Produced by Roger Frank and Sue Clark, Suzanne Shell, Björn Lijnema
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[Illustration: The canoe sped out into the gloom.]
THE GOLD HUNTERS
A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds
BY
JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD
1909
To the sweet-voiced, dark-eyed little half-Cree maiden
at Lac-Bain, who is the Minnetaki of this story; and to "Teddy" Brown,
guide and trapper, and loyal comrade of the author in many of his
adventures, this book is affectionately dedicated.
CHAPTER I
THE PURSUIT OF THE HUDSON BAY MAIL
The deep hush of noon hovered over the vast solitude of Canadian
forest. The moose and caribou had fed since early dawn, and were
resting quietly in the warmth of the February sun; the lynx was curled
away in his niche between the great rocks, waiting for the sun to
sink farther into the north and west before resuming his marauding
adventures; the fox was taking his midday slumber and the restless
moose-birds were fluffing themselves lazily in the warm glow that was
beginning to melt the snows of late winter.
It was that hour when the old hunter on the trail takes off his pack,
silently gathers wood for a fire, eats his dinner and smokes his pipe,
eyes and ears alert;--that hour when, if you speak above a whisper, he
will say to you,
"Sh-h-h-h! Be quiet! You can't tell how near we are to game.
Everything has had its morning feed and is lying low. The game won't
be moving again for an hour or two, and there may be moose or caribou
a gunshot ahead. We couldn't hear them--now!"
And yet, after a time one thing detached itself from this lifeless
solitude. At first it was nothing more than a spot on the sunny side
of a snow-covered ridge. Then it moved, stretched itself like a dog,
with its forefeet extended far to the front and its shoulders hunched
low--and was a wolf.
A wolf is a heavy sleeper after a feast. A hunter would have said that
this wolf had gorged itself the night before. Still, something had
alarmed it. Faintly there came to this wilderness outlaw that most
thrilling of all things to the denizens of the forest--the scent of
man. He came down the ridge with the slow indifference of a full-fed
animal, and with only a half of his old cunning; trotted across the
softening snow of an opening and stopped where the man-scent was so
strong that he lifted his head straight up to the sky and sent out to
his comrades in forest and plain the warning signal that he had struck
a human trail. A wolf will do this, and no more, in broad day. At
night he might follow, and others would join him in the chase; but
with daylight about him he gives the warning and after a little slinks
away from the trail.
But something held this wolf. There was a mystery in the air which
puzzled him. Straight ahead there ran the broad, smooth trail of a
sled and the footprints of many dogs. Sometime within the last hour
the "dog mail" from Wabinosh House had passed that way on its long
trip to civilization. But it was not the swift passage of man and
dog that held the wolf rigidly alert, ready for flight--and yet
hesitating. It was something from the opposite direction, from the
North, out of which the wind was coming. First it was sound; then it
was scent--then both, and the wolf sped in swift flight up the sunlit
ridge.
In the direction from which the alarm came there stretched a small
lake, and on its farther edge, a quarter of a mile away, there
suddenly darted out from the dense rim of balsam forest a jumble of
dogs and sledge and man. For a few moments the mass of animals seemed
entangled in some kind of wreck or engaged in one of those fierce
battles in which the half-wild sledge-dogs of the North frequently
engage, even on the trail. Then there came the sharp, commanding cries
of a human voice, the cracking of a whip, the yelping of the
huskies, and the disordered team straightened itself and came like a
yellowish-gray streak across the smooth surface of the lake. Close
beside the sledge ran the man. He was tall, and thin, and even at that
distance one would have recognized him as an Indian. Hardly had the
team and its wild-looking driver progressed a quarter of the distance
across the lake when there came a shout farther back, and a second
sledge burst into view from out of the thick forest. Beside this
sledge, too, a driver was running with desperate speed.
The leader now leaped upon his sledge, his voice rising in sharp cries
of exhortation, his whip whirling and cracking over the backs of his
dogs. The second driver still ran, and thus gained upon the team
ahead, so that when they came to the opposite side of the lake, where
the wolf had sent out the warning cry to his people, the twelve dogs
of the two teams were almost abreast.
Quickly there came a slackening in the pace set by the leading dog of
each team, and half a minute later the sledges stopped. The dogs flung
themselves down in their harness, panting, with gaping jaws, the snow
reddening under their bleeding feet. The men, too, showed signs of
terrible strain. The elder of these, as we have said, was an Indian,
pure breed of the great Northern wilderness. His companion was a youth
who had not yet reached his twenties, slender, but with the strength
and agility of an animal in his limbs, his handsome face bronzed by
the free life of the forest, and in his veins a plentiful strain of
that blood which made his comrade kin.
In those two we have again met our old friends Mukoki and Wabigoon:
Mukoki, the faithful old warrior and pathfinder, and Wabigoon, the
adventurous half-Indian son of the factor of Wabinosh House. Both
were at the height of some great excitement. For a few moments, while
gaining breath, they gazed silently into each other's face.
"I'm afraid--we can't--catch them, Muky," panted the younger. "What do
you think--"
He stopped, for Mukoki had thrown himself on his knees in the snow a
dozen feet in front of the teams. From that point there ran straight
ahead of them the trail of the dog mail. For perhaps a full minute he
examined the imprints of the dogs' feet and the smooth path made
by the sledge. Then he looked up, and with one of those inimitable
chuckles which meant so much when coming from him, he said:
"We catch heem--sure! See--sledge heem go _deep_. Both ride. Big load
for dogs. We catch heem--sure!"
"But our dogs!" persisted Wabigoon, his face still filled with doubt.
"They're completely bushed, and my leader has gone lame. See how
they're bleeding!"
The huskies, as the big wolfish sledge-dogs of the far North are
called, were indeed in a pitiable condition. The warm sun had weakened
the hard crust of the snow until at every leap the feet of the animals
had broken through, tearing and wounding themselves on its ragged,
knife-like edges. Mukoki's face became more serious as he carefully
examined the teams.
"Bad--ver' bad," he grunted. "We fool--fool!"
"For not bringing dog shoes?" said Wabigoon. "I've got a dozen shoes
on my sledge--enough for three dogs. By George--" He leaped quickly to
his toboggan, caught up the dog moccasins, and turned again to the old
Indian, alive with new excitement. "We've got just one chance, Muky!"
he half shouted.
"Pick out the strongest dogs. One of us must go on alone!"
The sharp commands of the two adventurers and the cracking of Mukoki's
whip brought the tired and bleeding animals to their feet. Over the
pads of three of the largest and strongest were drawn the buckskin
moccasins, and to these three, hitched to Wabigoon's sledge, were
added six others that appeared to have a little endurance still left
in them. A few moments later the long line of dogs was speeding
swiftly over the trail of the Hudson Bay mail, and beside the sled ran
Wabigoon.
Thus this thrilling pursuit of the dog mail had continued since early
dawn. For never more than a minute or two at a time had there been a
rest. Over mountain and lake, through dense forest and across barren
plain man and dog had sped without food or drink, snatching up
mouthfuls of snow here and there--always their eyes upon the fresh
trail of the flying mail. Even the fierce huskies seemed to understand
that the chase had become a matter of life and death, and that they
were to follow the trail ahead of them, ceaselessly and without
deviation, until the end of their masters was accomplished. The human
scent was becoming stronger and stronger in their wolf-like nostrils.
Somewhere on that trail there were men, and other dogs, and they were
to overtake them!
Even now, bleeding and stumbling as they ran, the blood of battle, the
excitement of the chase, was hot within them. Half-wolf, half-dog,
their white fangs snarling as stronger whiffs of the man-smell came to
them, they were filled with the savage desperation of the youth who
urged them on. The keen instinct of the wild pointed out their road to
them, and they needed no guiding hand. Faithful until the last they
dragged on their burden, their tongues lolling farther from their
jaws, their hearts growing weaker, their eyes bloodshot until they
glowed like red balls. Now and then, when he had run until his
endurance was gone, Wabigoon would fling himself upon the sledge to
regain breath and rest his limbs, and the dogs would tug harder,
scarce slackening their speed under the increased weight. Once a huge
moose crashed through the forest a hundred paces away, but the huskies
paid no attention to it; a little farther on a lynx, aroused from
his sun bath on a rock, rolled like a great gray ball across the
trail,--the dogs cringed but for an instant at the sight of this
mortal enemy of theirs, and then went on.
Slower and slower grew the pace. The rearmost dog was now no more than
a drag, and reaching a keen-edged knife far out over the end of the
sledge Wabi severed his breast strap and the exhausted animal rolled
out free beside the trail. Two others of the team were pulling scarce
a pound, another was running lame, and the trail behind was spotted
with pads of blood. Each minute added to the despair that was growing
in the youth's face. His eyes, like those of his faithful dogs, were
red from the terrible strain of the race, his lips were parted, his
legs, as tireless as those of a red deer, were weakening under him.
More and more frequently he flung himself upon the sledge, panting
for breath, and shorter and shorter became his intervals of running
between these periods of rest. The end of the chase was almost at
hand. They could not overtake the Hudson Bay mail!
With a final cry of encouragement Wabi sprang from the sledge and
plunged along at the head of the dogs, urging them on in one last
supreme effort. Ahead of them was a break in the forest trail and
beyond that, mile upon mile, stretched the vast white surface of Lake
Nipigon. And far out in the glare of sun and snow there moved an
object, something that was no more than a thin black streak to
Wabi's blinded eyes but which he knew was the dog mail on its way to
civilization. He tried to shout, but the sound that fell from his lips
could not have been heard a hundred paces away; his limbs tottered
beneath him; his feet seemed suddenly to turn into lead, and he sank
helpless into the snow. The faithful pack crowded about him licking
his face and hands, their hot breath escaping between their gaping
jaws like hissing steam For a few moments it seemed to the Indian
youth that day had suddenly turned into night. His eyes closed, the
panting of the dogs came to him more and more faintly, as if they were
moving away; he felt himself sinking, sinking slowly down into utter
blackness.
Desperately he fought to bring himself back into life. There was one
more chance--just one! He heard the dogs again, he felt their tongues
upon his hands and face, and he dragged himself to his knees, groping
out with his hands like one who had gone blind. A few feet away was
the sledge, and out there, far beyond his vision now, was the Hudson
Bay mail!
Foot by foot he drew himself out from among the tangle of dogs. He
reached the sledge, and his fingers gripped convulsively at the cold
steel of his rifle. One more chance! One more chance! The words--the
thought--filled his brain, and he raised the rifle to his shoulder,
pointing its muzzle up to the sky so that he would not harm the dogs.
And then, once, twice, five times he fired into the air, and at the
end of the fifth shot he drew fresh cartridges from his belt,
and fired again and again, until the black streak far out in the
wilderness of ice and snow stopped in its progress--and turned back.
And still the sharp signals rang out again and again, until the barrel
of Wabi's rifle grew hot, and his cartridge belt was empty.
Slowly the gloom cleared away before his eyes. He heard a shout, and
staggered to his feet, stretching out his arms and calling a name as
the dog mail stopped half a hundred yards from his own team.
With something between a yell of joy and a cry of astonishment a youth
of about Wabi's age sprang from the second sleigh and ran to the
Indian boy, catching him in his arms as for a second time, he sank
fainting upon the snow.
"Wabi--what's the matter?" he cried. "Are you hurt? Are you--"
For a moment Wabigoon struggled to overcome his weakness.
"Rod--" he whispered, "Rod--Minnetaki--"
His lips ceased to move and he sank heavily in his companion's arms.
"What is it, Wabi? Quick! Speak!" urged the other. His face had grown
strangely white, his voice trembled. "What about--Minnetaki?"
Again the Indian youth fought to bring himself back to life. His words
came faintly,
"Minnetaki--has been captured--by--the--Woongas!"
Then even his breath seemed to stop, and he lay like one dead.