THE WATCHER IN THE PASS.
Thenceforward, as the forest folded them deeper, John found a
wonderful solace in Bateese's company, although the two seldom
exchanged a word unless alone together, and after a day or two
Barboux took a whim to carry off the little boatman on his
expeditions and leave Muskingon in charge of the camp. He pretended
that John, as he mended of his wound, needed a stalwart fellow for
sentry; but the real reason was malice. For some reason he hated
Muskingon; and knowing Muskingon's delight in every form of the
chase, carefully thwarted it. On the other hand, it was fun to drag
off Bateese, who loved to sit by his boat and hated the killing of
animals.
"If I give him my parole," suggested John, "he will have no excuse,
and Muskingon can go in your place."
But to this Bateese would not listen. So the wounded were left, on
hunting days, in Muskingon's charge; and with him, too, John
contrived to make friends. The young Indian had a marvellous gift of
silence, and would sit brooding for hours. Perhaps he nursed his
hatred of Barboux; perhaps he distrusted the journey--for he and
Menehwehna, Ojibways both, were hundreds of miles from their own
country, which lay at the back of Lake Huron. Now and again,
however, he would unbend and teach John a few words of the Ojibway
language; or would allow him, as a fellow-sportsman, to sit by the
water's edge and study the Indian tricks of fishing.
There was one in particular which fairly amazed John. He had crawled
after Muskingon on his belly--though not understanding the need of
this caution--to the edge of a rock overhanging a deep pool.
The Indian peered over, unloosed his waist-belt, and drew off his
scarlet breeches as if for a bathe. But no, he did not intend this--
at least, not just yet. He wound the breeches about his right arm
and dipped it cautiously, bending over the ledge until his whole body
from the waist overhung the water, and it was a wonder how his thighs
kept their grip. Then, in a moment, up flew his heels and over he
soused. John, peering down as the swirl cleared, saw only a
red-brown back heaving below; and as the seconds dragged by, and the
back appeared to heave more and more faintly, was plucking off his
own clothes to dive and rescue Muskingon from the rocks, when a pair
of hands shot up, holding aloft an enormous, bleeding cat-fish, and
hitched him deftly on the gaff which John hurried to lower. But the
fish had scarcely a kick left in him, Muskingon having smashed his
head against the crevices of the rock.
Indeed Barboux had this excuse for leaving Muskingon in camp by the
river--that there was always a string of fish ready before nightfall
when he and Menehwehna returned. John, stupefied through the
daylight hours, always seemed to awake with the lighting of the
camp-fire. This at any rate was the one scene he afterwards saw most
clearly, in health and in the delirium of fever--the fire; the ring
of faces; beyond the faces a sapling strung with fish like short
broad-swords reflecting the flames' glint; a stouter sapling laid
across two forked boughs, and from it a dead deer suspended, with
white filmed eyes, and the firelight warm on its dun flank; behind,
the black deep of the forest, sounded, if at all, by the cry of a
lonely wolf. These sights he recalled, with the scent of green fir
burning and the smart of it on his lashes.
But by day he went with senses lulled, having forgotten all desire of
escape or return. These five companions were all his world. Was he
a prisoner? Was Barboux his enemy? The words had no meaning.
They were all in the same boat, and "France" and "England" had become
idle names. If he considered Barboux's gun, it was as a provider of
game, or a protector against any possible foe from the woods.
But the woods kept their sinister silence.
Once, indeed, at the head of a portage, they came upon a still reach
of water with a strip of clearing on its farther bank--_bois brule_
Bateese called it; but the fire, due to lightning no doubt, must have
happened many years before, for spruces of fair growth rose behind
the alders on the swampy shore, and tall wickup plants and tussocks
of the blueberry choked the interspaces. A cool breeze blew down the
waterway, as through a funnel, from the uplands ahead, and the falls
below sang deafeningly in the _voyageurs'_ ears as they launched
their boat.
Suddenly Menehwehna touched Barboux by the elbow. His ear had caught
the crackling of a twig amid the uproar. John, glancing up as the
sergeant lifted his piece, spied the antlers of a bull-moose
spreading above an alder-clump across the stream. The tall brute had
come down through the _bois brule_ to drink, or to browse on the
young spruce-buds, which there grew tenderer than in the thick
forest; and for a moment moose and men gazed full at each other in
equal astonishment.
Barboux would have fired at once had not Menehwehna checked him with
a few rapid words. With a snort of disgust the moose turned slowly,
presenting his flank, and crashed away through the undergrowth as the
shot rang after him. Bateese and Muskingon had the canoe launched in
a second, and the whole party clambered in and paddled across.
But before they reached the bank the beast's hoofs could be heard
drumming away on the ridge beyond the swamp and the branches snapping
as he parted them.
Barboux cursed his luck. The two Indians maintained that the moose
had been hit. At length Muskingon, who had crossed the swamp, found
a splash of blood among the mosses, and again another on the leaves
of a wickup plant a rod or two farther on the trail. The sergeant,
hurrying to inspect these traces, plunged into liquid mud up to his
knees, and was dragged out in the worst of tempers by John, who had
chosen to follow without leave. Bateese and McQuarters remained with
the canoe.
Each in his own fashion, then, the trackers crossed the swamp,
and soon were hunting among a network of moose-trails, which
criss-crossed one another through the burnt wood. John, aware of his
incompetence, contented himself with watching the Indians as they
picked up a new trail, followed it for a while, then patiently harked
back to the last spot of blood and worked off on a new line. Barboux
had theories of his own, which they received with a galling silence.
It galled him at length to fury, and he was lashing them with curses
which made John wonder at their forbearance, when a call from the
river silenced him.
It came from Bateese. Bateese, who cared nothing for sport, had
paddled up-stream to inspect the next reach of the river, and there,
at the first ford, had found the moose lying dead and warm, with the
ripple running over his flank and his gigantic horns high out of the
water like a snag.
From oaths Barboux now turned incontinently to boasting. This was
his first moose, but he--he, Joachim Barboux, was a sportsman from
his birth. He still contended, but complacently and without rancour,
that had the Indians taken up the trail he had advised from the first
it would have led them straight to the ford. They heard him and went
on skinning the moose, standing knee deep in the bloody water, for
the body was too heavy to be dragged ashore without infinite labour.
Menehwehna found and handed him the bullet, which had glanced across
and under the shoulder-blade, and flattened itself against one of the
ribs on the other side. Barboux pocketed it in high good humour; and
when their work was done--an ugly work, from which Bateese kept his
eyes averted--a steak or two cut out, with the tongue, and the
carcass left behind to rot in the stream--he praised them for brave
fellows. They listened as indifferently as they had listened to his
revilings.
This shot which slew the moose was the last fired on the upward
journey. They had followed the stream up to the hill ridges, where
rapid succeeded rapid; and two days of all but incessant portage
brought them out above the forest, close beneath the naked ridges
where but a few pines straggled.
Bateese pointed out a path by following which, as he promised,
they would find a river to carry them down into the St. Lawrence.
He unfolded a scheme. There were trees beside that farther stream--
elm-trees, for example--blown down and needing only to be stripped;
his own eyes had seen them. Portage up and over the ridge would be
back-breaking work. Let the canoe, therefore, be abandoned--hidden
somewhere by the headwaters--and let the Indians hurry ahead and rig
up a light craft to carry the party downstream. They had axes to
strip the bark and thongs to close it at bow and stern. What more
was needed? As for the loss of his canoe, he understood the
sergeant's to be State business, requiring dispatch; and if so,
M. the Intendant at Montreal would recompense him. Nay, he himself
might be travelling back this way before long, and then how handy to
pick up a canoe on this side of the hills!
The sergeant _bravo_-ed and clapped the little man on his back,
drawing tears of pain. The canoe was hauled up and stowed in a damp
corner of the undergrowth under a mat of pine-branches, well screened
from the sun's rays, and the travellers began to trudge on foot, in
two divisions. The Indians led, with John and Barboux, the latter
being minded to survey the country with them from the top of the
ridge and afterwards allow them to push on alone. He took John to
keep him company after their departure, and because the two prisoners
could not well be left in charge of Bateese, who besides had his
hands full with the baggage. So Bateese and McQuarters toiled
behind, the little man grunting and shifting his load from time to
time with a glance to assure himself that McQuarters was holding out;
now and then slackening the pace, but still, as he plodded, measuring
the slopes ahead with his eye, comparing progress with the sun's
march, and timing himself to reach the ridge at nightfall.
Barboux had proposed to camp there, on the summit. The Indians were
to push forward through the darkness.
Meanwhile John stepped ahead with Barboux and the Indians.
His spirits rose as he climbed above the forest; the shadow which had
lain on them slipped away and melted in the clear air. Here and
there he stumbled, his knees reminding him suddenly of his weakness;
but health was coming back to him, and he drank in long pure draughts
of it. It was good, after all, to be alive and young. A sudden
throbbing in the air brought him to a halt; it came from a tiny
humming-bird poising itself over a bush-tufted rock on his right.
As it sang on, careless of his presence, John watched the
music bubbling and trembling within its flame-coloured throat.
He, too, felt ready to sing for no other reason than pure delight.
He understood the ancient gods and their laughter; he smiled down
with them upon the fret of the world and mortal fate. Father Jove,
_optimus maximus_, was a grand fellow, a good Catholic in spite of
misconception, and certainly immortal; god and gentleman both, large,
lusty, superlative, tolerant, debonair. As for misconception, from
this height Father Jove could overlook centuries of it at ease--the
Middle Ages, for instance. Everyone had been more or less cracked in
the Middle Ages--cracked as fiddles. Likely enough Jove had made the
Middle Ages, to amuse himself. . . .
As the climb lulled his brain, John played with these idle fancies.
Barboux, being out of condition and scant of breath, conversed very
little. The Indians kept silence as usual.
The sun was dropping behind the cleft of the pass as they reached it,
and the rocky walls opened in the haze of its yellow beams. So once
more John came to the gate of a new world.
Menehwehna led, Barboux followed, with John close behind, and
Muskingon bringing up the rear. They were treading the actual pass,
and Menehwehna, rounding an angle of the cliff, had been lost to
sight for a moment, when John heard a low guttural cry--whether of
surprise or warning he could not tell.
He ran forward at Barboux's heels. A dozen paces ahead of the
Indian, reclining against the rock-face on a heap of _scree_, in the
very issue of the pass, with leagues of sunlight beyond him and the
basin of the plain at his feet, sat a man.
He did not move; and at first this puzzled them, for he lay dark
against the sun, and its rays shone in their eyes.
But Menehwehna stepped close up to him and pointed. Then they saw,
and understood.
The man was dead; dead and scalped--a horrible sight.