked.
Gerald hesitated, because his plan might daunt them; moreover he must be
careful not to rouse their suspicion.
"We want food first of all, and we'll have to sacrifice a day or two in
finding the cache. To do so, we'll cut McCarthy's line; this won't be
hard if he's blazed it."
"You'll follow him after you find the grub?"
"No," said Gerald, "I don't think so. He can't leave us much, and we'd
probably use it all before we caught him up. The best thing we can do is
to strike nearly north for the Hudson Bay post. We might get there
before the food runs out."
There was silence for a few moments, and he waited for the others to
speak, for he had carefully ascertained the position of the factory
before he left the settlement. If they missed the remote outpost, or did
not get there soon enough, they could not escape starvation.
"Well," said the first packer, "I guess that's our only plan, but we'll
certainly have to hustle. Better get to sleep now. There'll be a moon in
the early morning, and we'll pull out then."
Gerald made a sign of agreement. His companions had taken the direction
of affairs into their own hands, and he was glad to leave it to them. It
relieved him of responsibility, and they were not likely to blunder
where error would be fatal. When they reached the factory he must find
an excuse for remaining until McCarthy arrived at the settlements and
reported the party missing. It would be mentioned in the papers, a
relief expedition might be despatched, and Gerald's creditors would wait
until the uncertainty about his fate was dissipated. He meant to delay
his reappearance as long as possible; but he knew there was a
possibility of its never being made. One took many chances in the frozen
North.