UP THE OMBABIKA
For a few moments after Mukoki's remarkable discovery the three stood
speechless. Wabigoon stared as if he could not bring himself to
believe the evidence of his eyes. Rod was quivering with the old,
thrilling excitement that had first come to him in the cabin where
they had found the skeletons and the buckskin bag with its precious
nuggets, and Mukoki's face was a study. The thin, long fingers which
held the two pieces of the gold bullet trembled, which was an unusual
symptom in the old pathfinder. It was he who broke the silence, and
his words gave utterance to the question which had rushed into the
heads of the two young hunters.
"Who shoot gold bullets at bear?"
And to this question there was, for the time, absolutely no answer. To
tell who shot that bullet was impossible. But why was it used?
Wabigoon had taken the parts of the yellow ball and was weighing them
in the palm of his hand.
"It weighs an ounce," he declared.
"Twenty dollars' worth of gold!" gasped Rod, as if he lacked breath
to express himself. "Who in the wide world is shooting twenty dollar
bullets at bear?" he cried more excitedly, repeating Mukoki's question
of a minute before.
He, too, weighed the yellow pellets in his hand.
The puzzled look had gone out of Mukoki's face. Again the battle-scarred
old warrior wore the stoic mask of his race, which only now and then is
lifted for an instant by some sudden and unexpected happening. Behind
that face, immobile, almost expressionless, worked a mind alive to every
trick and secret of the vast solitudes, and even before his young
comrades had gained the use of their tongues he was, in his savage
imagination, traveling swiftly back over the trail of the monster bear
to the gun that had fired the golden bullet. Wabigoon understood him,
and watched him eagerly.
"What do you think of it, Muky?"
"Man shoot powder and ball gun, not cartridge," replied Mukoki slowly.
"Old gun. Strange; ver' strange!"
"A muzzle loader!" said Wabi.
The Indian nodded.
"Had powder, no lead. Got hungry; used gold."
Eight words had told the story, or at least enough of it to clear away
a part of the cloud of mystery, but the other part still remained.
Who had fired the bullet, _and where had the gold come from?_
"He must have struck it rich," said Wabi "else would he have a chunk
of gold like that?"
"Where that come from--more, much more," agreed Mukoki shortly.
"Do you suppose--" began Rod. There was a curious thrill in his voice,
and he paused, as if scarce daring to venture the rest of what he had
meant to say. "Do you suppose--somebody has found--our gold?"
Mukoki and Wabigoon stared at him as if he had suddenly exploded a
mine. Then Wabi turned and looked silently at the old Indian. Not
a word was spoken. Silently Rod drew something from his pocket,
carefully wrapped in a bit of cloth.
"You remember I kept this little nugget from my share in the buckskin
bag, intending to have a scarf-pin made of it," he explained. "When I
took my course in geology and mineralogy I learned that, if one had
half a dozen specimens of gold, each from a different mine, the
chances were about ten to one that no two of them would be exactly
alike in coloring. Now--"
He exposed the nugget, and made a fresh cut in it with his knife, as
Mukoki had done with the yellow bullet. Then the two gleaming surfaces
were compared.
One glance was sufficient.
The gold was the same!
Wabi drew back, uttering something under his breath, his eyes gleaming
darkly. Rod's face had suddenly turned a shade whiter, and Mukoki, not
understanding the mysteries of mineralogy, stared at the youth in mute
suspense.
"Somebody has found our gold!" cried Wabi, almost savagely.
"We are not sure," interrupted Rod. "We know only that the evidence is
very suspicious. The rock formation throughout this country is almost
identically the same, deep trap on top, with slate beneath, and for
that reason it is very possible that gold found right in this locality
would be of exactly the same appearance as gold found two hundred
miles from here. Only--it's suspicious," Rod concluded.
"Man probably dead," consoled Mukoki. "No lead--hungry--shoot bear an'
no git heem. Mebby starve!"
"The poor devil!" exclaimed Wabigoon. "We've been too selfish to give
a thought to that, Rod. Of course he was hungry, or he wouldn't have
used gold for bullets. And he didn't get this bear! By George--"
"I wish he'd got him," said Rod simply.
Somehow Mukoki's words sent a flush into his face. There came to him,
suddenly, a mental picture of that possible tragedy in the wilderness:
the starving man, his last hopeless molding of a golden bullet, the
sight of the monster bear, the shot, and after that the despair and
suffering and slow death of the man who had fired it.
"I wish he'd got it," he repeated. "We have plenty of grub."
Mukoki was already at work skinning the bear, and Rod and Wabigoon
unsheathed their knives and joined him.
"Wound 'bout fi', six month old," said the Indian. "Shot just before
snow."
"When there wasn't a berry in the woods for a starving man to eat,"
added Wabi. "Well, here's hoping he found something, Rod."
An hour later the three gold seekers returned to their canoe laden
with the choicest of the bear meat, and the animal's skin, which was
immediately stretched between two trees, high up out of the reach of
depredating animals. Rod gazed at it proudly.
"We'll be sure and get it when we come back, won't we?"
"Sure," replied Wabi.
"It will be safe?"
"As safe as though it were at home."
"Unless somebody comes along and steals it," added Rod.
Wabi was busy unloading certain necessary articles from the canoe, but
he ceased his work to look at Rod.
"Steal!" he cried in astonishment.
Mukoki, too, had heard Rod's remark and was listening.
"Rod," continued Wabigoon quietly, "that is one thing we don't have up
here. Our great big glorious North doesn't know the word thief, except
when it is applied to a Woonga. If a white hunter came along here
to-morrow, and found that hide stretched so low that the animals were
getting at it, he would nail it higher for us. An Indian, if he camped
here, would build his fire so that the sparks wouldn't strike it. Rod,
up here, where we don't know civilization, we're honest!"
"But down in the States," said Rod, "the Indians steal."
The words slipped from him. The next instant he would have given
anything to have been able to recall them. Mukoki had grown a little
more tense in his attitude.
"That's because white men have lived so much among them, white men who
are called civilized," answered the young scion of Wabinosh House, his
eyes growing bright. "White blood makes thieves. Pardon me for saying
it, Rod, but it does, at least among Indians. But our white blood
up here is different from yours. It's the same blood that's in our
Indians, every drop of it honest, loyal to its friends, and it runs
red and strong with the love of this great wilderness. There are
exceptions, of course, as you have seen in the Woongas, who are an
outlaw race. But we are honest, and Mukoki there, if he were dying of
cold, wouldn't steal a skin to save himself. An ordinary Indian might
take it, if he were dying for want of it, but not unless he had a gun
to leave in its place!"
"I didn't mean to say what I did," said Rod. "Oh, I wish I were one
of you! I love this big wilderness, and everything in it, and it's
glorious to hear you say what you do!"
"You are one of us," cried Wabi, gripping his hand.
That evening, after they had finished their supper and the three were
gathered about the fire, Wabigoon said:
"Muky could tell you one reason why the Indians of the North are
honest if he wanted to, Rod. But he won't, so I will. There was once a
tribe in the country of Mukoki's fore-fathers, along the Makoki River,
which empties into the Albany, whose men were great thieves, and who
stole from one another. No man's snare was safe from his neighbor,
fights and killings were of almost daily occurrence, and the chief
of the tribe was the greatest thief of all, and of course escaped
punishment. This chief loved to set his own snares, and one day he was
enraged to find that one of his tribe had been so bold as to set a
snare within a few inches of his own, and in the trail of the same
animal. He determined on meting out a terrible punishment, and waited.
"While he was waiting a rabbit ran into the snare of his rival.
Picking up a stick he approached to kill the game, when suddenly there
seemed to pass a white mist before his eyes, and when he looked again
there was no rabbit, but the most wonderful creature he had ever
beheld in the form of man, and he knew that it was the Great Spirit,
and fell upon his face. And a great voice came to him, as if rolling
from far beyond the most distant mountains, and it told him that the
forests and streams of the red man's heaven were closed to him and his
people, that in the hunting-grounds that came after death there was no
place for thieves.
"'Go to your people,' he said, 'and tell them this. Tell them that
from this day on, moon upon moon, until the end of time, must they
live like brothers, setting their snares side by side without war, to
escape the punishment that hovers over them.'
"And the chief told his people this," finished Wabi, "and from that
hour there was no more thievery in the land. And because the Great
Spirit came in the form he did the rabbit is the good luck animal of
the Crees and Chippewayans of the far North, and wherever the snows
fall deep, men set their traps side by side to this day, and do not
rob."
Rod had listened with glowing eyes.
"It's glorious!" he repeated. "It's glorious, if it's true!"
"It is true," said Wabi. "In all this great country between here and
the Barren Lands, where the musk-ox lives, there is not one Indian in
a hundred who would steal another Indian's trap, or the game in it.
It is one of the understood laws of the North that every hunter shall
have his 'trap line,' or 'run,' and it is not courtesy for another
trapper to encroach upon it; but if he should, and he should lay a
trap close beside another's, it would not be wrong, for the law of the
Great Spirit is greater than the law of man. Why, last winter even the
outlaw Woongas made no effort to steal our traps, though they thirsted
for our lives!"
"Mukoki," said Rod, rising, "I want to shake hands with you before I
go to bed. I'm learning--fast. I wish I were half Indian!"
The next morning the journey up the Ombabika was resumed, and a
little more of anxiety was now mingled with the enthusiasm of the
adventurers. For no one of them could relieve himself of the possible
significance of the gold bullet, the fear that their treasure had been
discovered by another. Wabi regained his confidence first.
"I don't believe it!" he exclaimed at last. Without questioning, the
others knew to what he referred. "I don't believe that our gold
has been found. It is in the heart of the wildest country on the
continent, and surely if such a rich find had been made we would have
heard something about it at Wabinosh House or Kenegami, which are the
nearest points of supply."
"Or, if it was found, the discoverer is dead," added Rod.
"Yes."
In the stern, Mukoki nodded and grunted his conviction.
"Dead," he repeated.
The Ombabika had now become narrow and violent. Against its swift
current the canoe made but little headway, and at noon Mukoki
announced that the river journey was at an end. For a few moments Rod
did not recognize where they had landed. Then he gave a sudden cry of
glad surprise.
"Why, this is where we had supper that night after our terrible
adventure on the river last winter," he exclaimed.
From far off there came faintly to his ears a low, rumbling thunder.
"Listen! That's the river rushing through the break in the mountain
where we walked the edge of the precipice!"
Wabi shrugged his shoulders at the memory of that fearful night and
its desperate race to escape from the Woonga country.
"We've got to do the same thing again, only this time it will be in
daylight."
"Long portage," said Mukoki. "Six mile. Carry everything."
"Until we reach the little creek in the plains beyond the mountain,
where you shot the caribou?" asked Rod.
"Yes," replied Wabigoon. "That little creek will now be a pretty husky
stream, and by hard work we can paddle up it until we come within
about eight miles of our old camp at the head of the chasm, where we
found the skeletons and the map."
"And from that point we shall have to carry our canoe and supplies
to the creek in the chasm," finished Rod. "And then--hurrah for the
gold!"
"Mak' old camp on mountain by night," said Mukoki.
Wabi broke into a happy laugh and thumped Rod on the back.
"Remember the big lynx you shot, Rod, and thought it was a Woonga, and
had us all frightened out of our wits?" he cried.
Rod colored at the memory of his funny adventure, which was thrilling
enough at the time, and began assisting Mukoki in unloading the canoe.
Two hours were taken for dinner and rest, and then the young hunters
shouldered their canoe while Mukoki hurried on ahead of them, weighted
with a half of their supplies. Every step now brought the thunder of
the torrent rushing through the mountain more clearly to their ears,
and they had not progressed more than a mile when they were compelled
to shout to make each other hear. On their right the wall of the
mountain closed in rapidly, and as they stumbled with their burden
over a mass of huge boulders the two boys saw just ahead of them the
narrow trail at the edge of the precipice.
At its beginning they rested their canoe. On one side of them, a dozen
yards away, the face of the mountain rose sheer above them for a
thousand feet; on the other, scarce that distance from where they
stood, was the roaring chasm. And ahead of them the mountain wall and
the edge of the precipice came nearer and nearer, until there was no
more than a six-foot ledge to walk upon. Rod's face turned strangely
white as he realized, for the first time, the terrible chances they
had taken on that black, eventful night of a few months ago; and for a
time Wabi stood silent, his face as hard-set as a rock. Up out of the
chasm there came a deafening thunder of raging waters, like the
hollow explosions of great guns echoing and reëchoing in subterranean
caverns.
"Let's take a look!" shouted Wabi close up to his companion's ear.
He went to the edge of the precipice, and Rod forced himself to
follow, though there was in him a powerful inclination to hug close
to the mountain wall. For half a minute he stood fascinated,
terror-stricken, and yet in those thirty seconds he saw that which
would remain with him for a lifetime. Five hundred feet below him the
over-running floods of spring were caught between the ragged edges of
the two chasm walls, beating themselves in their fury to the whiteness
of milk froth, until it seemed as though the earth itself must tremble
under their mad rush. Now and then through the twisting foam there
shot the black crests of great rocks, as though huge monsters of
some kind were at play, whipping the torrent into greater fury, and
bellowing forth thunderous voices when they rose triumphant for an
instant above the sweep of the flood.
All this Rod saw in less than a breath, and he drew back, shivering
in every fiber of his body. But Wabigoon did not move. For several
minutes the Indian youth stood looking down upon the wonderful force
at play below him, his body as motionless as though hewn out of stone,
the wild blood in his veins leaping in response to the tumult and
thunder of the magnificent spectacle deep down in the chasm. When he
turned to Rod his lips made no sound, but his eyes glowed with that
half-slumbering fire which came only when the red blood of the
princess mother gained ascendency, and the wild in him called out
greeting to the savage in nature. It is not music, or fine talk, or
artificial wonders that waken a thrill deep down in the Indian soul,
it is the great mountain, the vast plain, the roaring cataract! And so
it was with Wabigoon.
They went on, now, with the canoe upon their shoulders, and hugging
close to the mountain wall. Slowly, avoiding every stone and stick
that might cause one of them to stumble, they passed along the
perilously narrow ledge, and did not rest again until they had come
in safety to the broader trail leading up the mountain. An hour later
Mukoki met them on his return for the remainder of their supplies.
Shortly after this they reached the small plateau where they had
camped during the previous winter, and lowered their canoe close to
the old balsam shelter.
Everything was as they had left it. Neither snow nor storm had
destroyed their lodging of boughs. There were the charred remains of
their fire, the bones of the huge lynx which Roderick had thought was
an attacking Woonga, and had killed; and beside the shelter was a
stake driven into the ground, the stake to which they had fastened
their faithful comrade of many an adventure, the tame wolf.
To this stake went Wabigoon, speaking no word. He sat down close
beside it, with his arm resting upon it, and when he looked up at Rod
there was an expression in his face which spoke more than words.
"Poor old Wolf!"
Rod turned and walked to the edge of the plateau, something hot and
uncomfortable filling his eyes. Below him, as far as he could see,
there stretched the vast, mysterious wilderness that reached to Hudson
Bay. And somewhere out there in that limitless space was Wolf.
As he looked, the hot film clouding his vision, he thought of the old
tragedy in Mukoki's life, and of how Wolf had helped him to avenge
himself. In his imagination he went back to that terrible day many,
many years ago, when Mukoki, happy in the strength of his youth, found
his young wife and child dead upon the trail, killed by wolves; he
thought of the story that Wabi had told him of the madness that came
to the young warrior, of how year after year he followed the trail of
wolves, wreaking his vengeance on their breed. And last he thought
of Wolf--how Mukoki and Wabigoon had found the whelp in one of their
traps; how they tamed him, grew to love him, and taught him to decoy
other wolves to their rifles. Wolf had been their comrade of a few
months before; fearless, faithful, until at last, escaping from the
final murderous assault of the Woongas, he had fled into the forests,
while his human friends fought their way back to civilization.
Where was Wolf now?
Unconsciously Rod questioned himself aloud, and from close behind him
Wabi answered.
"With the hunt-pack, Rod. He's forgotten us; gone back to the wild."
"Gone back to the wild, yes," said Rod; "but forgotten us, no!"
Wabi made no reply.